“Of course. When would you want to start the project?”
“I happen to have a week off. So please start as soon as possible.”
“That’s fine. We can get started on it tomorrow or day after tomorrow. Now, about the payment-”
Chen took out his credit card. But there was a credit limit on it, so he could only pay half the amount now.
“Can you charge half the amount to my card now, and I’ll pay the remaining half in a day or two?”
“No problem. For a client like you, no problem at all!” Hong exclaimed, apparently impressed.
Chen signed the credit slip, and after pocketing the receipt, he got up to leave.
Outside, there was no one left at the bus stop. He’d stayed too long at the cemetery office and missed the return bus.
There was no sign of a taxi. The cemetery was too far out of the way. The bus driver had mentioned another bus later in the afternoon, but how long he’d have to wait, he didn’t know. But there was no reason he couldn’t wait, there was nothing pressing back in Shanghai.
And he ought to start economizing, having just paid a large sum. He didn’t have to pay anything more for the return trip to Shanghai on the cemetery bus.
He waited for another half hour without a bus showing up.
“There are no more buses today!” a passing local farmer shouted out to him.
“Are there any other bus stops nearby?”
“Follow this road, turn left at the small creek, and then turn right. In about ten minutes, you might be able to see a bus.”
“Thanks!”
He decided to follow the farmer’s suggestion, though he knew there was no telling how long he’d have to wait at that stop, either.
THREE
CHEN SET OFF ALONG the trail in the direction the farmer suggested. In the countryside, a passing bus would sometimes stop for a possible passenger waving it down, just like the cemetery bus had on the way from Shanghai.
But the weather was beginning to change. A drizzle blew over from beyond the hills. He quickened his step, but in only three or four minutes the trail became slippery and treacherous. Chen was trudging along with increasing difficulty, splashing muddy water around. Unlike the road in the Tang dynasty poem, there was no Apricot Blossom Village in sight. He was probably lost, seeing nothing like the creek the local farmer mentioned.
His clothes were soaked by the sharper and larger raindrops, and he felt like a chicken dropped into an enormous pot of boiling water.
There was still no sign of any vehicles cutting through the rain curtain. At another bend in the trail, he saw something that looked like a shelter. He hurried over in that direction, but as he got close to it, he came to a dead stop. It was actually a large straw-covered chicken shed, abandoned.
Then a white car came speeding down the road past him. Up ahead, it made an abrupt U-turn, its tires screeching on the gravel, and rolled to a stop beside him. It was new Lexus.
Was it possible that he’d been followed all the way here to Suzhou?
The driver rolled down the window, sticking her head out.
“Where are you going?”
An attractive woman in her midtwenties, the driver had an oval face with delicate features. She was wearing a custom-tailored mandarin dress.
“It’s raining cats and dogs.” She spoke with an unmistakable Suzhou dialect.
“I’m looking for a bus stop,” he said, “or a taxi. I’ve missed the cemetery bus.”
“You can never tell when the bus will come. You’re from Shanghai?”
“Yes.”
“Let me give you a ride,” she said, her slender hand lifting the door lock.
“Oh, it’s so kind of you, but-”
It was a luxurious car with a shining beige leather interior. He hesitated, afraid of making a mess with his wet clothes. She leaned over, pushing the door open for him.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s raining hard.”
It was a surprising offer, one he couldn’t afford to turn down. He got in and slumped into the seat beside her.
Her generous offer to a stranger had come out of the blue, but she lost no time demystifying it. “I saw you at the cemetery office. What a filial son! Paying the eternal maintenance fee, all of it, there and then.”
“A filial son?” He then recognized her as one of the VIP customers seated on the sofa in the office.
“Well, I happened to overhear part of your conversation with the manager.”
“I haven’t paid a visit to my father’s grave in years. It was the least I could do for him, and for my mother, too. This way, whatever happens, she won’t have to worry about that.”
That was the truth, which he blurted out at the spur of the moment, though its full meaning was beyond her.
“I see,” she said. “So you’re going to the railway station?”
“Yes. If you could just take me to the stop for any bus that goes to the station?”
“Oh, don’t worry about the bus. Let me just take you to the train station.”
“That would be extremely nice of you, but it’s too much trouble.”
“No trouble at all-not for a filial Big Buck,” she said, not trying to conceal her curiosity. “Particularly one who doesn’t have his own car. My name is Qian, by the way.”
“And mine is Cao. However, I’m neither filial, nor rich. I’ve just completed a well-paid job, so I decided to pay the maintenance fee now, while I still have the money.”
“It must have been quite a well-paid job!”
He wasn’t in the mood for conversation, but since she’d rescued him from a long walk in the rain, he didn’t think he had a choice. He took a pink napkin she held out to him and wiped his wet face and dripping hair.
“In a month or two, all that money may be gone. In fact, after today’s payment, I might have to start cutting back.”
“What kind of job was it?”
That was a difficult question. There was no point in telling her that he was a government official, which was neither a popular profession nor one that matched the “well-paid job” he’d just invented. And he saw no need to reveal his real identity.
“Well, I’m-sort of a cop-for hire.”
He’d been a cop for so long, it was the first thing that came to mind.
“Oh-a private investigator?”
That was ironic. Old Hunter, Detective Yu’s father, was helping out at a private investigator’s office in Shanghai. For Chen, though, “private investigator” meant something else-an investigator who was independent of the Party’s legal system.
“Well, you could say that.”
“That’s really interesting,” she said., “You’re based in Shanghai, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Now we meet, though not known to each other before.”
“Oh, it sounds like a line from ‘Pipa Song.’”
“I like pipa. And ‘Pipa Song’ too.”
Pipa, a zitherlike musical instrument, had been popular in ancient China and was still commonly used in Suzhou opera. Bai Juyi, a Tang dynasty poet, wrote a celebrated long poem about a forsaken artisan playing pipa, entitled “Pipa Song.” It wasn’t surprising that Qian, a native of Suzhou, liked the instrument. But the line she cited from the poem was a curious choice. The original couplet read:
Two pathetic souls adrift to the ends of world, / now we meet, though not known to each other before.
She was apparently well-to-do, and she had taken him for some sort of Big Buck as well. So why did she choose those two lines?
He began to feel a bit uneasy about her and felt pressured to say something merely for the sake of saying it. He decided to change the topic. “Why were you at the cemetery office today?”
“I was there to pay the annual fee for my grandparents’ grave.” She quickly changed the topic back: “Please tell me more about your business. I’ve only read about private investigators in foreign mystery novels.”