Shanghai Redemption Read online

  If no one else, his mother believed in Chen’s trip to oversee the renovation of his father’s grave. She wasn’t materialistic, but the knowledge that the grave of her late husband would be properly tended to would help her sleep at night. Her request that Chen have his father’s book buried with his remains originated in a dream of hers in which the late Confucian scholar was frantically searching for his copies of the classics stored in the attic room, worrying that they had been burned. During the Cultural Revolution, one of the crimes his father had been accused of was his condemnation of the first Qing emperor’s burning books as a means to control people’s minds. Mao happened to admire the first Qing emperor.

  At the cemetery, on the hillside with his father’s grave, Chen saw two farmers in their early fifties standing nearby. They were smoking and talking, but not working. These were the workers supposed to be doing the restoration job. Chen introduced himself and lit cigarettes for them. Then, as Chen stood watching, the workers picked up their tools with undisguised reluctance.

  Chen decided to stay there for a while, take a look around, making a comment every now and then and pretending to supervise. At one point, Chen walked over to a moss-covered stone step, sat down, and opened the book he’d brought with him. But he couldn’t concentrate on all that Confucius said. Soon he got up and started pacing about, making a renewed effort to visualize the details of the renovation.

  Around eleven, the farmers declared they had to leave for lunch, tossing down their tools. It was still early, but Chen chose to say nothing.

  With the workers gone, Chen, too, walked down the trail, casting a look around and wondering if he was being followed. So far, he hadn’t noticed anything suspicious. It was more than possible, however, that somebody would check with the cemetery office. Chen might as well stop in and let the office confirm that Chen was in Suzhou.

  Manager Hong welcomed Chen to the office with open arms, leading him to the same sofa as the last time.

  “Let’s talk about the project,” Chen started, moving straight to the point.

  “We’re doing our best, Director Chen. You can be assured that progress is being made. And that the work is of good quality, too.”

  “I have a week before I must get back to work in Shanghai. So I plan to spend some of that time here in Suzhou.” Chen showed Hong the book he was carrying. “This book was written by my father. It’s my mother’s request that I place this copy of the book in my father’s casket myself.”

  “Let me say it again, Director Chen, a filial son like you will be blessed. But you don’t have to worry about the restoration work on your father’s tomb.”

  “For the work to be completed in time, however, the farmers might have to work overtime. I understand that this might cost extra, and I want to reassure you that that’ll be fine. Just make sure to give me an itemized list of expenses.”

  “To be honest, Director Chen, some of the local farmers might not be pulling their own weight. But I will visit your father’s grave site frequently and keep an eye on the workers for you. I give you my word on it. If you want to stay in Suzhou for a short vacation, there is a lot to see in the ancient city.”

  A lot to see in the ancient city—that’s what his father had said when they were in Suzhou many years earlier.

  “Thank you, Manager Hong,” Chen said, his tongue suddenly dry. “Time alone will be able to show my gratitude. The blue mountains always stand, the green water flows along the unchanging course.”

  Chen’s response sounded like something from a martial arts novel, but his mind had suddenly gone blank, and that was all he could come up with.

  He gave Hong his regular cell phone number, which Hong entered into his own cell. Hong then called a taxi for him.

  “Where are you staying, Director Chen?”

  “It’s a hotel called—” He had not booked a hotel yet, thinking that he could find a cheap one close to the cemetery. But that wouldn’t fit the persona of a high-ranking director. “Southern Garden, I think that’s the name.”

  “That’s a nice hotel, the Southern Garden. It’s just about twenty minutes from here. That should be very workable for you.”

  Chen said his farewells and walked out of the office to see a taxi driver waiting, arms crossed, a cigarette dangling between his lips.

  “Southern Garden Hotel,” Chen said, after settling into the backseat.

  “Oh, the Southern Garden, I know it well,” the driver said, nodding. “Years ago, Mao and other top Party leaders used to stay there. It’s a really nice hotel, in the old city section. Most tourists don’t know anything about Suzhou, and they swarm to newly built five-star hotels in the new city section.”

  As a result of China’s economic reform, Suzhou had grown into a much larger city. There was now an outer ring called the new city and an inner section called the old city. The hotels in the old city were generally less desirable, with their old buildings and gardens little changed from the old days. Most visitors preferred the recently built high-rise hotels in the new city.

  Fifteen minutes later, the taxi pulled up in front of a hotel located on Ten Perfections Street. What “Ten Perfections” referred to, Chen had no idea. Chinese people often believed in the power of certain numbers, and ten happened to be a lucky number.

  Chen walked into the hotel, taking stock of the antique-style lobby and the southern-style garden in a sweeping glance. Things seemed to be little changed. The hotel was said to have been built on the site of a Qing dynasty garden, and the original grotto had been kept intact. The room rate was somewhat higher than what Chen had been planning on, but for a couple of days, he could handle it.

  In the Ming and Qing dynasties, it was fashionable for the southern literati, when successful, to be Confucianists and to be intent on worldly achievements. When not successful, however, they tended to be Taoists focused on self-cultivation. For the Taoists, the southern-style garden represented a metaphysical landscape as well as a physical one, with the grotto, stream, and bamboo grove all clustered together in imitation of nature.

  At the front desk, Chen registered, got his room key, and, just before he turned to go, decided to pick up a train schedule as well. Flipping through it, he saw that there was a Shanghai-bound train leaving Suzhou roughly every twenty minutes. If need be, he could leave Suzhou in the morning and return in the evening.

  His room was on the second floor of the main building. It was a cozy, comfortable one, furnished partially in the Qing style. On one wall, there was an impressive row of pictures showing visits of high-ranking Party leaders in the fifties and sixties, eloquently documenting the hotel’s glorious past. The wall opposite displayed a long rice-colored silk scroll of a seventh-century Tang poem copied by a modern calligrapher.

  Chen decided to take a short rest and slumped across the bed. The mattress came as a pleasant surprise—it had a foam cushion covering the old-style mattress. Of late, he’d slept badly, and he could use a nap. However, he lay on the bed and tossed restlessly.

  There was a strange sound—not loud, but persistent—a tapping against the window. Chen got up and saw that it was a lone twig trembling in the wind, creaking until it finally snapped. It reminded him of a story he’d read long ago.

  The work at the cemetery seemed to be off to a decent start. What worried the ex-cop was his inability to do anything in Suzhou that could make a difference in Shanghai.

  He pulled out his laptop. The hotel provided free Internet service, so he connected and started surfing the Web. He came across an anecdote marked as the daily top pick. It was written by Jian Hao, a Web-based writer popular in Shanghai, about a lunch of meatball rice on the train.

  I was traveling on the high speed train to Beijing. An attendant came by selling meatball rice lunches. “Come on,” he said. “The meat is a joke, I don’t need to tell you that. The balls are made of nothing but flour with a generous pinch of MSG.” Such an unbelievable tone of irony. The attendant was trying to pitch his wares by ins
isting they were fake. With the story of the dead pigs still so fresh in everybody’s mind, nobody had any appetite for meatballs. Could the attendant be telling the truth? The heart of the matter is that the list of “truths” in China can be too long. It’s not just dead pigs, toxic milk powder, contaminated fish, DDT-sprayed ham, and formalin-whitened shrimp …

  I recently heard a joke about the people of Shanghai being blessed … they enjoy pork rib soup every day for free. There are so many things that are beyond imagination in this miraculous country. At the end of a TV soap opera I was watching, a Ming dynasty imperial concubine said to her secret lover, “Why are your brows knitted so deeply? I would love to smooth the lines with an electric iron.” Can you believe that? Still, let us pray that there will be such a miraculous iron to smooth out all of our frowns and worries over a portion of meatball rice.

  It was no wonder, Chen thought, that Jian Hao had so many followers online. He really knew how to effectively poke at social realities. Chen stood up and began pacing about the room, liked a cricket jumping in a corked bamboo container. His cell phone rang: it was White Cloud.

  She spoke very fast, as if anxious to finish the call. There was some traffic noise in the background.

  “Following your instructions, I’m calling from a public phone,” she said. “About what happened at the club, nobody seems to have noticed anything unusual that night. A little disturbance at the Heavenly World is not surprising. But it might be because the people I’ve talked to—who are just girls like me, not the top management—know only a limited amount. I’m still working on it, though, and you can count on me. As for any particular topics that the clubgoers are talking about, you might as well simply check out the hottest topics on the Internet. Some of them that don’t appear at first to be related to the club actually do have a connection. For instance, the notorious Watch Boss Yao. He was said to have spent a night at the club right after the scandal broke, spending time with two top girls in a private room before he committed suicide the next day. Then there is Shang’s wife, who was also seen coming to a party at the club. She was coming to sing, though not necessarily like one of those singing girls, you know—”

  “Watch Boss Yao—hold on, I know who you are talking about, I think. He was the unlucky city traffic bureau chief who got into trouble because of a Wenhui picture of him at the scene of a traffic accident, smiling and wearing an expensive watch. Overnight that picture turned him into a target on the Internet.”

  “Yes, that’s Yao. After that photo appeared, people started asking a simple question, ‘How could he afford that gold Rolex watch if he’s not corrupt?’ That was even the caption for the picture when it was posted on some muckraking Web site. Soon after it was posted, other pictures of him showed up. Ultimately, photos turned up online showing him with a total of fifteen or sixteen other watches. Together they looked like window of a luxury watch shop, and it didn’t leave him with even a shred of credibility—”

  “Okay, so that was Yao. But who is Shang’s wife?”

  “She’s Little Red Star’s mother. You must have heard of Shang’s son?”

  “Oh yes, I have. Shang’s son. I see. But how did she end up at the nightclub?”

  “Before she married Shang, she used to sing professionally at a club.”

  “Used to?”

  “That was years ago. I don’t really know the details, but if you want, I can check. Nowadays, she might be just earning some money on the side. But it is strange that she was at the Heavenly World and performing at a private party for ‘distinguished guests.’”

  “That’s strange indeed. I think I saw her singing on TV last year. She’s not exactly—”

  “She’s not a beauty, I know. I wondered why she was hired for a private party as well, but I was told that the people throwing the party wanted to hear her singing red songs. That it was exciting for them.”

  “That’s perverted.”

  “The fact that she is a PLA general’s wife added to the kick. It was the juxtaposition of a red general’s wife singing red songs in the middle of all the decadence and over-the-top luxury of the club.”

  “How absurd!” he said. “Can you find out more about her? Such as what was she paid for her appearance, and who paid her fee?”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  “Just more stories like that. All kinds of people come to the club, for all kinds of reasons. But there is one more big story going around—everyone is talking about the death of a client, an American client.”

  “He died at the club?”

  “No, somewhere else. It was in a hotel in Sheshan. One of the girls told me he was very well connected and spent money like water. There are a lot of clubgoers like that at the Heavenly World, but there was something special about this one. People have been whispering about it. Perhaps it’s because he was a regular at the club, and some of the girls knew him well.

  “As for Rong, people there haven’t heard of him before—at least, not in connection with the nightclub. It’s possible that he knew somebody there and that that’s why he chose to hold the book launch party there.” She then added with a touch of hesitancy, “Finally, about Shen, the owner of the club. I don’t know him well, but I know how to get to him, if need be. He might have something to say.”

  “I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough, White Cloud.”

  “I wish I could do more.” The noise in the background was getting louder, and she paused. “Sorry, someone outside the booth is knocking, waiting to use the phone. I might be able to call you later with another message. Bye.”

  After White Cloud hung up, Chen sat there for a few minutes staring at his cell phone. Her failure to find any real clues didn’t surprise him. Nor did the fact that no one was aware of the attempted raid or any other disturbances that night. As for the hot topics of discussion at the club that she’d uncovered, none of them seemed to be worth following up on.

  For instance, Watch Boss Yao’s visit to the nightclub. A corrupt official, aware of his doom, Yao very likely wanted to have his last “heavenly fling” there before leaving the world. It was understandable that the visit was never mentioned in the official media. Chen hadn’t paid much attention to the situation. The punishment of a Party cadre was the responsibility of the Party Discipline Committee, not the police.

  Chen also didn’t see anything relevant in the death of the American clubgoer. There were so many Westerners living and working in Shanghai these days that it was nothing shocking that some visited the club. That night he was at the Heavenly World, Chen himself had seen a foreigner chasing a half-naked girl down the corridor.

  As for Shang’s wife, she would have been even less relevant except for the case of Shang’s son having been assigned to his former squad just before Chen was promoted out of the police department. While he didn’t see a connection, he couldn’t help feeling curious. Who were the clients paying her to sing red songs in that environment? Red songs supposedly meant a lot to the down-and-out, the people who missed the days under Mao. But why would they interest the elite who rented that private room?

  What White Cloud was able to learn couldn’t help but be limited. The hair salon of hers was nothing compared to the high-end club. She had made her way up from the bottom, but she was still a long way from the top. Her current associates and contacts were mainly the girls who worked at places like the club. There was something vaguely disconcerting about the way she referred to her contacts as “girls like me.”

  Opening the window, he saw that it was a fine day outside. A chirping note, off and on, came from the peaceful garden. It was still too early in the year for crickets, he thought.

  Chen decided to go walk around the garden. He left his room, bought a pack of cigarettes at a kiosk in the hotel lobby, and headed out into the hotel’s garden.

  Once he was in it, the garden somehow seemed smaller. Nonetheless, it was a pleasant scene. He cut across a white bambo
o bridge, which spanned a pond with a shoal of leisurely golden fish, lit from below by lambent lights on the pebbled bottom. Chen stopped for a moment, leaning against the bamboo rail, and wondered whether the fish enjoyed the artificial effects.

  Master Zhuangzi says, “You are not a fish, and how can you tell whether a fish enjoys itself or not?”

  As he walked off the bridge, another hotel guest enjoying the garden nodded at him. Chen strolled farther, reaching the back of the garden, where he seated himself on a stone stool at a round stone table, partially obscured from the view of others by a bamboo grove. He took out a notebook and a pen and placed them on the table.

  A go board was carved into the tabletop. Running his fingers over it, Chen found himself missing Detective Yu, his longtime partner. Yu was an enthusiastic go player, and his wife, Peiqin, was a great hostess and chef. Chen had spent many evenings at their home, playing go over tea and, sometimes, delicious appetizers. In Chinese, go was sometimes called “hand talk.” Sitting in the garden, Chen was tempted to give Yu a call, but he decided against it. The present situation resembled a go game in some ways. He was in trouble, waiting for the coming attack, without knowing when or where.

  In a go game, however, one knew who was attacking and why. Chen did not have this advantage.

  Once again, he thought about the cases recently assigned to the Special Case Squad, wondering which, if any, might have posed a real threat to someone powerful, who then neutralized Chen by removing him from the police bureau.

  When a go player didn’t know how to respond, one option was to position a piece anyway. Though it was a questionable move, it added the element of confusion to the game, and an opportunity might arise from the opponent’s surprised response. It was sometimes referred to as a response-seeking move.