Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

anything new, let me know.”
    Still, the timing of the call couldn’t have been worse. How would Huang have reacted had he learned about Shanshan staying overnight at the center with the Chief Inspector?
    All of a sudden, a siren shrieked, piercing the grayness of the overcast morning sky. Chen looked up to see that he had arrived at the shabby eatery, with Uncle Wang bending over a large stove outside.
    “You’re early today, Chen,” Uncle Wang said, busy setting up the fire with old newspapers and dry twigs before he threw in a ladle of coal balls. He must have just started. “We don’t serve breakfast. There’s nothing for you at the moment. But I can have a bowl of salty bean soup microwaved if you’d like.”
    “Don’t worry about it, Uncle Wang. I’ve had my breakfast. Has Shanshan been here?”
    “Not this early and not today. It’s Sunday. I didn’t see her yesterday either. Do you know if there’s anything going on with her?”
    “No, but I saw her last night.”
    “Oh, I’m so concerned about her,” Uncle Wang said. “And about you, too. The day before yesterday, a couple of strangers came here. They asked me a number of incriminating questions about her, and about the man seen with her in the last few days.”
    “Really!”
    “Of course, I didn’t tell them anything.”
    So they were already checking on him. Perhaps it was naïve of him to think he could provide protection for her. If Internal Security found out about their relationship, it might only be to her disadvantage. Nor was he untouchable, in spite of the assurances he’d given Shanshan. In China, everything was politics. His enemies could hit him hard by saying that his involvement with her was another example of his “bourgeois lifestyle.”
    A lanky middle-aged man on a tricycle rode up with the morning’s food supply piled in the trunk. Uncle Wang picked up a carp, smelled it, threw it back, and then began bargaining with the supplier.
    As Chen watched, his cell phone rang again. It was Detective Yu. He must have been calling from the street again, given all the noise in the background.
    Yu summed up his encounter with Bai after the church service.
    “According to Bai, Mrs. Liu may be attending church in Wuxi today,” Yu said.
    “So she seems to find some peace in the church.”
    “Yes, at least Bai thinks so.” Yu summarized what he had termed Peiqin’s analysis before he shifted to another topic with renewed excitement in his voice. “But you know what, Chief? I’ve just talked to Wei, the neighborhood cop, again. He recognized the girl with Fu in front of the sleazy hotel from the pictures we took. She’s none other than Fu’s longtime girlfriend. There’s something weird about that. Why would they be so stealthy?”
    “It might not be that odd. It could be as simple as Fu having to sneak off for a quickie with his girlfriend at such a hotel, because of his housing situation in Shanghai.” It was not uncommon for two or even three generations of a Shanghai family to squeeze together in a single room.
    “True. Still, people always find ways to do what they want to do. Peiqin and I lived in the same apartment with my parents for years, as you know. But Peiqin insists that she would never spend money for something like that.”
    “Peiqin is so perceptive. I’ll check it out here,” Chen said. “Anyway, you’d better keep the pictures of the lovers. Someday, you might be able to sell them for a lot of money.”
    Closing the phone, Chen thought that it must have been an anticlimax for Yu, who had spent his weekend learning nothing really useful, at least not from a cop’s perspective.
    As for Mrs. Liu, Chen didn’t know what else he could do. If anything, this new information made her more of a character but less of a suspect. It wasn’t the first time, however, that the chief inspector had an elaborate theory end up as nothing more than just that: an unsubstantiated theory.
    Then he thought about the “something weird,” as Detective Yu had phrased it, about Fu’s behavior yesterday. There could be a number of explanations for it. For one, Fu might be a sly dog who kept his affair “in a stealthy way,” so that he could approach other girls at the same time. When Chen was first assigned to the Shanghai Police Bureau, he also tried to keep secret his relationship with his HCC girlfriend in Beijing, though for a different reason.
    Chen decided not to think too much about it. He could see no