A Case of Two Cities

His own father, a neo-Confucian scholar, had donated to his college a collection of rare books, which were later exhibited as criminal evidence against him and were burned at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.
     
    “Don’t worry, Mr. Dai. The university will take care of your problem tomorrow morning,” Chen said. “It’s an honor for me to share this room with you. I read your poems as early as in middle school. Now you go to bed first, Mr. Dai. I’ll look through the schedule.”
     
    After Chen glanced through the schedule, he took out his notebook, scribbling down several lines. It was out of the question to call Yu with Dai in the room.
     
    Finally, he went to bed. Lying uncomfortably on one side, staring at the ceiling, he knew he would not be able to fall asleep anytime soon. The old man, exhausted by the long hours on the bus, started to snore. Chen soon got up and moved over to the sofa. Sitting with his legs resting on a chair, he tried to think over the day’s events.
     
    But his mind was tired, unable to focus. English seemed to be jarring against his Chinese subconscious. Then he thought of Xing again—who was also in Los Angeles. But Chen was not a cop here and he had no idea how to proceed. In a way, he didn’t even know what he really was, with the old poet snoring in the bed. He thought of a poem written by Su Dongpo, a well-known Song dynasty poet, in his exile. Chen particularly liked the ending of it.
     
    Long, long I lament
    there is not a self for me to claim
    oh, when can I forget
    all the cares of the world?
    The night deep, the wind still, no ripples on the river.
     
    The poem was about Su being shut out at midnight because his houseboy slept too soundly, snoring like thunder. He could only stand outside, listening to the sound of the river, while he thought about the loss of his self in the midst of all his worries. Chief Inspector Chen was in quite a different situation. He was in his own hotel room, with his career in a steady rise, though the snoring that came to him in the depth of the night was perhaps as loud.
     
    After a while, he rose again and took two sleeping pills. He started jotting down notes for a speech on the second day. When he finished with the notes, however, the pills still hadn’t started working.
     
    His mind wandered further away—to An. The memories of her black braid flapping in their reading-group days, of her politically correct image radiating on TV, and of her naked body lying spread-eagled in her apartment. A nocturnal confusion of juxtaposed images. And then their meal in the restaurant on the Bund. He had a feeling he had missed something in his earlier reconstruction of that evening. Once more he tried to recall what they had said, minute by minute, in the Lovers’ Nest. As he had experienced before, the effort only wore him out without yielding any clue.
     
    It was almost three-thirty, the window revealing the first gray light, when sleepiness finally began to overtake him. Perhaps Dai would get up soon. Still, Chen tried to set the alarm clock. The instruction was in English and took him several minutes to figure out. He was mechanically clumsy. Then something rang in his memory.
     
    It was not what she said, but what she did in Golden Island.
     
    That evening, he had had a problem with his cell phone. He must have accidentally touched a button, and he had had no clue how to put it back to the normal ringing. She had taken it from his hand and restored the ringing in no time. He was amazed, her slender fingers touching his, but he did not ask her how she did it.
     
    “It’s easy,” she said.
     
    Not easy for the chief inspector, who now realized the importance of the incident. She must have had a cell phone too. Or she could not have fixed the problem so easily. He had to find her cell phone record.
     
    * * * *
     

15
     
     
    T
    HE SECOND DAY IN Los Angeles was like the first day, busy with meeting, visiting, dining, and discussing. And now it was the third day, which would probably turn out to be just like the day before, Chen thought, waking up early in the hotel room.
     
    In the midst of all the delegation activities, Chen managed to do a few things on his own.
     
    With an international phone card, he had called Detective Yu, his hardworking assistant in Shanghai, who had hardly anything new to tell him. The weather remains cloudy, with little change in the air. If An had been murdered in connection with the