“You have such a charming way of expressing yourself,” said Lee. “Did anyone ever tell you that?”
“Only me dear old mum,” Jimmy replied in an atrocious attempt at a Cockney accent. “She’s not nearly as hot as your mom, though,” he added, poking Lee in the shoulder.
“Don’t you ever let up?” said Lee as they hailed a cab back to the precinct.
“Not ’ardly, mate,” said Jimmy, taking another stab at the Cockney routine.
“You sound like a drunken Benny Hill,” Lee remarked as they climbed into the cab.
Jimmy grinned. “Oh, snap. You got me, bruthuh, right where it hurts—my ability to mimic the Round Eyes. Jimmy stick to cooking pork flied lice,” he added in an exaggerated Chinese accent.
The cab driver, a Sikh in a white turban, shot a glance at them in the rearview mirror. Lee poked his friend and put a finger to his lips. Jimmy got the hint and shut up for the rest of the journey.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jimmy and Lee reported in at the precinct house to tell Butts what they had learned. He listened, chewing on a Slim Jim. When they were done, he tossed the remainder of the beef jerky into the trash, stood up and stretched.
“Okay, talk to you tomorrow. Wife’s waitin’ at home—I think it’s meat loaf tonight.”
“Right,” said Jimmy. “By the way, I like the Columbo routine.”
Butts frowned, merging the pockmarks on his forehead. “What?”
“The whole rumpled thing, the turkey sandwich in the pocket, the absentminded routine—it’s very good. I thought maybe you copied it off Columbo.”
“What do you mean?”
“You mean, it’s not an act?”
Lee tried to catch Jimmy’s eye and failed.
Butts stopped putting on his coat, and his eyes narrowed. “Look, Chen, you’re a pal of Doc’s, and so I guess you’re okay. But do I need to remind you who’s in charge of this investigation?”
“No, I just thought—”
“Well, don’t, okay? It’s not working out too well for you right now.”
Jimmy flushed and turned away. “Jeez. I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“Never mind,” Lee said. “We should let the man get home to his meat loaf. I’m sure he’ll be in a better mood tomorrow,” he added with a meaningful glance at Butts, who just grunted.
Lee and Jimmy headed down Third Avenue together, wading through the puddles of slush gathered in the intersections. Snow didn’t stay pretty in New York very long, and a warm front had turned the streets into a slushy mess.
“I didn’t know—really,” Jimmy said as they walked downtown in the gathering twilight. “I thought he was putting on an act.”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Lee. “He’s a little odd.”
“A little odd?” Jimmy laughed. “He’s a goddamn cartoon character!”
“You know,” Lee said, “we all have our . . . idiosyncrasies.”
Jimmy stepped over a pile of slush. “I don’t like where you’re going with this, Angus.”
“I’m just saying . . .”
“Listen, I gotta stay with my little brother tonight. My parents are going to my aunt’s in Boston.”
“Boston?” said Lee with mock astonishment. “There are Chinese people in Boston?”
“You velly funny, Round Eyes,” Jimmy said.
“How are they getting there?”
“They’re taking the Fung Wah bus,” Jimmy said, sidestepping a beggar with a greasy beard and wild cocaine eyes. “Twenty bucks round-trip.”
The man wore a Santa hat; Lee imagined him crashing someone’s Christmas party. The panhandler started to approach them but thought better of it and turned away, muttering to himself, “Twenty bucks round-trip to hell. What a bargain—buy ’em while they last.”
He tottered up First Avenue, steadying himself on parking meters and lampposts. No one looked directly at him; other pedestrians strode briskly past him, averting their eyes like good New Yorkers. You could always tell out-of-towners by the way they dealt with panhandlers—too much eye contact. That’s all the encouragement most of them needed to launch into their spiel. Lee watched the man thread his way through the rush hour throng of pedestrians crowding the avenue, wondering what his story was and how he’d gotten to that point in his life.
“I’ve heard about these Chinatown buses—so they really are that cheap?” Lee asked Jimmy.
“Yep. Of course, you take your life into your hands with some of the drivers, but Chinese people love to gamble, so that’s part of the fun.”
“Thank God you’re above racial stereotypes.”
“Cultural, my man, not racial—there’s a difference. Are you telling me you white Anglo-Saxon Protestants aren’t repressed? When’s the last time you went dancing?”
“Actually, I like to dance.”
“When’s the last time you went?”
“Okay, you win—I’m repressed, all right?”
“And my old man likes to gamble. So what? It’s part of our culture,” Jimmy said, turning to look at a young man in tight jeans with windswept blond hair. He preferred dating Caucasian men, whom he called “humpies.”
“Hey, I’ve never met your brother,” said Lee. “You want some company?”
“Sure, if you got nothing better to do. What about that girl of yours?”
“That’s on the rocks.”
“That’s a shame. She sounded nice.”
“How did you know about her?”
Jimmy winked at him. “I get around, Angus. My Chinese name means The Shadow.”
“Really?”
“Actually, it means peaceful clarity.” Jimmy laughed. “Doesn’t really sound like me, does it?”
“Peaceful doesn’t exactly fit you.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” he agreed as they passed Great Jones Street, home to a beautiful old firehouse. A couple of firefighters lingered outside Engine 33, Ladder 9, leaning against the brick building, suspenders dangling from their black rubber trousers.
In post-9/11 New York, firemen had become what movie stars were to the rest of the country. In this town, every waiter was an actor and every restaurant hostess a model, and most people took the presence of celebrities casually. Film stars were routinely glimpsed on the Seventy-ninth Street crosstown bus, viewed using the stair machine at the gym or seen shopping at Zabar’s; they were even likely to turn up at a Wednesday night AA meeting in a local church basement. It was a point of honor for any true New Yorker to regard these people as part of the scenery, hardly worth a second glance. Oh, they felt the reflected glory, all right—down deep, New Yorkers believed they were living in the center of the universe.
But after September 11, firefighters were more than celebrities: they were gods. The city embraced its fallen heroes and their comrades with a fervor uncommon even in a city of extremes. There was an air of ragged desperation around the edges of this fervor, but then, in the months following the attack, everyone had been a little overwrought.
Jimmy smiled at the firemen, and one of them gave a friendly wave—a handsome devil with thick black hair and eyebrows. No wonder Kathy was so taken with New York firefighters. But then, every woman Lee had ever known said the same thing: firemen were dreamy. Judging by the look on Jimmy’s face, he agreed.
“Hey, I could go for pizza,” his friend said, eyeing a storefront with a large pepperoni pie in the window.
“What about your lactose intolerance?”
Jimmy held up a bottle of Lactaid. “Meet the Chinaman’s best friend, my man. Come on—I’m buying.”
Lee had always felt that Jimmy’s restless energy was hiding something—a darkness of the soul, perhaps, or a secret sorrow—but his friend never exposed that side of himself. He always radiated the buoyancy of a game-show host or a tour guide, and Lee had to admit, sometimes it was easier just to go along for the ride. Like the Fung Wah bus, though, it felt a little crazy, as if things could spin out of control at any minute.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jimmy’s parents lived above the restaurant his father once owned, the Happy Good Luck Palace, on Pell Street. The smell of Peking duck and Sichuan pepper sauce floated up the creaky stairwell as they ascended the narrow steps to the second floor. The Chens’ apartment took up the entire floor, which was probably not more than twelve hundred square feet. The rooms were small but tidy, the windowsills laden with many different varieties of plants.
“My mom’s into growing her own herbal remedies,” Jimmy said as they passed clay pots of exotic vegetation. “It’s a habit she brought over from China.”
“You’ll be in good hands if you burn yourself,” Lee remarked, glancing at a robust-looking aloe vera plant.
“Yeah, right,” his friend said, leading them to the back of the apartment to Barry’s bedroom. Jimmy knocked on the flimsy wooden door, waited for a response and, getting none, knocked again. When he was again met with silence, he opened the door and went in.
The lighting in the room was minimal; the two small windows facing north were covered with thin white cotton curtains. Lee could see in the dim light that the room, though small, was uncluttered and almost obsessively orderly.
“Barry doesn’t like bright light,” Jimmy said. “It makes him anxious.”
His brother sat in front of a flat-screen computer monitor, studying math problems. In the green light from the computer screen Lee could make out Barry’s features, though the thick glasses he wore obscured his eyes. Though not as handsome as his brother, Barry Chen had the same long face and aquiline nose. He had the frank, open expression of a child, though he looked to be in his thirties.
“Hi, Barry,” said Jimmy. His brother responded by rocking back and forth in his chair and waving both hands in the air. It was hard to tell if the wave was a greeting or a signal to leave.
“Nice computer,” said Lee.
“Nice computer,” Barry echoed, his expression unchanging. His voice was flat and nasal, curiously uninflected. He continued to rock back and forth, staring at the screen.
“He does that sometimes,” Jimmy told Lee. “Especially when he first meets people. Don’t take it personally.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Barry said, still looking at the computer.
“No problem,” said Lee.
“No problems except math problems,” said Barry. “In fact, math problems are the best.”
“Is that what you’re doing, math problems?” Lee asked.
“Doing math problems,” Barry replied, typing.
“Jimmy says you’re very good at math.”
“Jimmy says,” echoed Barry in his nasal voice. “Jimmy says this, Jimmy says that.”
“Hey, Barry, tell Lee what your name is short for.”
“Barrington. Barry, short for Barrington,” he said.
“Wow,” said Lee. “Nice name.”
“Isn’t that a kick?” said Jimmy. “My parents wanted to give their kids hyper-British names, so they chose Barrington.”
“Barry, short for Barrington,” said Barry, rocking.
Jimmy shook his head. “That kills me—Chinese parents trying to fit in, so they choose the most Anglo-sounding name they can think of, one of those hyper-British names like Winston or Nigel or something. Who names their kid Barrington, for Christ’s sake?”
“Barrington, short for Barry,” said Barry.
“You’ve got it backward,” Jimmy said. “It’s the other way around.”
“Asymmetry,” said Barry. “In fact, I prefer symmetry.”
“You mean, like in math?” asked Lee.
“In math, in fact, in life, and everywhere.”
“He likes numbers,” said Jimmy.
“In fact,” Barry said, “numbers have a relationship to each other. No two numbers are alike.”
“We know, Barry,” Jimmy said gently.
“In fact, if you line up prime numbers on a grid, you can get—”
Jimmy put a hand on his shoulder. “Barry, my friend can’t stay very long, okay?”
His brother looked at him with the same blank expression. “How long is he staying?”
“I don’t know exactly,” said Jimmy, “But not long.”
“Exactly how long?” Barry said, rocking. “How long?”
“Five minutes and twenty-three seconds,” Jimmy blurted out.
That seemed to calm Barry. He turned back to his computer screen and typed the numbers, while reciting them under his breath. “Five-minutes-and-twenty-three-seconds. . . twenty-three is a prime number, of course, and the number five is common in Nature.” He typed some more, peering at his screen.
“He loves the Internet,” Jimmy whispered to Lee.
Barry stared at the computer, reading. “The starfish has five legs, we have five fingers on each hand, and many flowers have groupings of five petals. Five is the basis of the geometrical shape of pentagrams—”
“That’s all very interesting, Barry,” Jimmy said, “but my friend has to get going.”
“In five minutes and twenty-three seconds,” Barry said, waving his fingers in the air. He peered at the clock at the bottom of his computer screen. “It has now been exactly one minute and forty-eight seconds.”
“He loves clocks too—anything to do with numbers,” Jimmy said.
“That’s great,” said Lee. “You’re very good with numbers, Barry.”
“Very good,” said Barry. “In fact, I am very good with numbers.”
“Nice meeting you,” said Lee. “I have to go.”
“Nice meeting you,” Barry said, imitating his inflection precisely. “You have to go.”
They left Barry typing away at his computer, hunched over the screen in the dim light.
Back in the living room, Jimmy threw himself onto the couch. “I didn’t mean you have to leave. It’s just that sometimes it can be hard ending a conversation with Barry.”
“That’s okay—I really should get going. I have a boxing lesson tomorrow early.”
“You’ve taken up boxing?” Jimmy said, kicking off his shoes.
“Yeah.”
“Very cool. Maybe you’ll get to use it against this UNSUB, huh? I’d like to take a few swings at him myself.”
“Yeah, right,” Lee said, but they both knew that finding the killer was going to be the real challenge. “Well, see you tomorrow.”
“See you then.”
He went back down the rickety staircase, inhaling the intoxicating aromas coming from half a dozen restaurants. The odor of lemongrass and ginger from the Vietnamese restaurant next door combined with the vinegary smell of hot-and-sour soup, garlic sauce and fried fish at the Happy Good Luck Palace. He stopped in and ordered some House Special Lo Mien and Chef ’s Special Fish in Hunan Sauce.
Walking uptown carrying his bag of steaming Chinese food, he couldn’t help wishing he could pick up an order of Happy Good Luck along with the noodles.
The moment he entered his apartment, the phone rang. He dropped the bag of food onto the coffee table and picked up the receiver without looking at the caller ID. When he heard the flat, metallic voice on the other end of the line, his heart pulsated rapidly in his throat.
“Why, hello. I hope you haven’t forgotten about me. I certainly haven’t forgotten about you.”
“What do you want?” Lee said, fumbling to turn on the tape recorder attached to the phone.
“Just checking in to see if that red dress had turned up yet.”
“I thought you knew more than I did about all that.”
“I never said that.”
“My mistake. I thought you knew everything.”
He wanted to keep the conversation going to get as much as he could on tape, but he knew the caller would hang up before the call could be traced.
Anything he said was giving the man what he wanted.
“I think you’re just trying to keep me talking,” the caller said. “I’m hanging up now.”
The line went dead. Lee stood with the receiver in his hand, then pressed the Stop button on the recorder. Knees trembling, he sank down onto the couch. Steam seeped from the bag of Chinese food on the coffee table in front of him, but he had lost his appetite.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Lee stopped by the precinct the next morning after his boxing lesson, to see if there were any developments in the case. There weren’t—the lab had determined there was no sign of sexual assault, and so far no helpful DNA had shown up.
“You okay, Doc?” Butts said. “You look a little rough.”
“He called again last night.”
“That jerk who claims to know something about your sister’s disappearance?”
“Yeah.”
“How long has it been since you talked to anyone who worked on your sister’s case?” Butts asked, sniffing at a white bakery bag.
“It must be about three years now.”
“You might try finding the guys who worked the case,” Butts suggested. “Look ’em up, see what they have to say. Tell ’em about the phone calls. Anyways, couldn’t hurt, right?”
“The primary on the case was a Detective Brian O’Reilly.”
“O’Reilly?” Butts said, digging a doughnut out of the bag. “Think I heard of him. Came from a line of cops. His dad was a captain back in the day.”
“That’s him.”
“Rumor was, he used to drink heavily.”
“Still does, far as I know.”
Butts shook his head. “Bad habit to get into. Can’t let the job get to you like that.” He bit off a chunk of doughnut and chewed thoughtfully. “I think he retired about a year ago. Lives in the Bronx somewhere. Moved in to look after his mom or something like that.”
Butts turned out to be right. According to his personnel file, Detective Brian O’Reilly had left the force two years ago, taken an early pension and moved back to Woodlawn, where he’d grown up. Lee tracked down his phone number, which was unlisted, and called to ask if he could pay a visit. The detective was guarded over the phone, but Lee persuaded him it wouldn’t be a long visit, and he finally agreed. With the weather continuing to break, the air warm and foggy, Lee took the long subway ride to the borough that took its name from a seventeenth-century Scandinavian farmer, Jonas Bronck.
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