Mandarin Plaid

by S. J. Rozan

  Oh, but you’re wrong, I said to her inside my head, seeing Genna’s face, the straight line of her back, her small, well-kept hands. I think John understands true elegance very well.

  Mrs. Ryan said, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars to tell me why you were hired.”

  My eyes widened before I could stop them. That was more than I’d gotten for being hired.

  “No, thank you,” I said, trying to sound as cool as if I were turning down a cup of tea.

  “Five thousand, then. This is not a negotiation. Dealing with you is worth five thousand dollars to me. Beyond that it’s easier to see if I can get the information elsewhere. Your partner, for example. He may have expenses you don’t have and might welcome some extra cash. But consider this: if someone is going to sell me this information for five thousand dollars, why should it not be you?”

  “Mrs. Ryan,” I said, trying to be professional and keep the fury out of my voice, “you may be able to buy this information, but not from me. And not from Bill. Our reputations rest on keeping our clients’ business private. It would be extremely shortsighted of us to take this offer.”

  “Is that so?” she said thoughtfully. “Well then, I’ll amend it. For five thousand dollars I’ll buy the information from you and not disclose where it came from. If I’m forced to go elsewhere for it, I’ll let it be known to my son that you were here, and it came from you.”

  She sat facing me, waiting for my answer, her face expressionless. What she’d just said to me—the threat she’d made—was cruel, but she didn’t seem to be taking any joy in it. Nor did she seem to have said it reluctantly, as if she were forced by circumstances to be meaner than she’d like to be. It was just a tactic, a way to apply pressure to increase her odds.

  I could have sworn that an icy breeze had gusted through the glassed-in terrace, but the terrace was covered and controlled, and no wind had caused the chill I felt.

  “Mrs. Ryan,” I said, standing, “I’m sorry I can’t help you.” I turned to walk from the room.

  “Sit down,” she ordered me.

  I turned again to face her. “No.”

  Then I left, walking as soundlessly down the carpeted hallway as I had come. Well, Lydia, I thought, between mother and son you might be looking for a new career. But at least you’ve had the satisfaction of seeing something very few people probably get to see: the expression on Mrs. Ryan’s face when someone tells her “no.”

  SEVEN

  I called Bill from the closest phone booth I could find.

  “How was she?” he asked. I pressed the phone to my ear to block out the whoosh and honk of traffic.

  “I hate her,” I barked. “She’s rich, mean, and nasty. She thinks she owns everybody. If I’d stayed another minute she would have called me a Dragon Lady.”

  “What an opportunity. Why’d you leave?”

  “So I wouldn’t lose my temper. I almost told her my ancestor Genghis Khan had sent me to collect white slaves and ship them back to China, and she was going to be first.”

  “Genghis Chin,” he said. “Why did she call you?” His voice was calm and familiar. I took a breath and tried to get my anger under control.

  “She wanted to know why John and Genna hired us,” I told him.

  “And she didn’t ask John because … ?”

  “Because she thinks he’ll lie to her.”

  “To his own mother?” Bill sounded shocked. “I’ll bet you never lie to your mother.”

  “It wouldn’t get me anywhere. She offered us five thousand dollars.”

  “Jesus Christ. For what?”

  “The answer.”

  “I hope you took it.”

  “I wouldn’t touch it. She’ll be calling you.”

  “I’ll endeavor to give satisfaction. Did she say why she cares so much?”

  “She thinks Genna’s after John’s money. Now that Genna’s got John in her evil clutches she’s afraid there’ll be hordes of slanty-eyed children calling her ‘grandma.’ She’s desperate for something to stop that.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Oh, what, you think I’m overreacting? Putting words in her mouth?” I demanded.

  “No, I didn’t say that.”

  “Well, I’m not! She said she didn’t want one of ‘you people’ quote unquote to be the mother of her grandchildren.”

  “Ah: family values.”

  “Stop it! You just don’t get it, do you?” I stomped my foot in angry frustration, twice as frustrated that Bill couldn’t even see me do it.

  “Lydia?” His voice was tentative. “Are you okay?”

  “No, I’m not okay! Why should I be okay? A woman who spends more at the hairdresser in a month than my mother ever made in a year just told me I’m not good enough for her son—”

  “Not you. Genna.”

  “It’s the same thing! She probably wouldn’t even be able to tell us apart. Because, you know, we do all look alike.”

  “Not to me.”

  I stopped, rubbed my forehead, and sagged against the side wall of the phone enclosure. “I know,” I sighed. “I’m sorry. It’s not your fault. It’s just … I don’t know. You act as if this weren’t a big deal. Like I should just get over it and make jokes about it. You have no idea how it feels!”

  “No,” he said quietly. “I suppose I don’t. But I didn’t mean to make it worse.”

  “I know,” I said again.

  The traffic light changed; cars began to slide by. Nobody crashed into anybody else.

  “Bill?” I said. “Let’s just talk about business for a while, okay?”

  “Okay. Tell me this: How did she know who you were?”

  I took a breath and prepared to talk about business. “I don’t know. She says she has ways.”

  “Winning ones, I’m sure.”

  “Oh, right. Like blackmail.” I told him about Mrs. Ryan’s closing threat.

  “That’s not blackmail,” Bill said. “It’s extortion.”

  “Don’t get technical with me! It’s a cold-blooded dirty strong-arm shakedown. I didn’t like it from John, and I hate it from his ice-queen mother!” I stopped ranting for a moment. “She explains a lot about John, doesn’t she?”

  “Does she make you like him better?”

  “No. But I can see why maybe he can’t help himself. Family values,” I said.

  “Well,” Bill said, “I don’t think it’s a threat to worry about. Whoever told her who you were obviously doesn’t know why we were hired, or they’d have told her that, too. Where else is she going to get that information, except from me, John, Genna, or Andrew?”

  “Andrew?” I hadn’t thought of that, but of course it was true: Andrew did know why we’d been hired. “He’d never—”

  “Not if he knew he wasn’t supposed to. But someone will have to tell him that. That means someone will have to call him.”

  “What’s it to you?” I bristled.

  “Not a thing,” he said. “But if you don’t call him, you won’t be there when he and I meet for a drink.”

  “You’re meeting Andrew?” The conversation’s sudden change of direction threw me off. I wasn’t sure what to make of this.

  “Well, none of your other brothers speak to me. He called me and said he’s got something important to tell us and you won’t return his calls.”

  “He just wants to yell at me. If you meet him alone he’ll yell at you.”

  “That’s not what it sounded like. Anyway I’ll take that chance. I’m meeting him in the Village, at a place called David Kim’s.”

  “You have no right,” I told him, “to be more tolerant of my brothers than I am.”

  “I’m not. But somebody had to call the poor guy.”

  “Don’t lecture me,” I said, annoyed that he’d said that and annoyed that he was right. “I’m calling him right now.”

  I hung up, fished out another quarter, and called Andrew.

  Tony D’Angelo answered the phone. In conversations with m
y mother, for the last six years Tony has been referred to by me and my brothers as Andrew’s roommate.

  Tony pounced on me as soon as I said hi. “Oh ho!” he said. “It’s Little Sister, in Big Trouble. Boy, have you got the Emperor in a snit. You want to talk to him, finally?”

  “Is he really mad, Tony?”

  “Oh, no. He’s not mad, Lydia. He’s just making my life a total misery because it’s Tuesday. I banished him to the darkroom and told him not to emerge until he could be civil. That was hours ago. He hasn’t been seen since.”

  “Well, I don’t want to interrupt him if he’s working …”

  “Honey, he’s only working because he’s not fit company for man nor beast. Of which you are the cause. Speak to him.”

  Before I could say anything, Tony put me on hold. I waited, my blood racing with leftover anger, plus impatience and guilt. The guilt made me more angry. Who was Andrew to make me feel guilty? Just because he was my favorite brother, that didn’t give him the right to tell me what to do with my life. I’m working at the career I chose, the career I love. It gives me satisfaction and variety and excitement and who asked Andrew anyway? Danger’s a part of it sometimes, but that’s my choice. If I don’t have any problem with that, my brothers shouldn’t either. Or my mother. Or anybody else who thinks it’s their job to take care of me and look after me and protect me, when actually—

  “He’s not here,” Tony announced.

  “Oh.” I deflated.

  “He left me a note. He went to see your partner. He’s meeting him at David Kim’s, on Bank Street.”

  “I know where that is. Thanks, Tony.”

  “Lydia? Are you okay? I heard what happened this morning.”

  “I’m fine, Tony.”

  “Good. Be careful, okay?”

  “Yes,” I said, resigned. “I will.”

  * * *

  I took the subway, which Mrs. Eleanor Talmadge Ryan probably didn’t even know stopped four blocks from her house. I fumed downtown and across town and came out on Fourteenth Street, on the West Side.

  The night had turned chilly, as early spring nights often do, just to remind you to be grateful that they aren’t winter nights. Even in the chill, people who’d come out earlier in the evening were reluctant now to leave their stoops and street corners and domino games to go back to the apartments they’d been cooped up in all winter. Skateboarders slalomed down the sidewalk between young lovers with their arms around each other and groups of middle-aged men in animated conversation. I skittered to the side to avoid a child charging by on a tricycle, and then to avoid the older brother chasing her.

  Older brothers, I thought. Hmmph.

  Below Fourteenth Street I turned off of Eighth Avenue onto the quieter streets of the Village, and went over in my mind my conversation with Mrs. Ryan. When I’d recounted it to Bill I’d gotten the nagging feeling that something wasn’t right. I wasn’t sure what was bothering me: something she’d said. The way she’d said something. The way she’d looked at me. Something about that conversation was setting off a little bell in my head.

  I try to listen to those little bells when I get them. That’s P.I. instinct, and that’s how it develops: by letting your hunches float to the surface, not squashing them just because they’re not logical or rational. Hunches aren’t based on anything mystical or weird; they’re based on experience, just not always consciously. They’re sometimes wrong, but they’re always, I’ve found, worth exploring.

  However, sometimes listening to those little bells can keep you from hearing the clanging alarm being set off by the situation you’re in right now.

  A smashing blow from behind to the side of my head sent me staggering against a wall of rough bricks. Pain and confusion clouded my sight, but I spun myself around to face where the blow had come from. When something moved, I ducked, grabbed at it, pushed it away. That turned out to be right: the thing was a leg, lifted to throw a kick. When I pushed, the guy attached to it lost his balance and thumped to the concrete.

  He was dressed all in black, his face hidden by a soft, featureless ninja mask. He rolled smoothly to his feet as I steadied myself on mine. I tried to break away from the trap I was in, backed against the wall, but he stepped in sharply and threw a punch at my head. I blocked it, front-kicked his kneecap, and shot the heel of my palm into his masked face. His head snapped backward. I tried another punch, but he yanked my arm forward as he stepped to the side. Throwing his hip into me, he flipped me as neatly to the pavement as if this were Sensei Chung’s Saturday morning black belt class.

  I rolled to duck the kick I knew was coming next. It came; then was my chance, while he was off-balance, pulling his leg back. Without wasting time trying to get up, I pounded my fist onto the knee I’d kicked before. Then I dug my thumbs into the Achilles tendon behind that ankle and thrust up. He started to topple, I rolled away, and then we were both on the ground.

  He sprang to his feet before I could, but he didn’t attack again. “Genna Jing,” he spat, in a loud harsh whisper. “Stay away from that, bitch. Or I’ll be back.” He turned and ran, his feet pounding hollowly, swiftly, down the middle of the cobblestoned street.

  I struggled to my feet and charged after him, but by the time I got to the corner he was gone. He might be hiding in a doorway, right here, close; or he might be running still, in any direction, laughing at the thought of me standing panting and sweating on deserted Village cobblestones under a sickly yellow streetlight.

  David Kim’s—or, more properly, David L. Kim’s, because the “L” was what you saw glowing in red neon script between the other two much more dignified words on the sign outside—was the downtown crowd’s newest “in” restaurant, a Korean supper club with food as hot as the place itself. Andrew, naturally, had discovered it just before everyone else, and had become a regular as soon as he’d tasted the kim chee.

  When I got there, the place was crowded, and the lighting, from tiny, high-intensity spots that picked out the single flower in its vase in the center of each table, was dim. Score one for me, I thought. I had put myself back together quickly in the restroom of a diner, and now, though I could still feel the fight, the only place anyone could see it was the bruise on my cheekbone from where I’d hit the wall. And if the lighting was dim enough, maybe no one would notice that.

  I waited at the entrance’s etched glass screen and surveyed the room. The air smelled lusciously of roasting meat, fiery pickled vegetables, complex casseroles in covered bowls. Glasses clinked at the bar and conversation hummed. Surprisingly, for a tremendously trendy place like David Kim’s, the bar TV was carrying a basketball game. Not surprisingly, the sound was off.

  By the time the handsome David L. Kim himself came smiling over to seat me, I’d spotted Bill at a table by the bar. He was alone; Andrew must not have made it yet. Score another one for me.

  “I’m with him,” I said, pointing to Bill. Maybe I’d have time to get Bill’s take on what had just happened, not to mention time to bring my heartbeat and sweat production down to normal, before I had to deal with Andrew.

  David Kim kept smiling and picked up a menu, the better to guide me to Bill’s table. Then, “So am I,” said a familiar voice behind me. I turned; Andrew had just walked through the door.

  Score one for him.

  As Andrew and I exchanged wary looks, David Kim looked from one of us to the other and beamed more broadly.

  “Lucky him,” he said.

  Bill stood when we approached. He can’t help that; it’s an old southern habit. He didn’t kiss me, though, probably because of Andrew. Bill’s met all my brothers, and my mother, too, and he and Andrew actually seem to like each other, in a tentative sort of way. They share a love for jazz, especially piano and bass late at night in smoky bars. Tony and I don’t know anything about it, but the four of us have gone together once or twice to hear some performer who Bill and Andrew have both been excited about. Bill’s not really social, but I think this is part of a campaign t
o make himself more acceptable to my family.

  It will never work.

  Andrew and Bill shook hands, and we all sat down. The owner asked for drink orders, and we got that little bit of business out of the way. Then we were by ourselves. I tried to unobtrusively deep-breathe and do whatever else I could think of to blunt the adrenaline edge Mr. Ninja Mask had left me with.

  Bill already had a drink, something amber and half-finished in a short wide glass. “You two want me to referee?” he offered. “Or is this full-contact, no holds barred?”

  “It’s not like that,” Andrew said testily.

  “Tell Lydia,” Bill suggested.

  Andrew faced me. “Why the hell have you been avoiding me all day?” he demanded.

  My resolve to be reasonable evaporated in an adrenaline spurt. “Because of this,” I shot back.

  “Because of what?”

  “Because I wasn’t interested in you yelling at me like this!”

  “I wouldn’t be yelling at you if you hadn’t been avoiding me!”

  “Yes, you would.”

  “For what?”

  “Getting shot at!”

  “Well, don’t you think that was pretty stupid?”

  “How was I supposed to know that was going to happen?”

  “I thought you guys thought about things like that. You, too,” he jumped on Bill. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be so experienced. What the hell were you thinking?”

  “You’re right,” Bill said calmly.

  “You’re wrong!” I snapped.

  “She could’ve been killed,” Andrew said to Bill, ignoring me.

  “It’s not his fault,” I protested.

  “You’re right,” Bill said.

  Andrew and I both stopped, confused. “Who’s right?” I demanded.

  The waiter came with Perrier for Andrew and orange juice for me. I clamped onto my straw and tried not to gulp the whole thing all at once.

  “Everybody’s right,” Bill said, when the waiter left. “I should have been more awake this morning and I’ve been kicking myself since.” He lit a cigarette as he said that, and looked at Andrew but not at me.