A Case of Two Cities Read online

  A Case of Two Cities

  Qiu Xiaolong

  Inspector Chen Cao of the Shanghai Police Bureau is summoned by an official of the party to take the lead in a corruption investigation – one where the principle figure and his family have long since fled to the United States and beyond the reach of the Chinese government. But he left behind the organization and his partners-in-crime, and Inspector Chen is charged to uncover those responsible and act as necessary to end the corruption ring. In a twisting case that takes him from Shanghai, all the way to the U.S., reuniting him with his previous cohort from the U.S. Marshall's service – Inspector Catherine Rhon.

  At once a compelling crime novel and a insightful, moving portrayal of everyday life, The Emperor's Sword is the next installment in the critically acclaimed, award-wining Inspector Chen series.

  Qiu Xiaolong

  A Case of Two Cities

  The fourth book in the Inspector Chen series, 2006

  Prologue

  AN ANONYMOUS PHONE CALL came to the Fujian Police Bureau at 1:15 a.m. on that early May night.

  “Come to Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold immediately. Room 135. You will find front page stuff for the Fujian Star.”

  Sergeant Lou Xiangdong, the cop who answered the phone, had heard of the place before. It was a so-called karaoke center, but really known for its karaoke-covered sexual service among the corrupt officials and businessmen. The Fujian Star was a local tabloid newspaper founded in the mid-nineties. The telephone call delivered an unmistakable message: there was something scandalous going on in that room.

  But Lou felt sleepy and grumpy. He had chosen to work on this late shift for the night subsidy. A bachelor reaching his mid-thirties, he had just met a lovely girl, with whom he was going to have dim sum the next morning, and a week’s subsidy would probably cover the expense. He had been dreaming of golden bamboo steamers, of the mini shrimp buns and crab dumplings, her crispy laughter rippling in a tiny cup of Dragon Well tea, and her white fingers tearing the green lotus leaf off the sticky rice chicken for him…

  The police bureau received this sort of anonymous call occasionally, but most of them were false alarms. With corruption spreading like an uncontrollable plague all over the country and the gap between the poor and the rich increasing, people reacted out of their frustration. Consequently, when cops hurried out to those notorious entertainment places, more often than not they found decent businesses there, the K girls-karaoke girls allegedly hired to sing along with companionless clients-dressed demurely, as if still buttoned up with the puritan codes of Mao’s time. People knew too well, however, what they really performed, totally unbuttoned, behind the closed doors of private K rooms.

  But Lou was not so sure about the calls being false alarms or practical jokes. Infamous resorts like Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold were known to be associated with high-ranking officials in the city government, with insider tips readily available to them. That was probably why the police raids had ended up fetching water with a bamboo basket-total failures.

  Despite this, the sergeant made up his mind to go. The informer sounded urgent, with a specific room number too, and like other low-level cops, Lou was concerned about the corruption getting out of control in “ China ’s brand of socialism.” He did not mention anything to his colleagues, and he took an office cell phone and set out in a jeep.

  Ten minutes later, he walked into the club. In the large entrance hall of Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold, he saw a stage at one side, with a bevy of girls strutting around in bikinis, and in the mist, a willowy girl in transparent gauze with cloudlike trails danced barefoot to lambent music, which floated out of the imitation Dunhuang murals behind. Off the stage, a line of K girls waited in their black mini slips and transparent slippers. One of them rose and flurried toward Lou, reaching out her skinny, pasty arms like clipped chicken wings. It reminded him of a brothel scene in an old movie. From the private rooms along the somberly lit corridor, he heard a chorus of moaning and groaning. Two or three clients in the hall were moving among the K girls like fish in the water, bargaining with a muscular night manager in a black Tang costume.

  Lou turned to the night manager, who started an introduction, grinning though a ring of his cigarette smoke.

  “My name is Pang. We are pleased to offer you our service. Puncturing the clock costs a hundred yuan. For a rich and successful man like you, you will definitely need more. Puncturing the clock three times, I would say. Not including the amount for puncturing the hole. For the whole night, you can enjoy a wholesale discount. You may discuss the details with the girl you choose. Take a look at Meimei. So beautiful, so talented. She can play your jade flute into a soul-ravishing song.”

  Pang must have taken Lou for a new client. Puncturing the clock probably meant half an hour or an hour, Lou supposed, but he did not have to guess about “puncturing the hole” or “playing the jade flute.”

  Lou took out his badge. “Take me to Room 135.”

  Startled like a wakened sleepwalker, Pang tried in vain to convince the cop that no one was there. When they arrived at the room in question, the door was locked, with no light coming out of it. At Lou’s insistence, the night manager took out a key, opened the door, and turned on the light.

  The light outlined a sordid scene. On a sofa bed lay two naked bodies, their legs still entwined like fried dough sticks. A middle-aged man with gray-streaked hair and long hairy limbs slept next to a young girl, thin, ill-developed, perhaps only seventeen or eighteen, with slack breasts and a broad patch of black hair over her groin. The room stank of sex and other suspicious odors. The glaring light failed to wake them up.

  Walking over to the bed with a frown, Lou shoved the man on the shoulder. When the man showed no sign of response, Lou leaned down and was shocked to find him dead. The girl slept on, a luscious smile playing on her lips, her hand resting on his cold belly.

  A more stunning discovery came to Lou. The dead man was none other than Detective Hua Ting, the head of the special case squad of the Fujian Police. Impulsively, Lou grabbed a blanket to cover the body before he pulled back the dead man’s eyelid-a bloodshot eye stared back at him with an unfathomable message. The corneas were not exactly opaque, which suggested that the death was recent. He turned to pick up Hua’s clothing, which was scattered on the ground, and felt something bulging in the pants pocket. It was a pack of cigarettes, Flying Horse.

  Across the room, the girl finally stirred and awoke. Opening her eyes, she appeared terrified. She jumped up, fell down, and tossed her head from side to side, her naked body twitching like a rice-paddy eel. Lou then realized that he should take pictures of the crime scene.

  “Don’t move,” he shouted, holding the camera while she broke into a hysterical fit of screaming and squirming. The pictures might truly be stuff for the Fujian Star. He would never do that, though. Hua had been one of his trainers upon his entrance into the police.

  “The eighteenth level down in hell, rats and snakes,” she sobbed, like she was still struggling in a nightmare, her eyes vacant. “Old Third, I want to cut your damned bird to a thousand pieces. A small sip, like a teardrop. Never seen him. Never known him.”

  Getting anything coherent from her was out of the question. Lou had to call the bureau. This was a scandalous case, and the bureau might be anxious to control the damage to its public image, especially since corrupt cops had started to appear on Chinese TV series. No one seemed to be immune, incorrigible, in the age of Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold, even a veteran officer like Hua. Lou decided to make a phone call to the bureau head, Ren Jiaye. It was a long call, and Lou came to an abrupt stop toward the end of his report.

  “What’s wrong?” Ren as
ked.

  Something disturbed him. Lou recalled the case assigned to Hua- “ China ’s number one corruption case,” as described in the People’s Daily. It was an investigation of Xing Xing, a high-ranking Fujian Party cadre and business tycoon with an empire of smuggling operations under him, run through his connections at all government levels. To be exact, it was an investigation of the corrupt officials connected with Xing since Xing had fled the country. But it was only a hunch of the moment, Lou thought, and he did not mention it to the bureau head.

  Finishing his report, Lou hung up with the bureau and dug out Hua’s home number. He hesitated. He started pacing about the room, the girl sobbing like a broken electronic flute, and Pang still standing like a terra cotta figure in a Tang tomb.

  Lou tried to rehearse what he was going to say to Hua’s widow, but it was a daunting task. He finally decided to wait until the next morning. To his surprise, a group from Internal Security, headed by Commander Zhu Longhua, arrived at the scene in less than twenty minutes. The appearance of Internal Security, trusted by the Party authorities in circumstances of “highly political sensitivity,” made sense-the dead was a cop possibly involved in a sex scandal-but their speediness was amazing, especially since it was already after midnight. Internal Security lost no time taking over. Without even listening to his report about the crime scene, they ordered Lou out as they started searching, questioning, and shooting pictures in the room.

  Shoved out of the room by Internal Security, Lou and Pang were left looking at each other like two clay images. Neither of them knew what to do. Lou was in no position to argue with Internal Security, however baffling their way of doing the job. They had not even questioned Pang.

  Pang handed Lou a cigarette. It was a Camel, far more expensive than the Flying Horse in Hua’s pant pocket.

  “Have you seen Inspector Hua here before, Pang?”

  “No. I have worked here about three years, and I have never seen him.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “Oh, Nini. She’s not a regular. A temporary girl without the K permit, and we follow the government regulations strictly.”

  It was absurd that K girls had to receive professional ethics training before obtaining a K license, Lou reflected, but it was not his business for the moment.

  “When did you come to work tonight?”

  “Around eight. I did not know there was anyone in that room, there was nothing in the record. It doesn’t make sense, unless Nini sneaked Hua in before my shift.”

  Lou thought Pang was telling the truth. As they finished their second cigarettes, Commander Zhu came out, shaking his head. He too lit a cigarette, drew the smoke into his lungs, and turned to address Lou.

  “According to the girl, Hua was a regular customer here. Though only in his early fifties, he had problems getting an erection. So he usually took Tiger and Dragon Power, a drug smuggled in from south Asia. Very expensive on the black market, and effective too. Early this evening, he finished half a bottle of liquor, and popped in a double dose of Power. She was not aware of any difference in him, she said, except that he came twice that night, and the second time in the back. Exhausted, they both fell asleep. She was totally unaware of the change in the man lying beside her.”

  Lou was stunned. Through the half open door, he caught a glimpse of the girl trembling hysterically at the foot of the sofa bed. How could Internal Security have obtained a confession from her so quickly? Zhu stepped back into the room and shut the door after him.

  Lou thought of the earlier remarks made by Pang, who looked more puzzled than before. Lou accepted another cigarette from him. Doubts rose in the spiraling smoke. As the head of the special case squad, Hua was known to have been a capable cop and a good man. He had never heard of the detective engaging in indecent activities. Lou also recalled the blank, almost drugged expression on the girl’s face. If things had happened the way Zhu had just described, she should have reacted differently when Sergeant Lou entered the room earlier.

  “A hundred coffins. Perhaps the first one,” Lou murmured in spite of himself, grinding out the cigarette.

  “Coffin?” Pang repeated in utter confusion.

  Lou did not explain. More suspicions barged into his mind. Hua’s colleagues had worried about his last assignment. Xing was reputed to be one with a long arm reaching into the skies. To investigate the high-ranking officials behind Xing was to bring a hornet’s nest about one’s ears.

  In a recent press conference, the premier of the Chinese government had made a statement about the corruption eating up the system like cancer. “To fight against those corrupt Party officials, I have prepared one hundred coffins. Ninety-nine for them, one for myself.” It was not a pompous speech to impress the audience. With those Party officials interwoven into “a gigantic net covering the heaven and earth,” it was not inconceivable that the premier might fall as a victim.

  “Have you seen the latest episode of Judge Bao on TV? The swarthy-faced judge who carries a coffin for himself all the way to the palace.”

  “Judge Bao?” Pang repeated. “You mean the legend of the incorruptible Judge Bao in the Song dynasty?”

  The premier’s coffin metaphor might have been an echo from the old legend. In his efforts to punish law-breaking officials, Judge Bao pulled a coffin all the way to the emperor, as a token of his determination to fight to the bitter end. Now, about a thousand years later, Hua had met an infamous end shortly after he had gotten a similar assignment.

  Once again Zhu came out. “Lou, you don’t have to stay here anymore. It has been a long night for you, we know. We are going to send Hua and Nini to the hospital for tests, and put him into the mortuary afterward. You may notify his family if you want to.”

  It was the last thing Lou wanted to. Hua had only a sick, old wife left behind. Their only son, an educated youth, had died in a tractor accident in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Lou wondered if the old woman could survive the blow of losing her husband too.

  “I’ll go to the hospital too. After all, Hua was my colleague for many years. It is up to me to accompany him, I think, for the last part of his journey.”

  Lou drove at the back of the convoy of vehicles that took Hua’s body to a special army hospital. As before, Lou had to wait outside in the corridor, watching the old cop under the white sheet pulled in, followed by Internal Security. Again, he could do nothing but smoke, affixing a second cigarette to the butt of the first one. All these years, Lou recalled with a bitter taste in his mouth, Hua had smoked Flying Horse, one of the cheapest brands. It spelled a face loss in this gilded age, but Hua had no choice. The medical bill for his wife was no longer covered by the state-run company on the edge of bankruptcy. How could Hua have had the money to be a regular customer in a karaoke club-with Flying Horse in his pocket? Lou added a third cigarette to the first two. It looked almost like an antenna, trembling in a pathetic effort to catch imperceptible information from the surrounding blank walls.

  Initial test results came out. The medical examination proved that the girl had had sex earlier that night and the remaining semen detected in her vagina was from Hua. The autopsy had to wait until morning. According to the doctor, an overdose of the Tiger and Dragon Power could have led to a heart attack. Internal Security had found a package of the drug in Hua’s pocket.

  That was the last nail knocked into the coffin. Lou staggered. The cell phone started ringing like bells. Calls from people both in and out of the bureau. He was surprised at the speed the news spread around. It was still early. Everyone was shocked, and no one believed that Hua could have done something like that.

  Lou even got a long-distance call from Yu Keji, nicknamed Old Hunter, who was a retired Shanghai cop with a national police information network. Perhaps people did not have to be too cautious talking to a retired man. Old Hunter seemed to know a lot about the Xing case assigned to Detective Hua.

  “I don’t believe a single word of it, Sergeant Lou. I’ve know
n Hua for twenty years. All that must have been a setup,” Old Hunter said. “Have you found anything suspicious?”

  Lou told the old man what suspicions he had for the night.

  “Damned Internal Security must have been part of it. Today’s China is like a rice barn ravaged by those red rats. A good man like Hua tried to do something about it, but what?”

  “Yes, those corrupt Party officials, like fattened rats. But why call them red rats?” Lou asked.

  “Those Party officials are of course politically red-before their corruptions are exposed. The so-called red spearhead of the proletariat marching along the road of the socialist construction. But they are really barn rats moving all around. The one-party system is like a specially designed barn, where they can run amok without getting caught. Why? Because the barn is theirs. Nothing independent of this system can challenge or question it. Think about the Xing case. To smuggle on such a large scale involves a long chain of numerous links-ministry, customs, police, border inspection, transportation, distribution, and whatnot. And this chain of connection and corruption worked all the way-”

  “You are right, Old Hunter.” Lou recalled another nickname for the retired cop-Suzhou Opera Singer, a reference to a popular southern dialect opera known for its singers’ tactics of prolonging a narrative by adding digressions or ancient anecdotes. But it was too late to stop the old man.

  “In the Qing dynasty,” Old Hunter went on, “high-ranking Manchurian officials wore red-topped hats. If an official happened to do business on the side, people would call him a red-topped businessman. It was such a notorious term at the time, that few liked to be called so. Nowadays it is taken for granted. And those officials are hardly businessmen. They simply steal or smuggle, like Xing, like rats in their own barn. So how could they let an honest cop get in there?”