David Rotenberg - The Shanghai Murders

“I’m going to have a girl. I’m going to do the play. I’m going to live with Geoffrey.”

Like three perfectly landed body blows, she blasted apart his ordered world and planted chaos in his heart.

Just once he looked at her to confirm that what he had heard was what she had said. Her eyes never wavered.

“I’m going to live with Geoffrey,” she repeated.

And then, somehow, the big white man was at their open door, now just Fong’s open door. Fong heard himself saying in Mandarin, “There is no place here for you.”

But Fu Tsong was already moving toward Geoffrey and pulling herself close to his side.

Fong didn’t remember reaching for the VCR or hurling it across the room. All he remembered was the dent in the plaster and the red and black connector cables embedded in the wall from which the unit now dangled.

He remembered the give in the white man’s chest as he charged him and the thud as they went through the open door and crashed against the darkened corridor wall. The drip from the hallway air conditioner landed on his face as he screamed at the white man to leave his wife and baby alone.

Then he heard his name called. For a moment he didn’t recognize Fu Tsong’s voice. She called him sharply a second time and he turned to her. She stood in the door and said simply, “I’ll see you tomorrow at rehearsal, Geoffrey. My husband and I have much to talk about tonight.”

And so they did. In tears and twisting tongues and rage and tenderness they tried to find each other again across the abyss. They made love, had sex, fucked, and tried to hurt each other. They closed their eyes and fantasized that they were still in love. But tomorrow loomed and the girl child in her womb was a night older as the thunderous dawn approached.

Fong’s welcome at rehearsal was chilly to say the least. Geoffrey was sporting a cast on his right wrist and Hao Yong was reading Fu Tsong’s role, book in hand.

“She’s not here, Fong,” snapped Geoffrey.

“Where is she, then?”

“She said she was going to fix everything. That she was going ’to get everything fixed’ were her exact words.”

Fong responded weakly, “Do you know where she went?”

“She’s your wife, Fong. You tell me. She left rehearsal over an hour ago.”

As if on a cue from the heavens, a crack opened high in the theatre’s south wall and a slender river of water, like a free-flowing tear, made its way to the floor.

Fong controlled his rising anxiety. His years of training as a cop came to the fore. “When exactly did she go?”

The stage manager said, “Forty-five minutes ago.”

“Was she carrying a bag?”

“Yes, a small one,” the stage manager said. “I called her a cab.”

Geoffrey stared straight ahead.

“Which company?”

The stage manager gave him a name and he turned and ran toward the exit. As he left the theatre he heard Geoffrey’s voice call out, “If anything happens to her, I’ll chase you wherever you go. Wherever you go I’ll find you and get my revenge.”

“’Wherever you go I’ll find you and get my revenge.’ You said that?” asked Wang Jun. The white man nodded and continued to talk but Wang Jun wasn’t listening. Geoffrey Hyland’s story had triggered a memory in the old cop. A memory of another room, one in the Pudong, later on the day that the theatre director was describing.

Wang Jun took a deep breath to clear his head. It was getting light outside and Wang Jun was tired, vulnerable. When he had been ordered to interview the Canadian director he had been skeptical that anything new would come of it. Now, after his second interview, he just wanted to be sure before he proceeded. Before he reported that it was time to reopen the case against his friend Zhong Fong. Yes, Hyland had seen a terrible fight and been attacked by Zhong Fong the night before Fu Tsong’s death in the Pudong. Yes, Fu Tsong had asked the director to contact Soo Jack the next afternoon, the afternoon of her death. No, Geoffrey Hyland had not been able to get in touch with Soo Jack so the stage manager had gotten Fu Tsong a cab. Yes, Fong had shown up at the theatre that afternoon, asking after Fu Tsong. Yes, Geoffrey had seen Fong the day after Fu Tsong’s death and asked after Fu Tsong but Fong had ignored the question. And finally yes, Geoffrey had had an affair with Fu Tsong.

“Do you think Fong capable of killing his wife?”

“I guess anyone is capable of such a thing.”

Then, as if it were an afterthought, Wang Jun tossed in, “You did know that Fu Tsong was pregnant, didn’t you?”

Wang Jun watched the white man’s face carefully.

“Yes, I knew, but . . .” Geofffrey himself falling-deep in the big white room. His mind did the simple arithmetic, the calculation he had never done before. Fu Tsong died in August four years ago. He had last slept with her in March of that year. The child could have been his.

Loa Wei Fen’s breath was coming in slow, ragged bursts. His heart was racing. The sheet he slept on by the side of his bed at the Portman Hotel was dripping with sweat. “I must have been poisoned,” he thought. It was the only thing that could explain what was happening to him. The clock on the bedside table said 2:07 A.M. He’d been asleep for almost twenty-two hours. He turned to the window, unwilling to accept the clock’s assessment of the time. He fully expected to see daylight as he parted the curtains, but no. The blanket of night was full upon the city.

He had made an error when he killed the black man. He didn’t know why he had made the error, but he did know that everything in his world had changed since.

Two days ago, after discovering that the source of his e-mail commands was police headquarters on the Bund, he had headed back toward the Portman. He went via the Old City, intending to pick up his bicycle from where he had left it the day of the killing. But as he approached, he sensed rather than saw the watchers. After a moment’s examination, he spotted the police officers everywhere asking people about bicycles. He veered into the Fu Yu antique market and found himself somehow drawn toward the opium den where he had seen his quarry kiss the Chinese woman.

The image of the Chinese woman materialized more lovely than his memory, when she parted the curtains, a pipe in her elegant hands. That image exploded in his heart when, after preparing the opium, she put her tongue in his mouth. That image implanted itself as the liquid dream floated into his lungs and the impossibly small woman inserted him into herself bringing the clouds and the rain.

As if the two of them were part of something else. Part of a whole thing, he thought.

On the floor of the Portman Hotel the memory hurt him. Hurt him more than the scarring on his back. More than the rigours of his training. Something was ripping open inside him. Then Wu Yeh, his opium whore, was there in his hotel room-although he knew she couldn’t be. The slender Chinese woman, pipe in hand, her robe open, awaiting him. As she approached, all Loa Wei Fen could think was that this isn’t true-what has happened to me? And the great beast carved on his back flared its hood, its eyes blood red, and sank its fangs deep into Loa Wei Fen’s heart.

Even as he toiled in the midst of his nightmare of love, Loa Wei Fen’s computer was collecting data from the ether. A name appeared and an address. A photo likeness and a long set of names, dates, and places. The message ended simply. “Kill him any way you wish, and then disappear for a very, very long time.”

Shanghai, PRC, An April Dawn

Dearest Sister,

In Shanghai, I wear my westernness like an overcoat. As the sun crests the horizon in Fuxing Park the long gray amoeba shadows of the old men doing tai chi glide in slow motion across the cracked pavement. A woman in stirrup stretch pants is conducting a ballroom dance class to the sounds coming from a crackly beat box. Couples are learning the steps to a rumba. To my left two men in old-fasioned undershirts are playing a game of go while six or seven other men crowd in to offer their unsolicited advice. I am left alone with pen and paper and a head full of phrases running this way and that. I saw a girl in love yesterday, mourning the death of her lover. Back in the hotel room at Narita I thought that was what I was doing, but now I know for sure that it was not. I was pushing my past out of me or it was rising out of me by itself. I saw a little boy peeing by the roadside yesterday evening and I wanted to run over to him and hug him and tell him to figure out how to love someone with that thing. But I didn’t. I just smiled. I do a lot of smiling here, sometimes when I don’t feel like smiling much. After spending the day walking with Inspector Zhong, I spent a large portion of the evening walking alone. I found an area down Wolumquoi Road, near the consulates, where the city is a little less hectic. I sat and watched and dreamed of being alive here in a city where life is all there is for most people.