The adviser pinched a sheet of information between two fingers as he hopped out of the car and hurried at a trot into Master Qiao’s villa. Ignoring the bodyguards and servants who greeted him, he forced his old arms and legs to carry him up to the second floor as fast as they could. Before long, he reached Master Qiao’s bedroom and knocked hurriedly.
Master Qiao’s lazy voice came from inside. “Who is it?”
“Me!”
“Come in.”
The adviser pushed open the door. The instant his foot crossed the threshold, he cried, “Aiya!” and whipped his head away. Bodies were sprawled across the enormous bed. A pale, naked little backside rested on top of Master Qiao’s sagging belly. The scene was simply indecent.
“Boss! Why are you bringing them home now?!” The adviser’s heart tasted more bitter as gall.
Young, handsome Sammy clung to Master Qiao like a pale gecko. Compared with Third Sister Lai, who loved acting coquettish just as much as she loved throwing tantrums, Sammy looked positively innocent and sensible. He immediately pulled the blanket over his head and shyly curled into Master Qiao’s arms.
Master Qiao stroked the little head beneath the blanket with boundless affection. “Speak. What is it?”
The adviser stood as far away as possible in disgust and waved the information in his hand. Master Qiao sighed and patted Sammy, signaling for him to leave first. “My precious old Adviser, why are you always so jealous?”
“My Boss! Stop calling everybody precious this and precious that! Not one of them is easy to deal with! Look!” The adviser urgently shoved the information in front of his eyes. “This is the man who fought with your precious He Chu San at the charity gala! He wasn’t some poor brat sneaking in to eat and drink—he’s an ICAC investigator! The two of them were secretly talking in a corner that night, and the moment I walked over, they started fighting! Something is definitely wrong!”
Master Qiao took the paper and glanced over it. Besides the man’s name and employment history, there was a photograph of Lu Guang Ming: young and handsome, crescent-shaped eyes, with a sly, adorable look even in the photograph.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk. What a pity!”
“That’s it?” Master Qiao asked the adviser.
“Isn’t that serious enough?!”
“Oh, my Adviser.” Master Qiao pulled him over with one arm. “Can that aging heart of yours give itself a rest? Stop seeing ghosts in every shadow. If you can think of it, do you really think Consultant He couldn’t? He uncovered this brat’s identity ages ago. The night before last, he quietly gave him…” Master Qiao made a slicing gesture with one hand.
“He told you that?” The adviser looked suspicious. “He had the guts to kill an ICAC officer?”
8
“Killing is killing. This ICAC brat had to die. He uncovered the red-envelope bribes we used to give the Inspectors and started looking into Consultant He’s accounts. If we let him keep digging, he might have reached the Old Shopkeeper.”
“You personally saw Consultant He kill him?” the adviser still asked suspiciously.
“Kevin brought over a photograph of the corpse yesterday.”
“Where is it?”
“Kevin burned it right there! What were we supposed to do, keep it around until the cops came knocking?”
The adviser’s wrinkled face tightened. Something about this still felt increasingly wrong. If He Chu San was really this ruthless and meticulous, why had he deliberately left Xia Liu Yi alive back then and ended up getting two holes stabbed into himself? Were all gay men like Boss Qiao, so easily bewitched by a handsome man that they lost their senses? And Kevin—he was obviously completely bewitched by He Chu San too. Whose side was that brat actually on?
Master Qiao impatiently drove the adviser out. The adviser returned to the car and slumped into his seat, thoroughly dispirited. It had rained for several days straight, and only today had the weather finally cleared. It was late spring edging into early summer, the sunshine bright and beautiful, yet his heart remained heavy and frustrated.
…
At the same time, He Chu San, dressed in a plain black suit and wearing sunglasses, stepped off a small ferry at Tai O.
The Old Shopkeeper’s proxy was waiting alone at the pier. In complete contrast to his cultivated elegance in the underground tea room, today he wore ordinary cloth clothing and trousers and looked no different from the residents of the fishing village.
The heavy salt smell of the sea struck them as the two walked one behind the other across an old, gray-white wooden bridge that looked ready to collapse. The boards beneath their feet shuddered with creak, creak sounds. Layers of old, cramped stilt houses lined both sides of the narrow waterways. Wooden piles driven into the water supported the structures. The posts were rotten and the houses dilapidated, some roofs patched with canvas, others with planks in mismatched colors. Everything looked poor, cluttered, and aged. They saw almost no young people as they walked. Several elderly women washed clothing in seawater beside their homes, while old wooden racks nearby were covered in salted fish drying in the air. The entire place seemed quiet and desolate.
The proxy led He Chu San across bridges and through winding alleys deep into the fishing village, finally stopping outside a little stilt house no different from any of the others. He Chu San noticed several men stationed in front and behind the house. They were dressed like ordinary islanders, but their heavily muscled builds suggested bodyguards. His heart tightened.
This was the place.
The guards searched him from head to toe before allowing him through. He Chu San entered alone and glanced at the incense burner in the outer room. A black-and-white photograph of a woman could vaguely be seen on the altar, blurred by drifting incense smoke. He walked around the altar, passed through the empty inner room, and emerged onto a wooden platform facing the sea.
A plainly dressed man sat with his back to He Chu San on a little wooden chair, fishing.
Hearing He Chu San approach and stop, the man said in a calm yet commanding voice, “Sit.”
He Chu San sat on the other small chair beside him.
“Have you been here before?”
“No.”
The man watched the float on the water with complete concentration. His profile was as hard and sharply carved as though cut with an axe. “This place used to be called Tanka Village. The fishermen here were Tanka people. During the war in the forties, many refugees fled to this island. They had nowhere to go and no homes to live in, so they lived on the water, on boats. I was born on one of those filthy, broken boats. From childhood, my only dream was to leave this place. When I was fourteen, I took a little wooden boat and tried to row from here to Hong Kong Island. I rowed and rowed, from daylight into night. At night I couldn’t tell which direction I was facing. There was nothing around me but black seawater, so I could only keep rowing. Either I would reach land, or I would die in the sea. I rowed for two days and two nights. On the morning of the third day, my boat sprang a leak and sank. I swam with everything I had. In the end, I reached Hong Kong Island.”
Elio’s Notes: The Tanka are traditionally boat-dwelling fishing communities of southern China and Hong Kong, historically associated with living aboard boats and, in places such as Tai O, in stilt houses over the water.
After finishing, the man turned and looked at He Chu San.
A violent shudder ran through He Chu San as though electricity had passed through his entire body. He felt killing intent like that of a tiger—a bloodthirstiness that seemed to have tasted raw flesh and torn open human hearts. Those were not eyes that some pretentious, cultured proxy could imitate.
And He Chu San recognized him clearly.
The highest-ranking Chinese officer in the police force at the time, the Deputy Commissioner of Police—
Xie Ying Jie.
Xie Ying Jie saw the shock and fear in his eyes. “Can you swim?”
“No.”
“If the boat sinks, what will you do?”
“Since I’ve boarded your boat, I know the boat won’t sink.”
Xie Ying Jie turned back toward the trembling fishing float. “Heh. A young man who doesn’t know how high the sky is or how vast the sea.”
Elio’s Notes: The line riffs on the Chinese idiom 不知天高地厚, literally “not knowing how high heaven is or how thick the earth is,” which describes someone young, arrogant, or inexperienced enough not to understand their own limits. Here the source replaces “earth” with “sea,” tying the idiom directly to Xie Ying Jie’s story about crossing the water.
He jerked the fishing rod upward with force. A large fish came thrashing out of the sea.
“Tell me your plan.”
Leave a Reply