When they got back to the hotel, it was near six. She heard him telling Little Zhou to leave. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll take a taxi home.”

In her room, the chambermaid had prepared everything for the night. The bed was turned down, the window closed, and the curtain drawn. There was a pack of Virginia Slims by a crystal ashtray on the nightstand, an imported luxury that suited her status here. Everything had been prepared for a distinguished guest. As he helped her seat herself on the couch, she said, “Thank you, Chief Inspector Chen, for all you have done for me.”

“Don’t mention it. How do you feel now?”

“I feel much better now. Mr. Ma is a good doctor.” She motioned him to sit in the sofa. “Why did you call him Dr. Zhivago?”

“It’s a long story.”

“We are finished for the day, aren’t we? So please tell me the story.”

“You will probably not be interested in it.”

“I majored in Chinese studies. There’s nothing more interesting to me than a story about Doctor Zhivago in China.”

“You should have a good rest, Inspector Rohn.”

“According to your Party Secretary Li, you are supposed to make my stay a satisfactory one, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“But if you call in sick tomorrow, Party Secretary Li will hold me responsible.”

“I cannot take my evening walk along the Bund,” she pleaded in mock seriousness, but she felt a bit vulnerable, too, as she spoke. “I am alone, in this hotel room. Surely you could humor me.”

Perhaps he realized how she felt, her ankle sprained, her yin-yang system out of balance, in a solitary hotel room, in a strange city, where she had no one to talk to-except him. He said, “Fine, but you have to lie down, and make yourself comfortable.”

So she slipped off her shoes, reclined on the couch, and laid her feet on a cushion he placed for her. Her posture was modest enough, she thought, her dress pulled down over her knees.

“Oh, I’ve forgotten all about Mr. Ma’s instructions,” he said. “Let me take a look at your ankle.”

“It’s better now.”

“You have to take off the paste.”

When the gauze was removed, she was astonished to see her ankle had turned black and blue. “The bruise did not show in Mr. Ma’s office.”

“This yellowish paste is called Huangzhizhi. It is capable of bringing the inner injury to the surface, so you can heal more quickly.”

He went into the bathroom and came back with a couple of wet towels.

“The paste is no longer useful now.” He knelt down by the couch to wipe off the remainder and to rub her ankle. “Does it still hurt?”

“No.” She shook her head, watching Chen examine the bruise, making sure there was no paste left.

“Tomorrow you will be able to run like an antelope again.”

“Thank you,” she said. “So, it’s time for the story.”

“Would you like a drink first?”

“A glass of white wine would be perfect. What about you?”

“The same.”

She watched him open the refrigerator, take out a bottle, and come back with the glasses.

“You are making it a special evening.” She raised herself slightly on one elbow, sipping the wine.

“The story goes back to the early sixties,” Chen started, sitting in the chair drawn close to the couch, gazing down at the wine, “when I was still an elementary-school student…”

In the early sixties, the Mas had owned a used-book store, a husband-and-wife business. As a kid, Chen had bought comic books there. Out of the blue, the local government declared the bookstore “a black center of antisocialist activity.” The charge was made on the evidence of an English copy of Doctor Zhivago on its shelves. Mr. Ma was put in jail, where he was allowed to take with him, out of all his books, only a medical dictionary. Toward the end of the eighties, he was released and rehabilitated. The old couple did not want to reopen the bookstore. Mr. Ma thought of running a herbal drugstore with the knowledge he had acquired in prison. His business license application traveled from one bureaucratic desk to another, however, without making any progress.

Chen had been an entry level cop then, not the one in charge of “rectification of wrong cases.” When he heard about Mr. Ma’s situation, however, he managed to put in a word through Party Secretary Li and obtained the license for the old man.

Afterwards, Chen happened to talk to a Wenhui reporter, dwelling on the irony of Mr. Ma becoming a doctor because of Dr. Zhivago. To his surprise, she wrote for the newspaper an essay entitled “Because of Dr. Zhivago.” The publication added to the popularity of Mr. Ma’s practice.

“That’s why the old couple are grateful to you,” she said.

“I did little, considering what they went through in those years.”

“Do you feel more responsible now that you are a chief inspector?”

“Well, people complain about the problems with our system, but it is important to do something-for people like the Mas.”

“With your connections-” she paused to take a sip of her wine, “which include a woman reporter writing for the Wenhui Daily.”

“Included,” he said, draining his glass in one gulp. “She is in Japan now.”

“Oh.”

His cell phone rang.

“Oh, Old Hunter! What’s up?” He listened for several minutes without speaking and then said, “So it must be someone important, I see. I’ll call you later, Uncle Yu.”

Turning off the phone, he said, “It’s Old Hunter, Detective Yu’s father.”

“Does his father work for you too?”

“No, he’s retired. He’s helping me with another case,” he said, standing. “Well, it’s time for me to leave.”

He could not stay longer. She did not know about his other case. And he would not tell her about it. It was not her business.

As she tried to rise, he put a hand lightly on her shoulders. “Relax, Inspector Rohn. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. Good night.”

He closed the door after him.

The echo of his footsteps faded along the corridor.

There was a sound of the elevator bobbing to a stop and then starting to descend slowly.

Whatever reservations Inspector Rohn might have about her Chinese partner, and his possible involvement in a cover-up, she was grateful for this evening.

Chapter 11

Chen failed to reach Old Hunter. He had forgotten to ask where the old man had called from. He had been too preoccupied with telling the story of Dr. Zhivago in China to an attentive American audience of one. So he decided to walk home. Perhaps before he got there, his phone would start ringing again.

It rang at the corner of Sichuan Road, but it was Detective Yu.

“We’re in for it, Chief.”

“What?”

Yu told him about the food poisoning incident at the hotel and concluded, “The gang is connected to the Fujian police.”

“You may be right,” Chen said, not adding his own comment: not only with the Fujian police. “This investigation is a joint operation, but we don’t have to report to the local cops all the time. Whatever action you’re going to take, go ahead on your own. Don’t worry about their reaction. I will be responsible.”

“I see, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“From now on, call me at my home or on my cell phone. Send faxes to my home. In an emergency, contact Little Zhou. You cannot be too careful.”

“Take care of yourself, too.”

The food poisoning incident made him think of Inspector Rohn. First the motorcycle, and then the accident on the staircase.

They might have been followed. While they were talking with Zhu upstairs, something could have been done to the steps. Under normal circumstances, Chief Inspector Chen would have treated such an idea like a tall tale from Liaozhai, but they were dealing with a triad.

Anything was possible.

The triad might be proceeding on two fronts, in Shanghai and in Fujian. They were more resourceful than he had anticipated. And more calculating, too. The attempts, if that is what they were, had been made to seem like accidents, orchestrated so that there was no way to trace them to the perpetrators.