The Mao Case

“fire away.”
    “I just have a couple of questions about your experience during the Cultural Revolution.”
    “I know what you’re driving at.” Peng started gulping down the second cup. “About my damned affair with Qian, right? Let me
     tell you something, Mr. Journalist. I was only fifteen when I first met her. More than ten years older, she seduced me. If
     a white voluptuous body, like a bottle of iced beer in the summer, was put in front of you, for free, what would you do?”
    “Drink it?” Yu responded sardonically, astonished by the callousness with which Peng spoke about Qian.
    “In those years, a young boy like me didn’t know anything. I was a substitute, there to satisfy her lust. She didn’t care
     for me at all — only for my pathetic resemblance to her dead lover. And after I got out of prison, my best years and opportunities
     all gone, I couldn’t find a decent job. A wreck with no skills or experience. No future.”
    Staring at this middle-aged man, sloppy and sluggish, swigging down beer as if there were no tomorrow, Yu wondered what Qian
     could have seen in him.
    “Things have not been easy for you, Peng, but it’s such a long time ago. You can never know what she really thought at the
     time, and she
paid a terrible price for her actions too. So please, go ahead and tell me the story from the beginning.”
    “You mean the story of me and Qian?”
    “Yes, the whole story.”
    “Come on, I’m not that dumb, Mr. Journalist. The story is worth tons of money. You aren’t going to buy it for a couple of
     beers.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Someone came to me long before you. A writer, at least he introduced himself as one.” Peng put a large piece of pot-stewed
     beef into his mouth. “I was naïve enough to tell him everything, and he didn’t even buy me a bottle of beer. Only a couple
     of cigarettes — Red Pagoda Mountains. Such a cheap brand. He wrote the book, sold millions of copies, and I got nothing.”
    “Have you read the book?”
    “I’m just a rascal in the book, I’ve heard.”
    The writer, presumably the author of
Cloud and Rain in Shanghai
, might have portrayed Peng in a negative light in contrast to Qian, a romanticized and glamorized heroine.
    “Listen, Peng, I don’t really have to listen to your story. I can read the book. So how about a hundred yuan for a couple
     of questions?” Yu said, producing his wallet, imagining Chen’s move under the circumstances. Chen, however, had funds available
     to him as a chief inspector, which Yu did not.
    “Five hundred yuan.” Peng helped himself to a large spoonful of the Guizhou hot fish soup, slurping, smacking his lips.
    “Let me tell you something.” Yu banged the table with the bottom of the beer bottle. “You were following Jiao, and taking
     money from her the other day. It was a tip from a cop friend of mine, and I stopped him from taking action against you. After
     all, you’re a victim of the Cultural Revolution.”
    It was a long shot. Peng might have blackmailed her. But even if he hadn’t, his history was such that it wouldn’t be too difficult
     for the police to get him in trouble.
    “Those damned cops. They came to me about a month ago, treating
me like shit. Naturally, they got nothing,” Peng said in a dramatic way, stretching out his arms, snatching the hundred-yuan
     bill from Yu. “Jiao’s my step-daughter, isn’t she? She has so much it’s only fair for me to share a little bit of it.”
    “So Qian must have left something behind?”
    “A treasure trove — that’s a matter of course. What was her mother? A queen in the movie world. How many rich and powerful
     men had she slept with?”
    “But the Red Guards must have ransacked her home and taken the valuables away.”
    “No, I don’t think so. I’ve done some serious thinking — I’m not a brainless rice pot. At that time, the local Red Guards didn’t
     rush to her house like with some other families. She could have hidden her riches away.”
    The idea of treasure must have been mind-boggling for Peng, given the little he made at those odd jobs. The scenario was possible,
     but would it have taken Internal Security, and Chief Inspector Chen too, to launch such an investigation?
    “I called the writer,” Peng went on. “He gave me no money, and no money to her either, he said. So she must have Shang’s hoard.”
    “Jiao was as poor as you until about a year ago. If Shang had left something behind, Jiao