Ghost Hero

by S. J. Rozan

  “Now that the case is over,” my mother said, her back to me as she sorted dishes from the dish rack onto cabinet shelves, “I suppose you will not be seeing the other detective? The Chinese one?”

  “Jack? I guess I hadn’t thought about it.” I hadn’t, and I had to say, my first reaction to the idea wasn’t positive. “But Ma, I thought you didn’t like him.”

  “Ling Wan-ju.” She turned, wearing the wide-eyed look. “I do not know him.”

  This was true, and was the point at which, normally, I’d have given up. Now, though, maybe prompted by the still-circulating remains of my cosmo, or maybe by the not-yet-faded flush of victory, I found myself soldiering on. “Ma, you just seriously flip-flopped on the subject of Jack. A few days ago you were completely disenchanted when you found out he was an investigator, and second generation, too.”

  “I do not understand what you mean by ‘disenchanted.’ I have not been under a spell.”

  Bilingual communication failure: The Chinese word I’d dredged up to express that thought was obviously not quite right. “If you spoke English I wouldn’t always be using the wrong Chinese word,” I said. “I meant ‘disappointed.’”

  “If you spoke better Chinese, you would not, also. I was disappointed. I was hoping you had met a young man in a respectable profession. First generation, or possibly Chinese-born. More Chinese than American.” She shut the cabinet. “However, you have not. You have met this Lee Yat-sen. You seem to enjoy his company. He appears to be a respectable young man.”

  “How do you—oh, no. You had someone Google him, didn’t you?”

  “Someone” could only be one of my brothers, and her affronted look told me I was right. “Ling Wan-ju, I don’t know that word, goo-goo. I asked your brother on the telephone if he knew this Lee Yat-sen. He called me back to tell me that he had heard good things about him, as far as that is possible in your profession.”

  My mother never tells me which brother she’s talking about; I’m supposed to just know. In this case, it could have been any of them, until she hit that last snide remark. That made it Tim, and I snorted.

  My mother pursed her lips. “Your brother is concerned about you, Ling Wan-ju. He is interested in your happiness.”

  “He just doesn’t want me to embarrass him.”

  “Bringing shame to your brother would cause you sorrow, would it not? So in this concern, he is interested in your happiness.”

  I could only stare. The woman was a natural wonder.

  “Your brother cares for you,” she insisted again. “All your brothers do.”

  “I suppose you’re right. Sometimes they have odd ways of showing it, though.” I sighed and finished my tea.

  “That is a privilege of family. To express concern and be understood, even if the expression is odd.”

  “Yes, Ma.” I got up, kissed her again, and went off to get dressed and face the day.

  30

  Three nights later, there was another celebration. As Asian Art Week opened with grand fanfare, and Beijing/NYC debuted to critical praise, the East Village communal studio in Flushing threw a party to welcome Mike Liu to New York. The PRC government had already issued a press release to the effect that, for humanitarian reasons involving his health, lawbreaker Liu Mai-ke had been released from his obligation to the Chinese people to serve his sentence and, by the benevolence of the government and the Party, been sent to the West for medical treatment. The press release had been Xeroxed a few hundred times at different sizes and pinned up all over the studio’s corridors, where it had been painted and drawn on by the artists. In some places it was covered with glitter; in others it was folded into origami animals. A giant copy was suspended from the ceiling and hung with bells that tinkled in the breeze whenever the door opened. It kept opening, too, to admit the hippest of the hip; literary and art world stars; Chinese community movers and shakers; and all the downtown glitterati, every one of them dressed in black. The only other color you could see, spotted throughout the crowd, was red, the color of luck and joy.

  The party was roaring by the time we arrived, me in black silk pants and sleeveless black blouse, with a chunky red glass necklace; Jack in black suit jacket, black jeans, white shirt and red tie. Bill was a bit out of place, in a charcoal suit with a gray shirt and no tie, but at least he wasn’t wearing Vladimir’s bling.

  “I thought about it,” he’d said when he picked me up. “But if Jack won’t wear the fat suit, you’re not getting the bling, either.”

  “How is it I’m so lucky?” I’d climbed in the car and we’d fetched Jack and made tracks to Queens.

  Unlike our first visit to the studio, entrance tonight was through the loading dock doors. The party and its thumping soundtrack spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the street. “Hey, Jack!” Francie See waved from behind a long outdoor table crowded with wine bottles. “We’re taking turns playing bartender. Hi, Lydia, Bill. What can I get you?”

  Jack asked for Cabernet, Bill took a beer, and I got a Pellegrino with lime—I was forced to glare at Jack when he asked if I wouldn’t rather have a cosmo—and we strolled on inside. Almost no one at this shindig understood the part we’d played in freeing Mike Liu, which was how we wanted it. As far as we knew, just he and Anna, Pete Tsang, and Dr. Yang had any idea at all. Of them, Dr. Yang knew the most, but even he was sketchy on the whole Lionel Lau thing. The less anyone knew, we’d decided, the safer everyone would be.

  “Is that Mike Liu?” I pointed down the hall to a thin man with glasses. He was animated, laughing, talking. Radiant, you might say, as was Anna, at his side. “Gee, he doesn’t look sick. Let’s go get introduced.” We headed over, but Mike and Anna were swept up by a writer I recognized from a profile in The New Yorker. “Oh,” I said. “I guess we’ll be later.”

  “That’s the way it goes when you’re on the B list,” Bill shrugged.

  Jack said, “Oh, really? I wouldn’t know.”

  “Jack?” Someone had stepped out in front of us, an Asian woman in a red cheongsam. She raised her voice over the music to say, “Hello, Ms. Chin. Hello, Mr. Smith.” It took me a moment, then I realized: Anna’s mother.

  “Mrs. Yang!” I said. “You look wonderful.”

  Her bearing was still subdued, dignified, but she no longer looked grim, as she had when we’d met her in Anna’s living room. “Thank you. May I speak with you for just a minute?” She included all of us in her gaze, so we followed her through the door of the nearest open studio. It happened to be Francie See’s, where the bowl-and-tap painting we’d seen the birth of was pinned to the wall, joining all the other paintings of water, infinitely yielding and yet, in the end, invincible. Mrs. Yang turned to face us.

  “I wanted to thank you. For all you’ve done for Anna, and my family.”

  I said, “Dr. Yang told you?”

  “Yes, he did. He keeps no secrets from me.”

  “Oh. Well, you’re very welcome.” The guys seemed to have elected me spokesperson, or maybe I did that myself; so to be properly Chinese about it, I went on, “We’re honored to have had the opportunity to help. We were lucky to be able to come up with a fitting solution to the problem.”

  “Fitting.” Mrs. Yang gave a small smile. “Yes, some solutions are more fitting than others. Anna’s so happy now that Mike is here, it’s hard to remember that my husband and I once opposed this marriage.”

  “You wanted to protect her,” Bill said. “I’m sure she understood that, even if she didn’t like the way you tried to do it.”

  “Of course she did,” I said. To my surprise I found myself channeling my mother. “That’s a privilege of family. To express concern and be understood, even if the expression’s odd.”

  The look Mrs. Yang gave me was definitely odd. So was what she said: “And beyond family? Can one be understood, do you think, and maybe even forgiven, for expressions of concern that are … odd?”

  I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what we were talking about. Bi
ll just drank his beer, so I guessed he didn’t either. Jack, though, leaned down, kissed Mrs. Yang’s cheek, and said, “Forgiveness is always possible, even without understanding. When there’s understanding, it’s inevitable. Go back to your son-in-law’s party, Yang Yu-feng.”

  After a moment she smiled; then she bowed. Jack bowed back, and she left the room.

  I said, “Um?”

  Jack smiled as he watched Mrs. Yang make her way down the hall. “She’s the one who shot at me.”

  “What?”

  “That’s what she wants to be forgiven for. She said he has no secrets from her. But she kept a few from him. She knew Anna had made the paintings, and what Anna and Pete were planning to use them for. That’s why the target was me, not Dr. Yang. For one thing, I’m not sure she could bring herself to shoot at him, even if no one was supposed to get hurt. For another, it didn’t matter that there are other people who do what I do. By the time Dr. Yang found and hired one of them the Free Mike Liu rally would’ve happened and the paintings would’ve been shown. She just wanted to buy time for Anna by scaring me off.”

  “No, seriously? Where would Mrs. Yang even get a gun?”

  “Oh, I don’t think she personally did it. She hired it.”

  “Okay, then where would she get a person with a gun?”

  “A gun, and a high slime factor. Right here, in the studio next to Anna’s.”

  “Jon-Jon Jie?”

  Jack nodded. “I’m sure Mrs. Yang paid him well. And he probably thought that this would, long-term, give him something to hold over Dr. Yang. For when he wants a show reviewed or something.”

  “Gunshots in the middle of the day on Madison Avenue? He’d take that kind of risk?”

  “Come on, he’s a Texas cowboy.”

  Bill said, “What are you going to do?”

  “About her? Nothing. I forgave her. The end. About him?” Jack shrugged.

  “Jack, he shot at you!” I said.

  “Can’t prove it. Besides,” he grinned, “he’s got enough problems. Every artist here knows he stole the paintings. He has an expensive lease on a Manhattan studio, and he’s about to lose his gallery. He’ll never drink white wine in this town again.”

  “You don’t think Eddie To will take him on?”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  Probably conjured by my magical powers, Eddie To right then passed the doorway in the company of a familiar-looking Chinese woman. He took a step backward and leaned in. “Hey! Is this you guys’ cabal office?” He led the young woman in. “Hu Mei-fan, this is Jack Lee, Lydia Chin, and Bill Smith. You need to meet them, they’re very dangerous.”

  Hu Mei-fan smiled shyly, a smile that suddenly vanished when she got a look at me. Flushing, not meeting my eyes, she said, “We have met.”

  In Doug Haig’s office, yes we had. “No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

  “Mei-fan’s a painter, fresh off the boat from Beijing.” Eddie said as the young woman gave me a grateful smile and an almost imperceptible bow of the head. “Really good. We’ll be giving her a show later this year, Frank and I. After, you know…” He winked and touched a finger to the side of his nose. “About which, by the way, Drs. Snyder and Lin said exactly what you said they’d say.”

  Jack asked, “They’ve seen the paintings? They’re here?”

  “Snyder’s here for the week’s festivities. Lin’s in Hohhot. I sent him photos. Not so easy for him to travel, you know. Though now that he’s advisor to the top dogs in Chinese contemporary, he thinks his government may cut him more slack. Listen, if you people don’t have any crimes to plan right at the moment, let me buy you a drink.”

  “Drinks are free here, Eddie.”

  “All the more reason to get you the best. Come on, come say hi to Frank. Lydia and Bill, you haven’t met him yet. He’s right over there.”

  We started out of Francie’s studio. “You guys go ahead,” I said. “There’s someone I want to talk to. I’ll catch you up.”

  “Cool.” The four of them walked away down the corridor. Only Bill gave me a lingering glance, and I gave him a tiny head shake. To which he responded with a minute nod. I was tempted to wink, just to confuse him, but the man I wanted to speak with was turning the corner and I went after him.

  That man was Dr. Yang, and I found him outside. A few yards away, under a streetlight, a half-dozen people were taking a cigarette break.

  “Getting some fresh air, Professor?”

  He turned to me. “Ms. Chin. Good evening.” He gestured at the others. “I used to smoke. After I stopped, I realized one of the things I missed most wasn’t the cigarette itself, but the excuse to leave a room for a brief, unquestioned period.”

  “I understand the feeling completely. But if you were hoping for an unquestioned period right now, I’m afraid I’m going to mess you up. I have a question.”

  He didn’t give me permission to ask it, but he didn’t turn away. So I said, “Chau Chun is alive.”

  “Is that the question?”

  “No, Jack’s got me convinced that’s true. But the other day in your office you gave us a very persuasive account of holding your friend’s hand while he died. Either you’re a terrific actor, or that story was also true.”

  “Performance has never been one of my talents.”

  “I disagree. I saw you in Haig’s office. But that’s not the point. That story was true.”

  “Yes.”

  “But it wasn’t Chau Chun who died.”

  “No.”

  “But,” I said, “Chau Chun was there.”

  A long pause. Dr. Yang looked down the quiet street. “Yes. He was there.”

  “And he’s here now.”

  “Tonight? At this party? No, he—”

  “No, Dr. Yang. Here. On this sidewalk. With me. You’re Chau Chun.”

  The professor didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t react at all.

  “It was Yang who died,” I said. “You took his identity. That’s why there were rumors about Chau for months afterward. People saw you before you managed to leave the country.”

  “You’re stating these hypotheses,” the professor said quietly, “as facts. My students learn early on not to do that. You said you had a question.”

  “I have. What really happened that day?”

  “I have a question, also: What gives you the right to ask that?”

  “I could say, I just risked an awful lot to save your reputation, your daughter’s career, and your son-in-law. But that’s not really it. I took this case from the start to find out what was going on. I’ve found a lot, some of it complicated, little of it what I expected. But there’s still something else. There’s still something I don’t know.”

  “And do you have to know?”

  “Do you mean, will I shrivel up and die if I don’t find out? Probably not. But I might keep looking, now that I know it’s there to be found.”

  “Are you that tenacious?”

  I told the simple truth. “Yes.”

  Another long pause, and I gave him time for it. “What happened,” he finally said, “was what I told you. Chau had been in the square for days with our students; teaching, painting, chanting, encouraging. Yang went to persuade the demonstrators to leave. ‘Violence will serve no purpose,’ he said. ‘We can build the movement with our art.’ As they debated, the tanks came. There was gunfire, there was running, there was blood and screaming.” The professor fell silent again, and again I waited. Staring into the night, he said, “Yang was shot. The gentle peacemaker. Bleeding to death on the paving stones. I held his hand.”

  The door behind us opened. Music thumped out of the party as a couple left laughing.

  “But I didn’t take his identity,” the professor said. “He gave it to me.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “As he lay there. His name and his papers. ‘They know you, Chau,’ he said. ‘They’ll come for you. Everyone knows you’ve been here from the beginning. And Yang the Coward,
back in the studio, everyone knows about me, too. Take my papers.’ I refused. I told him he was being foolish, that I’d get him a doctor, that he’d be fine. ‘I’m dying,’ was his answer. ‘It doesn’t matter. But they’ll come for you.’ ‘Then let them come.’ ‘And Yu-feng?’ he said. ‘They’ll come for her, too. Your daughter, born in prison and taken away? Don’t let me die with that fear in my mind.’”

  “So you did what he asked.”

  “Yes. I exchanged our papers. He thanked me, and he died. Thanked me! Do you understand? I made my way out of the square and back to our offices, to do another thing, the last thing he asked of me. On his wall were three paintings I’d made for him to celebrate his faculty appointment. I took them. ‘I have no gift for your child. Take the paintings. From you to me, and now from me to your daughter.’ I stayed until he died, and then I did that.”

  “But his body,” I said. “It was identified as Chau’s.”

  “By me! Who better? I presented myself at the Public Security Bureau in the morning, claiming to seek information on my friend. It was chaos there, frightened people whose loved ones hadn’t come home. They showed me bodies, a roomful of them, all laid along the floor. I recognized one of our students. And Yang. ‘Chau Chun,’ I said. ‘From the Art Institute. A painter.’ That was all they needed. All they wanted. I left Beijing within the hour, making my way circuitously to my hometown, to my wife. We went into hiding until it was safe to contact Xi Xao, the man who came to you as Samuel Wing. He brought us here. My wife needed false papers made. I didn’t. I used Yang’s.”

  Overhead the stars were bright; before us the street was empty. Music pounded from the artists’ studio, where a poet’s freedom was being celebrated.

  “That’s why you wouldn’t give Anna’s Chaus to Haig.”

  “They weren’t mine,” he said simply. “I’d been painting all along, in any case, in a rented studio.”

  “And also, what Jack said was true. Your professional pride demanded those paintings be new, if you had to say they were.”

  He regarded me. “I think you know something about professional pride, Ms. Chin.”