In fact his body was alive with fat, succulent leeches.
He bit the one closest to his mouth and spat out half the wriggling thing as he jumped onto the perimeter wall of the second paddy. The street sweeper didn’t seem to be making much better progress than he so he tried the wall rather than the paddy this time. As he did, he heard a shriek from the paddy ahead. When he got there he saw that the street sweeper had fallen into the netting that separated the eel section of the paddy from the rice section. The creatures were now actively pouring through the rent in the net, many of them crawling over the street sweeper who was howling in terror. Her howls attracted the locals, one of whom owned the eel section. His howls outdid hers.
Fong finally got to the exhausted street sweeper. He stood on the mud bank and managed to pull the sucker end of the leech off his face. As he tossed it into the teeming eely waters, he couldn’t help but thinking that he really hated the country. He really did.
Back in the barrow, the street sweeper faced the two policemen. She was probably in her early twenties but it was hard to tell. Her work on the streets of Shanghai, in the traffic fumes and dirt, year after year, for eleven out of every fourteen days, had taken its toll. It’s possible she had hopes and aspirations like the rest of us, but the wheezing in her lungs as she breathed did not bode well for them.
Fong had salted off the remaining leeches and found that he only had one serious sore, near his right hip, which continued to bleed despite the compress from the first aid box in the car. Ignoring the blood, Fong, still in his soaking suit, sat down opposite the street sweeper. Wang Jun had taken the silk carpet and thrown it over the snake aquarium, then cleared the rest of the barrow of its inhabitants. While doing so he took the opportunity to slam the brother across the temple with his revolver “just so that he’d remember next time not to lie to the police.”
The street sweeper sat on a low bamboo stool and shivered. Fong was quite calm. He had done many interrogations. His very first had almost cost him his life, when he decided that a young thief needed understanding and a friend, not a swift kick in the teeth. He still carried the scar of the knife wound a blade edge from his left kidney. Fong lit one of the cigarettes from Wang Jun’s dry pack and sent a funnel of smoke in the street sweeper’s direction. It had its desired effect. The poor creature began to cough violently.
“Where’s your face mask?”
She indicated her pocket. “You can put it on if it helps.”
She grunted what passed for a thank you, took out the wet mask and put it over her mouth and nose. The street sweepers all wore them-at first just in the latter parts of the day, then all day and finally almost all the time. Some slept with them on. The ever generous state supplied them free of charge.
Wang Jun had already taken the preliminaries from the brother. She was twenty-seven, single, worked the second street cleaning shift on Julu Lu from 5:00 P.M. to 2:00 A.M. Her name was Tsong Shing and it’s possible that there was a time in her life when her eyes were not filled with the fear of her own death.
“My name is Zhong Fong and I am head of Special Investigations for the Shanghai District. Two nights ago, between nine-thirty and ten-thirty on the evening of April 18 a man was killed in an alley off Julu Lu. The alley is on your route. It is in fact your responsibility according to your supervisor.” There was no response from Tsong Shing. She sat sullenly with her eyes down and wheezed through the mask.
“The dead man was chopped into pieces and left like so much rancid meat to stink in the alley,” Fong said, his voice rising ominously. “Open your stupid mouth and tell me if you saw him.”
Her mouth, behind the mask, stupid or not, opened and then shut. Like a trapped animal she was looking for a way out. She wasn’t sure where the danger lay and hence thought it best to stay where she was, pretty much the way most pedestrians in Shanghai deal with the reality of hundreds of bicycles coming at them on a walkway. Don’t move, let them avoid you.
But Fong was a good interrogator. Some policemen thought interrogations were a joyous opportunity to degrade a suspect. Fong never believed that. He found it base and demeaning to humble another human being. He felt himself a lesser entity each time he walked out of an interrogation room with the suspect broken into mental pieces.
Softly he said, “We know that you didn’t kill him.” There was the slightest glimmer of hope in her eyes. “We assume that you didn’t even see him, the killer, that is.” Rushing toward the safe spot she almost screamed. “I didn’t. I swear to you that I didn’t, I didn’t. Honest.”
“But you did see the dead man, didn’t you, or at least the pieces of the dead man, didn’t you?” Slowly her head moved up and down. Then in a sharp nasal tone, with harshly punched consonants, Fong snapped, “You missed his wallet, you little idiot.” Tsong Shing literally faltered under the surprise attack. Her body slipped from the small stool as if someone had upended it. Before she could rebalance herself, Fong was on her, so close to her face that he could smell her breath through the mask. “But you found something in the alley, didn’t you? Didn’t you! His right hand was pointing, wasn’t it? What did it point at? What did you pick up in the alley, what!” But this time the trick wouldn’t work. He saw it in her eyes halfway through his attack. They had gone dull as she retreated back inside herself. With a hand she pushed him back and then virtually spat into the mask, “I have nothing! I have nothing. Everyone else has something, everyone, but I have nothing. Nothing.” Then she crumpled on the ground, moaning softly.
“Finished with the psychological crap, Fong?” Wang Jun was standing across the barrow.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Shall I execute plan B?”
“It seems they leave us no alternative.”
Wang Jun then pulled out his revolver and yelled toward the door opening, “Get your fucking ass in here.” In a hurry, the brother, his face now quite swollen from Wang Jun’s pistol whipping, came to the door.
Wang Jun approached the rich peasant. “Well, comrade, and I use the term guardedly here, I think we have ourselves a situation. It being this.” He pointed at the street sweeper but spoke directly to the brother. “Your little thieving whore of a sister over there took something from a Julu Lu alley two nights ago. We as the representatives of law and order in the District of Shanghai want it back.” The brother went to speak but Wang Jun indicated that he thought silence the only correct response at this point. The brother stared at Wang Jun’s raised gun and said nothing. “Very good, you’re a smart guy for a peasant.” Reaching for the silk rug, he said, “This will have to be taken in evidence, as will. . .” and he rattled off a list of every valuable article in the place. At the end of his recitation he handed the brother a card and said, “That’s my number, if you want your stuff back, you call me and tell me what your slut sister took from the alley.” The brother was eyeing his sister with fury. Seeing this, Wang Jun took Fong by the arm and headed him toward the entrance. As they left he said under his breath, “He’ll have what we need within a day or I’ll eat leech for lunch. By the way I’m hungry and there’s a good restaurant in the next water town.”