“We can box the crab for you after you finish dinner. It’s seven now,” the waitress said, “and we’ll wait for your order to start cooking the hot dishes.”
She left, again closing the door after her.
Outside, the glittering splendors began to surge up along the Bund. Across the river, the ceaselessly changing neon lights from the jostling skyscrapers projected intoxicating fantasies of the new century on the shimmering water.
Lianping sighed. “What a feast!”
“I have no idea how long it takes to deshell a crab like that.”
“By the way, do you know the Internet joke about a river crab? ‘River crab’ in Chinese is a homophone for ‘harmony.’ When an online post is banned, people will say it was harmonized, deleted for the sake of harmony of our socialist society. Now they simply say the post has been river-crabbed.”
“The connotations are unmistakably negative, just like they are in the idiomatic expression about the chain of crabs.”
“Mr. Gu certainly went out of his way to have the Shaoxing style meal prepared for you,” she said, picking up a glistening white crab leg with her slender fingers. “But you were saying that there was something else left to resolve in your investigation.”
“Yes, there was another part. Remember the other clue in Detective Wei’s phone call to Party Secretary Li?”
“You mean the visit to Wenhui he planned to make?”
“Yes. From what his wife said, I thought it might have had something to do with the picture that got Zhou into trouble in the first place. That was certainly the focus of Internal Security, and to some extent, of Jiang too. For me, this part is still mostly guesswork.”
“So…”
Chen helped himself to the golden crab roe, which was displayed like a dainty chrysanthemum petal on the white plate. It tasted scrumptious, just as he remembered it from many years ago. It wasn’t an evening, however, for him to savor delicacies.
A shrill siren blared all of a sudden from a distance and reverberated along the darksome water.
“It’s an aspect of the case that is not only informed by a lot of guesswork, but also involves some people that you or I may know. Still, I wanted to tell you about it tonight-and not as a cop.”
“This is intriguing,” she said uncertainly.
“As I may have told you, it can be tiresome to be stuck in one’s professional role all the time. So for the sake of convenience, we might as well switch to something different, more like storytelling.”
“Storytelling?” she said, surprised by his sudden shift in manner. What was the enigmatic chief inspector up to?
“Do you remember what you suggested with regard to the poems you wanted me to write for Wenhui? You suggested that I adopt a persona. A persona that didn’t have to be the writer himself. Adopting such a persona has helped me with a couple of poems. It’s a pity that I don’t have more time for poetry.” He poured himself another cup of the aromatic and heady rice wine, which he drained before he went on. “In a police report, in some situations, people may be referred to as John Doe or Jane Doe. Or in some novels, characters might be referred to by letters such as C or L.”
“So… tell me a story, if you like,” she said, the wine rippling in the small cup in her hand, “Chief Inspector Chen.”
“This story flows more smoothly if it’s told from a third person perspective. More important, remember that you’re listening to something fictional. As such, the narrator doesn’t have to worry about possible liability and the listener doesn’t have any responsibilities. For the record, I’m just a storyteller at the moment, not a cop with any professional obligations, and you are just listening to a fantasized scenario, nothing that concerns you as a professional journalist.”
Whatever Chen was about to say, Lianping thought it would have direct bearing on her. She thought she should have guessed as much earlier.
There was a subtle change in his tone as he started to tell his story.
“C was a cop investigating the death of a shuangguied corrupt official named Z. It was a complicated case with different people from different agencies investigating different aspects, and needless to say, each of them had their own agenda. One of the aspects of the case concerned the subversive role in today’s society that the most devoted Internet users-the netizens-can play through those increasingly frequent human-flesh searches. The case in question could be said to have started with a picture posted online, which prompted just such a search, and which in turn exposed Z.
“As a cop, C didn’t think that the person who originally sent the picture to the Web forum did anything wrong. On the contrary, C had his reservations about the government’s control of the Internet. As for the other investigators, including Internal Security, they were focused on punishing the ‘Internet troublemaker’ in the name of maintaining social stability. But their target was clever and had sent the picture from a computer at an Internet café, thus making it impossible for them to track down the sender.”
Chen paused to pick up his cup again. She reached out, unexpectedly, and snatched the cup out of his hand.
“No, you’re drinking too much.”
“I’m fine, Lianping,” he said with a wan smile. “In the course of his investigation, C came to know a young journalist named L. He was drawn to her, not merely because she was attractive and intelligent but also because she was passionate about justice in socialism with Chinese characteristics. To his pleasant surprise, she helped him with the investigation, familiarizing him with the Internet users’ resistance to governmental control of the Internet. She introduced him to a computer expert who was able to break down some barriers for him. In the meantime, in some of the pictures she sent to him and his friends electronically, C came upon clues that had eluded Internal Security. While he was picking up some e-mail from her, C happened to discover a loophole in the new Internet café regulations. From there, he was astonished to learn that the identity of the original picture sender was none other than L.” Chen paused for a moment, then started up again. “Now, what was C going to do?
“As a cop and a rising cadre, he was supposed to report this to the higher authorities, but L didn’t post the picture out of any personal grudge. She was merely upset with the brazen, widespread corruption that was taking place while those responsible were pretending that their actions were in the Party’s interests. Her desire to cause Z trouble was, in fact, a spontaneous protest against the injustices of an authoritarian society. Her action led to a call to dig into the background of Z, which in turn resulted in a flood of responses. What happened to Z subsequently was beyond her imagining, and for which she wasn’t to blame, C concluded.
“So, if what she did was done on the spur of the moment, did he…” Chen trailed off.
In the silence that ensued, they heard footsteps moving closer to the door, and then trail off down the hall.
“So that’s it, the end of the story?”
“Yes, that’s the end. As I mentioned earlier, for C, that was an aspect of the investigation he has to wrap up, a missing piece to the puzzle. But there are things above and beyond playing one’s part in the system. Things far more important, like justice, however partial and paradoxical, in the present society. Of course, the persona in this narrative doesn’t have to be a real person. It’s just a story between you and me.”
Chen then produced an envelope containing the page he’d torn from the register at the Flying Horse Internet café and handed it to her. “Oh, this is for you. I almost forgot.”
“What is it?” she asked, as she opened the envelope. She looked briefly at the name “Lili” on the register page, and her face drained of color. Only a few knew that was her childhood name. Her ID card bore her new name, but the people in the Internet café in the neighborhood knew her well and never noticed or bothered about it. “I don’t know what to say, Chen.”