by S. J. Rozan
He looked around my room. I suddenly wished I’d hung the yellow silk robe in the closet instead of leaving it draped over a chair.
“No offense,” Bill said, bringing his eyes back to me, “but could Grandfather Gao have pulled that switch?”
I skipped the part about taking offense—under the circumstances, it seemed disingenuous—and said, “Probably. He had old Mr. Wei’s jade for a week before Mr. Wei died, and according to the jeweler this afternoon, these pieces aren’t all that rare. But even if he could have, why would he? Why substitute a piece worth more for one worth less?”
Bill didn’t look like someone who had any light to shed on that matter. What he looked like was someone who wanted a cigarette. Well, after this phone call he could go back to his own room and smoke a whole pack if he wanted to.
The bedside phone rang. I answered it; it was the overseas operator, hooking us up. I gestured for Bill to pick up the desk phone, told the operator to go ahead as though Lydia Chin joined in on international conference calls every day of the week, and waited to hear how these things went.
This one went by the operator asking if New York was there, and when Grandfather Gao, in slow but clear English, replied that he was, she checked on me, which also meant Bill, and Steven Wei, which also meant Natalie Zhu. Then she told us to ring her when we were through and left us alone with each other.
Natalie Zhu, in a voice that brought to mind a small, swift fighter plane approaching from the distance, introduced herself as Steven’s lawyer and then told Grandfather Gao the basic fact: “The jade we have here, the jade Lydia Chin has given us, is not Wei Yao-Shi’s jade.”
Grandfather Gao was silent, then asked calmly, “What is the difference between the two pieces?”
Typical, I thought, as I half-listened to Steven Wei explaining. Anyone else would have been startled by this news and would have demanded, “Are you sure?” But no one would make an overseas conference call in the middle of a kidnapping to say something like this unless they were sure, so Grandfather Gao had just moved to the next step.
“You understand why we have called you,” Natalie Zhu picked up after Steven Wei was done. “Lydia Chin claims the jade she gave Steven is the same jade you gave her.”
“If she says that,” Grandfather Gao replied, “it is true. You have called, therefore, to ask whether the jade I gave Chin Ling Wan-Ju is the jade Wei Yao-Shi gave me. It is.” Even speaking in English, Grandfather Gao used my Chinese name. That was how he had always known me.
“You are sure?” Natalie Zhu asked. “Could a substitution have been made without your knowledge, perhaps?” A whole unspoken sentence was contained in that perhaps. Or could you, perhaps, be lying to us and have made the switch yourself, or, perhaps, be protecting your protégée and Lydia Chin actually did it, which is what we think most likely?
Everyone knew all the words in that silent sentence, but no one responded to them. Grandfather Gao answered the question Natalie Zhu had actually asked. “No,” he said. “I guarded Wei Yao-Shi’s jade with the utmost care from the moment I received it until I handed it to Ling Wan-Ju.”
“Pardon me, but how can you—?”
“I wore it.”
That stopped that.
A moment’s silence. I looked at Bill, in the easy chair across the room, his feet up on the desk. “Grandfather,” I said, trying to shake off the disorienting strangeness of speaking to Grandfather Gao in English, “could the substitution have been made before Wei Yao-Shi entered the hospital? While he was ill, maybe too ill to notice?”
“I suppose that is possible.”
“My father,” Steven Wei suddenly came alive, “how long was he ill before he was hospitalized?”
“He called me in the morning,” Grandfather Gao said, “requesting that I bring him a remedy for the symptoms he described. When I arrived, however, I found him more seriously ill than he had said. I called an ambulance.”
“But he could have been ill for days before he called you?”
“A day, perhaps. More is not likely.”
“Why not? He was alone in his hotel, wasn’t he? Who would have known?”
“No, he was not alone. Although there was a period after he sold his home that Wei Yao-Shi stayed in hotels when in New York, that had not been his custom these last few years. As age increasingly overtook him, he found it more difficult to cope with hotel living.”
“Then where did he stay?”
Wake up, Steven, I thought, just before Grandfather Gao actually said it: “He stayed with his other son. With Franklin, your brother.”
After the overseas operator disconnected the lot of us, Bill and I just looked at each other across my hotel room. Steven had been so hot to call his brother that Natalie Zhu had had to restrain him from doing it from his cell phone while the rest of us were still conferenced together. I suggested making the call to Franklin another conference call, but that was vetoed fast. Steven promised to let us know what happened between them. I wasn’t sure he would, but there was nothing to be done about it right now.
Bill swung his feet off the desk, got up and walked over to the minibar. He pulled out a beer and held up a bottle of orange juice. I nodded. He tossed me the juice, then plunked himself down in the easy chair again.
I drank some juice, cool and acidy in my dry throat.
“Franklin Wei,” I said, “wanted his father’s jade for sentimental reasons, but he knew his father was planning to leave it to Harry. He’s a doctor; on Mr. Wei’s last New York trip Franklin could see the old man wasn’t well and might go at any time. He snuck into his room one night and lifted the real jade off his neck, replacing it with the phony one, while the old man kept on snoring. The phony one was worth more than the real one because after all this was for sentiment, not for cash, and Franklin didn’t want to cheat little Harry. How does that sound?”
Bill popped the top on his beer. “Ridiculous.”
I sighed. “In half a dozen places, right?”
“At least.”
“The main one being that Franklin didn’t know about Harry?”
“That’s a big one.”
“What if he did?”
“What?”
“What if he really knew about Harry all along? Harry and Li-Ling and especially Steven? Knew about them, or maybe found out recently?”
Bill drank and lowered the beer can. “Go on.”
“Well, it doesn’t explain any of this nonsense with the jades, but it’s an interesting thought. He’s got a fast-andloose lifestyle to maintain. Maybe medicine just isn’t doing enough for him right now. Old Mr. Wei is his way out: That will leave his half of a prosperous business—Lion Rock—which Franklin had probably been expecting to inherit, and which he would if it weren’t for the other family.”
“So after old Mr. Wei dies, Franklin comes to Hong Kong, kidnaps the kid, and demands twenty million Hong Kong dollars?”
“Don’t you think?”
“Then who wants the jade?”
The orange juice was kicking my brain into gear. “The amah, who’s in on it with Franklin and could be the only person who knows the jade is coming who doesn’t really know what it’s worth. She tries to double-cross Franklin and get the jade before the real demand is made. She probably thinks it’s worth more than whatever share of the twenty million Franklin offered her, or maybe she doesn’t trust him to come through with any of it. Franklin, knowing nothing about that, calls as planned and asks for the twenty million.”
“And then calls again and offers to mortgage his apartment to raise half of it?”
“Why not? It throws suspicion off him and nets him a million American dollars, in the end.”
“Hmmm,” Bill said, rubbing his eyes. “If I open this window really wide can I smoke?”
“No.”
“In the bathroom, with the exhaust fan on?”
“No.”
“Come up to my room?”
“You have to be kidding.”
The phone rang, saving me the trouble of telling him it had not really been worth a try.
“Wai?” I said, “Hello?”
“He is not there,” came Steven Wei’s voice, again dull and lost.
It took me a second. “Franklin?”
“He is not at his hotel. I have left an urgent message for him to call me. If for any reason you hear from him you must—”
“I’ll tell him. I don’t know why he’d call me, but I’ll tell him.”
It didn’t sound to me like Steven completely believed that, but there wasn’t much he could do. I wondered briefly whether to share my suspicions about Franklin with Steven, but I wasn’t sure whether, in the light of bright, non-jet-lagged day, anything in the scenario Bill and I had just woven would make any sense at all. There were things we could do, I decided, to check this theory out, and we ought to do them before we started going around making Steven Wei distrust a brother he had only just met.
“I’ll tell him,” I repeated. “And if you hear from him, you’ll let me know?”
He said he would, he hung up, and Bill and I were alone once more.
“Now that we have the phone to ourselves, I’m calling Grandfather Gao again,” I said, looking at Bill across the room.
“Why not?” He leaned back in his chair. “Maybe a nature metaphor or two will help.”
“He didn’t use a single one just now, did he?” I reached for my orange juice.
“Maybe he only does it in Chinese.”
“You know,” I said, dialing the endless series of numbers you need to get to the other side of the world, “I don’t speak to him in English very often. He sounds exactly the same as he does in Chinese. He’s the only person I know who does that.”
“Most people sound different?”
“Definitely. Don’t you think so? People’s whole way of expressing themselves changes in different languages. They move their hands around differently and everything.”
Bill drank his beer. I could see his hand itching to be holding a cigarette. I wondered if he were thinking about the cigarette in another language if his hand would look different.
“Wai?” came Grandfather Gao’s voice in my ear, finally.
“Grandfather, it is Chin Ling Wan-Ju calling.” I switched automatically back to Chinese, the way we were used to talking. “I wanted to speak to you privately.”
“You are alone?” He sounded not at all surprised at hearing from me again.
“Bill Smith is here.” Speaking in Chinese, I used Bill’s full name, the Chinese way; but it didn’t roll easily off my currently Cantonese-shaped tongue. Maybe, for these situations, Bill needed a Chinese name. Smith Soy Ngau, I thought. Water Buffalo Smith. That’s good.
“Ah,” said Grandfather Gao, meaning, in Chinese, that’s fine with me. He went on in his usual calm manner, but his voice struck me as darker than I was used to. “Ling Wan-Ju, this matter of Wei Yao-Shi’s jade is disturbing.”
“Very,” I agreed.
“Have you thoughts on this problem?”
“None that make sense to me.”
“As you continue your work, do not fail to keep this matter in mind. I believe that when you understand this, you will understand all.”
That would be nice. “Wei Di-Fen”—Steven—“thinks Wei Fu-Ran”—Franklin—“is responsible,” I told him. “Actually, I think he thinks I’m responsible, but he can’t understand what my motive would be. Grandfather,” I chose my words carefully to avoid offending Grandfather Gao by insulting his friends, “I can’t understand what Wei Fu-Ran’s motive might be. Do you know him well?”
“I have known him since he was a child, Ling Wan-Ju, as I have known Quan Mai, as I have known you.”
All right, I thought, you didn’t bring up Mark Quan just to have more people in that sentence. Parallel construction: the next best thing to metaphor. “You told me Quan Mai could be trusted,” I said. “Is this true also of Wei Fu-Ran?”
“Quan Mai is a police officer,” Grandfather Gao answered. “It is his profession to uphold the law, his nature to be honorable. Wei Fu-Ran is a doctor. It is his profession to be of help, though there is much he cannot cure.”
His profession, I thought. “What is his nature?”
“To make decisions quickly, with great confidence.”
Well, that sounded like the Franklin I’d seen, the man who just popped up to his brother’s apartment in a foreign country, carrying flowers and chocolate, because it seemed like a cool surprise.
“What about honor, Grandfather?”
“I have never known Wei Fu-Ran to be deliberately deceitful or ungenerous. I have, however, seen him surprised by the results of his actions.”
I’d have to think about that. I filed it away and changed the subject. “We went to the Lion Rock warehouse tonight,” I said. “We brought Wei Ang-Ran your greetings. The man we had seen watching Wei Di-Fen at the temple was there, working as a laborer, in the company of a member of Strength and Harmony.”
From the other side of the world, a long silence. “Ling Wan-Ju, if this is true you must take great care.”
“What does it mean, Grandfather? Is Wei Ang-Ran a member of the triad? Was his older brother, Wei Yao-Shi?”
“Tree branches can be swept away on the river’s current,” he answered. “Still they are not water.”
“What did he say?” Bill asked after I hung the phone up and leaned back against the headboard.
“Maybe I should speak to him in English from now on. This Chinese business is exhausting.” I detailed the conversation for Bill.
“Great,” he said. “Franklin likes to help but he makes decisions fast and screws things up. Steven has a valuable piece of jade that was not his father’s and someone, somewhere, has a piece less valuable, except that someone else somewhere else may be willing to trade a young boy for it. And the older Wei brothers may or may not be all wet. Is that accurate?”
“Yes,” I said, “it’s just perfect.”
“I,” he said, standing, “am going to bed. I’m hoping that what seems like Alice in Wonderland stuff now will make complete sense after a night’s sleep.”
“You think so?”
“No.” Hands in his pockets, he looked over at me. I thought he was about to say something, but he just stood there, and then he left.
I sat on the bed sipping orange juice and looking at the door for a while after it closed behind Bill. Then I picked up the phone again and called Mark Quan.
“You never sleep?” was his response when I told him it was me. Behind him I heard music, American jazz played on saxophone and drums.
“I do, and I wish I were. But I thought you should know the latest.”
“They’ve heard from the kidnappers?” His voice quickened. The music stopped abruptly; he must have turned it off.
“No. But Steven Wei just called me.” I told Mark Quan about the jade, about the call to Grandfather Gao, about my theory about Franklin.
“Goddamn,” he said. “This is unbelievable.”
I said, “I keep wondering whether it would make sense if I weren’t jet-lagged, exhausted, and in a completely foreign country.”
“It wouldn’t,” he said. “I’m none of those things, and it makes no sense to me.”
“Did you understand this place?” I asked suddenly. “Hong Kong, when you first got here?”
“Understand it?” Mark Quan seemed surprised at the question. “I’m not sure I understand it yet. Everyone’s always telling me Hong Kong is different from every place else. All I know is Birmingham, but it’s true, it’s real different from Birmingham. But do you mean you think this Wei case is so weird because of Hong Kong?”
“I …” I tried to think what it was I meant. “It fits,” I said. “Hong Kong seems to know what it’s doing, but I can’t figure it out. All the confusion, the hurrying, the stopping and starting. The temple courtyard that people can watch from their apartmen
t windows next to their laundry. The pipes down the outsides of the buildings. It’s all on purpose, but I don’t get the logic of it. Like this case. All this stuff must mean something, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Well,” he said. “I don’t either. But I’m just a cop. I’m like one of those windup Godzilla toys. Put me on a case and I just keep going until I get to the end of it or I fall over.”
I had to stifle a giggle, because Mark Quan did sort of resemble one of those round Godzilla robots with the flashing eyes. I pictured the robot in a linen jacket, with a tiny gun under its arm, stomping across the night market tabletop.
“If you were wound up now,” I asked, “where would you go?”
“This jade,” he said. “This jade is the key. I know it is.”
The same as Grandfather Gao, I thought.
“But I don’t know what I can do about it right now. Meanwhile, I’m interested in your idea that Franklin Wei knew about Steven and his family. I don’t much like Franklin for the kidnapper, but I can’t seem to unearth anyone who can point a finger at Strength and Harmony, which is what I’d really like. At least this would be something to follow up.” He was silent for a few moments. “I think I’ll call the NYPD.”
“The NYPD? Why?”
“For a printout of Franklin’s phone calls. Maybe he’s been calling someone here—if he’s involved in this, he’d have to have set it up before he got here.”
Of course. And if I were thinking, I’d have thought of that, too. “Will you call me when you get it?”
Mark Quan paused. “Now you have me in a tough position. You brought me into this case; I wouldn’t know anything about it if it weren’t for you, so I owe you. But I’m a cop and you’re not and I live here and you don’t. Anything happens to you, I’m an earthworm for the next dozen lifetimes, not to mention all the unpleasant things that would happen to me in this one.”
“You’re telling me to stay out of it now?” I bristled.
“No, that would be dumb. The Weis aren’t about to call me; you’re the only one who’s keeping me informed. I need you to stay in it, at least until we figure out what it is. What I’m telling you is to stay out of trouble.”