Flower Net (Red Princess 1)

“The leader in America.”

“Do you know his name?”

“I am not there!” Zhao spat out. “I am not listening! I do not want to die!”

“Take it easy, Mr. Zhao,” Milton Bird said. “Maybe this is enough for today…”

“No, I want to finish! I want to leave this place! You tell me I can leave after I tell you.”

“That’s right,” David agreed. “We promised you could leave as soon as you told us what you knew. Please finish. What did the leader say?”

“I do not know. But the storm comes. The other boat comes and the crew leaves. We think that the crew knows you are on the way. That is all I know.” Zhao lowered his eyes back to the table.

“What more can you tell us about Guang Henglai? Do you know who might have killed him and why?”

Zhao, reverting to Chinese, spoke to Mabel. When he came to the end of his speech, she said, “There are many phrases in Chinese that are similar to what you have in English. One of these is—look the other way. Mr. Zhao says that he looked the other way and you should, too.”

“You ask questions and you get in trouble,” Zhao added. “You want to know about the crew, I tell you. They ask questions. They get the answer and they are dead.”

David started. “You told me they left the Peony on lifeboats for a rescue ship.”

“You don’t hear me,” Zhao said. “I don’t see them die, but I think they are dead. It is true, I tell you that I see some of them wash off their little boat when they try to get away. But I tell you, those men are dead. The leader in America will kill them.”

“They didn’t do anything wrong.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, David wondered what he meant.

“Guang Henglai is a Red Prince,” Zhao warned. “His father is powerful. Don’t be a fool. You look the other way, too. If you don’t, you will die.”

4

JANUARY 23

Beijing

The suspect, a Mr. Su, had already confessed, been handcuffed, and taken away. The body of his victim, however, was still sprawled under a stained blanket in the communal bathroom. Blood congealed in a wide smear across the floor. The odors of human habitation—garlic, ginger, sweat—combined to create the fetid smell that was so much a part of Liu Hulan’s daily life. Murders in China rarely happened far away from humanity, and so Hulan was here today in an apartment building where dozens of multigenerational families—literally hundreds of people—lived and had become witnesses to the crime.

Hulan sat on a stool at a small table tucked into the corner of Mr. Su’s tiny apartment. A few neighbors crowded against the wall. They listened as Hulan conducted her interviews, and they noisily passed whatever information they could out to those who had pressed into the corridor to see what was happening. Across from Hulan sat Widow Xie, the deputy head of the Neighborhood Committee in charge of this apartment complex. It was her duty to keep an eye on people’s comings and goings and to report anything untoward—from political misstatements to acts of corruption to monopolizing the communal bathrooms.

“Mr. Su was nothing more than a country bumpkin,” Widow Xie remarked. Hulan winced at this insult. Country bumpkin had become one of the vilest and commonest epithets in China; now the government was trying to bar it from speech. But the woman seemed unaware or unconcerned about this new rule. “He came here and stayed. I asked him many times for his residency permit. I hope you will forgive me for being lax in my duties, for I didn’t report him earlier.”

“Did Mr. Su and Mr. Shih argue frequently?”

“Those troublemakers put rat shit in the porridge pot for everyone,” the woman answered, staring at the gun that hung from Hulan’s shoulder holster. “They are both bumpkins. They come in here. They don’t wash. They don’t change clothes. They don’t work. They stay in this room. They always disagree. They fight in their vulgar dialect. I tell you, it is ugly to the ears. Everyone—not just me—has t

o listen.”

“Why were they arguing?”

“One man, he says, ‘It belongs to me.’ The other says, ‘No, it is mine.’ All day, all night, we are listening.”

“But why were they arguing? What was it they wanted?”

Widow Xie’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. Do you think I know everything?”

A police officer pushed into the room and handed Hulan several manila folders. The effect on the residents of the apartment complex was immediate. Their chatter and jostling dwindled and was replaced by the soft footfall of people trying to leave as unobtrusively as possible. Without looking their way, Hulan spoke. “Stay right where you are. I will call on each of you when I am ready.”

The silence deepened. Liu Hulan began to sort through the folders, finally coming across the one belonging to the murderer. Inside was Mr. Su’s dangan, his personal file, which had been forwarded to Beijing three years ago. Hulan quickly perused its contents. Mr. Su had been a diligent worker at the Bamboo Village commune until 1994, when he disappeared, leaving behind a wife and a child. Family members said that they believed him to be dead; his file, however, noted that the Su family had lived better since his absence. Local officials suspected that Mr. Su had gone to Beijing to seek better wages, but officials were too overwhelmed to look for one man when thousands of peasants were flooding into the capital every day.

Hulan looked up to see Widow Xie’s face lined with worry. “This is Mr. Su’s personal file,” Hulan said. “Before I look at yours, is there anything more you want to tell me?”