We sat for some time in the quiet of the shop, drinking tea, as Grandfather Gao explained to me the specifics of the situation. The more I heard, the more I understood his thought that things were not simple. What was involved, though, still didn’t seem like things you’d need a PI to accomplish, much less two, but I had voiced my opinion and Grandfather Gao seemed set on this path. I saw no reason to argue further.
When we were done I went home, took a deep breath, and explained my client’s request to my mother.
“To Hong Kong?” She sat on our living room couch, me beside her. The sun poured in the window, sparkling off my father’s collection of mud figures in their glass cabinet. The expression on my mother’s face was the same as it would have been if I’d told her Grandfather Gao wanted me to fly up to heaven and bring him back one of the peaches of immortality. “Gao Mian-Liang wants you to go to Hong Kong? He has chosen you for this important task?”
“With Bill,” I said. “He said Bill needs to come along.”
I was as astounded as she was: she at what I had said, I because I had never before seen my mother at a loss for words.
I could understand her dilemma, though. On the one hand, she couldn’t imagine I could go all the way to Hong Kong, a place on the other side of the world I knew nothing about—and where almost everyone is Chinese, a state of being that according to my mother I, an American born and raised, also knew nothing about—and not screw this up. On the other hand, there was no way she could contradict Grandfather Gao’s decision in this or any other matter. And on the third hand, Bill was supposed to be going, too.
This last became her point of departure. “If you went alone,” she said, “alone, with no distraction, possibly you could accomplish this task. Or—” her whole face brightened with inspiration and relief; she had found an answer, “—or, Ling Wan-Ju, if I were to go with you, I could guide you. I could help you. I could make sure you did not fail in this undertaking, so important to Grandfather Gao.”
Oh boy, I thought. But I didn’t stop her as she grabbed the red kitchen phone (“Red, most likely to bring good news”) and dialed the number at Grandfather Gao’s shop.
After that conversation, I called Bill.
“I’m coming over.”
“Good,” he said. “Why?”
“Just wait till you hear.”
It took me, adrenaline-filled as I was, about six minutes to get from the apartment to his place above the bar on Laight Street. Generally, it’s a ten-minute walk, but that’s if you walk.
Bill was waiting for me at the top of the stairs, a fresh cup of coffee in his hand. He poured hot water into a teapot as I paced the living room, outlining the job we’d been offered.
“Grandfather Gao?” Bill said. “Can I call him that? And will you please sit down?”
“Yes. And no. I can’t.”
Neatly sidestepping me, he moved to the couch safely out of my path and put his coffee on the table beside him. “Your tea’s ready. You want it to go?” I glared. He grinned. “Boy, I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Grandfather Gao!” I said, striding by. “Grandfather Gao wants to hire
me
! Do you know who he is in Chinatown? Do you know what he’s been in my life? Do you know what he is in the eyes of my
mother
?”
Bill did know, and I knew he did, but he asked, “What?”
“Respectability itself! The Man Who! Even my mother can’t object to my working for Grandfather Gao. I mean, she does on principle because she hates this profession. But she’s secretly thrilled that
Grandfather Gao
thinks a worthless girl like me can be some use to him.”
“If it’s a secret how do you know?”
“She’s my mother. And Grandfather Gao—” I turned and strode the other way, “Grandfather Gao could get anybody he wanted to work for him! But he thinks
I’m
the one who can help him out. Me! Little Ling Wan-Ju. That tomboy. That misguided problem child. And—!”
Bill waited, patience itself. Finally, after I’d done another lap, he said, “And what?”
“
And
he wants to send us to Hong Kong! The other side of the
planet
! Ted and Elliot were born there. My parents used to live there.”
“And Suzie Wong.”
“Hong Kong! It’s almost China.”
“It is China, now.”
“You know what I mean! I’ve hardly ever been anywhere in my whole life, and now I have a client offering me business-class tickets and a week in a hotel in Hong Kong. How can you just sit there like that?”
He picked up his coffee. “Okay, tell me again.”
“Thursday,” I said, telling him the important part. “Can you do it? Can you come?”
“He really wants me to? Why?”
I stopped pacing and just stood for a moment, looking at him. “I don’t know,” I confessed. “What he wants us to do seems pretty simple, not something a paying client might think he needs two people for. But it was his idea. He said, ‘Neither the little bird nor the water buffalo, different though they are, can do its work alone.’”
“And I suppose you would be the little bird?”
I didn’t answer, because it seemed obvious. Bill sipped his coffee. “You know, of course, that the bird sits up there on the water buffalo’s rump and eats his fleas?”
I detoured into the kitchen and picked up the tea he’d fixed for me. “If you have fleas, you’re sitting in coach.”
The tea was jasmine, one of my favorite kinds, and I had to admit that over the four or so years we’d known each other Bill had learned to make a not bad cup of tea. But all I could think as I sipped it was, I wonder if they drink jasmine tea in Hong Kong.
“And what are we supposed to do in Hong Kong?” Bill asked.
“Bring a bequest to a seven-year-old boy.”
“Any particular seven-year-old boy, or do we get to choose?”
“Harry,” I said impatiently, starting to pace again. “The grandson of Wei Yao-Shi. Didn’t I tell you that already?”
“You haven’t actually said anything coherent since you got here. I think it would help if you sat down.”
“It wouldn’t. I told you, I can’t.” He was following me with his head as though I were a one-woman tennis match. “Now listen: This little boy—his Chinese name is Wei Hao-Han, by the way—his grandfather, Wei Yao-Shi, just died. Mr. Wei and
my
grandfather and Grandfather Gao were inseparable buddies in the home village in China.”
“Used to hang out on street corners together, whistle at girls, stuff like that?”
“Certainly not. The home village didn’t have streets, just dirt paths. Can you hang out on a dirt path corner?”
“Depends on whether that’s where the girls go by.”
“Oh, of course. Anyway, my grandfather stayed there, but Mr. Wei and Grandfather Gao left to come to America when they were fourteen.”
“Looking for street corners.”
“No doubt.”
I told Bill about Mr. Wei’s younger brother, the import-export firm, the office Mr. Wei came to New York to establish, his marriage, his traveling back and forth, and the house in the suburbs.
“Now,” I said, “a month ago Mr. Wei died and left this thing with Grandfather Gao with instructions to give it to his grandson Harry and a letter to his brother at the same time and Grandfather Gao wants you and me to go to Hong Kong to deliver them. How hard is that?”
“To understand, or to do? Or to say in one breath the way you did? Because I don’t think I could do that.”
“You could if you didn’t smoke.”
“You pace. I smoke.” He struck a match and lit a cigarette, maybe to illustrate the point. I picked up pacing speed, to keep up my side.
“I understand it,” he said, dropping the match in an ashtray. “Mostly. But I do have one question. No, two.”
“Shoot.”
“You say Mr. Wei came here and married. How come he has a seven-year-old grandson in Hong Kong? Did his kids move back there?”
“Ah. I was afraid you’d ask that.”
Bill raised his eyebrows and I prepared to tell him the rest of the situation, the part that made the thing not simple. “Mr. Wei’s American son, Franklin, lives here in New York. But apparently about a year after Mr. Wei got married here he got married in Hong Kong.”
“Hmmm. Short-lived marriage, the one here.”
“Actually, no.”
“Say what?”
I took a defensive sip of tea. “Now don’t go getting all superior and moral. It’s the traditional Chinese way. A man is entitled to as many wives as he can support.”
“He is? You mean still? Today? They still do that?”
“Well, no,” I conceded. “By my parents’ time they’d pretty much stopped, and of course Mao stamped that sort of thing right out. But men of Mr. Wei’s generation—well, it happened.”
“It happened.” He was grinning. No one could ever say Bill was a handsome man, but when he grins this particular grin I sometimes have trouble staying as dignified as I like to be. “You mean, like an accident? Stumble into the church, wedding going on, you find out it’s yours? Had one already, but what the hell?”
“We don’t get married in church.”
“You’re grasping at straws. And you approve of that kind of behavior?”
“I can see certain merits,” I said airily. “The more wives there are, the less time each one has to spend with the husband.”
“A good point. I’ll remember that after you marry me. Did Mr. Wei’s wives approve?”
“At least you’ll have something to remember. They didn’t know.”
Bill pulled on his cigarette. “Now that’s not a sign of a man with a clear conscience. When did they find out?”
“The wives? Both dead, long since, and it seems they never did know. The people who were surprised were the sons, on both sides of the planet, when the will was read. Grandfather Gao knew all along, and the younger brother in Hong Kong, but no one else did.”
“How many sons? And did Grandfather Gao approve?”
“Two: one here, one there. And when did you get to be such a puritan?”
“Hey, you’re the one who doesn’t drink, smoke, or swear. Who’d have thought that when it came right down to it you were as twisted as the next guy? Wei was supporting both families the whole time?”
“Better,” I said, leaving the next guy out of it. “He was living with both. According to Grandfather Gao, each family thought it was just an unfortunate necessity of business that he had to keep going back and forth to the other side of the world.”
“This is great. But what if they needed to talk to him when he was on the other side of the world? Wouldn’t the jig be up as soon as someone made a phone call?”
“He told both families he was staying in hotels and to contact him at work if they needed to. In Hong Kong that was the firm’s office. That’s why the brother had to know. In New York he used Grandfather Gao’s number at the shop.”
“And that worked all these years?”
“Seems to have.”
Bill finished his coffee and set his mug down. “Okay. Intriguing as Mr. Wei’s lifestyle is, let me ask my other question. Why us? This seems like a fairly straightforward job, delivering a legacy to a kid. You don’t need an investigator to do this. What is it, by the way?”
“Jade. Some valuable piece, something Mr. Wei got in China on one of his buying trips and used to wear around his neck.”
“Oh-ho, so he made buying trips to China? How do we know he hasn’t got another three dozen wives over there?”
“Why do I get the feeling you’re not taking this seriously?”
He gave me a look over his coffee that almost made me laugh. But someone around here needed to act like a grown-up, and neither Bill nor, I had to admit, old Mr. Wei seemed willing to play that role.
“Anyway,” I said professionally, “he didn’t go there that often. It was usually the brother who did the China trips. And to answer your question—assuming you still care about the answer—”
“Oh, I do, deeply.”
“—Grandfather Gao says he’s hiring us because he wants someone he can depend on, partly because of the other piece.”
“The other piece of jade?”
“The other piece of the job. Delivering the bequest and the letter is only half of it. We also have to deliver Mr. Wei.”
“You’re kidding.”
“He wants—wanted—to be buried in Hong Kong. Next to his second wife. In a mausoleum in Sha Tin on a windy mountain with a view of the hills and the water—” I broke off and looked at Bill, who was grinning yet again. “
What
?”
“You mean we’re taking the old two-timer with us? Carrying his cheatin’ heart home? Laying dem double-crossing bones to rest?”
“Ashes. And show some respect.”
“You misread me. I have nothing but respect for your Mr. Wei. What a guy. Maybe just by being in the presence of his mortal remains, I can learn something.”