A Loyal Character Dancer

spending an hour making one phone call after another, he concluded that the information from the private sector was practically the same. It was out of the question for a middle-aged, pregnant woman like Wen to find a job in Shanghai.
     
    Gu’s metaphor came buzzing back to him, as the stack of papers piled up on his desk, the phone rang incessantly and the pressure on him increased. He stood up to practice tai chi in his cubicle. The effort did not relieve his tension. It actually served as another subconscious reminder of the unsolved case in the park. Perhaps he should have practiced tai chi all these years, like the elderly former accountant, who at least enjoyed inner peace, moving in harmony with the qi of the world.
     
    What might have been was like the flower in the mirror, or the moon in the water. So vividly alive, he could almost touch it, but it was not real.
     
    And what was he going to do about the proposed “vacation” in Beijing? It was not a matter of making or not making a decision in his personal life, not as Party Secretary Li had supposed. In China, the personal could hardly be separated from the political. He could have tried harder to court Ling, but his awareness of her HCC status prevented him from making any further effort.
     
    Was it really so hard for him to be a bit more courageous, to disregard others criticizing him as a political climber?
     
    On a moment’s impulse, Chen picked up the phone, thinking of the number in Beijing, but he ended up calling Inspector Rohn instead.
     
    “I’ve been trying to reach you all afternoon, Chief Inspector Chen!”
     
    “Really, Inspector Rohn!”
     
    “You must have turned off your cell phone.”
     
    “Oh yes, it rang several times with a fax signal. I turned it off, and forgot about it.”
     
    “Because I could not reach you, I called Detective Yu.”
     
    “What is his news?”
     
    “Wen was actually seen leaving the village the night of April fifth! Instead of taking a bus, she hitchhiked and got a ride on a truck heading to the Fujian railway station. The truck turned off a few miles before it reached the station and Wen got out. The truck driver contacted the local police bureau this morning. The description matched, except that he was not sure if the woman was pregnant.”
     
    “That’s possible. Wen’s only in her fourth month. Did she mention to him where she was going?”
     
    “No. She may still be in Fujian Province, but it is more likely that she has left.”
     
    He seemed to hear a train whistle in her background. “Where are you, Inspector Rohn?”
     
    “The Shanghai Railway Station. Can you meet me here? According to Detective Yu, a train left Fujian for Shanghai at 2 a.m. on April sixth. Tickets were sold out long before that date. The ticket seller remembered one of the people approaching him for an emergency ticket was a woman. Yu suggested we make inquiry at the Shanghai Railway Bureau. That’s why I am here, but I don’t have authority to ask questions.”
     
    “I’m on my way,” Chen said.
     
    The visit turned out to be a prolonged one. The Fujian train did not arrive at the station until after late afternoon. They had to wait for hours before they could obtain the conductor’s records. Three ticketless passengers had boarded the train at the Fujian station in the early hours of April sixth. Judging by the amount they paid, Shanghai was the destination of two of them. The third got off before Shanghai. The attendant remembered one was a woman because the other two were businessmen who chatted all the way. The woman had squatted silently near the door. The attendant had not noticed where she left the train.
     
    So the “lead” led nowhere. No one knew where the woman got off, nor whether she was, indeed, Wen.
     
    * * * *
     

Chapter 21
     
     
    L
    ater, Chief Inspector Chen entered the Dynasty Karaoke Club with Meiling, his former secretary in the Shanghai Metropolitan Traffic Control Bureau. Their visit to the club was prompted by a phone conversation with Mr. Ma, the old herbal doctor..
     
    Ma had given him additional background information about Gu. Gu had been born into a middle-ranking Party member’s family. His father had served as a manager of a large state-run tire company for more than twenty years. The outbreak of the Cultural Revolution turned the veteran manager into a “capitalist roader,” wearing a huge placard around his neck, on which his name was crossed out in