Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

happened to meet when were both getting a haircut in the same barbershop. He knew of my work—I’ve translated some mysteries, you know—so I talked to him about it.”
    “According to the police officer who released me, I have a guiren in my life that I didn’t know about. He said to me, ‘But for your guiren, you might have remained in custody for god knows how long.’ I don’t know that many people here. Certainly not anyone that powerful, Chen.”
    In traditional Chinese culture, guiren meant someone powerful or influential who helps out in an unexpected way. It was understandable that Huang couldn’t help using such a term, which suggested Chen but didn’t give him away.
    “Well, clearly they had no right to detain you. When they realized their mistake, they had to come up with some excuse, which is probably why they credited a guiren .”
    He couldn’t tell whether she believed him or not, but her comment gave him an excuse to turn the conversation to the topic he had in mind. He had been unwilling to bring it up that evening.
    “Let’s talk business,” she said, stealing the initiative from him. She sat up and drew her legs up under her on the bed, her hands clasped around her knees. “I don’t think you came here for a bowl of noodles.”
    “Well,” he said, looking at her, and then past her to the wall behind her, “the partition wall looks as thin as a piece of paper.”
    “No one will hear,” she said, lifting up a wisp of black hair that had strayed over her eye, “provided we don’t talk too loud. But why? If it was anything that important, you could have called me and asked me to meet you elsewhere.”
    “Here’s a phone for you,” he said in a quiet voice, pushing across the table a newly bought cell phone. It was shining scarlet, which somehow reminded him of her in her trench coat that day in the sampan. “In the future, when you call me, use this phone only.”
    “Why?”
    “You aren’t only getting prank calls on your cell. It’s been bugged too.”
    “You’re really scaring me, Chen. How the devil could you know about all that?”
    “Through my connections. Don’t worry about what connections, Shanshan. I just happen to have them. When I made inquires into those nasty calls you’d been getting, I was told about your phone being tapped.” He went on after a short pause. “For instance, they mentioned you had been speaking to someone named Jiang.”
    She stared at him in shock, not uttering a word. She hadn’t said anything to him about Jiang. Of course, she didn’t have reason to—not to a tourist she’d just met by chance.
    “How could you have—” she started without finishing the sentence, her face instantly bleached of color.
    “About the threatening phone calls you’ve been getting, they were all made from a public phone booth. So there’s no way to trace the identity of the caller. If anything, though, it proved that they weren’t merely prank calls. Kids wouldn’t have made such an effort or spent money on a practical joke.”
    “But how could someone have stooped so low?”
    “It’s someone who is capable of anything. That’s one of reasons I decided to come over the moment I learned about it—without calling you first. But it’s also true, needless to say, that I missed you. As an old proverb goes, One day elapsed without seeing you feels like a separation for three autumns to me.”
    “You’re still being poetic with me.”
    “Setting sentimentality aside, tell me as much as you can about what has been happening of late—with you, around you, or at your company. I don’t know if I’m in a position to help, but to be able to do anything at all, I need as much information as I can get from you.”
    “Why are you going out of your way to help me?”
    “You know why,” he said, grasping her hand across the table. “I want to.”
    “But I don’t know what you want to know.”
    “Let me ask you this first. Now that Liu is dead, is there anything new at your company?”
    “There’s been nothing new under the sun. The wastewater keeps flowing into the lake, day and night. Fu, the new general manager, won’t change anything.”
    “I heard that Mi was promoted to office manager.”
    “You’ve been hearing about things promptly. I only heard about it yesterday.”
    “She was only Liu’s little secretary, wasn’t she?”
    “Fu’s only been here for four or five years. He needs her help for the transition, I think. After