A Case of Two Cities

understandable, but her business relationship with Ming was a different story. It might be nothing unusual for a businessman to engage the service of a PR company. But why An’s? Why, with Ming’s construction project hardly in blueprint?
     
    An might well know something about Ming, and about Xing as well.
     
    But would she talk to Chief Inspector Chen?
     
    The reading group long dissolved, their paths hardly crossed anymore. At a city congress conference not too long ago, he had seen her at a distance. She was so busy interviewing more important people, he did not even make an attempt to approach her. Now, out of the blue, he was going to try to get information out of her. It wasn’t hard to predict her reaction.
     
    He pulled together a dossier on her. There was nothing surprising or suspicious about her career as an anchorwoman. In fact, she’d received a long list of awards for her excellent work. It was also commonplace for celebrities to run businesses on the side, like restaurants with large pictures of them on the wall. It did not take much for people to go to a restaurant, but it took a lot to hire a PR company. What could she do for her clients? An anchorwoman with no experience in that business.
     
    There were stories about her from an unofficial source, but such tabloid stuff might not be unusual for celebrities, let alone an attractive woman with an audience of millions. He lit a cigarette, underlining the paragraph about her “special connection” to high-ranking Party cadres. As in the saying, It might be like catching at the wind, clutching at the shadow. But there’s another saying, Chen recalled: No waves will rise without a stir of the wind.
     
    Those stories alone were far from enough to make her talk. He ground out his cigarette in the swan-shaped crystal ashtray.
     
    He realized it was time for lunch. Three hours already gone this morning and he still had no idea how his Chen trail could work. He walked down to the bureau canteen, which was full of people, as always. He ate a bowl of beef noodles with plenty of red pepper and green onion without talking much to anyone. His colleagues all seemed to be aware of how sensitive his investigation was. The noodle soup tasted heavy, hot, and afterward he felt slightly drowsy. But there was no coffee in the bureau to wake him up. His cell phone rang.
     
    “Long time no see, Chief Inspector Chen,” Gu said. “You haven’t come to my place for weeks.”
     
    “Sorry, I’ve been so busy—you know how it is.”
     
    Unlike other businessmen, Gu knew better than to be a nuisance. It bothered Chen that their relationship had become a handle for Dong. Not really Gu’s fault, though: an entrepreneur could not have helped boasting of his official connections and Gu might have been discreet in his way. At least Dong seemed to have learned nothing about Chen’s lucrative translation project with the New World. Gu had claimed that it was a favor by Chen, but with such a large fee for the translation, Chen knew better.
     
    “You are always busy, but so are other celebrities. They still come to my KTV club. Liu Wei, he stars in three TV series, and he visits here every week.”
     
    “Really,” Chen said. Liu was a rising star, notorious for his lusty performance in bedroom scenes. Then something clicked in Chen’s mind. “Do you have a lot of visitors from the TV and movie industry?”
     
    “Yes, quite a few,” Gu said. “How about this Saturday evening? White Cloud will also be there. A nice girl.”
     
    “She’s very nice, but I don’t think I have time this weekend.” Chen said after a short pause, “How about this afternoon? A cup of coffee or tea. Indeed, we haven’t seen each other for a while.”
     
    “What about the Starbucks near the New World?”
     
    “Great. See you there in half an hour.”
     
    Chen left the canteen, and looked around before heading out through the bureau gate. Old Liang, the veteran bureau gatekeeper, saluted him with one hand, the other still grasping a plastic lunch box. The old man had worked dutifully for over forty years, long past his retirement age. The pension fixed in the eighties was not enough to support the retired gatekeeper in the nineties, so the bureau made a special allowance for him to continue to work here.
     
    Chen got onto a bus, which turned out to be a most unpleasant experience. The conductor kept shouting, “Move in! Don’t stand close to the door.” At each new