The Master of Rain Part 33

The inspector had a thin, hawkish face, but a disarmingly genial manner. He'd already explained to them that he had come to Shanghai only after ten years in French Indochina, first in Saigon and then Hanoi. There was something weary about him, Field decided, not so much cynical as plain tired, as if the heat had finally got to him.

He couldn't imagine the heat not getting to everyone, in the end. Not even his new lightweight suit was enough to prevent him from sweating.

The inspector spoke English with a heavy French accent and moved his hand in slow circular motions as he talked, pausing as a Vietnamese officer came in to refresh their coffee.

"The girl," he said. "A prost.i.tute."

Caprisi edged himself forward in his seat, cradling his cup. "Not Blood Alley."

"Cla.s.sy."

"Well . . ."

"A Russian." The inspector waved his hand again, as if this were sufficient explanation. "I know." He put his feet down and looked at the paper on his desk, then returned to his previous position. "Lu . . ." He shrugged. "It's not his style, no?"

"The girl lived in his flat."

"She was his? He has so many."

"Yes. She was one of his women."

"He is greedy. Like a Chinese." He cleared his throat and looked briefly at Chen. "So you think that he . . . you know? She was stabbed. Many times . . . In the v.a.g.i.n.a you say?" He grimaced.

"Yes."

"And it was Lu, you think?"

"We certainly believe he knows who it was."

Caprisi had not touched his croissant, so Field pulled over his plate and began eating. He was suddenly ravenously hungry.

"There are no other cases . . . there has been nothing similar here?" Caprisi asked.

"Here?" The inspector shrugged, as if to say such things could not possibly happen on French territory. "No." He thought about it some more, head tilted to one side, before shaking his head. "No."

Twenty-five.

They pulled up outside a three-story house with an open balcony on the first floor, hidden behind ornate bal.u.s.trades: number 3, Rue Wagner. Caprisi leaned forward and looked up at it. His expression reflected the nervousness Field felt. "Know how many men Lu has at his beck and call?" the American asked.

"Twenty thousand."

"Right. An army. A f.u.c.king army. What do you think, Chen? Leave our guns in the car?"

The Chinese detective turned around, his mouth tight. "Let them disarm us."

There was no one on the veranda, but as they climbed the stone steps to the entrance, one of the big wooden doors swung back to allow them to pa.s.s into a gloomy hallway with a black-and-white-checkered stone floor. At first, Field could not see who had opened the door, but as one man in a dark suit stepped forward, he saw another in the background, leaning against a gla.s.s-fronted gun cabinet that was well enough stocked for the outbreak of a war.

Both men were Russian, and the one closest, who was bald, indicated with his hand that he wished them to give up their weapons. Caprisi reached reluctantly into his pocket and handed over his revolver. Field followed suit. Chen hesitated, but once he, too, had obliged, they were ushered toward the stairs and left to climb them on their own.

Field wanted to look back but resisted the temptation. The staircase was wide, the floor above gloomy, too. The place felt like a funeral parlor.

They walked slowly toward a pair of doors that opened into a large room with shutters closed and thick, dark red curtains half-drawn, the only light coming from a dull lamp in one corner. Lu sat facing them, his legs resting on a footstool while a Chinese girl in a silk dressing gown ma.s.saged his feet. He dismissed her and beckoned them toward him, indicating that they should sit on the two chairs that appeared to have been placed opposite him specifically for their visit. He showed no sign of recognizing Field from the altercation in the Majestic.

Chen was left to stand.

Lu sat in a low leather armchair, between a Chinese cabinet and a grand piano bedecked with framed photographs. It was a moment or two before Field realized that they were pictures of girls-his girls, Lena and Natasha Medvedev ostentatiously to the fore. They were studio photographs, similar to those one saw of film actresses like Bebe Daniels and Lillian Gish.

Field stared at them.

Lu opened and closed his right hand slowly, as if stretching his fingers.

"Tea?"

"Yes," Caprisi said.

Lu hit a bell and within a second a houseboy appeared.

Lu coughed once. His lungs sounded heavy, and his complexion, as Field had noticed the other night, was sickly, his cheeks scarred. His expression was sour, his mouth turned down. His eyes were small but piercing, and, if his body appeared weak, his eyes revealed a quick mind and a soul consumed, Field thought again, by burning anger and barely suppressed aggression.

"You wish to speak to me?" he asked once the houseboy had gone. He raised his hands and placed them together, two sets of portly, manicured fingers resting against each other beneath his chin. He spoke English well but quietly, with an accent that clipped the ends of some words, but not others, so that "wish" was perfectly enunciated, but "speak" half-lost. His voice was cold.

"About Lena Orlov," Caprisi said.

"Lena, yes." He nodded.

"We're obviously sorry to trouble you about it."

Lu nodded again. "I spoke to your colleagues in the French police."

"But we're conducting the investigation. Excellent as our colleagues are, you would expect us to wish to speak to those involved."

"How am I involved?"

The houseboy came in with a tray and placed it on a table next to Lu's chair. Caprisi waited until he had withdrawn. " 'Involved' is perhaps the wrong word. Connected."

"How am I connected?"

Caprisi shifted uneasily in his seat. "Lena Orlov was living in a flat which we have been led to believe belonged to you."

Lu frowned, tapping the bottom of his chin with his fingers. "Happy Times block?" he asked himself, as if trying to recall it. "Yes, I believe it is owned by one of my companies. That is all."

Field could see that, for the Chinese, this was a game. Recalling the hostility in evidence at the Majestic, he wondered how long it would last.

"You didn't allow Lena Orlov to live there for free?"

"Why would I wish to do that?"

"So she was paying rent?"

"I do not know. Perhaps she had a relationship with one of my men." He shrugged, to emphasize the extent of his disinterest. "I do not know. I have many companies, many men. I cannot know what is happening with them all."

"So you did not know her personally?" Caprisi asked, his eyes conspicuously drawn to the photograph of Lena on the grand piano.

"I know many people, Officer."

"So you knew Lena?"

"This city has many beautiful women to admire."

There was something in the way he said this-the grotesque satisfaction of a man of humble peasant origins who has risen far enough to buy the right to abuse women he could once never have dreamed of even meeting-that so outraged Field that he had to restrain himself from getting to his feet. He looked at Caprisi and saw a muscle twitching rapidly in the American's cheek. For the first time he felt naked without his revolver.

His aggression dissipated as he sensed the power of this Chinese man. Field could see how often and with what little consideration death was dispensed with a curt wave of one of those hands.

"So you did know Lena?" Caprisi asked.

"I knew the girl. I know many."

Caprisi was sweating now and he wiped his forehead and took out his notebook. "Do you mind if I take notes?"

Lu looked unsettled for the first time, waving his hand at them and frowning deeply. "Better not."

"We are detectives, Mr. Huang."

"You are police."

Caprisi left his notebook on his lap but didn't open it. "Lena Orlov was not, then . . . You knew her, but she did not . . . You had no arrangement with her?"

"Arrangement?"

"She was not a concubine?"

He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the idea of having such a formal relationship with a Russian woman.

"There was no relationship?"

"What do you mean relationship?"

Caprisi sighed, leaning forward in his chair. "Mr. Huang, we have no wish to be difficult, but you will appreciate that Lena Orlov was murdered with extraordinary brutality, even by the standards of Shanghai."

"You don't like Shanghai?"

Caprisi bent his head.

"We both find it an exciting city," Field said.

Lu shifted his eyes slowly, looking at Field for the first time. "Exciting, yes."

"Perhaps the greatest city on earth."

"Greater than London? Paris? New York?"

"Their equal. An example of harnessing the benefits and strengths of two cultures."

"Or their faults." Lu's face was impa.s.sive.

"And their faults."

"Lena was one of your girls," Caprisi said more bluntly.

"My girls?" Lu had raised his hand, an ivory bracelet on his wrist trailing down half the length of his forearm. "We spoke a couple of times. I did not know she was living in a flat we owned."

"You had no idea she lived in the Happy Times block?"

"Why should I know? I cannot know everything." He smiled at Field, as if now considering him an ally.

"Lena was paying rent?"

He shrugged again, as if this was becoming absurd. "How can I know?"

"But you had met her?"

"Met her? Yes, I'm sure." He gestured at the photographs. "There are many beautiful women in Shanghai, Officer. I meet many."

"It is not possible that you-or one of your men-owned her and gave her to someone else? Lent her."

Lu was still frowning. "My men . . ." He shrugged.

Field could see this was pointless. He edged forward in his seat and looked across at Caprisi, but the American didn't move, his face fixed on Lu's. Field wondered if Caprisi would produce the notes Lena had made but now considered that to do so would be a mistake.

"The doorman of that building . . . the block owned by your company. He was removed, taken to the Chinese city, and then beheaded."

"I had not heard it."

"It does not concern you?"

"Concern me, perhaps. He was a communist?"

"No."

"Some are too enthusiastic. Many are accused. These are dangerous times."

"But you had not heard that a doorman of your building was taken away and summarily-"