A Case of Two Cities

serene, like the Beijing sky in autumn again . . .
     
    Finally he sunk into a slumber full of dreams. One of them was a recurring nightmare from his childhood. The black night rubbing its muzzle on the windowpane, licking its tongue into the corners of the moment, he found himself turning into a cat, curling itself in contentment before suddenly jumping out of the attic window, running along the tile roof, fleeing from a faceless enemy. In his then neighborhood, all the ramshackle houses were perilously connected. He kept leaping from one roof to another. Any minute, he could irrecoverably fall into the abyss, but not yet. . .
     
    The shrill of the cell phone startled him from his recollection of the broken dream. It was Catherine.
     
    “Can you tell me what the Chinese visitors would like to do today?”
     
    “Good question.” He did not have an immediate answer. She had a hard time making all the arrangements for the delegation. St. Louis was not a tourist city with many sightseeing alternatives. Shasha could spend another afternoon at the shopping mall, perhaps. She had just received her book contract with a decent advance. As for the others, he had no clue. Then he remembered what Tian had told him about other Chinese delegations in L.A.
     
    “Isn’t there a casino boat in the river?”
     
    “Yes, but what about your delegation regulations?”
     
    “As the American host, you can make suggestions. Mark Twain wrote several short stories about sailing on the Mississippi River. So it may have a lot to do with the tradition of American literature.”
     
    “I see,” she said with a giggle. “It is like a Chinese proverb: To steal a bell with your ears stuffed —you simply believe others will not hear the sound.”
     
    So she suggested it at breakfast. No one raised any objection, except Peng, who said something more like a question:
     
    “The boat did not move, I noticed. How can a boat be moored all the time?”
     
    “It used to be a real riverboat, all right,” she explained. “According to the state law, it’s illegal to gamble on land, but legal in the river—as entertainment. As long as it is on a boat, it doesn’t matter whether the boat moves or not.”
     
    “An excuse,” Zhong commented.
     
    “So hypocritical,” Bao observed, “typical of American capitalism.”
     
    “It’s the same everywhere. Gambling is forbidden in China, but the government has recently legalized mahjong,” Shasha said. “Everyone knows mahjong is no fun without money put on the table.”
     
    Still, no one had any objection. Not even Bao, who might be just as eager to experience the forbidden.
     
    “Well, one place is as good as another,” Chen said, understanding it was up to him to say something. “Let’s follow the footsteps of Mark Twain. No point staying in the hotel all the time.”
     
    “Yes, it’s so close,” Catherine said.
     
    So around eleven, they got out of the hotel and into a minivan. Chen took his seat in front, behind the driver, and Catherine sat in the seat across the aisle, her hair tied into a plait with a scarlet velvet string. She was wearing a white shirt, a beige blazer of light material, and a matching skirt. Then he noticed she was frowning. Leaning down, she rubbed her bare shapely ankle. He resisted the impulse to do what he had done that evening in the Suzhou garden. He felt her nearness, as if through the memory. Abruptly, his cell phone rang. It was Detective Yu in Shanghai.
     
    “Breakthrough, Chief.”
     
    “What?”
     
    “Ming was caught!”
     
    “Really! How?”
     
    “It’s a long story. Thanks to the phone record—”
     
    “Where is he now?” Chen knew he had to cut his partner short. It was too sensitive a case to discuss at the moment, with all the delegation members, and Catherine too, sitting in the car.
     
    “I turned him over to Comrade Zhao—”
     
    “Great.” Chen understood why his assistant had done so. For someone like Ming, the Shanghai Police Bureau or Party Secretary Li might not be a safe bet. After all, it was a case under the Party Discipline Committee. “I’ll call you back. We are going to a riverboat.”
     
    This was great, Chen thought. Ming might not be that important to Xing’s entire empire, but at least their activities in Shanghai would be exposed, and those red rats could be punished. Some of the evidence thus obtained might help with the eventual deportation of Xing from the U.S.
     
    Also, the