Finishing his report, Lou hung up with the bureau and dug out Hua’s home number. He hesitated. He started pacing about the room, the girl sobbing like a broken electronic flute, and Pang still standing like a terra cotta figure in a Tang tomb.

Lou tried to rehearse what he was going to say to Hua’s widow, but it was a daunting task. He finally decided to wait until the next morning. To his surprise, a group from Internal Security, headed by Commander Zhu Longhua, arrived at the scene in less than twenty minutes. The appearance of Internal Security, trusted by the Party authorities in circumstances of “highly political sensitivity,” made sense-the dead was a cop possibly involved in a sex scandal-but their speediness was amazing, especially since it was already after midnight. Internal Security lost no time taking over. Without even listening to his report about the crime scene, they ordered Lou out as they started searching, questioning, and shooting pictures in the room.

Shoved out of the room by Internal Security, Lou and Pang were left looking at each other like two clay images. Neither of them knew what to do. Lou was in no position to argue with Internal Security, however baffling their way of doing the job. They had not even questioned Pang.

Pang handed Lou a cigarette. It was a Camel, far more expensive than the Flying Horse in Hua’s pant pocket.

“Have you seen Inspector Hua here before, Pang?”

“No. I have worked here about three years, and I have never seen him.”

“What about the girl?”

“Oh, Nini. She’s not a regular. A temporary girl without the K permit, and we follow the government regulations strictly.”

It was absurd that K girls had to receive professional ethics training before obtaining a K license, Lou reflected, but it was not his business for the moment.

“When did you come to work tonight?”

“Around eight. I did not know there was anyone in that room, there was nothing in the record. It doesn’t make sense, unless Nini sneaked Hua in before my shift.”

Lou thought Pang was telling the truth. As they finished their second cigarettes, Commander Zhu came out, shaking his head. He too lit a cigarette, drew the smoke into his lungs, and turned to address Lou.

“According to the girl, Hua was a regular customer here. Though only in his early fifties, he had problems getting an erection. So he usually took Tiger and Dragon Power, a drug smuggled in from south Asia. Very expensive on the black market, and effective too. Early this evening, he finished half a bottle of liquor, and popped in a double dose of Power. She was not aware of any difference in him, she said, except that he came twice that night, and the second time in the back. Exhausted, they both fell asleep. She was totally unaware of the change in the man lying beside her.”

Lou was stunned. Through the half open door, he caught a glimpse of the girl trembling hysterically at the foot of the sofa bed. How could Internal Security have obtained a confession from her so quickly? Zhu stepped back into the room and shut the door after him.

Lou thought of the earlier remarks made by Pang, who looked more puzzled than before. Lou accepted another cigarette from him. Doubts rose in the spiraling smoke. As the head of the special case squad, Hua was known to have been a capable cop and a good man. He had never heard of the detective engaging in indecent activities. Lou also recalled the blank, almost drugged expression on the girl’s face. If things had happened the way Zhu had just described, she should have reacted differently when Sergeant Lou entered the room earlier.

“A hundred coffins. Perhaps the first one,” Lou murmured in spite of himself, grinding out the cigarette.

“Coffin?” Pang repeated in utter confusion.

Lou did not explain. More suspicions barged into his mind. Hua’s colleagues had worried about his last assignment. Xing was reputed to be one with a long arm reaching into the skies. To investigate the high-ranking officials behind Xing was to bring a hornet’s nest about one’s ears.

In a recent press conference, the premier of the Chinese government had made a statement about the corruption eating up the system like cancer. “To fight against those corrupt Party officials, I have prepared one hundred coffins. Ninety-nine for them, one for myself.” It was not a pompous speech to impress the audience. With those Party officials interwoven into “a gigantic net covering the heaven and earth,” it was not inconceivable that the premier might fall as a victim.

“Have you seen the latest episode of Judge Bao on TV? The swarthy-faced judge who carries a coffin for himself all the way to the palace.”

“Judge Bao?” Pang repeated. “You mean the legend of the incorruptible Judge Bao in the Song dynasty?”

The premier’s coffin metaphor might have been an echo from the old legend. In his efforts to punish law-breaking officials, Judge Bao pulled a coffin all the way to the emperor, as a token of his determination to fight to the bitter end. Now, about a thousand years later, Hua had met an infamous end shortly after he had gotten a similar assignment.

Once again Zhu came out. “Lou, you don’t have to stay here anymore. It has been a long night for you, we know. We are going to send Hua and Nini to the hospital for tests, and put him into the mortuary afterward. You may notify his family if you want to.”

It was the last thing Lou wanted to. Hua had only a sick, old wife left behind. Their only son, an educated youth, had died in a tractor accident in the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. Lou wondered if the old woman could survive the blow of losing her husband too.

“I’ll go to the hospital too. After all, Hua was my colleague for many years. It is up to me to accompany him, I think, for the last part of his journey.”

Lou drove at the back of the convoy of vehicles that took Hua’s body to a special army hospital. As before, Lou had to wait outside in the corridor, watching the old cop under the white sheet pulled in, followed by Internal Security. Again, he could do nothing but smoke, affixing a second cigarette to the butt of the first one. All these years, Lou recalled with a bitter taste in his mouth, Hua had smoked Flying Horse, one of the cheapest brands. It spelled a face loss in this gilded age, but Hua had no choice. The medical bill for his wife was no longer covered by the state-run company on the edge of bankruptcy. How could Hua have had the money to be a regular customer in a karaoke club-with Flying Horse in his pocket? Lou added a third cigarette to the first two. It looked almost like an antenna, trembling in a pathetic effort to catch imperceptible information from the surrounding blank walls.

Initial test results came out. The medical examination proved that the girl had had sex earlier that night and the remaining semen detected in her vagina was from Hua. The autopsy had to wait until morning. According to the doctor, an overdose of the Tiger and Dragon Power could have led to a heart attack. Internal Security had found a package of the drug in Hua’s pocket.

That was the last nail knocked into the coffin. Lou staggered. The cell phone started ringing like bells. Calls from people both in and out of the bureau. He was surprised at the speed the news spread around. It was still early. Everyone was shocked, and no one believed that Hua could have done something like that.

Lou even got a long-distance call from Yu Keji, nicknamed Old Hunter, who was a retired Shanghai cop with a national police information network. Perhaps people did not have to be too cautious talking to a retired man. Old Hunter seemed to know a lot about the Xing case assigned to Detective Hua.

“I don’t believe a single word of it, Sergeant Lou. I’ve known Hua for twenty years. All that must have been a setup,” Old Hunter said. “Have you found anything suspicious?”