“Don’t move,” he ordered, and they froze.
“Did you just steal a wallet on the number 12 bus? Don’t lie.”
“How did you know?” one of them asked. “But we didn’t steal it, we found it.”
“We’ll see. Put it here in my right pocket. The person who lost it is in tears at the police station.”
“We did find it, sir.” One of the men put the wallet in the policeman’s pocket. “We found it by the bus door.”
“That sounds fishy to me. You can go now, but you won’t get off if I ever catch you ‘finding’ another wallet. Now get out. Button up your shirts and get out of here.”
They buttoned their shirts and gave him a respectful hand gesture before running off. The man laughed, picked up the flatbreads, and started eating. Zhuang and the others were amazed by what they had just witnessed.
“Do you think he’ll return the wallet to its owner?” Meng whispered.
“I know the type,” Zhou Min said. “He’s not someone you want to mess with, so don’t let him hear you.”
“You know what he does?” Zhuang asked.
“He’s a deadbeat who sometimes works for the police. I did that back in Tongguan.”
“Muzi!” Zhao yelled out when he returned with the receipts for their orders. “I’ve been looking for you. Imagine running into you here.”
Unable to talk because his mouth was stuffed, Muzi offered one of the flatbreads to Zhao, who declined and turned to Zhuang. “We’ve been looking for Muzi,” he said, “and he’s sitting right beside you. Muzi, let me introduce you. This is Zhuang Zhidie, the celebrated writer; this is Meng Yunfang, a researcher; and he’s Zhou Min, a magazine editor.”
Finally managing to swallow his food, Muzi asked, “Who? Who did you say this is?”
“Zhuang Zhidie. Haven’t you heard of him?”
“I may not know the name of our governor, but I’d be laughed at as a cultural idiot if I said I hadn’t heard of Zhuang Zhidie.” The man rubbed his oily hand on the table before offering it to shake with everyone. “I heard your books are terrific, so I bought some, but I haven’t had a chance to read them. My wife has, though, and she’s a fan. What do you need to see me for? Were you really looking for me?”
“Yes,” Zhao said. “Go home and ask your wife if you don’t believe me.”
“I’m honored that Mr. Zhuang is looking for me.” Muzi reached his oily hand into his pocket and took out some money for Zhao. “Go buy a bottle and let’s have a drink.”
“There’s no need for that,” Zhuang said. “You’re open and direct. I like your style. Come have a drink at my house some other time.” Zhao had Muzi sit down and told him what they needed.
“I’ll make a phone call.” Muzi walked out and headed for a phone booth. He returned in a few moments. “I checked with some people in the east and south, but they didn’t have the woman, nor had they seen her. The ones in the north said she lived outside their territory. I don’t know Black Three in charge of the west side, so I told Wang Wei, who heads the north faction, to check with him and get back to me. He’ll call.”
That all sounded like an urban myth to Zhuang, who said, “So there are territorial boundaries.”
“Well, a country has its borders, and so does a province,” Muzi said. “It’s easy to find a lost object, but a person, that’s hard.”
“The thieves you nabbed just now,” Meng said with great interest, “how did you know they were thieves?”
“I was at the number 12 bus stop as people were getting off. The last one was an old man who was shouting that his wallet was gone. I took a closer look and knew immediately that it was them. Every profession gives off an aura, and I know it, even if I can’t tell what it is.”
“Sort of like the ‘feel’ for something that writers talk about,” Meng said.
Muzi’s pager chirped. “He’s calling back,” he said as he got up and walked out. The others sat wordlessly, their hearts in their throats, and stood up when Muzi appeared in the doorway. “Did you find her?”
“He said no.”
Their faces fell. Sitting back down, they finished their meal distractedly before taking another taxi to Meng’s place.
“What do we do now, Yunfang?” Zhuang asked.
“Should we report it to the police?” Meng asked.
“That’s not necessary,” Zhao said. “What can the police do if Muzi can’t find her?”
“Since it’s gotten to this point, Yunfang, why don’t you do a divination with the eight trigrams?” Zhuang asked.
“I can do it for fun, but this is too serious for that. Let me try something else. We often use Master Zhugu’s Magic Numbers to look for people. Give me three characters, Zhou Min,” he said, but Zhou came up blank. “Anything that pops into your head.”
“Rock beside door,” Zhou said. “I noticed one there.”
Meng began working on the number of strokes for the characters, coming up with three numbers that led him to a poem:
To the east by the water / a grove of peach trees / the birds call in the evening / the clouds obscure and dim the moon.
They puzzled over the lines.
“East?” Zhuang asked him. “Where would that be? It would be the eastern district if it’s in the city, and outside the city it would be the eastern suburb. So where is it?”
“Could she have returned to Tongguan?” Zhou Min blurted out. “Tongguan is in the east.”
“Very likely. Do you still have pals there?” Zhao asked.
“Lots of them.”
“Then start calling,” Zhao said.
“But I didn’t notice any signs of her wanting to go back there,” Zhou said. “She’d have told me if she wanted to return.”
It took him a while to get through, but when he did, he learned that she had indeed returned to Tongguan. According to his old pals, news of her return had spread all over town. People were saying that after Zhou Min tricked this woman from a good family into running away with him, her husband had hired two men to look for her in Xijing and found her at a movie theater within a week. So he and one of the men hailed a taxi while the third man went inside. She knew the man, and when she inquired about her child, he asked her to come outside to talk. There her husband and the other man grabbed her, shoved her into the taxi, stuffed a towel in her mouth, and tied her hands and legs. They drove all the way back to Tongguan.
Zhuang was the first to sob after Zhou Min told them what he had learned. “That’s how you treat criminals. How could they do that to her? Who knows how much she’s suffered since returning. Zhou Min, take the train back. You have to save her.”
Zhou Min squatted down and said nothing.
“What’s wrong with you? Don’t you want to go?” Zhuang asked.
“This is what I feared would happen one day. If they can find her in Xijing, like finding a needle in a haystack, I wouldn’t be able to see her if I went back there.”
“What nonsense is that? If that’s what you think, then why did you bring her here in the first place? You’re a grown man. Can’t you even protect a woman? She must have been blind to be in love with you.” Zhou Min slapped himself, and then Zhuang did the same thing.
. . .
Meanwhile, Niu Yueqing had taken up residence at Shuangren fu. The lowland reconstruction project was underway, and the people in the lanes to the north had begun moving out, causing her elderly mother to panic. It would be her turn the next month or when winter came. Soon the lane with the former Water Board and the kiosk with the ancient well platform would be gone. She took out the water tokens to look at several times a day, chattering to her daughter about the former dynasty and later generations, mixing human words with ghost talk. Niu Yueqing took care of her mother’s daily needs, but her mind was always on Zhuang Zhidie. She had thought that after leaving the compound and its many distractions, she would be able to think about her relationship with Zhuang with a clear head, but she had grown so used to all the activity that the absence of it now made her feel lonely. She had left the place out of anger and vowed never to see him again; she hadn’t realized how much she loved him until she was alone. She tried to imagine his reaction after reading her letter. Did he fly into a rage, or was he beset by grief? If the latter, then he would have rushed over to explain things to her tearfully, showing remorse for his errors and vowing to leave Tang Wan’er right away. When that happened, she had said to herself, she would kick him out the door, humiliate him with a broom, and dump a basin of filthy water on him; she wouldn’t take him back until she had vented her anger and resentment. But Zhuang never showed; he did not even call. Had she done precisely what he had been wishing for? He might have been looking for a reason to divorce but did not want to initiate the discussion, so he waited for her to say those things and start a fight. That would have been what he was waiting for, wouldn’t it? Or maybe he was really upset, she thought. He was normally easygoing, but he had a stubborn streak; he might be holding out, unwilling to relent until she returned on her own. As a celebrity, he was used to being revered, and she had coddled him at home. After he hurt her feelings, might he have been waiting for her to mollify him before coming back? Several times she went to check the compound, but turned back halfway there, afraid she might further incur his displeasure by giving him the erroneous impression that she could not live without him. Besides, why had she written that letter and walked out on him if she planned to go back all along?