The Mao Case

be nothing without that damned house of his.”
    “You’re the one behind the offer made by the real estate company! I should have guessed — you with your connections to both
     the black and white ways.”
    “But for Chen’s interference, Xie would have been homeless today. Now listen to me. Whoever stands in my way will be punished.
     Not even your Mr. Chen with all his connections. Next time he won’t get away with only a warning from my little brothers.”
    “So that’s why he suddenly left the city? You’re capable of anything!”
    “Yes, I’m capable of getting rid of anybody that’s in my way. And don’t dream that anybody will help you get away from me.
     No one under the sun can ever do that. Not Chen, not Xie, not Yang —”
    “Yang? Why are you talking about Yang?”
    “That bitch tried to take you to other parties — to other men.”

    “What?” Jiao jumped up from the bed, which squeaked and squealed. “How could you —”
    “Use your fucking brain!” “Mao” snarled. “Who else cares for you?”
    “You care only for yourself. You fuck me just because Mao fucked my grandmother.”
    “Only I’m Mao, the son of the Heaven, and you can be nobody else’s — nobody else.”
    Chen was sure that the man on the bed was insane. He wasn’t merely imitating Mao, he believed he was Mao.
    “But Yang —” Jiao couldn’t finish the sentence, wracked by an outburst of sobbing.
    “I would let down all the people in the world rather than have any of them let me down. To make revolution is not to invite
     people to dinner, you stupid woman.”
    Chen recognized the first sentence as a quote from Cao Cao, a Han-dynasty statesman Mao admired. And the second was a familiar
     quote from the
Little Red Book
, a favorite line the Red Guards would quote while beating and smashing people and things at the beginning of the Cultural
     Revolution.
    But the man’s comment also implied that he had killed Yang — that he’d done so since, in his logic, she had become a threat.
     Killing her and leaving her body in the garden could have taken care of Xie, another threat, had Jiao not unexpectedly provided
     an alibi for the old man.
    “You are a crazy monster, killing people like weeds,” Jiao shrieked hysterically.
    “You ungrateful bitch!” He slapped her face hard.
    “You bastard of Mao —”
    Her protest was replaced by a muffled sound. “Mao” must be stopping her from shouting. A disturbance in the room of a young
     single woman at night could draw attention from the neighbors.
    Chen sprang up, placing his hand on the door, though not sure what exactly to do. Domestic violence wasn’t a priority for
     him at the moment, and he might be able to learn a lot more from their fight.

    He tripped over something in the closet, and nearly stumbled. It was the broom. He was transfixed by the bulging sensation
     under his foot — something tangibly hard inside the coir fiber of the broom head. He bent over and examined it in the glow from
     the night-light. A worn-out broom head, but with a relatively new binding thread.
    Jiao could have unraveled the coir, inserted something inside, and rebound the fiber.
    What could be hidden inside?
    He touched the broom head again. whatever was inside appeared to be square in shape. Something like paper. Not just one or
     two pieces, but a stack of them. The size was smaller than legal-size paper, possibly a notebook, except that it did not feel
     like a notebook with a hard cover.
    What he had learned from Diao came back to him. About Shang’s passion for pictures and her photography equipment. Inside could
     be the pictures of Shang and Mao — possibly in their most intimate moments, in the midst of the rolling cloud and rain.
    The presence of the broom in the bedroom closet now made sense. She didn’t want to leave the broom in the kitchen, where a
     maid could use it just like any broom. But in the closet here it was safe and acceptable to her, psychologically. That would
     explain her choosing not to use this broom a short while ago.
    Also, it provided an insight to that surrealistic painting. Her unconscious might have produced a revenge fantasy, in which
     broom swept over the Forbidden City. The lines by Mao appeared, ironically, so proper and right in context. The concern of
     the Beijing government was not unfounded.
    He took out his pocketknife, ready to cut open the broom head in the faintly-lit closet.
    It was really a Mao case after