A Loyal Character Dancer

drank some water, then crushed the paper cup into a wad and dropped it into a wastebasket.

Chapter 20
     
     
    T
    he moment he got back in his office, Chen dialed Qian Jun.
     
    “Oh, I called you several times last night, Chief Inspector Chen, but I could not reach you. I lost your cell phone number. I’m really sorry about it. So I called Party Secretary Li.”
     
    “You lost my cell phone number!” He did not believe Qian’s explanation. He could have left a message at his home. It was understandable that a young ambitious cop might try to please the number-one Party boss—but by circumventing his immediate superior? He began to wonder why Li had insisted on assigning Qian to him.
     
    “You know what happened to the Guangxi woman, Chief Inspector Chen?”
     
    “Yes, Party Secretary Li has told me. How did you learn of it?”
     
    “After I talked to you, I got in touch with the Qingpu police. They called me in the evening.”
     
    “Any new developments today?”
     
    “No. The Qingpu police are still trying to find the jeep the men rode in. It had an army license plate.”
     
    “Tell them to contact me as soon as they have any leads. They are responsible for what happened in their area,” Chen said. “Anything new about the body in Bund Park?”
     
    “No. Nothing, but the official autopsy report from Dr. Xia. There’s nothing new in it. No response from hotels and neighborhood committees, either. I’ve interviewed a number of hotel managers. More than twenty of them. None of them provided any clue.”
     
    “I doubt that they have the guts to speak. The gangsters would never leave them in peace if they did.”
     
    “That’s true. Several months ago, a cafe reported a drug dealer to the police, and it was totally smashed the next week.”
     
    “What else are you going to do?”
     
    “I’ll keep calling the hotels and neighborhood committees. Please tell me what else I can do, Chief Inspector Chen.”
     
    “There is one thing you can do,” Chen said testily. “Go to the hospital. Ask the doctors to do their best for Qiao. If money is an issue, draw on our special budget.”
     
    “I’ll go there, Chief, but the special budget—”
     
    “Don’t give me any buts! That’s the least we can do,” Chen snapped, slamming down the receiver.
     
    He was perhaps too upset to be fair to the young cop. He felt enormously responsible for what had happened to Qiao, who had gone through all that for her baby, and still lost it in the end. What was worse, she could never become pregnant again. A devastating blow to the poor woman.
     
    Chen broke a pencil in two, like an ancient soldier breaking an arrow in a pledge. He must find Wen, and soon. That would be his way to retaliate against human smuggling. Against Jia Xinzhi. And against all the evil of the triads.
     
    He brooded over Qiao’s bad luck in finding the job in Qingpu. “Fortune begets misfortune, and misfortune begets fortune,“ as Lao-tse had said thousands of years earlier. So many provincial people had poured into Shanghai, they could not find jobs even with the help of a new institution in the market economy—the Shanghai Metropolitan Employment Agency. Qiao had succeeded, but that success had led to disaster for her.
     
    There was another office for him to call, he realized. Wen might have turned to the job agency for a temporary position, such as a live-in waitress or nanny.
     
    The answer he got was not encouraging. Their records did not show anyone matching Wen’s description, nor was a pregnant woman considered a likely candidate in the present day job market. The agency manager promised, however, to call if any relevant information turned up.
     
    Then Chen phoned the Peace Hotel. It was still his responsibility to keep Catherine Rohn company, whatever criticism this might lead to. She was not in. He left a message. This was not the moment for him to go to the hotel, holding a bouquet of flowers. Not after Internal Security had reported his putting a trinket around her neck, and Party Secretary Li had chosen to bring up the subject.                                       
    He had worked with her for only a couple of days. A partner assigned to him temporarily. It could have been, however, one   of the unstated reasons for Party Secretary Li’s proposing the vacation in Beijing. A timely reminder. Everything was politics, and everything would be grist for Li’s