The Mao Case (26 page)

THIRTY

“OH — CHIEF INSPECTOR CHEN!”
Old Hunter bumped in, panting. “I was patrolling on the street when I heard a crash and saw a black object flying out of the window. Is something wrong —”

He cut himself short at the sight of the naked body on the bed — Jiao, lying stiff, still — and then the other one, a naked man on the floor, sprawling over a splintered portrait of Mao.

The utter disarray of the room was presented in ghastly somberness, with only the tiny night-light flickering in the corner. The clothes of the two bodies were scattered around. There was a chunk of plaster on the bedsheet that had fallen from the wall above the headboard. A pocketknife glittered beside the rumpled pillow. A broom lay not too far away, sticking out of an open closet, pointing to the bed.

How did Chen come to be in the midst of all that?

Chen looked distraught, his eyes bloodshot, his hair disheveled, and his T-shirt and pants crumpled and soiled, as if he had been just released from a prison cell. Old Hunter knew that Chen had just come back that morning on the night train from Beijing.

However, nothing about the eccentric chief inspector would be surprising.

“I’m calling for an ambulance,” Chen said, producing his cell phone.

Feeling for a pulse on her ankle, Old Hunter said, shaking his head, “It’s too late, Chief. Who’s the man?”

“His name is Hua. They had a fight. She started shouting, and he tried to stop her —”

“So he strangled her —” Old Hunter didn’t finish the sentence, wondering where Chen had been at the time. He checked to see if the man on the floor was breathing. There was a thin trail of blood congealing along his temple, but he breathed evenly. “He’s alive.”

“I let myself into the apartment and was looking around. Then they came back unexpectedly — no, Jiao arrived first, and then Hua, possibly through a secret door. So I had to hide in the closet. I couldn’t see and I could hardly hear.”

Old Hunter turned on the lamp on the nightstand. The light glared on her white body, which had a purplish bruise around her shoulders and neck. Her breasts were flat and appeared unbruised, yet bore something like a bite mark. There were no other outward signs of sex — no semen around the genitals, thighs, or in the black pubic hair. Her large eyes remained open, staring. The corneas were not yet cloudy, a sign of a recent death. Her fingernails had hardly lost their pinkish color.

Chen picked up her crumpled dress and covered her in silence.

Technically, they should wait for the arrival of the detectives from the homicide squad or Internal Security before touching anything, Old Hunter thought, shifting his glance toward the closet.

“I should have come —” Again he left the sentence unfinished.
A couple of minutes earlier?
He was outside on the street, unaware of the situation here. As in an old saying, the water’s too far away for the fire close at hand. Still, he didn’t want to sound too critical of Chen. It could have been hard for Chen to judge the situation in the room while hiding in the closet. “But you subdued him.”

“When I became aware that something was terribly wrong, I jumped out of the closet. He hurled the cinerary casket of Shang at me. It was empty except for a picture of Shang inside. Then, in an effort to dodge my attack, he caused the Mao portrait to fall and hit him on the head with the full weight of the metal frame.”

“Mao’s spirit worked,” Old Hunter murmured, shuddering at the realization. He didn’t really believe in the supernatural, but there was something so unbelievable about the case. It was almost like those Suzhou operas. “Hua killed Shang’s granddaughter under his portrait, and Mao knocked him out. Mao’s not dead.”

“Mao’s not dead — you can say that again.”

“But how did Jiao and Hua get together?”

“Here’s what I think,” Chen said. “Hua learned about her family history while she was working as a receptionist at his company. He then overwhelmed her with his Big Buck advances, buying her the apartment and everything else, cutting a ‘little concubine’ deal with her. He did all that, however, not because of her, but because of Shang, her grandmother.”

“I’m totally lost, Chen. It’s even more mind-boggling than a Suzhou opera ghost story. Shang died so many years ago. Is Hua such a crazy fan of hers?”

“No, he fell for Jiao because of Shang’s affair with Mao. I should have made that clear.”

“So — Hua fucking Jiao was like a parallel of Mao fucking Shang. Is that what you mean?”

“It’s more than that. By sleeping with Jiao — Shang’s granddaughter — Hua turns himself into Mao. He started talking like Mao, thinking like Mao, living like Mao, and fucking like Mao too.”

“But Hua is a Big Buck. He could have girls like Jiao and live like an emperor — like Mao too. Why all the bother, Chief?”

“Being Mao gave Hua a meaning he had never known before. In terms of the cultural unconscious, it’s the emperor archetype — Son of Heaven, with the divine mandate and power, all the emperor’s men and women. That’s why Hua was so panic-stricken about the possibility of losing Jiao, a woman he didn’t really care for. Consciously, she was nothing to him. But in his subconscious, Jiao was everything.”

“Leaving your psychological jargon aside, he’s devil-possessed. He has fucked his brains out! He must have watched too many movies about Mao and the emperors. He’s totally crazy.”

“It’s sheer craziness, but for such a split personality, it makes sense. Jiao provided the mechanism for him to switch into Mao, so he couldn’t afford to let anyone know about their relationship. That led to a hell of secrecy: adjoining apartments, a secret door from his apartment into hers — somewhere in the living room, I believe — and financial transactions too. After she quit her job, he no longer was seen in her company, but he kept seeing her in secret. That’s how you caught a glimpse of them by the window the other night.”

“I’m still confounded, Chief. That bastard is crazy — why would Jiao have played Shang for him?”

“I don’t think Jiao liked the role of Shang, but he must have insisted on it as the condition of their Mao deal.”

“Beauty has a thin fate indeed. What a curse to three generations! A curse to her grandmother, to her mother, and to her too. But what’s the damned point for him?”

“There’s not a point in the world — its not like in a Suzhou opera. There isn’t always a transcendental point visible in life, so people have to have their own point, or to make one, at least, in their own imagination,” Chen said, his dismal smile getting lost in thought. “Anyway, Hua got increasingly uneasy about Jiao’s visits to Xie’s place, and about her mixing with other people. For instance, Yang kept trying to drag Jiao to other parties —”

Chen’s cell phone rang, cutting short his speech.

“Oh, it’s Liu,” he said to Old Hunter, pressing a button.

“Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, I’ve got the information you requested. Among the people Song interviewed during your vacation, there’s one named Hua. He owns several large companies, including the one for which Jiao once worked. It was just routine. Nothing suspicious on the record —”

“Nothing suspicious on the record,” Chen repeated in irrepressible sarcasm. “Then listen to this, Comrade Liu. Less than an hour ago, Hua killed Jiao in her apartment. He’s in my custody. Hurry over here with your people.”

“What?” Liu said, too astonished to absorb what Chen had said. “But you didn’t say anything about it this morning, or this afternoon.”

“You were so bent on your tough measures, expecting to get the warrant tomorrow. Did you really want to listen?” Chen added after a pause, “Hua also killed Yang, who he saw as a potential threat that could drag Jiao away from him.”

“He killed Yang! But — why should he have bothered to leave Yang’s body in Xie’s garden?”

Old Hunter, too, found it hard to believe. How could Chen have discovered it while on vacation thousands of miles away?

“In Hua’s imagination, Xie had became another threat because Jiao was nice to him.”

“How could an old pathetic fellow have been a threat?”

“Hua’s paranoid, and all he saw was that Jiao was nice to Xie. So by getting rid of Yang and planting her body there, Hua tried to kill two birds with one stone.”

“You — you have done an amazing job. We’re on the way. Stay there, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Yes, I’ll stay here,” Chen said, snapping the phone closed in disgust. “An amazing job indeed, Old Hunter. Jiao was murdered in this very room, not even a stone’s throw away from the closet I was in.”

“But you did your job,” Old Hunter said in earnest, aware of the agony in Chen’s voice. A cop could close many cases successfully, but a single screwup could haunt him forever. “You were in the closet, unable to see or hear clearly. Nobody could have done any better under the circumstances. But for you, the criminal would have got away. What a case —”

Old Hunter lost his words in angst. What a Mao case — so many years ago for him, and now for Chen …

“Shang —”

THIRTY-ONE

“SHANG —” HUA WAS COMING
round, his features convulsed with bewildered astonishment. “What the hell happened?”

“That is exactly what happened,” Chen said, thinking of the superstitious interpretation of Old Hunter’s. “You strangled Shang’s granddaughter, Mao knocked you out — at least, Mao’s portrait did.”

“But how did you get in here?” During their fleeting encounter in the dark, Hua must not have seen Chen break out of the closet — probably hadn’t realized that Chen had been hiding in there at all.

“You devil, you deserve a thousands cuts!” Old Hunter interrupted. “You won’t get away with it. This is murder in the first degree.”

Hua appeared very different, his eyes lusterless, his left cheek twitching uncontrollably, his mouth dropping. There was no trace left of the imperial Mao persona. Nor even of a successful businessman. He was totally crushed.

It was a moment for Chen to seize upon. To shake something more out of the fallen. There were still unanswered questions.

But his cell phone shrilled out again, breaking the spell of the moment. It was Minister Huang from Beijing, and Chen had to take the call.

“Liu’s just called me, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Oh, Minister Huang, I was going to call you too,” Chen said, not surprised by Liu’s fast move. Jiao was killed in her apartment by someone named Hua. A nut who tries to imitate Mao. He is in my custody.”

“A nut who tries to imitate Mao! That’s unbelievable. But how did you get in there? Internal Security is complaining about your singular methods.” The minister added quickly, “It’s sour grapes, of course. I understand. You beat them again.”

“They were so anxious to use their tough measures, but it wasn’t a good idea, not on such a politically sensitive case. As you have said, it wasn’t in the best interest of the Party. So I decided that I had to act on my own.”

“It was very decisive action, I have to say. Now, did you find anything there?”

“Yes, there was something left behind by Shang.”

“Really, Chief Inspector Chen!”

“A scroll of a poem in Mao’s brush handwriting with a dedication to Phoenix — which was her nickname, you know. It was ‘Ode to the Plum Blossom.’ And the scroll was certified as authentic. Shall I turn it over to Internal Security?”

“Oh, that — no. Turn the scroll over to me. You don’t have to say anything about it to Internal Security. You’re working directly under the Central Party Committee. Is there anything else?”

“Not at this moment,” he said. Apparently the minister didn’t think that the scroll mattered a great deal to the image of Mao. Chen decided not to mention the broom. He still had to verify what was inside first. Besides, Old Hunter and Hua were listening. “I’m going to search thoroughly. whatever I find, I’ll report to you, Minister Huang.”

Old Hunter looked confused. So did Hua, though he had been tipped about Chen’s high connections. Little did he imagine that the “would-be writer” was actually a chief inspector who was talking to a government minister in Beijing.

“Don’t reveal anything to the media,” Minister Huang said. “It’s in the Party’s interest.”

“Yes, I understand. It’s in the Party’s interest.”

“You solved the case under a lot of pressure. I’d like to suggest that you take a vacation. How about one in Beijing?”

“Thank you so much, Minister Huang,” Chen said, wondering whether the minister was aware of his recent trip to Beijing. “I’ll think about it.”

“As I said, you’re an exceptional police officer. The Party authorities can always depend on you. Greater responsibilities are awaiting you.”

The minister didn’t forget his promise of promotion to Chen probably as the successor to Party Secretary Li in the Shanghai Police Bureau.

Following the conclusion of the phone call, a wave of silence overwhelmed the room.

Hua looked up from the floor, his smoldering glare shifting and settling on Chen.

“What a bastard you are! You’ve created all this trouble for me, haven’t you? But you’re so stupid.
Surrounded and surrounded by the enemy, / I stand firm and invincible.”

Hua was quoting again. Those were lines composed by Mao while fighting the guerrilla war against the nationalists in the days of the Jinggang Mountains. However, it was ridiculous for Hua to attempt the Hunan accent. It sounded hollow, empty, without any conviction.

“What an idiot!” Old Hunter commented. “Still lost in the days of the Jinggang Mountains. That son of a bitch doesn’t even know what day it is today.”

But what did Hua know about the Mao material? Chen had to find out. Judging by the renewed defiance of “Mao,” it would be impossible to make him talk before Internal Security arrived.

“Today? Look at what the so-called reforms have done to China today. A total restoration of capitalism. New Three Mountains are weighing down on the working class, who are suffering once again in the fire, in the water. Indeed, all this I foresaw long, long ago.
Contemplating over the immensity, / I ask the boundless earth: / Who is the master controlling the rise and fall of it.”

“What the hell is he talking about?” Old Hunter grunted. “The rise and fall of the devil, I say.”

“He’s quoting again,” Chen said, recognizing the lines from another poem written in Mao’s youth, which was perhaps less well known. But Hua’s speech was a passionate defense of Mao — and self-justification, as well.

But it was a defense made in the most grotesque way, with him lying stark naked on his back, mouthing those heroic lines, waving his arm in a style, fashioned after Mao’s — as in the picture beneath him. It was a weird juxtaposition too, not just of Mao and Hua, but of so many things — past and present, personal and not personal. Chen had a hard time fighting off the impulse to kick the hell out of Hua and all that was behind him. It was then that an idea hit the chief inspector.

He flipped out a cigarette for Old Hunter, lit it, and then another one for himself, flicking away the ashes, as if too contemptuous to cast another look at the prostrate figure on the floor.

“The bastard’s utterly lost in the spring and autumn dream of being Mao. But he’s not worth a little finger, a little hair, a little fucking peanut of Mao. He should pee hard, and see his own ludicrous reflection in it.”

“What do you mean?” Hua snarled.

“You’re no match for ordinary cops.” Chen turned round, his finger still tapping the cigarette. “How can a pathetic bastard like you ever delude yourself into being Mao?”

“You were just lucky, you devious son of a bitch, but the other cop had no such luck.”

“But Song didn’t even suspect you,” Chen pressed on, taking a shot in the dark. “You barked up at the wrong tree.”

“He came to me for information about her; he was nosing around. How could I let him get away with that? Any leniency toward your enemy is a crime to your comrade.”

Liu had said that Song was only conducting a routine interview, but Hua panicked. To a cold-blooded man like Hua, like Mao, it was logical to prevent scrutiny by killing Song. Chen surmised that Hua, in order to hang on to his illusion of being Mao, didn’t hesitate to confirm that, if nothing else, at least he could kill as ruthlessly as Mao.

“Any leniency toward your enemy is a crime to your comrade,”
Old Hunter repeated, imitating Mao’s Hunan accent with his brows in a knot. “That’s the Mao quotation we used to sing like a morning Prayer at the bureau during the years of the proletarian dictatorship. But I can’t make him out, Chief. This bastard keeps talking and quoting as if he had a tape of the
Little Red Book
playing in his head.”

“He has played Mao so much, he has become Mao incarnate. When Song’s investigation posed a potential threat to him, he simply had him killed. It was the same way that Mao got rid of his rivals using one ‘Party Line Struggle’ after another.”

“I am Mao!” Hua screamed. “Now do you finally understand?”

“You’re talking in your dreams,” Chen sneered. “How could you even come close to the shadow of Mao? For one thing, Mao had many women devoted to him, heart, body, and soul. ‘Chairman Mao is big — in everything!’ Think about it. Many years after his death, Madam Mao committed suicide for his ‘revolutionary cause.’ You may quote Mao, but do you have anyone loyal to you? Wang Anshi put it so well:
‘Lord of Xiang is a hero after all, / having a beauty die wholeheartedly for him.’
What about you? You couldn’t even win the heart of a
little concubine
.”

“You bastard,” Hua hissed through his clenched teeth, groaning savagely, his eyes darting back and forth like a trapped animal. “Don’t fart.”

“Don’t fart your Mao fart,” Old Hunter butted in.

“Don’t fart” was a notorious line in a poem published by Mao in his last days, by which time he believed he could put whatever he liked to say into poetry. People joked about it after his death.

“Jiao might have shared the bed with you, but nothing else,” Chen went on. “Like the old saying, she dreamed different dreams on the same bed with you. You didn’t know anything about her.”

“What the hell do you know?”

“A lot, and you’re completely in the dark. Like her passion, her dreams, her future plans, we talked about them for hours in the garden and over a candle light dinner at Madam Chiang’s house. Let me just give you a small example; her sketch of a broom-riding witch over the Forbidden City.” Chen paused in deliberate derision, attempting to drive Hua past mere fury. What was sustaining Hua was only the alter ego of Mao that he’d created and to which he had to cling at any cost. What Chen wanted to find out was if Jiao had given him any inkling of the real Mao material — hidden in the broom head or anywhere else. Pushed hard enough, he might be tempted to divulge that knowledge, like his adamission that he had Song murdered. “It’s so symbolic, surrealistic, with something hidden behind the surface —”

“Shut up, pig! You fell hard for her, really head over heels. You tried so hard to charm her with a candle light dinner, with all your literary mumble and jumble, symbolic or not, but you didn’t get her, not a hair of her. To show her loyalty, she swore to me she would stop seeing you altogether.
Oh, to the song of ‘Internationale’ tragic and high, / a hurricane comes for me from the sky
!”

His reaction was that of a wounded lover-emperor, proving that he knew nothing about the Mao material, about the broom head.

“If I couldn’t have her, neither could you or anybody else!” Hua went heatedly, spittle flying from his mouth. “You’re too late. She betrayed me and she had to die.”

With the pressure from the investigation and with his insane jealousy, fear that she might leave him for another man drove Hua over the edge. He strangled her not so much to stop her shouting as from a subconscious resolve to let no one else have her. Again, that was Mao’s logic, an emperor’s logic. As in ancient times, the palace ladies had to remain single, “untouched,” even after the emperor’s death.

“You bastard of Mao!” Old Hunter exclaimed.

“Now,” Hua said, raising himself up on one elbow, “let me tell you guys something.

“I succeed, and I’m the emperor,” he said, his face lit with enraged dignity as he suddenly jumped up to his feet, balancing himself and pivoting around, all in a lightning flash of movement, “you fail, and you’re the murderers.”

It was an unexpected move, fast, furious, catching them by surprise. He must have recovered during the phone call and the subsequent talk. Hair flying, he flung himself forward and swung out with his right arm. A tall, stout man, he bulled past them with a momentum that sent Old Hunter reeling backward against the wall. Sprinting to the living room, he swerved in the direction of the long scroll of Li Bai’s poem on the wall.

It was a turn Chen hadn’t anticipated. He thought he glimpsed something like a door behind the scroll, but in the semi-darkness he wasn’t sure. Cursing, he took after Hua, who was dashing like a dart. But then suddenly Hua stumbled and swayed with a blood-chilling yell, having stamped his foot down on the dustpan full of splintered glass Jiao had set down.

Chen took a stride over and clubbed him with the edge of one hand. The blow cracked on Hua’s head, reopening the wound inflicted by the portrait of Mao. Bleeding, Hua went down, banging his head against the corner of the dining table. He stared up, shook violently as if having a nightmare, and lost consciousness again, still making a blurred sound in his throat.

“Idiot!” Old Hunter hurried over and bent back Hua’s arms, hand-cuffing the unconscious man. “Now what, Chief Inspector Chen? Internal Security is coming any minute. What are we supposed to say to them?”

“We’ll play our roles — You’re retired, of course, and happened to be patrolling around the area tonight. When you heard the noise, you rushed up. Naturally, you know nothing about the Mao Case — about the case.”

Internal Security might not easily swallow that story, but it was basically true. There wasn’t much they could do about a retired cop.

Chen wasn’t that concerned about himself. He had been authorized by Beijing to act however he chose. With the tape recording he’d made, and with Old Hunter as a witness, he would be able to nail Hua for the murders of Jiao, Yang, and Song. That should be more than enough.

He didn’t have to do anything else, except turn the Mao scroll over to Beijing. Nor would it be difficult for him to tell his story. It might be necessary to omit some parts, of course. But it would be best for him, and for everybody else, to have the case conclude this way.

This way it wasn’t a Mao case.

Hua would be put away, conveniently, as a “nut.” With Mao in the background, no one would raise any questions, and all would be hushed up. A murder case, simple and pure, perhaps with details selectively revealed, such as Jiao being kept by Hua in secret, as a “little concubine.” It might prove a plausible interpretation to some: like grandmother, like daughter.

Such a conclusion would be acceptable to the Party authorities. There was no need for them to worry about any Mao material. If she had had any, she took its whereabouts to the grave with her. It was the end of the Shang saga.