Xiao Bai - French Concession

“You idiot!” Li muttered.

“The Communists don’t do assassinations,” he said to Hsueh. “They take care of their own traitors, sure. And they might kill someone who poses a serious threat. But they wouldn’t have to hound a small-time journalist like me when they can use their own publications. They wouldn’t shift gears like that overnight.”

“What’s your stake in this anyway?” Li asked, gesturing with his wineglass. The deep glasses were said to have been invented by the captain of a Scottish pirate ship, to make sure that the wine wouldn’t spill even if the seas were rough. Nowadays, of course, the pirates had all become bigwigs in Asia.

Hsueh produced one of the official name cards he had gotten from the newspaper, and handed it to Li.

“The French are keen on it. They think there’s a story here. They think it could be a big deal.”

“It could be a pretty big deal, that’s true. .” Li stopped midsentence and looked at Hsueh, as though he had just realized something.

The table was low, and Hsueh could see Li stroking Tao’s thigh from across the table. Tao glanced at Hsueh, adjusted her posture slightly, and smoothed out the slit in her cheongsam. The line of white flesh that had been visible just above her stockings vanished.

“What I’m about to tell you, now that’s a big deal,” Li said mysteriously.

“You cunning old fox. Stop pretending you know anything,” Hsueh said, deliberately refusing to give Li any face in front of Tao.

Li was provoked. He got up, shrugged his shoulders, rubbed his nose, lit a cigarette, and let slip a piece of information that could have been worth a hundred-yuan check:

“You’re not the only person who’s been coming to me asking about this. And it’s not just the police. You wouldn’t believe it. At the teahouse by the Race Course, even Morris Jr. came to me. Not on his own steam — you guessed it, the Boss himself sent for me.”

“Wait, the Green Gang cares about this?”

“Word is that someone paid the Green Gang a lot of money to find the killer, so yes, the Boss does care. Of the three killings so far, one isn’t important. One has to do with the coup in Fukien. Three days after the assassination, the commander of the fort at Safuchou was arrested and sent to Nanking. The most important of the three is the assassination at Kin Lee Yuen Wharf. Ts’ao Chen-wu was in Shanghai making arrangements for the arrival of an important figure, and he was killed to stop that man from going to Canton. It had something to do with public debt, but even I don’t know the whole story.”

He said “even I” as though it should all have been reported to him as a matter of course. Then he put his hand complacently around Tao’s waist, and pinched her.

It was Li’s own fault he didn’t know the whole story — he’d never done an honest day’s work in his life. To find out whether public debt had played a role, all you’d have to do was read the papers for the week of the assassination. Once they were done talking, Hsueh resolved to go straight to the editorial office’s reading room and read all the foreign newspapers from the past month.

The dance hall didn’t seem to be doing well that night. Even Peach Girl, their most popular dancer, wasn’t hauled off to join any other tables. A singer shrieked the song “Drizzling Rain” at the top of her voice, while a fire-eating acrobat performed in between songs, juggling three flaming beer bottles that rose and fell in the air. Li was groping Tao; Tao’s deep eyes were fixed on Hsueh; Hsueh couldn’t stop thinking about Leng.

“Leng is your real name, isn’t it?” he had once asked her. She had ignored the question.

Hsueh didn’t really trust Li. You had to take all the tips horse-traded in the Concession with a grain of salt. He could have sworn Leng belonged to a Communist cell because she was so focused, and he felt she must be ideologically motivated. Mere flirting seemed not to distract her at all.

But the next day, he felt less sure. He had stayed up all night reading old newspapers in the editorial offices until the early hours of the morning. Even the editor had praised his diligence:

“Whatever the big scoop is that you’re looking for, after you go to the police, you’re coming to me. Whatever you’ve got, you’re publishing it with me.”

He went to the Jih-hsin-ch’ih Bathhouse for a bath and a full-body massage, and took a nap. He also kept an ear out for the latest news of the Green Gang.

“There’s that new assassination squad, of course. People something?” The bathhouse was the best place for gangland news — even the boys who gave foot massages were sworn gangsters. They knew exactly what tips to leak and what to bury. The Boss had it all under control.

So when he met Leng at noon, the first thing he did was to try and worm more information out of her.

“I didn’t think financiers could be Communists.”

“What do you mean?” Leng was puzzled.

“Nothing.” Leng was getting used to Hsueh’s random questions. If she ever thought back to these conversations days later, she would realize that things would have turned out quite differently, had she told Ku about every exchange between her and Hsueh.

Hsueh’s chief talent was being creatively untruthful. Last night I went straight to Moon Palace Dancing Hall on North Szechuen Road, he said. I was looking for my police friend. This barely counts as a lie. I pretended I didn’t really care, and I was only asking questions to make the dancing girl think I was in the know. This isn’t too far-fetched either.

“Your friend, is he a Frenchman?” Leng asked.

“Yes, but he’s lived here for years and he speaks Shanghainese.” Hsueh blushed at having been caught out.

“It’s funny you speak French and know so many French people.”

“My father was French,” he said without trying to boast, although being French had its advantages in the Concession.

“I see.”

Hsueh was surprised that Leng was in such a lively mood. She had been silent and nervous the previous day, like a hedgehog curling up when prodded.

Yesterday afternoon the Concession Police ransacked the apartment. They found identity papers with your photo and a fake name, unless that’s your real name and Leng isn’t.

Leng grew irritated. Those sons of bitches, she muttered.

He had nothing left to say. That’s all for today. Dismissed. Hsueh touched his brow in what he imagined to be the international Communist salute.

He was even more surprised when Leng suggested watching a movie. A movie? Sure, why not. Let me buy you a steak dinner too.

JUNE 15, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

3:55 A.M.

Before Ku could make his next move, they made a move on him. That was his own fault. Under the circumstances, he shouldn’t have gone to Ch’i’s place. If they hadn’t yet decided to buy him off, there was a chance they might be sizing him up, and he should have guessed they would use Ch’i to get at him. When he first negotiated with them, Ch’i had been their go-between.

He got home in the early hours of the morning and rapped on the door. Still shaken, he told Ch’in to go to sleep. He wanted to think.

On the way to Ch’i’s apartment the previous night, he had had a funny feeling. The apartment was on Rue Eugène Bard, and getting there from Rue Palikao usually took about fifteen minutes, but today it took more than half an hour. He could have taken Rue du Consulat toward Boulevard de Montigny, which would have allowed him to stay within the bounds of the French Concession and not go through the iron gates. But for some reason he ventured into Chinese territory via the gates on Rue Palikao. He was always telling the cell that they had to breathe deeply and stay calm, and maybe he had been jittery. But that meant he had to cross the northwest corner of Chinese-administered territory and enter the Concession at the gate between Ming Koo Road on the Chinese side and Rue Voisin on the French side, where two policemen stopped him and frisked him.