by Dave Lowry
“Wing Sung?” I said. “Cantonese?” Corinne nodded. I did too, more slowly.
“What’s that mean?” Ms. Masterson asked.
“Cantonese—they’re mostly in southern China—and Mandarin speakers—they’re dominant in the rest of the country—don’t always get along so well.” I didn’t add that for many Mandarin-speaking Chinese in the northern part of China, Cantonese people, from the southern part of the country, are thought of the way a lot of New Yorkers would tend to think of Appalachian hillbillies, as slightly uncouth and unsophisticated country cousins. It was a snobbery that went back a long way in Chinese history.
“That’s true,” Corinne said. “But if you want to work in the diamond trade for Chinese, you’d better learn to get along with Cantonese.”
“Which you did?” Ms. Masterson asked.
“Sure,” Corinne answered. “I even managed to get along with him”—she tilted her head in my direction—“for four or five days.”
“You cannot think of me as being worse than Cantonese,” I said, feigning surprise. I didn’t think Corinne had any prejudices against Cantonese. Most Chinese Americans of her generation wouldn’t. I was working for a Cantonese guy, Mr. Leong, at the Eastern Palace, and I never heard much anti-Cantonese sentiment from the northern Chinese I worked with. I was just amusing myself. Corinne went along with it.
“At least they’re Chinese,” she said to me in Mandarin.
“Okay,” Ms. Masterson went on, as if she hadn’t heard our exchange, “so why did you leave Wing Sung?”
“The company went out of business,” Corinne said.
“That’s an understatement,” Ms. Masterson said.
“It is.”
I wondered what that was all about. I had begun, I realized, to think about Corinne Chang as something of a jigsaw puzzle that needed assembling. I had assembled a few pieces. Maybe some of the edges of the puzzle were done. Those were always the easy part. I was missing a lot more of the pieces in the middle of the puzzle, though. I didn’t think this was a good time to try to put any new ones in place. I kept my mouth shut. Tucker’s Rule #95: When you’re already lost and clueless, it’s best not to clutter things with any more information that’s as likely to be superfluous as not.
“Do you have some idea why we want to talk to you?” Ms. Masterson asked Corinne.
Corinne nodded. I wondered if she needed a lawyer. I wondered if you’re supposed to ask about getting a lawyer. I wondered if Corinne had the right to remain silent. I wished I’d watched more of those cop shows my roommate Toby was always watching back at Beddingfield. Former roommate. Mostly, though, I wondered where the hell all this was going. So I just sat and listened. Rule #95 was still in play.
“The FBI has been asked by the Canadian police to help out in an investigation of the Wing Sung company,” Ms. Masterson said. “There’s a strong possibility the case may cross, ah, jurisdictional boundaries.”
Corinne took a deep breath, then let it out. Then she started telling the story. I’d heard it earlier, back in the motel in Ohio.
“I came to work one morning,” she said. “It was a Friday. I’d been working at Wing Sung for almost five years. It was the same routine. Mr. Sung, the owner, was always there first. He opened up. The shop was on the third floor of the Mercantile Mart, in the Central Business District. Do you know that area, by any chance?”
“I’ve been there,” Ms. Masterson said. I wondered why she’d have been to Montreal. I tried to work it into my theory about her having been a field hockey player in college. Maybe they had a big tournament in Montreal. Maybe there were some pieces in her puzzle that needed work. I decided I was too busy on the Corinne puzzle, though, to spend a lot of time on another one.
“So I get there, go up, and the door’s locked,” Corinne said. “And there’s a sign in the window, saying that Wing Sung Jewelry Importers is no longer in business.”
“That’s it?” Ms. Masterson said. “No forwarding address on the sign, no telephone number? No nothing?”
“No nothing,” Corinne said.
“What did you think?”
“I thought it was a joke,” Corinne said. “I actually thought for a second or two that I was having a dream. It was like getting up in the morning and walking to your bathroom and finding it wasn’t there anymore.”
Corinne told Ms. Masterson what she’d told me that night back in Ohio. She used her key to get into the building. Everything was still in place, she said. Desks for Mr. Sung and two assistants? Check. Stacks of invoices in baskets on top? Check. Her forceps, viewing loupe, and notebooks, all in place on the counter in the back room where she worked, under a big skylight to let in the natural light? Check. The inventory, kept, she said, in a bedroom closet–size vault? Checked out. As in gone. Faded away. Departed the premises.
“Did you have the combination to the vault door?” Ms. Masterson asked. She was sitting with both hands on the table between us, listening carefully.
Corinne shook her head. “I didn’t need it. The vault door was open when I got there.”
“Do you know how much inventory had been in there?”
Corinne shrugged. “I didn’t have much to do with that end of the business,” she said. “So I’d be guessing. But if I had to do that—guess—I’d say we had about fifteen million dollars’ worth of diamonds there, retail value.”
“Would the other people working there know?”
“They could probably guess, like me,” Corinne said. “But Mr. Sung kept track of inventory. And if you want an exact figure, you could probably call the police in Montreal. They could go in and check all our paperwork. It looked to me like it was all still there. Nothing seemed missing.”
“Except the diamonds,” Ms. Masterson said.
“Except them.”
“Which is a pretty big exception,” I said.
They both turned and looked at me like they’d forgotten I was there. Tucker, you suave guy, you. Ms. Masterson looked back at Corinne.
I was fairly sure the police had already done as Corinne suggested. It was a reasonable bet they’d been over every piece of paper in that office. They would have also interviewed everyone who worked there. Except for Corinne. Who was unavailable for an interview. Because she was, about that time, sitting at a highway rest stop outside a town that had originally been named for a cheese farm.
“Did you get in touch with either of the people who worked there?” Ms. Masterson asked.
“I called them,” Corinne said. “They sounded as surprised as I was.”
“Did you notice anything unusual in the time leading up to all of this?” Ms. Masterson sat back in her chair and lifted her hands, turning them over so her palms faced out. “Something out of the ordinary?” She leaned back in and put her elbows on the table. “You know what we’re looking for. I mean, was it like things were just perfectly normal, nothing at all odd or unusual going on, and suddenly, completely out of the blue—bang!—your boss is gone, the other people in the office are gone, nothing? No clues beforehand?”
“Two things you ought to know,” Corinne said. “One, about six months ago, Mr. Sung suddenly had a girlfriend. He was private about his life. He’d never talked about any relationships. Then one day a woman walks in and asks for him, and he comes hustling out the office, and it’s obvious something’s going on between them.” Corinne paused, then added, “And it was a little weird.”
“Weird how?”
“Mr. Sung is in his mid-fifties, I’d guess,” Corinne said. “He was kind of a lao touzi—” She looked at me and raised her eyebrows.
“Nebbish,” I translated. “What nerds become when they drift past middle age.”
“And the girlfriend?” Ms. Masterson asked. “She didn’t fit the—what’d you call it?—lao touzo—girlfriend image?”
“Lao touzi,” Corinne corrected, and shook her head. “No. She was definitely a gong-gong qi-che,” she said, and noticing Ms. Masterson’s expression, she instant
ly translated. “Loose. Gong-gong qi-che is literally a ‘public bus.’”
This time it was Ms. Masterson’s eyebrows that lifted.
“Everybody can ride,” I said. “Get it?”
“I do,” Ms. Masterson said.
“Besides the girlfriend, there were also some guys who came around a few times,” Corinne added. “They weren’t the typical customers we got. They’re what we’d call in Mandarin huai dan. A ‘bad egg.’ It’s like a low-life type. Somebody who’s shady, sleazy; somebody you wouldn’t turn your back to.”
Ms. Masterson sat back in her chair. She propped her elbows on the table again, folded her hands, and stuck her chin on top her knuckles. “They weren’t the usual sorts of people who came into Wing Sung?”
Corinne shook her head. “The usual sorts of people who come into a wholesale diamond office are buyers or sellers. In the diamond business, it’s a good idea to keep a low profile. Not many diamond buyers look like thugs.”
“And so when you considered that these ‘bad eggs’ had started visiting the place, you thought that maybe something was going on, right?” Ms. Masterson said.
“Something was going on,” Corinne said. “It wasn’t business as usual. At first I just assumed it wasn’t any of my concern. But then, walking in that morning and finding that whole bizarre situation, I was worried.”
“Did you think it might be dangerous?”
“Yes,” Corinne said simply. “And I thought whatever it was, it could be dangerous for anyone associated with Wing Sung.”
“And that’s why you left Montreal after you found the office deserted and apparently abandoned,” Ms. Masterson said.
“I didn’t know what was going on. I still don’t. But I thought it was too much a coincidence that these guys had shown up a few times over the past few months, and all of the sudden, the place is closed and Mr. Sung is gone. That, and I didn’t have any family or other connections in Montreal. It was a good first job in the field. But it wasn’t going anywhere. I thought it was the right time to leave and try living somewhere else.”
“Like Buffalo?” Ms. Masterson said, and Corinne nodded.
“So if you were going from Montreal to Buffalo,” Ms. Masterson pressed, “how’d you end up in the wilds of New Hampshire meeting”—she tilted her head in my direction—“the world’s only Chinese chef whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower?”
“Some friends were going skiing in New Hampshire,” Corinne said, and I remembered the conversation she’d been having on the phone back at that rest stop. “I thought it was a good idea to get out of town as quickly as I could. They were going in that direction.”
“So why are you here?” Ms. Masterson said, and then quickly added, “Not that you have to tell me. I’m just curious.”
I interrupted. “It’s been my familial experience that people in law enforcement aren’t ever ‘just curious.’ They don’t even ask you your favorite ice cream flavor without some reason.”
“You’re cynical for one so young,” Ms. Masterson said. “The truth is I’m kind of a romantic.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “First thing I think of when I hear ‘FBI agent’ is ‘romantic.’ Maybe it’s the gun thing.”
“Give me a break,” Ms. Masterson said. “You told me you met Corinne on the road. You take her to Buffalo, then she calls you to pick her up, and now here are the two of you, sitting together next to one another. Come on. Are you telling me this doesn’t have all the makings for a love story?”
“I’m thinking of asking her to the prom.”
“Would it be any less romantic if I told you somebody came to my friend’s work and was asking about me?” Corinne said.
Ms. Masterson straightened. Her expression changed. Not dramatically. But we went from having a “just some new friends having a conversation” to “just the facts, ma’am.” We went there in about a quarter second. Ms. Masterson, I decided, wasn’t an amateur.
“Any idea how someone would have known you had gone to Buffalo?” she asked Corinne, who shook her head.
“Are you concerned about your safety now?” Ms. Masterson asked her.
“St. Louis is a long way from Buffalo—and even farther from Montreal. No one but Ariadna knows I’m here.”
“So what’re your plans now?”
“Stay in St. Louis for a while,” Corinne said. “Maybe get a job waiting tables at the place where the Master Chef here is cooking.” She looked at me.
“See,” Ms. Masterson said, relaxing a little. “I told you. I’m a trained detective, and I’m telling you, all the clues are pointing to romance.”
“I hope your crime-fighting skills are better than your detective work,” I said.
Before she could answer, her phone buzzed. She took it from her purse and checked it, then excused herself. “I have an appointment,” she said. “But let me know if you think of anything else that might be of use.”
“She’s a nice person,” Corinne said, after Ms. Masterson had gone. She offered me the last bite of her cinnamon roll. I accepted. It wasn’t bad. Not as good as the one in the rest stop. But not bad.
“She is,” I said. “You should have asked to see her badge, though. It really does look pretty cool.”
19
Rule #22: No matter how bored you are in a situation, it could always be more boring sitting in the dress department of a clothing store.
Over the next two days, we got Corinne moved into an apartment in a building one over from where Langston and I were living. A friend of Langston, one he had high hopes of eventually making more than just that, had an empty bedroom. Her name was Bao Yu. Around non-Chinese, she went by Jade. Which I kind of liked because unlike most Americanized versions of Chinese names that seemed to be picked completely at random for no reason except to sound as awkward or dated as possible, “jade” in Mandarin is yu. So it sort of made sense. Bao Yu—“Precious Jade”—was waitressing at the Eastern Palace.
The move didn’t take long. Corinne’s only possession seemed to be the bag that had been sitting at her feet when I met her. After I hauled it up to Bao Yu’s apartment, I took Corinne to the Eastern Palace. I introduced her and pointedly explained to Mr. Leong and his wife that she was just a friend and not a girlfriend, and they immediately began referring to her as my girlfriend. Mr. Leong asked if she had any experience waiting tables. She did, she told them. She’d worked summers in a Chinese seafood restaurant in the International District in Seattle.
“What were you doing in Seattle?” I asked her.
“Growing up,” she said. “I was born there.”
“Wow,” I said. “You’re quite the woman of mystery.”
“You bring girlfriend in here, you two be all time making love talk, making flirt talk,” Mr. Leong said, interrupting us. “You not be working. You be wasting time. My time.”
“You still have family there?” I asked.
She shook her head. “My parents died four years ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Car wreck,” she said. Which was thoughtful. Not thoughtful that her parents died in a car crash. But thoughtful to tell me what it was. Sometimes somebody will reveal something, like “I’m going to die soon,” and then not say anything else, and you wonder if you’re supposed to pursue the conversation or if you’re just supposed to say, “Okay,” and let it go. It would have been gruesome and maybe too pushy for me to ask how her parents died. I appreciated her telling me. I also noted that she didn’t break up or become emotional about it. She just gave me the information. Which meant she had come to terms with it. Or maybe she didn’t want to show any of her feelings about it to me. I found myself hoping it was the former.
“I no have time pay for people to stand around making love talk,” Mr. Leong said. “You want job making flirt talk, you go somewhere else.”
We promised we would not utter so much as a syllable of love talk between us. Or flirt talk. I’m not sure if that assurance was what sold hi
m. Still, he told Corinne to show up the next day to work lunch. We left the restaurant and walked out into the bright sun. It was chilly.
“You know when Mr. Leong said ‘You got good dress, nice dress’?” Corinne asked me as we were walking down the alley to get back to the car.
“Yes,” I said. “Mr. Leong’s English is only slightly more successful than his comb-over, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“Well,” she said, “me no got good dress.”
“No nice dress, either?” I asked.
“No nice dress.”
“We go mall,” I said. “You get good dress, get nice dress.”
We then had to call a moratorium on speaking Leong-style pidgin because we couldn’t stop laughing and I was trying to drive. While Corinne tried on some dresses at the mall, I sat outside the dressing room and, looking at the mannequins, tried to remember if I’d ever seen a real female with a neck anywhere near as long as these. I thought about Tucker’s Rule #22: No matter how bored you are in a situation, it could always be more boring sitting in the dress department of a clothing store. I had made that one up as a child, when I’d had to go shopping with my mother. I’d always figured no matter how bored I was, I could be thankful I wasn’t sitting in a women’s apparel department. And now there I was. And I reflected that I had been right. Corinne came out of the dressing room and showed me the first one, a sleeveless black dress. It looked nice on her. Which is like saying it’s cold in New Hampshire in the winter. It looked really nice.
“Jeez,” I said. “You’re a girl.”
“That sounds suspiciously close to flirt talk,” Corinne said. She turned away from me a second too late to hide her flushing face.
Ms. Masterson called me later that afternoon. I’d dropped Corinne and her new dresses at her apartment building. I went back to my own apartment and was thinking about dinner when Ms. Masterson called to ask how things were going. I told her. About Corinne’s new job. And about going to the mall for dress shopping. I did not tell her how nice Corinne had looked in the dress. I didn’t think full disclosure was necessary.