Cat and Mouse

He did not return to the hotel.

He stepped into an old public phone booth, the cold receiver pressed to his ear.

After dropping in several coins and dialing the hotel, he informed the front desk in the briefest possible terms that he had an urgent matter and needed to check out early. All personal belongings left in the room could be thrown away.

The crisp click of the call ending marked his farewell to the brief comfort of his past. Without looking back, he headed straight for the other side of the city, toward an unknown hiding place.

He needed a new nest, somewhere less conspicuous and harder to find.

This time, a temporary stop like a hotel was clearly out of the question.

He combed through the densely packed rental ads in the newspaper and eventually set his sights on an old industrial district with a mixed crowd and an enormous turnover of people.

There, he found an apartment up for rent. The landlord who received him was a middle-aged man with a beer belly and an oily face, his eyes filled only with greed for money. He had no interest whatsoever in a tenant's origins or background, which was exactly what Chu Hang needed.

Chu Hang presented his brand-new identity—"Anthony Chen." He signed a one-year lease under that name and decisively paid six months' rent upfront in cash.

That almost ostentatiously generous payment made the greasy landlord grin until the wrinkles on his face bunched together. He stuffed the keys into Anthony's hand on the spot, skipping even the extra questions, afraid this fat sheep delivered right to his door would run away.

The apartment was small, a standard one-bedroom with a living room. The furniture was old enough to seem like relics from another era, and