” Robert said nothing. How could he tell her that he was “antiquing” to raise money so he could investigate a crime that may or may not have happened over fifty years ago. A crime that may or may not have ruined his life.
She shook her head and took a deep breath. “I hope your secrets can keep you warm, Robert.” She put her napkin on the table, touched her fingers to his face, then stood.
He watched her disappear into the omnipresent crowd that is Shanghai, not noticing that she passed within a hair’s breath of a man who had been staring at them. A man from Virginia called Angel Michael by his associates but named Matthew by his adoptive father.
Matthew watched Tuan Li’s departure. He knew that she was considered beautiful, even exquisite by some. For the first time in his life he wished he understood that – no he wished that he saw that. He had succeeded in the first step of his plan – succeeded brilliantly – and now he wanted to reward himself. But with what? The food in front of him could have been diced cardboard for all the joy it gave him. For that matter, Tuan Li could have been a deformed old crone for all the thrill he got from looking at her.
He turned in his seat and noticed that his hands were shaking. Quickly the familiar wave of pain began to form behind his left eye. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of stick matches. He managed to get one out and snap its head against a thumbnail. It flared – and the pain backed off. His hands stopped shaking.
Suddenly a long thin cigarette was thrust into the flame’s brightness.
Matthew looked up.
“Light me,” said the whore.
Matthew snuffed out the light and glared at her.
“Hey, it’s your loss, puny one,” she hissed as she turned and left. But as she told her girlfriend later that night, “I got the chills. It’s like that bastard froze my heart.”
Fong couldn’t sleep. Chen was camped on the tiny couch in their small apartment on the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s campus. He snored. “Naturally he would snore,” Fong thought as he looked out the window. Three young male actors were drunkenly lounging on the lawn by the Henry Moore-esque statue. Fong noted their faces. All would be the only children their families would ever have. For the briefest moment Fong wondered how many had been “selected” by their parents.
Chen snorted loudly and pulled the blanket up to his lantern jaw.
Fong moved over to the crib. Xiao Ming slept on her back – her pudgy hands slowly clenching and unclenching in response to some secret nocturnal vision.
Fong reached down and gently touched his daughter. She momentarily wakened and looked at him full in the face. She was so present. So there. He’d heard that boy children spent about a year slowly coming into the world. But he had found that Xiao Ming had been aware of everything from the very beginning.
He smiled. She watched his features move and tried to imitate them. She got close, but a few muscle groups misfired and she ended up with an oddly quizzical look on her face.
Fong knew he should be happy. He was back in Shanghai. He had been reinstated as head of Special Investigations. He had a child. Yes, he should be happy. But something nagged at him. Pulled him toward a waiting darkness. Fong lifted Xiao Ming and held her head against his shoulder. He felt her breath on his neck – it was soft, soft, and so warm. A sweetness from far away. He held her out at arm’slength. She looked away from him. The darkness drew his eyes to the wall mirror. There they were, as if captured in the glass. He noted the distance between them. An arm’s-length. A shiver went through him. Something about their relative positions. He continued holding her at arm’s-length and knelt.
He put Xiao Ming on the floor and turned away. Then he looked back at her. How had the baby’s skull been positioned in the construction pit? Away. She had been looking away from her father. At least the killers had allowed that. At least the last image in the baby’s mind would not be the agony of the ritual murder of her father. Fong allowed his head to loll back and opened his throat as far as he could. How great the fear would have to be to make a man swallow his own crucifix. He held Xiao Ming’s hand tightly as if saying goodbye.
“Fong!”
Lily snatched Xiao Ming from the floor. “How could you, Fong? This is our baby. Not an old skull buried in the ground! What are you thinking! Really, Fong. What are you thinking?” She turned with Xiao Ming in her arms and hurried into their bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
Fong hung his head. “You’re right, Lily. What am I thinking?”
“You scared me,” said the head nurse of the abortion surgeries at the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital when Angel Michael entered the room he had rented for her.
“Did I?” asked Matthew as he took out the evensided cross and handed it to her.
As she took the icon she turned from him. The wide patch of missing hair exposed the nape of her neck. Matthew had read that the nape of a woman’s neck is very erotic. He looked at the back of the nurse’s neck but saw nothing but slack sinew and aging flesh.
She turned back to him. The cross now hung directly beneath her Adam’s apple. “Would you like a drink to celebrate our glorious start?”
He looked at the woman before him. “Our glorious start?” he thought. But all he said was, “That cross suits you.”
CHAPTER NINE
There was palpable anger in the air of the over-air-conditioned room in Virginia. Copies of the New York Times and several other papers were spread on the table. All screamed of death and mayhem in a Shanghai abortion clinic – and, of course, of the fetus in a cage.
“This is completely beyond what we agreed to,” said Larry, a tall, thin, Yale-ish man.
There were loud expressions of agreement around the table.
“This was a slaughter.”
“Jesus! What was Angel Michael thinking of?”
“God,” said the older man, who Angel Michael called his father. That silenced the room. The whitehaired man looked at the last speaker, “And I’d remind you that it’s a sacrilege to use His name in vain.”
“Yes, but so many dead!”
“A hundred dead, two hundred, five hundred. That place murders a thousand beings every week – year after year,” snapped back the older man. “What are those dead to the fifty thousand killed every year? This is a war. I warned you when we started. I warned you that this wouldn’t be simple. But there is a simple reality that we all must face. Mid-term Congressional elections are approaching and not a single candidate in this country has even mentioned abortion. Not one has come out against the slaughter of babies. We have to put the evil of abortion back in the light where it belongs. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we are doing.”
“Yes, but-”
“But nothing. The sword is in Angel Michael’s hand – we put it there. All of us here did that. And we know why we did it.”
Eyes were averted around the table.
“Lest anyone have second thoughts now – I’ve had all our conversations in this room videotaped.” Before the uproar could start, he continued, “There’s no going back. In the eyes of the law we are all accessories to multiple murder – a crime punishable by death in Mr. Bush’s America.”
“That’ll shut them up for a while,” the older man who Matthew called his father thought. As the truth of the situation sank into the minds of the people around the table he allowed his thoughts to drift to Angel Michael. Such a big first step and so melodramatic – the fetus in the cage. So gaudy. So unlike the boy he had carefully raised as his son – his weapon to return the world to God. He looked out the window at the setting sun, at the quiet beauty of the Virginia farm country. Then for the first time in his life he questioned the wisdom of his plan, the wisdom of putting the sword in Angel Michael’s hand.