Chapter 25: A (2/2)

“She’s traveling,” Jiang Zhengkai responded vaguely.  Except for those days when he had to work overtime, he had been coming to Uncle Cai’s every night since A-Jiao had been discharged from the hospital.  Sometimes it was to eat a bowl of noodles; other times it was to exchange some chit-chat with Uncle Cai.  It was a routine that he had settled into, just like how he would park his car in front of Ju’an Estates and smoke a cigarette before going home for the night.  There, he waited hopefully for the light in A-Jiao’s home to suddenly turn on.  Here, he desperately yearned for a woman to walk in and yell, “Uncle Cai!  A bowl of hand-cut noodles!”

After leaving Uncle Cai’s, he drove his car to Ju’an Estates as usual.  However, he stayed there for a very long time this night, because his work during the day irritated him greatly.  Right before he’d left the office, he had notified his colleagues at External Affairs to go to the post office and track down the recipient of A-Jiao’s wire transfer.  He hoped that by tracking down the wire transfer’s destination, he would be able to find out more information about A-Jiao or Xiaomei.

However, he didn’t care if the woman who lived here was really called A-Jiao or Xiaomei.  All he knew was that couldn’t let go of that woman, even though she was a prost.i.tute.

The next morning, Jiang Zhengkai didn’t go to work at the sub-bureau.  He first drove to the alley, where he picked up the pimp A-Tie and brought him to the Ju’an Road Police Station for questioning.

Inside the interrogation room, Jiang Zhengkai asked him, “A-Tie, where did A-Shun go these last couple of days?”

“Oh!  Yeah, he took a couple of days off.  His kid’s sick,” A-Tie replied.

“Then what about A-Jiao?  What do you know about her?” Jiang Zhengkai continued his questioning.

“A-Jiao?  She hasn’t been around for a while now,” A-Tie answered.  “She’s not a bad person, but she does have a bad temper and likes to beat people.  Other than that, I’ve got nothing.”

“Bad temper and likes to beat people, huh?”  Considering his interactions with A-Jiao, Jiang Zhengkai was inclined to agree.  “Then, what about Xiaomei?”

“She was a clever kid,” A-Tie sighed at Jiang Zhengkai’s mention of Xiaomei.  “She came out to work on the streets because her family needed money.  Of all the women in the alley, she was the most hardworking one.”

“Then let me ask you, what was her relations.h.i.+p with Zhu Yuping?”

“I don’t think they had a relations.h.i.+p,” A-Tie candidly replied.  “What would the two of them have had to do with one another anyway?  Oh, I remember now!  Xiaomei often asked Zhu Yuping to help her write letters home because she was functionally illiterate.”

“And what about A-Jiao?” Jiang Zhengkai changed the subject.

“A-Jiao?  She’s beautiful, liked to surf the internet, seemed like she was well-educated.  She didn’t really hang out with the other girls when she wasn’t working,” described A-Tie before pausing for a moment.  “She had a pretty good relations.h.i.+p with Xiaomei, actually.  Mostly because she didn’t bully Xiaomei.”

“Was Xiaomei was frequently bullied by others?” Jiang Zhengkai asked, focusing all of his attention on A-Tie’s eyes.

“Yeah, she was young, and she was small.  Even though she had been working in the alley for two or three years, the other women still liked to take their anger out on her.  I mean, these women are treated like s.e.x toys by men on a daily basis, so of course there’s a lot of pent-up anger and frustration,” A-Tie said matter-of-factly.  “Half a year ago, A-Jiao took Xiaomei under her wing, and the other girls in the alley stopped bullying her, because whoever picked on Xiaomei would be paid back with interest by A-Jiao.”

“Paid back?”  Jiang Zhengkai gently tapped the table.  “How would she pay them back?”

“Hehe, normally A-Jiao’s a pretty nice person, but if you f.u.c.ked with her, she could turn into a real nasty b.i.t.c.h.  Plus, she has backup, so no one in the alley wanted to mess with her,” A-Tie responded with a smile on his face.  “We’re obviously not going to pay anyone back by calling the police.”

“Then who was it that died in the first murder?” Jiang Zhengkai suddenly asked with feigned casualness.  He already knew what A-Tie meant by “backup”; A-Jiao must have had ties to the Triads.

“Xiaomei, wasn’t it?” A-Tie answered in astonishment.  “Wait, are you saying it wasn’t her?”

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“What was Xiaomei’s real name?” Jiang Zhengkai asked, ignoring A-Tie’s question.

“Real name?  n.o.body cares what your real name is in our line of profession,” A-Tie scratched his head.  “I think Xiaomei was Sichuanese and had the last name Lu.  I think I remember A-Shun mentioning it once.”

“And how often did A-Jiao work?” Jiang Zhengkai asked his last question.

“Her?  She worked when she felt like it,” A-Tie replied.  “She didn’t actually care all that much about money, which made her different from the other women in the alley.  After Xiaomei died, she worked harder for a while, but look at how she just up and disappeared for more than a month now.”