The Mao Case

aware of footsteps hurrying up from behind. Glancing over his shoulder, he glimpsed the white-hatted
     man rushing over to him, wielding an iron bar in one hand, cursing between clenched teeth, “You busybody bastard!”
    Chen hadn’t been trained at the police academy, but his reflexes were sharp. He ducked his head to the side and swirled around.
     The assailant, having put the weight of his body behind his blow, missed, lurched forward. The two were now in a typical kongfu
     hand-push position. Chen swung his arm over, bearing it down hard on the back of the attacker, who staggered, his blue-dragon-tattooed
     forearm flailing out for support. Before Chen could deliver a second blow, however, he caught sight of another black-attired
     man dashing across from Shao-xing Road, brandishing an identical iron bar. The two gangsters could have been sitting in ambush,
     waiting for him at the intersection.
    “You must have taken me for another, brothers,” Chen said, trying to think of Triad jargon as the first gangster was regaining
     his balance. “The flood is surging into the Dragon King Temple.”
    “Who are your brothers? An ugly toad let its mouth water at a beautiful swan! You should pee and take a look at your own reflection,”
     the second man said, charging toward him in a lightning-fast movement.
    Dodging, Chen counterattacked with his right fist. He felt the iron bar brushing against his left shoulder. Reeling, Chen
     fell backward, his head bumping against the umber brick wall of a two-story house at the street corner. But he managed to
     kick out simultaneously, his feet hitting the abdomen of the second thug, who then doubled over in pain. Chen moved a step
     to the left, blocking instinctively with his numbed left arm another blow from the first one. Panting, swaying, he sized up
     the situation with a sinking heart. He could cope with one, but against two, both wielding iron bars, he had no chance.
    His only way out would be to cut back to Ruijing Road. With more people moving around and a cop standing there — possibly a
     plainclothes Internal Security as well — the gangsters might not be able to
chase him all the way, especially if he raised hue and cry in the broad daylight.
    Pivoting, he hurtled back toward the main street, with the two gangsters running after him.
    Neither a cop nor an Internal Security man was in sight as he sprinted onto Ruijing Road.
    Only a couple of pedestrians were visible in the intersection, neither of them choosing to do anything, watching like the
     spellbound audience at an absurd scene in a martial arts movie.
    The door of Xie Mansion was closed, as usual. It was then that his glance swept across the street, to the small café he had
     visited. On the front door flashed a neon sign saying “open.” And there was a back door behind the partition wall, he recalled.
    He spun round and dashed across the street, nearly colliding with a bike. A couple was emerging from the café, chatting and
     holding hands. He ran through them, sending the woman sprawling against the window and the man flinging his arm in rage. Bursting
     into the café, to the consternation of both the customers and waitress, he closed the door and locked it behind him, before
     slipping out through the back door and darting into a small lane.
    It was only a matter of a minute or less before the gangsters started to bang on the front door, but it was enough time for
     him to escape the lane without the two barking at his heels. Turning onto Shaoxing Road, he thought he heard terrible shouts
     and crashes somewhere in the lane.
    A taxi sped along. Waving his hand frantically, Chen rushed toward it and hurried in, gasping for breath.
    “Drive.”
    “Where?”
    “Anywhere. Drive.”
    It wasn’t until after the taxi swung into Fuxing Road that Chen was capable of reconstructing the encounter in clear sequence.
    Ambush. No question about it. The gangsters could have been
following him for days. A couple of times, he had walked along Shao-xing Road and turned down the side street as a shortcut
     to the subway station. The attackers had stationed themselves at the intersection, waiting for him whichever way Chen might
     have turned.
    Judging by their clothing, the iron bars, the tattoo on one’s arm, and their jargon, the two were undoubtedly Triad members.
     They didn’t try to disguise it.
    But he couldn’t remember having ruffled the feathers of any particular organization. Of late, there had