Shanghai Redemption (23 page)

He wondered why she had suddenly decided to leave. Because of something he'd said? Because she wanted him to stay there and not feel awkward about it?

“But it's late.”

“It's not too late for me,” she said with a mysterious smile. “I might even go to the salon afterward.”

“If you leave, I'd better leave with you, White Cloud.”

“How can you be so obstinate? It's too late for you to go to your friend's, and clearly it's not advisable for you to go back to your apartment or your mother's.”

“I can make do with a public bathhouse for the night. They don't bother to check ID regularly, and for one hundred yuan, I can enjoy a good foot massage and then sleep in a bath-towel-covered folding chair overnight.”

“Come on. That's not only uncomfortable, it's risky too. From time to time, the cops raid those places. You don't need me to tell you that,” she said. “Don't try to be such a gentleman. Besides, I might learn something about the nightclub tonight.”

He didn't respond immediately.

“Oh, come to the study with me,” she said, taking his hand. “If you want to use the computer, both the laptop and desktop are yours. The desktop is hooked up to the printer. So make yourself at home.”

“I don't know what to say.”

“Here, let me enter the computer's password for you.”

She leaned over him, typing in the password, her long hair brushing against his cheek. He moved the chair closer to the desk, catching a glimpse of her breasts through the opening of her robe.

“In case you need to reenter it later, it's CC123.”

Was that a coincidence? “CC” could refer to the initial letters of his name in Pinyin.

But she had already turned away and was padding back to the bathroom in her bare feet.

There, with the door half open, she slid off her robe, her snowy white back flashing under the light.

He stood up and walked out to the balcony. Out there, he took a deep breath of the night air.

Across the river was the Bund that was so familiar to him. It also seemed strange, as he looked at it from this different perspective. The Bund seemed to change and change again with the pulsing of the city.

Years slip away like water …

“How do I look, Chen?”

He turned to see her stepping out onto the balcony in a red mandarin dress with high slits. It reminded him of something from another case, several years ago, when she'd also helped him. For a moment, he was gripped by a sense of déjà vu. Was she wearing the same dress tonight?

“Ravishing, as always.”

“Make yourself at home,” she repeated.

She turned and walked out, looking back over her shoulder to flash another smile at him before closing the apartment door behind her.

She was gone before he had the time to ask where she was going. But was he really going to ask?

He stepped back inside the apartment and paced about the study before he finally sat down at the desk. Instead of working on the computer, he pulled out the cassette tape and listened to it again, focusing on the paragraphs he'd marked. He spent more than an hour listening to the tape, but he didn't find anything really new.

Then he turned on the computer, typed in the password again, and started surfing the Internet. Immediately he read about a new twist in the dead pig case. A Shanghai meat company was trying to buy an American meat company, as a way of reassuring domestic consumers by implying that the company's quality control standards were the same as those in the United States. All over the Internet, the move was being ridiculed as an attempt by Chinese socialism to buy superior quality from American capitalism.

Chen continued to surf around the Web. It seemed that Liang was still missing, but the high-speed train industry was being unanimously praised as another great achievement under the Party's leadership. As for Shang's son, he seemed to have been largely forgotten. With so many fresh scandals breaking every day, old scandals usually didn't last long on the Internet.

He looked up from the screen, feeling worn out. The screen stared back at him, untiring.

Outside the windows, the view of Bund at night was truly breathtaking. The neon lights along the Bund projected beautiful abstractions onto the water and into the sky, while occasional ships slid down the river, casting shadows against the dreamlike horizon.

Once again he thought of some lines by Liu Yong, a decadent Song dynasty poet from the eleventh century.

All these beautiful scenes are unfolding, / but to no avail. / Alas, to whom can I speak / of this ineffably enchanting landscape?

He was dismayed by his own recurrent waves of self-pity. Was he really giving up, ready to become a decadent poet like Liu or Baudelaire?

It was just past midnight. There was no telling when she'd come back, and he had to get up early the next morning. So he went to the living room, and without undressing, he stretched himself out on the couch. It was fairly comfortable, and he dropped off to sleep quickly, in spite of himself.

He is standing in front of a door, hesitating. Finally, he raises his hand to knock, but there is no response. He pushes at the door, which opens into an empty room. There is nothing inside except an embroidered silk robe lying rumpled across the bed. He touches the pillow, which seems to be still warm and slightly wet. A red slipper anchors the silence of the room. Where is the other one? Outside the window, the footprints left by a night bird are being covered by freshly falling snow …

He was awakened by a phone ringing in the middle of his fast-fading dream. Disoriented in the grayness of the early morning, he rubbed his eyes. The ringing phone wasn't just part of his dream. It was her phone on the corner table. Chen looked at his watch. Four twenty-five. He was alone in the apartment—she hadn't come back yet.

Then the answering machine picked up and played the recorded message, “Sorry I'm not available. Please leave a message and I'll call you back.”

From the other end, the caller spoke up. “It's me—White Cloud.”

He crossed the room and picked up the phone in a hurry. White Cloud's voice came rippling over the line. “I'm glad you're awake.”

There seemed to be a strange gurgling sound in the background, like water coming out of a showerhead.

“I went to see Shen tonight, the owner of the nightclub,” she went on. “As I mentioned, I've met him at some parties before, and several times he's invited me to his place. So he was pleased to see me tonight, but apparently he had something on his mind. Still, I managed to engage him in small talk, going over some of the currently hot gossip.

“About Shang's wife, he said that the people who hired her to sing for them privately are perverted. They were after the sensation of a red general's wife singing red songs in the same way that others hire a slut to entertain them in a private room. It's not that she's still young or pretty, but that they liked the very idea of it, for which they paid quite a lot. Some of the guests that night were quite high up in terms of their positions. So perhaps she didn't do it solely for money. But Shen didn't say who the clients were.

“About the law firm that represents the two Heavenly World nightclubs—Kaitai LLC—he mentioned an advisor. At first I had no clue who he was referring to, but then I realized that the advisor was actually the founder. She officially resigned from the firm out of political considerations—”

“She resigned?”

“Yes. I'm not finished yet. Sorry, but I have to speak in a hurry.”

She didn't say why she was in such a rush.

“The founder is Kai, none other than the First Lady of Shanghai.” She didn't have to say that Kai was Party Secretary Lai's wife—everyone in Shanghai knew that. “Because of her husband's position, the law firm attracted too much attention. Her resignation was just a show, of course, and she's still in control. The Heavenly World retained her law firm as their legal counsel, and that's why no one dares touch it.”

Chen had heard of Kaitai, the law firm. On at least one occasion, Lai had talked about Kai's resignation from her firm as a sacrifice she had made for the best interests of the Party, a noble move to avoid any possible conflict of interest due to his position.

“There was something strange. While talking about Kai, Shen made a comment on an unrelated topic. He mentioned an American businessman who recently died. He was somehow related to the club, possibly a regular customer, I suppose. But there are so many foreign customers there that his comment struck me as odd.”

“What was the context of his comment?”

“After mentioning the law firm, he jumped right to the topic of the dead American. And then, all of a sudden he said, ‘The First Lady is a real bitch.' That's what he said,” she said breathlessly. “She seems to be putting pressure on him.”

“A bitch?” He was more than surprised.

The “First Lady” could be more involved with Shen than simply working as his nightclub's legal representative. Could she have been behind the raid that night?

Chen had never met Kai before, and he couldn't remember any of his investigations having anything to do with the law firm.

Even if Chen's troubles were somehow related to Kai and her law firm, Kai, after the failed raid, shouldn't have had any reason to put pressure on Shen. Shen wasn't in any position to do more, because Chen would never set foot in the club again.

“I've got Shen's e-mail address,” White Cloud said. “Do you have a pen?”

He grabbed a pen, wondering at this unexpected piece of information.

“This is his personal e-mail, not the office e-mail,” she said, reading it out to him. “He's a cautious man. Sorry, I have to go now. There's some movement in the other room. Bye.”

It wasn't difficult to imagine where she was calling from.

She was with Shen, which she didn't try to hide, and calling from the bathroom, with water running in the background, like a shower, to cover the sound of the call. She had to be cautious, knowing that the man in the other room could wake up at any time.

Shen had invited her to the club several times, Chen knew, but she hadn't gone there until tonight. In fact, she hadn't said anything about going out tonight until after he'd asked for help. She was doing this for his sake, to uncover information about the Heavenly World, which could be crucial to his survival. Feeling sick to his stomach, Chen willed himself not to imagine what was going on with White Cloud anymore.

As he sat there on White Cloud's couch, more fragments of his dream resurfaced, but what the dream meant continued to elude him. He found himself thinking about the first time he met White Cloud. Almost to his irritation, several lines by Yan Jidao, a poet in the eleventh century, came crashing back to him.

Holding the jade cup, / her bare arms reaching / out of the florid sleeves, drinking, / unaware of her cheeks flushing, / dancing with the moon sinking, / in the willows, singing / until too tired for her / to wave the fan that unfolds / peach trees blossoming …

Or was he still imagining the scene between White Cloud and another man tonight?

She had done that for him—despite the cost to herself.

Her passing Shen's e-mail address on to him also spoke to her thoroughness. Had he ever told her about the help he'd gotten from a hacker in another case? He wasn't sure, but her hint was unmistakable—she expected him to use Shen's e-mail address to find out more.

Across the river, most of the lights along the Bund were off. The skyline appeared barren and lusterless, like an aging woman with all her makeup removed. Wherever White Cloud was, she wasn't coming back anytime soon.

It hurt for him to sit alone—he couldn't do it any longer.

The People's Park probably opened at six, and he couldn't afford to miss Old Hunter.

He found a piece of paper and scribbled a quick note.

“Thanks.”

That was all he could think of to say.

He took the white jasmine spray he'd put in his pocket and placed it on the note.

The tiny bouquet was badly rumpled, and several petals fell onto the desk.

 

FIFTEEN

CHEN ARRIVED AT PEOPLE'S
Park about five minutes before six and waited with a group of old people who had started queuing up earlier. When the park opened, they all walked in together.

He had no idea when exactly Old Hunter was going to arrive. Retired Shanghainese tended to get out early to do their morning exercise. Perhaps that would be true for Old Hunter, since he had to go to his job at the agency afterward.

The park was at the corner of Nanjing and Xizang Roads, its northern gate facing the First Department Store across a busy intersection. The park was much smaller than he'd remembered. Just like the garden in Suzhou, the park's location was too commercially valuable not to be exploited. All around it high-rises were jostling, elbowing against one another, encroaching on the park. It was a relentless effort that eventually had reduced the park to about one third of its original size.

Despite the early hour, Chen saw people here and there in the park, starting to practice tai chi, to sing Beijing opera fragments, to dance to the melodies from a portable CD player. He approached a half dozing man leaning on a dragon-head-topped walking stick and asked for directions to the “bird corner.”

“It's near the gate on Huangpi Road, facing the Flower and Bird Market across the street.”

Chen had read about people training birds like parrots or orioles to repeat simple human words. There was a scene about it in a documentary about Shanghai. But that morning, there was only one old man sitting on a jutting rock in the corner, with a bamboo birdcage at his feet. He watched as a tiny sparrow skipped out of the open cage and then hopped about on the ground, flapping its wings. It was strange. The bird could fly away, but the old man was watching it, completely at ease, as if the bird were attached to him by an invisible string.