It was nearly three o’clock, somewhere between lunch and dinner. I wasn’t hungry, though I should have been. We went to the Orient Cafe. It was like a movie set. Huge, heavy, dark chandeliers hung over the worn black-and-white-checked floor. The walls, a smoky rose, were in need of a couple of coats of paint.
We went down past the bar, where a few Caucasians in short-sleeved shirts and Bermuda shorts sat talking, maps out. There were two white women at one of the round tables we passed on our way to a row of small enclosed rooms. Mr. Zheng and I went into room 23.
A man in a white apron brought menus and plates with napkins on them. He and Mr. Zheng spoke briefly. There were probably two dozen rooms like this, affording diners the ultimate in privacy. What secrets had passed within these dark wooden enclosures? What whispers of love? What conspiracies were discussed? What sinister plans were set down?
“I called your number, and I think your wife answered. I don’t speak Chinese, so we didn’t get very far,” I told him. “I may have upset her.”
Mr. Zheng smiled and shook his head.
“She is very angry. Angry at Ted.”
“Why?”
“Because he left her.”
I thought I understood the oddness of his reply, but I didn’t get it all.
“With the child?”
“That’s what she says, but it is because he left. She believes he made certain choices, that in some way he chose to die. She is difficult. If it weren’t for the child, she would have nothing.”
Just then an older, very stern-looking Chinese man in a black suit and tie came in. He smelled of tobacco.
Mr. Zheng and the man talked. Soon the two of them were laughing.
I ordered some fried rice. Mr. Zheng, I came to understand when the order arrived, wanted only a beer.
“I can’t drink at home,” he said. “What would the child think?” He shook his head. “My wife, she is very difficult. She is old China. That was the problem, Mr. Strand. Ted was young America.” Mr. Zheng was silent for a moment. “Entrepreneur,” he said.
“You have any ideas about what may have happened?”
“No, I don’t. One minute he was going to make a fortune with a nightclub. The next he was going to get a fleet of limousines. What a boy!” Mr. Zheng said that with a mix of exasperation and admiration. “Ted was so smart, so quick, so charming. But he bounced from one idea to another. From one person to another. No one could keep track of him.”
“I hate to bring this up, but he police suggest that maybe he was dealing drugs.”
“No,” Mr. Zheng said clearly. “Nothing to hurt anyone else. Maybe himself. But he wouldn’t get into drugs or prostitution. I know him. I knew him.”
“Gambling?”
“Maybe. But nothing serious. A little mahjong maybe.”
“And his girlfriend, Sandy?”
“What about her?”
“Do you and your wife like her, accept her?”
“My wife, no. Me? I accepted it as part of Ted’s curiosity. He had a Chinese wife before. He wanted something different.”
“Not serious?”
“Not serious, I’m sure.”
“The people who live in the apartment building. Was Ted close to any of them, or did he have business with them?”
“All of them, one way or another. Ted was the kind of person who loved an audience. And people liked him. He was a charmer.”
Mr. Zheng slipped into his own world but was brought out of it again when the waiter reappeared with another bottle of beer. The two talked more. My guess was that Mr. Zheng frequently came here for a few illicit beers.
“Come with me,” Mr. Zheng said after we’d finished. “We’ll talk with Gong Li. My wife.”
We walked over to Stockton Street. Here the fruit and vegetables spilled from the markets out onto the narrow sidewalks, which were already too narrow to convey the massive river of people without creating bottlenecks.
There is in Chinatown, like in other neighborhoods, a recognizable, telltale scent. I think perhaps it is some strange mixture of the sweet cookie dough and the open fish markets.
My upbringing in Phoenix hadn’t prepared me for the live fish sold from barrels and buckets. My upbringing in waspish, cellophane-wrapped America had done little to prepare me for this vaster marketplace. There were kicking frogs under netting, turtles waddling over each other in shallow water and eels in deeper tin pans.
As we approached the door of the apartment building and Mr. Zheng fiddled with keys, I noticed the doormat for the first time. BLUE DRAGON, it said, the letters nearly obliterated by countless entrances and departures.
“Blue Dragon?” I asked.
“Oh, that. Yes, that has been here for a long time. I don’t remember now who did it. I guess someone just decided to name the building Blue Dragon. We are now entering the mouth, I suppose,” he said with a laugh.
Ray was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if he was peeping from behind his door.
We went up the steps to the second floor.
“You know the other tenants very well?”
“Not very well. We say hello and that’s about all,” Mr. Zheng said, fishing a breath mint out of his pocket. He gave me a smile that insinuated we were partners in crime.
The Zhengs’ apartment was immaculate. Mrs. Zheng was standing when we came in. She was a small woman with fierce eyes. In tow was the child, in blue shorts and a starched white shirt. He looked up curiously. On the sofa was an elderly man. He smoked a cigarette, holding it in long bony fingers that were yellowed from nicotine.
There was the obvious introduction. I smiled and nodded. Mrs. Zheng remained standing, brittle against the outsider.
I dropped down on my haunches and extended a hand to the child.
“Hello, I’m glad to meet you. What is your name?”
The child continued to stare, an undecipherable look on his fresh face.
It seemed odd. I was his age when I last saw my parents. Now his too are gone, I thought. That was an assumption. I hadn’t asked about the boy’s mother, Ted Zheng’s wife. That should have been too obvious to miss.
FIVE
It was an awkward visit. So much of the conversation had to be translated. Each of my questions caused considerable discussion before Mrs. Zheng would consent to answer.
A few important pieces of information emerged. Ted’s wife had died in childbirth. Mrs. Zheng disliked Sandy Ferris and didn’t want her to be with the child. Mrs. Zheng had seen her son earlier the day he died—in the afternoon.
The angry woman had nothing to say about any of the other tenants. But she turned up her nose when the Wens in apartment 3A were mentioned. There was much Mr. Zheng did not translate for me. During the long and animated conversations they had with each other, I glanced at the child. What would he remember of his father?
We were similar, this child and I. But he was being raised in a Chinese home. He knew his grandparents. He spoke the language. And perhaps, unlike me, his face would never be strange to him.
A photograph of Ted sat on a table nearby. He was in his late teens or early twenties, I guessed. He was handsome and smiling and with a woman I presumed to be the child’s mother. The child. I thought of him as only “the child.” I hadn’t gotten his name—only his long and now curious look.
Coming out of the Zhengs’ apartment I spotted what had to be Steven Broder, fiddling with his key at the door of apartment 2B. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt and tennis shoes. In his hand were a black jacket and a pair of black shoes.
“Mr. Broder.”
His head twisted around, and he looked at me curiously.
“I’m Peter Strand.”
He still looked puzzled.
“Investigating…”
“Oh yes,” he said, relieved.
“Do you have a second to talk about Ted Zheng’s death?”
“A second, maybe a second and a half.” He paused in front of the door. It was obvious we were goin
g to have our conversation in the hall. “I don’t have much to say.”
“You knew him?”
“Yes, of course—he lived in the building.”
“You knew him a little better than that,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it was a little more than a hello in passing, wasn’t it?” I had detected a defensive attitude, and I instinctively probed in the same direction that had gotten me that reaction.
“What are you getting at?” he said. “Listen, I’m doing a double today. I don’t have much time, and frankly, I wasn’t born with a lot of patience.”
He started to turn to put his key in the lock. It was difficult, having to juggle his belongings.
“What I mean is that you hired him to paint the apartment, right?”
“I didn’t. Norman did.”
“Did you like Ted?”
“I didn’t think much about him one way or another.”
“Did you see him that night? The night of his death?”
“No,” Broder said with quick certainty.
“You’re sure?”
“What is this? I really know nothing about his death. I don’t know much about his life. Now, I’m sorry if that seems callous, but unfortunately, life goes on, and so do I.”
“I’m sorry about the inconvenience. Sometimes people see things they don’t know they see and—”
“I’m sure that all makes for a very nice philosophical discussion, but I don’t have the time. Talk with Norman.” He’d finally gotten his key into the lock and was about to disappear.
“I have,” I said.
He paused for a moment. He looked at me as if for the first time, up and down, appraisingly. “That’s just fine and dandy.”
“Weren’t you a little closer to Ted?” I asked, probing without grounds.
“Not me, sweetheart.”
Steven Broder was gone.
I waited at the door. In a moment I heard loud voices inside.
The Sandy Ferris who opened the door to apartment 1B on Saturday morning was a woman with bright-red hair and freckles. She had clear, bright-blue eyes and a smile. She wore a white T-shirt through which her obviously unencumbered breasts were visible. Below, an expanse of flesh, including her navel, revealed itself before disappearing into the loose waistband of a pair of tan shorts.
I suppose I expected an aura of grief wrapped in sackcloth. I didn’t get that, nor did I get the image Norman Chinn had painted, of an all-American girl, the type you’d find on a Wheaties box.
“Come in,” she said, and as I did, a gray cat with yellow eyes leaped to the back of the sofa, wary eyes focused on the stranger. The inside of the apartment was stark. Yet it had the requisite furniture—a sofa, side table with lamp, an upholstered chair. All from the same unidentifiable time period.
The large photograph stood out as ornament. It showed two barely clad individuals. One was Sandy Ferris, whose slender body seemed nevertheless to explode out of a skimpy bikini. The other was a muscular and handsome Ted Zheng. He too seemed to be attired in the minimal amount of fabric necessary to avoid arrest.
“Mexico,” she said. “Acapulco.”
I nodded.
“I’m sorry about Ted,” I said.
She shrugged.
I interpreted it to mean “what can I say?” rather than that it was of no consequence to her.
“Sit down,” she said, nodding toward the sofa. The cat came across the back of it and down the arm to greet me. Its nose touched my fingertip. Then it rubbed its face across my hand. It leaned its soft body into my palm as I ran it along its back.
I wasn’t aware that I had thought so much about what kind of person Sandy Ferris would be. This was a social worker? This was a woman who had just lost her lover? Whatever I’d had in mind to ask her had vanished at the sight of the real person. It wasn’t just the apparent sexuality and strange attractiveness that unnerved me. It was…yes, I expected sackcloth. I expected mourning. I did not expect sunlight and a sensuous woman.
The gray cat found its way into my lap.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“Less than a year,” she said, still standing. “Can I get you something? Coffee?”
“Thank you.” That might give me a moment to get my mind together.
“He’s lived here for a few years,” she said from the kitchen. “I think it was late last fall that I moved in.”
“So the photograph is recent?”
“Yes. February. We scraped some money together and went to Mexico.”
“Where did you meet?”
“Where I work.” She came in with two cups. “This is about an hour old,” she said, sincere apology in her voice. “He wanted to get some help—day care or something—for his child.”
“What about Mrs. Zheng?”
“Oh, she loves the boy—don’t get me wrong.” Sandy settled into the sofa at the other end. “But it’s all so Chinese. Ted wanted his son to have a chance in America. Learn English before he went to school. He wanted Mark to be an American. Football, hamburgers, big-screen TVs. Mrs. Zheng isn’t likely to let that happen. Ted really struggled when he was young.”
“Struggled?”
“He said he always felt caught between the cultures. He wasn’t educated the way he felt he should have been to succeed. He said he could have been a great businessman. But no one took him seriously. He used to say that he spoke English like a peasant.”
“The police seem to believe that he was dealing drugs.”
Sandy frowned. “No. Ted played with them. Parties. We’d go out. He’d do something to get in the mood, to stay in touch with the others.”
“Didn’t that mean he was hanging out with some pretty shady characters?”
“All middle-class partygoers,” she said. “Like me. Not gangsters, not murderers. What we did was small. Really small.”
“You party a lot?”
She smiled. “Weekends. Life’s short. I work hard during the week. At night I try to forget all my troubles…”
“And try to get happy.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling, tilting her head and seeming to invite me to continue in that direction.
The cat rolled over on its back. I patted its belly. It wanted more.
“Ted’s family. How do they feel about you?”
“The father is nice, polite. His mother hates me.” She shrugged. It was her line now: “What can I say?”
“How did Ted get along with others in the building?”
“Pretty good. He did work for some of them from time to time.”
“Who? What kind of work?” My ignorance was only partially feigned.
“He would find buyers for some of Mr. Emmerich’s seemingly endless supply of antiques. He’d do some odd jobs for Ray. And painting for Steve and Norman.”
“Anyone else?”
He helped Miss Siu’s sister move in. And he helped Miss Siu get her pamphlets out. She’s going to run for city supervisor.”
“What about the Wens? Nobody seems to mention them.”
“I don’t know much about them,” Sandy said. This reply was different. The tone wasn’t casual, though Sandy tried to make it sound that way. It was hard for her to keep her teeth from clenching.
“Did Ted know them?”
“I don’t know,” she said coldly.
“When was the last time you saw Ted that night?”
“About midnight. He said he was going out for a while.”
“He did?”
“Yes.”
“At midnight?”
“Before, I think.”
“Unusual?”
“No.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“No.”
“Who he was going to meet?”
“He didn’t say he was going to meet anyone.”
“Did he often do that?”
She was no longer the open, friendly, flirtatious young girl. Sandy
Ferris was uncomfortable.
“I told the police everything.”
She seemed like a little girl. Now very unsure of herself. She had pulled her legs in, her body in full retreat.
“Did you tell them you had a fight?”
She waited. “Yes…sort of. It wasn’t serious. He said he was going out for some fresh air. I didn’t like him to smoke inside. Sometimes he’d only be gone for ten or fifteen minutes. This time it was longer.”
“And it was before midnight?”
“Eleven thirty.”
“You know that exactly?”
“Yes. I remember looking at the clock.”
“Why did you look at the clock?”
“I don’t know. Why do people look at the clock?”
“Maybe sometimes they look at a clock because someone else did. Ted looked at the clock, didn’t he?”
I was prepared for either answer. But one would be more telling than the other.
“Yes,” she said.
“And you didn’t worry when he didn’t come back?”
“Well…”
“Because he’d stayed away before?”
“Yes.”
“And did you tell the police that?”
“Yes.”
Seemed logical that the police, already determined to put him in their drug-dealer scenario, would take his strange comings and goings as support for their theory.
But if he’d left, actually left the building, Ray would have known it.
“Were you aware of any problems he might have had with the other tenants?”
Her hand went to the sleeping cat, still on my lap. Her palm swept back the smooth gray fur. I wasn’t sure of her intent. It seemed intimate. I was growing uncomfortable.
“No,” she said softly.
“Are you going to stay here?”
“I don’t know,” she said wistfully. “I don’t know if it matters where I live.”
She said it plainly, not with self-pity.
“Thanks for giving me the time. I’m really sorry to put you through—”
“You don’t need to go.”
“I need to go,” I said. I really did. “I might need to talk to you again,” I said.
“Please. Anytime. I’m up late.”
I extricated myself from the sleeping feline.
The Blue Dragon Page 3