by S. J. Rozan
I was sure Haig couldn’t, and I was sure the professor knew that, too. I was tempted to give Haig a pass, though. I could read the Chinese, but my classical education was so poor I couldn’t have told Wang Wei from Liu Mai-ke. Or, for that matter, from A. A. Milne.
“Yes, all right,” Haig said, not even pretending to study the painting. “And you’ll say all that? When you authenticate it?”
“I’ve brought a letter.”
Haig seemed to try to put the brakes on, to think about this miracle the way he would any transaction. “What’s the painting’s provenance?”
“It’s from my personal collection. It was painted the year Chau died. I brought it with me from China. That, too, is in the letter.”
“I see. All very interesting. And Dr. Yang, you’re offering to do what? Consign the painting to me? On what terms?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t expect you to agree to anything as fair as a consignment. No, I’ll give it to you. In exchange for these.”
“Well.” Haig rubbed his chins. “Well. A true, unknown Chau. Authenticated by two major experts.” He looked at Jack, who nodded quickly. “If handled correctly, I imagine it could bring upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars.” He looked from the carp painting to the others. “Oh,” he said, as though a thought had occurred to him, “but these can be authenticated, too. Can’t they?” Again, he looked at Jack. Jack swallowed, threw a quick look at Dr. Yang, and nodded again.
“They are not Chaus!” Dr. Yang barked.
“So you say,” Haig answered equably. “Another expert says otherwise. And there are four of them. Not quite as good, but still, with proper attribution, they’ll be worth close to two million together. I’m not sure the bargain is a good one, Dr. Yang.”
Dr. Yang ground his jaw, making the vein in his forehead pop again. “Mr. Haig,” he said quietly, “your greed doesn’t surprise me. I was prepared for it, though I suppose I’d hoped to find it less boundless than it appears. Consider this: One painting authenticated by Dr. Lin and myself will be worth a good deal more than four authenticated by Dr. Lin alone and challenged by me. Challenged also by the painter, my daughter, who, I must tell you, is prepared to sacrifice her career rather than allow you to commit this despicable crime. Since this situation is to some extent her fault, not for making the paintings but for failing to grasp the dangers of people’s greed and malevolence, I’m prepared to permit her that sacrifice. However, if we can find another answer, that would be preferable.” The professor slipped his hand into the portfolio again and brought out another painting.
On a page laid vertically, a path wound through pine trees and floating mists to a craggy peak. At the mountain’s foot a river rushed, and on its banks stood a tiny figure, staring upstream. The three or four brushstrokes of which he was made created a palpable sense of longing. I read the poem, about yearning to see the spring in the poet’s hometown, far away, and was surprised to find my eyes as misty as the mountain.
Haig had no such reaction. What filled his eyes were dollar signs. He practically broke into a happy dance when Dr. Yang brought out a third painting, this one so traditional in subject even I recognized it: The Three Friends of Winter. Curving branches of pine, plum, and bamboo swept across the page, the leaves of each delicately mounded with snow. Three Friends paintings are always about persistence and endurance, but the poem was about standing in the snow alone after bidding an exiled friend a last farewell.
Haig, after a long look at these paintings, didn’t ask either expert about them. His only question, with almost comical inevitability, was, “How many more are there?”
Dr. Yang shook his head. “There are no more.” He lifted the top board of the portfolio. We could all see it was empty. “I brought three from China. There are no more.”
“And you’ve been hiding them all these years. You bad boy.” Haig smiled. “Now the world will get a chance to see them. How wonderful. Professor, I believe we do, after all, have a deal.”
* * *
Jack and I left Baxter/Haig soon after Dr. Yang brought out the last painting. Jack hailed the first cab he saw. It happened to be going in the wrong direction, but I was right there with him. As the cab sped around the block I threw myself back on the seat and kicked off my shoes. “What was he thinking? Three Chaus, in Doug Haig’s hands?”
“Well, he read Haig right on that: One wouldn’t have done it.”
“I almost had a coronary! I thought you said he was with the program.”
“I thought he was.”
“And now he’s freelancing, too.” I rooted through my bag, then stopped to ask Jack, “Hey. You think we got away with it?”
“With Haig and Woo, yes. Who knows what was going on in Dr. Yang’s head—who ever does, witness the three paintings—but what would he gain by ratting us out?”
“He wouldn’t have Lin to worry about?”
“He’s better off if Haig does believe in Lin. He said it himself, two experts are better than one.”
I found my cell phone. “I’m calling Bill. And then I’m calling my client. If they all start doing improv this isn’t going to be easy.”
I did call Bill, brought him up to speed.
“Holy cow,” he said. “Three?”
“I don’t know what was more beautiful,” I said. “The paintings, or Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang trying to ad lib around them.”
By the time I got off the phone with Bill the cab was nearing Jack’s office, so I put off the other call. “You’ve been quiet,” I said to Jack. He’d taken off the glasses and run his hand through his hair, spiking up Dr. Lin’s prissy man bangs. “Are you about to say something serious? Because the mustache is a problem.”
“I can’t take it off without solvent, so deal with it. No, just thinking.”
“About what?”
“The paintings.”
“It’s a shame,” I said. “Three new Chaus, falling into those hands.”
“Three new Chaus,” he nodded. “It sure is.”
24
I paid the cabbie and we climbed the stairs to Jack’s office. “The new window’s not bad,” I said, seeing it for the first time. “Trim all painted and everything.”
“The new window stinks. My entire fee for this case is going for a real one.”
“You think you’re getting paid? By Dr. Yang?”
“He gave me a retainer. Damn lucky, because you’re probably right, I shouldn’t expect anything else.”
“He might even sue you,” I said cheerfully. “To get the retainer back.”
I called my client while Jack went off to the bathroom to use his solvent.
“Ms. Chin!” Dennis Jerrold was cautiously eager as ever. “News?”
“Yes, Mr. Jerrold. Things have changed. We need a meeting.”
“What’s wrong? Are the Chaus about to be unveiled?”
“No. The good news for you is, it looks like the fake Chaus with Mike Liu’s poems on them won’t be shown at all.”
“That is good news. In fact, it’s terrific and it’s better than I expected. So why do I get the feeling I’m not supposed to celebrate?”
“Don’t pop the champagne yet. As I said, things have changed. There are three real Chaus that just turned up, and they will be shown.”
“Oh. You’re right, that’s not great. Turned up from where?”
“I can’t tell you that. But they’re real, they’re authenticated, and they’re going on the market. However, I think I can still do right by you.”
“Oh? How’s that?”
I repeated, “We need a meeting.”
Bill showed up at Jack’s office twenty minutes later. I buzzed him in and met him at the door.
“Am I in time?”
“Plenty,” I said. “Jerrold will be here in half an hour.”
“Not for that. To see Jack’s outfit.”
“The outfit, yes,” said Jack, coming out of the bathroom in black jeans and a white Oxford shirt. His wet hair
was combed back and his face showed every sign of being freshly scrubbed. He pointed to the padded jacket and discount pants hanging over a chair.
“That’s all I get?”
“Can get accent also.” Jack bowed, speaking in Lin’s nasal tones. “Small scholar of Hohhot does not wish to disappoint.”
“He was great,” I told Bill.
“Vass he chust as great as Vladimir Oblomov, do you tink?”
“Oblomov, forgive me say so, but is coarse man,” Jack said. “Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang, much more refined.”
“Dah, you mean, sissy. Real man tuff like Oblomov.”
“Could you two pretend your native language is English?” I broke in. “We have work to do.”
The English thing was put off a little, though, because for our next trick, Jack and I listened in while Vladimir Oblomov called Lionel Lau.
“Meester Lau, Oblomov here. Pleasure to talk to you.… Chust fillink you in, need to esk a favor.… Good, Meester Voo already told you about Chaus? He did great job, by de vay, keepink his mouth shut.… Oh, yes, two million dollars, cute leetle Lydia says.” I gave Bill the stink-eye, but he was in character, so he just shrugged. “Vun tink, now, Meester Lau. Dose friends I vass tellink you about? Dey vould be very grateful, you do dis vun tink for dem.…”
* * *
Although Dennis Jerrold tried to keep his face pleasantly neutral as he stepped into Jack’s office forty-five minutes later, it wasn’t hard to tell he found the surroundings more congenial than my Canal Street back room. Well, nuts to him. “Hi, Mr. Jerrold,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”
“Thanks for making the meeting place so convenient. Is this your office?” That question, addressed to Bill, must have been diplomacy, because he couldn’t have been serious. Even bling-free, Bill does not look like an uptown-office kind of guy.
“Mr. Jerrold,” I said, “if we’d known from the start where you worked we could have made all our meetings more convenient. No, this is Jack Lee’s office—you met him, remember?—and he was supposed to be back here by now. I don’t see why we shouldn’t start without him, though. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”
He wanted coffee, of course, and so did Bill, and I made myself some green tea from the supplies Jack had replenished specifically to make this afternoon run smoothly.
“The paintings,” I said. “The Chaus you hired me to find. There are four, we found them, they’re fakes, and as I said on the phone, they won’t be authenticated and they won’t be sold. Though they’re really beautiful, as it happens.” I sipped my tea: high-quality, but I’d made it too strong.
“Beauty’s not the point,” Jerrold said.
“That’s the problem with politics,” said Bill.
“Yes, fine, we’ll debate that some other time. Where did they come from?”
“I can’t tell you who made them,” I said. “What I can say is, they do have Mike Liu’s poems on them, and not only would showing them next week have embarrassed the PRC, it seems that was the whole point.”
“That’s why they were made?”
“No, but it’s why they were going to be shown. If you want to tell your boss, and he wants to tell Mr. Jin at the Consulate, and you want to modestly take credit for saving the PRC some serious face, we’ll back you up.”
“Well, I’ll certainly do that if it’s the best I can get. Though I’d really like to know—”
“You’re not going to know, so forget it.”
He pursed his lips. A sticky point in the negotiations; pass it by, accomplish something else so you and the other party can feel good about each other, return later. “But don’t we still have a problem?” We. Give the other party the sense you’re on the same team. “You said there were three real Chaus about to come on the market.”
“Yes. From a private collection.”
“The interest in Chau brought them into the open?”
“In a way, it did. I don’t think we can stop their sale. But forewarned is forearmed. We can tell you where they’ll be shown and who’s doing the authentication. You can tell the people at the Consulate. They can get their own experts, pooh-pooh the whole thing, whatever they want to do. Cast some doubt, be wet blankets.”
“All right,” Jerrold said, setting his cup down. “I think—”
I was interested to know what he thought, but I wasn’t destined to find out. The door popped open and Jack popped through it.
“Hi!” he said. “Mr. Jerrold, sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. Welcome to my world.” He pulled off his leather jacket. “Hey, coffee! What a great idea.”
He poured himself a cup and joined us, looking particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.
“We were just telling Mr. Jerrold about the new Chaus,” I said.
“The new Chaus!” Jack took a quick sip of coffee. “Hey, this is pretty good. You must have made it.”
“No, Bill did.”
“Oh. Well, it’s good anyway. The new Chaus. I have a couple of things to say about them, myself. They’re new.” He sat back, beaming.
“Yes,” I said. “We know that part.”
“No, you don’t. You mean unknown. I mean new.” He jumped up and went to his desk, where he switched the computer on and rotated the monitor so we could all see. “These photos from the spy camera aren’t great but they’re good enough.” On the screen, with a couple of mouse clicks, he called up the three paintings Dr. Yang had brought to the gallery. He added close-up details from each, and tiled everything on a single screen. “These paintings”—he tapped the screen with the back of his hand—“are new.” He sat back down. “You said in the cab I was quiet. I was thinking. What I was thinking was, if Dr. Yang brought those paintings with him when he left China, I really am Lin from Hohhot.”
“Who’s Dr. Yang? Does he have these? Who’s Lin?” My client was confused.
I ignored him. “What do you mean, Jack? We know he had three. Anna said so.”
“Who’s Anna?”
“He might.” Jack ignored Jerrold, too. “But not those three. You saw them.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“They sure are. Chau never painted like that.”
“I thought all his paintings are supposed to be beautiful.”
“They are. But they don’t look like that. They don’t have that pared-away quality, like the painter knows exactly what matters and what doesn’t. Or that sense that he knows what he wanted to do and he did it and he doesn’t give a damn if you like it.” Jack grinned. “But they would have. In Chau’s mature period. If he’d lived.”
“What are you saying? You think these are fakes, too? Just better fakes?”
“No.” He clearly wanted to keep the suspense going, make us keep asking, but he also clearly couldn’t wait to tell. “This very issue was part of the full and frank exchange of views I had not an hour ago with Dr. Yang. They’re not fakes and they’re not old. They’re Chaus. From his mature period. Painted within the last year. Chau’s alive.”
You could’ve heard a pin drop, if anything as messy as a loose pin were to be found in Jack’s office. Then we all recovered at once.
“Jack—”
“Jack—”
“Mr. Lee!” My client was the guy with the loudest voice. “The Ghost Hero? He’s alive?”
“Dr. Yang admitted it. He’s an old friend of Chau’s. Smuggled out of China around the same time, as it turns out, and by the same smuggler.”
“What?” I said. “No. That story—you were there—”
“He said the story was true. But the man who died was someone else.”
I sat openmouthed. Meanwhile Jerrold, with impressive diplomatic cool, said, “Where is he?”
“Chau? I can’t tell you.”
“Mr. Lee, you—”
“No, I mean I really can’t. Dr. Yang absolutely drew the line at that. I’m assured, though, that he’s been an American citizen for many years, under a shiny new name, living a shiny new life. Painting only in private, nev
er showing. He was more than happy to give his old bud Dr. Yang those three paintings, though, to help him out of a hole. Like everyone else, he’d heard all the rumors about new Chaus, and he felt responsible for Dr. Yang’s troubles.”
“What troubles?”
“Trouble’s all fixed, don’t worry about it,” Jack said, though worried wasn’t how Jerrold looked.
“Whatever that means,” Jerrold said, “this guy’s a fugitive from a friendly foreign power and I want to know where to find him.”
“You won’t find him. You could ask Dr. Yang, but,” Jack surveyed Jerrold, “I guarantee you wouldn’t last a minute.”
“I’d like to try.”
“Oh, Mr. Jerrold!” I broke in. “Really, what good would it do? Are you thinking that turning Chau over to the Chinese government would help your chances for promotion? If it’s true he’s a U.S. citizen, the Chinese government can’t touch him.”
“It is true,” Jack affirmed. “Dr. Yang’s one, too. Very efficient smuggler.”
“We could agree to extradite them.” Jerrold wasn’t giving up.
“For Tiananmen crimes?” Jack was enjoying himself. “Just wait until that hits the news. You’re with the government, Jerrold, so maybe you don’t know this, but we’re supposed to be the good guys. The Chinese government, during Tiananmen, they were the bad guys. Friendly foreign power, feh.”
Jerrold fixed Jack with a hard stare. “You said they were smuggled in. If they entered the country illegally I could—”
“No, you couldn’t.” Bill got in the act. “Twenty years ago someone in the INS obviously decided whatever they were using for paperwork was good enough. Maybe even someone in your own Department told them it was. Gave Chau and Yang political asylum. While you were playing Little League.”