by S. J. Rozan
“This is quite exciting! I’ll be expecting you.”
C. D. Zhang and the sleek white tea set were waiting when we arrived. I introduced Bill, and a smile creased C.D. Zhang’s face. “Mr. Smith. Now, you more closely fit my preconceptions of a private eye.”
“It’s a liability,” Bill said.
“Not in all situations, I imagine. Now, please! Sit down! Tell me your new discoveries!” He poured tea and passed cups around.
“We’ve come across some information,” I said. “Facts I wanted to ask you about.” To be polite, I tasted my tea before I began. This was not the smoky tea from yesterday but a flowery jasmine. Delicious, I thought, and said so, and Bill agreed, though I was sure it was too sweet for him.
I decided to lead with yesterday’s question, to soften him up. “Mr. Zhang, you told me Rosalie Gilder took your brother to Hongkew because his mother, Mei-lin, had disappeared. Forgive me, but sir, what you didn’t say was that she disappeared with you and your father. When you escaped the Municipal Police, who were coming to arrest your father for being a Communist spy.”
C. D. Zhang stayed silent for a long minute. His face slid from buoyant to rueful. “He wasn’t, of course.”
“A spy? No, Chen Kai-rong was.”
“Yes. The Communist cause, as miserable a failure as it became, was guided in those early days by idealism and ideology. Those were not goods in which my father traded. Tell me, how did you learn this?”
“We’ve been doing research. There’s a navy intelligence report that lays out the incident based on interviews with former members of the Municipal Police. Why did you let me believe you had no idea what happened to Mei-lin?”
“You came here to unearth the Shanghai Moon, not the disgraceful secrets of my family. What happened to my poor stepmother isn’t part of the story of the Shanghai Moon.”
“I think it may be. Can you tell us about it?”
“In what way could the two possibly be related?”
“I’d rather you told the story first. So your memories aren’t tainted by what I think.”
His glittering eyes regarded me. “And if I do, you’ll tell me why?”
“Yes.”
Another few moments; then he put his teacup down. He folded one hand over the other and let some time go by before he began. “My stepmother did indeed leave for Chongqing with my father and myself, and not happily. I was frightened, not because of our rapid flight—I was twelve, young enough to be excited, not old enough to fully comprehend the danger—but because my stepmother was so wretched. I thought that was because we didn’t take the time to fetch my brother at the Chen home, and wondered why we didn’t. My father, of course, explained nothing.”
“How did he know to run? Did Mei-lin tell him?”
“No. He was warned—in your profession you’d say ‘tipped off.’ ” He gave a wan smile. “A bought-and-paid-for friend in the SMP.”
“What happened after you left Shanghai?”
“We boarded a train for the interior, rattling over the miles in air electric with Mei-lin’s misery, my father’s anger, and stiff silence. Late at night my father and Mei-lin left our compartment. He returned without her. I knew my father’s fury, and even in the weak lamp from the corridor I could see it was best to play at being asleep. But I didn’t sleep that night, though my father did. I heard his snores. In the morning I asked where my stepmother had gone. My father said she’d betrayed us and now she’d left us. I asked if she’d gone back to Shanghai, and when we would be going back. My father replied that I’d be punished if he heard my voice again before we reached Chongqing.”
“So you never knew what happened?”
“I never knew, and for years I wouldn’t let myself imagine. But it’s clear.” He looked at me sadly, and I had to agree.
“And after that?”
“After that? Where the train line ended, my father bribed the border guards. From filthy cafés he hired drivers. At one point we rode hidden in an oxcart. If not for my father’s smoldering fury and my loneliness, it would have been thrilling. Finally we arrived in Chongqing. We set up house. A new amah—young and beautiful—and new tutors. My father, as always, gone much of the day, and I more lonely than before. I missed my stepmother. I missed my small brother, who made me laugh. It was a long time before I let go of the idea that Mei-lin had returned to Shanghai. I pictured the garden at the Chen home, the acacia in bloom, everyone playing, happy together. I was consumed with envy! But of course I said nothing to my father. He, in a change of heart I only understood years later when I learned the reason for our flight, had joined the army of Chiang Kai-shek. I did the same myself when I was of age, though as I said, my value increased with my unit’s distance from actual combat. But my lack of military talent pales beside my father’s political judgment. He had a genius, apparently, for picking the losing side. In a three-way war, he chose it twice.
“Now.” C. D. Zhang’s smile re-emerged. “That’s our sordid family story, and I’m ready to be enlightened. Where in all this is the Shanghai Moon?”
Well, we’d made a deal. Before I could start, though, Bill asked, “Could you just tell me one more thing? How did you and your father get out of China?”
C. D. Zhang waved an arm. “I’ve told this to Ms. Chin. I thought partners shared everything! Our escape was dramatic, but not unique. With companions from my unit, I reached Shanghai scarely ahead of Mao’s barefoot soldiers. My father had gone earlier, to negotiate passage on the Taipei Pearl—one of the last ships. I nearly missed boarding it. A frantic crush streamed up the gangway, many losing their footing, plunging into the oily water. My father, on the deck, screamed at the crewmen repelling the mob to let me board. As though they were troops under his command! Of course they ignored him. As my friends and I fought our way to the top of the slope, a desperate sailor unhitched the gangway from the ship. I leapt, crashing onto the deck as the steel plates fell away below and sent hundreds into the river. My companions were among them. With screams still echoing we set course for Taipei.”
His sharp eyes flicked to me. “Ah, Ms. Chin, you look so sad! The past is gone. Those hundreds are long dead, and many worse things have happened since those days, and many better ones, too. As for my father and myself, when the ship reached Formosa—or as we now say, Taiwan—Chiang’s men settled in to await the day, sure to come soon, when they’d regain the country. My father mocked them as fools. He said China and the past had both betrayed us and he wanted nothing more to do with them. We continued to America, to start new lives in the land of opportunity! Where, for a man who told any who’d listen that he’d turned his back on the past, my father spent a good deal of time tending his garden of bitter memories.”
“One of those memories was Mei-lin’s betrayal?” My synapses suddenly made a connection. “That’s why he wouldn’t have wanted you to sponsor your brother and your cousin?”
“Yes, Ms. Chin. Exactly.” C. D. Zhang offered the teapot around. I accepted; Bill declined. “Now, you’ve heard my story and wrested from me a dark family secret. The very least you can do is tell me why. Do you suppose Mei-lin had the Shanghai Moon with her when we left, and my father unwittingly . . . discarded it?”
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “Do you remember a German friend of your father’s, a Major Ulrich?”
“Major Ulrich, of course. A sneering fellow, not so different from my father. Why?”
“He’s the man who stopped the Municipal Police from beating Kai-rong. To get him to do that, Mei-lin and Rosalie may have promised him the Shanghai Moon.”
A flush of excitement crept into C. D. Zhang’s face. “Ms. Chin! New discoveries indeed! How did you learn this?”
“We’ve found some documents. Mei-lin’s diary and some other things. Papers no one’s seen before.”
“My stepmother’s diary! And other things?”
“Yes.”
I didn’t elaborate, and after a moment he asked, “Where did you find them?�
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“As an academic told us, it’s unbelievable what’s maintained in government archives at taxpayers’ expense.” That was deliberately misleading and I felt bad about it. But Paul Gilder could have handed any of these men his rosewood box at any time over the years. If he’d chosen to keep it secret, it wasn’t my business to give him away. “There’s a lot of material, apparently, that hasn’t been translated.”
“And something you found says Major Ulrich had the Shanghai Moon?”
“No. The documents seem to say he was promised it. It’s not clear whether he ever got it.”
“Ulrich . . .” C. D. Zhang’s brows knit in thought. “He died not long after we arrived in Chongqing, I think. We were sent word. He was part of the escape plot?”
“Just that limited role, it seems, to keep Kai-rong safe while Mei-lin worked out the rest of the plan.”
“And you don’t know whether he actually got the gem,” he mused. “Although if he had . . . that would explain . . .”
“Explain what?”
C. D. Zhang kept his gaze on the nighttime photo. He spoke quietly. “As I told you, the rumor persisted that Rosalie Gilder always wore the Shanghai Moon at her throat. But when her body was laid out for burial, it wasn’t found. My cousin and my brother have always assumed it to have been stolen when she died. I never agreed. I’ve thought it must have been hidden in the gardens of the Chen villa—as we now see her other jewelry was. But if she and my stepmother gave it years before to Major Ulrich, that would explain why it wasn’t found.”
“Stolen when she died? Who by?”
“She died during a robbery near the end of the war. Li and Lao-li have always thought the robbers took the Shanghai Moon with them.”
“Do you know anything more about that? Rosalie’s death?”
He paused, then shook his head. “There was no law toward the war’s end. Money had no value, and life even less. Any object that could be traded for rice, fuel, or passage out of China was stolen and stolen again. We had been hungry so long we no longer felt hunger, just desperation and fear. It was a terrible time and drove many mad.”
Poor Rosalie, I thought, escaping the nightmare of Europe only to have to live through, and die in, times like that.
“But if you’ve come to ask if my stepmother ever said anything about Major Ulrich,” C. D. Zhang said, “I’m afraid she didn’t.”
“I admit I was hoping. Mr. Zhang, think back. Couldn’t there be anything, maybe something that didn’t make sense at the time?”
He smiled. “I suppose there may be. Not much made sense to me at that time. However, nothing my stepmother said stands out. But Ms. Chin, your documents. Is it possible they hold something? Something you haven’t recognized? Would you like me to look at them?”
“I don’t think there’s anything there. Mei-lin’s diary, for example, stops the day you left Shanghai. She gave it to Rosalie. Along with your brother.”
I watched his face as this sank in. “Her most precious things.”
“Yes.”
“All these years,” he said slowly, “I thought it was a quirk of fate that my brother was at Rosalie’s home when we fled and was left behind.”
“No. I think Mei-lin was afraid of what might happen.”
“What my father might do, you mean.”
“Yes.”
“Yes. And your other documents? They stop then, too?”
“No, some are from years later. But none seem to be able to tell us much about Major Ulrich.”
We sat in silence for a time, or as much silence as we could find between the traffic noise and the cooing pigeons. “Well, it does no good to brood, does it?” C. D. Zhang finally said. “Ms. Chin, I’m sorry your new discoveries seem to lead to a dead end.”
“Maybe not quite. There’s another incident I’m curious about. Do you know a man named Yaakov Corens?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“A jeweler who died many years ago. He had a shop in Shanghai when you were there. He made the Shanghai Moon.”
“He made it?” If this wasn’t news to C. D. Zhang, he’d missed his vocation as an actor. “Ms. Chin! That’s remarkable! This is also in your documents?”
“Yes. We were able to track Corens to New York and speak to his granddaughter. But this is the odd part. In 1967, someone reported to have been a, quote, Chinese gentleman visited Corens’s shop. They had tea together, and the gentleman asked Corens never to discuss the Shanghai Moon with anyone.” I watched him closely as I said this. His expression was one of intense interest, but if anything I was saying was familiar, I couldn’t see any sign.
“Why? And who?”
“I was hoping you’d know.”
“I certainly don’t! But this is astonishing! Who could he have been?”
“Your brother? Or your cousin?”
“But why? I was under the impression they had no idea who the maker was.”
“I don’t know. It’s very strange. But if it wasn’t you—”
“I assure you it wasn’t.”
“Then it must have been one of them. I think”—I looked at Bill—“we should go ask them.”
26
The first call I made when we hit Canal Street was to Mr. Chen.
“I’m sorry, he’s still not here,” Irene Ng said.
“Is that true, or he just told you to say that?”
“Oh, no.” She sounded hurt. “It’s really true.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just getting really frustrated here, not being able to find either him or his cousin.”
“Why don’t you try Mr. Zhang again? I just spoke to him. He’s back at his office.”
By “try,” Irene Ng probably meant “call.” I didn’t call. Bill and I were on Mulberry Street before you could say, “He’s back at his office.”
On the ground floor of Number 43 was a funeral-goods store, its window full of paper clothes, furniture, and money to burn for the dead. The second-floor buzzer read FAST RIVER IMPORTS. I buzzed it, and Fay’s tinny voice asked who I was. When I told her, there was a short silence. Then she came back and said Mr. Zhang wasn’t in.
“Oh, yes, he is,” I said, mouth close to speaker. “And if we can’t talk to Mr. Zhang, we’re going over to Mr. Chen’s shop and not leaving until we talk to him.”
More silence. Finally, a buzz. I yanked the door open and took the stairs two at a time, Bill right behind me.
A thin young woman sat behind a desk in a wonder of file folders, paper stacks, and sunshine. We didn’t have to ask again for the boss: Zhang Li was waiting in his inner-office doorway. He smiled and bowed. “Ms. Chin. I apologize if I seemed reluctant to speak with you.”
“Seemed? Mr. Zhang, you’ve definitely been avoiding me.” I bowed back, annoyed with myself to feel my irritation fading fast. I introduced Bill, who shook his hand. It occurred to me I might want to teach Bill to bow.
“Yes.” Mr. Zhang spoke contritely. “I suppose I have been. Please, come with me. Fay, please bring tea.”
The clutter in Mr. Zhang’s office was as impressive as in the outer room and went way beyond paper. Delicate porcelains peeked out of shipping crates. Soldiers from the terra-cotta army stood to attention on the floor and windowsill, reproduced in eight sizes from half-real-life to thimble. Jade bracelets, bronze coins on red ribbons, cricket cages, and embroidered shoes spangled every surface, as though a wave of Chinese culture had crashed over this room and beached them all.
“Samples of my wares.” Mr. Zhang sounded both rueful and proud, like an indulgent uncle apologizing for rambunctious nephews. “Please, sit.”
Stools and a low table occupied a clearing, as in Mr. Chen’s office. These were glazed ceramic, the kind you’d find in a garden. Before we’d settled, Fay entered and set down a lacquer tea tray.
“You and your cousin are both lovers of tea,” I said as Mr. Zhang poured.
“I think you are also, Ms. Chin?”
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��Yes, I am.” I took the lidded, saucerless cup.
“And you, Mr. Smith?”
“I’m learning.”
Pushing an old Chinese man might be the wrong way to get anywhere, but over the millennia people who’ve wanted to know things from old Chinese men have concocted other tactics. I said, “This tea smells lovely. Delicate and tropical. Did you and Mr. Chen develop your taste for fine teas in Shanghai?”
Zhang Li smiled. He knew what I was doing. “Hardly. Our boyhood years were war years, our adolescence the early days of the People’s Republic. Most often, tea then was a cloudy, bitter drink, something to keep you warm when you had no heat, or make you forget you had no food.”
All right. Going that far was a signal he was ready to talk. So I did the polite thing. I backed off, sipped, and said, “Your tea is refreshing and sweet.”
“I’m glad you find it so. Dragonwell, a favorite of mine. Mr. Smith? Do you enjoy it?”
“It’s subtle. I’m probably missing the nuances. But yes, it’s very good.”
We all sipped again. Zhang Li carefully replaced the lid on his cup and said, “Now, Ms. Chin. You have questions about the Shanghai Moon.”
“Yes, we do. But first: You and your cousin have both been avoiding me. Is it because Wong Pan’s found you and you’re negotiating for the jewelry?”
“Ms. Chin! Of course not! You’ve said the man’s a killer. We’d have let you know at once if he’d contacted us.”
“Maybe you would have. But your cousin?”
“I promise you.”
“Good. Because he’s here. In Chinatown. With a gun. Even if he doesn’t know who Mr. Chen is, if he’s going from jeweler to jeweler he’ll find him. So make sure you don’t lose my number.”
He nodded, looking worried. Good; let him take this seriously. “Now, Mr. Zhang, I do have questions. One is why you stopped me from asking questions yesterday. And why you never mentioned your brother. And why, years ago, you asked Yaakov Corens to keep silent about the Shanghai Moon.”
That last was a shot in the dark. I wouldn’t have been surprised to get wide-eyed innocence, either real or feigned. If Zhang Li denied it, what could I do? But he didn’t. He gave me a long, quiet look and a soft smile.