MANDARIN PLAID (Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series) (11 page)

The strong black tea was what I had, and though I usually take my tea with lemon, I had it with milk because it’s good that way here. Roland had coffee, dark and sweet, and though I’d protested that I wasn’t hungry, he came back to the table with two forks and a flaky square of custard-filled pastry on the tray between the tea and the coffee.

“So,” he said, grinning as he emptied the tray and sat down on a brass-backed cafe chair, “you told me all about the other Chins: now, about
you
. I heard you’re a private eye. Is that really true?”

“Yes,” I said noncommittally, over my teacup. “How do you know?”

“Oh, I know one of your clients,” Roland said, swallowing some coffee. “Or clients-to-be, or something. John Ryan. Genna Jing’s significant other? He’s a client-to-be of mine, too. Maybe.”

“He told you he was my client?”

“He was bitching to me a day or two ago, about someone trying to extort money from Genna. He said he wanted to hire a private eye to stop it. He asked if I knew you. You know the way the
low faan
always think we all know each other?”

I didn’t point out to Roland that we did know each other. “What did you say?”

He winked. “I said of course I knew you. I said you were the best, that you had a tremendous reputation in Chinatown and he’d be lucky to get you. I figured that was the least I could do for old Elliot. Did it work? Did he hire you?”

“We talked,” I said. “It didn’t go very far.”

“Damn,” he said. “Too bad. Might have been a good gig for you. Well, I tried. What was it about?”

I lifted my eyebrows. “You can’t really expect me to answer that.”

“Why not?” He stopped with his fork halfway into the pastry. Flakes of dough splintered onto the plate.

“Because that’s where the ‘private’ in ‘private investigator’ comes from.”

“But this is just John Ryan,” Roland protested. “It’s not like it’s international intrigue or anything. Or is it?” He grinned wickedly. “Genna Jing is smuggling illegal aliens! Right? No: drugs. Heroin, rolled up in bolts of Chinese silk. I’m right, Lydia, I know I am. At least I’m on the right track, aren’t I? Come on, tell!”

I just shook my head, smiling.

Roland scooped out another forkful of custard filling. “Hey, try some of this. It’s great. You’re not going to tell me, huh?”

“No.” I picked up my own fork and tried the pastry. The dough was light and the custard was lemony and sweet.

“Damn. Well, I didn’t really want to know anyway. I was just testing to see if you really kept things private.” Roland’s grin let us both know that wasn’t true. He stuck his fork back into the pastry. “Well, I just hope whatever his problem is, Ryan’s not trying to deal with it himself.”

“Why not?”

“The guy’s nuts.”

“He is?” I licked off some lemon filling and put my fork back on the plate.

“Off the wall.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know. He’s a rich white guy who thinks the world belongs to him. If he doesn’t get his way, he gets a little crazed.”

“I guess I saw some of that,” I said, thinking back to John’s reaction to Genna’s saying she’d already borrowed the ransom money.

“Yeah?” Roland dug into the dwindling pastry once more. “Well, that’s what’s been keeping me from signing on with them. They’ve been trying to talk me into producing their fall line.”

“Genna said you’d already signed on to do it, and then changed your mind.”

“Oh, she told you that, huh? Well, I got a great offer I couldn’t turn down. But it was a one-time.”

“So you might do their line after all?”

“It’s a hard call. This would be a good time to hook up with them. If she makes it big and they’re an account of mine, I have steady work all six seasons. Better than having to go out and hustle.” Having finished the lion’s share of the pastry, Roland leaned back in his
chair, crossing his ankle over his knee. “But I don’t know,” he said. He pulled a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, drew one out, flipped the pack onto the table. “The guy’s a pain,” he said, lighting up. “Might be more trouble than he’s worth. And she’s a little nuts, too. ‘Mandarin Plaid.’ What the hell does that mean? I have plenty of accounts, anyway. You want a cig?”

“No, thanks.”

“You don’t smoke, huh? You don’t drink either, isn’t that what I remember? God, you probably don’t have any vices at all. You still do Tae Kwon Do, practice at six in the morning, all that?”

“Not at six in the morning.”

“You used to. In junior high. You used to get up and work out in the morning before school. Elliot would tell me about it. All your brothers had quit martial arts, and you were still going. Like the Eveready rabbit.”

“They were studying Kung Fu. Maybe it wasn’t as much fun,” I said modestly. I was actually surprised to hear that my brothers had even noticed what their little squirt sister was doing, back in those days.

“Or maybe they’re just not as tough as you,” Roland grinned. He gathered up the Marlboros and the matches. “Listen, this’s been great, but I’ve got to get back to the factory. I have to keep showing my face up there, keep the ladies on their toes. Otherwise they stop working and sit around scheming to get me hooked up with their daughters.” He winked again. “I’ll give you a call, okay? And tell Elliot congrats on the wife and kids and all. I’ll call him, too. And if I ever need a private eye, you’re first on my list.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Back out on Canal Street, Roland gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and another wink. Then he turned and walked away. I watched him striding down the sidewalk, snapping his fingers, until he turned into the building, two blocks down, where his father’s factory was.

I took the fruit and vegetables home to my mother.

As I unpacked the string bag and she scanned the front page of the
China Post
, my mother asked me nonchalantly, “How is Roland Lum?”

“Roland Lum?” I repeated, instantly suspicious. “How do you know I saw Roland Lum?”

“Oh, Mrs. Chan called to ask for my recipe for salt-baked shrimp. She told me she happened to see you and Roland having coffee at Maria’s on Canal Street. I wish I’d known you were going there. I’d have asked you to bring me some almond cookies, to put in the freezer in case your brothers come.”

None of my brothers likes Maria’s almond cookies. I don’t either. My mother could live on them.

“I didn’t know I was going there,” I said, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “And since when do you give your recipes to Mrs. Chan?”

“Of course I didn’t give it to her. I told her I was too old to remember it and I would have to find it where it’s written down.”

“Was she devastated?”

“Devastated? Over a recipe? Of course not. She seemed not to mind at all.”

“She would’ve minded if she’d been calling for the recipe,” I muttered, dumping the tofu from its plastic bag into the container in the fridge.

“Ling Wan-ju, did you say something?” My mother looked up innocently from the newspaper.

“No, Ma.” I headed for my room.

“When you see Roland Lum again,” my mother called after me, “tell him to give his mother my regards.”

“I don’t know when I’ll see him again,” I called back.

“When he calls, of course,” my mother said, mostly to herself, in a satisfied tone. “When he calls you.”

The next call, however, was not from Roland to me, but from me to Bill.

“Lo, the Mighty Hunter,” he said. “I like a culture where the women provide. Did you bring down vast quantities of water spinach?”

“Herds. I just brought it triumphantly home. But I had the strangest encounter.”

“At home? With your mother?”

“That, too. But no, that’s not what I mean. Guess who I ran into on the street?”

Bill paused briefly in thought. “Dawn Jing?”

“A reasonable answer, but wrong. Roland Lum.”

“Roland Lum?”

“The guy who owns the factory John and Genna are negotiating with.”

“Oh, right. But you know him.”

“Elliot used to.”

“And his factory’s in Chinatown.”

“Yes.”

“So why is running into him strange?”

“Well, for one thing, I haven’t seen him in years, so it’s a little odd to run into him right now, when his name just came up yesterday. For another,
he
stopped
me
on the street, took me out for coffee, chatted and winked, and then abruptly left.”

“I don’t like him winking at you, but I’ll let it slide. What did he chat about?”

“That’s the point. Once we got past the family part, he brought up John and Genna. He tried to get me to let him in on what the case was. Then he told me in three or four nonsubtle ways that John is a loose-cannon type, a guy who goes off half-cocked and messes things up if he doesn’t get his way.”

“That doesn’t come as news,” Bill said. “But I don’t get why he brought it up in the first place. How did he know you knew John?”

“Apparently John sort of used Roland as a reference for me. He asked him if he knew me, and what he thought of me. Roland can’t possibly remember me except as a wild teenager, but he says he gave me a glowing reference, on the principle of Chinese solidarity. It annoyed me.”

“I wish
I
remembered you as a wild teenager. At least I’d have my memories. Chinese solidarity annoys you?”

“People doing me patronizing favors annoys me.”

“Sounds like he might have been just trying to help.”

“Maybe,” I said grudgingly.

“How did he react when you wouldn’t tell him about the case?”

“How do you know I didn’t?”

“Do I really have to answer that?”

Alone in my room, I smiled. “No, sorry; it was just a reflex.” I thought back to the bright fluorescent lights of Maria’s. “He pushed a little, then he gave up.”

“Did he give up because he really didn’t care all that much, or because he knew it was useless no matter how much he cared?”

“That’s an interesting question,” I said. In my mind I saw Roland’s grin, the flicking ash of his cigarette. “I’m not sure. Both. Neither. Something in between.”

“It’s the casual attitude toward specificity in the Chinese character that makes you people so intriguing.”

“A rigid hang-up on specificity is what makes Westerners narrow-minded physical determinists,” I pointed out haughtily. “A way of thinking, I might add, that is leading this planet straight into disaster.”

“And which the entire non-Western world is hell-bent on imitating,” Bill said.

“Only because of the short-term gains.”

“Which this line of conversation is very deficient in. Let me ask this about Roland Lum’s short-term gains: what do you think he wanted and what do you think he got?”

“You only want to drop that conversation because you were losing,” I said. “What did Roland want? Either to find out what the case was about, and if that’s it he got nothing; or to warn me about John. If that was it he succeeded, at least in getting his opinion across.”

“Why would he want to do that?”

“Warn me? Proprietary interest. He was a friend of my brother’s. He also seems like a guy who likes to be on the inside. If he really thinks John’s a nutcase, Roland struck me as the kind of guy who’d want to impart his superior wisdom rather than letting me make my own mistakes.”

“Then maybe the whole thing wasn’t so strange. It was just what you thought it was: a planned encounter, for a reason.”

“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “It just seemed to me there was something else going on.”

“Like what?”

“I’m not sure. Don’t start with that specificity stuff again,” I warned.

“I never try the same line twice on a woman. Is it possible Roland was just looking after you?”

“Because he used to know me?”

“Uh-huh. Maybe he saw you there on the street and was overcome with one of those urges to protect you that gets you so steamed.”

“Maybe,” I sighed. “Why do people get those urges? Do I seem that incompetent and helpless and useless to everybody?”

“That,” Bill said. “And you’re short.”

N
INE

A
fter I hung up on Bill I looked in the Manhattan phone book, came up empty, and then made some more calls, to directory assistance in the four boroughs I didn’t have phone books for. After they’d all told me they didn’t have any such listing I tried the Manhattan operator, too, in case the number was new, but she didn’t have a listing for a Dawn Jing either.

I expanded my search to Jersey City, Hoboken, and other places where hopefuls take first apartments, within view of New York, watching the lights across the river and waiting impatiently for their chance to see the view from the other side of the looking glass.

No luck anywhere.

There were all sorts of simple explanations for this. Dawn Jing could have a roommate and the phone could be in the roommate’s name. Dawn Jing could have taken over an illegal sublease and the phone could still be in the real tenant’s name. Dawn Jing could be using an alias, some kind of professional name. All sorts of explanations, but a fat lot of good any of them did me.

There was nothing to do but to call Oak Park.

There weren’t a lot of Jings in Oak Park, Illinois; in fact directory
assistance could only come up with one. An H. P., on Elmwood Avenue. I sat for a few minutes, looking at without really seeing the blue sky and black rooftops out my window, until something Andrew had said the night before came back to me. Serve him right, I thought, if he’s my inspiration. Filling in the details until I had a story that could work, I called H. P. Jing.

The phone was answered on the third ring by a woman.

“Good morning,” I said pleasantly. “May I speak to Mrs. Jing?”

“This is Mrs. Jing.” The woman’s voice was reserved and held a slight Chinese accent. “Who is calling?”

“My name is Angela Fowler.” I made myself sound apologetic and ethnically neutral. “I’m sorry to bother you. I’m with the credit department at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York. We have a little mix-up I hope you can help us with.”

“I don’t believe I have a charge account at Saks,” she said, warming up not at all.

“No, the mix-up isn’t in your account,” I said quickly and, I hoped, reassuringly. I didn’t want her thinking this was some kind of credit scam and hanging up on me. “It’s your daughter, I believe? Dawn Jing?”

“Oh?” The mention of her daughter’s name did not make her throw her arms open and welcome me. “What is this about?”

“It’s a small thing,” I assured her. “Her revolving credit account is unpaid for the last two months.”

“Yes? And what has this got to do with me?” Mrs. Jing’s tone had gone from reserved to guarded.

“I’m sure it’s only an oversight,” I went on. “There’s not a great deal of money involved, and I’m sure Ms. Jing has other things on her mind. It’s just that it’s my responsibility to contact our customers in these situations. Before a problem develops with their credit ratings. No one wants that to happen.”

“And please tell me why you’re calling me? You must know that Dawn doesn’t live here.” My subtly implicit reassurances and threats seemed to be bouncing off Mrs. Jing like rain off a car hood. Careful, Lydia, I warned myself, or you’ll lose her.

“It’s just that when I tried to call your daughter, the telephone
number she’d given on her credit application had been disconnected. Do you have her new number?”

“How did you find me?”

“She listed your home on her credit application as a former residence.”

“I see.” A depth and resonance I heard in her tone made me suddenly want to ask, What? What do you see? Tell me about your daughter, both your daughters; would one of them truly do something like this to the other?

But that wouldn’t do, and I knew it.

“I don’t know that I should help you,” Mrs. Jing said. “I don’t want to be responsible for creditors harassing my daughter.”

“I understand that, Mrs. Jing. On the other hand, she’s probably forgotten all about this bill, and she’ll thank you for helping out before a problem develops.”

“I suppose that’s possible. What number was it that she gave you?”

I made up a ten-digit New York phone number and gave it to her for an answer.

“I’m not familiar with that number,” she said. “But Dawn is hard to keep up with. She travels often, for her career. If I need to get in touch with her, I usually call my other daughter.” She carefully did not, I noticed, give me her other daughter’s name. “She’s much less trouble to find. I’ll call her and tell her to suggest to Dawn that she call you at Saks. Is that satisfactory?”

It was not satisfactory, but it was clearly her best offer. I thanked her and hung up, assuring her, one final time, that this was nothing serious.

And then I sat, staring without seeing out the window once again.

Genna was much less trouble to find. I was willing to bet she was much less trouble overall. Not a good Chinese daughter, Dawn, from the sound of it, the sound of her mother’s voice. I wasn’t much of a good Chinese daughter, either. Would my mother’s voice sound like that someday, guarded, angry, but not surprised at my failings? Not indulgent, not impatient, but finally disappointed and cold?

Not a profitable line of inquiry, Lydia, I told myself firmly. I reeled myself in and made another call, to
Vogue
.

“Simone Sinclair, please,” I asked the operator, using a French accent. I’d gotten
Vogue
’s phone number and the list of assistant editors, from which I’d picked Simone Sinclair, from the masthead on the copy I’d bought while I was out. This was my fallback scheme for finding Dawn.

Three rings, and then, “Simone Sinclair,” said a musical young voice.

“Bonjour,” I said. “My name is Marie Leclerq. I’m sorry to trouble you, but I represent Botanica Nature. You have heard of us perhaps? Well, no matter. We are preparing to introduce our newest scent, Au Revoir, to the American market. We are planning parties, advertisements—including those wonderful scented strips in the magazines you Americans are so clever at—oh, so many things. My marketing director believes he has found the perfect models to represent Au Revoir, but alas, I do not know how to reach them. This is my responsibility, and I dislike to disappoint. I thought perhaps that you would be in a position to help me … ?”

“I’d be glad to try,” said Simone Sinclair, responding, as I’d hoped, to a combination of my hint of underlying desperation and the suggestion of a possible advertising campaign in her magazine. Then she added eagerly, “D’où venez-vous? Êtes-vous Parisienne?”

My actual French consists of three years in high school, and high school was a long time ago. The meaning of what she’d just said—Where are you from? Are you from Paris?—I could just about make out, but there was no possible way I could hold up my end of a French conversation.

“Oh, no, no, no,” I scolded. “I am living in America now; I must improve my English, which is sad and weak. I am from Paris, from the fourth Arrondissement,” I added. “The rue des Chinois, do you know it?”

“No,” she said. “I’ve only been there twice. But my mother’s French.”

“I suspected, from your lovely name,” I told her.

“Well, I’ll try to help,” she said, sounding pleased. “Who are you looking for?”

“Dawn Jing,” I said. “And Andi Shechter.”

“Oh, I know Andi Shechter. Let me look her up.” I heard the click of computer keys. “Who was the other?”

“Dawn Jing,” I repeated, and then, because it’s a hard name to make clear in a bad French accent, I spelled it for her.

“I’ve never heard of her. Here’s Andi Shechter. She’s with Snap, Inc. That’s her agency. You can contact her there. But …” She let her voice trail off.

“But, it is what?” I asked.

“Well, there’s a note in the file. Maybe I’m not supposed to tell people. But then why would it be here?”

“A note?”

“I don’t want to get her in trouble.”

“No, no, do not worry. Only, if I know a problem, perhaps I can find a way to help to, as you Americans say, work around it?”

As I hoped, the word
work
gave her the push she needed.

“Probably it’s not a big deal anyway,” she confided. “It just says she was late to her last two shoots. It says ‘unreliable and uncooperative.’ But probably she was just having a bad day.”

Uh-huh, I thought. Two of them. “Oh, I agree, I doubt if this has any meaning. My director, I am sure, will want to speak with her in any case.”

“Good.” Simone Sinclair sounded relieved not to have ruined Andi Shechter’s chances at becoming the face of a new French fragrance. “Let me give you the phone number.” I wrote it down as she did. “The other one, Dawn Jing, she’s not in the computer,” she said apologetically. “That doesn’t mean anything, except that we haven’t used her in a spread. I could ask around for you,” she offered.

“No, please do not trouble yourself. I will make other attempts. If still nothing results, I may call you again?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Merci.”

“De rien,” Simone Sinclair said, her voice smiling.

I called Snap, Inc. I asked to be put in touch with Andi Shechter, but didn’t tell them why.

“I can’t give you her number,” the receptionist said, popping her gum. I bet her mother hated that. “I can take yours and see if she wants to call you.”

“That would be fine,” I said, keeping the French accent going. I gave her Marie Leclerq’s number and told her Marie Leclerq would be leaving within a half-hour. Then I asked for Dawn Jing.

“Who?”

“Dawn Jing, is she not with your agency?”

“I don’t think so, unless she’s really new.” A short silence, then, “No, she’s not one of ours.”

I hadn’t thought so, but it was worth a try. I thanked her, told her I’d wait for Andi Shechter’s call, and hung up. I turned off my answering machine, so if I were in the other end of the apartment, Andi Shechter wouldn’t be faced with Chin Investigative Services answering calls in Chinese and English. Then I dumped my bureau drawers out onto the bed.

There’s a lot of waiting around in this profession, and you learn to do mindless constructive things while you’re waiting. At my office I shuffle paperwork. At home I organize.

My mother passed my door as I was putting T-shirts I no longer wore in a shopping bag to take to Goodwill.

“Ling Wan-ju, what are you doing?”

“Waiting for a phone call, Ma.”

She smiled a small, knowing smile. “He won’t call this soon, silly girl.”

I looked at her blankly. “Who won’t?”

“ ‘Who won’t?’ ” she repeated teasingly. “You don’t need to pretend with your mother, you know.”

“Ma, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No, of course not.” She smiled again. “But I’m glad to see you taking an interest in your wardrobe. That’s important to people in the clothing business.”

She continued down the hall, humming to herself.

I stared after her, dumbfounded. It’s too bad, I thought, that they don’t give prizes for that, because if they did, she’d be a Lifetime Grandmaster.

The ringing of the phone brought me out of my mother’s world
and back to reality. I grabbed it, and, reactivating the French accent, said, “Allo?”

“Marie Leclerq, please. This is Andi Shechter.”

“Ah, yes, Miss Shechter. This is Marie. So good of you to call. There is something I am hoping you can help me with.”

“Yeah, sure. What’s that?” Impatience cut her words short, a jumpiness I wasn’t sure of the source of. But I wouldn’t have classified it as uncooperativeness.

“My firm, Botanica Nature, would like to contact a young American model. I do not know where to find her. I thought perhaps you might know her: Mademoiselle Dawn Jing.”

“Oh.” I could hear her disappointment. “I thought you were calling because you wanted
me
.”

“I am so sorry,” I said. “For myself, your look is ideal for our product. But my creative director has discovered a photograph of Dawn Jing, and he very much likes to find her.”

“What makes you think I know her?”

“I do not know so very many American models, nor where to look for them,” I said soothingly. Nor do I know, Mademoiselle Andi Shechter, what you and Monsieur John Ryan were discussing last night at Donna’s. Is it that you could enlighten me, please? No, Lydia, back to the business at hand. “Someone has told me, Andi Shechter knows many people, especially models up-and-coming.”

“Oh, yeah, I know everyone,” Andi said bitterly. “I know Dawn. But if you’re looking for up-and-coming, you’re not in the ballpark.”

“Ballpark?” I said uncomprehendingly. “It is scent we create, not sportswear. Is it that you can tell me how to find her, yes?”

“You’re making a mistake,” she said. “There are other Asian girls you’d be better off with, if that’s what you’re looking for.”

“I am sure you are correct,” I told her politely. “It is not myself, but our creative director who has, how do you say it, this bee in his hat. If Miss Jing does not suit, he will look at others, but he first must remove this idea from his system. I am sure you understand.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Someone gets a girl stuck in his head and the rest of us don’t exist. That must be an
old
picture of her he’s working from.”

“Oh? Why is that, please?”

“You’ll see. In fact, I didn’t even think she was in the business anymore.”

“Miss Jing no longer models?”

“Oh, hell,” Andi said. “What do I know? Maybe she got lucky and the laugh’s on the rest of us. Maybe you’re her ship and it finally came in.”

“I arrived by airplane,” I corrected her. “To Kennedy, such a busy airport. Do you have her telephone number?” The professional jealousy I was hearing, if that’s what it was, was getting on my nerves, along with my own accent.

“Oh, if you insist. I guess the sooner you find her and your creative director gets over her the sooner some other girl gets a job, right?”

“Oui, I believe so,” I said kindly.

“Then call Everest models,” Andi said cooperatively, although I thought I also heard a sneer. “The Peak of Perfection. Last I heard, she’s with them.”