Ghost Hero (23 page)

She nodded. “I think so.”

“Jon-Jon Jie. He has the studio beside you. He climbed over the wall.”

I thought of the quiet building, the ceilingless studios.

“The security commissar,” Anna said bitterly. “We’ve never protected ourselves from each other. Artists? What was someone going to do, steal your brushes? We lend each other everything all the time anyway, who’d steal? The only reason we lock our studio doors is so you don’t have to go round up your stuff every time you come in. But all the real security worries were about the bad guys outside.”

“Jie’s signed with Baxter/Haig,” Jack said. “Francie See told us. Just yesterday. She said she thought he bought his way in.”

“Looks like he did,” I said. “Just not with money.”

“Haig has them,” Anna went on, her voice suddenly urgent, “and he wants to put them on the market. As authentic.”

“But how can he?” I demanded. “You’ll just say you painted them. You’ll show everyone the paper, and the ink, that it’s easily available. And your sketches, don’t you do sketches? How can he pretend they’re real if you do that?”

“He says if I do that, he’ll tell everyone I already sold them to him as authentic, for a lot of money. Because I’m Bernard Yang’s daughter, so I knew he’d believe me. I cheated him and the only reason I’m admitting it now is I’m mad and I want to make him look stupid because Baxter/Haig wouldn’t take me on. He’s got a whole story cooked up, bills of sale and everything.”

“Would people believe that?” I looked to Jack.

“If he’s got paperwork,” Jack said. “And the paintings are good enough. Maybe they would.”

“It would make him look like an idiot,” Bill said. “Buying fakes.”

“A trusting, honest idiot,” said Jack, “bamboozled by a cold-blooded cheap thief trading on her father’s reputation. He’d look stupid but it would pass. But it would end Anna’s career. No gallery would take her on, no one would show her.”

Anna and her mother sat silent, Anna pale, her mother seeming tight-packed, like TNT.

“Still,” I said. “Suppose Anna doesn’t say anything, then. No one will pay Chau’s prices without getting the paintings appraised. Wouldn’t it take more than the supposed word of an expert’s daughter and some old paper to get some other expert to put his reputation on the line, authenticating new work by someone who’s supposed to be dead?”

Jack nodded, as though what I’d said had confirmed something. “Yes.” He looked at Anna, waiting.

“Yes,” Anna also said, and she didn’t look at anyone. “That’s why I called you, Jack. I don’t know what good you can do, though. I don’t know how you can help me. He says Daddy has to authenticate them.”

16

It took Jack as long to persuade Anna to sit still and do nothing until she heard from us as it had to convince her to let me and Bill come along in the first place. As soon as she finished her story she decided we couldn’t, in fact, help her. So she wanted to help herself. She wanted to call her father. She wanted her mother to call her father. She wanted to call Pete Tsang. She wanted to call the police. She wanted to race up to Doug Haig’s gallery with a meat cleaver.

“That’s why Dr. Yang fired me,” Jack said. “We thought it was just because he found out you had the paintings.”

“Haig called Daddy. He was afraid I wouldn’t, that I’d be a martyr no matter what he threatened me with. ‘Like your idiotic husband,’ he said. ‘Two self-righteous peas in a two-bit pod.’” She flushed crimson. “So he called Daddy, and Daddy called me. We had a big fight but I couldn’t lie to him. I guess that’s when he fired you.”

“He’s not really going to do it, is he?” I asked.

She didn’t answer that directly. “Haig says he has until tomorrow morning to decide.”

“If he doesn’t,” Bill asked, “is there someone else Haig could go to?” Jack and I looked at him. “Well, I’m assuming that, much as he’d love to destroy Anna’s career because he’s just a mean SOB, he’d rather get the paintings authenticated and make a fortune.”

“Maybe there’s someone,” Anna said. “I don’t know.”

Jack said, “There aren’t a lot of experts in that area, people who really know Chau’s work. There’s Clarence Snyder, in Chicago—I studied under him, he was on my committee. But he’d spot them for fakes, or at best, if they’re really good, he’d give them a question mark. No, Dr. Yang’s perfect. He’s the biggest name, plus he’s in a corner.”

“He can’t even be considering it,” I said. “He just can’t. This is exactly what he was afraid of. It’s why he hired you. Someone making a big profit off of Chau’s reputation. And for that someone to be Haig, and for him, Dr. Yang, for him to make it possible by
lying
—he just can’t.”

“I said that,” Anna said. “Not the part about Chau’s reputation, and him hiring Jack—I didn’t know that. But I told him to call Haig’s bluff. I’m such a nobody. What could it matter?” Mrs. Yang stirred, but Anna frowned and her mother said nothing. “But Daddy was so mad. He didn’t hear a word I said. He just told me to stay here and do nothing until he called me. That was last night. But I couldn’t do nothing. I just couldn’t. I didn’t sleep, not at all. When I called you this morning, Jack, I was thinking … I don’t know why. I don’t know what I thought you could do. I just…” She trailed off. “I just needed someone to help me.”

There was silence. In it, I heard my own voice say, “We will.”

*   *   *

So there we were, Jack and Bill and I, back in Bill’s car, rolling through Queens, trying to find a place where we could think. “There’s a diner over there.” Jack pointed from the backseat.

“Pro,” Bill said. “Coffee.”

“Mrs. Yang’s osmanthus tea didn’t do anything for you?” I asked.

“For me, either,” Jack admitted.

“And just when I was beginning to think you really were Chinese,” I said. “Anyway, veto. Walls have ears.”

“Your paranoia knows no bounds?” Jack asked. “We’re in the middle of Queens. Maybe you’re famous in Flushing, but me, I’m pretty well unknown around here.”

“First: I don’t believe you’re unknown anywhere. Second:
around here
is where yesterday afternoon the security commissar scaled a wall and stole the paintings, right before the Chinese mob slapped a tail on us, tried to kidnap me, and shot at you.”

“You have such a vivid way of making your points.” Jack sat back with a sigh.

“Compromise,” Bill said. “We stop at the diner, pick up coffee, and sit in the park. Unless you think the trees have ears.”

“Tree ears,” Jack said helpfully. “Those black mushrooms. My mother makes soup from them.”

So with two coffees, a tea, and a giant cherry cheese Danish—Bill had apparently not had breakfast—we repaired to Flushing Meadow Park, where in the middle of a fresh spring morning you can sit on a lawn with toddlers chasing dogs, dogs chasing Frisbees, and, if you’re lucky, no one chasing you.

“Okay, bigmouth,” Jack said to me as he peeled back the tab on his coffee lid. “You told her we’d help her. What’s the plan?”

“Me? You’re the one who said, ‘Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.’”

“I was hoping you’d forgotten that.” He turned to Bill. “How come you didn’t make any promises?”

“I never do.”

I said, “That way when he saves the day it’s more of a wow because no one expects it.”

“But you do have a plan?” Jack asked.

“Nope.” Bill took a bite of the Danish, which was the size of his head. “Don’t you?”

“What, a plan? To quote you, nope.”

“Come on, use your imagination,” I said.

Jack pondered. “Well, how about this? You could distract Doug Haig with your mind-blowing legs while Bill breaks into the gallery and resteals the Chaus.”

“You’ve never seen my legs.”

“You said to use my imagination.”

“Besides, where are you in that plan?”

“Monitoring the proceedings from my office. Wearing a bulletproof vest.”

I sighed. “You mean, it’s up to me as usual? Why is everything my job? Okay, but you’ll have to give me a piece of that.”

Bill held out the Danish. I tore off a fistful. Bill offered the hardly diminished hubcap to Jack, but he declined.

“Okay,” I said. “The problem is, Haig has the paintings. I’m just thinking out loud here. But at least I’m thinking.”

Jack said, “Ouch.” Bill shrugged.

“If he didn’t have them he could yell and threaten to expose people and throw as many hissy fits as he wanted and no one would care.”

“Vladimir Oblomov could go to him, to buy zem,” Bill said.

“If Haig thinks he can get them authenticated, he’ll wait,” said Jack. “He’ll stall any buyers until he knows how high he can go.”

“Besides, we don’t have a couple of million dollars to buy zem vit,” I said. “No, I’m thinking we really might have to steal them. Jack’s idea about my legs was ridiculous, but we could try something like it.”

“How about my legs?” Bill offered.

“You mean, instead of seduction we try terror? No, we need a
real
idea.”

A Frisbee flew long and landed on the pond with a plop. A shaggy black dog chased it to the shoreline, stood and barked, whined, and then, with a loud yip, charged in after it. He beelined across the water, clamped his jaws around the thing, and swam like hell for dry land.

“Or,” I said.

“Or?”

“Or?”

“Or, we let Haig keep the paintings and get exactly what he wants.”

“Which is what?”

“To have them authenticated.”

I laid on them the scheme that had come to me. A lot of brow-furrowing and dog- and Frisbee-watching followed, and a great deal of discussion. Bill worked his way through two cigarettes while we did what he and I always do when we’re making a plan: try to poke holes in it, look for solutions to all the problems we were likely to stumble over.

Jack joined in all that but he loved the idea from the start, as I knew he would.

“Because you get to show off,” Bill said.

“Oh, like you didn’t show off already, Lord of the Blings? But I do have an issue to raise.”

I said, “And that would be?”

Jack leaned back on his elbows. “I want to remind you guys that Doug the Slug, Anna, and Dr. Yang aren’t the only people who’re interested in these paintings. For reasons we haven’t even learned yet, the US State Department, the PRC government, and the Chinese mob also care. And Pete Tsang’s human rights group,” he added. “Though them we can probably discount as a threat.”

“And dere’s da Russkie mob, too,” said Bill.

“Please don’t go native on us,” I warned him. “Jack, once all those people know the paintings are fakes, don’t you think they’ll stop being interested?”

“I don’t know. Since we don’t know exactly what they were after in the first place.”

I turned to Bill. He stubbed out his smoke. “He’s right. It’s not clear what we’d be getting in the middle of.”

“But then what are you guys saying? It’s too dangerous, this whole thing, and we should back off? How can we? Leave Anna and Dr. Yang twisting in the wind? That’s just wrong.”

“Back off?” said Jack. “Are you kidding? That’s just wrong. But since it
is
dangerous—I speak as the guy who’s been shot at twice—”

“Yeah, yeah, okay.”

“—as that guy, what I’m saying is, if we’re going to take Haig on, and whoever else, using this undeniably brilliant strategy you’ve just outlined, then all I’m suggesting is, maybe we should consider playing for higher stakes.”

I cocked my head, regarding him. “You said before, there ought to be some way we could make something off of this.”

“It was one of the things my mentor drilled into me when I was working out my business plan. Risk should be commensurate with reward.”

“You had a business plan? For a PI office?” I turned to Bill. “So much for the whole wild-man thing.”

“He’s crazy,” Bill said. “Not stupid.”

“Thank you,” Jack said gravely.

“Did you have a business plan?” I asked Bill.

“Not a chance. For a PI office? Listen, guys. We don’t know how big the risk actually is. The government men on both sides could still be freelancing. They might easily both just fade away if there were real trouble involved.”

“I question the ‘easily,’” Jack said. “And Mighty Casey Woo didn’t sound like he was going to fade away. And he has a gun.”

“Well,” I said, “if that’s the direction you want to go in…”

So we explored that direction, looking from many angles at a reasonable risk/return ratio. By the time the coffee and tea were gone and even the goliath Danish had disappeared, we’d come up with what we thought was one heck of a plan.

17

Our first step was to get all the good guys on the same page. We ran into trouble right away: We wouldn’t be able to talk to Dr. Yang until lunchtime. “He has a seminar,” Jack said, clicking off from a short conversation with the department secretary. “I made us an appointment. Meanwhile, at least we know where he is.”

“You mean, at least he’s not out trying to do Doug Haig grievous bodily harm? Because that thought crossed my mind, too.”

Next good guy, Anna. Jack put his phone on speaker. He didn’t tell her what we were planning, just to sit tight, not to answer the phone if Haig called, and to wait until she heard from us. She couldn’t believe we really had an idea, and if we did, that it was any good; except she wanted to so badly she was willing to do what we asked.

One of the things we asked was that she call Pete Tsang and tell him about the stolen paintings.

“Haig said not to tell anyone,” she protested. “Daddy did, too.”

“I know,” Jack said. “But if Pete talks to the wrong people he could screw this up. We’ll explain the whole thing later, when we have it all lined up. Just ask Pete to call me, okay? And don’t worry.”

It was a no-brainer that she was going to disobey that last instruction, but she said she’d follow the others. Our next call was to the good guy who’d need the most lead time: Linus. I got his voice mail and told it what we needed. “Another Web site. Call Jack Lee”—I gave him Jack’s number—“and he’ll tell you exactly what to say on it and where to get material. You don’t know him but you can trust him.” Jack delivered a thumbs-up when he heard that. “It can look a little primitive, in fact it probably should. But here’s the important part. I need it by four this afternoon. And Linus, it needs to be in Chinese.”