by S. J. Rozan
Just my brothers.
“You shot at Tim. From a moving motorcycle. For God’s sake! You could’ve killed him.”
She stared.
“Don’t bother,” I said. “You’re deciding whether to keep bluffing. You can’t. I know all about it.” I didn’t actually know anything about it, but if I left her any squirming room I never would.
Briefly, the defiant stare remained. Then Nat’s face relaxed into a small smile with a hint of pride in it. “I wasn’t moving when I took the shot. You think I’m crazy? And I wasn’t planning to hit him.”
“You could’ve screwed up!”
“No, I couldn’t have. I’m really good. Remember, I told you about my little silver revolver?”
“Fine. It’s still a felony. And you still scared the daylights out of him. And he took it out on me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, you’re not. That was actually the point. To scare me, not Tim. You must’ve thought I was moving too slowly trying to convince Mel to sell.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think you were moving at all. I knew you didn’t want Phoenix Towers to go ahead. Maybe you decided my problem wasn’t a big enough deal.”
“For me to help Jackson Ting destroy my neighborhood? Actually, it wasn’t.”
“See? I thought so. So I tried to make my problem your problem. When I heard about the other shooting, Ironman’s, I thought maybe if you were scared for your brother you’d get in gear.”
“Just so you know,” I said, “I don’t just leave clients in the lurch. I told you I’d try to help. I wasn’t about to talk Mel into selling, but I was working on getting Jackson off your case another way.”
“What way?”
“If he’s canceling the project, it doesn’t matter, does it? But I think you owe me the real reason for this panic about Jackson’s claim. It wasn’t the publicity. It was the DNA test. It was the IVF.”
She froze.
“You said you’d had trouble getting pregnant,” I went on. “You didn’t mention the IVF. When I found out—”
“How?”
“Oh, come on. Investigating is pretty much what I do, you know? I started looking at you because it was obvious you weren’t telling me everything. If you’re going to keep lying to people, you really should take an acting class or something.”
Her cheeks reddened.
I said, “When I found out you’d used IVF, my first thought was you’d had a sperm donor and your kids weren’t Paul’s, and that was the real reason you didn’t want the DNA test. But they are his, aren’t they? It wasn’t a sperm donor. It was an egg donor. Mel’s their biological mother.”
“Goddammit,” Nat said softly. “Goddammit.” Then, “You can see, can’t you?”
“Not really. The test would have shown Paul was Matty’s father. No one would have asked for your DNA.”
“Now. But once Matty’s DNA was on record, the risk would always be there.”
“You’re never going to tell him?”
“When he’s older! When Paul’s horrible parents can’t try to take them away. If they ever found out I wasn’t even their mother—”
“You are their mother. You carried them. You’re raising them.”
“Try telling that to my in-laws. That sneaky scheming Oriental dragon lady bitch—and they’ve called me all those things, by the way—she got her claws into their son but couldn’t breed, so her sister helped so his fortune would stay in their slant-eyed family. See?”
I said nothing.
“You probably think I’m exaggerating. I’m not.” Nat bit her lip and looked away. Women with vegetables and fish in shopping bags headed home to cook dinner for their families. They eddied around us like a stream around rocks.
“Does Paul know?” I asked.
“Of course he knows! What kind of a person would do something like that without telling her husband?” Nat’s face softened into sadness. “You think I’m that kind of person, don’t you?”
“I don’t know you. Just what I’ve seen these last few days. Maybe you are.”
“I’m not. I’m really not.” She sniffled, and her eyes started to water. Even for a good actor that’s a hard trick. Nat, I was sure, couldn’t fake it. “They’re my kids. He’s my husband. I don’t want to lose them. I can’t! It would kill me. Please. You won’t say anything, will you? Please? Promise me?”
I stayed silent.
“Please! I really wouldn’t have shot your brother.”
Probably I was giddy from tension, exhaustion, and too much sugar, but I suddenly burst out laughing. What she’d said struck me as the funniest way to extract a promise anyone had ever tried.
Nat smiled tentatively.
“All right,” I said. “Not just my brother, though, okay? Promise me you won’t shoot anyone.”
“Done.” She grinned, with something of her old spark. “And thanks.”
In that aura of mutual sunniness we turned to head back up the block to Tai Pan. Just as we got there Mel pushed out the door, followed by Tim and Bill.
“What’s up?” I said.
“Tan Lu-Lien called,” said Mel. “There’s something she wants to show me.”
47
Tan Lu-Lien?” I said. “Where is she? Is she with Jackson? What happened to them?”
“She’s a few doors down from the Li Min Jin building. She didn’t give me time to ask anything. She just told me where to come and hung up. Except she said no police.”
“What a surprise,” I said. “Okay, let’s go.”
“You don’t have to,” Mel said.
“Are you kidding?”
She glanced at Bill. He said, “I’m in.”
“I’m coming, too,” said Nat.
And of course Tim said, “I’m not sure this is a good idea. It could be a trap or something.”
Mel said, “She wouldn’t hurt me. She’s the one who made Johnny Gee let Nat go.” She spoke in reassuring tones, with a small smile at Tim. I’d been about to respond with something along the lines of If you’re scared don’t come then, so I guessed he lucked out.
Tim looked entirely unconvinced, but when the rest of us started hustling along the sidewalk, he hustled right with us.
Bayard Street had been reopened, but the Li Min Jin building was still sealed off with crime scene tape. I wondered if the NYPD would take the opportunity to search for the buried treasure while they were in there.
Three buildings east, Mel pressed the buzzer at the door beside the hair salon. The door buzzed back, and she opened it, leading us not up the rickety stairs to the apartments but to a door at the back of the perm-chemical-scented hallway. It led to a flight of stairs to the basement, lit by the lowest-watt bulb I’d ever barely seen by. Mel reached the bottom and called softly, “Tan Lu-Lien?” while the rest of us were still filing down. The basement was all shadows and columns and dust, dim arcs of hanging wires and hulking hints of boxes and building debris.
For a moment, nothing. Then a shadow stepped out from a deeper shadow. Tan gave a soft laugh. “Is it friends and family day?”
“You said no police,” Mel said evenly. “You didn’t say come alone.”
“No, I didn’t.” Tan surveyed us all and then turned to the dark behind her. “Jackson?”
Jackson Ting stepped forward, too.
“Wait,” I said, feeling a buzz up my spine. “Is this like the clown car at the circus? How many gangsters do you have hidden down here?”
“I’m not a gangster!” said Jackson.
“Debatable.”
“It’s only the two of us,” Tan said. “Neither of us had a reason to be involved in a battle between Ironman’s faction and Loo’s. At the same time as you left through the front door, we came down here. When I leave Jackson will say I kidnapped him and forced him to come with me.” She gave Jackson a long look. In the dim light her face was impossible to read.
“When you leave?” I said. “The entire Fifth Precinct is looking for you
.”
“They won’t find me. But before I go, there’s something Mao-Li needs to see.” She faced Mel. “I told you I didn’t know what message Chang Yao-Zu had for you from your uncle. I didn’t. But I guessed. To my regret, I told Johnny.” She shook her head. “Johnny hasn’t changed, over all these years. Impatience and fast action are still his trademarks. I wasn’t sure what you’d make of the information, but I was willing to wait and see. Johnny wasn’t.”
“What are you saying?” Mel asked. “He killed Mr. Chang?”
“If you never got the message, you wouldn’t act on it. Jackson was under a deadline. Whatever decision you made might not come soon enough. Johnny did what he believed to be expedient.”
“The message,” Mel said after a brief pause. “What was the message?”
“I want you to see for yourself. Please…” Tan looked around and gave a small, ironic smile. “Please, all of you, follow me.”
Although the route she led us along had twists and sharp lefts and rights, and included one more staircase down and then a little farther on another one back up, and was lit nowhere any better than the first staircase had been, I could tell we were moving basically west. I wasn’t surprised that when Tan stopped, she said, “This is the basement of our building. I apologize, Mao-Li. Yours. The Li Min Jin building.”
The obvious question was so obvious that the only one who thought it necessary to ask it was Tim. “Why have you brought us here?”
Tan didn’t respond but strode along past stacks of boxes, mounds of broken furniture, piles of drywall and wood scraps, and other heaps of that unnamable junk dusty basements silt up with. Stopping at the hot water heater, she grasped a piece of the wall behind it, what looked like a badly applied sheet of plywood with just enough edge for a finger hold. She pushed and pulled until it was free; it had been attached, apparently, to nothing. She hefted it aside.
Behind it, practically invisible in the shadows, a rectangle outlined a low door.
Tan took the silver key from her pocket and slipped it into the door’s lock.
“Are you saying,” Mel asked, in a voice of astonishment, “that there really is a treasure buried in this building?”
Tan turned with a soft smile, not one I’d seen on her before. “Yes. A treasure is buried here.” Unlocking the door, she opened it and stooped through. A light went on, though because of the door’s height I could see nothing of the room, just the floor. I thought I saw the corner of a carpet on the rough concrete, but it wasn’t until after I ducked under the door frame—after Mel, but before the others—and straightened up that I saw what the room contained. Even so, it took me a minute to work it out.
Mel didn’t work it out. She stared at the two porcelain figures, one male and one female, each about four feet high, clothed in silk outfits and seated on carved chairs on a raised platform. She took in the carpet, and the painting of a dragon and a phoenix, intertwined. Other paintings hung on the walls, too—a duck and a drake, birds on a branch in snow, cherry blossoms—and a pair of chairs sat on the carpet facing the two figures. The air, though cellar-damp, was lightly perfumed with incense, and the light in here was also dim, but not five-watt-bulb dim as on the circuitous route we’d traveled through the basements. The switch Tan had flicked as she entered had lit a hanging brass lamp that covered the room in a soft glow.
Softly, Mel said, “What is this?”
Nat’s furrowed brow echoed Mel’s bewilderment, and this time I didn’t think Nat was acting. Bill wore his normal poker face, but I’d have been willing to bet he had no idea what was going on, either.
Tim did, though. We’d been raised together, after all, and though neither of us had ever seen this before, we both knew what it was. He said, “It’s a ghost marriage.”
48
A what?” said Nat.
I waited for Tim to answer, but he didn’t, an unusual reluctance for him when the chance to explain something came up. He seemed a little pale. Spooked out by the supernatural? My brother was full of surprises.
I took it. “When a son dies unmarried,” I said, gazing at the figures, so beautifully detailed and dressed, “the tradition—I guess it still exists—used to be to find him a ghost bride. Someone’s daughter who also died unmarried. So neither of them would have to spend eternity alone. Look. The female effigy in red, the male one in black. On the wall, phoenix and dragon uniting. This is a wedding chamber.” I turned to Tan. “It’s Choi Meng’s baby son, isn’t it? And Long Lo’s three-year-old daughter. That was what was really behind the combining of the two tongs. The two families. A marriage.”
Tan nodded. “When Choi Meng’s son died, his wife wouldn’t be parted from him. She insisted he be buried here, in the building, where they lived.” Tan pointed to a pair of plaques in the wall behind the figures. “After the ghost marriage, Long Lo’s daughter was brought here, too. To be with her husband.”
“When Uncle Meng bought the building, he said it was so his family would always have a home,” Mel said. “I thought he meant the tong.”
“The tong, also,” said Tan. “Both families. Choi Meng bought this building for both families.”
“At the cemetery, Lydia,” said Mel, still staring at the figures, “you asked where the babies’ graves were. They’re here. Behind those plaques, in burial vaults.”
“Yes,” Tan said. “And no.”
I was reading the Chinese inscriptions. “My God,” I said. “This one. This one is for both children. They’re together. The other—it’s Choi Meng’s wife. Your aunt, Ni Mei-Mei.”
“She’s not buried in the cemetery? Uncle Meng’s headstone says—”
“It says that’s her final resting place,” said Tan. “Choi Meng buried her here, where she’d died. So she wouldn’t be alone in the cemetery.”
“She died in this room?”
“She killed herself here. A year to the day from when the baby died.”
Mel’s hand went to her mouth.
“Choi Meng came down here often, to sit with them. Every day, sometimes more than once. You understand why this room was secret. That sort of sentiment would only be seen as weakness in a leader.
“But he told me, and he told Chang Yao-Zu, that he intended all his family to be together after his death. He wanted his wife and the children moved to the cemetery. To unite them. I believe that was Chang Yao-Zu’s message to you.”
“The key,” I said. “To this room. It was left by the baby’s plaque, the one that traditionally shouldn’t be on the altar. It should be near the baby’s grave. I guess, in a way, it was.”
Mel looked at the figures and the plaques behind them. “This is why Uncle Meng wouldn’t sell the building. So he could come and be with them every day.”
“And why he left it to family, not the tong,” Nat said.
Mel nodded. “Of course I’ll move them. We’ll have a funeral, all the correct rites.” After a moment, “But I still think”—she looked straight at Jackson—“I think I’m not selling.”
Jackson appeared dazed. I supposed it had been a long day for someone who’d woken up a real estate developer with respectable deceased parents and no personal experience with firearms. “It’s all right,” he roused himself to say. “I told you I’m canceling the project. I wish I’d never started it. This is all too much.”
“Not too much,” Tan said gently. “Not too much for my son, mine and Johnny’s. You’ll be fine now, and you won’t see us again.” While we’d been absorbed in what we were seeing, she’d worked her way to the entrance. “The door’s not much. Mr. Smith can probably take care of it. I just need a few minutes.” She fixed a look on Mel. “Thank you, Wu Mao-Li.” She ducked under the doorway and slammed the door shut.
I charged over and turned the knob, but it was locked from the outside. “Step aside,” Bill said, grinning. “Let me take care of it.” He drew his leg back and kicked. The door flew open.
Tan was gone.
49
One of
these days,” Mary said, licking her ginger ice cream cone before it could melt down her hand, “you really are going to get yourself killed. Either by criminals, or by me.”
“You sure you don’t want two scoops?”
“Are you trying to bribe a cop?”
“I want two scoops,” Chris Chiang said. He was on medical leave (“For a scratch,” Mary said with an eye roll), but he had agreed to join us at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory for my penitential ice cream treat.
“I do, too,” said Bill.
“I have to buy yours, too? Aren’t you my partner?”
“What does that prove?”
“Nothing,” I admitted. “Go ahead.”
Chris got coffee and vanilla fudge, Bill got a double scoop of ube, and I brought up the rear with pineapple and my credit card. We walked to Columbus Park and found a bench near the folk song group.
“No sign of Tan?” I said as the accordion started up.
“That’s a sore point,” Mary warned me.
“Hey. My client—”
“Oh, shut up.”
The bamboo flute joined the accordion.
“We’re shipping Johnny Gee out, though,” Chris said. “What Tan said about him killing Chang is hearsay, but grabbing him in the middle of a gun battle is enough for us to kick him back to Hong Kong.”
“I bet Mark Quan has a buddy or two who’d be interested to know he’s coming. I’ll give him a call. And the others?”
“Loo’s going to have a long recovery. Old man, bullet in his lung, blood loss, all that. Ironman we’re holding on reckless endangerment. Bullets from his gun all over the lobby and three in the asphalt in the street, thank you, Jesus.”
“Why the thank-you?”
“Because the bad guys were all inside. A bullet in the street means he was shooting at us.” Chris finished the vanilla fudge in his cone and moved down to the coffee. “That might be the best we can do, but it’s a Class D, and he could get seven years.”