Q: You always such a smart ass?
A: Your face always look like a pimpled ass?
“Hide you ass,” Lily said in her personal variant of the English language.
“So ‘Hide you us’ means hideous. Swell.” Fong thought. But what he said was, “What did you learn from this turd, Captain Chen? What did you learn that we need to know?”
Chen put aside his notebook. “The guy had all the necessary clearances to give the boat to foreigners. His men got the boat out onto the lake, handed the controls over to the Taiwanese guy with the pilot’s licence then took one of the lifeboats back to shore.”
“Did he or his men see anyone, other than the dead men, on board the boat?”
Chen hesitated.
Before Chen could speak, the coroner piped up with, “Shit.”
Chen smiled. The smile sat oddly on his features.
“May I add my information now, sir?”
“Certainly, Chen,” Fong responded testily.
“Thank you, sir.” He took a breath, enjoying the moment then said, “They saw the girl.”
“Which girl?” asked Lily.
Captain Chen’s smile increased. He reached into his pocket and took out one of the business cards the Triad man gave him. “This one.” He flipped the coloured business card onto the table.
“Nice picture,” the coroner said.
“Doesn’t that ever go away,” Fong thought. “What about the writing, Grandpa?” he asked.
The coroner moved the card far from his face and read in a booming voice: “Sun Li Cha – Mistress of the Ancient Arts. Then some foreign scratching.”
Lily grabbed the card. “It’s English, I think,” she said in Shanghanese. The coroner looked at her. “English speaks me. It doesn’t read me,” Lily told him.
Fong took the card and read the English. “Sunny Lee - Mistress of the Cervical Arts.” Fong didn’t have a clue what that meant. But Lily was suddenly on her feet, pacing.
“I know that reference in English. I’ve heard it before,” she said in Shanghanese. “I’ve seen it on TV.”
Fong stared at her. Unless television had changed drastically during his years on the other side of the Wall, he doubted that Sunny Lee’s artistry had ever been seen on a television set in the People’s Republic of China.
“Got it!” Lily announced. “Got it! It’s that game the British play with sticks and balls on a green table. The announcer calls it (here she switched to English) ‘The Academy of Cervical Arts.’”
Fong briefly wondered if Lily knew any English at all. Then he recalled dealing with a rape case early in his time with Special Investigations in Shanghai. He remembered his embarrassment when he was forced to learn the English names for female private parts. In many ways, it was an education for him since the Chinese names were more fanciful than scientific. He remembered nodding like an idiot as the doctor briefed him on the assault. Then he took the doctor’s report home to Fu Tsong. They were eating a meal he had prepared when he chose to ask his questions. She’d at first found it funny then slowly realized that Fong was deadly serious. Embarrassed, but deadly serious. So she led him through – part by part.
It had bonded them even closer together – had made her infidelity even more devastating.
Fong spoke. “Let’s leave it that she was part of the entertainment on board ship, shall we?”
Chen took the card from Fong and flipped it over. “Personally, I thought this was of more interest.” He pointed at a phone number. Fong swore under his breath.
“It’s a local Xian number.”
“It’s probably just a cell phone,” said Grandpa.
“She’d have to register an address to get a cell phone,” said Chen.
“And I’m sure she gave an accurate account of her lodgings to the authorities, fart face.”
“Get her name and picture to Xian vice. Xian’s a big tourist town, they’re bound to know her,” said Fong.
Chen nodded, was about to say something then thought better of it.
Fong said, “Well done, Captain Chen.”
“Thank you. I can complete the transparencies if you want, sir.”
“Complete how?”
“With more projectors I can detail the floors and ceilings to go with the walls.”
“Do it, Chen.”
Chen nodded and headed out.
The coroner spat a wad across the room then said, “So who does he work for, Fong?”
Fong didn’t respond. Everything about Chen was confusing. A good cop, but a yes man. In charge, but obviously a junior officer. Fong could see him as a party man, but there was something wrong about that too. It didn’t sit well. “Didn’t stack well” was the phrase that came to him and, with a smile, he filed it away. “I don’t know, Grandpa. What’s your guess?”
The coroner cleared his throat. “He’s connected, but not like the commissioner back in Shanghai or the guy who put that leg cuff on you.”
“Then how is he connected?”
“Have you been to Beijing, Fong? No, course not, you’re just a stupid cop when all is said and done.”
“Thanks.”
“Think nothing of it.” Something sad crossed the old man’s features. “Beijing is set up in boxes, Fong. Then boxes within those boxes. And each box is kept apart from all the other boxes. Mao understood revolution, after all. And he, and those who followed him, knew how to prevent further revolutions. Stop the boxes talking to each other and make them do all their communicating through the chairman’s office. Then be sure that only the chairman’s office deals with the outside world. But sometimes boxes get it in their heads that they can make their own connections without the chairman’s office – first to other boxes and then to the world beyond boxes – beyond Beijing. Sometimes they even try to spawn boxes of their own. They’re called rogues.” He said the word rogues a second time but this time it was in a hoarse, pained whisper. “Very Chinese if you think about it. I was called once from one such box.” He paused as if something sour had touched his tongue. When he spoke again, his voice was thin. Uncertain. “A man had been decapitated in a party hotel suite. The wife had called me. She was a powerful government minister. Head of a box.” He chuckled briefly, but the sound was as dry as the air from a hot kiln. “She’d found her husband down in Shanghai with a younger woman or a boy – it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that I was called in. At first I thought it was through official channels. But quickly it became apparent that wasn’t the case. The wife was acting on her own – as a rogue. She wanted a death certificate stating death by natural causes. I laughed at her and told her, ‘Sure – he came so hard his head fell off.’ She didn’t laugh.”
The old man paused. Pain passed over his features like a cloud obscuring the sun. He spat angrily.
“I’m a diabetic. She knew. She told me that if I didn’t give her the death certificate, my supply of insulin would be cut off.”
Fong thought he’d never seen anyone look so old.
“I signed the papers. I got the insulin. I’m still here.” His voice was light as dust in the wind.
Fong thought about it. The coroner had covered up a murder. A crime. But if he hadn’t, he’d have died a long time ago. Would it have been worth dying to punish the party woman? Fong didn’t know. In the years since the incident, the coroner had been invaluable in bringing hundreds of cases to successful completion. Without him – who knows? Fong shook his head, but said nothing. He just filed it under “another case of relative justice.”
“So you figure Chen may be on a leash from one of those Beijing boxes, Grandpa?”
“I don’t know, Fong.”
Fong didn’t figure Chen to be with the people who set up the exhibit on the boat and killed Hesheng with the snake or with the people who tried to burn the ship and poison Hesheng.
Then a bit of logic that had escaped him fell into place. Someone sets up an exhibition of dead foreigners. What would the reaction be to that display? “How far are we from Xian?” he asked.