by S. J. Rozan
“Maria’s, on Walker Street.”
“Happy to see you then.”
I didn’t share the sentiment, but I agreed to the time and place and clicked off.
“You set up a meet with that guy?” Jack asked.
“Don’t you want to know why he was shooting at you?”
“He was shooting at me because I was throwing rocks at him. Who is he and what does he want?”
“He’ll tell me tomorrow. Nine o’clock, Maria’s on Walker.”
“Well, you’re not going alone.”
I raised an eyebrow. “For Pete’s sake, you don’t have to get all John Wayne about it. Of course I’m not. You’re going to come and do the same thing you did at the bar. Get there first, blend into the scenery. It could be you,” I said to Bill, “but Jack will blend better at Maria’s.”
Maria’s is a Taiwanese tea shop and Bill’s been there with me any number of times. He’s almost always the only non-Chinese person in the place, and he’s big besides. He sticks out like a buzzard in a flock of swallows. That’s if you ask me. If you ask him, the whole thing has more to do with lions and Hello Kitties.
That settled, Jack checked his watch. “It’s past eleven. Hope Anna doesn’t mind the late call.” He made the late call, and Anna didn’t get the chance to tell us how much she minded because she didn’t pick up. Jack left a message, calm but using the words “really important” twice.
“When she calls back,” I said, “whether it’s tonight or tomorrow morning, let me know.”
“What do you mean? You won’t be with me when it happens? We’re not going to end the night in some enormously chichi boîte over a couple of single malts, discussing exactly where we are in this case?”
“You’ve actually ever been to a boîte? Never mind. Besides, do you have any idea exactly where we are in this case? Me neither. Listen, you guys, this has been fun, chasing around with you, getting shot at and stuff—”
“I don’t recall you getting shot at,” Jack said.
“No, I think that’s right,” said Bill.
“Oh, so sorry. I’ll try to position myself better next time. But right now, I’m going to leave you guys to have all the fun and I’m going home to sleep.”
So Bill, dedicated chauffeur that he was, took me back to Chinatown. Nothing untoward happened on our drive, and the universe was clearly telling me I’d made the right choice because my mother was asleep when I unlocked the door, slipped off my shoes, and tiptoed in. Or at least, she was in bed pretending not to be waiting up. Either way was fine with me.
14
In the morning my mother’s cover was blown. I woke full of energy, pulled on my bathrobe, and headed into the kitchen. My mother wandered in fully dressed suspiciously soon thereafter and with wide-eyed artlessness said, “Oh, are you home? I didn’t hear you come in last night. I thought you were still out, working overnight on your new case.” She says stuff like that to remind me that she’s not interfering in my life, professional or personal. But when I peeked into the teapot I found about five times as much tea as my mother, alone in the apartment, would ever drink before lunch.
Being the big tea drinker in the family, I poured myself a cup, gave her a kiss, and said, “It’s an interesting case. It involves art.” I dumped granola in a bowl and sat down at the table.
“Oh, really?” She spoke offhandedly, puttering around the kitchen doing things that clearly absorbed her attention way more than anything I was saying. “Do you know many things about art, Ling Wan-ju?”
“No, Ma. But I’m learning. I went to a gallery yesterday and saw little red boxes chasing each other around.”
My mother turned to look at me, waiting for the part about the art.
“It was sort of a sculpture. By a Chinese artist, in fact.”
That the home team was responsible for this incomprehensible item didn’t impress her. “Your cousin Yong Xiao is an artist. He painted a beautiful scarf for me.”
My third cousin twice removed, Yong Xiao, is a twenty-year-old fashionista wannabe working for pennies at the atelier of a hot designer barely older than he is. In his off hours he paints chrysanthemums on cheap silk scarves to sell to tourists so he can pay his rent.
Casually, because of course she takes so little interest in that which is not her business, my mother asked, “Are you working alone on your new case?”
“Or, you mean, is Bill working with me?”
She gave me the wide-eyed innocent look again. Her brow has permanent grooves from that look. “Oh, yes,” she said, as though she hadn’t given that possibility a thought. “I suppose you might be getting help from the white baboon.” She hasn’t said Bill’s name in years. She refers to him in other ways that would be endearing if she actually liked him.
“Bill’s on the case, yes.” I poked around for raisins in my granola bowl.
“I see.” She sounded relieved, which surprised me. One of the things she dislikes about my profession is that she thinks it’s dangerous. Almost as high on her dislike list, though, is the people I’m forced by the job to associate with, and on the top of that list is Bill. That he’s big and strong and bodyguardish and could help with the “dangerous” problem has never cut any ice with her. So what was the relief about?
“But this case is not urgent? It allows you time for yourself? Perhaps to see your friends?” She spoke coyly and I had no idea what she was talking about. Keeping a quizzical eye on her, I scooped up another mouthful.
Then I got it. “The Chinatown telegraph.” I put my spoon down. “Someone saw us at New Chao Chow, didn’t they? Me, and Bill, and Jack?” The relief must have been at the idea that I was hanging with Bill out of professional necessity, not personal choice. And the reason for the coyness was now blindingly clear.
Absorbed in measuring rice into the cooker, my mother answered vaguely. “I think your auntie Ying-le might have mentioned it. Yes, I remember now. She saw you when she was shopping on Mott Street yesterday.”
Mao Ying-le, a friend of my mother’s from her sewing days and in no way my aunt, was one of Chinatown’s biggest gossips. But it didn’t matter. If not Ying-le, my mother would have gotten the word from someone else. It should have occurred to me that I couldn’t dine in the neighborhood with a handsome Asian guy and expect my mother not to know about it before the check came.
“Jack Lee,” I said.
“Your auntie said he looked very nice.”
“She did?”
“Not exactly. She said you looked as though you thought he was very nice.”
My face grew hot, which annoyed me. “She stood there and watched us?”
My mother smiled. “Is he very nice?”
Some things you can’t fight. I’d have to talk to myself about the color in my cheeks later. “Yes.”
“And he is Chinese?” Just checking. Because he might be Japanese, or Korean. From a different planet, in her universe, but still light-years ahead of Bill.
“Jack Lee Yat-sen,” I confirmed. “From Wisconsin. He’s second generation, parents born here, too. But, Ma, it was work. Jack’s also on the case. He’s another PI.”
Her face fell. My mother’s been to California twice, to visit relatives, and to New England to view the fall leaves, but she has only a vague idea where Wisconsin is. “Second generation” clearly worried her, too. But Jack’s job was the final blow.
“Chinese, is he?” She sniffed. “Hollow bamboo.” Hollow bamboo: Chinese-looking outside, empty inside.
“Ma, you don’t even know him! He speaks and reads Chinese. And his field is Chinese art.” I didn’t tell her that in most other ways Jack was the guy who put the “A” in “ABC.”
“I thought his field was detecting.”
“In the art world. He finds stolen paintings, things like that.”
“So he’s involved with criminals, then.”
“No more than I am.”
“There, you see?” She plugged in the rice cooker emphatically, with
bitter triumph.
I gave up. Whatever we were arguing about, I wasn’t going to win. And why, I suddenly asked myself, did I care whether my mother thought well of Jack Lee, anyway?
I was finishing my tea when the cell phone in my robe pocket chirped out Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs.” That would be Linus.
“Cuz!” he said. “Too early?”
“Not at all. Have a good time last night?”
“Dudess, it was sick! Dum Dum Girls at the Mercury Lounge! They tore it up! We didn’t get back until, like, five a.m.”
“And you’re up working? I’m impressed.”
“No way. We just didn’t crash yet. A little wired, you know? So I thought I’d check out your dude first, to kinda bring me down.”
“So does he? Bring you down?”
“Well, yeah. I mean, the dude himself, I don’t know anything about him. You didn’t get, like, cell phone pix or something?” His voice was hopeful.
“Linus, we were—” I almost said, pointing guns at each other, but I remembered where I was. “It was dark.”
“Oh. Well.” He sounded like he wasn’t sure why that mattered, and to a tech geek I guess it wouldn’t. But he moved on. “Okay, so, I found the car. This dude I know, he has a dude he rolls with—sorry, TMI. A Navigator—last year’s, like you said. Plate number you gave me plus six-eight at the end? It’s registered to Tiger Holdings, LLC. Addresses in Beijing, Hong Kong, Manhattan, and Basking Ridge, New Jersey.”
“Who are they, Tiger Holdings? What do they do?”
“Well, I don’t know who they are, but a couple of their honchos, you can see photos on their Web site.” He gave me the URL. “Maybe your guy’s there.”
“Okay, I’ll check it out. Anything else?”
“Well, sort of. I mean, I could be wrong.”
“But?”
“Well, you remember that Web site I built for Vassily Imports? So Bill could be a shady Russian?”
“Sure.”
“It kind of … smells the same.”
“What do you mean? You think the Tiger Holdings Web site’s a fake?”
“Not really. There’s got to be a real Tiger Holdings, because they own at least one car, right? But you said, make Bill’s look dubious, so I did. This one, it’s like they’re hiding the same things. Who the boss really is, all that. I mean, I was fake hiding, but I think they’re real hiding. Cuz, I think they’re gangsters.”
* * *
I didn’t finish the tea in my mother’s pot because I was headed out soon to Maria’s to meet Mighty Casey the Gangster. This disappointed my mother, but there’s not much I do that doesn’t. I had about twenty minutes before I needed to leave, so I sat down at my computer and brought up the Tiger Holdings Web site.
Linus’s conclusion didn’t surprise me. We’d figured Casey for a gangster last night. That whole kidnap thing, it was kind of a clue. Interesting to have it confirmed through the smell of a Web site, though. And Linus’s worried tone made me glad I hadn’t gotten to tell him the part about the guns.
I clicked through the bios of Tiger Holdings’s officers, each page topped by a photo of a confident Asian man in a costly suit. A prosperous crowd, though I could see what Linus meant: They made it easy to get in touch with them to discuss investment and partnership opportunities, but exactly what they did was hard to tell.
I did find Casey, though. His broad face and thick shoulders were labeled as belonging to one Woo Long. Title: Corporate Liaison. If last night was illustrative of his liaising technique, I’d be surprised to find Tiger Holdings actually doing all that well.
Figuring Linus had already followed Tiger Holdings as far as he could, I Googled Woo Long, but found nothing. Linus had been heading for bed, an unorthodox sleep schedule being his MO and one of the perks of running your own e-business. This wasn’t worth waking him for, but I sent him a note so when he resurfaced he’d know which of these guys I was interested in. Just because Google came up empty didn’t mean Linus would.
I got dressed, clipping on my small-of-the-back holster with the .25 that had come in so handy last night. I surveyed my closet for a drapey jacket loose enough to hide them. I have a bunch of those, mostly made by my mother. She sews them out of fabric I buy and to specs I describe while I wave my hands around. When I was young she taught me embroidery, knitting, and other handwork, but she never let me touch the sewing machine. Her theory was if I couldn’t sew I wouldn’t end up in the factory. Now that she’s retired, dressing my brothers’ wives and me is her chief joy. Though making things for my sisters-in-law seems to be the more gratifying: When she’s sewing my clothes she never stops grumbling about girls not finding husbands if they walk around wearing trousers and tents.
If she has any idea why I really like my jackets baggy, she’s never said.
I chose one of my favorites, a black cotton twill that swings at the hem. It looks particularly good with black pants and a white shirt, and I added a red scarf because black-white-and-red is a power-color combination and I was, after all, meeting a gangster. The fact that Jack Lee would be sitting at a back table watching me barely crossed my mind.
“So long, Ma,” I called, hopping around one-legged in the foyer, putting on my shoes.
“You are going to work?” She appeared from the kitchen, cleaver in hand.
“Yes.”
“With the white baboon? Or the hollow bamboo?”
“Both. Aren’t I lucky?”
She frowned. “Ling Wan-ju. You think you have been lucky, on your road in life. But take care. What looks like the path to good fortune can often be the opposite. And to bad luck, the same.” With that she turned and walked back to the kitchen. Wow, I thought. All that was missing were crickets and ants.
* * *
In the bright spring sunlight I cut a path—to what kind of fortune, I didn’t know. Pushing through the crowds of morning shoppers and early-bird tourists, I called Jack to ask if he’d heard from Anna Yang.
“Nope. I called her this morning again, just got voice mail. After I get through bodyguarding you here I’ll try again.”
“Here? You’re at Maria’s already?”
“The egg custard tarts come out of the oven at eight-thirty. Didn’t you know that?”
I was early, too, and as I planned, I hit Maria’s before Mighty Woo Long Casey. Inside the bakery things were only slightly less chaotic than on the street. I found Jack spread out over a cup of coffee, an egg custard tart, and The Times. His leather jacket hung over the back of his chair and he seemed completely absorbed in the news and caffeine, oblivious to the din around him, which included me ordering milk tea and a red bean bun.
I paid and stood with my tray, waiting for a table to clear. Jack, of course, could have gotten up and given me his, but then he wouldn’t have been able to watch over the meeting. If I couldn’t find one, though, Casey and I would have to take this meeting out to the street, in which case, what good was Jack having one? Quite a conundrum. I wondered if Jeff Dunbar, in the delicate diplomacy of the State Department, had ever faced one like it. Maybe after I’d filled him in on Tiger Holdings’s concerns about him, and passed on their advice, I could ask him.
Luckily, as I stood there, a young couple got up from a table by the window. I sped over, plunking my tray down ahead of the countergirl who was coming to pile their dishes up and push their crumbs onto the floor with a cloth. I thanked her. She nodded and turned to leave, nearly bumping into Casey as she did.
“Ms. Chin,” he grinned. “So nice, see you again.”
“Not all that nice.” I tried to play it tough, but it was hard to keep from smiling at the white bandage on his forehead. Nice work, Jack. “I trust you feel all right.”
“Feel great, thank you.” He pulled out a chair and deposited himself in it. Not far from Jack, a squarish young guy looked up from a Chinese-language newspaper and looked down again quickly. So we were both cheating: Casey had a second here, too. Not suprising. I hoped Jack had notic
ed. I thought he might have, because, still reading his paper, he shifted in his seat to where both our table and the square guy’s were within his sight.
Casey stuck a straw in his plastic cup of bubble tea. I don’t like that stuff anyway, and certainly not for breakfast. And the one he had was purple.
“What do you want?” I said.
“No,” he contradicted me after a slurp. “Question is, what do your client want?”
“That’s private business.”
“Some private business, he telling everybody.”
“Who?” I said, confused. “He’s telling who?”
“Everybody. Go around saying, I looking new Chaus, you know where to find?”
“Not as far as I know, he’s not. That’s supposed to be my job. Do you, by the way? Know where to find them?”
Casey laughed cheerily, as though I’d made a good joke. “Of course. Boss know. But not telling you.” He wagged a finger in front of my face. “Not telling your client, too. You tell him, go away.”
“No.”
The smile dropped from his face. His voice hardened to ice. “Yes.”
What, we’re not friends anymore? Then enough of this. “Mr. Woo—oh, you’re surprised? Don’t be. I know all about you, you and Tiger Holdings.” “All” was exaggerating, but I let it stand. “Mr. Woo, if you want something, you have to give something. That’s how it works. Who is Tiger Holdings, how do you know who my client is, and why do you and your boss care if I find the Chaus for him?” Because they could be worth a ton, I suggested to myself; but I wanted to hear what he had to say.
He stared at me. “Think you pretty damn smart, Lydia Chin?”
“Why, is Tiger Holdings a big secret? Then you shouldn’t have a Web site. Who are you people?”
Eyes still on mine, he took another slurp of his purple bubble tea. Some tough guy, I thought. Except I was glad there were three dozen other people crowded into the shop here. And that one of them was Jack.
“We same people as your client,” Woo finally said.
“Interesting. Last night you said you weren’t.”