In the next interrogation room Fong found another couple holding hands. Both were male this time. The actor playing Guildenstern interlocked his fingers with Rosencrantz’s beautifully manicured ones. Gay men were nothing new to Fong. Through Fu Tsong he had many contacts in the gay community and had, more than once, come to the rescue of a gay couple who had found themselves in trouble with the puritanical Communist authorities.
Fong looked at Guildenstern. The man withdrew his hand from his partner. “Detective Zhong, how can we help?”
Fong turned his head to one side. He wondered if Guildenstern knew that the offer to “help” was often seen as a sign of potential guilt.
“I’m not sure.”
“We’ll help in any way we can. What happened to Geoffrey is just terrible. Terrible. A great loss.”
Fong looked to Rosencrantz. “How did you get along with Mr. Hyland?”
“As a director or as a person?” Rosencrantz asked.
Fong momentarily wondered if there was a person Geoffrey Hyland different from the director Geoffrey Hyland. He thought not but answered, “As a director.”
“He was great if he liked you.”
“Liked you or liked your work?”
“What’s the difference?” Rosencrantz asked.
Fong wasn’t sure about that either so he chose one, “Liked your work.”
“He rode my case pretty hard but I liked him. He had standards and wanted them met without excuse.”
That sounded right to Fong. He turned to Guildenstern. “How did you get along with Mr. Hyland?”
“He liked me. So I liked him.” The man shrugged his slender shoulders. “That’s how the world works, isn’t it?”
Fong thought about that for a moment then asked where the two of them were last night. “There was a party,” said Rosencrantz.
Guildenstern shot him a look.
“I’m with Special Investigations, not Vice.”
Rosencrantz supplied the information about the party and the phone numbers of some people who were there. As he finished he let out a sigh.
“What?” Fong demanded.
Rosencrantz looked to Guildenstern who nodded. “There were party members at the party, if you get my meaning.” Fong got his meaning and wasn’t surprised. The party may have a puritanical face but behind closed doors sex was sex. To many it gave meaning to life. At very least it held death at bay – for however brief an instant.
The guard knocked at the door. “Has she stopped crying?” asked Fong.
“Who can tell with actresses?” the guard replied.
Fong let that pass and headed back to Laertes and Ophelia. Ophelia’s tears had disturbed her carefully applied makeup. A slender line of black marked her left cheek.
“Feeling better?” he asked.
“A little, thank you, Detective.”
That sounded honest enough. He turned to Laertes. “I hear that Mr. Hyland could be very hard on actors. How did he treat you?”
“He hated me,” said Laertes, “as if it were my fault the guy he cast as Hamlet couldn’t cut it.”
Fong recalled Laertes’ attack on Hamlet with the fight master and smiled – so that was what that was all about – just your basic theatre scrap over casting. Would someone murder over casting? Fong doubted it. If so, why didn’t he murder the guy playing Hamlet?
He turned to Ophelia, “And you?”
“He liked me. He liked my acting.” She reached up and unclipped her hair.
The interrogation didn’t seem to be going anywhere. They were each other’s alibis claiming that they spent the night together. Fong made a note to check with the house warden although he knew that the warden system at the Shanghai Theatre Academy was as weak as the key-lady system in guesthouses. He reminded them that this was a murder investigation and that they were not to leave the city without his permission. He demanded their passports but neither had one since neither had ever left the People’s Republic of China.
At the door he looked back at them. She rested her head against his shoulder, her long hair, loose from its clip, fell to the floor, revealing the nape of her neck. Laertes spoke to her softly, reassuringly. She tilted her head to accept his kiss. They were an attractive young couple. The kiss was tender, sweet.
Fong snapped shut his folder on Ms. Kitty Pants, the smaller of Geoff’s Screaming me-me’s, as the woman strode into his office. He didn’t stand. She didn’t sit. “Thank you for coming,” Fong began.
“You summoned me, I didn’t come because I wanted to. I have a show that I have to get ready.”
“Really?”
“Really.” She clutched her red zippered binder tightly to her chest and actually tapped her little foot.
Fong went through his mental file on North Americans and really didn’t think he’d met one like Kitty Pants before. Through Fu Tsong he had met several American producers but Ms. Pants wasn’t like them. She had their swagger but not their style. In fact, her style reminded him more of a petty bureaucrat at a post office checking foreign packages for correct “stampage,” if there is such a word. Was it possible she was some sort of government producer? Was there such a thing? Fong did recall Geoff bemoaning the state of his country’s arts that were as he put it “in the hands of people who can write grants to people who have written grants. Fifty-yearold failed women who have control over artists and not a clue what art is – I like to think of them as meme’s.” Fong looked at the woman – one of Geoff’s me-me’s. She sat. Now that he hadn’t asked her to sit, naturally she sat. Was she always so angry and officious he wondered, or was this an act she reserved for him?
“What’s in the book?”
“It’s not a book, it’s a binder.”
“Fine. What’s in the binder, Ms. Pants?”
“My notes on the show. I never let them out of my sight.”
“Do you take many notes?”
“More than Mr. Hyland ever did. They’re my record of how we got to where we got and they never . . . ”
“Leave your sight. You mentioned that already. Now who makes the rehearsal schedule?”
“Nominally, Geoff.”
“Nominally?”
“Well, he makes requests and I sort out the problems he creates.”
“Geoff creates problems?”
“He’s disorganized. He’s impulsive. He’s . . . ”
“An artist,” Fong wanted to complete her thought but decided not to. Instead he said, “You didn’t like Mr. Hyland?”
“Oh, I liked him fine, but he was a director in desperate need of someone like me who could harness his energies in the proper fashion.”
Fong had seen several of Geoff’s previous productions at the theatre academy. All had been excellent and none of them had needed a person like Kitty Pants to help him harness his energies. Geoff had, in fact, worked totally on his own, often using no one but his translator Da Wei to assist him. Again Fong looked at this woman. Was this a unique product of Canada – like a moose? Then he reminded himself that people were people. If it looked like a squid and swam like a squid and inked like a squid – it was a squid, whether an Asian or a Caucasian squid made no difference. He’d seen lots of Asians like this before. He nodded. What sat in front of him was just an angry control freak, filled with her own selfimportance. He’d also seen lots of these folks before. He pressed a button on his desk and spoke quickly into the intercom in Mandarin, confident that Ms. Pants didn’t speak a word of the Common Tongue. Chen answered.
“Sir?”
“I thought you were sick?”
“I was but I’m better.”
Fong let that hang for a moment then said, “Good, come into the office and demand in Mandarin that Ms. Pants get up, then demand that she walk over and stand in the corner with her face to the wall.” Chen’s chuckle began to erupt from the box but Fong clicked it off before it hit the air.
“Planning some outrage, are we?” Ms. Pants asked with feigned casualness.
Fong just smiled. “Just one more question.”