China Trade (15 page)

“Did you see her?”

“No.”

I was disappointed. “That’s not a very interesting lunch.”

“Yes, it was. The reason I didn’t see her was that it was
the maid who came to the door when Roger Caldwell rang the bell.”

“Caldwell? Wait, what? Caldwell went to see Mrs. Blair?”

“Uh-huh.” I could hear the pleased grin in his voice.

I hesitated, mystified. “What do you suppose that means?”

“I don’t know what it means. I’m just the employee, reporting in. The boss is supposed to figure out what things mean.”

“Where are you?”

“Home.”

“Can you come over?”

“Do you have coffee?”

“No.”

“I’ll bring my own.”

Sometimes it’s best not to think too much. If you ignore something maybe you can sneak up on it later when it isn’t trying to hide from you. I balanced my checkbook and shuffled some papers while I waited for Bill. The radiator hissed and the Rockies glowed. The yellow mug made my tea cheerful, and the tea made me relaxed. The mug had a chip, I noticed. So did the blue one, and the one from the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank. Maybe I should get some decent teacups. Porcelain, something nice. I didn’t want to lose face in front of people when they saw my stuff.

When the street buzzer buzzed I jumped. I tore myself from the Guilin mists I’d been lost in and answered it.

“Let me in,” Bill said. “I brought you a present.”

“Goody.” I buzzed, waited for him at the end of the hall.

When he reached me he stopped, examined my face critically. Then he touched his fingertips to my chin and softly kissed my forehead. His arms wrapped around me, the cold of the evening he’d walked through emanating from his jacket and his skin. He held me so gently that it didn’t hurt even where it should have. I hugged him, letting myself feel, just for a moment, sad and small and safe.

Then I moved away.

He let me go without protest, looked me over as we stood apart in the corridor. “You don’t look so bad,” he told me.

“I love compliments. Where’s my present?”

He lifted a white cardboard box tied with string.

“Cookies?” I brightened, led the way into my office.

“White-trash medicine,” he said, settling on the guest chair. “Eat sugar, you’ll feel better.”

In the box were miniature Italian pastries: tiny cannoli in three flavors, silver-dollar-sized cheesecakes, thumbprint cookies with red and green cherries on them. My mouth started to water; lunch had been years ago.

“Okay,” Bill said, opening the large container of black coffee he’d come with. Its rising steam joined the steam from the radiator and from my fresh cup of tea. “Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

“None whatsoever.” I took a cannoli with microscopic chocolate chips in its rum-flavored cream, passed Bill the box. “I want to hear about Caldwell and Mrs. Blair.”

“You’ve pretty much heard it all. I was uptown gallery hopping. I saw some interesting stuff, by the way. Some rusted steel sculpture you might like.”

“Sounds lovely.”

“Lovely’s the wrong word, but it’s graceful and tough. It made me think of you.”

I was flattered and surprisingly touched. I hid it with a bite of cannoli.

“Anyway,” Bill continued, when it was obvious all I was going to do was eat, “afterwards I figured I was so close, I’d take a look at Mrs. Blair’s place.”

“Thinking what?”

“Thinking it’s possible someone had had his eye on those pieces for a long time, but the Blairs’ security was so good that there was no opportunity to grab them until they were moved.”

“I knew you were thinking something. I knew you didn’t just want a look at Mrs. Blair.”

“Why would I want to look at her when I can look at you?”

I crossed my eyes for him and bit into a cheesecake with a quartered slice of kiwi on it.

“Anyway, I was halfway through my calzone when Caldwell trotted up the street, climbed the steps of the Blair house, and rang the bell.”

“Did he seem to be known there?”

“I couldn’t tell, I couldn’t see the maid’s face well enough. But he wasn’t searching the buildings for their numbers.”

“How long did he stay?”

“Through the rest of the calzone, two cups of coffee, and a browse through the bookstore down the street.”

“How did he look when he left?”

“In a hurry. He went back to the museum,” he added before I could ask.

“You followed him?”

“Why not?”

I pulled the chewy green cherry off a cookie. “Of course, there may not be anything sinister about this at all. Nobody ever said they didn’t know each other.”

“Nobody ever said they did.”

“But why would anybody? She had no reason to mention him to me that first day, and we didn’t tell him yesterday whose porcelains had been stolen, so he had no reason to mention her.”

“Unless he recognized the pieces.”

“Supposedly no one’s seen the collection in years. And those were the new acquisitions. Which makes your theory that someone’s had an eye on them for a long time sort of unlikely,” I added.

“But maybe someone was interested in whatever he could get from that collection, and those two boxes just happened to be what he got.”

“Only supposedly no one’s seen it.”

“Supposedly.”

“Mrs. Blair might be lying about that?”

“People do.”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, “people are evil and malicious and wicked—”

“I mean why would Mrs. Blair in particular lie about this?” I said with something approaching patience.

“To protect the person who’d seen the collection.”

“Because she thinks he’s the thief.”

“Or knows he is.”

“Wait,” I said. “If this is someone she knows and likes well enough to protect, why not give the stuff to him in the first place and not to CP? Or sell it to him, or whatever?”

“I don’t know.” Bill munched a chocolate cannoli.

“And why agree to hire me?”

“Well, it was you or the police. She couldn’t exactly have said to Nora, ‘Oh, let’s just forget about it.’ This gives her a couple of days float, for the trail to get cold.”

I felt the muscles in my shoulders tighten, and it hurt. “That only works,” I said, “if I’m no good.”

“Or,” Bill said reasonably, “if, as you told them yourself, you have fewer resources than the police, and art isn’t your specialty.”

“You mean you think I—we, let me point out, white man—were hired because they figured we couldn’t solve this case?” The radiator hissed. I felt like hissing with it.

“I don’t think that necessarily. But haven’t you ever been hired by a client just going through the motions, who’d just as soon you didn’t do what he hired you to do?”

“No. I always assume they want what they’re paying for.”

He didn’t answer me. We were quiet for a few minutes, he drinking his coffee, I my tea. Then I picked another cannoli out of the box and asked, “You think this could be some sort of complicated insurance fraud?”

“I thought of that. But if that were it, they’d report it to the police right away.”

“They.” I looked at him. “That could mean Nora and CP were involved, couldn’t it?”

“Well, this didn’t happen until they had the porcelains on their premises.”

“But these are the pieces that weren’t recorded, so they weren’t even insured.” I thought about that and said reluctantly what I was thinking: “Of course, all
that
means is that it’s not likely to be insurance fraud, or, if it is, someone screwed up. It doesn’t necessarily mean that whatever it is, CP’s not involved.”

“Or someone at CP.”

“Or someone.”

Through the pebbled wire-glass windows in my office faceted light shone from the building behind, like lights in a pool when you open your eyes underwater.

“Tim really doesn’t want me on this case,” I said to Bill.

“Tim? Tim’s afraid of losing face. He doesn’t want you to embarrass him. That’s what you said.”

“Think how embarrassing it would be if I found out he’d stolen the porcelains.”

Bill lowered his coffee. “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“When he came to dinner last night he tried to get me to quit again.”

“You told me.”

“He said my mom would be humiliated if she heard I’d met with Trouble. He said all of Chinatown was talking about it.”

“She would, wouldn’t she?”

I poked my fingernail at the chip in my mug. “Nora didn’t know about it. She was mad when I told her. And this afternoon, Mr. Gao didn’t know either.”

Bill lit a cigarette, dropped the match in his empty coffee container. “Oh. All of Chinatown isn’t talking about it.”

“Mr. Gao didn’t know, and he set it up! How did Tim know?”

He breathed out a stream of smoke, leaned back in his
chair. “Jesus.” Then he said, “Lydia, there are other explanations.”

“I’m sure there are loads of them. But how
did
he know? And how come Roger Caldwell went to see Mrs. Blair? And how come Trouble beat me up?”

I looked at him, and he looked at me, and neither of us said anything. Then he put out his cigarette and stood.

“And how come you’re not home in bed?” he asked. “Come on. There’s no point in trying to do anything else tonight. I don’t think Tim had anything to do with this, but if he did we’ll find out and then we’ll worry about it. You need to get some rest now or you won’t be any good tomorrow.”

“I probably won’t be any good tomorrow anyway,” I said glumly.

“Come on, with that Ho Chi Minh medicine? It’ll fix you right up.”

“Ho Chi Minh medicine?”

“Oh, never mind. Generation gap. Let’s go.”

Bill rinsed out my mug while I, who was moving more slowly, pulled on my jacket and scarf and gloves and hat. He got wrapped up too, minus the hat, and we left, switching off the light and shutting the door behind us. I took out my key to lock up; then I pushed the door back open, grabbed the half-empty pastry box and, with it under my arm, locked my office and walked with Bill into the night.

S
E V E N T E E N

I
had another cup of Mr. Gao’s foul-tasting tea that night, and another bath, and more tea in the morning. After a late morning bath I did some gentle stretching exercises
and except for my jaw, ribs, back, shoulder, stomach, and head, I felt almost okay. Wrapped in a thick flannel bathrobe, I ate oil sticks and rice porridge my mother had made for me while she hovered and fussed.

I hadn’t told her what had happened, and by now it was clear that I wasn’t going to, but that didn’t stop her.

“I called your brother,” she said, standing over the table while I ate. “He said I should lock the door and not let you out anymore until your brothers find a husband for you.”

“I’ll bet he’d like that,” I muttered darkly. I didn’t give her the satisfaction of asking which brother. Andrew wouldn’t have said that. If Elliot had said it he’d have been half-kidding. The other two didn’t bear thinking about. “Did he have anybody in mind?”

She began seriously, “He said it would be difficult, such a headstrong girl, but that—”

“Oh, Ma!” I stood, tightening my jaw so she wouldn’t see the pain. I took my dishes to the sink. She followed me and grabbed them away to wash them; she doesn’t think I get dishes very clean.

Back in my room I dressed, slowly and carefully. Tournament Tae Kwon Do bouts in my teens and through college had taught me a lot about isolating pain, but this was a lot of pain to isolate. I reached for my sweater the way I always reach and my shoulder shrieked. Anger flamed in me, knotted my stomach and flushed my skin: anger at Trouble, at Mr. Gao, at Tim and whatever other brother wanted me married and no longer embarrassing him, at Lucky Seafood’s kitchen help and all the people with windows on the courtyard who didn’t call the police. I was angry at Nora for not paying the Main Street Boys and at my mother for not getting off my case, at Mrs. Blair for owning the porcelains in the first place and at whatever rat had stolen them.

Calm down, Lydia, I demanded. I sat on my bed, tried to slow my pulse and focus my breathing. I thought about Bill, and the baker from up the street, and Mary who knew how important my gun was to me, and the incandescent Steve at the
Kurtz Museum. Not everybody connected with this case, or my life, was bottom-feeding slime whose only goal was to give me a headache. Not everybody.

The phone rang as I was finishing dressing, not my office line but the phone in the kitchen. My mother spoke in rapid Chinese, too softly—deliberately, I thought—for me to catch. Then she came across the living room to call through my closed door, “It’s Grandfather Gao. Come, hurry, don’t keep him waiting.”

In the kitchen I picked up the phone, which my mother had left dangling within an inch of the floor.

“How are you feeling?” Mr. Gao’s soft, even voice asked me.

“Better than I expected, thank you, Grandfather.” Even in the nasal cadences of Chinese I could hear the wariness in my own voice, and I knew he could, too. Mr. Gao has been treating illnesses in the Chin family for thirty years. Calling to check up on you is not one of the things he does.

“You must reassure your mother when you hang up the telephone.” Mr. Gao’s voice smiled. “She thinks I’ve called to inquire after your progress, and she is very worried about what that might mean.”

My mother, who knew Mr. Gao’s habits as well as I did, was fluttering anxiously nearby. She probably figured this meant I was going to die.

“Yes, I’ll do that, Grandfather,” I said. And what does it mean, I wondered; but I didn’t ask. I could be as discreet as he was.

“I am concerned with your progress, of course, and delighted to hear you’re improving,” Mr. Gao went on, “but that is not why I’m calling.”

“No, Grandfather.” And the little voice in my head screamed, Well, then, why, for Pete’s sake? but I waited patiently so my mother wouldn’t get more upset.

“The choice not to ask for retribution for what has happened to you is a wise one, Ling Wan-ju.”

He seemed to be waiting for something from me, so, with my mother practically breathing down my neck, I said, “Yes, Grandfather.” Let her try to read something from that.