The Hua Shan Hospital Murders (4 page)

Angel Michael quickly scrolled down to Courses and clicked on Political Science. Slowly a new list appeared from top to bottom. He scrolled down to a fourth-year course with the terse title:
Justice
. He clicked on the underlined word.

A small box appeared at the bottom of the page. There were no instructions in the box.

Angel Michael moved his cursor to the left of the small box and clicked once. Then to the right of the box and clicked again. Then above and below. Upon the last click the cursor within the box began to blink.

Angel Michael typed in his password – FROM THE MOUTHS – and hit enter. The screen went blank then a large black cross filled the space. Eight pop-up boxes snapped on. This was no low-speed peripheral site.

A counter at the bottom flashed the number 6.

“So they wanted to talk again, did they?” thought Angel Michael as the blood vessel behind his eye began to pulse.

He right-clicked on the number and punched in his second password: BY THE LIGHT.

There was a pause, then in the chat box appeared the words: “Welcome Michael.”

“Hi,” he typed.

“Is Angel Michael’s flaming sword in hand?”

“Not yet,” he lied. The pain swelled.

“When?”

“When I think it’s safe,” he lied again.

Just for the slightest moment the chat box was empty – as if the person on the other end was holding his breath. Finally text appeared. “God be with you.” The first wave of pain crashed behind his left eye.

Angel Michael turned off the computer without exiting the program and sat in the growing darkness trying to will away the pain. “Before the light – darkness,” he quoted. The idea comforted him. He crossed to the window and took out five stick matches from his pocket. He scraped them against the glass. They screeched like fingernails on a black board then flared light . . . and the pain started to recede.

He looked out at the vastness that was Shanghai.
He was alone in this strangest of strange cities. Just the way he wanted it.

And despite what he had said in the chat room, his first message was already in place and ticking its way toward zero – toward the future rising of the light.

CHAPTER FIVE

“This is not a play about a dumb nigger!” shouted the towering Afro-American actor playing Othello as he lifted the middle-aged English actor playing Iago by the throat and held him against the stage-left proscenium arch.

“The Iago Conundrum,” said Fong under his breath from his seat at the back of the Shanghai Theatre Academy’s decrepit old theatre. It had been his wife’s, Fu Tsong’s, favourite performance space and she had performed all over China and Japan.

The Caucasian playing Iago was unable to speak.
“Good,” Fong thought, “every bad actor silenced was a move in the right direction.”

“You do that ‘I’m-a-bad-dude’ shit one more time Gummer and I’ll take your stupid British head off your wimpy British body – got it!"

” Gummer nodded and the massive black American released his single-handed grip. “Good,” he muttered and stomped away.

As soon as he was gone, Gummer turned to the auditorium, and shielding his eyes from the lights, shouted, “Roger, I was only doing what you directed me to do – wasn’t I?”

The Iago Conundrum, Fu Tsong, Fong’s deceased wife, had called it. It was a classic stage-acting problem. Shakespeare insists that Iago dupe Othello over a remarkably short period of time into murdering his own wife – and all on stage. The audience must know what Iago is doing to follow the plot but at the same time Othello must not. If Iago plays his part so that the audience can follow every twist and turn of his scheming then Othello is made to look like a fool – or as the Afro-American actor so charmingly put it – a dumb nigger. However, if Iago plays his cards too close to the chest, thus making his words totally believable to Othello, it is very possible that the audience will miss the joy of following the scheming – point by point. The Iago Conundrum.

The director wisely sidestepped Mr. Gummer’s question and called for a scene without his two male leads. The actresses playing Othello’s wife, Desdemona, and Iago’s wife, Emilia, were sent for.

Fong looked around the theatre. Its mustiness was familiar. Comforting. He’d spent many, many joyous hours here watching his brilliant wife rehearse and perform. Since her death, he’d haunted the theatre – finding it a good place to think. There was hub-bub and chaotic energy everywhere, but since none of it concerned him directly he found a profound stillness amidst the whirlwind. A deep peace to which he often retreated. Lily didn’t know. She wouldn’t have approved. He didn’t want to have to explain.

He fingered his copy of
Othello
. Fu Tsong had played Desdemona. She had used the very script that sat in his lap with its Mandarin on the left and its English translation on the facing page. On some pages she had written notes about the text – insights etched in her remarkably delicate hand. He treasured them as access points to her. To her privacy.

She’d loved Shakespeare’s plays and had made Fong read and discuss them with her as she developed her characters. It was during one of these discussions that she’d told him of the Iago conundrum. Like so many memorable conversations with Fu Tsong it’d taken place mid-coital. He was on his back, she straddling his legs.

“Inside hug,” she’d announced as she tightened her muscles around his member – and he’d gasped. Then he opened his eyes and saw her staring down at him.

“What?” he’d protested.

“You like it when I take control,” she said sliding her right foot forward so she could push off and rise up and down his length. “You like that.”

“So?” he’d croaked.

“So why do you resist me?” she’d asked and quickly rose and fell twice. “Don’t you want to be swept away, to be bowled over, to fall hopelessly in love?”

He nodded slowly.

“Then why do you resist? Give over!”

Fong slipped a foot over her bent knee and dragged himself to a sitting position. They were equal now. He rose when she did and fell as she fell.

She smiled.

“What?” he demanded again.

“In your head this feels better – less being swept away – but Fong, in your heart this feels like you’ve stopped a mighty river. And of course in your thing you feel nothing.” Then she’d smiled broadly and announced, “It’s the Iago Conundrum of Sex.”

“What?” he’d asked yet again.

“You have to work on your vocabulary husband – how many ‘what’s’ is that in one sex session?” Then she’d explained the conundrum. At the end she said, “However, in the Iago Conundrum of Sex there’s a way out.”

“How? I’m not backing down, Fu Tsong,” he announced through gritted teeth as he followed each of her rises and falls so that no one led and no one followed. Nor did anyone get much pleasure.

“How?”

Fu Tsong said, “Like this.” She tightened her muscles again and announced, “Inside hug.” He gasped and stopped his resistance. “A little something I’m sure Desdemona would know all about. Now Fong, let go. Have the faith that I will bring you safely home. Have a little faith, husband.”

As the image of Fu Tsong’s memorable inside hug faded, the actress playing Desdemona in this production stepped onstage. Fong’s jaw almost hit his chest.

Fong had never seen the famous Chinese film actress Tuan Li in the flesh. Although lovely in film, she was luminous in person.

At the far side of the theatre, Robert Cowens watched Tuan Li steal every eye. He had finally completed a particularly complicated bit of “antiquing” and was anxious to take his mind off what he had just learned about Shanghai in the early forties. And what better way to forget than to be with Tuan Li? For an instant he thought that despite her beauty she wasn’t worth all the trouble she’d caused him. Then he dismissed the thought as bullshit. Robert was many things – but a bullshitter was not one of them.

Tuan Li was well aware of her effect on both the men and women in the room. She was also deeply honoured to play the part of Desdemona in the same theatre where the great Fu Tsong had made the role famous. She allowed her eyes to scan the seats. Could the small, delicate-boned man at the back be Fu Tsong’s husband? It was rumoured that he was here on occasion.

Then her eye caught Robert and she smiled. Not at him – but definitely for him.

CHAPTER SIX

The next morning, Lily’s elderly mother picked up Xiao Ming as she usually did just before 7 a.m. “Where to today, Mom?”

“The Children’s Palace.”

Lily had walked past the former mansion almost every day of her married life on her way to work.
She’d avoided going into it because it was a place for “artistically inclined children.” No doubt Fong’s first wife, Fu Tsong the actress, would have spent time as a child in such a place.

“I like to watch.”

“Watch what, Mom?”

“Foreigners. They love to see our children and they also come to see the house, which I think was built by some famous foreigner.”

“Could be.” Lily bent down, kissed Xiao Ming, then touched her mother’s fingers lightly. Mother and daughter were much closer now that Lily had a baby.

Before 8 a.m. Lily walked quickly past the long line of women waiting for therapeutic abortions in the Hua Shan Hospital. Although Lily had been sexually active since she was eighteen, she’d always been very careful about birth control and never had to avail herself of China’s free answer to overpopulation. And now that she and Fong had their child she had re-instituted her strict birth control regimen of spermicide in addition to the IUD she’d had implanted shortly after Xiao Ming’s birth.

But these sad-eyed women at the clinic, many from the countryside, faced the stern governmental consequences of having more than one child and waited stoically to be “unpregnanted.”

“At least only a few were showing,” Lily thought as she hustled by them. She ascended the long set of steps to her office that was situated directly above the Hua Shan’s six operating theatres, which performed more therapeutic abortions in half a week than were done in a month in most American hospitals.

Twenty-three minutes after Lily entered her lab, a therapeutic abortion operating theatre in the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital down by the Huangpo River burst into flames.

Seven people were instantly immolated – one doctor, three nurses, two technicians, and of course, poor Ms. Wu who was on the table. By some people’s count there were not seven human lives lost in the blast but rather eight – assuming Ms. Wu wasn’t carrying twins.

It certainly was the way that Angel Michael and his people counted.

But it wasn’t the blast that brought frantic calls to Special Investigations – it was the scrawled note found at the hospital’s reception desk moments before the blast – the note was in English. It said: THIS BLASPHEMY MUST STOP.

Fong carefully sealed the note in a plastic evidence bag. All around him sirens were screaming and people were staring bug-eyed, some through dust-encrusted faces.

Fong recognized the growing possibility of real panic taking hold and in a city the size of Shanghai – eighteen million at night, twenty-four million during the day – panic was not an acceptable response to any situation. Fong immediately called in every available man and began issuing orders. “Evacuate the hospital. Cordon off six full square blocks. Anyone acting erratically is to be removed from the area immediately. Block and building wardens are instructed to use whatever force is necessary to keep people indoors.”

Fong ordered the yellow-taping of the entire front lobby and then left four young cops on guard with the strict orders that, “Nothing – but nothing – is to be touched. Get the basics from the man at reception who found the note, then bring him down to my office.” The police officers nodded and Fong headed toward the blast site. He wanted to talk to Wu Fan-zi.

Fong passed by the security cordon and stepped through the blasted-out wall of the surgery. The place still radiated heat in sporadic pulses. The remains of the foam poured on it by the People’s Third Fire Brigade were still very much in evidence. The room was now a shattered twisted thing. Everything pushed upward or outward. Metal shards of expensive machinery thrust deep into the walls and ceiling, glass everywhere, blood, identifiable fragments of human body parts – and amidst the chaos a perfectly formed tiny human fetus wrapped in some kind of metal sheathing inside a metal cage. On the metal sheathing was etched a repeat of the warning – in English: THIS BLASPHEMY MUST STOP.

“What does it say, Fong?”

Fong looked up into the dark, patient eyes of Wu Fan-zi, his head arson investigator – his fireman. Fong searched for a good translation for the word
blasphemy
in Mandarin. He finally settled on
bu gong
zheng
meaning injustice and gave the whole translation as:
Zhe zhong bu gong zheng de xing wei bi xu ting zhi.
This injustice must stop. Wu Fan-zi nodded his head several times, then asked, “Which injustice must stop?”

Fong almost laughed but didn’t – nothing remains funny for very long in a place that is beginning to stink of burnt human flesh.

“Crime Site Unit will want to go in first.”

“So what else is new?” Wu Fan-zi lit a cigarette and carefully pocketed the match.

“I’ll see what I can do about getting you in ahead of them.”

Wu Fan-zi shrugged and headed out of the blast zone.

Lily stopped the Tibetan woman in the market. The woman smiled, revealing missing teeth and silver caps. Her dark eyes swam deep within her heavily wrinkled face. But she was not old. In fact, Lily couldn’t tell whether the woman in front of her was older or younger than she.

“So – you back?”

The woman’s Shanghanese was spotty, her breath formidable.

“I have returned as you can see,” said Lily.

The Tibetan looked at Lily, then turned away.

Lily reached out and grabbed the woman’s arm.

The Tibetan whirled quickly, reaching for her swolta blade as she did.

Lily almost screamed.

It was lucky for her that she didn’t. “You back – I see – what want?”

Lily replied carefully, “You gave me photographs of some old statuary the last time.”

“So, you buy or you think buy?” she asked sharply.

Lily wanted to see the pieces in the flesh but almost thought better of it when she saw the sun glint off the sharpness of the woman’s knife.

“You, me follow.”

And Lily did – through three densely packed alleys, then down a long set of steps into the sub-sub-basement of a building off Zhe Jiang Lu. Lily wasn’t all that tall but even she had to lean forward to avoid banging her head against the ceiling in the dank subbasement. The tiny Tibetan didn’t need to bend. She flipped a switch. Three well-armed Tibetan men came to silent life.

“Pick, you,” said the Tibetan woman, pointing to the ground.

Four lintel pieces were on the floor. Some were delicately carved, others had fresco paintings – all were sand-worn – ancient. And totally illegal.

“From the Taklamakan Desert,” the Tibetan said. “Far west.”

Lily knelt to get a better look. The first must have been a facing piece – perhaps the carved figures were family gods. The second was smaller and badly damaged. But there was a prize – a beautifully carved young boy. The third was obviously a vertical piece and seemed to depict a farming scene of some sort. The final one was also vertical. This had the standing figure of the man in ancient Western garb. He faced forward, his head looked slightly to his right, his palms turned upward. There was a beautiful calm to his face and lines of light radiated from his body.

Lily pointed to the fourth piece. Immediately, the Tibetan pulled out a hand calculator and punched in a very high number – what the Shanghanese call the laughing price. When you see that price, you are supposed to laugh. If you don’t, then the merchant laughs – inside, of course.

Lily smiled – bartering was familiar territory. She chortled and then snapped the calculator out of the Tibetan’s hands and punched in a ludicrously low figure – the crying price. The Tibetan shrieked in proper proportion to Lily’s offer.

The bartering lasted twenty minutes. Lily threatened to leave twice, the Tibetan threatened to kill her once – just another day at the market.

Finally, a price was settled upon. Then Lily pressed the Tibetans to deliver the object. “After all, a fine Han Chinese lady like myself cannot be seen parading through the streets with a piece of China’s priceless history on her back.”

A few more dickering moves and the delivery price was set.

Lily gave them the address of her office at the Hua Shan Hospital. They were to wrap the fresco and leave it with the receptionist down the stairs from her lab.

She insisted the object be well concealed and then asked, “When will it arrive?”

The Tibetan raised her shoulders.

“When?” Lily pressed.

“Within the week. We don’t openly move objects of such value in the city. Shanghai’s filled with thieves, you know.” All of a sudden the woman’s Shanghanese was perfect and her sense of irony very strong.

Lily gave them a 10-percent deposit and her very best I’m-a-cop-so-don’t-fuck-with-me look.

As she left the Tibetans and stepped into the brilliant sunshine, she had a slight twinge – she’d just used her best cop look to do something illegal. Then she banished the thought from her head. Fong would love the piece and it would be their first present to Xiao Ming – their first- and only-born – on the occasion of her three-month birthday. It would also be the first of many purchases that were hers and Fong’s – not Fong’s and Fu Tsong’s.

The heat in the operating room was still intense enough to mask the stink of death as Fong watched his “fireman’s” eyes move – no, scan – the blasted-out surgery. Wu Fan-zi was almost half as wide as he was tall but not one ounce of him was fat. What little neck he had was substantially wider than his head. His muscular torso came directly from his Mongolian ancestry. He was basically a small building that had grown legs – and, oh yes, brains. Fong thought of Wu Fan-zi’s expertise as the zen end of policing. He’d worked with Wu Fan-zi several times before his exile west of the Wall and each time he’d found it fascinating.

Wu Fan-zi horked up a wad of phlegm into his mouth but didn’t spit it out. After all, this was a crime scene and there’s no telling what stupid conclusion a CSU guy could come to if he found fresh phlegm on the floor. Wu Fan-zi had little patience with CSU guys – but then he’d been allowed into the crime site first this time – so he’d hold his phlegm. “Well?” Fong ventured.

Wu Fan-zi slowly brought his almost black eyes to meet Fong’s gaze. Then he slid them past Fong and stared at a mass of tangled metal imbedded in the far wall.

“Well?” Fong ventured again.

Wu Fan-zi brought a handkerchief to his mouth and spat into it. “He’s a pro – that’s for sure.”

Fong nodded. It wasn’t something he hadn’t figured out himself.

“Perhaps more advanced than we’ve ever seen, Fong.”

That was new – and deeply troubling. “Great. We have enough trouble finding regular, old-fashioned, stupid arsonists.” Arson was a relatively new crime in Shanghai.

“I’ll need assistance and money to work on this properly.”

“You’ll have both,” Fong assured him while he made a mental note that he’d never approached the new commissioner for money and should do some study before he stepped into that territory. “Where will you start?” Fong asked.

“With the mathematics of it,” Wu Fan-zi said flatly. “We can find the weights of the surgical tables and can measure the flight patterns and the depth of penetration into the walls. We should be able to determine the resistance co-efficient of the building material in the wall. Plug all those numbers into the basic formula and at least we’ll have an idea of the force released by the blast.” He waved his ham-sized hand at the walls of the surgery. “From the force coefficient we might be able to determine the type of explosive – might – no promises, Fong.”

Fong nodded. Like in so much police work, a fireman’s conclusions rested on a base of science but were highly influenced by intuition and supposition.

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. If the force co-efficient . . .” he didn’t bother completing the statement. The large man squatted down and put his hands on the concrete floor, palms down. It was hot to the touch. Then he leaned over and plucked a strand of thin metal wire from the floor. “Phosphorus,” he muttered and looked away from Fong, clearly not interested in answering any questions. He approached the shattered window high up on the west wall. “I would have thought that surgeries wouldn’t have windows,” he said holding the strand of phosphorus in his palm.

Fong consulted the notes he’d been given by the hospital. “This is the newest operating theatre. It’s only one of the two with windows.” Fong looked to Wu Fan-zi. The man nodded but said nothing.

Fong waited. Finally, Wu Fan-zi turned to Fong. “Where will you begin?”

Fong pointed at the fetus in the cage, “With that.”

“Why it didn’t explode like the rest of the things in the room?”

“No, I’ll leave that detail to you.”
“How it got here then?”
“That and who put it there.”

“I’m the head of administration for the People’s Twenty-Second Hospital, Detective Zhong.”

Fong immediately thought, “Not for long. Someone has to be blamed for this breach of security.” Fong allowed himself to smile.