“Can you come out? You are leaving, I know, but I’ve got something important for you. I’m in the café across the street.”
“I’ll be there,” Chen said simply.
In the café, Tian was waiting at a table against the window, and he rose as Chen stepped in.
“Remember the white mansion I pointed out to you the other day?” Tian said before Chen was seated.
“It belongs to the politburo member’s son, Little Tiger, right?”
“Exactly. As a matter of fact, it was Little Tiger that arranged for Xing’s arrival in L.A. He made the down payment for Xing’s house months earlier.”
“How did you learn all that?”
“Mimi has been talking about buying a new house in a better area, like Roland Height. It prompted me to talk to Shan, a real estate agent. He happens to be the one who arranged the deal for Xing’s house. Little Tiger put down two hundred thousand dollars. Shan gave me all the detailed information.”
“That’s incredible!” Chen said. “But why tell you his business secret?”
“Well, most of the houses there are in the range of one and a half million dollars. So at six percent, the agent gets around ninety thousand dollars. He would do anything for that fee. Indeed, he’d sell his soul to get me to buy in Roland Height-except he’s no Dr. Faust.”
“You know a lot about real estate business, Tian.”
“Well, my ex-wife’s present husband is a real estate agent. A man with only a middle-school education, who doesn’t even need that for his business. He simply drives his clients around, with a smile heaped on his face, but he earns more than a professor. Little wonder my ex-wife dumped me for him.”
“You have proven to be far more successful,” Chen said, understanding why Tian would have a grudge against real estate agents.
“So Xing and Little Tiger must have been in the same boat for a long time. Partners in their common smuggling business. Xing must have connected at the top in Beijing.”
“Xing may have lots to do with Little Tiger, but not necessarily with his father.”
“Come on, Chen. It’s such a notorious case-a teenaged son would not have the guts to keep his involvement from his father.”
Chen nodded, as the politburo link also accounted for Xing’s flight in the last minutes. The information came from the very top because people at the top had their own interests at stake. Chief Inspector Chen was not simply dealing with a corrupt official with connections, but with the very connections that made the country what it was.
“And there was something else,” Tian went on, “something I can’t understand.”
“What?”
“Xing has talked to Shan about selling his house. Shan asked him why. Xing said that he can hardly pay his legal fees.”
“That’s impossible! With so much stolen money in his hands, that doesn’t make sense.”
Xing’s plan to sell the house was a surprise, though of course, he would not have told the true reasons to a real estate agent. So could there be other possibilities?
The information Chen had gathered here led him to believe it was a huge gamble that Xing would be granted political asylum in the United States. He might be able to afford the exorbitant attorney fees, but the evidence he had produced so far was hardly convincing. Several experts considered the odds of his being granted asylum extremely slim. The American government was also under pressure from the Chinese. Once deported, Xing knew his fate would be sealed. So what did that mean?
“I’ve been busy with Shan, looking for houses,” Tian went on. “I almost forgot to choose a present for you. So Mimi has wrapped a case of fish oil for you. And I have just dug out a scroll I bought last year. Allegedly the work of Zhu Sishan, a calligrapher at the beginning of the twentieth century,” Tian said, taking the scroll out of the box. “Possibly a fake, but at least not one of those mass-produced imitations you buy in China.”
The calligraphy was angular and spirited, as if subtly animated with the qi of the calligrapher. What impressed Chen was the poem copied on the scroll. The poem was entitled “Fisherman,” written by the eighth-century Tang dynasty poet Liu Zongyuan.
A reminder of the “River Snow” his father had copied. By the same Liu Zongyuan. Whether the scroll was genuine or not, what mattered for Chen was the spirit of the poem, lonely yet uncompromising. It would make an excellent present for his mother. Possibly a message to her as well. Her son might not have followed her husband’s academic path, but there was still something in common between the two.
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Chen said. “Remember the lines we read together in Beijing? ‘When you have a good friend in the world, / no matter far away, he’s like your next door neighbor.’”
“Of course I remember. We read it together while cooking a small pot of white cabbage over an alcohol stove,” Tian said, taking a look out of the window. “Oh, isn’t that the antique worker-poet in your delegation?”
Sure enough, it was Bao standing outside the hotel, looking in the direction of the café. Then came another surprise. Bao produced a cell phone out of his pants pocket and started dialing. As far as Chen knew, Bao had a hard time making ends meet in Beijing. Now, all of a sudden, Bao had a cell phone here. An unnecessary luxury, which alone would have cost more than his delegation allowance. The hotel phone was covered by the Americans, at least in Los Angeles.
If the phone call was about Chen, as Chen suspected, what could it possibly mean?
After Tian left, Chen continued to think about Bao and his cell phone. Things had been strained between Chen and Bao. Not simply a matter of men of letters belittling each other. In modern Chinese literature, Bao had left his mark as a representative of a particular period, and the foreign visit before his retirement should be a crowning experience for him. But Bao must have found it hard to swallow a younger man’s having been appointed as the delegation head. Bao bore him a grudge, he understood, but there was something more than that.
Instead of going back to the hotel, Chen used his phone card at a pay phone in the café.
“I’ve been expecting your call, Chief,” Yu said.
“How is the weather in Shanghai?”
“Cloudy, but there seem to be some dark clouds approaching.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s difficult to describe the weather on the phone, you know, so unpredictable.”
Indeed, it was too difficult to talk the way they had agreed on. The weather terms had worked before, but not this time. There were so many new, unforeseeable factors involved. He wanted to know what Detective Yu had learned.
“Forget about the weather,” Chen said. “Let’s talk.”
It was a risk they had to take. Yu’s home line might not be tapped. Chen had not mentioned Yu’s assistance to anyone except Zhao.