Qiu Xiaolong - A Case of Two Cities

She put everything in her bag. Rubbing her ankle, she was ready to go back to Washington University, where Chen would deliver his talk on “Eliot in China.”

IT WAS STILL EARLY in the morning when the phone rang in Detective Yu’s small room. He took a look at the radio clock on the night-stand. Not six yet. Peiqin was still asleep, her bare legs and feet reaching out, so white against the light green towel blanket in the pale light. He picked up the phone and moved down, so as not to wake her up. But there was not much space for him to do so. Qinqin was asleep in the back part, which was partitioned out as his room.

“A very important development, son,” Old Hunter said. “Now I know why the Beijing government sent Chen out with the delegation. A devious conspiracy indeed.”

“What is it?” He had to push the old man. Old Hunter, otherwise nicknamed Suzhou Opera Singer, could go on delaying and digressing for an hour before coming to the point. “Please tell me, Father. I’m leaving in five minutes.”

“Now it’s from a most reliable source, this information I’m going to tell you. But I have to begin from the beginning. Now, Hua had a sworn brother at the passport office of the Shanghai City Government, Miao Zhiying. I have just learned that from Hua’s widow. Hua sheltered Miao for weeks during the Cultural Revolution. Miao was then on the wanted list issued nationwide by a Red Guard organization. Hua’s a golden-hearted guy, as I have told you. So I went to Miao, who, a man in his late fifties, burst into tears. You know what he said to me? ‘If you can do something for Hua by cutting my head off, Old Hunter, strike, and I will not groan.’ So I asked him to check any suspicious movement made of late by those rats, and he promised to help. Early this morning, through one of his colleagues, he found out that a Canadian visa-for ‘personal business’-had been recently granted to Jiang, the director of the City Land Development Office. The application and approval were conducted in a secret way, completed just two days ago. Miao called me immediately.”

“So Jiang’s trying to run out, before Chen comes back.”

“That’s possible. Those rats have had their passports ready long beforehand, Miao told me. It is said that people nowadays can sort of get Canadian citizenship through investment. Two million yuan, and the visa would be granted. Now, how has Jiang gotten all the money? We have to act quick. Or there will be another damned red-topped rat carrying its huge storage of stolen money abroad.”

“No, he won’t be able to get away,” Yu said. “I’m going to the bureau. I’ll call you back.”

“Chief Inspector Chen should be coming back soon,” Peiqin said quietly the moment Yu hung up. She must have woken up during their conversation, yet was still curled up under the blanket. “You may as well wait for a couple of days.”

“Oh, you’re awake. Old Hunter always talks like that.”

“That’s a way of prolonging his old professional pride, I understand. It wasn’t easy for him to have obtained the information,” she said, getting down and putting on a fluffy robe. “But I don’t think Jiang could have sent Chen out with the delegation.”

“Nor do I. But those rats may get away in the twinkling of an eye,” he said, reaching out to the nightstand, out of habit, for a cigarette. He picked up his watch instead. “I’d better do something.”

“What can you do?” She walked barefoot to the microwave and started warming two bowls of water-reboiled rice. “But you’re right, I think. Things can’t wait. We have to do something.”

He was pleased with her use of “we.” Like Old Hunter, she, too, had thrown herself into it. She had stayed late with Chen’s mother last night. White Cloud was too busy with her studies or something else in college. Peiqin considered her too busy and modern a girl for Chen, and for the old woman too.

“I’ll make some phone calls first,” Yu said, finishing the watery rice with a piece of pickled green cabbage. “I know someone working at China Airline. He may find out whether Jiang has booked the ticket.”

“That’s a good idea. You need to check other airlines, too,” she said. “Call me if I can do anything. I’ll be at Old Geng’s place in the morning, and at the other restaurant in the afternoon. Don’t skip your lunch.”

Around eleven o’clock, Detective Yu hadn’t received a response from his contact at China Airline. Just as he was going to go down to the bureau canteen, his phone rang.

To his surprise, it was Chen, who had made a rule of not calling into his office.

“The weather is really bad. So I think you’d better check on what the K man gave you immediately. Or the fish may go bad.”

“Yes, it’s not good here.” He was so confounded by Chen’s sudden switch back to the weather terminology, he had a hard time figuring out how to inform Chen of the latest development here in their agreed-on jargon.

“We have to be careful,” Chen moved on before Yu could respond. “Let’s hope it will change for the better-as quickly as possible.”

And with that, Chen hung up, leaving Yu in confusion.

To an eavesdropper, this international call could hardly make any sense except that the chief inspector proved to be an impossible gourmet. Thousands of miles away, he was still concerned about a fish, possibly given by a peddler in a K market. Perhaps no one would believe it. But Yu, too, failed to make heads or tails out of it, whatever fish it could be.

That was the drawback of their jargon communication. Chen must have a reason for it. Yu went over the short conversation in his mind. It was not about any fish, but who was the K man? He tried to recall all the people he had contacted, one by one, during the past week. The effort was not successful. He refocused on the people who had given him something. Then Gu and the laptop came to mind. With karaoke girls commonly called K girls, it would make sense to call Gu a K man, even though there was no such term in current circulation.

Skipping his lunch, he hurried out of the bureau, heading home.

Sure enough, he had mail from Chen on the computer that Gu had loaned him. It took him a while to download the attachment with Xing’s phone transcript. Yu didn’t know how Chen had gotten it, but he knew Chen wanted him to study it carefully.

Reading through the phone transcript, he didn’t succeed in producing a comprehensible picture. Something had been going on between Xing and his associates in China, particularly in the last few days, that Yu could tell. Many calls had been made, only most of the details were couched in triad jargon. There were names he had seen or heard before, some of them Chen had given him earlier, including Jiang and Dong. The context surrounding their names remained far from clear, except that they still had contact with Xing one way or another.

Then Yu got the call from China Airline. Jiang’s name didn’t appear on the list. It wasn’t exactly high season yet; people could get a ticket one or two days beforehand.

Lighting a cigarette, he read the transcript more closely. All of a sudden, he alighted on a name: Weici.

Weici was an extremely rare family name. Yu had heard of it only once, in a Tang dynasty story. He had not met anyone with such a family name. But at Apricot Blossom Village, the club to which An’s phone calls had led him, the general manager was surnamed Weici. So he reread the part containing the name, which happened to be in connection with Ming. He found the name of Weici was mentioned on three occasions.

“I have just learned, Xing. Weici is a man. Your little brother should be fine there,” someone said to Xing, possibly in response to his inquiry about the whereabouts of the “little boy.”