by S. J. Rozan
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“There’s a group of women from the area around Cabagan who get together where this bridge hits the one going across there.” He pointed ahead. “The woman who told me that has a cousin from Cabagan. She has lunch with them sometimes. She couldn’t believe a Westerner had ever heard of the place.”
We worked our way to and up the sloped bridge, picking a path between groups of women marveling over photographs and others singing along with crooning CDs.
At the top of the slope, where the intersection of two bridges formed a sort of skyway plaza, eight or nine women sat on mats, their shopping bags propped against the bridge railings. They ate chunks of beef and tomatoey rice from paper plates, offering each other cans of sweet juice drinks and plastic containers full of pickled vegetables. They paid no attention to our approach until we stopped in front of them and Bill, smiling, said something I by now recognized as hello in Tagalog.
Most of the young women smiled back, some looking curious, and one or two of them answered, also in Tagalog. Bill said something which included “Cabagan,” and the response involved smiles and nods, a few giggles, and a question or two. Bill answered the questions and then said something else, and I recognized Maria Quezon’s name among the unfamiliar sounds. Heads turned to one quiet young woman sitting cross-legged against the railing. The others waited, apparently, for her to respond.
She had said nothing when Bill first started asking questions and she said nothing now. She did not smile, but fixed Bill, and then looked me over, with large dark eyes.
She spoke, Bill spoke, she spoke again. Bill shook his head. She said something else, something that seemed to be a question. Bill gave a short answer. She glanced around at her friends, whose faces had lost their cheerful smiles and looked now concerned and confused. She stood, said something to them, and drew Bill off to a place a few feet away. I stayed behind. They spoke briefly. He took out his passport, and then some things from his wallet, and showed them to her. He nodded in my direction. They exchanged a few more sentences, she shaking her head, he speaking low, seeming to repeat himself. When they parted he left her with a card from his wallet on which he’d scribbled something. She came back to join her friends; he gestured me over to him. I nodded to the women, who watched me warily. I went on to where Bill stood, and walked with him over the bridge.
“So?” I said after about two steps. Coming to another intersection, we turned. We didn’t head back down onto the streets, but took yet another walkway that, ahead, plunged into the side of a glass-walled building.
“That,” said Bill, reaching the door in the building, pulling it open for me, “was Maria Quezon’s sister.”
A blast of cool air rolled out and nearly knocked me over. “What?” I demanded. I went though the door into a short carpeted corridor. My skin tingled in the twenty-degree temperature drop. I turned to Bill as soon as I was inside. “And? So? What?”
Trying to get through the door also, he bumped into me. Then two Japanese tourists coming in behind him bumped into both of us. We all apologized with smiles and bows, and Bill and I moved over, out of the traffic lane.
I opened my mouth but before I could start again Bill said, “She told me she didn’t know where Maria was.”
“What do you mean, her sister?”
“Remember Natalie Zhu said she thought Maria had a sister working in Hong Kong, but she didn’t have any idea where to find her? Well, you find her where you find the other women from her village. Right there”—he nodded in the direction we’d come from—“at the corner of Bridge and Bridge.”
“Well,” I said, “that’s pretty bright of you, I have to admit. You get genius points. But she doesn’t know where Maria is, so in the end it gets us nowhere.”
“Wrong. She said she doesn’t know where Maria is. I swore up and down that not only weren’t we cops or officials of any kind, we weren’t even citizens here, and we didn’t want to get into trouble here any more than she did. But I said we knew about Harry, and I thought Maria was already in trouble, and if she was, we wanted to help.”
“What did she say?”
“What she didn’t say was that she didn’t know what I was talking about, or what did I mean, ‘knew about Harry’? She just told me again she didn’t know where Maria was.”
“Hmm. And you’re thinking if she’s really in the dark she’d ask more questions?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Don’t I anyway?” I stepped aside as a middle-aged couple opened the door to go out onto the bridge. A gust of hot humid air tried to sneak in, but the air-conditioning muscled it out again. “So what now?” I said.
“I told her again I wanted to help. I said I was worried about the little boy. I told her I knew about living someplace where you don’t belong and feeling like you have no place to turn when you’re in trouble. I suggested Maria could call me and we could talk.”
Three Americans came in the door, flushed and wilted from the heat. I looked at Bill as they passed us. “You do, don’t you?”
“I do what?”
“You know about living places you don’t belong.”
He shrugged. “We lived in a lot of places when I was a kid.”
“It’s not just that.”
“Not just what?”
“Feeling like you belong. It’s not just the place.”
He didn’t answer and he didn’t look at me.
“And speaking of places,” I said, changing the subject in my usual adroit manner, “where are we?”
“The Furama Hotel. I thought you might want a cup of tea.
“Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s your bonus genius points being rung up.”
Down the short corridor we turned left, which was the only possibility. The carpet, released from the narrow banks of the corridor, flooded out to become the floor of a grand upstairs lobby, high-ceilinged, dotted with easy chairs, sleek glass-topped tables, and newspaper racks in case you wanted to sit around in cool comfort and catch up on the world.
Or you could sit and look at the actual world through the glass wall on the far side of the lobby. We decided to do that, strolling across the endless carpet to choose a table right up against the glass, with a view of the Chater Garden and the ocean of Filipinas we had spent the morning among. No sooner had we sat down than a young woman in a discreet gray uniform appeared to ask us gravely if there was anything we wanted. I ordered hot tea and Bill ordered iced. Then we settled back in the easy chairs and looked at each other.
“This tropical-climate business,” I said. “I don’t know about it.”
“You’re gorgeous when you sweat. It makes you glow.”
“Uh-huh. I bet I smell good, too.”
“As always.”
“Well,” I said, “my personal hygiene aside, what do we do now?”
“We wait for our drinks before we try to do any more thinking?”
That sounded like a good plan. I leaned back in the chair, feeling my body temperature dropping one slow degree at a time. I was content not to think right now, just to watch the other Sunday tea-takers, the hotel guests checking in and out at the long lobby desk, the waiters and waitresses coming and going. The traffic and the palm trees and the amahs beyond the glass were a sunlit, silent spectacle, and all the sounds I could hear were hushed ones: soft footsteps, quiet conversations, the mild chirp of a cell phone.
A cell phone. Chirp, chirp. From my bag. I yanked the snap open and grabbed the thing out, stuck it to my ear, and shouted, “Wai!”
“Lydia?” came a tentative voice in my ear.
I dropped my voice to normal speaking tones. “Yes, it’s me. Mark?”
“You sounded so Hong Kong,” Mark Quan said. “I thought I might have the wrong number.”
“I’m adapting. Do you have news?”
“As a matter of fact I do. Not about the boy—that’s your department.”
“No, nothing. I was thinking of calling them but if they’re waiting for a call …”
“I know,” he said. Then, “I don’t suppose you’re anywhere near me?”
“I wouldn’t know. Not only don’t I have any idea where you are, I’m not exactly sure where I am. We seem to be at the Furama Hotel.”
He laughed. “Right down the street. Give me a few minutes. Where do I find you?”
“The lobby on the second floor. Having tea.”
Our tea came exactly as I said that. I folded up the phone and, when the waitress was through laying out the milk, sugar, lemons, and spoons, I told Bill we were expecting a visit from Mark Quan, with something to say.
“He didn’t say what?”
“Not even a hint.”
“Then I don’t suppose there’s anything we can do except drink and wait.”
“You could speak Dutch to me some more.”
“Is that sexy and attractive?”
“No. It’s pretty silly, as a matter of fact. Are you sure your accent’s right?”
“I’m almost sure it’s not.”
“Well, then.”
I used the lemon and Bill used the sugar, and I wondered if that meant anything about our approaches to life. He didn’t try any more Dutch, or Tagalog, or really do anything at all. He just settled into his chair, sipping his iced tea and watching people as they moved around the leisurely lobby; but the shadow in his eyes, the tightness in his shoulders, though still there, were faded. Maria Quezon’s sister, who knew enough about something to be troubled, to be silent and watchful as she sat with her friends; but was not panicked, not so frightened she had not joined them; who had not asked what it was Bill knew about Harry, and had slipped the card with his cell phone number into the pocket of her cotton skirt: Maria Quezon’s sister had lifted a weight from him, and I found myself silently thanking her.
As we sat quietly in the cool lobby drinking our tea I decided this must be how my cell phone felt when, after carrying it around all day, I plugged it in to recharge its batteries at night. By the time Mark Quan came striding across the carpet, wearing a gray linen jacket and darker gray slacks, moving with that surprising grace, I was ready to pay him some serious attention.
“Hi,” he said, pulling a chair from another table over to ours. The chairs were all on casters, the better to glide without a hitch through the peace of the lobby of the Furama Hotel. “Hotel lobbies R us, huh?”
“Bill found this one,” I said. “We had a hot morning.”
The waitress appeared again. Mark Quan ordered a lemon squash.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A drink only the British could have invented,” he said. “Too sour and too sweet. Tastes terrible, but it works.” He sat forward, forearms on knees. “I got Franklin Wei’s phone records for the last six months.”
“And?” I demanded. “Are there calls to Hong Kong?”
He nodded. “Two numbers.”
“Could you trace them?”
“Could and did. One’s the number at Lion Rock Enterprises.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, he’d have that, wouldn’t he? To find out when his father was coming in, or tell him he’d left his socks behind on his last trip. That doesn’t really mean anything.”
“No. But the other’s better. It’s to an antiquities dealer up on Hollywood Road.”
“Antiquities?” I glanced at Bill. “I don’t suppose this antiquities dealer sells jade? Little laughing Buddhas, maybe?”
“No jewelry, as far as I know. Bronzes, ceramics, that kind of thing. All genuine, on the up-and-up, but that’s no surprise. I don’t know much about that stuff, but I do know something about him.”
“The dealer?”
“L. L. Lee.” Mark looked from me to Bill. “A long-term high-up member of Strength and Harmony.”
Bill drew a cigarette from his pocket, then glanced around the lobby.
“It’s a Japanese hotel,” Mark Quan said. “You can smoke wherever you want.”
Bill lit a match, got the cigarette going. The waitress returned with a grayish-yellow drink in a tall frosted glass, placed it on a coaster in front of Mark.
“Well,” I said, “that’s not good news, but I can’t say I’m surprised.”
“I don’t know the guy,” Mark said. “Franklin, I mean. So I don’t have an opinion one way or the other. But it puts Strength and Harmony right in the middle of this, whatever this is. If I had a reported crime here I could round up a bunch of them and start pounding.”
“Maybe I should call the Weis,” I said. “If they haven’t had a ransom call since yesterday afternoon they might be desperate enough to bring the police in.”
“Wait,” Bill said, reaching for the ashtray. “Let’s think about that. If Steven reports the kidnapping, Franklin will hear about it—Steven will tell him next time they talk. Either that or we have to tell Steven not to, which will tell Steven what we think of Franklin. From what I’ve seen, Steven’s not the type to grit his teeth and wait. He’ll go charging off to face down Franklin and things could get worse.”
Mark sipped his drink. “There’s something to that. If this really is Franklin’s game, then he’s put himself in a position to know everything the other side does, or at least, if he gets shut out, to know he’s been shut out, so there must be something going on.”
“So what are you thinking?” I asked Bill.
“We have the police”—he gestured at Mark—“involved already. Rounding up triad members might give us something, but it might not. We may get results we don’t want, and they may not bring us any closer to Harry.”
Mark shrugged. “It’s okay with me. I’d sort of like to have the Department behind me, except,” he grinned, “every time they get behind me I find a knife in my back anyhow. Okay, so let’s think. I may not be able to pick these guys up but I can dig a little deeper than I did last night, now that I know where to look. And I can go up and see L. L. Lee.”
“What did you mean,” I asked, “when you said his business was completely legit and that’s no surprise?”
“Any triad high-up needs someplace to operate from, some legit business that he keeps straight so we don’t have any reason to go poking around. Lee’s known as a cultured man, a guy with a passion for the ancient arts. An antiquities business makes sense for him. He may be laundering money through it, but him being L. L. Lee, I’m sure people have looked into that before and not been able to make anything stick. Probably the business is squeaky clean. But I’ll look again. Okay, what else?”
“We did something interesting this morning,” I said, glancing at Bill. Bill nodded; I. went on, telling Mark what we’d set up. “She may not call,” I ended. “Her sister may really not know where to find her. But Bill got the feeling that she did.”
“Tagalog, huh?” Mark said to Bill. “That’s pretty good. You ought to be a cop.”
Bill shook his head. “Couldn’t take the coffee.”
“Can I find the sister again if I want her?” Mark asked.
“She wouldn’t give me her address and I didn’t want to push it. But her name’s Alicia Carolina Quezon-Aguilera, and she works for a family on the Kowloon side, in one of the new towns.”
“That ought to do it,” Mark said. I started to say something and he stopped me. “No, I’ll stay out of it for now. But if she calls—”
“Yes,” I said.
“Right.” He raised his glass in a toast. “Tagalog, huh?”
Bill raised his iced tea in response, and they drank more or less to each other.
Humph, I thought. But the Furama had no potted plants for me to talk to, so I said to Mark, “Did you check on Natalie Zhu?”
“Yes. If what everyone says is true, there’s someone who won’t have to come back in her next life. Not a hint of a shadow of anything bad. Reputation for complete devotion to her clients, especially the Weis.”
“Well, that’s comforting. And you checked on the W
eis’ finances?”
“As far as I could. I think it’s true, they don’t have fifteen million dollars—Hong Kong dollars; two million, American. They don’t seem to have anything close.”
“Could they raise it?”
“I suppose they could borrow against Steven’s share of the business. They’d need the uncle’s permission, but he’d give it. But I talked to a banker I know, gave it to her as a hypothetical situation. She said it would be hard to borrow until the will’s probated. Steven doesn’t really own anything yet. Anyone who was looking for that kind of money would have done better to wait.”
“It’s strange,” I sighed, sitting back in my chair. “The timing on everything involved in this is just wrong.”
“Probably not,” said Bill. “It’s probably right; we just don’t know what it’s right for.”
We drank our drinks, finishing them in silence.
“There’s something I want to do now,” I finally said. “Just a little thing, but as long as we’re here.”
So, after a brief squabble over the bill which Mark won, we all set off.
I was, as I’d told Mark, adapting. And one thing I knew by now was that there’d be an elegant, small, expensive jewelry store somewhere in the corridors of any grand hotel.
We found it with no trouble, a tiny storefront sandwiched between a shop selling Italian leather wallets and keycases and one selling extravagantly wrapped boxes of chocolates and marzipan fruits. The jewelry store’s windows featured pearls, on long strands where each pearl was identical to the others in color and size, in earrings where rubies surrounded them, in brooches where pearl-bodied fish blew diamond bubbles as they swam between strands of twenty-four-karat seaweed. They all shone with that sharp, brighter-than-sunlight glow that Bill had attributed to high-intensity lighting, but I was sure had at least something to do with the nature of jewels themselves.
A bell rang as we entered the shop, and a young man in gold-rimmed glasses and a quietly expensive suit put away his calculator and came forward to greet us. His eyes swept our little party, and then, coming to a decision, he addressed us in British-accented English. He took care to include us all, because it wan’t obvious at first glance which of these gentlemen might be planning to buy me some little pearl fish.