David Rotenberg - The Lake Ching murders

“Do you think we’re idiots, old lady?”

“No, I don’t, dearie. I think you’re cops.” She laughed so hard at her own cleverness that she snorted like a pig.

“Just tell us where your daughter is!” Lily demanded.

Fong could have killed Lily. All this patient waiting and smiling was meant to build up credit with the old lady so she’d do just that.

“How should I know? Young people have no respect anymore. Like you,” she barked at Lily. “Sun Li doesn’t tell me anything. Do you tell your mother where you’re going, girl?” Before Lily could defend herself the crone continued, “Or that you sleep with these two men. Oh, I see the way they look at you. I’m not new to the Earth you know.”

“Does your daughter have a boyfriend?” asked Fong gently, before Lily could tear a strip off the lady’s old carcass.

“No.”

“Come, Grandma, a girl as beautiful as Sun Li must have men around her all the time,” said Chen gently.

The old woman softened. Fong looked to Chen who just smiled.

“Only beautiful mothers give birth to beautiful daughters,” Chen added. Lily almost puked down the front of her dress.

The old charlatan reached over and touched Chen’s arm. “True. Beauty begets beauty. Very true.” She patted his arm twice more and then said, “Your mother must have been a real dog. Bow-wow wow-wow. Know what I mean?”

Fong was about to leap to Chen’s defence when the younger man held up a hand. “What you say may be true, but I haven’t seen my mother for many, many years. Perhaps she has become, like you, beautiful in her old age.” He smiled.

She smiled back.

Then she said, “You could try the Humming Way bar in the Sheraton. Sometimes she’s there.” Then sadness crossed her face and she said, “She’s an entertainer, you know.”

The Humming Way bar at the Sheraton was dark and stank of cigars and expensive perfume. When Fong’s eyes adjusted to the murk he saw many foreigners with Chinese women. The women were all overly made up and wore tight-fitting clothing.

“Westerners didn’t understand us at all,” Fong thought. These girls were openly disdainful of the men. Yes, their hands rested with seeming ease on the Westerners, but their body language spoke openly of their aversion. Why couldn’t Westerners see that?

It was Lily who picked Sun Li out from the others. “There,” she said pointing at a back booth where a tall Han Chinese woman laughed loudly at something the Western man at her side had said. She touched his hand with her elegant fingers, but her body canted away. A second Westerner returned to the table, balancing three martinis. A small cheroot dangled from the side of his mouth.

“Chen, guard the entrance.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Lily, you take the door to the woman’s toilet.”

“Why?”

“This isn’t a forensic lab, Lily,” he snapped. “Just do as I tell you.” Lily, surprised by his tone, didn’t question him further.

Fong turned from Lily and surveyed the bar closely. He would be more careful with this interrogation than he’d been with Hesheng’s. The image of the terrified islander’s face came to him. He breathed it away.

Once Lily and Chen were in position, Fong strolled over to the booth. Sun Li Cha’s right hand was beneath the table on the thigh of the young Westerner on her right. Her other hand held a half-emptied martini glass. The older man on her left had an arm around her shoulder, his stubby fingers dangling close to the top of her low-cut silk blouse.

Her laughter stopped when she saw Fong.

“What’s wrong, honey? Who’s this?” the older of the two men said in English.

In furiously quick Shanghanese, Fong spat out, “Tell them to go away.”

“Is that accent real?” She smiled but a tiny crack appeared in her bon vivant mask.

“I won’t ask a second time. Tell them to go.” He almost added, “Tell them to fuck their own daughters, not ours,” but didn’t.

“Bug off, fella,” said the younger one but before he could say more, Sun Li whispered something in his ear that made him glow with expectation. “It’s a deal.” She smiled as he got to his feet and signalled for the other man to follow him.

Fong slid into the booth. The buttery leather gave to accept his weight. Sun Li touched the lip of the martini glass, lit a cigarette. She had the most beautiful hands he’d ever seen. And she knew it.

She blew out a line of smoke and turned to Fong. “So?” Her voice was consciously low and smoky.

“I’m a police officer . . . ”

“No!” she laughed. “Even before you came into the room I knew that. I could smell you. Hey, I got to pee first, then we can chat, okay?” Fong shrugged. She put a hand on his thigh and leaned in close to his face. “Won’t be a second.” She slid out of the booth adjusting her skirt just enough to cover the crease between her long legs and her nether portions.

As Sun Li moved toward the washroom, Lily caught Fong’s eyes with a what-am-I-supposed-to-do look. He mouthed back, “Stop her.”

The woman’s toilet was brightly lit and spanking new. Three stalls. Beautiful swan head faucets. And to one side a partly opened window. Sun Li Cha kicked off her high heels and made a beeline for the window. She already had one of her long legs on the counter beneath the window when Lily, catching her off-balance, yanked her back to the floor.

“Hey . . .”

“You’re a suspect in a multiple murder case, Miss Sun. Consider yourself lucky that I don’t charge you right here. Get back out there and talk to Inspector Zhong.”

Sun Li Cha slowly put her heels back on then looked down at Lily. “I like your blouse, where’d you get it?”

“Could it really be about clothes,” Lily thought. “Sleep with men to get money to buy good clothes so that men will want to sleep with you?”

Sun Li Cha’s beautiful hand touched Lily’s arm.

Lily shrugged off the hand. “Huai Hai Road.”

“What about Huai Hai Road?”

“It’s where I got the blouse.”

“Swell.” Sun Li Cha reached out, allowing her fingers to linger on the top button of Lily’s blouse. Lily didn’t know what to do. The whore smiled at her discomfort but she didn’t remove her hand. She said languidly, “I think I’ll go out and talk to your boss now – or is he something more, honey?” The whore’s fingers expertly undid the button exposing the strong sinew of Lily’s neck. “Sweet,” Sun Li Cha whispered then turned and sashayed out of the toilet. Lily found her eyes drawn to the whore’s retreating figure. She felt a surge of envy followed by a flush of anger.

“Good pee?”

“Yummy. What can I do for you, Inspector Zhong?”

“Three months ago you were on a luxury boat on Lake Ching.”

“Was I?”

Fong tossed Sun Li’s business card onto the table. “You left this there,” he lied smoothly.

“You can get one of those at the front desk of dozens of hotels.”

“Perhaps, but I’m sure the fingerprints on the back of this one would match yours and at least one of the men on that boat. Now, we can throw you in jail for the five weeks or so it will take to finish the fingerprint analysis or you can talk to me here. Your choice.”

After briefly considering her options she smiled and said, “I guess I was there.” Fong nodded. “I said I was there,” she repeated. Fong simply nodded again. She smiled. “So is that it? Anything else in your cute little head?”

“Tell me about it.”

She fluttered her beautiful hands just long enough to attract Fong’s eye. “It was cold. They told me to wait on the dock and greet the foreigners who . . . who were there.”

“Did you?”

“Yeah. So what?” Fong saw fleeting lines of fear cross her face then disappear. Surely she’d heard about the murders on the boat. There it was again. Fear. Like an animal realizing it was trapped. “I didn’t do anything,” she barked. Fong didn’t respond. She reached for her purse and lit a cigarette, forgetting that she already had one smouldering in the ashtray. Fong stubbed it out. She smoked Kents. If he ever took up smoking again, he’d definitely change brands. “Besides, they arrested those three peasants for . . .”