Enigma of China(85)
The American might not have been impressed by Chen’s command of English so much as he was by Gu’s connection to “a high-ranking Shanghai police officer.” For this sort of shikumen redevelopment project, right in the center of the city, official connections might have been the most crucial factor for it to succeed. The American probably knew that as well as she did.
“I begged him to help with the translation,” Gu went on. “I even mentioned a bonus in the event the loan was approved. Naturally, I had to keep my word, but he wouldn’t listen. When New World went public, I had no choice but to invest the bonus I’d promised in the shares of the IPO for him. It wasn’t a large bonus, just about ten thousand shares.”
She did a quick calculation in her mind. As a finance journalist, she happened to be familiar with the stock. After repeated stock splits, at least four or five of them by now, and at the present share price of over eighty yuan, that could add up to a sizable fortune.
But why was Gu telling her all this? It seemed so unlike the shrewd businessman she’d known him to be. Then she realized what was happening. Gu must have assumed he knew what was going on: a prominent Party cadre had brought a young girl to a private room in a fancy restaurant. So what could Gu do to help Chen out in this imagined romantic scenario? He was trying to make Chen seem even more of a catch, if possible, in her eyes—not only a rising Party official with a great future, but a Big Buck too.
“Cut it out, Gu. Don’t talk about business in the company of a finance journalist. Someday, she might write about my shady dealings with Big Bucks like you,” Chen said with a laugh. “For the record, I never agreed to any such bonus. For that translation, which was only about twenty pages in all, you paid me more than I could have made for translating twenty books. That was more than enough.”
“No. It was far from enough for such a successful project,” Gu insisted, waving his hand emphatically. He turned his attention to Lianping. “In today’s society, an incorruptible police officer is almost an endangered species. I admire him not for his position, but for all the things he’s done for the country. An ordinary businessman like me has to consider himself extremely lucky to have a friend like Chief Inspector Chen.”
“If I write a biography of Chen someday,” she said with a smile, “I’ll definitely include that part, Mr. Gu.”
“Please do, Lianping. You would be a fantastic biographer, providing all the intimate details. So let me share one more thing I’ve just learned about our chief inspector. His mother was in the hospital last month.”
“East China.”
“Yes. It’s a special yet expensive hospital. A number of the nutritional supplements necessary for her recovery are pricey and aren’t covered by medical insurance. They cost way too much for a cop like him to afford, so I left a gift card for her at the hospital. For once, the gift card wasn’t returned to me but instead it was cashed. The store manager contacted me to verify the name of the woman who cashed it in. It wasn’t his mother, but the widow of Chen’s colleague. So what could I say?”
“Come now. You’re painting a portrait of me as some kind of selfless model Communist, like Comrade Lei Feng. It was a gift card of such a large sum, my mother wanted me to give it back to you,” Chen said. “Detective Wei died in an accident last week, and his family needed help badly. So, on the spur of the moment, I gave your gift card to his inconsolable widow. It was your good deed, not mine. Good deeds will not go unrewarded, as my mother always says.”
Chen hadn’t told Lianping anything about it, but once he mentioned Wei’s widow, she remembered the incident.
“His mother is a wonderful woman,” Gu said. “You’ve met her, haven’t you?”
“No, I only met Chief Inspector Chen a couple of weeks ago.”
“For a woman of her age, she embodies Buddhist enlightenment. She believes in karma, and so do I,” Gu said, changing the subject unexpectedly. “Indeed, karma is seen everywhere in the world of red dust.”
“Yes?” she asked. The abrupt turn in the conversation mystified her.
“This morning I ran into Old Xiang of the Purple City Group, which is teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. He was hitting me up for an emergency loan. Only a few people know anything about it right now, so don’t write about it in your newspaper, Lianping. But did you know how the Purple City got its start? By selling fake medicine.”
Then it dawned on her. As a well-connected businessman, Gu might have heard something about Xiang and her. It wasn’t the sort of information she’d expect Gu to share, but with Chen hovering in the background, she understood what Gu was doing. Did Chen realize the purpose of Gu’s revelation? Probably. It wasn’t as if the chief inspector needed that kind of help, but Gu must have seen it as another opportunity to do a favor for Chen.