She got up again, aware of the wistful expression on his face. “I’ll take a look upstairs and tell him you’re here. You may have something to say to him.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I have to leave now,” he said, rising too, “for a lunch appointment.”

He was going to find a maid for her. That could be a move crucial to the investigation. The maid had to be someone he himself was able to trust, making it out of the question to approach the bureau for help.

Hardly had he stepped out, however, when he realized that he didn’t have her phone number. So he turned back in haste.

Jiao was speaking on her cell phone again. She said something hurriedly at the sight of him.

“Oh, I forgot to ask for your phone number, Jiao.”

“Sorry, I forgot about that too,” she said, covering the phone with her palm. “I have yours. I’ll call you in a few minutes, so you’ll have mine too.”

Leaving again, closing the door after him, Chen decided to walk for a while. In the late summer morning, he heard cicadas screeching, sporadically, in the green foliage of French poplars that lined along the street. The area had belonged to the French Concession in the early years of the century.

He took out his phone and started dialing White Cloud, but he halted after pressing only the first three numbers. It wasn’t only too much of a risk for her. She was too young and too fashionable. No matter how she tried, she wouldn’t pass as a maid. After a minute’s hesitation, he dialed Old Hunter, explaining the situation.

“So I need to find a maid for Jiao. A reliable one. Not really for her, but for us. Someone who can work inside while you patrol outside.”

“I’ll talk to my old wife about it. She knows quite a lot of people,” Old Hunter said. “I’ll call you back as soon I have any news.”

Putting the phone back into his pants pocket, Chen looked ahead to see a stinking tofu peddler bending over a portable stove and wok on a shaded side street. Chen realized he must have smelled it first, the familiar tang strong in a breeze. A typical Shanghai snack with a special pungent flavor, which he liked – an unlikely moment for temptation, which he tried to resist.

Still, he found himself turning down the side street, at the end of which he could take a shortcut to the subway station. He had walked this route before. It was also quieter here, better for his thinking.

If there was anything interesting to the visit this morning, it was the extraordinary concern Jiao had, once again, exhibited for Xie. It was perhaps more than what was usual between a student and his teacher, but he couldn’t identify the ulterior motive that Song – and Chen himself – had suspected.

He passed by a wrought-iron gate across the entrance to a lane. In front of it squatted a man wearing a black Chinese-styled short-sleeved shirt, smoking, who looked up at the passing Chen from under a white canvas hat pulled low, shading most of his face. It was not an uncommon sight in the city, with so many people laid off in the recent years. The smell of the stinking tofu floated nearer, more pleasantly pungent…

But then Chen became aware of footsteps hurrying up from behind. Glancing over his shoulder, he glimpsed the white-hatted man rushing over to him, wielding an iron bar in one hand, cursing between clenched teeth, “You busybody bastard!”

Chen hadn’t been trained at the police academy, but his reflexes were sharp. He ducked his head to the side and swirled around. The assailant, having put the weight of his body behind his blow, missed, lurched forward. The two were now in a typical kongfu hand-push position. Chen swung his arm over, bearing it down hard on the back of the attacker, who staggered, his blue-dragon-tattooed forearm flailing out for support. Before Chen could deliver a second blow, however, he caught sight of another black-attired man dashing across from Shao-xing Road, brandishing an identical iron bar. The two gangsters could have been sitting in ambush, waiting for him at the intersection.

“You must have taken me for another, brothers,” Chen said, trying to think of Triad jargon as the first gangster was regaining his balance. “The flood is surging into the Dragon King Temple.”

“Who are your brothers? An ugly toad let its mouth water at a beautiful swan! You should pee and take a look at your own reflection,” the second man said, charging toward him in a lightning-fast movement.

Dodging, Chen counterattacked with his right fist. He felt the iron bar brushing against his left shoulder. Reeling, Chen fell backward, his head bumping against the umber brick wall of a two-story house at the street corner. But he managed to kick out simultaneously, his feet hitting the abdomen of the second thug, who then doubled over in pain. Chen moved a step to the left, blocking instinctively with his numbed left arm another blow from the first one. Panting, swaying, he sized up the situation with a sinking heart. He could cope with one, but against two, both wielding iron bars, he had no chance.

His only way out would be to cut back to Ruijing Road. With more people moving around and a cop standing there – possibly a plainclothes Internal Security as well – the gangsters might not be able to chase him all the way, especially if he raised hue and cry in the broad daylight.

Pivoting, he hurtled back toward the main street, with the two gangsters running after him.

Neither a cop nor an Internal Security man was in sight as he sprinted onto Ruijing Road.

Only a couple of pedestrians were visible in the intersection, neither of them choosing to do anything, watching like the spellbound audience at an absurd scene in a martial arts movie.

The door of Xie Mansion was closed, as usual. It was then that his glance swept across the street, to the small café he had visited. On the front door flashed a neon sign saying “open.” And there was a back door behind the partition wall, he recalled.

He spun round and dashed across the street, nearly colliding with a bike. A couple was emerging from the café, chatting and holding hands. He ran through them, sending the woman sprawling against the window and the man flinging his arm in rage. Bursting into the café, to the consternation of both the customers and waitress, he closed the door and locked it behind him, before slipping out through the back door and darting into a small lane.

It was only a matter of a minute or less before the gangsters started to bang on the front door, but it was enough time for him to escape the lane without the two barking at his heels. Turning onto Shaoxing Road, he thought he heard terrible shouts and crashes somewhere in the lane.

A taxi sped along. Waving his hand frantically, Chen rushed toward it and hurried in, gasping for breath.

“Drive.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere. Drive.”

It wasn’t until after the taxi swung into Fuxing Road that Chen was capable of reconstructing the encounter in clear sequence.

Ambush. No question about it. The gangsters could have been following him for days. A couple of times, he had walked along Shao-xing Road and turned down the side street as a shortcut to the subway station. The attackers had stationed themselves at the intersection, waiting for him whichever way Chen might have turned.

Judging by their clothing, the iron bars, the tattoo on one’s arm, and their jargon, the two were undoubtedly Triad members. They didn’t try to disguise it.

But he couldn’t remember having ruffled the feathers of any particular organization. Of late, there had been a special squad formed at the bureau for the purpose of coping with organized crime in the city. His Special Case Squad’s main responsibility was dealing with politically special or sensitive cases. Thanks to his connection to Triad-related people like Gu, Chen had been able to keep himself out of troubled water.