Sipping at his tea, Chen remembered a vacation not too long ago, when he was still a chief inspector. He was waiting for an attractive woman in a tiny eatery, in another city not too far away…
Now, he was no longer a cop. He was not on vacation. In no mood for romantic fantasies at all.
Last night, he’d gotten another phone call from Old Hunter. The information from Tang confirmed what Chen had suspected. He was the sole target of the raid. The room number, the statements from the two cat girls, the books piled in the room… all of this led to one unmistakable conclusion. The book party had been a setup orchestrated at a higher level and was designed to entrap him.
After the phone call, Chen couldn’t fall asleep. He lay there, awake, trying to put the pieces together in his mind, but got nowhere. By morning he was worn out, and haunted by the ominous feeling that he was far from grasping the crucial piece of this puzzle.
The waitress came over to pour him another cup of tea.
“I’m still waiting to order,” he said, holding up the menu.
Glancing at his watch, He began wondering whether Qian would appear. It was now seven ten. It didn’t really matter, he thought. All he really wanted to do this morning was enjoy a bowl of Suzhou noodles, not dwell on his troubles.
As he was breathing deep into his second cup of the fragrant tea, he heard a flurry of footsteps coming up the stairs. Qian appeared on the landing in a ray of dazzling morning light, waving her hand.
She was wearing a light blue, short-sleeved mandarin dress, with a white cashmere shawl over her shoulders. It accentuated her slender figure, as if she was stepping light-footedly out of another poem by Du Mu.
Down and out, I wander around / crossing rivers and lakes / with a cup of wine, / and her waist willowy, / as if capable of dancing / on my lone palm.
Chen stood up to greet her and then poured her a cup of tea, rather than the wine featured in the Tang lines.
“It’s such a nice place. Thank you for your recommendation, Qian.”
“You have a good memory, Chen.”
The waitress came over to take their order. Chen chose the double topping of smoked fish and slow-cooked pork belly and the noodles in red soup, while Qian settled on shredded pork fried with pickled cabbage in white soup.
“The deep-fried rice paddy eel is the chef’s special. It’s from Cai’s personal farm, so it’s guaranteed to be hormone-free.”
So along with the noodles, they agreed to share a platter of the eels.
“I didn’t think you’d call,” she said, chopsticking up the noodles as the waitress withdrew with an empty tray.
“I’m a detective for hire. So why not? But I’m here in Suzhou to oversee the renovation of my father’s grave. My mother insists that I personally attend to the details, and I happened to have a few days off.”
“You’re a filial son, aren’t you?”
“Well, you may tell my mother that,” Chen said, picking up an eel slice for himself.
“How did you happen to pick that hotel?”
“Because of what you said about this restaurant the last time we met. The hotel is a nice one; it’s also close to here and to the club.”
“So you have also been to the club?”
“No, not yet. But I’ll go there.”
“I didn’t know you were a Suzhou opera fan.”
“What does that have to do with Suzhou opera?”
“You just mentioned the club.”
“Don’t you mean Southern Heavenly World, the nightclub that’s in the hotel?”
“Oh. No. I was talking about the Suzhou opera club. It’s just two minutes’ walk from here.”
“A Suzhou opera club-” That was a disappointment. He’d invited her out for information of a different kind. “Of course I’ll go there too.”
“The Southern Heavenly World nightclub murders the landscape.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Because of my job, I have to visit such places. It reminds me of the Heavenly World in Shanghai, which has almost the same name.”
“I’ve heard that the nightclub here is affiliated with the one in Shanghai. A former colleague of mine works in the Shanghai nightclub.”
“I see,” he said. This was the second time someone had mentioned the affiliation of the two clubs, and this time it was from a more reliable source. “This noodle restaurant is fantastic. There are a lot of customers this early in the morning. We’re lucky to be able to get such a great table, with just the two of us sitting by the windows.”
“This raised section by the windows is more expensive. They charge double for the view, and for the service. The other customers at this hour are mostly local retirees who are not well-to-do like you with your lucrative jobs.”
“Ah, that explains it.”
“And there’s another reason they come so early. They want to get the noodles from the first pot of the morning.”
“Why’s that?”
“When the noodles are freshly made, and boiled in the first pot, the taste is particularly delicious. As the day goes on, the chef has to frequently add water to the pot. Let’s say you come here around noon. At that stage, the water can be floury from all the noodle residue, and there’s a huge difference in the taste.”
“That’s intriguing,” he said. “Is that why it’s open for only half a day?”
“It might be part of the reason, but there’s another explanation for why it’s only open for half a day. To make traditional Suzhou noodles, the soup has to be cooked in a pot-a different pot from the noodle pot-overnight, for five or six hours, with all the special ingredients. Because of the great demand here, the soup is usually gone by noon. To maintain the highest quality, the proprietor, Cai, can only serve from morning till one thirty in the afternoon.”
“Cai sounds like an interesting character.”
“He doesn’t come in early. He’s another fan of Suzhou opera,” she said, reaching into her purse. “I’ve brought a CD with me.” She showed a disc to Chen. “It is Tang and Song poems set to Suzhou opera. You won’t find it in any stores. It was produced by the Suzhou Opera Club.”
“Tang and Song poems set to Suzhou opera!”
“It was an experiment we did at our club. An old proverb says, if you memorize three hundred Tang poems, you might be able to write a little. It’s easier for people to remember words when they’re set to music. And at the same time, people interested only in the classic poetry might also learn to appreciate opera.”
“That’s great. You are promoting poetry as well as Suzhou opera.”
She took a slow sip at the tea, the morning light lambent in her eyes, a tiny greenish leaf between her lips.
The tenderness of the green tea leaf between her lips. / Everything is possible, but not pardonable…
Did he write those lines himself? Possibly. It wasn’t a morning, however, to indulge in poetic reveries.
“We didn’t talk much about the job on the phone,” Chen said, steering the conversation back to the reason they were meeting. “Tell me more specifically what you want me to do. Last time, you indicated that it involves somebody in the city government, someone big.”
“He’s not that big, but he is in a sensitive position. That’s about all you need to know. You should simply focus on the woman. You’ll find more about him as you investigate her-it’s inevitable, and really only a matter of time. Once you reach that point, it’s possible you’ll decide the job’s too much trouble. Once you understand what’s involved, you can decline the job and not tell me anything of what you’ve learned.”
It was basically what she’d said when they first met. But it would be difficult for him to back out now, since he’d invited her here, with his own ulterior motive in mind.
“I see,” he said, putting down the chopsticks. “I still have to ask you some questions first.”
“Go ahead.”
“The identity of the man aside, why do you want information on this woman?”