A Case of Two Cities

Prologue
     
     
    A
    N ANONYMOUS PHONE CALL came to the Fujian Police Bureau at 1:15 a.m. on that early May night.
     
    “Come to Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold immediately. Room 135. You will find front page stuff for the Fujian Star.”
     
    Sergeant Lou Xiangdong, the cop who answered the phone, had heard of the place before. It was a so-called karaoke center, but really known for its karaoke-covered sexual service among the corrupt officials and businessmen. The Fujian Star was a local tabloid newspaper founded in the mid-nineties. The telephone call delivered an unmistakable message: there was something scandalous going on in that room.
     
    But Lou felt sleepy and grumpy. He had chosen to work on this late shift for the night subsidy. A bachelor reaching his mid-thirties, he had just met a lovely girl, with whom he was going to have dim sum the next morning, and a week’s subsidy would probably cover the expense. He had been dreaming of golden bamboo steamers, of the mini shrimp buns and crab dumplings, her crispy laughter rippling in a tiny cup of Dragon Well tea, and her white fingers tearing the green lotus leaf off the sticky rice chicken for him . . .
     
    The police bureau received this sort of anonymous call occasionally, but most of them were false alarms. With corruption spreading like an uncontrollable plague all over the country and the gap between the poor and the rich increasing, people reacted out of their frustration. Consequently, when cops hurried out to those notorious entertainment places, more often than not they found decent businesses there, the K girls—karaoke girls allegedly hired to sing along with companionless clients—dressed demurely, as if still buttoned up with the puritan codes of Mao’s time. People knew too well, however, what they really performed, totally unbuttoned, behind the closed doors of private K rooms.
     
    But Lou was not so sure about the calls being false alarms or practical jokes. Infamous resorts like Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold were known to be associated with high-ranking officials in the city government, with insider tips readily available to them. That was probably why the police raids had ended up fetching water with a bamboo basket—total failures.
     
    Despite this, the sergeant made up his mind to go. The informer sounded urgent, with a specific room number too, and like other low-level cops, Lou was concerned about the corruption getting out of control in “China’s brand of socialism.” He did not mention anything to his colleagues, and he took an office cell phone and set out in a jeep.
     
    Ten minutes later, he walked into the club. In the large entrance hall of Inebriating Money and Intoxicating Gold, he saw a stage at one side, with a bevy of girls strutting around in bikinis, and in the mist, a willowy girl in transparent gauze with cloudlike trails danced barefoot to lambent music, which floated out of the imitation Dunhuang murals behind. Off the stage, a line of K girls waited in their black mini slips and transparent slippers. One of them rose and flurried toward Lou, reaching out her skinny, pasty arms like clipped chicken wings. It reminded him of a brothel scene in an old movie. From the private rooms along the somberly lit corridor, he heard a chorus of moaning and groaning. Two or three clients in the hall were moving among the K girls like fish in the water, bargaining with a muscular night manager in a black Tang costume.
     
    Lou turned to the night manager, who started an introduction, grinning though a ring of his cigarette smoke.
     
    “My name is Pang. We are pleased to offer you our service. Puncturing the clock costs a hundred yuan. For a rich and successful man like you, you will definitely need more. Puncturing the clock three times, I would say. Not including the amount for puncturing the hole. For the whole night, you can enjoy a wholesale discount. You may discuss the details with the girl you choose. Take a look at Meimei. So beautiful, so talented. She can play your jade flute into a soul-ravishing song.”
     
    Pang must have taken Lou for a new client. Puncturing the clock probably meant half an hour or an hour, Lou supposed, but he did not have to guess about “puncturing the hole” or “playing the jade flute.”
     
    Lou took out his badge. “Take me to Room 135.”
     
    Startled like a wakened sleepwalker, Pang tried in vain to convince the cop that no one was there. When they