MANDARIN PLAID (Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series) (15 page)

“What are you wearing?” she asked suspiciously.

I climbed back up the two stairs I’d made it down and posed for her on the landing.

She pursed her lips at my outfit. “I’m glad to see you’re wearing a hat,” she said. “Even that one.”

“Thank you.”

“But you should be wearing a skirt, not trousers.”

“Pants are very in.”

“In,” she scoffed. “What difference does ‘in’ make? ‘In’ doesn’t make you attractive. A skirt will make a man look at you.”

“Beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, Ma,” I said, although I got the uncomfortable feeling it didn’t sound nearly as convincing in Chinese.

Certainly not convincing to my mother. Her look was incredulous. “What sort of nonsense is that? Is that something you heard from Crooked Face?” My mother steadfastly refuses to learn Bill’s name. “Some things are beautiful and some aren’t,” she snorted. “The same as right and wrong. Any man who thinks you look good that way …”

She pulled her head in and shut the door, bringing the rest of the sentence with her. I gathered, though, that it had something to do with undesirable sons-in-law. As I headed down the stairs, I heard her decisively locking our first and third locks.

Tai Hong Lau was a few blocks over, on Elizabeth Street. I walked there, through streets that were beginning to quiet down now, as the sidewalk vendors and vegetable sellers packed up and went home to eat their rice and catch a few hours sleep in rooms they shared
with five or six other newly arrived men. Tomorrow morning they’d be up before dawn again, bringing out their merchandise, getting a jump on another day in the Beautiful Country.

I reached Tai Hong Lau at five to eight. It’s one of Chinatown’s new, upscale restaurants: tables draped in white tablecloths and set with fine china, standing a discreet distance from each other in a plant-and-mirror lined, marble-floored room. The waiters wear crisp white shirts and black pants, and the cooks, who are called chefs at Tai Hong Lau, experiment with the use of shockingly foreign ingredients like mayonnaise. The price is high, for Chinatown, but dinner for two plus cappuccino afterward a few blocks north in Little Italy still costs less than dinner for one in a white-tablecloth restaurant uptown. That way a guy like Roland can impress his date without really putting a dent in his bankbook.

Thinking that made me wonder, as I entered the restaurant, whether Roland thought of this as a date, or if my mother was the only one making that assumption.

The business-suited manager smiled a professional smile when I gave him Roland’s name. He showed me to a table up a few steps in the back part of the restaurant, left two menus, and hurried back to his station at the front to smile professionally at someone else. A waiter came over and asked what I wanted to drink. I sipped the seltzer he brought me, watched the diners and waiters move sedately around the room, and waited for Roland.

I grew up in Chinatown restaurants: my father was a cook, and though he died when I was thirteen, I remember at least five different places he worked in. Relatives of mine own, work in, or have worked at some time in probably half the eateries in the neighborhood. But they’re the old-style restaurants and noodle joints, the ones with Formica tables and stainless steel teapots, thick plates, and rushing, harried waiters. I didn’t know anyone at Tai Hong Lau.

Roland, of course, was a little different. As far as Chinatown has a high society, he grew up in it; as far as there’s a right side of the tracks here, he was from it. There weren’t restaurants like Tai Hong Lau when Roland and I were growing up, but I wasn’t surprised that Roland had made friends with a chef in a place like this as soon as there was a place like this.

And speaking of Roland, he was late. I sipped my soda and tried to keep my foot from bouncing impatiently up and down. I was curious about Roland’s problem, and why I was the person to solve it. And I don’t like to be kept waiting.

Fifteen minutes later, when I was on my second seltzer, Roland pushed through the glass doors and cut easily to the front of the short waiting line that had formed since I came in. One hand in the pocket of a soft-fabric navy suit, he spoke some old-buddy words to the manager and was pointed in my direction. He grinned up at me; then he hustled through the restaurant, taking the steps in one bound, and came to a stop at my table.

“God,” he said, still standing, his grin spreading. “You look fantastic. Your hair wasn’t like that this morning, was it?”

“Hi, Roland,” I said. “Imagine meeting you here. Hey, why don’t you sit down?”

If there was any irony in my voice, he missed it completely. Maybe I’d have to work on irony. He pulled out the opposite chair and sat, signaling the waiter.

“I’ll have a Heineken,” Roland said, in Cantonese. “And bring the lady another of whatever she’s having. And tell Lee Yu Sing in the kitchen that Roland’s here. He knows what to do.”

The waiter smiled and took our menus away. I gave Roland a quizzical look. “You ordered already?”

“I called Yu Sing before and asked what’s good. He’s got some great fresh perch and some huge oysters, so I told him full speed ahead. That’s okay, isn’t it?” His face said that the idea that perch and oysters might not be okay with me was absolutely brand-new to him. “You like oysters?”

“I love them,” I said truthfully. There had been a sizzling four-spice chicken dish on the menu that I’d been interested in, but I guessed I’d try that next time I came.

“So.” Roland leaned back in his chair. “Sorry I was late. On the phone with my brother. He wants a loan.” Roland made a face. “I’m going to give it to him, but not as big as he says he needs. We had to talk, I had to cut him down. He was disgustingly grateful anyway. You don’t fawn on your brothers, I’ll bet.”

“Never.”

“Good. It’s really a drag, let me tell you. Hey, did I mention you look terrific? The haircut is great. You didn’t get it just for me, did you?”

“Sorry. I got it before I even knew you called.”

“Well, it’s great. Makes you look more feminine than this morning. You’re going out after this, right? Some hot date in a cool spot?”

“I’m going to a club with my brother,” I told him. If that news either relieved or disappointed him, I couldn’t tell.

“Old Elliot?” he asked.

“No, Andrew.”

“Andrew. How is Andrew?” Roland’s voice took on a tone of knowledgeable insinuation. “Is he still … single?”

“Just like me,” I answered.

“Well, maybe not
just
like you,” Roland grinned.

Luckily I didn’t have to say anything then, because the waiter came over with Roland’s beer. He started to pour it, but Roland’s face changed in an instant, flashing into anger. “Heineken!” he barked at the waiter, who looked in surprise at the bottle of Chinese beer in his hand. “Not this shit! Why don’t you listen? What the hell’s the matter with you?” The waiter’s face darkened, too, and he might have said something, but the manager was at our side, apologizing, steering the waiter away, assuring Roland everything was being taken care of.

Roland watched them walk away. Then his face changed instantly again, from hard back to breezily cheerful. “God,” he grinned, shaking his head, switching back to English. “Some people, huh?”

Yes, I thought, that’s true. Some people.

A different waiter came over with the right beer, and another seltzer for me. Roland took the bottle from him and poured it himself, carefully down the side of the glass, to avoid making a head. Bill, I remembered, likes a head on his beer.

Before Roland was finished pouring, the new waiter was back, presenting with a discreet flourish a platter of sizzling oysters in a garlic and scallion sauce. Well, at least I’d gotten something sizzling.

“Hey, not bad for starters, huh?” Roland asked, beaming at the oysters as though he’d made them himself. He dished some out for
me and then took some. I tasted them. They were wonderful, something bitter in the sauce setting off the richness of the oysters perfectly.

“You know, I really can’t believe my luck,” Roland said, after he’d eaten half his plate of oysters and washed them down with beer. “I run into you this morning, I need some help this afternoon, and bam! you’re having dinner with me tonight. What a world.” He shook his head in delighted bafflement. “So what do you think? You picked up any new clients today, or can you take my case?”

“No new clients,” I answered. “What’s the case?”

“The case,” he said. “The case. It’s a missing person.”

“Who’s missing?”

“A girl who works for me. Peng Hui Liang. At the factory.”

“How long has she been missing?”

“Since yesterday.”

“That’s not very long,” I said. “Are you sure she didn’t just give herself a few days off?”

“They don’t do that,” Roland answered, scooping some more oysters onto his plate, leaving the spoon handle pointed in my direction. “They don’t even take the ones I give them. They’re too afraid they’ll come back and find someone else at their machines.”

“Would they?”

“What?”

“Find someone else.”

“Well, I have to meet my orders.” Roland defended himself and his hiring practices with a smile. “I don’t have much margin. I can’t sit around short-staffed with empty machines.”

“So then why do you care?”

“About what?”

“Peng Hui Liang. If she’s been missing since yesterday, you must have already replaced her.”

“Well, but that doesn’t mean I’m not worried about her.”

“Do you worry about all your workers if they don’t come in?”

“Sure. Anyone doesn’t come in, I call her to make sure she’s okay. And to make sure she still wants the job.”

“And you called Peng Hui Liang?”

He nodded. “They said she didn’t live there, whoever answered the phone. That happens.”

That happens mostly for one reason. “Is she illegal?”

Roland gave me a shrug and a half-smile.

“So maybe she’s been picked up by Immigration.”

“I thought of that. I checked. I have a buddy over there.”

A buddy. What Roland probably had at INS was what every factory owner dreams of and many of them have: a bagman, someone he could pay not to notice that the people sitting behind his machines for ten hours a day at four dollars an hour six days a week were what are politically correctly called “undocumented workers.”

“Under a different name?” I suggested.

“I showed him a picture. Not there.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“I don’t know.”

“And why do you want to know?”

Roland’s face was innocent. “I told you, I’m worried about her.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s missing,” he said, with a look that said he didn’t understand what my problem was.

“Hiring a P.I. to look for a worker who didn’t show up for work shows an impressive level of concern from an employer. Do you do it often?”

Roland let out an exasperated sigh. “Lydia, I’m offering you a paying job. Do you want it or not?”

“I want to know why you want to find this woman.”

Roland pursed his lips and tapped his chopsticks on the table, looking like he was trying to decide whether to answer me. He bought a little time for free, because just then the waiter brought the fish. It was a whole perch, steamed and glistening in a ginger-scallion sauce, topped with delicate strands of carrot, red pepper, and bean thread. With it came a platter of watercress sauteed with garlic, and a large covered bowl of fragrant rice.

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

Roland said, “I told you Yu Sing knows what he’s doing,” and began to expertly debone and serve the perch.

I didn’t interrupt; there was no point in getting bones in my fish in order to win a point. When the perch and the watercress and the rice were all sitting in splendid readiness on my plate, however, I started up again.

“Why do you want to find her?” I asked. As I waited for his answer, I lifted some perch on my chopsticks and gave it a try. It was perfect, firm and moist, the ginger piquant and the scallions crunchy.

Roland moved his shoulders casually. “She’s alone here,” he said. “She hasn’t got anyone, and now the people at her phone number are saying they don’t know her. I don’t like it.”

“And I don’t believe it.”

Roland’s cheeks flushed red. “What don’t you believe?”

“The concerned-boss routine. Illegals disappear all the time, for all sorts of reasons. Maybe she got a better job. Maybe she got married. Maybe she went back to China. No one who didn’t have a personal relationship with her would be losing any sleep over it.”

Roland looked at me for a long time, drumming his chopsticks lightly against his glass. Then he dropped his eyes to his plate and dug back into his perch. He finished the piece in front of him before he looked at me or spoke again.

“Still the toughest little thing in town,” he said, one corner of his mouth turning up ruefully. “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know what it is,” I answered. “But you need to tell me before I decide whether to take the case.”

“You don’t know what it is,” he repeated sarcastically. “Like I’d really believe someone like you wouldn’t have figured it out. Okay, if that’s what you want, I’ll say it. We had a thing going on. I think she ran away because of me.”

I gave myself some more rice and considered this. “Why would she do that, if you had a thing going on?”

“Maybe one of us thought more was going on than the other one did.”

“Which one were you?”

“Guess.”

“What are you telling me? You came on to her and she ran away?”

“Not like that. We did have a thing, saw each other a few times, you know. Not that it was serious or anything. I mean, not really. But, you know …”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at me over a hard smile. “My God, you’re really something, aren’t you? Lydia, for god’s sake. She’s pregnant with my kid.”

S
IXTEEN

I
called Bill from the phone outside the ladies’ room at Tai Hong Lau. All I got was his service. I didn’t leave a message; there wasn’t any point. I’d wanted to bring him up to date on Roland’s troubles before we met at Andrew’s, but it could wait. I grabbed a cab and headed for Chelsea.

I’d told Roland I’d do it. I’d gotten from him the phone number where they said they didn’t know Peng Hui Liang, the photograph he’d shown to his buddy at the INS, and instructions.

“Don’t let her know I’m looking for her, okay? It’ll only make it worse. I just want to know that she’s okay and she hasn’t done anything stupid.”

“What’s stupid?”

“Lydia, come on.”

“You mean you want to make sure she hasn’t had an abortion? Or you want to make sure she gets one?”

Roland didn’t answer that. He finished his fish, his watercress, his rice—I was already done—and waved the waiter over to take the plates. Then he poured out the rest of his beer and drank that. Leaning back in his chair, he lit a Marlboro and flipped the pack onto the table.

“You know, Lydia, I sort of admire your approach. I’m a pretty direct guy myself. Don’t care much what people think. If it’s what I mean, I say it. Same for you, huh?”

“Sort of.”

“Thing is, I’m not sure how far it’ll get you in your business. People who hire private eyes might want a little more discretion. I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong.” Cigarette dangling from his lip, he signaled the waiter with an American Express Gold Card. “You just find Hui Liang for me. Discreetly. Then we’ll talk.”

Now, in the cab on the way uptown, I was thinking about searching for people. What a strange relationship it put you in, this circling closer to someone who, in Peng Hui Liang’s case, didn’t want to be found; in Dawn Jing’s, didn’t know anyone was looking. It was like a split-screen movie image, where the actors on one side of the screen didn’t know about the actors on the other, where everyone just went about their business but the audience could see the connections and sense what was coming.

Of course, the metaphor wasn’t quite right, because I was both actor and audience, about to reach out from my side of the screen, about to step across to the other set of images.

Bill was at Andrew’s when I got there. I don’t know what their conversation had been, but when Andrew met me at the elevator that opened into the loft, he seemed in a much better mood than I’d been prepared for.

“Nice outfit,” he smiled, leading me into the living area, where I’d met Genna Jing and John Ryan two nights before. “What if I told you we were going to a grunge bar?”

I frowned. “We’re not, are we?” Grunge, which depends heavily on flannel and torn denim, was one of the New York scenes this outfit would not cover.

“No.”

“Then if you told me that, I’d know you were lying. Hi,” I said to Bill, who’d been scrutinizing one of Andrew’s photographs on the wall when I came in, but was now scrutinizing me.

“Hi. Nice outfit.”

“You, too. Good color choice.”

Per instructions, Bill was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt. The tail of the big blue snake tattooed on his left arm was visible below
the shirt sleeve. That alone would probably get us into any club in New York.

Bill pulled a pair of small round sunglasses from his T-shirt pocket. He slipped them on and I had to grin. It was very Hollywood.

“Cutting edge,” I said approvingly.

Andrew was in black slacks, too, but with a black-buttoned white shirt fastened all the way up to the neck, no tie or jacket. His hair was combed straight back, his usual way. The ruby stud winked from his left ear. My brother, I mentioned to myself again with the slight surprise I always feel when I notice it, is a very handsome man.

Tony waved a languid hand from where he was settled on the sofa. “The princess of private investigation,” he greeted me. “The queen of questioning, the duchess of detection. ’Lo.”

“ ’Lo.” I went over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. Tony’s handsome, too, with short sandy hair. He’s as tall as Bill, and his muscles are well-defined because he works out at the gym. Bill’s muscles aren’t as sculpted-looking, but I have no question who’d win if the two of them ever had any reason to go up against each other. Bill likes to keep his strengths hidden, but they’re there.

“Lydia,” Tony ordered, staring closely at me, “remove your hat.”

“Okay,” I said. “But I want you guys to maintain a certain degree of cool.”

I took the hat off.

Andrew breathed, “Wow,” but quietly. Bill grinned. To his credit, probably because he’d already seen the haircut, he didn’t whistle.

Tony did.

“You,” I pointed at Tony, “lose. So what do you think, you guys? You like it?”

“It’s perfect,” Andrew said.

“It’s fabulous,” Tony agreed.

I raised an eyebrow at Bill. “Don’t tell me you have nothing to say.”

“Oh, no,” he answered. “I have plenty to say. But I think it’s better said in private. Where I can whisper in your shell-like ears, which I can now see. Where I can—”

“Well, I don’t know where that would be,” I overrode him. “But I doubt if it’s where we’re going tonight. And by the way, where is that?” I turned to Andrew. “And shouldn’t we be going?”

“We’re going to a club called Quiver,” Andrew told me. “Not far from here. We can leave whenever. The action doesn’t start there until late.”

“When does Pearl Moon get there?”

“The couple of times I’ve seen her there, she’s come in around eleven.”

“Then let’s go,” I said. “The thought of missing her is making me antsy. Besides, I need to put my hat back on. My head’s getting cold.”

Bill, picking his black leather jacket up off the sofa, opened his mouth. I shot him a look. He had been about, I could tell, to offer to keep me warm.

Quiver was a hot, happening club near Union Square. That meant it cost us $15 apiece to get in, and we might not have been admitted, even so, except that the bouncer waved us to the front of the line as soon as he saw Andrew.

“Hey, man,” they greeted each other, with the shoulder-level handclasp that men in the in crowd use to differentiate themselves from the rest of us. Then we were ushered through the door, on which was painted a fat, lascivious cupid reaching for an arrow to fit on his bow. Oh, I thought,
that
kind of quiver. Cupid had sunglasses and a cigar. We were invited to pay our money to a bored-looking young woman on a high stool, and permitted down the stairs and into the sanctuary.

The club was in the basement. The pounding music we’d felt at the top of the stairs was a physical presence here, a thumping and howling that worked in partnership with the strobing colored lights, the swirling cigarette smoke, and the two huge video screens at the ends of the cavernous room to provide the decor, ambiance, dance music, and excuse not to make conversation all at once. Smoke-blurred people stood around the edge of the dance floor, or, on the floor itself, swayed and twisted, moved apart, or held each other close.

Bill and I looked at each other, but neither of us tried to say anything. There wouldn’t have been any point. Andrew grinned and motioned us to follow him. We did, working our way through the crowd to an archway in a side wall. It lead to a short corridor, another archway, another corridor. With each thick wall we passed, the music diminished. At the end of the second corridor, a final archway opened into a midsized room, high-ceilinged but not huge. The music here was provided by a live band at a loud but listenable level, and there were tables, chairs, banquettes, and a bar.

Andrew, Bill, and I settled at a table away from the band while Tony went to the bar to get drinks. “This is the ‘A’ room,” Andrew said, leaning forward across the table. “The front room is mostly for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, unless there’s a hot group playing there. They like the scene, the lights, and everything.”

“So when cool people come to Quiver, this is where they come?” I asked.

“You’re here,” Andrew said, as though that was the answer to my question.

Tony came back with the drinks. Bill lit a cigarette, we all leaned back, listened to the band, and watched.

The band was pretty good, especially the drummer. He was the total opposite of the wild man I’d seen in the subway. This one seemed almost catatonic, a tall thin kid who stared straight ahead, never seeming to look at his drums or anything else. But he was always completely on top of the music, always giving the singer or the guitarists exactly what they needed, and his solo was terrific.

While we waited in hopes of Dawn Jing, I checked out the other people who knew about the ‘A’ room. The place was full but not crowded, nothing like the crush in the big, main club. The women mostly wore short, tight skirts, black hose, and high, thick-heeled shoes, although I was not the only one in pants. I made a note to tell my mother that. The men wore black or white shirts, some with jackets with casually rolled-up sleeves, and as far as I was concerned, an overrepresentation of cowboy boots.

The band finished a set, took a break, started another set. We made not very much conversation, and we each had another drink. I wanted to tell Bill about my dinner with Roland, and from a look he’d
given me as we were leaving Andrew’s, I could tell he wanted to know, but I didn’t want to do it with Andrew and Tony around. Besides, although what we were getting from the band in here was loud music and not the thumping, over-the-top noise they had in the other room, it was still of a level that would have made it difficult for me to convey any of the subtleties of the tale.

In the middle of the second set, I had to go to the bathroom. I made Andrew promise he’d throw a net over Pearl Moon if she came in while I was away, and I headed for the corridors and archways, following his directions.

The room was a white-tiled grotto smelling of perfumed soap. I did what I had to do in a hot pink stall with huge paintings of the cigar-smoking cupid on both sides of the door. You could have called them twice life-size, except who knows how big cupids really are? I finished, pulled open cupid’s door to go wash my hands and get back to the band, and found Dawn Jing leaning on the tiled wall, arms crossed, waiting for me.

It had to be her. She wore a tight, skimpy black velvet dress with rhinestone straps, showing off the small, pale yellow moon and blue clouds tattooed on her left shoulder. She had Genna’s features, but with tiny differences of proportion and emphasis that amounted to this: where Genna was beautiful, Dawn was stunning.

She wore expert makeup and a haircut as short as mine. No, shorter, and with a harder edge. I felt the same edge when I looked into her dark eyes. Her brown-toned lips were not smiling.

“You’re new,” she said to me.

I was surprised, and tempted to say, I thought the haircut would take care of that. But what I said was, “Are you Pearl Moon?”

“You’re with Ed Everest?” she asked, ignoring my question in favor of her own. “I can tell from the haircut.”

I nodded. Ed Everest, who’d said he’d never heard of Dawn Jing. I wasn’t sure what we were doing, but Ed’s name bouncing around in the tiled room made me decide to follow this path a little ways. “Mishika,” I told her.

“Ed should know better,” she snorted. “Sending girls here.” She pushed off the wall and took a step toward me. “This place is off limits to Ed, honey. Scram.”

“Ed didn’t send me. I’m here with friends.”

She blew air out from her nose in a rude sound. “First of all, news flash: johns are not your friends. I’ve had my eye on you for about half an hour, honey. Between you and me, two of the guys you’re with aren’t even straight. Rookie mistake. Don’t make it too often or Ed’ll get pissed. But that’s your problem. Ed’s girls don’t work this club, Mishika. They didn’t before, and they don’t now. Ed should have told you, and it’s just like him not to, because that’s the kind of worm he is. But Pearl’s telling you. Get lost.”

“I’m not working.”

“Oh! Oh, please.” She rolled her eyes. “Okay, you’re just showing some folks a good time. Buyers, right? From out of town? I’ll bet the big one’s looking for catalog models. Has a chain of stores in the Midwest? That’s always good for a few hot nights. What about the queers—business associates he couldn’t shake?” Then a thought seemed to hit her and brought a sharp smile. “Or is Ed running boys now, too? You and that Asian boy work as a team? Good old Ed. Kinky bastard.” The smile faded like sunlight on a cloudy day. “Look, honey. I know what Ed’s thinking. He’s thinking without Wayne I can’t hold the territory. That’s bullshit and you can tell him I said so.”

“You worked with Wayne?” I hoped I didn’t sound as surprised as I actually was. “He was your—partner?” The other word I’d been about to use wasn’t such a nice one, and I swallowed it.

“Ed didn’t tell you that either, hmm? Ed’s a shit, honey. You’ll figure that out for yourself. Wayne and I helped each other. But not so much I can’t get along without him. Only, one thing: you can tell Ed that what he used to come to Wayne for he can find somewhere else. I’m not picking up that part of the business.”

“What was that?” I asked. “That Ed came to Wayne for?”

“Ed knows. If you don’t, you don’t have to. Now I have to take a pee. You and your ‘friends’ be gone when I come out.”

“Actually,” I said, “I came to this club especially to find you.”

She stopped in the act of entering one of the cupid booths. “Oh? And why was that?” She turned and looked me up and down. “Ready to leave Ed so soon? Good instincts; you’ll never make a nickel with him. But some of the johns are okay. You can take home some nice perks. That guy you’re with doesn’t look half bad. See if
you can hit him up for a good pair of shoes or a bag or something.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if I’m ready to take any talent off Ed right now, Mishika.”

“My name’s not Mishika,” I said.

“And mine’s not Pearl. So what?”

“I’m Lydia Chin,” I said. “And you’re Dawn Jing. I’m here because of your sister.”

She let her hand drop from the stall door. “Genna?” she said, making no attempt to deny her identity. “What’s that supposed to mean—because of her?”