Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01] (53 page)

An old high cadre such as Wu Bing, lying unconscious under an oxygen mask in the hospital, must remain untouched, including his mansion, his car, and, needless to say, his children.

If Chen persisted in conducting it his way, it was going to be his last case.

Maybe he could still quit.

Maybe it was already too late.

Once on a blacklist, there was no escaping the inevitable.

How far would Party Secretary Li go to protect him?

Not far, probably, since his downfall would affect Li, too. He was sure that Li, a seasoned politician, would not choose to side with a loser.

A case had already been built up against him. A case to cover up Wu Xiaoming’s case. What awaited him?

Years at a reform-through-labor camp in Qinghai Province in a dark prison cell, or even a bullet in the back of his head. Perhaps it was too dramatic to evoke these scenarios at the moment, but he was sure he would be thrown out of the bureau.

The situation was desperate. Wang had tried to warn him.

The night air was serene, sweet, along the Bund.

Behind him, across Zhongshan Road, stood the Peace Hotel with its black-and-red pinnacled roof. He had fantasized about spending an evening there in the jazz bar, in Wang’s company, with the musicians doing a great job with their piano, horns, and drums, and the waiters, starched napkins over their arms, serving Bloody Marys, Manhattans, Black Russians. . . .

Now they would never have the chance.

Somehow he was not too worried about her. Attractive, young, smart, Wang had connections of her own. Eventually she would be able to get her passport and visa, and board a Japanese plane. Her decision to leave might prove to be the right one. There was no foretelling China’s future.

In Tokyo, in a floating silk kimono, kneeling on a mat, and warming a cup of saki for her husband, she would make a wonderful wife. A blaze of cherry blossoms silhouetted against the snow-mantled Mount Fuji.

At night, as an occasional siren sounded in the sleepless skies, would she still think of him, across the seas, and across the mountains?

He remembered several lines by Liu Yong, written during the Song dynasty:

Where shall I find myself

Tonight, waking from the hangover
—

The riverbank lined with weeping willows,

The moon sinking, the dawn rising on a breeze.

Year after year, I will be far,

Far away from you.

All the beautiful scenes are unfolding,

But to no avail:

Oh, to whom can I speak

Of this ever enchanting landscape?

A
reversal of positions. In Liu’s poem, Liu was the one leaving his love behind, but now Wang was leaving him.

As a poet, Liu was a respected name in classical Chinese literature. As a man, Liu had been down and out, drinking, dreaming, and dissipating his best years in brothels. It was even said that his romantic poems were his undoing, for he was despised by his contemporaries, who denounced him with outrage born of orthodox Confucian dignity. Liu died in dire poverty, attended only by a poor prostitute who took a fancy to his poetry, though such a deathbed companion might also have been fabricated. A sugar cube of consolation in a cup full of bitterness.

In future years, would Wang come back, a happy, prosperous woman? What would have befallen him by that time? No longer a chief inspector. As down and out as Liu. In an increasingly materialistic society, who would take notice of a bookworm capable of nothing except penning a few sentimental lines?

He shuddered when the big clock atop the Custom Mansions started chiming a new melody. He did not know it, but he liked it.

It had played a different tune in his high-school days, a melody dedicated to Chairman Mao—”The East Is Red.”

Times changed.

Thousands of years earlier, Confucius said,
Time flows away like the water in the river.

He took a deep breath of the summer night air, as if struggling out of the surging current. Then he left the Bund and walked toward the Shanghai Central Post Office.

Located at the corner of Sichuan Road and Chapu Road, the post office was open twenty-four hours a day. A doorman sat dutifully at the entrance—even at that late hour. Chen nodded at him. In the spacious hall were several oak desks where people could write, but only a couple of people were sitting there, waiting before a row of booths for long distance calls.

He chose to sit at one of these long desks, and he started writing on a piece of paper with the bureau letterhead. That was what he needed. He did not want it to appear personal. This was serious business, he thought. In the interests of the Party.

As soon as he started writing, to his surprise, the words seemed to flow from his pen. He stopped only once, to look up at a poster on the wall. The poster reminded him of one he had seen years earlier—a black bird hovering above the horizon, carrying an orange sun on its back. There were two short lines under the picture. “What will come / Will come.”

Time is a bird, / It perches, and it flies.

When he had finished, he took a registered-mail envelope, and asked a yawning clerk behind the counter, “How much is a registered letter to Beijing?”

“Eight Yuan.”

“Fine,” Chen said. It was worth it. The letter in his hand might be his last card. He was no gambler, but he had to play it. Although, after all these years, its value might only be in his imagination. More likely, a straw, grasped at by a drowning man, he thought.

The clock was striking two as he left the post office. He nodded again to the doorman still sitting motionless at the gate. The man did not even look up.

Around the corner, a peddler with a huge pot of tea-leaf-eggs steaming over a coal stove greeted Chen loudly. The smell did not appeal to him; he continued to walk.

At the intersection of Tianton Road and Sichuan Road, he noticed a glass-and-chrome tower rising silhouetted against a dark backdrop of alleys and
siheyuan
houses. Floodlights illuminated the construction site as the procession of trucks, heavy equipment, and handcarts carried in material for the building. Like so many other roads, Tianton had been blocked by Shanghai’s effort to regain its status as the nation’s commercial and industrial center. He tried to take a shortcut by turning into Ninhai Market. The market was deserted, except for a long line of baskets—plastic, bamboo, rattan—of different shapes and sizes. The line led up to a concrete counter under a wooden sign on which was chalked the words YELLOW CROAKER. The most delicious fish in Shanghai’s housewives’ eyes. The baskets stood for the virtuous wives who would come in an hour or two to pick them up and take their places in line, rubbing their sleepy eyes.

There was only one night-shift worker standing at the end of the market, his cotton padded collar upturned as high as his ears as he hammered at a gigantic bar of frozen fish in front of the refrigeration house.

The shortcut through the market proved to be a mistake, so he had to turn into another side street, spending even more time on his way back home.

In retrospect, many of his decisions had been mistakes, he admitted, whether serious or trivial. It was the combination of these decisions, however, that had made him what he was. At the moment, a suspended—though not officially—chief inspector, with his political future practically finished. But at least he had tried to be an honest, conscientious decision maker.

Whether sending the letter to Beijing was just another mistake, he did not yet know. He started whistling, off-key, a song he had learned years ago:
“Yesterday’s dream is driven by the wind, / Yesterday’s wind is still dreaming the dream
...”

It was maudlin, even more so than Liu Yong’s poem.

* * * *

Chapter 30

t was late Friday afternoon. Detective Yu was still at his desk, staring at the files of the special case squad.

Chief Inspector Chen was not in his office. He was serving as an interpreter and escort for an American writers’ delegation. This had been an unexpected assignment announced by Party Secretary Li the previous day. A writer and translator in his own right, Chen had been chosen as a representative of the Chinese Writers’ Association.

The announcement had come so suddenly that Yu had hardly any time to exchange information with Chen. They had missed each other on the first day of Chen’s return from Guangzhou. And early the second day, when Yu had just stepped into the large office, Chen’s new assignment had been made. Chen left for the airport almost immediately.

On the surface, it was not too bad a signal. It could even signify that Chief Inspector Chen was still a trusted Party member, but Yu was worried. Since that crab banquet, he had in Chen an ally, and a friend as well. Old Hunter had told him about the snag their investigation had struck, and the trouble Chen was in. And in the afternoon, Yu, too, had talked with Party Secretary Li, who assigned him to an important conference in Jiading County, to act as temporary security.

“What about the case?” Yu asked.

“What case?”

“Guan Hongying’s case.”

“Don’t worry, Comrade Detective Yu. Comrade Chief Inspector Chen will be back in a couple of days.”

“Our squad also has a lot of work.”

“Finish as much as you can before reporting to the conference on Monday. Other people will take care of things here.” Li added without looking at him, “Don’t forget to ask the accountant about the standard meal allowance. It is possible that you will be staying there for quite a few days.”

Yu had not finished much of his work by five o’clock. Files of unfinished cases were stacked high on his desk. The case of the Henan abduction ring that kidnapped girls and sold them as wives to peasants in faraway provinces, Yu thought gloomily, could be turned over to the Henan Province Bureau. As for the pilferage case at the Shanghai Number 2 Steel Plant, he did not know what to do. Factory pilferage was constant and enormous. For some workers, it was a form of additional compensation. Ordinarily, if caught, a worker would be either fined or fired. But in accordance with a recent Central Party Committee document on the damage caused by pilferage from state-run enterprises, a culprit could be sentenced to twenty years. And there were several other cases, special just because the city government wanted to make them examples to warn young people in one way or another.

Detective Yu closed the file in frustration, scattering a thin layer of cigarette ash on the desk. Justice was like colored balls in a magician’s hand, changing color and shape all the time, beneath the light of politics.

A murderer was at large, while the police officers were in trouble.

In his position, however, there was nothing Detective Yu could do—except what he was told to.

At a quarter to six, the phone started ringing again.

“Detective Yu,” he said, picking up the phone.

“What in heaven’s name are you up to, Yu?” Peiqin’s voice sounded exasperated.

“What’s wrong?”

“Did you remember the parents’ meeting in Qinqin’s school today?”

“Oh—I forgot. I’ve been so busy.”

“I’m not nagging, but I hate being here all by myself, and taking care of him without your help.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s been a long day for me, too.”

“I know. I’ll come home right now.”

“You don’t have to come home just for my sake. It will be too late for the meeting anyway. But remember what your father said yesterday.”