The Mao Case

Chief Inspector Chen. I’m glad you have not forgotten him.” She turned to her husband and said in a
     low voice, “Go and look at your face in the mirror. It’s as red as Mao’s Little Red Book.”
    “Look at the table,” Long said a little blurredly, accompanying Chen to the door, “It looks like a battle field deserted by
     the nationalist troops in 1949. Remember the poem about the liberation of Nanjing?”
    Looking back, Chen found the littered table looked somewhat like a deserted battlefield, with broken legs, crushed shells,
     scarlet and golden ovaries scattered here and there, but he failed to recall the image from that particular poem by Mao.

ELEVEN
    DETECTIVE YU DECIDED TO interview Peng, Qian’s second lover.
    Yu didn’t know the neighborhood officer in charge of Peng’s area that well, so he had to approach Peng by himself, without
     telling anybody or revealing that he was a cop. It was a necessary move after an encounter Old Hunter had unexpectedly witnessed
     between Jiao and Peng — a suspicious meeting in a grocery store, where Jiao gave money to Peng.
    What was going on between the two?
    Peng’s affair with Qian had lasted no more than half a year before he was thrown into jail. When released, he could hardly
     take care of himself, let alone Jiao. They didn’t have any contact for all those years. She wasn’t his daughter, or even a
     stepdaughter.
    As Old Hunter considered himself more experienced at shadowing a person, he wanted to focus on Jiao. So it was up to Yu to
     tackle Peng.

    Early in the morning, Yu arrived at the market where Peng worked as a pork porter but was told that he had been fired.
    “A good-for-nothing guy, capable of soft-rice-eating only,” an ex-coworker of Peng’s said, hacking at a frozen pig head on
     a stump, spitting on the ground littered with rotten cabbage leaves. “You’ll probably find him eating white rice at home.”
    It was a harsh comment, particularly the “soft-rice-eating,” a phrase that usually referred to a parasitic man dependent on
     a woman. But, if in reference to Peng’s affair with Qian, it was not true. It had happened many years ago, when Qian had little
     money. As in a saying Old Hunter would quote, it’s easy to throw rocks at one already fallen to the bottom of a well. Yu thanked
     the ex-coworker, from whom he got Peng’s home address.
    Following the directions, Yu changed buses twice before he found himself at a shabby lane near Santou Road.
    He saw a heavily built man squatting at the lane’s entrance like a stone lion, half burying his face in a large bowl of noodles,
     holding a clove of garlic on the edge of the bowl. The noodle-eater wore a faded T-shirt, which was way too small on him,
     making him look like an overstuffed bag. Yu couldn’t help taking another look at the man, who stared back at Yu, still gobbling
     loudly.
    “So are you Mr. Peng?” Yu said, recognizing him from the picture. He offered the man a cigarette.
    “I’m Peng, but without
Mr.
attached to my name for twenty years.
Mr.
gives me goose bumps,” Peng said, taking the cigarette.
     “Oh, China. A smoke costs more than a bowl of noodles. What can I do for you, man?”
    “Well,” Yu said. He was going to play a role — just like his boss, who sometimes claimed to be a writer or a journalist when
     canvassing on a case. “I’m a journalist. I would like to talk with you. Let’s find a place. A nearby restaurant, perhaps?”
    “The restaurant across the street will do,” Peng said, holding the noodles bowl in his hand. “You should have come five minutes
     earlier.”

    It was a mom-and-pop place, simple and shabby. At the moment, between breakfast and lunch, there were no customers inside.
    The old proprietor looked curiously at the two, who made a sharp contrast. Peng, a down-and-out bum, and Yu, in a light-material
     blazer Peiqin had prepared for the occasion. She had even ironed it for him.
    “You’re familiar with the place, Peng. Go ahead and order.”
    Peng ordered four dishes and six bottles of beer, which came close to a banquet at this place. Luckily, nothing on the menu
     proved to be expensive. Peng shouted out his order loud enough that people outside the restaurant could have heard it too.
     Possibly it was a message to the neighborhood as well: that he was still somebody, with well-to-do people buying a big meal
     for him.
    “Now,” Peng gave a loud burp after swigging down the first cup of beer,