Xiao Bai - French Concession

9:33 A.M.

It was nearing the end of June, and the rainy season should have started by now. But although the sky sagged with clouds, the rains never came. It was hot and muggy. When Hsueh walked into Lieutenant Sarly’s office, he saw that Inspector Maron was also there. There was too much moisture in the air. The walnut wood paneling was mottled with mold, producing a musty smell that mixed with the smoke from Sarly’s pipe. He kept stuffing yellow tobacco into his pipe, while shreds of tobacco leaf drifted onto his file. The table was covered with documents: photographs, forms, letters, and several neatly printed reports.

“That Russian princess of yours — Therese, what’s she been up to? Mended her ways? Retired early on her money?” The lieutenant was clearly in a bad mood. A change in weather would help, perhaps a dusty Sahara breeze, or a tropical rainstorm from Indo-China.

“Look who’s here. You’re still knocking about? I thought she’d chopped you into salad and had you for lunch,” Maron sniggered.

These days, the thought of Therese made Hsueh’s head hurt. Ever since she had extracted a confession from him at gunpoint — though heaven only knew why she had believed him — their relationship had changed unexpectedly. For almost a week after that incident, Hsueh had avoided her. He was afraid that if she kept pressing him for details, he would invent one lie after another until the whole fiction crumbled to pieces.

Maybe the problem would solve itself if he ended their relationship. Now that Lieutenant Sarly had read his file and found that he was the son of an old friend, he was no longer afraid of what the police could do to him, though he was still privately terrified of Maron’s motionless fish eyes. He had even less reason to keep following Therese. But just because he didn’t want to see her didn’t mean that she didn’t want to see him. The Concession was tiny, and she had no trouble finding out where he lived. When he saw her men outside his rooms, his heart sank. He must have been found out, he thought, and this time she wouldn’t be threatening him with an unloaded gun.

The Cossack bodyguards took him to Mohawk Road. They marched him into the longtang next to the stables, and through a corner gate into what looked like a warehouse. He hadn’t expected to be brought here. Did she want him executed by firing squad? Or hanged at the platform in the center of the room?

The building probably used to be a stable. In the center there was a platform with posts at its four corners, linked by ropes. A man stood on it and hollered at the room. The crowd was in a frenzy, and the air was thick with the stench of sweat, tobacco, and of vodka belched up after fermenting in hot stomachs. He stumbled along behind the guards as they wove their way through the outstretched legs, overturned benches, and piles of beer bottles, until he found himself standing in front of Therese.

Unexpectedly, she motioned to a rattan chair next to her. Once he sat down, he realized that this was the underground wrestling ring founded by Cossack gangs and ex-navy officers from Vladivostok. Both groups put up fighters and took bets, and the police saw to it that other gangs did not interfere.

They had the best seats in the house. If you reached out you could touch the corner of the stage, the damp boards beneath the chair in the corner where the wrestlers rested and caught their breath. The timekeeper’s bench had been positioned to his right, between the audience and the platform. A bell and a small clock lay on the table.

The wrestler took a heavy punch in the ribs. It sounded like a butcher’s hammer hitting a slab of meat. Sweat splashed from his back, and the crowd screamed. People were placing bets, spitting, and cursing at the top of their lungs, as if shouting would make them win.

Therese loved watching men get beaten to a pulp. She also loved betting. She was shivering, and she kept licking her lower lip. Her cheeks were glistening with sweat that could have been hers or the wrestlers’. The way she stared at them, you’d think she could smell their crotches.

Later that night, she screamed as she rammed her thighs at him and sucked the sweat from his shoulders. She got on top of him, and just before the climax, she thumped him on the shoulder.

For the very first time, not only did she permit Hsueh to return to her apartment with her, but they also spent the morning of the following day in bed. She asked Hsueh to lunch at the Odessa with her, and over lunch she declared that she would let Hsueh handle the deal if his boss ever wanted to buy anything else.

He realized he wouldn’t be able to just stop seeing her. She believed he loved her because she had been pointing a gun at him when he said so, and the gun was now their witness. Therese was easily swayed by professional pride: if to love a housewife you had to like her cooking, or to love a seamstress you had to appreciate her embroidery, Therese would never be sure you loved her unless you were afraid of her gun.

But his affection for Therese was only one more reason to break things off. He would have to betray her if she had really been selling firearms to Leng’s cell. That reminded him of his own conflicting feelings. What was it that made him so desperate to get closer to Leng, to peel away her disciplined exterior, to explore her, analyze her, take her apart and put her together again?

“Your reports connect all these different incidents, from the arms dealer to the suspicious apartment on Rue Amiral Bayle, to the Kin Lee Yuen assassination, the street battle on Rue Paul Beau, and finally the fireworks on Avenue Foch. I’m expecting you to show us what you’re made of, to penetrate the cell and find. .”

“A forty-year-old man, the boss. He usually stays in the shadows, but he’s been seen before. Your Therese is the only way we can get to him,” Maron added.

“They’ve never met. They both use agents,” Hsueh said. He did not want Lieutenant Sarly to target Therese, at least not through him. In fact, he no longer wanted to see her, although he could now see her whenever he wanted to instead of having to stalk her — not that he himself knew whether he had originally followed her because Maron wanted him to, or for other reasons. She had given him a key to her apartment and let him use the bathroom there. She told him that when he wasn’t around, she thought about him every day. In her own words, she was “horny as a peach ripe to bursting.”

“I may let this Russian woman off. At the right time, I may decide to overlook her business selling unlicensed firearms to terrorists.” Lieutenant Sarly tapped his cigarette ash into a copper ashtray. “The Concession authorities are always sympathetic to commercial interests.”

“This lot aren’t Communists. That’s what the gangs are saying. They work differently. They’re acting more like a new gang trying to establish itself,” Maron said thoughtfully. Although the weather was humid, he wore his police uniform buttoned up all the way. He ignored the fly buzzing about his ear. Hsueh remembered how solemn Leng looked when she was telling him about her ideals.

“They’ve got to be Communists,” Sarly said. Maron shook his head and yawned.

“Their activity is linked to the Comintern’s newest networks in Asia and to the Communist cells threatening colonial authority in Indochina. Consul Baudez told me that once we’ve cracked this case, we’ll have to send copies of all the files to Paris. This information could influence the French government’s attitude toward Shanghai.”

“They’ll be easier to crack if they aren’t Communists. The Communists are hard to beat, and we’re short-staffed. We should leave the Communists to Nanking.”