China Trade (16 page)

“However,” he went on, “I feel that, because of my role in this situation, as well as my long association with your family, I am nevertheless in your debt. I have gotten a call this morning that I think might interest you.”

“Yes?” I was practically out of non-committal responses, and my mother was practically climbing the walls.

“Are you well enough to go out?”

“Definitely.”

“Then come to my shop, and we will go out.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Ling Wan-ju?”

“Yes, Grandfather?”

“Tell your mother you sound so much better to me I’ve decided to give you a different prescription.” I could hear the smile again.

“She won’t believe me.”

“No, but after you leave she’ll call me to ask whether it’s true.”

As I put on my shoes and jacket I told my mother what Mr. Gao had said to tell her. She didn’t believe me, but at least she had the grace to wait until I’d shut the door behind me before she grabbed up the phone to call him.

Outdoors, the day was still and cold, the cloud-covered sky luminescently pearly and the air bright with reflected light. I made my slow way to Mr. Gao’s shop, different muscles aching with different steps. I wore my big round sunglasses even though there was no sun. On the street corner people who sold other things at other times of year were selling gladiolas now. The long stalks’ blooms huddled defensively against the cold, ready, once they were warmer, to burst into flares of scarlet and salmon and peach to celebrate the New Year.

Mr. Gao was alone in the shop when I got there. The two-note chime tinkled behind me; the shop was as dim and soothing as ever. The brass scales were set up and on them Mr. Gao was weighing golden flowers that I recognized as useful in cases of cough. Valuable now, in flu season.

He smiled, finished his work, and then stepped around the counter to look at me. I’d taken off the sunglasses; they made the dimness of the shop into impenetrable night.

“Well.” He smiled. “A remarkable recovery.”

“I feel terrible.” He wasn’t getting off the hook that easily.

“I’m quite sure that’s true. But your spirit is like your father’s. He was always able to turn fear into anger and anger into work. A very productive ability.”

At least it wasn’t a nature metaphor.

“Grandfather, why did you call me? Where are we going?”

“Come.” He put on his coat, the good wool coat I had rested against yesterday as I was carried up and down stairs. He pulled down the blind on the shop’s glass door and we went out.

We crossed Canal on Mulberry, and then we crossed Hester. The building we stopped at, half a block up, used to be in the heart of Little Italy. Now the Italians, all third and fourth generation, are moving to the suburbs, and Chinese—from Hong Kong, from Taiwan, from the People’s Republic and Singapore and Viet Nam—are buying this property, living in these tenements, cooking food from home, and depending on their children to learn English and guide the family through its new life, as immigrants have always done.

Mr. Gao led the way into the building, whose outer door lock was broken, and up to the second floor. There, in a dank hallway with grime at the places where the vinyl tile met the baseboard, he knocked on a door, like my mother’s, with four locks.

A quavering voice called in Chinese, “Who is there?”

Mr. Gao answered calmly, “It’s all right. It’s Grandfather Gao, with a friend. Please let us come in.”

I heard bolts thrown and the clinking of a chain; then the door moved, widened until someone’s eye appeared, blinked, stared. It was a runny brown eye, located about the height of my shoulder. Then the door finished opening, and we stepped inside.

The woman who’d let us in was shorter than I am, although she probably hadn’t always been. Stooped and arthritic, with unkempt thinning gray hair framing a dry, lined face: There’s your future, Lydia, I thought. If you live that long.

Probably an apartment like this was my future too, mismatched furniture, a threadbare carpet, a non-working fireplace whose mantel was crowded with photographs of family members who didn’t live here. One, a picture of a young man, had, I noticed, a black mourning band across it.

The woman took Mr. Gao’s hand in both of hers and thanked him for coming. She didn’t look at me at all.

“I’m grateful for this opportunity to be of use to you in this sad time, Mrs. Hsing,” Mr. Gao said. “Please, sit down.”

She led him to a seat and made sure he sat; then, because I was with him, she offered one to me, without eye contact and without much interest in whether I took it or not. Then she seated herself on the edge of a straight-backed chair, her hands resting on the shapeless housedress that covered her knees.

“Please,” Mr. Gao said, as silence filled the shabby room. “My friend knows all about your suffering, Mrs. Hsing. She is only here to listen and to help.”

Actually, I knew nothing at all about anything, since Mr. Gao hadn’t spoken a word to me on our way over, but I got it: You’re here to keep your mouth shut and learn something, Lydia. Let’s not hear from you.

Well, for Pete’s sake, I thought. It wasn’t my bright idea to come here in the first place. Now I’m supposed to sit here like a potted plant? An actual potted plant, a rubber tree,
drooped in the corner. I tried to think of it as my spiritual brother.

Mrs. Hsing, after a glance at me, rose slowly and made her way into the bedroom. She returned holding in both hands a glossy red box. She looked at it with a slight hesitation, then handed it to Mr. Gao, and sat again.

“If you tell me I must return it to him, Grandfather, I will,” she said, and something about the way she said it was touchingly brave. Feeling like an intruder in something I didn’t understand, I looked away, let my eyes wander the room again. They were drawn to the mantel, found the black-banded picture of the young man.

Suddenly, things fell into place in my potted plant brain.

The Golden Dragon who’d been killed on Main Street Boys’ turf had been named Hsing.

I threw a quick glance at Mr. Gao, to let him know I’d figured it out, but his attention was fixed on the box he was opening. I watched as he removed the top and moved red tissue paper aside. Then he lifted out the contents, a paper-thin white porcelain cup. An orange-red tiger coiled around it and another one wrapped itself around the knob on the cup’s lid.

Mr. Gao held it to the window’s cloudy light. “It’s quite beautiful.”

“It was the last time I saw him,” Mrs. Hsing said, in a steady voice. “ ‘A gift for my mother,’ my son said. He was a good son.” Her voice caught. She swallowed and continued. “I would like to keep it.”

“And please tell me,” Mr. Gao said, “who is demanding its return.”

“Lee Kuan Yue,” she said simply. I searched my memory, but the name meant nothing to me.

“And on what grounds?”

“Lee says my son worked for him. Lee has an import-export business, and my son made deliveries. This cup was part of a shipment, Lee claims, and was missing when the shipment arrived.”

Mr. Gao nodded, regarding the cup thoughtfully. “Did
you know, Mrs. Hsing, that your son was employed by Lee Kuan Yue?”

Mrs. Hsing shook her head emphatically. “My son was a cook at Lucky Seafood.”

Oh, swell, I thought.

“Part-time,” she went on. “He was a student at City College, in electrical engineering.” She said this proudly, and her eyes moved to the black-banded picture. Then they misted, and she looked down into her lap.

“Still, many people in Chinatown work at two jobs,” Mr. Gao mused. “Even students. How does Lee know you have the cup?”

“He doesn’t know. He called to say items were missing from the last—” her voice quavered, but she recovered, “the last shipment my son handled. He said that to avoid bringing great disgrace upon my family and my son’s memory, he would urge me to see that the missing pieces found their way back to him.”

“Pieces? What other items were missing?”

“Another cup like this. There were two, Lee said.”

“Did your son give you both?”

“No, Grandfather. My son gave me this. It was the first, he said, of many beautiful gifts for his mother.”

Mr. Gao and I walked back down Mulberry toward Chinatown in silence. He had carefully restored the white porcelain cup to its box and promised to weigh the matter and attempt to guide Mrs. Hsing to a proper course of action.

When we stopped for the light at Canal, I spoke. “Stolen porcelains,” I said. “And Golden Dragons. That’s why you called me.”

“I thought Mrs. Hsing’s situation might interest you. I also hoped it would prove useful.” Mr. Gao surveyed the bustling Chinatown scene with the air of a patriarch whose children’s flaws were only too well known to him but who found them, on the whole, satisfactory.

“Her son was Hsing Chung Wah, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

The light changed and we started forward. “Do you know Lee Kuan Yue?” I asked.

“An importer with a business on Mulberry Street.”

“Do you,” I tried to be at least a little subtle, “know him to be involved with the Golden Dragons?”

“All the merchants on Mulberry Street have an acquaintance with the Golden Dragons,” he said. Which meant: You’ve gotten everything you’re going to get for free, Lydia.

But it also meant Mr. Lee wasn’t a well-known major bad guy, because Mr. Gao would have warned me about that.

What else it meant, I had no idea.

Taking a deep breath, I tried something else. “Grandfather, do you remember that I asked you about the
dai lo
of the Main Street Boys? A boy named Bic?”

Mr. Gao glanced at me, then returned his eyes to the street. “Ling Wan-ju, I would have thought you had had your fill of that sort of young man.”

“It would make me happy never to speak to another of that sort of young man again,” I admitted. “But there is a connection here, Grandfather. Hsing Chung Wah was killed in Main Street Boys’ territory. It’s more important than ever to me to know why.”

Staring straight ahead, he said nothing at first. Then he asked, “And if you were to find out why from someone else?”

“I would still like to speak to the Main Street Boys’
dai lo
, Grandfather.”

With a look I couldn’t read, but one that gave me a very uncomfortable feeling, Mr. Gao said, “Very well. You will hear from me.” He unlocked the door to his shop and, without inviting me in, stepped inside and closed it behind him.

E
I G H T E E N

I
turned down Canal to my office, where I’d left my file of Dr. Browning’s descriptions and photographs of the stolen items. That beautiful cup had seemed familiar, though why, if it had been part of the Blair collection, an importer named Lee Kuan Yue would be demanding its return—and the return of its mate, which she didn’t have—from the mother of a Golden Dragon found dead in Main Street Boys’ territory, was beyond the mental powers of a potted plant.

However, my instincts were in fine Chinese harmony with Mr. Gao’s: Any reference to stolen porcelain or, in this case, porcelain of contested ownership, was worth, at least, close attention.

In my office I put the kettle on and flipped through the file. The cup didn’t appear either on the list or in the photographs. I reached for the phone to call Bill; maybe it was obvious what all this meant, to someone with a brain in the animal kingdom. My hand was on the receiver before I noticed the message machine blinking. No kidding, I thought, someone called me? Probably the thief giving himself up.

The first message was from Bill. “Something interesting,” he said. “Call me.”

Well, I was just about to, I grumbled to myself. But there was another message also, so I played it first.

“Hi,” a voice said eagerly, and, I thought, a little furtively. “This is Steve Bailey. You know, from the Kurtz Museum? That’s so cool, that your machine answers in Chinese! Anyway, could you call me? Something strange happened. Well, maybe. I mean, it’s definitely strange. But maybe it has
nothing to do with why you were here, because, I mean, I don’t know why you were here. But it’s about the porcelains. I mean, I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. But I thought maybe you’d want to know. But you’re not there. Shoot. And I’m going out. Oh, wait, I know—I’ll call your partner. But anyway, call me back, okay?”

My kettle whistled as he clicked off. I set some jasmine tea to brewing and called the Kurtz, but Steve Bailey was, as he had represented, out. So I called Bill.

“You have a lot of interesting things for me, right?” I asked when he answered.

“More than you know.”

“Do me a favor, stick to the ones that have to do with the case. Did Steve from the Kurtz call you?”

“You’re no fun,” he complained. “Yes. He said he’d left you a message.”

“I just got it, but all it says is he found something strange and he’s going out. I called the museum, and he’s out.”

“Predictability. Among my people, it’s a virtue.”

“Among your people mayonnaise sandwiches are food,” I reminded him. “What did he find?”

“I’m going to put that crack down to the strains of your weakened physical state. How do you feel, by the way?”

“I’m fine. Come on, Bill, you’re driving me crazy.”

“Just doing my job, ma’am. Apparently,” he said, just before I could sputter something, “he was snooping in his co-executive-assistant’s files. Trish Atherton, remember her?”

“Beautiful blond hair.”

“Really? I didn’t notice.”

I slurped my tea noisily.

“Anyway,” he said, “she’s in charge of the porcelains at the Kurtz. Processing them in and out, recording, what they call in the museum biz ‘acquisitioning.’ ”

“Now that I
know
isn’t English. So? What did he find?”

“Irregularities.”

My heart shifted into a higher gear. “What sort?”

“He said it was complicated and he didn’t have time to
talk. I also had the feeling he didn’t want to be overheard. Anyway, he wants us to meet him at the Kurtz tonight, six o’clock The museum will be closed, we will be alone, and he will reveal all.”

“Six o’clock! I can’t wait that long. God, Bill, what do you think it means?”