“The rate is not the important thing,” he said, feeling trapped. “As a rule, I don’t take a case without having at least some background information.”
“Yes, you are special,” she said. She paused, leaned back, and looked Chen over carefully, as if reappraising him.
“You don’t have to tell me everything right now. Still, some basics will be necessary.”
“I want you to check up on someone in Shanghai-and not just her, but the people she meets with as well. In particular, a man she’s seeing.”
“What’s her name and address?”
“Jin Jiani, and she lives in Gubei. This is her address.” She scribbled the address on a pink paper napkin.
He could guess what this was all about. She wanted him to catch a cheating husband. Once she had evidence of his infidelity, she could make her move.
But Qian’s here in Suzhou, he reflected. “So the man goes to Shanghai to meet her?”
“No, he lives in Shanghai. You’ll find out more about him.”
That’s strange, Chen thought, but he refrained from commenting.
“He’s somebody, I can tell you that much. But for the moment, you don’t have to do anything regarding him. For that matter, you don’t even have to know his name. Focus on the woman instead. When you find out more about her, you’ll decide whether you want to move forward or not.”
She was reasonable and persuasive, carefully taking into consideration his earlier statement about professional taboos. He found it difficult to respond with an outright no.
“Alas, it’s most difficult not to return a favor to a beauty,” he quoted in spite of himself.
“What a flattering line!”
“It’s not mine, but I forget the poet’s name. Fine, I’ll take a look for you. Don’t worry about the hourly rate or paying me a retainer, since I might not take the case. Give me your phone number, and I’ll call you if I think I can be of any real help.”
Such a vague promise wasn’t really a commitment at all, he told himself.
Soon, they finished the noodles, and she had the remaining shrimp boxed. Chen paid the bill and picked up one of the restaurant’s business cards on their way out.
When they reached the street, the rain had stopped. To Chen’s surprise, right next to the restaurant, there was a bus stop for a route going directly to the train station.
“Oh look, there’s a bus stop right here. I can just take the bus, and you won’t have to go any farther out of your way,” he said. “I’ll contact you once I know if I want to take the case.”
A silence ensued. She gave him a wan smile. He heard a faint sound behind him, like something had burst. It was a bubble of mosquitos. He looked over his shoulder, and saw the air bubbles burst on the surface of the green water pond.
FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, BACK in his apartment in Shanghai, Chen woke up quite late.
A glance at the clock on the nightstand showed that it was past nine thirty. Stretching in the morning light, he felt refreshed and reenergized.
He hadn’t been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep for a long time. Perhaps it was due to satisfaction of doing something for his father and to exhaustion as well. Yesterday, all the trains to Shanghai had been sold out except for the last one of the night. Chen had to wait hours at the station, so he spent some time with a cup of coffee in a station café, stirring up the details of the Special Case Squad’s latest cases. Detective Yu had a point-there might be something in one of these cases that would explain the reason for Chen’s sudden transfer. Chen jotted down a lot of notes, most of which would probably turn out to be irrelevant. He kept going over those cases in his mind during the trip back to Shanghai, and then again as he waited in the long line for a taxi at the train station. He didn’t get home until after midnight, where, exhausted, he fell asleep almost immediately.
Now well rested, he got up and went to check his e-mail. It was no great surprise when he found more than thirty messages waiting in his in-box.
A number of them were enthusiastic congratulations on his new position. Was it possible that so many people had no clue what this new assignment really meant? Some of them were probably sent as a formality, but at least it seemed that people weren’t trying to avoid him. Perhaps they were thinking that since power struggles within the Party were unpredictable, there was no telling if, or when, Chen would stage a comeback. Whatever interpretation one placed upon recent events, Chen was still a Party cadre with the rank of a bureau head.
There were already several e-mails marked “urgent” from his new office, along with a number of attached documents. He didn’t open any of them immediately.
On his answering machine, Chen found a number of phone messages waiting for him, including several from senior Party officials in the Shanghai city government. The messages all sounded more or less the same, perfunctory expressions of congratulations. Chen knew better than to take any of them seriously.
There were no calls or e-mails from Beijing, though.
He made himself a pot of coffee, took a sip, then sat back down at his computer and began surfing the Internet. He was looking for articles about legal reform. In China, the first sign of change would have appeared in cyberspace. There was still a week before he was to start his new job, but Chen might as well get a head start and do some research.
After an hour or so, he gave up in resignation. He hadn’t found anything interesting, except some old news about Zhongtian. Zhongtian was an “independent scholar” who had posted articles on his blog about the idea of separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. The People’s Daily had responded with an editorial declaring that this idea would never work in China. Zhongtian had argued that under the one-party system, where it was taken for granted that the Party’s interest was above the law, any talk of legal reform was just a show, full of politically correct language, yet empty of anything real. As a result, Zhongtian had been invited by Internal Security to meet them for “a cup of tea,” which meant a serious warning delivered in person. When Zhongtian continued posting, he got into some “tax trouble”-at least, that was the word on the Internet.
That incident spoke to the possible role of the Legal Reform Committee, Chen thought, with a frown. Reform was just another umbrella word in the politics of China, capable of referring to anything, or nothing. At bottom, the legal system was part and parcel of the Party system.
Annoyed at the whole concept, he began replying to the e-mails from his new office, using similar, equally empty language. He didn’t bother to download, much less read, any of the attachments.
It soon wore him out. He got up and put a bowl of instant noodles in the microwave. While waiting, he sent his pictures from Suzhou electronically to a nearby convenience store to have prints made for his mother. He selected same-day service, so he could pick them up later that afternoon.
He called his mother to tell her about his visit to Suzhou. He made a detailed report about the planned renovation of his father’s tomb and promised to bring the pictures over soon, possibly that evening. She sounded pleased.
Afterward, as he was throwing the paper bowl of the noodles into the trash bin, he started going through the pile of junk mail he’d let collect on his kitchen counter. Among the piles, he found an invitation from White Cloud for the grand opening of her high-end hair salon on West Huaihai Road. The envelope contained a VIP voucher in the amount of five thousand yuan. He’d already missed the event.
He’d met White Cloud on a case several years ago. At that time he was an “emerging cadre”-a man on the rise-and she was a “college/karaoke girl” working in a KTV salon. Afterward, she briefly worked as a “little secretary” for him while he was doing a translation project. They’d kept in touch ever since. On several occasions, she’d been helpful, and he was sure it wasn’t because of his position. She had no need to curry favor with him. This invitation was yet another of her generous gestures.