Ghost Hero (21 page)

15

Jack didn’t get far. I caught up with him on the corner of Mulberry. He was peering after a black SUV as it disappeared east along Canal.

“I got the plate this time,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it. Linus ran it already.”

“Seriously? From what he had?” Jack stuffed his pen and paper back in his pocket. “I guess he really is all that.”

“And a bag of chips. He’s my cousin, what did you expect?”

“So who is this guy?”

“Who he is is interesting. Who he thinks his competition is is even better.” I gave him the rundown: Tiger Holdings, Vassily Imports, the warning left with me to pass on to Vladimir Oblomov. “Obviously Tiger Holdings isn’t a Chinatown outfit, or they’d know who I am.”

“She says modestly. No, I know what you mean. But you’re telling me that atrocious accent of Bill’s has the Chinese mob on the run from the Russian mob?”

“Well, technically, the Chinese mob is telling the Russian mob to be on the run from them.”

Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “There really ought to be some way we can make something off of this.”

“If you think of it, let me know. I’m calling Bill. Did you hear from Anna Yang?”

“Maybe. Someone called while we were in Maria’s, but I let it go to voice mail so I wouldn’t get distracted. In case I needed to leap to the rescue or something.” He pulled out his cell phone.

“And don’t think I didn’t appreciate it. Did you notice Woo had someone there, too?”

“Messy guy in front of the pastry case?”

“That’s the one. I was concerned he might be between you and your only ammunition if it came to a battle again.”

“I never threw a cream puff in my life.”

“That’s a baseball joke.”

We focused on our phones. I called Bill while Jack listened to his message. “Hey,” Bill said. “Done already? How’d it go?”

“Let me speak to Vladimir. He’s the big star.”

“Vat?”

“Casey’s a Chinese gangster and he never heard of Jeff Dunbar. It’s Vladimir and Vassily Imports he wants off his back. Wait. Hold on.”

I stopped because I was looking at Jack. In the background I’d heard, “Hey, Anna, thanks for getting back to me,” and then watched Jack’s face darken as he listened in silence. Now he was offering an impressively reassuring, “Of course I will. Anna, calm down. Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it. Give us half an hour, we’ll be there.”

“Unless you have other plans, meet us at the car,” I told Bill. “I think we have business.”

*   *   *

It took Bill, following Jack’s directions, just over twenty minutes to get us from his parking lot to Anna’s apartment in Flushing. It had taken Jack the entire walk from the bakery to the lot to persuade Anna to let me and Bill come along. In the end he had to both throw around the word “partners”—which he was beginning to use with not just abandon but also a certain élan—and to promise he’d toss us out if, after she told us what it was all about, he thought we should go.

“Doesn’t want to know us, huh? Did you ask her about the Chaus?” I’d said when he finally hung up. We stood on the sidewalk waiting for Bill.

“She was too upset for me to ask her anything. And she knows you already. She says it’s bad enough now, and having you involved will only make it worse.”

“Us, anyone? Or us, us?”

“I got the feeling you, you. But remember, she doesn’t know what you already know.”

“When you put it that way, I don’t either. Did she say what was wrong?”

“No. She just said it was bad trouble and there’s no one else she could call.”

“I hate it when people say that. Does it mean their first thought was to send up the Bat Signal and hope you’d come? Or does it mean, if there
were
anyone else they could have called, they would have called them?”

“Hmmm. Breakfast with a hard case makes you paranoid, does it?”

“I have breakfast at home every day. You only say that because you’ve never met my mother.”

“No,” he grinned, “but I’d like to.”

Luckily, at that moment Bill came loping down the block, saving me from having to answer Jack and, I hoped, from Jack noticing the sudden heat in my face.

*   *   *

Anna Yang’s apartment was the downstairs of a two-family house in a blue-collar Flushing neighborhood, not far from the East Village communal studio. By the time we got there I’d filled Bill in on Woo, Tiger Holdings, and Vassily Imports.

“And you scoffed at my accent,” he said.

“I still do.”

“Me, too,” said Jack.

“Jack thinks we should find some way to make something off this,” I told Bill.

“Scamming the Chinese mob?” Bill asked. “Well, if you think of a way, I’m in.”

“Seriously?”

“Of course not. You think I’m crazy?”

“I don’t know, you guys,” said Jack. “I think we’re missing a bet here.”

“Give me a break,” I said. “You’re the one who was complaining all day yesterday about how serene your life was until you met us.”

“Met you. I already knew him.”

“Well, if you think this stream’s that much rougher than your peaceful pond was, you are totally not ready for the Chinese mob white water.”

For a moment, silence in the car. Then both Jack and Bill cracked up.

“Hey,” I said huffily. “I’m trying. This nature metaphor stuff, it’s not so easy.”

*   *   *

Bill found a parking spot on Anna’s block, a well-kept street of narrow houses and tiny yards. We rang the bell and, as she had at her father’s office, Anna Yang opened the door to us. This time she didn’t light up at the sight of Jack, though. She didn’t react at all. She just stayed standing in the doorway. Her eyes were dry, but puffy lids and a red-tipped nose made it clear she’d been crying. Guys sometimes miss that, or pretend they have, but, after a soft, “Hi, Anna,” Jack reached out and hugged her. I think I’d have found that comforting, myself, but Anna started to cry again.

“Come on,” Jack said, moving into the apartment with his arm around her. “Let’s go sit down.” Bill and I followed them through a small entryway into a spare, bright living room: pale wood floor, ivory sofa and chairs, a scroll painting of wild geese in flight on one wall and a hazy, peaceful watercolor of a wooded lakeshore on another. That one had a familiar feel and I wondered if it was Francie See’s, from before she tightened her focus. The coffee table was crowded with photos of Mike Liu: with Anna, with friends, alone. In most, he was smiling.

Anna wiped her eyes, smoothed her skirt under her, and sat on the sofa. Jack sat protectively close beside her. That left me with a choice of armchairs, so I organized myself in one. Bill, as usual, didn’t sit, but wandered a distance away, as though he wanted to examine the paintings.

“Okay,” Jack said to Anna. “Tell us. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”

I was a little alarmed to hear him say that so categorically. This was a woman whose husband was in prison in China. It was possible her problems were beyond the three of us.

Or, the four of us. From the hall an older Chinese woman appeared, thin and, while not quite as tall as Anna, not a tiny Cantonese like me. Jack stood immediately, so I did the same. “Mrs. Yang,” he said.

“Hello, Jack.” Her voice was deep, steady, and heavily Mandarin-accented. She wore her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a bun. Standing stick-straight, she carried a tray with a white pot and five no-handle teacups, so she couldn’t bow, but she inclined her head to Jack. He, apparently without thinking, bowed to her. This was a well-trained Midwesterner.

“This is Lydia Chin, and Bill Smith,” Jack said. “Yang Yu-feng. Anna’s mother.”

Yang Yu-feng deposited her tray on the coffee table. She shook our hands and now she bowed. She gestured us to sit again, which she also did, back straight, and she poured the tea. Jack picked up a cup, holding it one hand bottom, one hand side as good manners demanded. Whatever he said, I’d bet he’d have passed the lidded-cup test on his first go. “You’re looking well, Mrs. Yang. Anna didn’t say you’d be here. It’s an unexpected pleasure.”

Well, well. Straight-up suburban Jack, suddenly going all Chinese on us. He was smiling at Yang Yu-feng but the message was for Anna: If her mother’s presence wasn’t part of the plan and she didn’t want to discuss her troubles with her there, she should send up a flare. We’d make small talk and get back with her later.

“Jack.” Anna’s mother spoke with a calm that could equally have been born of confidence or despair. “Anna has a problem. She thinks you will be able to help her.”

Okay, so that was our answer. Jack glanced at Anna, and nodded. “I hope so.”

Yang Yu-feng didn’t respond. She waited until we all had our teacups—Bill came across the room, picked one up, and held it correctly, also, just like I’d taught him—and then she lifted her own. After we’d taken our ceremonial first sips—tea before trouble, oh, would my mother have approved—she put her cup on the table and turned to her daughter, waiting.

Anna looked at Jack, and then at Bill and me. She didn’t say anything, but her lip began to tremble.

Jack followed her gaze. “Lydia and Bill and I are working together on a case,” he said evenly. “It has to do with Chau Chun, new paintings that are supposed to be his. If the reason you called me has nothing to do with Chau, they’ll leave. If it does, you need them as much as you need me.” He added, “I promise you can trust them.”

I gave Anna what I hoped was a reassuring smile, Chinese woman to Chinese woman. Jack she already knew and trusted; her mother, she also knew, and had had twenty-two years to decide whether she could trust. That pretty much left Bill on his own, but sometimes he can be just a big, heartening presence. After hearing what Jack said, though, Anna suddenly seemed to stop caring about me and Bill, and even her mom. Pale, she was staring at Jack.

“You already know? Is that—that’s why you came to see Daddy yesterday? To ask him if he knew anything about the Chaus?”

“Sort of. Not really. Lydia and Bill are working for a collector who’s looking for them.”

“Someone’s looking for them already? Who?”

I wasn’t sure what that meant. They shouldn’t be looking for them yet? Later would be better? Later than what? Jack said, “It seems like a number of collectors are. This one hired Lydia to find them. I’m sorry, we can’t tell you his name, but it doesn’t matter. And I’m—I was—working for your dad.”

“What?”
Momentarily, she was wordless. “Working for Daddy? He didn’t tell me. Working for him how?”

She hadn’t known that. She had the Chaus, her father wanted the Chaus, and no one in this family talks to each other? Well, almost no one. Either Jack’s client wasn’t news to Anna’s mother, or she had a good poker face.

“He’d heard rumors the paintings existed,” Jack said. “Like the other collectors. He hired me to find out whether it was true.”

“Where did he hear it? Why did he want to know?”

“I don’t know where he heard it. But Chau Chun was his friend.” Jack gave Anna and her mother the party line: “He thinks the paintings are phonies and this is all about someone trying to cash in on Chau’s reputation. He’s trying to protect his friend.”

Mrs. Yang’s gaze remained steady on her teacup. Anna opened her mouth, but covered it with her hand instead of speaking. Jack went on, “Your father’s very protective about Chau. I think they must have been pretty close. He was with Chau when he died.” Watching Anna, ashen and silent, Jack asked, “He’s never told you that story?”

She shook her head. “No. They were close? He was there? Daddy was at Tiananmen? Oh, my God. Mom, did you know that?”

“Yes.” Yang Yu-feng’s dark calm was unshaken. “I knew them both, when we were young.”

“Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me that?”

Mrs. Yang raised her eyes to her daughter. “The story of that night? A terrible night in terrible times. Your father and I left it behind us when we left China. You are an American child. A new land, a new life. Why should we burden you with such times?”

After a moment, Anna asked, “Did you know Daddy had hired Jack?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Anna, tell you what?” Her mother’s voice sharpened. “You were working again, you were eating, sleeping. For months you had been lost, so unhappy. Now you have been going to the studio eagerly, now you have…” She shook her head, said it in Mandarin, then switched back to English. “Come back to life, you have come back to life. Why would I tell you about your father’s troubles, your father’s anger? It had nothing to do with you. Or so I thought.”

Anna didn’t answer.

“Anna,” Jack said gently, after a few moments, “it might help if I tell you we already know you have them. The paintings, the Chaus.”

Anna shook her head without looking at him. “No, I don’t.”

Jack glanced at Bill, who walked over and handed Jack his phone. It took Jack about ten seconds to find Shayna’s photo and show it to Anna. She didn’t reach for the phone, just stared. In a voice almost too low to hear, she said, “What was I thinking? This whole thing, what was I thinking?”

“What were you thinking about what? Anna, are the paintings real? Where are they?”

For a moment, nothing. Then Anna stood unsteadily and began to wander around the room as though she were lost in a strange place. Her mother’s gaze followed her. “They’re not real,” Anna said softly. “I made them.”

Jack glanced at me and at Bill. “Okay.” He nodded. “So someone spotted them and the rumors started and the whole thing got out of hand. But that’s not your fault. I can’t imagine you claimed they were real, right? So what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

When Anna didn’t answer Jack looked to Mrs. Yang. She didn’t turn his way, just kept watching her daughter.

Anna stood at the window, fingering the curtain, gazing at a couple walking down the street. When she finally spoke I had to strain to hear her words. “I always loved Chau. He’s not really taught in art school but I grew up with him.”

Jack threw me a glance. “Does Dr. Yang have paintings? Is that what you mean?”

Anna nodded. “Three. Literally, I grew up with them—they were in my room.”

Paintings that valuable, in the nursery? Mrs. Yang must have spotted me trying to keep my jaw from dropping. She said, “We hung them there to remind us. What was really precious, what was valuable, what could be lost.”