A Case of Two Cities

knees, and selected a cigarette from his case with deliberation.
     
    “That’s what an old friend is for,” she said between her teeth. Putting her spoon into the fish soup, leaving it there, and digging a cigarette from her crumpled pack, she was trying to pull herself together, but not successfully. She was doing anything to keep herself from looking up at him.
     
    “I wish I had an alternative. So I want to talk to you first as an old friend.”
     
    “What do you mean?”
     
    “What if I had turned these pictures in to the committee first? You don’t need me to tell you. In a worse scenario, if somebody else—not necessarily in the committee—got hold of those pictures, God alone knows what could happen. An unscrupulous rascal could have sold them to a tabloid magazine for a fortune.”
     
    She didn’t say anything for a minute or two, staring at the pigeon head, which stared back at her with its dead eyes.
     
    “Your company would be closed, your job lost, your property taken, and your apartment would be gone too. What a nice apartment! I don’t think it would be easy for you to move back to your tingzijian room of eight or nine square meters, An. If that room it is still there.”
     
    “You don’t have to be sarcastic, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
     
    He did not have to be sarcastic, but sitting in a “lovers’ nest” he had to justify himself. He went on, “Don’t believe those high up will try to help you. They have their own necks to save. Beijing means business this time, and they know it. An anticorruption bureau will be set up in Shanghai. Do you want to sacrifice yourself for those who would throw you out as a pawn? In the end, they may get away scot-free, but you’ll have to pay the full price.”
     
    She studied him up and down, still in disbelief over her humiliating downfall in front of an old friend.
     
    His cell phone started ringing again. “Nothing important,” he said, turning it off after looking at the number.
     
    “You think you can pull this off?” she said. “Evidence like this may not be permissible. As a cop, you know better.”
     
    “Let me put it this way, An. When I got the assignment, a leading comrade in Beijing joked about me being the emperor’s special envoy with an imperial sword. You know what it means, don’t you? In ancient China, such an envoy could kill without having obtained official approval first. Believe me, the evidence will be more than permissible.”
     
    “So I have no choice? Listen, Chen,” she said hoarsely, “I want you to know something—”
     
    He did not say anything, waiting to hear what she wanted him to know. But the waitress knocked at the door again. She came to light a new candle for them, bowing before she left with a smile. In the fresh candlelight, he noticed that An was without makeup. Her face clear and clean, suggestive of an innocent purity, untouched by evil. She looked up at him, in a long gaze, as if the autumn waves were breaking against the shore in her large black eyes.
     
    “Xing has so many connections in Shanghai,” she finally said. “But why have you chosen me, a helpless woman, of all the people? Are the others too monstrous for you to touch?”
     
    She was sharp. The accusation hit home. He did not wince. It was not that he did not have the guts, he told himself.
     
    “I have no choice, An. The investigation is under the committee,” he said. “If you collaborate, I won’t mention your name in the report. I give you my word.”
     
    “So what do you want from me?”
     
    “You tell me everything related to Xing—or to Ming—and I’ll return those photos to you. Your choices in your personal life are not my business. The anticorruption campaign, however, is a matter of life and death for our country.”
     
    “Can I have some time to think?”
     
    “About what?”
     
    “It may be a matter of life and death for me.”
     
    He lit another cigarette for her and pushed the window slightly open. Unexpectedly, a mosquito came buzzing in. An incredible nuisance at such a height, like a tedious song coming from next door during a sleepless night.
     
    An then began to tell about the business deal she had helped to arrange for Ming. A long, complicated story. The beginning part of it had little to do with An, comprehensible only in a larger context. With the development of the economic reform, there were a large number of state-run factories that had fallen in terrible shape.