Shanghai Redemption (32 page)

It might be a wild guess, but Chen was starting to think that perhaps it wasn't so important that he attend the conference this morning …

He was startled by a metal smell wafting over from the stove's gas burner. The water had boiled away, and the dumplings had burned into a black and reddish mess at the bottom of the pot. He quickly threw the pot into the sink.

Glancing at his watch, he decided to leave.

He tried to think while he was heading out. He turned off his cell phone, lest his thoughts be interrupted by the phone.

As he walked past, several people stood by side of the road, waving frantically at taxis, shouting in vain. Party Secretary Li was probably right about needing to send over a bureau car. Still, it didn't look like it was about to rain anytime soon.

Abruptly, he stopped walking and took out his phone. He checked the weather forecast, and an image of a smiling sun beamed at him. He pondered for a moment, then composed a short text message to Li. In the message, Chen said that there was an accident during the renovation of his father's grave site and that he had to rush back to Suzhou. Then, turning off the phone, Chen headed to the train station.

He wasn't ready to go back to Suzhou. Instead, he planned to continue his research from the train station until evening, when he would go visit his mother. This way, it would be possible for him to claim that he'd actually hurried to Suzhou and then come back to Shanghai.

In
Zhuangzi
, there is a well-known saying: “To hide most effectively is to hide in the busiest section of the city.” So here he was, bent over his laptop at a train station café like many others, surrounded by the nonstop flow of commuters. From the train station, if need be, he could easily take the subway to Peiqin's restaurant. She might have something new to share from her firewall-climbing efforts on the Internet. In the meantime, he'd try to sort through more of those e-mails.

Soon the e-mails overwhelmed him again with their conflicting, contradicting currents of possibilities. As he was working on his second cup of coffee, he decided to try a new approach. In the three files of e-mails, was there some intersection, something that all of them touched upon?

There was. To his surprise, it was the death of the American.

The topic came up in various contexts. In the e-mails between the ernai, it seemed it was just a curiosity to gossip about. Though such a death touched upon his work in the Foreign Liaison Office, Sima's e-mails seemed very cautious on the subject. What struck Chen as particularly suspicious was the connection in those e-mails to someone named FL.

Was foul play involved in the American's death?

If so, the death would become an international scandal, which would be far more disastrous to the city government than all of the other cases combined.

Perhaps his having gulped two cups of coffee without any breakfast was making him too intense and paranoid. He was beginning to feel something like coffee sickness.

A waitress came to refill his water glass. “Are you all right, sir? You look so pale.”

“I'm fine. I just need to sit by myself for a while.”

He turned on his cell phone to check for messages, and immediately the phone started ringing. Chen picked it up.

“Where are you, Chief?” Yu said breathlessly.

“At the Shanghai Railway Station.”

“Thank Heaven,” Yu said, with an audible sigh of relief.

“What happened?”

“Earlier this morning, Skinny Wang said that he was going to drive for you. He was excited…”

“Yes, I was told that a bureau car was being made available and to wait for the pickup,” Chen said, “but I had to leave before he arrived. Something urgent came up, so I sent Li a text message.”

“Skinny Wang had a car accident.”

“A car accident!”

“Just about an hour ago. There was a deafening bang, something like an explosion, apparently, and the car went out of control. There are different accounts about the accident, but it happened on his way back to the bureau. It's so hard to understand. He's such an experienced driver.”

“How is he?”

“He's still at the emergency room. His life isn't in danger, but he might end up paralyzed.”

“Go to the hospital for me and bring some money with you.”

“Don't worry. I'll be there. You take care of yourself,” Yu said and ended the call.

Chen was reminded of the “spam” text messages he'd received, particularly the one that quoted “Sweeney among the Nightingales.” Now the warning was unmistakable.

Whoever sent that message was someone who had been informed that something devilish was being orchestrated but was too shrewd to send Chen an explicit warning.

For the moment, however, Chen decided not to speculate about who sent the warning. And not to contact Peiqin as he'd originally planned.

He was reminded of a proverb she'd quoted, which she'd gotten from Old Hunter:
Treating a dead horse as if it were still alive
.

He stood up, shaken but ready to move.

 

TWENTY-FOUR

CHEN STEPPED INTO THE
public phone booth at the railway station, pulled out a phone card, and dialed Qi Renli, the associate head of the Songjiang district police bureau. Last year, Qi had worked under Chen on a special case. Afterward, Chen had described Qi's work as “energetic and creative” in a recommendation letter he wrote as part of the Party cadre promotion process.

“Chief Inspector Chen—no, Director Chen.”

“Are you alone in the office, Qi?”

“Yes, I'm alone—and I understand. This call is confidential.”

“I'm afraid I don't have much time to talk. Last month, the death of an American in Sheshan was reported to your district office?”

“Yes, it was reported to the Sheshan precinct in our district. They got a call from a hotel and immediately sent two policemen over, but when Internal Security arrived at the scene, they were kicked out.”

“But they got there before Internal Security?”

“That's correct. I've met Fei, one of the two cops at the hotel that day, but he didn't say much about the incident. With Internal Security in the background, few would.”

“Do you have their names and phone numbers?”

“Yes, let me find them for you.”

Chen could hear Qi typing on a keyboard on the other end.

“Here they are. Fei Yaohua and Jiang Hui.” Qi read Chen their cell phone numbers. “And the address of the precinct they work out of is 222 Shexin Road. By the way, Fei may not be there today. I heard that he's helping on a case somewhere else, outside of Shanghai.”

“Has anybody else come to the district office asking about the dead American?”

“No, I don't think so. If there were any complications, they would be referred directly to Old Kang, the head of our district office. But I heard that the American died of alcohol poisoning.”

“Let me know if you hear anything new,” Chen said. “Needless to say, don't breathe a word to anyone else about this phone call.”

“Needless to say,” Qi said, then added belatedly, “Oh, congratulations on your new position. I've heard that it's just a preparatory step for a higher position in Beijing.”

It wasn't the first time that Chen had heard such an interpretation. Whether Qi really meant it or not, Chen saw no need to contradict him.

With the names and address in hand, Chen set out for the Sheshan precinct immediately. But it was a trip he made with a downloaded map in hand, taking three different subway lines and then hailing a taxi. A Shanghai native, Chen had passed though the Sheshan area only once before, and that was years ago. There was a Catholic church there, but that was about all he could recall about the area. The taxi driver hardly knew it any better, making several wrong turns along the way.

Finally, the taxi pulled up to the police precinct. Chen got out and walked around the area for several minutes. New apartments and condos had mushroomed up in Sheshan, just as they had in other parts of the city, but around the corner there were still old, shabby houses built a century earlier. The police station was located in the run-down section.

He walked back to the police station and pushed the door open without even a knock.

Jiang was there alone, bending over a paper bowl of instant noodles. At the sight of Chen striding into the office, he stood impatiently. Then recognition hit home.

“Oh…”

“It's a nice day, Jiang,” Chen said, lifting a finger to his lips. “Let's get out of here and go have a cup of tea.”

Jiang nodded. He was a youngish-looking man in his early thirties. He was wearing a black jacket and khaki pants instead of the police uniform, which wasn't unusual for a beat cop.

“Is there a place nearby we can talk?” Chen said.

“Sure,” Jiang said, walking out of the precinct with him.

About a block and a half away, Chen saw a dingy hut with a sign out front reading “Neighborhood Cultural Recreation Center.” On the peeling paint of the sign was a hand-drawn mahjong table.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics forebade mahjong, a gambling game, but as “cultural recreation” it was quietly tolerated, even this close to the neighborhood police station.

“It's an open secret,” Jiang said with a hint of embarrassment. “When people are engaged over a mahjong table, they don't make trouble. So the city government has always turned a blind eye.”

The owner of the mahjong den seemed to know Jiang well, letting them in without a question. Inside, there were three tables, each of them surrounded with energetic, exuberant players of mahjong, which seemed to be the one and only recreation in the center.

“My friend wants to learn how to play the game,” Jiang said.

“That's great.” The owner led them to a smaller room with a mahjong table set up in the middle of the room.

“If you want to practice for a real game, I'll send in two other players. Just let me know,” the owner said before he backed out, closing the door after him.

With the door shut, they had a measure of privacy, even though the noise from the tables in the other room wasn't completely shut out. Mahjong was a unique game, sometimes called the war of a square city, referring to the way that players stood their tiles on end, like walls, along the four sides of a table. Chen knew little about the game, except that there was no way to play a game with only two of them. However, he liked Jiang's choice of location. They could talk there, a side room in a mahjong den, without raising suspicion.

“I want to talk to you about the death of an American in a hotel here,” Chen said, shuffling the bamboo-backed mahjong pieces about, creating a convenient background noise.

“How did you come to hear anything about it, Chief Inspector Chen?”

“Why do you ask?”

“The case was taken from us before we even started looking into it. In fact, we were instructed not to say anything about it.”

There was something about the way Jiang spoke, Chen observed. Possibly a hint of hesitancy.

“You've heard about my change of position, haven't you?”

“Yes…”

“I'm no longer a chief inspector in the police bureau,” Chen said, going on to reshuffle the pieces.

“But you're now the head of another important office.”

Working in a local police precinct, Jiang apparently knew little about the politics involved in the city government. His interpretation of events regarding Chen seemed to be similar to Qi's.

“Have you guessed why I was removed as head of the Special Case Squad?”

“No.”

“There's an old English proverb: ‘When the cat's away, the mice will play.'”

“Now I see, Chief.”

“Now you see, Jiang. I was told about this case by an old comrade.” Which was a true statement. Who the “old comrade” might be, however, was up to the younger cop to decide. “Suffice it to say that things are complicated and sensitive. So, please, tell me what you know, in detail, about the dead American.”

“Fei is the one who can give you all the details, but he's off in Wuxi now, helping the police out there. I can only tell you what I heard from him,” Jiang said, holding up a tile and then setting it down with a thud.

“Ours is a new police station for this rapidly developing area. Only two of us work out of this station, and there's a lot of work for each of us. The case of the dead American came to us about ten days ago. Usually, Fei and I would get to the station around eight thirty, but that morning, I had a meeting in the city, so Fei was alone in the office. About nine thirty, I got a text message from him saying, “A dead foreigner was found in the Wugong Hotel. I'm going there.” With so many foreigners living and working in Shanghai, it wasn't surprising that one of them got sick and dropped dead. If it's a case of death from natural causes, the local hospital is in charge, not the police. But since it was a foreigner who died, and in an area hotel, Fei went over there to take a look. It sounded like a matter of formality, and I believed Fei could take care of it by himself. Shortly after ten thirty, I got another text from Fei. ‘As soon as the meeting is finished, hurry back. Come directly to the hotel.' There was a suggestion of urgency in the message. The meeting wasn't important, so I left before it was over. But there was an accident on the toll road to Sheshan that morning, and I got stuck in the traffic. Around noon, I sent him a text saying I was on the way, and he wrote back, ‘Internal Security is coming too.'

“Now, that was weird. The deceased was an American; if the higher authorities were called in, it would be the responsibility of the Foreign Liaison Office. So why was Internal Security coming to the hotel?

“When I finally got to the hotel around two, two Internal Security officers were already there in the hotel room with Fei. Judging by the way they were talking to Fei, they hadn't been there very long.