Xiao Bai - French Concession

There were also a handful of German words on the page, he said. Sarly agreed that the device could be a machine gun. Hsueh also vaguely remembered something that looked like a cylinder split in two, but he had to put it at the bottom of the page because there was no space on the side. Then he drew the other shape he remembered beneath the mount. That shouldn’t matter, he thought, since the two components are completely separate.

Lieutenant Sarly said he would have a weapons specialist look at it. The most important thing was to work out how it would shape Ku’s plan.

“What about that woman, where is she hiding now?” he asked.

“She’ll get in touch. She won’t give me her address or phone number.” Having lied to Sarly made him afraid to go straight home after he left the police station, as if the rooms on Route J. Frelupt didn’t exist as long as he wasn’t home, and no one would realize Leng was hiding there. Of course, he was also reluctant to see Leng. He was the kind of person who liked to bargain with life, and if he could put something off, he always would.

He went to Haialai, the jai alai court on Avenue du Roi Albert. They had started holding enough contests that there was betting going on almost every day. But the contests were over for the afternoon. He was sitting in Domino Café, a small Spanish restaurant opposite the courts, watching men with names like Juan and Osa holler at the top of their lungs. The air was heavy with the scent of fried onions and chorizo. The handle of the slot machine creaked every now and again, and a coin would drop with a clang. A pile of cestas lay on the table in the corner, like a heap of beaks cut from the corpses of giant slaughtered birds.

As soon as he sat down, he saw Barker, the American, all in white like most of the players. But Barker seemed to be sweating more than they were, and his white shirt had two large yellow underarm stains. He was standing at the players’ table, shouting that he would buy everyone a round. If he weren’t so loud, Hsueh wouldn’t have noticed him right away. A balding man stood to his left; the hairy man to his right looked as though he had shaved this morning but already had a five o’clock shadow.

When Barker saw him, he began to elbow his way out of the crowd. He came right up to Hsueh, and sat down so violently on the chair next to him that he nearly burst the seams of his pants.

“It’s been ages, how have you been?” Barker was as loud as ever. A few years in American prisons hadn’t taught him the value of peace and quiet. He didn’t have the look of a wanted man who had fled to China across the oceans — he could easily have been a businessman chatting in front of any one of the trading houses on the Bund.

Just then, a red armored vehicle sped right past them, outside the glass doors, its machine gun pointed at the sea of people, like Poseidon’s trident or Moses’s staff parting the Red Sea, the shrill police whistle piercing the glass and hurting everyone’s ears. If it weren’t for that car, Barker wouldn’t have told his story about Dillinger.

The armored vehicle turning onto Avenue du Roi Albert was carrying the newly issued silver yuan from the Shanghai mint to the central bank’s treasury. This was neither its usual route nor the usual time of day. Barker spat on the wooden flooring and muttered: If John Dillinger were here. .

Barker’s words made the famous outlaw appear in the room, darting among the coffee cups and ham platters. They had done time in the Indiana State Prison together and were great friends, Barker said. (He was probably lying.) He talked too much, said Barker, you’d never think he was a real robber. (Hsueh wondered whether anyone could talk more than Barker himself.) Dillinger was always daydreaming about bank heists, about barging in somewhere and scaring the daylights out of the guards and customers. The few minutes after someone called the cops and before they got there were the best. Of course you’d tweak the engine on your car to make it go faster than the police cars. You had to be better armed than they were, so that you could be sure of winning a shootout. Barker said he couldn’t imagine how Dillinger eventually pulled it off. He also didn’t think that Dillinger would actually manage to escape, taking Barker and a few others with him as they dashed out of the prison gates.

Barker talked about Baby Face Nelson and Bonnie and Clyde as though they were all his friends and he was proud of them. He kept talking when they were sitting behind the wire fence in the jai alai court. When the server in a blue shirt ran over to give them their bill, he didn’t even look at the number on the man’s nameplate.

Hsueh won his bet that evening, guessing both the first and second places right. Everything seemed to be going his way. But when he got home in the early hours of the morning, and saw Leng’s tear-stained face on the pillow, he began to doubt whether things were going as well as he’d hoped.

JUNE 27, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

7:35 A.M.

The day after what happened at the Singapore Hotel, Leng began to doubt her own influence over Hsueh. In fact, she started doubting Hsueh himself. It all came about because she found herself alone in Hsueh’s rooms that morning, after he went out. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and she was overcome by affection for Hsueh.

When she started cleaning his room, she found a pair of dirty drawers under the bed. They were made of Cantonese crepe silk with lace edges. In the sunlight, they gave off a dusty, moldy scent of old perfume, and a musky smell.

There were other signs. Lipstick stains on a cigarette holder, a scrunched-up powder puff in his woolen Fintex vest, and a photograph slipped under the cover of a notebook in his suit pocket. The woman in the photo was smoking, and a five-digit number was scrawled on the reverse. Leng realized she knew nothing about Hsueh. It wasn’t the other woman who upset her, she told herself; she was upset that she had trusted Hsueh.

She told herself not to cry, but she did — though not until late at night, when she collapsed on the bed and found herself sobbing with loneliness into the pillow, too exhausted to be repulsed by thoughts of the scenes that pillow might have witnessed.

But when she woke the next morning to see the sunlight stream through the window onto Hsueh’s face, she felt like a new person. Later she would learn that it was officially the last day of the rainy season. The air was fresher. Actually, this will simplify things, she thought. Her duty loomed before her like a mountain. She was no longer feeling lethargic, and she felt she could outdo the owner of the dirty lingerie. She didn’t ask him about it until two days later. She had started thinking of Hsueh as an enemy to be conquered. Keep your distance, she told herself. Provoke him — make him pursue you. It was a pity she couldn’t just get up and leave, since she had nowhere else to go. Still, he was confused by her aloofness, which meant her plan was working.

He was out all the time. She didn’t ask where he was going. Two days later, he asked abruptly when they were in the kitchen: “Didn’t you say your boss wants to see me?”

Then he glanced away without looking her in the eye. He’s feeling guilty, she thought. She had been avoiding him for a few days. He kept wanting to say something, and then not saying it. Maybe he had noticed the difference and felt bad about it. Maybe he subconsciously wanted to prove he cared by doing something for her.