Death of a Red Heroine Read Free

night, he could smell the tangy breeze from the Huangpu River.
    Chief Inspector Chen should have stayed at the office, but he found himself alone in his apartment, working on a problem. Reclining on a leather-covered couch, his outstretched legs propped on a gray swivel chair, he was studying a list on the first page of a small notepad. He scribbled a few words and then crossed them out, looking out the window. In the afternoon sunlight, he saw a towering crane silhouetted against another new building about a block away. The apartment complex had not been completed yet.
    The problem confronting the chief inspector, who had just been assigned an apartment, was his housewarming party. Obtaining a new apartment in Shanghai was an occasion calling for a celebration. He himself was greatly pleased. On a moment’s impulse, he had sent out invitations. Now he was considering how he would entertain his guests. It would not do to just have a homely meal, as Lu, nicknamed Overseas Chinese, had warned him. For such an occasion, there had to be a special banquet.
    Once more he studied the names on the party list. Wang Feng, Lu Tonghao and his wife Ruru, Zhou Kejia and his wife Liping. The Zhous had telephoned earlier to say that they might not be able to come due to a meeting at East China Normal University. Still, he’d better prepare for all of them.
    The telephone on the filing cabinet rang. He went over and picked up the receiver.
    “Chen’s residence.”
    “Congratulations, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen!” Lu said. “Ah, I can smell the wonderful smell in your new kitchen.”
    “You’d better not be calling to say you’re delayed, Overseas Chinese Lu. I’m counting on you.”
    “Of course we are coming. It’s only that the beggar’s chicken needs a few more minutes in the oven. The best chicken in Shanghai, I guarantee. Nothing but Yellow Mountains pine needles used to cook it, so you’ll savor its special flavor. Don’t worry. We wouldn’t miss your housewarming party for the world, you lucky fellow.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Don’t forget to put some beer in your refrigerator. And glasses, too. It’ll make a huge difference.”
    “I’ve put in half a dozen bottles already. Qingdao and Bud. And the Shaoxing rice wine will not be warmed until the moment of your arrival, right?”
    “Now you may count yourself as half a gourmet. More than half, perhaps. You’re certainly learning fast.”
    The comment was pure Lu. Even from the other end of line, Chen could hear in Lu’s voice his characteristic excitement over the prospect of a dinner. Lu seldom talked for a couple of minutes without bringing the conversation around to his favorite subject—food.
    “With Overseas Chinese Lu as my instructor, I should be making some progress.”
    “I’ll give you a new recipe tonight, after the party,” Lu said. “What a piece of luck, dear Comrade Chief Inspector! Your great ancestors must have been burning bundles of tall incense to the Fortune God. And to the Kitchen God, too.”
    “Well, my mother has been burning incense, but to what particular god, I don’t know.”
    “Guanyin, I know. I once saw her kowtow to a clay image—it must be more than ten years ago—and I asked her about it.”
    In Lu’s eyes, Chief Inspector Chen had fallen into Fortune’s lap—or that of whatever god in Chinese mythology had brought him luck. Unlike most people of his generation, though an “educated youth” who had graduated from high school, Chen was not sent to the countryside “to be reeducated by poor and lower-middle peasants” in the early seventies. As an only child, he had been allowed to stay in the city, where he had studied English on his own. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chen entered Beijing Foreign Language College with a high English score on the entrance examination and then obtained a job at the Shanghai Police Bureau. And now there was another demonstration of Chen’s good luck. In an overpopulated