Ghost Hero (19 page)

“Nothing right now. Planning something out, but I’m not ready to start.” Pete didn’t elaborate, and his glance flicked back to the sketch on his desk. He seemed taut, Pete Tsang did, like an arrow waiting for the bowstring to snap.

It occurred to me, if this case didn’t end soon I’d be talking in nature metaphors, myself.

That wasn’t my immediate problem, though. That was that it was clear Pete Tsang would rather we left. Which would leave Pete Tsang alone with his studio door open, two down from Anna Yang’s, and who knew what was going on there? Jack, obviously thinking along the same lines, had strolled over to examine the yellow canvas. I looked around. There was nothing remotely intelligent I could say about Pete Tsang’s paintings. That was my lack of art vocabulary, not the paintings. I liked the huge range of colors I could now see within what had seemed at first like two or three shades of a single color; and I liked the suggestion of small, shadowy human forms I thought I saw. The canvases struck me as radiating the same tightly coiled vigilance the painter did. Maybe; but that wasn’t a promising conversational path. Then I spied a flyer tacked to the wall: a photo of a handsome young Asian man with wire-frame glasses, smiling on a sunny day. Below the picture, heavy black type read F
REE
L
IU
M
AI-KE!
At the bottom was a Web site address.

“Mike Liu,” I said. “Are you involved in that?”

Pete looked me over as though maybe he’d missed something the first time. “You know about him?”

“He’s that poet. He’s married to Jack’s friend Anna, who we came to see. ‘The world calls this China’s century, but if China’s people are denied the right to think and to express their thoughts, if they cannot count on basic human rights and human dignity, China’s century will be worthless dust.’ He got seven years.”

Jack’s eyes were on me. Pete Tsang asked, “Are you an artist?”

“No. But I’m Chinese.”

“You followed Mike’s case?”

“The sentence was outrageous. It would have been a joke if it hadn’t been a tragedy.”

Pete looked at me another few moments, then reached to a long counter holding neat cans of brushes and pencils. He picked up a couple of sheets of paper, which turned out to be the same flyer as on the wall. “Have you been to our Web site?”

“No.”

“Check it out. There’s a rally next week. It’ll be big. Important. You’ll want to be there. Jack, you will, too.”

Jack didn’t say anything, but he walked over and took a flyer.

“You think it’ll help?” I asked. “The Chinese government doesn’t respond to much. Rallies and letter-writing, with other dissidents it sometimes looks like they don’t even notice.”

Pete’s hard gaze held me. “I don’t know. But I know doing nothing won’t work.” After another moment: “And this time, I’m pretty sure they’ll notice.”

He stood up and walked to the door, where he just waited. So we actually had to leave. By then I wasn’t too worried. Bill’s fast, especially when he’s breaking the law.

Jack and I walked back down the hall the way we’d come. We both threw quick looks at Anna Yang’s door, saw nothing but her name. We waved to Francie See as we passed her studio. She didn’t respond, just kept feathering pale blue onto the emerging painting on her easel.

Jack said, “I didn’t know you could do that. Quote Mike Liu.”

“I read the open letter.”

“I read it, too. But I can’t quote it.”

“I can do it in Chinese, too. You want to hear?”

Jack sighed. “No, I believe you.”

“But actually,” I admitted, “I read it twice.”

We turned the corner and found Bill lounging on an entryway sofa, leafing through a book on the history of Chinese fireworks. A F
REE
L
IU
M
AI-KE
flyer, I now noticed, was pinned to the bulletin board.

“Hey,” Bill said, getting up. “How’s Pete Tsang?”

“Curt,” said Jack.

“Handsome,” said I.

“Really?” said Jack.

“I’m just reporting.” I handed Bill the flyer as we headed for the door. “He wants us to come to a rally next week. He says it’ll be big.”

“For Anna Yang’s husband?” Bill looked at Jack.

“Lydia can quote his whole manifesto by heart. In two languages.”

“I’m translating it into Italian, too, right now in my head. No, seriously, that passage is the only part I can quote. It just grabbed me.” I repeated the passage for Bill. “And now that we’re outside”—which we were, on the sidewalk under the Flushing stars—“tell!” I wheeled on Bill. “Are they there? In Anna’s studio?”

“The Chaus?”

“No, Jimmy Hoffa and Judge Crater! Of course the Chaus!”

“No.”

I stopped. “No? Wait. No?”

“Not on the walls, and as far as I can see, not in the file drawers. That wall you’d have seen from about where Shayna took the photo? It’s empty.”

“Maybe they’re what Anna came to get.”

Jack said to Bill, “What about you? Will there be any way for Anna to know you were there?”

“If I didn’t know you were asking that question out of concern for your friend Anna’s nerves,” Bill said, lighting a cigarette, “I’d take offense.”

“Bill does a very clean B and E,” I reassured Jack. “It’s a point of pride with him. And you’re sure that’s where they were, the Chaus? Those papercuttings were for sure Anna’s?”

The question had been for Jack, but Bill nodded. “I saw the ones in the photo. They’re still there. It’s just the Chaus that’re gone.”

“Well, damn,” I said. I’d have said more, but my phone rang. An unfamiliar number, so I answered in both languages. The voice that replied, speaking in English, was not unfamiliar, but I was glad it was on the phone and not up close and personal.

“Chin Ling Wan-ju, my apology. I think we start on bad foot. I don’t try to scare you, just want to talk.”

I covered the phone and whispered to the guys, “Mighty Casey.” To Casey himself, I said, “How did you get this number?”

“Just want to talk,” he repeated. “About your client.”

“Okay, we’re talking.”

“No, we meet. Have tea, be civilized.”

“Your driver almost ran me down, you pointed a gun at me, you tried to kidnap me, and you shot at my friend. You might have tried this ‘civilized’ approach first.”

“I say, I apologize. Sometime, get too … involved, my work.”

“Who are you?”

“We have tea, I explain.”

I thought. “Okay. Tea. In a public place.”

A pause. “Yes. Okay. You come alone.”

“So do you. And,” I added, “not tonight. Tomorrow. In daylight.” After, maybe, we’d heard from Linus, or one of Bill’s cop friends, and I had some idea of with whom I was having the pleasure.

That didn’t seem to bother him. In fact, he sounded amused. “Tomorrow, nine o’clock. Sun up high enough?”

“Maria’s, on Walker Street.”

“Happy to see you then.”

I didn’t share the sentiment, but I agreed to the time and place and clicked off.

“You set up a meet with that guy?” Jack asked.

“Don’t you want to know why he was shooting at you?”

“He was shooting at me because I was throwing rocks at him. Who is he and what does he want?”

“He’ll tell me tomorrow. Nine o’clock, Maria’s on Walker.”

“Well, you’re not going alone.”

I raised an eyebrow. “For Pete’s sake, you don’t have to get all John Wayne about it. Of course I’m not. You’re going to come and do the same thing you did at the bar. Get there first, blend into the scenery. It could be you,” I said to Bill, “but Jack will blend better at Maria’s.”

Maria’s is a Taiwanese tea shop and Bill’s been there with me any number of times. He’s almost always the only non-Chinese person in the place, and he’s big besides. He sticks out like a buzzard in a flock of swallows. That’s if you ask me. If you ask him, the whole thing has more to do with lions and Hello Kitties.

That settled, Jack checked his watch. “It’s past eleven. Hope Anna doesn’t mind the late call.” He made the late call, and Anna didn’t get the chance to tell us how much she minded because she didn’t pick up. Jack left a message, calm but using the words “really important” twice.

“When she calls back,” I said, “whether it’s tonight or tomorrow morning, let me know.”

“What do you mean? You won’t be with me when it happens? We’re not going to end the night in some enormously chichi boîte over a couple of single malts, discussing exactly where we are in this case?”

“You’ve actually ever been to a boîte? Never mind. Besides, do you have any idea exactly where we are in this case? Me neither. Listen, you guys, this has been fun, chasing around with you, getting shot at and stuff—”

“I don’t recall
you
getting shot at,” Jack said.

“No, I think that’s right,” said Bill.

“Oh, so sorry. I’ll try to position myself better next time. But right now, I’m going to leave you guys to have all the fun and I’m going home to sleep.”

So Bill, dedicated chauffeur that he was, took me back to Chinatown. Nothing untoward happened on our drive, and the universe was clearly telling me I’d made the right choice because my mother was asleep when I unlocked the door, slipped off my shoes, and tiptoed in. Or at least, she was in bed pretending not to be waiting up. Either way was fine with me.

14

In the morning my mother’s cover was blown. I woke full of energy, pulled on my bathrobe, and headed into the kitchen. My mother wandered in fully dressed suspiciously soon thereafter and with wide-eyed artlessness said, “Oh, are you home? I didn’t hear you come in last night. I thought you were still out, working overnight on your new case.” She says stuff like that to remind me that she’s not interfering in my life, professional or personal. But when I peeked into the teapot I found about five times as much tea as my mother, alone in the apartment, would ever drink before lunch.

Being the big tea drinker in the family, I poured myself a cup, gave her a kiss, and said, “It’s an interesting case. It involves art.” I dumped granola in a bowl and sat down at the table.

“Oh, really?” She spoke offhandedly, puttering around the kitchen doing things that clearly absorbed her attention way more than anything I was saying. “Do you know many things about art, Ling Wan-ju?”

“No, Ma. But I’m learning. I went to a gallery yesterday and saw little red boxes chasing each other around.”

My mother turned to look at me, waiting for the part about the art.

“It was sort of a sculpture. By a Chinese artist, in fact.”

That the home team was responsible for this incomprehensible item didn’t impress her. “Your cousin Yong Xiao is an artist. He painted a beautiful scarf for me.”

My third cousin twice removed, Yong Xiao, is a twenty-year-old fashionista wannabe working for pennies at the atelier of a hot designer barely older than he is. In his off hours he paints chrysanthemums on cheap silk scarves to sell to tourists so he can pay his rent.

Casually, because of course she takes so little interest in that which is not her business, my mother asked, “Are you working alone on your new case?”

“Or, you mean, is Bill working with me?”

She gave me the wide-eyed innocent look again. Her brow has permanent grooves from that look. “Oh, yes,” she said, as though she hadn’t given that possibility a thought. “I suppose you might be getting help from the white baboon.” She hasn’t said Bill’s name in years. She refers to him in other ways that would be endearing if she actually liked him.

“Bill’s on the case, yes.” I poked around for raisins in my granola bowl.

“I see.” She sounded relieved, which surprised me. One of the things she dislikes about my profession is that she thinks it’s dangerous. Almost as high on her dislike list, though, is the people I’m forced by the job to associate with, and on the top of
that
list is Bill. That he’s big and strong and bodyguardish and could help with the “dangerous” problem has never cut any ice with her. So what was the relief about?

“But this case is not urgent? It allows you time for yourself? Perhaps to see your friends?” She spoke coyly and I had no idea what she was talking about. Keeping a quizzical eye on her, I scooped up another mouthful.

Then I got it. “The Chinatown telegraph.” I put my spoon down. “Someone saw us at New Chao Chow, didn’t they? Me, and Bill, and Jack?” The relief must have been at the idea that I was hanging with Bill out of professional necessity, not personal choice. And the reason for the coyness was now blindingly clear.

Absorbed in measuring rice into the cooker, my mother answered vaguely. “I think your auntie Ying-le might have mentioned it. Yes, I remember now. She saw you when she was shopping on Mott Street yesterday.”

Mao Ying-le, a friend of my mother’s from her sewing days and in no way my aunt, was one of Chinatown’s biggest gossips. But it didn’t matter. If not Ying-le, my mother would have gotten the word from someone else. It should have occurred to me that I couldn’t dine in the neighborhood with a handsome Asian guy and expect my mother not to know about it before the check came.

“Jack Lee,” I said.

“Your auntie said he looked very nice.”

“She did?”

“Not exactly. She said
you
looked as though
you
thought he was very nice.”

My face grew hot, which annoyed me. “She stood there and watched us?”

My mother smiled. “Is he very nice?”

Some things you can’t fight. I’d have to talk to myself about the color in my cheeks later. “Yes.”

“And he is Chinese?” Just checking. Because he might be Japanese, or Korean. From a different planet, in her universe, but still light-years ahead of Bill.

“Jack Lee Yat-sen,” I confirmed. “From Wisconsin. He’s second generation, parents born here, too. But, Ma, it was work. Jack’s also on the case. He’s another PI.”

Her face fell. My mother’s been to California twice, to visit relatives, and to New England to view the fall leaves, but she has only a vague idea where Wisconsin is. “Second generation” clearly worried her, too. But Jack’s job was the final blow.

“Chinese, is he?” She sniffed. “Hollow bamboo.” Hollow bamboo: Chinese-looking outside, empty inside.