Chapter 8

A Clear Blue Sky

A Novel Detective

I was escorted back to the main building as the two young PSB officers talked with a few policemen, then left in their own car. Inside, instead of being seated on the wooden couch by the reception desk as before, I was led to a small room adjacent to that desk where a long and wide wooden table dominated the space. Only two chairs stood on the back side of the table, so I walked around and sat down. Another man, Chinese, squatted in a corner. He looked to be from the lower working class, most likely there for stealing something. Another man, or I should say boy, stood guard at the door. He was interesting only by the fact that he was trying to appear human. I thought of him as "Monkeyboy".

He didn't wear a policeman's uniform. He had on army fatigues and he wore weight lifter's gloves--the kind with half the fingers cut off. He wore military style boots and he looked at me with dull, unintelligent eyes. He simply stared at me, so I gave him a Robert Dinero, "You lookin' at me? You lookin' at me?" challenge. He just kept staring, then he walked over to a barred window to one side of the room and brought up something thick and disgusting from the dark regions of his throat and spat it out through the bars, then he walked back, still watching me and parked himself by the door. I stared back a while, a half smile on my face, showing him I had no fear and he could stare all he wanted. He finally looked away, realizing I wasn't like the Chinese he was used to intimidating with his demeanor, and played with his stubby, short fingers, which looked as if they hadn't been washed in a week. He then attempted to wedge one grimy little digit into one of his nostrils and later inspect what he laboriously spent a full half minute to disengage from the shallow recesses of his intertwined nasal and brain cavity.

Later, they came for the skinny man, who Monkeyboy dragged out rather roughly and they disappeared. Shortly after I heard screams from another part of the complex and I at once knew that the small thief was being beaten. about an hour later he was brought back and he acted as if he had trouble standing on his feet or arching his back. He shifted constantly on the balls of his feet, groaning and sighing, never opening his eyes. Monkeyboy stood at the door again, leaning against the jam, glancing at me with his incredible dull, "No lights on in the attack" look. I tried something. I stood up and walked slowly around the side of the table toward him. He stood up straight right away and approached me with open hands, arms at length. I looked passed him at the wall. he tried to push me back, but I pointed over his head, I said in Chinese, "I see the time." Then I turned back and sat down, smiling at him as he glared at me, what else could the moron do? Then I thought, "Nobody knows I am here" and I realized I could be in for some very real trouble. There was already two stories of foreigners who had mysteriously died in recent years; one a covered up murder on the streets by the PLA, the other, a man taken in and beaten to death by police.

Later a uniformed policeman showed up, said something to Monkeyboy and took his place. The policeman looked at the man in the corner and said something to him, with only a grunt for a reply, then he asked me in fair English, "You want eat?" I said yes, and water please? He left momentarily and came back about ten minutes later with a Styrofoam container, chopsticks and a plastic cup of water. I opened up the container and ate heartily. It wasn't bad actually, probably the same things the officers were eating. Some steamed green vegetable, an egg and pork mixture, along with an ample helping of rice. I had not eaten since mid-afternoon the day before, so this might as well have been a rib-eye steak. At some point the thin man was removed and never returned. I on the other hand sat there in that chair, slept on folded arms on the table or walked around occasionally for the next 24 hours. Sometime in the morning I was served more food, and again in the afternoon.

Finally, around 4:00 pm or 5:00 pm I was brought out into the reception area and asked to sit upon the wooden bench. A bit later two gentlemen, one much older than the other, came in and the older gentleman addressed me. "Please come with us." And with that I was escorted to a black SUV with the two men and a third, who sat in the back with me. They handcuffed me before I got in and as we drove out of the station, the man in the back chatted with me. I can't recall anything he or I said, but it was small talk to be sure. Ten minutes later we pulled into a large building complex. Several buildings surrounded a central courtyard, where a number of vehicles were parked. I guessed this to be another police station of sorts. I was ushered into a waiting room and there the man who had sat with me on the ride there came to me and talked while the other two men disappeared.

"You know, this is a simple case. If you offer to pay for damages, I am sure this will all be over soon." I got excited at this information. Finally! Someone was telling me something I wanted to hear. "Can you pay for the damages? Also, if you apologize, it will help." I told him of course I could pay, but I would have to contact my sister, because my money was in the USA. He seemed to accept this as a good answer, then he went off. Later the other two men appeared and talked to a receptionist at the desk before me. They signed some paperwork, then they ushered me to follow them. We walked out into the open air courtyard where the older man stopped me as the younger man went ahead to another building with several small barred doors, one of which he unlocked, turned on some lights, and sat at a computer desk. To this day I have no idea who the other man had been. For all I knew he could even have been some representative of the court, being sure I was treated humanely as I was being moved out from the jurisdiction of the small neighborhood police station and now onto more daunting real estate, that of the Guangzhou Detective Bureau of Investigation.

The older man began to speak to me as he stood there, smoking. "I am the detective assigned to your case." He spoke carefully, but very well I thought. He looked up, rather contemplative and continued, "You can call me...officer Blue Sky." He seemed to be thinking something, watching the sky above, large billowy white clouds drifted by lazily in an unusually clear blue sky; so that was it, he had just made up his English name on the spot. He finished his cigarette and led me to the room where the younger man was. Inside on the back wall was a police mug shot wall, long black stripes with measurements written on each line. They handed me a small board with my name and other information on it, to hold against my chest and asked me to stand in the center of the wall, first a side photo, then a portrait shot. After that they fingerprinted me on a digital system, no ink! I rolled my finger over what looked like a supermarket register-scanner device that evidently read my finger print with lasers. Then I was led outside and Blue Sky walked me over to a line of toilet stalls enclosed in a walled area. I relieved myself, door open by request of Blue Sky, washed up for the first time in a day and a half, then I was led to another building across the way, near the reception building. I still had the idea of paying and moving on coursing through my head.

Here there were several rooms, one after another, each with a desk and two long wood benches. We went into the second one where I sat on a bench and officer Blue Sky sat on the edge of the desk, smoking, while the young man sat behind it, looking prim and proper. Then the interrogation began. For the next four hours I told the same story I had told the PSB officers and the younger man recorded it all by hand, but only after Blue Sky translated it to him.

Blue Sky showed me some paperwork which detailed the damage and expense for repair of the ATM in question. The total came to a little over 14,000 RMB. He asked if I would be able to pay this. I told him if I were allowed to contact my sister, I could pay it within 24 hours. He mulled this over, but continued to ask me if I had any memory of beating the machine. I replied that no, I did not and through the entire course of my predicament I never admitted to knowingly destroying the machine.

I found Blue Sky to be pleasant, if not distracted by something only he realized. He offered me green tea, which I accepted, and cigarettes, which I declined. We took a few breaks here and there and at one time had dinner together, similar to what I had at the police station. Sometime around 10:00 they wrapped it up, and I was then asked to sign some papers, which showed that I was officially being arrested. I asked Blue Sky when I could call my Consulate representative. He said that I was not allowed to call until 24 hours after my arrest. I told him I thought he was wrong about that and perhaps he could get into trouble. I also told him I sat in the police station for more than 24 hours. When he said that I had only now been arrested, I pointed out that at the police station the night before, I had also been fingerprinted and photographed. This gave him pause, evidently he juggled this information about, then he said, "I will contact them in the morning then." I thanked him, then we piled into the same SUV and drove out into the ever present Guangzhou traffic.

On the drive to god knew where, I contemplated what had happened over the last few hours. The comment the other man had made about this "being over soon" was just a ploy I gathered. Either that or the man actually believed it would happen. I never did find out exactly who he was or why he had been in the car with us that afternoon. Did he represent the bank? Had he brought those papers detailing the expenses for repair? Perhaps, but I will never know now.

All I knew was that I must have suffered for the first time in my life, a nervous breakdown, destroying an ATM in the process with no memory of it transpiring. Here I was, in a country on the opposite side of the world geographically and politically as well. An undercurrent of thought began to flow rapidly across all others that was totally useless but unavoidable nevertheless; had I not been robbed several days before, none of this would ever have happened. Had I not helped Peter and not stayed at his place and had I moved into my own place I would definitely be 15,000 RMB richer for it. My return from An Whei was my undoing.

Why? What had changed in that month away that so thoroughly ruined my life in China? Was it the recent death of a friend there? A friend who was also incredible as it would seem, tied to Peter as well? Maybe it was I thought. The haunting ghost of a recently deceased friend--was his spirit now driven to curse me after his death upon my recent return to Guangzhou? Because I didn't visit him while in the hospital, which turned out to be his deathbed? And that made sense to me really, because he had cursed Peter as well, but for different reasons. I only hope that Paul, one of the key people who came to my aide more than once during my time in jail, didn't receive a ghostly curse from our late friend Michael upon his lively hood. For one short moment I considered myself lucky; I was still alive while Michael had slowly and perhaps painfully wasted away in a foreign hospital, never knowing really that he was dying, until the very end and of course, what can anyone do then but accept fate, or go out raging against the world, or God or both.

A vengeful spirit, stolen money, loaned and borrowed money, I.D.s and bank cards and psychotic machines mocking me with open empty steel mouths. It all unraveled like a loosely tied bag full of things no one wants to lose, yet lost it becomes. And now I had lost too much. Strangely, I had been holding together so far. Perhaps I was still numb, numb from going berserk the day before, a madman beating a steel monster into electronic limbo. To this day I have never seen the video of my destruction of the ATM. I was told through various sources that it was extremely violent, and my friends said I was in all the papers, even got a writeup in Shanghai! Now I felt I was running on autopilot, my psyche locked into a frozen state, while all the auto-features ran at a bare minimum--breathing, blinking, heart beating. And now Detective Blue Sky began to tell me to my horror, where I was being taken.