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Taken In April 20, Thursday morning
I awoke around 10:00 am, noting the time on the computer screen before me. I ducked into the unisex bathroom and splashed copious amounts of water on my numb face. I went directly to the Hill Bar, but it wasn't open, so I went around the side and snoozed on some chairs in the beer garden. I dozed on and off, the busy morning sound of mechanical mammals and insects going through their morning ritual upon the street below. It was about 11:30 am when I entered the bar. The place was empty, except for one person slouched upon the bar. From his hunched back and bowed head I recognized the unsavory form of a leech named Peter. I couldn't believe he was there at such an early hour. Had his life become such a wreck? Here it was, not even a weekend, and he sat there, drinking. He turned in my direction when he heard the door open, his face grizzled with several days of stubble, his eyes surrounded by puffy bags of gray skin, blood-shot in the corners. His face attempted to make a friendly smile, but it only managed to mold into a leering half-grin; villainous and full of hidden anguish.
I told him what little I recalled had occurred about the night before. I told him that an ATM had swallowed my card and I wanted to go to the bank and retrieve it. He said he would go with me, no doubt thinking if he did so, I would invariably give him some cash; he had become someone I loathed, because of his constant borrowing and his creative excuses as to why he still had no money. Everyone else had given up on him long ago. He was in debt to me for more than 5,000 RMB--about $600 USD. He owed Daisy all her savings, draining her slowly while promising her the world;she was the girl who helped me with the police report. We left after I paid his tab, of course.
When I got to the area I thought where the bank was, I felt at a loss. Nothing looked familiar. It was then that I realized there were a lot more banks on those closely packed streets than I previously realized. I went looking for the ATM room, but nothing at all seemed to be familiar. At some point I lost track of Peter, "typical" I thought. In the bank I found myself in, a smartly dressed woman approached me and I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It felt like several sets of eyes were watching me, which wasn't uncommon in China, but still, as I looked behind her, the ATM room attached to the bank didn't look familiar, so I left. I gave up and headed back to Hill. As I did this, I took notice of several police cars in the area. Now I had goose bumps as a chill ran down my spine. "Where was Peter anyway?" I wondered. A block from the bank I ducked behind a large steel gate in an alley way, peeking through the gap between the gate and the brick wall, back towards the last bank. I now saw Peter some distance away, talking with two uniformed policemen. He had a habit of back-talking the authorities and perhaps now he was entangled in just such a situation. I slipped out from behind the gate, realizing I was only being paranoid, perhaps a little jumpy from a lack of sleep.
Back now at Hill Bar and no wiser to the fate of my bank card, I decided to Email my sister about my dilema. My laptop was stored there with a small travel bag in a back room where the bar's fix-all man, Lao Shen lived. He greeted me with his usual broad smile and "Heyro Miko!", shaking my hand most genuinely. It was people like him that kept me in China so long. The friendship of one earnest and happy unschooled worker was more desirable to ten of the new middle class yuppies anytime. If I wanted to do some writing, reading or surfing the Net, I would go sit at one of the old fashioned cafe-style booths, located beside large floor-to-ceiling windows. These looked out onto lush greenery: bushy ferns, cast iron plants and bamboo, all overshadowed by immense Kapok trees, the sentinels of the park.
A dark mass of people soon entered the front door of the Hill. A contingency of policemen, the Jing Cha, stood just inside the doorway, their eyes adjusting to darkness inside. I was the only person in the bar, or so I thought. Peter seemed to magically appear in the same spot he'd been at before he'd come along with me. "How had he got into the bar? Why had he not sat with me, or at least said hello?" I thought. Then I knew he had something to do with those policemen. It would be some time later that I worked out how he was involved with my dilemma that day. From the clump of police came a squat bodied, older officer in a rumpled uniform. With a slight swagger, he approached my dark little corner of the bar. Staring at me with blood shot eyes, the harsh reek of liquor roiling off his breath, he leaned down towards me and said in horribly mangled English, "Paaashh-paawt-uh?" At first I had no idea what he had said. My look of confusion had not gone unnoticed, so he repeated more slowly, making it sound even more ridiculous, "P-a-a-a-shhh (pause) p-a-a-a-w-t-uh!" I shrugged my shoulders to convey I didn't comprehend what he had said. Sighing out a lung full of his putrid breath, he straightened up and looked toward the knot of officers and addressed a Chinese gentleman in a suit. Dragon breath rolled off some slurred Cantonese to him. The man looked over an officer's shoulder and said, "Passport" in clear English. He then glanced at dragon breath for approval, who in turn looked at me with a satisfied smile. I had none to offer.
"You!" I suddenly blurted out. I was suddenly struck by the realization that dragon breath was the Sergeant of the police station where I made my theft report several nights before! He had been obnoxious, strutting about like a pompous ass at the station house. Suit man spoke again, "They wish to see your passport". I pointed to dragon breath and said, "He knows my passport is stolen! His station took my report!" The suit man wore the plain, masked expression so typical of many Chinese men when confronted with the unexpected. He looked back at dragon breath the same way, speaking no more than two words, and I knew at once that he had not told the officer what I had just said. He had simply said in Chinese, "Mai yo", don't have. So much for honest translation. suit man was no more competent than the old drunk he addressed.
A young and handsome Cantonese boy who had only been working at the bar a short time, interrupted the conversation after the policeman said something else to me. Perhaps he didn't like that suit man had not translated properly for me, or he simply wanted to help because he knew me. He told me the police wished for me to come with them. At this point I looked at Peter, who was trying his best to fade into the wood grain of the bar and become invisible. It's worth mentioning the reason for Peter's behavior; he had been living in China on an expired visa, in fact several months out of date. I now felt compelled to draw attention to him now. I was fed up with his lecherous, scheming ways and his psychological torture of Daisy, the sweet girl who had helped me at the polic station.
"Hey Peter! Can you come here a moment? I need you to take care of my computer for me." The police now focused on Peter momentarily and I reveled in it! I put my computer in its case and handed it over to Peter. I asked him to contact Daisy so she could come translate for me at the station, but he said she was working. He looked at me with a hopelessness which he was so very good at portraying. It turned out that would be the last time I ever saw Peter, although miraculously I would get my computer back. I found out that alter on his luck caught up to him and he was thrown out of the country, still owing several people thousands of Chinese dollars.
I was escorted to a parked vehicle not far from the bar. I climbed in the back, pinned between an officer and suit man. I didn't understand his presence until much later. The entire ride he simply stared straight ahead, while I pondered this new and odd predicament. We arrived at the same police station that I had been to several days before. I was ushered into the same receiving room the night I had come with Daisy. I was left sitting there for over an hour, everyone ignoring me. When I asked about my passport, no one responded. When I stood up, an officer told me to "please sit", so I did. It was then that I realized that there was more going on than I realized. A terrible panic began to settle into the space behind my ribcage. My heart beat anxiously. I was experiencing a mild panic attack, one of many to come.
A young Chinese man and woman appeared in the doorway. The woman spoke for a moment with the officers who had brought me there, then she told me in very clear English to follow them out. We walked down a sidewalk toward the back of the police compound to a building in the rear. We walked into a large dark room that contained two conference tables, big enough to seat at least 15 people each. At the far end of the room at one table sat several off duty policemen. The woman, the man and myself sat at the other, alone. I noticed that they had badges hanging from necklaces, much like FBI or CIA. Later I discovered they were from the dreaded "Gong anju", the Public Security Bureau--PSB for short. They handled all things involving foreigners, especially visa problems.
The first question was asked by the woman. "What can you tell me about the ATM last night?" I looked at her with a blank look, then at the man and I stated, "What are you talking about?" My lost bank card was the last thing on my mind, I wanted to get my passport back.
The woman snorted like a grunting pig, and re-asked the question, "What can you tell me about an incident with an ATM you...used last night?" Small and smoky wheels began to grind and turn noisily in my head. I heard sounds, I saw flashes of images, but it all dissipated as soon as I became aware of it. Something amiss; what was this about? MY head began to throb at the temples.
I cleared my throat and told them, "I thought I was brought here because the police found my passport, or found something out about my stolen property!" The girl paused, pursing her lips. Now she had the blank look, borrowed from me, which she passed on to her partner, who shrugged and shook his head, raising open hands with a "no clue" gesture.
In the next few minutes I told them about the robber and then produced my police report from my pocket. If there had been a large clock on the wall, everyone would have heard it grinding to a halt. They studied the report, then she looked over toward the languishing officers at the other table. I noticed two of the officers who were involved in my case. One was the passenger of the police car that night, the other, the one who wrote the report.
"Those two officers know about it. That one took that report. The other drove in a car with me and my Chinese friend to where the incident occurred." These guys looked at one another and said nothing. I had the feeling they wished they could dissolve into the woodwork much like Peter had earlier that morning. The woman got up and along with the young man, approached these men and questioned them, handing the paper to the officer who had written the report. He glanced at me, then at the paper, played with his hat a moment, realizing he was in trouble and said something to the woman. It was in that moment that I realized something that I and Daisy had suspicions about–the police report had never been filed, and now I knew for sure. Something was being covered up, and the police in that room, at that other table, were involved.
The woman talked a moment more, then tapping the paper with her other hand, she returned to our table, handing me the report and sat down, clearly thrown off balance by this new information. Smoky wheels were turning in her head now. She talked a moment with her partner, eyeballed the other policemen, glaring it seemed, then she turned her attention back to me. A new look, only for a moment, came over her face, expressing what I believed to be an acknowledgment of my previous conclusion, I had been Shanghai'd, or more appropriately, "Guangzhou'd".
"We are sorry about your stolen property, but let's talk about why we are here. Do you, I mean can you, tell me about the ATM you destroyed last night?". cont. | prev. | main
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