Enigma of China(28)
“Don’t worry. I was supposed to eat with you, and now I’ll have to finish it all by myself.”
He asked for the bill, which came to a little more than three hundred, including the fee for her. She added her name and number to the receipt.
“Next time, call me directly.”
On his way out, he looked at his watch. It was almost twelve thirty.
It wasn’t pleasant to climb the steel steps of the overpass, but he did. He’d hardly done anything all day, yet he couldn’t shake off a feeling that he was burning up. He wiped his sweat-covered forehead with the back of his hand. Passing under him, the traffic flowed like a turgid river.
It reminded him of a stone bridge he’d crossed long ago, the fallen leaves crunching under his feet, the water murmuring under the arch… It was an elusive scene in his memory, flashing into his consciousness for a split second, and then fading into confusion.
He labored down to the other side of Yan’an Road. A high-rise loomed in the afternoon sunlight—the Wenhui Office Building on Weihai Road. It housed not only the Wenhui Daily newspaper but also the Xinmin evening newspaper and Shanghai Daily, an English-language newspaper, along with several smaller newspapers, all under the umbrella organization of the Wenhui-Xinmin Group, or Wenxin Group, for short.
The scene of the accident was near the intersection of Shanxi and Weihai Roads. Because of the constant flow of traffic at that location, there was no yellow tape cordoning off the area. Nor was there any sign of a policeman on duty.
Chen decided to take a walk around the area first. As if in mysterious correspondence, his cell phone rang: the traffic cop who had dealt with the accident was calling him back.
“Detective Wei was run down on Weihai Road as he turned in from Shanxi Road, heading east. Several witnesses claimed that’s what they saw. There’s no ruling out the possibility that he had walked past the Wenhui Office Building first and then was turning back, but it’s not likely. As for the vehicle that hit him, it was a brown SUV that was parked one block down on Weihai Road. Apparently it started up suddenly, sped west, hit him, and took off. It happened so fast that nobody saw anything clearly. According to one witness, the SUV seemed to slow down after hitting Wei, but only for a second, then it sped away and turned onto Shanxi Road. The driver might have slowed to take a look, but must have realized it was too late.”
“The SUV hit him head-on?” Chen asked.
“Yes. At a high speed.”
“But that means the SUV was in the wrong lane.”
“Drunk driving, Chief Inspector Chen. Luckily, it wasn’t right after school had let out, or it could have been much worse.”
“Thank you. Would you fax a report to my office? Provide as many details as possible. I’ll be back there soon.”
For the next half an hour, however, Chen continued to walk back and forth along Weihai Road, his phone clutched in his hand. There was something not right about the accident.
Weihai was a two-lane street. A westbound car wouldn’t have ended up in the lane alongside the Wenhui Building, unless the driver was drunk or someone’s car spun out of control during a too-swift left turn. Chen thought the chances of such a dramatic, disastrous turn of events were slim.
Once again, he walked past the Wenhui Office Building, this time catching sight of a makeshift noodle stall on the sidewalk. The stall consisted of two pots of boiling water and soup on portable propane gas heads, along with a variety of meat and vegetable toppings on display in a glass case. The chef-proprietor appeared to be a local resident, cooking and hawking his wares with a flourish as if he was in a Hong Kong gourmet documentary. He dipped a ladle of noodles into the water, took it out almost immediately, and added the topping.
Chen went over to the stall and sat at a rough wood table. He noticed there were two or three beers in an almost empty crate nearby.
“A bottle of beer, the roast duck as a cross-bridge dish first, and then the noodles.”
“We don’t serve beer at lunchtime. Those are for myself. But if you really want one, twenty yuan. It’s normally served Hong Kong style, but I’ll make an exception for you and serve the topping separately.”
“That’s great. That you serve cross-bridge, I mean,” Chen said.
“Do you know the story about it?” the proprietor asked good-naturedly and went on without waiting for an answer. “In the old days, a scholar was preparing for the civil service examination on a secluded island in Yunnan. His capable wife had to carry his meals across the bridge to him. Among his favorite foods was a bowl of rice noodle soup with assorted toppings. But because of the time it took to deliver them, the noodles lost their flavor, having sat too long in the soup. So she put the steaming hot chicken soup in a special container, the toppings and noodles in two others, and then mixed them after arriving at her husband’s place. That way, the noodles and the toppings still tasted fresh. Revitalized by the delicious noodles, the scholar threw himself back into his preparations and eventually passed the examination. So it’s called cross-bridge—”