A Case of Two Cities

traditional Chinese landscape paintings hung on the wall.
     
    The sun is setting in the west —
    how many times?
    Helpless that flowers fall.
    Swallows return, seemingly no strangers.
     
    He was about to finish his last glass of wine when she came out, carrying a black plastic trash bag. Now in a white T-shirt and shorts, barefoot, she looked more like a college student. She went into a small lane next to the building. Then, emerging with the trash bag gone, she came to a stop by the mailbox at the foot of the staircase, the doorway framing her against the twilight, her face wistful. He rose from the table. She took out her cell phone.
     
    To his surprise, his phone rang. He glanced at the number shown on the screen. It was from her. No mistake. But for some inexplicable reason, he hesitated to push the talk button.
     
    What would she like to talk to him about? Not about the scene he had witnessed, surely. And what would he say to her?
     
    Then the ringing abruptly stopped.
     
    And she disappeared into the building again. The street stretched in front of the bar, like a tedious argument of ambiguous intent, again leading to an overwhelming question.
     
    Indeed, what could be said by him? A cop who had hardly met his responsibilities, or, to say the least, who was stuck halfway in his work, with two people killed because of him, and their justice apparently beyond hope, with his investigation ordered to stop, which he accepted without a fight. No use denying the fact to himself, he contemplated. The parody of Prufrock threw unexpected light on his spineless self. After all, he was no poet like Eliot, who redeemed himself through writing about those flickering moments. Chen was but a cop beating a pathetic retreat, in spite of all the high sentences from Beijing, and the lines on the notebook did not change that fact. So how could he prove himself worth answering her call? How should he presume—
     
    His phone rang again. He pressed the button in a hurry. “Catherine—”
     
    “No, it’s Yu.”
     
    “Oh, what’s up?”
     
    “Lei’s in trouble.’’
     
    “Lei?”
     
    “Your friend at the Shanghai Morning. He called me, saying that you alone can help—to prove that he did nothing wrong that afternoon in the bathhouse. It’s urgent, he said, and he insisted that you would understand.”
     
    Chen thought he knew why this was happening. Whatever trouble it was for Lei, it was really designed for the chief inspector. A “confession” by Lei would serve to prove Chen’s “decadent bourgeois way of life.” So those rats were pouncing on him. Lei might be holding on for the moment because he believed in Chen’s power to intervene.
     
    “Tell Lei to hold on for one or two days. I’m coming back. And I’ll take care of it.”
     
    “You are coming back so soon, Chief?”
     
    “Yes. And I’ll have a lot to discuss with you.” Chen added, thinking, “Call Comrade Zhao about Lei’s trouble. You may tell him I wanted you to make this call.”
     
    It might provide some help. Also, Comrade Zhao would explain the Beijing decision to Yu, who had not yet learned anything about the latest development. It could spare Chen the disagreeable task.
     
    “Great. I’ll do that right now. Tell you what. Peiqin has been talking about a special dinner for you.”
     
    “In celebration?”
     
    “Not exactly. She’ll explain. Old Hunter is going to join us too. He’s so proud of the part he had played in breaking China’s number-one corruption case. And his invention—-’red rats’—has gained incredible circulation in the city. He’ll bring an urn of Maiden Red he has saved for thirty years.”
     
    All that sounded wonderful. He wondered what the occasion could be. Surely it wasn’t yet another dinner in honor of his return to Shanghai—in addition to the one in Comrade Zhao’s hotel, with his bottle of Maotai, Chen reflected, draining the glass.
     
    But he was still worried about Lei. It came to an ironic circle. He had first heard of the Xing case in the company of Lei, in that bathhouse, and now at the end of the case, Lei was in trouble because of his company. But how could people have learned about that afternoon in the bathhouse? The net around the chief inspector must be a phenomenally large one. Again, it might prove naive of him to think that Comrade Zhao would step in to help. Then, did he really have a choice?
     
    “One more thing, Chief. Jiang has booked a ticket to