by S. J. Rozan
“Did Jim Johnson know you recognized the dish?”
“I said, ‘Oh, that sounds like that one we have, remember, Trish?’ and she said, ‘No, we never had anything like that,’ and she gave me this sort of look which means, ‘Shut up, Steve.’ So I shut up because I thought she didn’t want him to know for some reason. But when he left and I asked her she acted as though we really never had that dish. And I know we did.”
“All right,” I said. “Tell us the rest. How do you know about Trish?”
“About Trish.” His soft blue eyes blinked. “I went up there,” he said. “To meet you. We close at four-thirty, and I went out to do some errands. Trish was still there when I left but she said she was leaving soon, and when I got back the museum was dark. I went in—”
“You have a key?”
“Sure. We all do, Trish and the Director and me.”
“What about the alarm system?” Bill wanted to know.
“That was a little weird. It was off. But sometimes, like if someone’s just running out to pick up a sandwich, like if you’re working late, we don’t put it on, because it’s complicated and if you screw it up the security company gets mad and sometimes the cops come. In fact it worried me a little that it was off. I was afraid the Director or Trish might be coming back, and they’d be there when you got there. But there wasn’t anything I could do about it, and anyway it was dark, so I went up, and I got to the office, and I turned on the light … and there she was, Blood, and papers, and the computers all smashed … all this blood …” He looked away from us, his face gray-white in the smokey, packed room. The pounding of the rock music had increased steadily while we talked, so that we’d been leaning close, focussing tightly on each other’s loud voices. Steve stared into the gyrating crowd, holding his lips squashed shut. I wondered if he was going to be sick.
He suddenly turned back to us. “I think it was him.”
“Jim Johnson?” I asked.
He nodded.
“You think he killed Trish?”
He nodded again. “Doesn’t it make sense?”
“Not really,” I said gently. “Why would he do that?”
“Oh,” Steve said, blinking. “Oh. I didn’t tell you the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“He called. He called back later.”
“Johnson?”
“Uh-huh. I was in the Director’s office, filing something, but I heard Trish talk to him. She told him I wasn’t there. I guess he must have wanted to ask me about the dish. But then she talked to him some more. She said she wanted to meet him, that she might be able to help him, maybe.”
“Did they arrange to meet?”
“I think so, but I couldn’t hear where. But it could have been there, after work.”
Bill tapped the ash from his cigarette. “Steve,” he said, “why did you want us to come up to the museum? Why didn’t you arrange to meet us somewhere else, where there wasn’t any chance of running into anyone?”
“I wanted to show you. In the computer. I was right.”
“About the dish?” I said.
“I looked it up. Later, when Trish went to the bathroom. I called it up in the computer, in the Acquisitions file. It’s there. That stupid dish. It’s there.”
T W E N T Y - S I X
The music continued to pound, and the air had grown so smokey and thickly warm that I was beginning to long for the wind-blown January streets.
“Steve,” I said, “the police are looking for you. Did you know that?”
“The police?” He turned even paler, if that was possible. “Me? Why?”
“You had a key to the museum. You were supposed to meet us there. You weren’t there when we got there, and Trish was dead.”
“Wait—they think I killed her?” He said it as though it were a totally new idea. “That’s crazy. Why would I do that?”
“They look at everybody,” I said. “They have to. You have to go see them, Steve.”
“I have to go to the police? But what if he finds me?”
“Who, Johnson?”
He nodded rapidly. “What if whatever reason he killed Trish for, he thinks I know about it too?”
“Tell the police about him. Tell them that’s why you haven’t called them.”
“Will you come with me?”
I looked to Bill.
“It might be a good idea,” he said. “They’re going to want to check his story with us anyway. And ours with him. I we don’t come in with him they’ll wonder why.”
So the three of us inched our way through the throbbing music and the now shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of leather jacketed men until we reached the door. West Street, when we hit it, seemed to me more like the vast, empty, quiet reaches ο an Alaskan glacier than it probably ever had to anyone before.
Glacier or not, we found a cab right away, and after a wordless ride uptown presented ourselves at the Nineteenth Precinct. Outside, it looks like the building that’s been there for more than a hundred years, but the inside is all new and shiny and fluorescent-lit, reflecting modern police operations in a city where crime and cops never sleep.
After midnight, though, the cops get a little chip on their shoulders about it.
At the main desk, which is up on a platform so even people like Bill aren’t taller than the cop in charge, we asked for Detective Bernstein. The desk sergeant made a phone call, and a uniformed cop took us up in an elevator. In the squad room Bernstein was leaning back in a desk chair, watching for our entrance. When we made it, he didn’t get up.
“I knew I should’ve left ten minutes ago. What do you people want?”
“We can come back if this isn’t a convenient time,” I offered cooperatively.
“I already told you, don’t get smart with me,” Bernstein said without particular hostility. “Who’s this?”
“Steve Bailey,” I told him, since Steve didn’t answer.
“Oh ho, no shit.” Bernstein showed a glimmer of interest. “Where’ve you been, Mr. Bailey?”
Steve swallowed, and then looked at me, and then told Bernstein where he’d been.
Then came a period when Steve, Bill, and I were all talking to different cops in different rooms, so they could make sure the where-Steve-had-been-all-evening stories matched. Then the cop talking to me left and was replaced, after the required period of leaving me alone with my thoughts—presumably so my conscience would start to gnaw at me and I’d confess—by Bernstein.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Miss Chin,” Bernstein said, not too weary to be sarcastic. He tugged at his trouser legs and plopped his bulk into a molded plastic chair. “Especially in the company of a material witness—maybe even a suspect—who I’ve been looking for all night.”
“I’m happy to help, Detective.”
“Let’s talk about porcelains. The theft you’re investigating for the client you won’t name.”
“That’s right.”
“What if I told you Bailey already named them?”
“He doesn’t know who my client is. No one at the Kurtz does, or did.”
“Ah, what the hell. I didn’t think it would work.” He rubbed his upper lip and regarded me thoughtfully. “You still going to try to tell me your case has nothing to do with this?”
“I really don’t know,” I said. “I’m not sure what Steve’s story even means. Or if it’s true. If it is, this Jim Johnson seems kind of important.”
“If he exists.”
“I think he does,” I said slowly. “But that’s probably not his name.”
“Oh?”
I told him what Franco Ciardi had told us. “And Mr. Ciardi says he checked with the State Board, and there’s no Jim Johnson with a p.i. license in New York,” I finished.
Bernstein nodded. “Well, at least that’s true.”
“You know that?”
“I just ran him, after I heard Bailey’s story.”
“Steve’s afraid of him. He’s afraid he�
�s next.”
“If he exists,” Bernstein said again.
“If he does, Steve could be in danger.”
“Yeah. And if he doesn’t, Bailey could be full of crap. Come to think of it, even if he does, Bailey could be full of crap. Don’t get your shorts in a knot.” He waved his hand as I was about to speak. “We’re sticking him in a hotel with a cop in the hall, at least for tonight.”
“Not in jail?”
“It’d make me happier,” he admitted. “But I don’t have a motive and I can’t link him to the weapon, except that it came from his desk. That’s not enough to indict, so why bother? This way at least I’ll know where he is while I’m looking. And just in case he’s right, maybe I’ll be a hero and save his life, too. You know, Miss Chin, it would be awfully nice if you told me who your client was.”
His sudden change of topic threw me. My confusion made me realize how exhausted I was. I shook my head. “I can’t do that, Detective. Trish’s death may have nothing to do with them. Steve found the door open. Maybe so did someone else. Someone came in to rob the place, was surprised by Trish, and panicked.”
“On the third floor?”
I shrugged. “Trish’s murder isn’t my case. The stolen porcelains are my case.”
Bernstein stood abruptly. “All right. Look. I’ve had it, I’m leaving. I’m giving you twenty-four hours. Maybe I’ll find Johnson, maybe Bailey’ll confess. Maybe you’ll confess. If I don’t have somebody in the tank by tomorrow night, I’m going to pick you up as a material witness and hold you until you give me all the details. Good night, Miss Chin.”
He turned his broad back on me and strode out, leaving the door open.
I took the hint and left too.
* * *
This time it was my turn to head north. The desk sergeant wouldn’t tell me whether Bill or Steve were still being questioned. I could get a lawyer, and demand to know, and spend all night doing this; or, knowing that Steve—according to Bernstein—was taken care of, I could wait awhile for Bill, who could take care of himself. If he didn’t show, I could go home, sleep, and find him in the morning. The worst that could have happened was that he’d irritated some cop enough that he’d be spending the night in jail.
It wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
Two blocks up Third the windows of an all-night coffee shop spilled hard-edged blocks of light out into the street. One cup of tea, I promised myself, and then I’d go. I ordered the tea and a carrot-raisin muffin from a skinny Greek teenager who looked sleepier than I felt. He passed my order in Greek to the T-shirted man behind the counter. So tired I was bone-cold, I kept my jacket zipped and slumped into the corner of a padded booth, listening to the to-me meaningless, guttural rhythms of their casual conversation.
We were on to something. This Jim Johnson meant something, I knew that. The dish with Steve Bailey’s childhood dog on it meant something, and the fact that someone else—even someone who made my gut clench the way Matt Yin did—had connected Hsing Chung Wah with Lee Kuan Yue meant something.
Something, something, something. What a silly-sounding word. It ought to be spelled with a “p” in the middle. Sumpthing. Okay, Lydia, go home. Drink your tea so you don’t fall asleep in the cab, and then go home.
I nibbled my muffin, drank my tea. I watched the door, asked for more hot water, forced my eyes to stay open. I gave up, asked for my check, and stood.
Bill walked in as the skinny kid handed me my change at the cash register.
“Gee,” he said. “I waited for you before.”
“I knew you were about to walk in, so I paid so we wouldn’t waste time.”
“What about my coffee?”
I bought him a cup of black coffee to go and we went.
In the cab on the way home we talked but it didn’t do us any good. I told Bill that Bernstein had Steve packed away, and Bill told me that Bernstein hadn’t had much to say to him beyond the usual warnings.
“He’s going to lock me up tomorrow if he doesn’t get anybody else to lock up,” I said.
“Me too.”
“Well, that’ll be cozy.”
We talked some more. Bill had the same sense I did, that we were getting close, but he didn’t know, either, what we were getting close to.
I looked out the window while he drank his coffee. I wondered if everyone else I saw moving under streetlights and in the darkness of the city shadows was as cold and exhausted as I was. I felt sorry for everyone who wasn’t in a warm cab on their way home.
“Bill?” I said.
“Hmmm?” he answered through a sip of coffee.
“Were you surprised to find Steve at a place like Dusty’s?”
“You mean a gay bar in the Village?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Me either. I almost expected it, just from the way he acted when we met him that one time.”
“You’re getting at something.”
Something. That dumb word again. “I told you what Dr. Caldwell said about not knowing whether Steve and Trish had a romantic relationship. It just strikes me as sort of weird that Caldwell didn’t know Steve was gay.”
“Maybe he did know. Maybe he was trying to do Steve a favor by not bringing it up. To guys Caldwell’s age being out isn’t automatic.”
“But still…”
“Still what?”
“I don’t know. The way he said it. He made saying Steve couldn’t have done it sound like … like he was lying for Steve, or something.” Something. Leave me alone, you stupid word.
“Is it possible he was trying to help Steve by confusing things?”
“That’s not very smart.”
“People don’t necessarily think very well when they’re in shock.”
I didn’t answer.
“I think we just have to sleep on it,” Bill said, finishing his coffee. “That’s not a pass, by the way.”
“Yes it is,” I murmured, my eyes already closed, my head lolling against the cab’s back seat. “It’s just not a very good one.”
The cab rolled across Canal into Chinatown. Chinatown’s not a late-night place. All the corrugated shutters were locked down and the neon signs were dark. The streetlights cast a wide, lonely glow on near-empty streets. When the cab stopped at my building I turned automatically to Bill, to kiss him good night, but I got suddenly confused. Since I’d been so obnoxious about his making a pass at me, maybe it wasn’t fair of me to kiss him. And maybe he wouldn’t want me to. And maybe I was too tired to think about it.
Bill solved the problem by leaning over and kissing my cheek.
“Call me,” he said. “As soon as you’re up.”
I watched the cab pull away. Then, taking out my single key, I climbed the flights to my own front door.
I fell asleep immediately, probably before I actually lay down. But somewhere around four I woke, with a nagging feeling that there was something I needed to do. “Go back to sleep?” I suggested to myself, but that wasn’t it. I lay blankly on my pillows waiting for inspiration. It didn’t come, but the slightly guilty thought that I’d gone to bed without my cup of Mr. Gao’s unpleasant tea did.
Since I wasn’t sleeping, I got up. I tiptoed through our silent apartment to the kitchen to make my tea. At the living room window I stopped to watch the clouds blow away over the rooftops of Chinatown. The moon, close to full, glinted icily. Today had been gray; tomorrow, it seemed, was going to be clear.
As I turned from the window a gleam of moonlight fell on the cabinet where my mother keeps the little mud figures of scholars and horses and carp for longevity that my father used to collect. One of the gods—the one who stuffs evil spirits into a wine barrel—glared at me with his mock-fierce expression, the face that had always made me laugh as a child when my father imitated it.
“Yeah,” I whispered to the figure, so I wouldn’t wake my mother, “you’re about as tough as I am. You don’t scare me.”
He snarled all the harder,
as though scaring me was the point. The colored glazes of his robes threw little glittering stars of moonlight into the room. I turned to walk past him. One step, and then I stopped. I turned back, staring at him and his companions.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Oh oh oh oh oh.”
As I dashed back to my room to call Bill the wine barrel god’s glare had taken on a triumphant air.
The phone rang twice. “Smith,” Bill muttered, then coughed a smoker’s cough.
“Wake up. It’s me.”
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, and from his voice I knew a jolt of adrenaline had wakened him fully.
“Nothing’s wrong. Mrs. Hsing’s cup. I know where we saw it before.”
I told him the wine barrel god’s inspiration.
“He’s a genius,” Bill said, when I was done.
“What about me?” I asked indignantly.
“You’re a good medium. All right, go back to bed. Nothing’s going to happen now. We’ll go in the morning.”
I knew he was right, but I said, “You have to be kidding. I can’t sleep now.”
“Sure you can. The sleep of the righteous.”
“Me?”
“Try it.”
He was right. I slept soundly for the next couple of hours. But before I tried, I went back to the kitchen and brewed Mr. Gao’s tea. While it was steeping I tiptoed back to the living room, lit three sticks of incense, and stuck them in my mother’s little altar to burn down. I wasn’t really sure of the right way to do this, but I figured the wine barrel god would know it was for him.
T W E N T Y - S E V E N
In the morning I woke all stiff. I stumbled into the bathroom, dumped a package of Mr. Gao’s herbs into a steaming tub of water, and sat there feeling my muscles melt. I deep-breathed the fragrance of the floating twigs and petals. It cleared my head.