Free Skeleton Women by Mingmei Yip Page B

to be distracted by pointless feelings such as humiliation or embarrassment. These things were just part of the job, along with the singing and dancing, except that this part was in private, with only one admirer instead of a hall filled with them. But it was boring, not to mention tedious.
    Whenever I came out of Lung’s room, Gao would look flushed and embarrassed. His eyes would be filled with bitterness or sadness, depending on what he’d heard—cow-slaughtering cries or puppy-beating whimpers—from my fake orgasm. Like the young master, the head bodyguard seemed to have stepped onto a dangerous path by falling for a woman he’d be better off pretending not to notice.
     
    Anyway, even a beggar on the street in Shanghai would know that to assassinate Lung would be as difficult as to get a virgin pregnant. Lung, Zhu, and all the bodyguards were extremely cautious. Gao, though, might be different, because of his crush on me. Sometimes I wondered, if I became his lover, would he kill Lung for me? But to imagine this was pointless; to seduce the bodyguard under Zhu’s sharp eyes was as likely as a baby crawling out from a virgin’s narrow gate.
    Warlords, though powerful, were not invulnerable, since many ended up being assassinated. Some, however, managed to live to die in bed. But survival required constant vigilance. It was rumored that Lung had a double who would travel in his limousine, while the boss himself was going by another route. So to eliminate Lung was no simple matter. It was rumored that Lung wouldn’t trust any Chinese tailor for fear that he might be an assassin in disguise. Scissors in the back during a fitting were not unknown in Shanghai.
    I was Wang’s means to discover his rival’s defense tactics, his daily routine, where he entered and exited, his secret hiding places, who of his guards were the most formidable. And the grand prize: Lung’s bank account.
    Most of spying is not exciting but tedious, though still very dangerous. I was supposed to put together a complete list of Lung’s contacts: his close friends, relatives, and all who worked for him or did business with him. Not only those in the underworld but those supposedly above it. This also included a list of the spies who worked for Lung and who, ironically, might turn out to be my boss, Big Brother Wang’s, most trusted men!
    Like Lung, Wang always had an ominous feeling that he was marked for assassination. Of course the most likely source would be the Flying Dragons. So I was to try to find out who was on Lung’s assassination list and how high Wang was on it. Eliminating Lung had been Wang’s goal from the moment he became a gang head. He just hadn’t yet figured out a good plan—until his underling Mr. Ho had discovered me in the orphanage.
    After winning the title of Heavenly Songbird last year, I was given a luxury apartment inside the French Concession. This included a maid and a driver, but I knew full well that their real jobs were to keep track of me for Wang. I made good money, but unfortunately Wang took half and most of the rest for “safekeeping.” He knew that if I had my own money, his hold on me would be weakened. Though I was free to go places within Shanghai, I couldn’t just disappear. Wang repeatedly warned me that his gang men were everywhere, so he would know everywhere I went and everything I did.
    Yet life as a nightclub singer was incomparably better than in the orphanage. I now had a comfortable apartment, which was decorated in a mixture of Chinese and Western styles. The Chinese elements—calligraphy, landscape paintings, antique furniture and vases—were there to impress people, especially the refined ones, that I was not just a singer but one steeped in traditional culture and taste, perhaps from a prominent family. The Western décor—velvet curtains, soft sofas with silky coverings, a gilded and latticework clock, and oil paintings showing classical scenes—was to show that I was also