Shen Lai was not happy to see Fong. He was a roundfaced fat man in his early fifties with large puffy cheeks and the smallest mouth in the Eastern Hemisphere. Whenever he spoke his mouth looked like that of a goldfish, and that was in fact his nom de guerre, the Goldfish. Behind his back they called him Fish Face. Fong couldn’t see how the Goldfish was much of an improvement but then again Fong was never up to date on the intricacies of etiquette in the world of Chinese organized crime.
Shen Lai was not one of the tong bosses but he was the appointed access point through which the authorities could reach the tong known as the Small Knife Society. The tongs had controlled customs houses in Shanghai since well before the British came. They took a modest percentage off each and every duty. Those percentages bankrolled almost all their other activities- drugs, women, gambling. They were the cash cow.
Unlike most Chinese men of wealth, Shen Lai smoked a local brand-Snake Charm-and he was filling the air with its pungent aroma as Fong entered the office. Fong took out one of his Kents and lit up. Shen Lai shook his head. “Bad for business, that,” he said, indicating the American cigarette. “Not patriotic.” He puffed harder on his Snake Charm. The picture of the small cigarette in the tiny mouth almost lost in the enormous cheeks made Fong smile.
“Something funny, Zhong Fong?”
“Not a thing, Shen Lai.” Fong crushed out his cigarette against a windowpane. “We’re worried about the safety of your workers here.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes, we’re going to have to close your operations for the better part of a month to make sure that health standards are being maintained. There have been complaints.”
A month’s closure would cost the tong a lot of revenue and Fong knew it and he knew that Shen Lai knew it.
“You can’t-”
But he never got the rest out of his tiny mouth as Fong snapped back, “I can and you know I can. Then I can close down the customs yards at the docks and that would really hurt, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re crazy, you’re out of your jurisdiction.”
“Nonsense, I’m the head of Special Investigations. Public safety is part of my portfolio. This place is unsafe. You must have over a hundred workers here, I’m concerned for their health and well-being. I’m closing you down.”
There was a beat of silence wherein Shen Lai weighed the threat. He found Fong just enough of a fool to go through with it. Lighting another cigarette he smiled,
“Okay, you’ve made your point. What can I do for you?”
“I want the knife artist who carved up those two men.
I want him now.”
“He’s not one of ours, Zhong Fong, surely you know that.”
“I do, Shen Lai, he’s too artistic for you and yours. But I want him and I want your friends to use all of their considerable power to find him for me. Because if they don’t I’ll close down this customs house, the one on the Bund, and the new one in the Pudong. Then I’ll file so many legal documents that even with the best of lawyers it’ll take months to get them reopened. Do I make myself clear?”
Fish Face nodded. His cheeks wagged. His little mouth blew a tiny smoke ring. “Perfectly clear.”
It was two o’clock before Fong got back in his car and headed toward his Yellow River. He had been in touch with Wang Jun, who had warned him that some pretty heavy artillery awaited his arrival at the office. Fong thanked the older man and set him to work on the newspaper angle. The coroner and Lily were still waiting for word on the lung shards, but both now thought them likely to be slivers of ivory and there had been no word yet from Detective Li Xiao, who was checking into the martial arts schools. One message that he’d managed to get from Shrug and Knock was that the American consulate had called to inform him that Richard Fallon’s wife, Amanda Pitman, was arriving today in Shanghai and that he should make himself available. She was staying in the French Concession at the improbably named Shanghai International Equatorial Hotel across from Jing An Park, only a few blocks from the theatre academy. Fong called the consulate and left a message indicating his willingness to meet with Mrs. Fallon. He then gave them dozens of police phone numbers that she could call to find him. None of the numbers were his. Fong could live quite well without the intrusion into his life of a grieving widow from America.
Well, his Hu-ness was something to be seen.
Fu Tsong had laughed so hard that tears came to her eyes when she first heard the English term “high dudgeon”-which initially Fong had thought was a basement prison somehow up in the air. Now, looking at his Huness, Fong was sure that he was in fact in high dudgeon. He wondered momentarily what Geoffrey Hyland would call this emotion. Then he wondered why Geoffrey Hyland had entered his mind at a time like this. Then he decided he’d better try to follow what was being screamed at him. Within the general tirade concerning Fong’s incompetence, insubordination, lack of administrative skill, and refusal to be part of a team there was a consistent leitmotif: Just find the killer. Don’t get diverted. Just find the killer. Don’t become a conspiracy monger. Just find the killer. And finally what the fuck was he doing in the customs house this morning? Just find the killer.
Then more high dudgeonness, a demand for a complete report followed by a turn on his heel and exit with Shrug and Knock in tow. If his Hu-ness were a cartoon, and who was to say that he wasn’t, such an exit would be accompanied by a puff of dirt at his heels.
After a moment his office door opened and Wang Jun entered.
“You still my boss?”
“I think so. It’s hard to be sure with him.”
“Lots of words, little substance, huh?”
Fong didn’t respond. It occurred to him that there was in fact great substance, but exactly where the substance lay was escaping him. He had Wang Jun call in Lily, and the rest of the team.
Arriving at Shanghai International Airport is not as scary for an American as landing at Sheremetyevo in Moscow, but it’s close. It’s hard for Americans to overcome their programming and really see what is in front of them. Amanda did her best but she found the bustle and the foreign faces more daunting than she was willing to admit. When offered assistance with her carry-on bag by a young Chinese man, she instinctively refused. At the immigration counter she handed in her form, complete with a “no” answer to the “Do you have AIDS” question. The bluntness of the question galled her. At the counter she waited while the young man-“boy” was the word that popped into her head-put her passport under a light. He looked at the picture, then looked at her, and then down to the picture and at her again. It seemed to her that he was following a set procedure. The catch-a-foreign-devil procedure, no doubt. It also occurred to her that he was probably unable to differentiate Caucasian faces. Be that as it may, she smiled. He didn’t, but he handed back her passport and she proceeded to baggage claim.
After a reasonable wait, her bag arrived and she headed into the arrivals lounge. There before her was her first sea of Chinese faces. She took a breath, told herself that she could do this, and stepped forward. Immediately dozens of pencilled cardboard signs were held up and waved in her direction. Although she didn’t expect to be picked up she was grateful to see a MRS. RICHARD FALLON in the hands of a young man who took the cigarette out of his mouth to say “Huh-low” and then returned it to his face. He made no movement to take her bag. She followed him out of the terminal into the brightness of Shanghai’s late April sun.