“Like his other students? Don’t try to pull my leg anymore. You went so far as to provide a false alibi for him. That night you came home quite early as I recall. Why?”

“He is incapable of harming people – incapable of killing a fly. He was being set up. I had to help.”

“Help? Help by posing naked for him and risking perjury for him?” “Mao” raised his voice. “You told me you never knew him before going to him as a student. That’s another lie. He went out of his way to help you – as early as back in your orphanage days.”

“I didn’t really know.”

“Now he’s a legend in Shanghai, with a mansion worth a fortune, and a fabulous collection too.”

“What do you take me for?”

“How can you care for such a pathetic guy?”

Was that possible? While Chen had observed something between Xie and Jiao, he had never really contemplated that possibility?

Still, Jiao could have been drawn to Xie. Not necessarily because of anything material, but because of something spiritual in her mind. An imagined continuation of Shang’s world, which was shattered by Mao. It might also have lent meaning to the tragic life of the young girl, symbolically, for her world, too, was being shattered by Mao’s shadow.

“Do you care for me as a human being? No, I’m nothing but an object of your fantasy – like a vase, a decoration, a Mercedes, a piece of property.”

“Are you out of your mind? It’s for your sake that I purchased that scroll. It cost enough for five Mercedes.”

“No, you bought it for your sake. For your fantasy of being Mao.”

“I proposed that buyout to Xie for your sake as well. He would be nothing without that damned house of his.”

“You’re the one behind the offer made by the real estate company! I should have guessed – you with your connections to both the black and white ways.”

“But for Chen’s interference, Xie would have been homeless today. Now listen to me. Whoever stands in my way will be punished. Not even your Mr. Chen with all his connections. Next time he won’t get away with only a warning from my little brothers.”

“So that’s why he suddenly left the city? You’re capable of anything!”

“Yes, I’m capable of getting rid of anybody that’s in my way. And don’t dream that anybody will help you get away from me. No one under the sun can ever do that. Not Chen, not Xie, not Yang -”

“Yang? Why are you talking about Yang?”

“That bitch tried to take you to other parties – to other men.”

“What?” Jiao jumped up from the bed, which squeaked and squealed. “How could you -”

“Use your fucking brain!” “Mao” snarled. “Who else cares for you?”

“You care only for yourself. You fuck me just because Mao fucked my grandmother.”

“Only I’m Mao, the son of the Heaven, and you can be nobody else’s – nobody else.”

Chen was sure that the man on the bed was insane. He wasn’t merely imitating Mao, he believed he was Mao.

“But Yang -” Jiao couldn’t finish the sentence, wracked by an outburst of sobbing.

“I would let down all the people in the world rather than have any of them let me down. To make revolution is not to invite people to dinner, you stupid woman.”

Chen recognized the first sentence as a quote from Cao Cao, a Han-dynasty statesman Mao admired. And the second was a familiar quote from the Little Red Book, a favorite line the Red Guards would quote while beating and smashing people and things at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

But the man’s comment also implied that he had killed Yang – that he’d done so since, in his logic, she had become a threat. Killing her and leaving her body in the garden could have taken care of Xie, another threat, had Jiao not unexpectedly provided an alibi for the old man.

“You are a crazy monster, killing people like weeds,” Jiao shrieked hysterically.

“You ungrateful bitch!” He slapped her face hard.

“You bastard of Mao -”

Her protest was replaced by a muffled sound. “Mao” must be stopping her from shouting. A disturbance in the room of a young single woman at night could draw attention from the neighbors.

Chen sprang up, placing his hand on the door, though not sure what exactly to do. Domestic violence wasn’t a priority for him at the moment, and he might be able to learn a lot more from their fight.

He tripped over something in the closet, and nearly stumbled. It was the broom. He was transfixed by the bulging sensation under his foot – something tangibly hard inside the coir fiber of the broom head. He bent over and examined it in the glow from the night-light. A worn-out broom head, but with a relatively new binding thread.

Jiao could have unraveled the coir, inserted something inside, and rebound the fiber.

What could be hidden inside?

He touched the broom head again. whatever was inside appeared to be square in shape. Something like paper. Not just one or two pieces, but a stack of them. The size was smaller than legal-size paper, possibly a notebook, except that it did not feel like a notebook with a hard cover.

What he had learned from Diao came back to him. About Shang’s passion for pictures and her photography equipment. Inside could be the pictures of Shang and Mao – possibly in their most intimate moments, in the midst of the rolling cloud and rain.

The presence of the broom in the bedroom closet now made sense. She didn’t want to leave the broom in the kitchen, where a maid could use it just like any broom. But in the closet here it was safe and acceptable to her, psychologically. That would explain her choosing not to use this broom a short while ago.

Also, it provided an insight to that surrealistic painting. Her unconscious might have produced a revenge fantasy, in which broom swept over the Forbidden City. The lines by Mao appeared, ironically, so proper and right in context. The concern of the Beijing government was not unfounded.

He took out his pocketknife, ready to cut open the broom head in the faintly-lit closet.

It was really a Mao case after all.

“Chen, that bastard, strikes from the dark -”

Chen was stunned by the mention of his name, as his knife was poised just inches above the broom head. He hadn’t made a move against anyone through his connections in the city government, except for lobbying for Xie Mansion to be given the status of a historical site. But somebody else might be paying attention to “Mao.”

“His disappearance wasn’t the result of the warning from my little brothers. What he’s really up to, I don’t know.”

“Mao” was Mao, who, paranoid that everybody was plotting against him, killed his hand-picked successor Liu Shaoqi, and then the next one, Ling Biao, not to mention thousands of high ranking Party officials who had been loyal to him.

“And he’s connected with that bastard cop who came to my office for information about you. I got rid of him, though.”

Song – the lieutenant could have uncovered Jiao’s connection to “Mao,” approached him, and, to “Mao,” posed a threat.

“Yes, you have to say yes to me, say yes!” “Mao” shouted. Yes echoed in the bedroom.

Jiao didn’t respond.

The silence thundered over Chen. When “Mao” stopped his monologue, the bedroom was shrouded in stillness, except for his labored breathing.

Chen opened the door further to see before him an astonishing tableau. “Mao” sat naked on top of Jiao, straddling her abdomen, his back toward the closet door, his muscles stretched taut, tremulous, his hand rising up from her mouth, as if having just given up the effort to stop her shouting. She lay motionless, her white legs spread wide, her pubic hair darkly visible.

Only a tenth of a second, but long enough for all the details to start etching themselves onto Chen’s consciousness.

“You -” “Mao” abruptly dropped his Hunan accent. “I did all that for you. Without you, without -”

Wrenching open the door completely, Chen whirled headlong, flinging himself forward, but stumbled over the broom that was falling out of the closet.