MANDARIN PLAID (Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series) (17 page)

E
IGHTEEN

I
don’t get it,” Bill said.

“No,” Dawn answered Bill, “you wouldn’t.”

The
A
room at Quiver was shoulder-to-shoulder crowded now, short tight dresses and spikey heels swaying next to T-shirts, jeans, and silk jackets. And cowboy boots. People stood pressed together under the smoke that spiraled through the spotlights, watching the band mill around on the bandstand again and begin tuning up.

I didn’t believe Bill. I could see in his eyes that he got it. But just like me, he probably wanted to hear it from her.

Dawn turned to me. “Do you have brothers or sisters? Oh, yeah, him.” She nodded in Andrew’s direction. “Any more?”

“Three more,” I said.

“Do they like you?”

“Yes,” Andrew said, cutting my answer off.

Bill and Tony both smiled, and hid their smiles in their drinks.

“That’s nice,” Dawn said. “What if they didn’t?”

“They’d still be my brothers,” I said.

“And what if one of them wanted something all his life, wanted it so badly it was eating him up, and when he got close to it you could help? But he didn’t want your help because he didn’t like you?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She gave me a look that said she thought I did know.

“Genna’s had crappy luck lately,” Dawn said. “At just the wrong time. She had a factory lined up and they backed out on her. One of her suppliers is suddenly out of stock on buttons they promised her. She designed a whole damn dress around those buttons. Even that asshole Wayne dropped her as soon as he got a better offer. It’s a bad time and she needs cash. She doesn’t like me so she won’t take mine.”

I asked, “You have that kind of money?”

She flashed me a grin. “You know what they say, honey: do what you love; the money will follow.”

Feedback shrieked from one of the loudspeakers. Dawn waited until the band had wrestled their equipment back under control.

“Genna doesn’t want to take John’s money, either,” she said. “But she’s desperate, so she will. She treats it like he’s making an investment. It’s how she pretends she doesn’t need anyone.”

She looked at me. I didn’t look at Andrew.

“The trouble is, John hasn’t got any money.”

Bill and I exchanged looks. “We sort of knew that,” I said. “No ready cash, anyway.”

“No money,” Dawn repeated. “Nothing. One building, a real dump. He showed it to me. He bought it to fix it up for him and Genna, just before his mother cut him off. Sweet guy, but not a thinker. Like most sweet guys.”

That remark was directed, with a superior smile, to Bill. I could have told her Bill wasn’t a particularly sweet guy, but she didn’t ask me.

“His mother?” I said. Dawn looked back to me. “She was supporting him?”

“Not exactly. His father left him a trust, administered by her. She doesn’t have to give him money out of it if she doesn’t feel like it.”

“But it’s his?”

“For what that’s worth.”

I wasn’t surprised, but I was a little appalled; John Ryan was older than I was. “He could get a job,” I suggested.

Dawn shook her head. “He works for Genna. Fifteen hours a
day, seven days a week, just like her. She couldn’t afford to pay someone to do what he does, and he’s good at it. When he started, he had money. His mother hadn’t caught on yet that Genna wasn’t a wasp from Newport.”

“So you give John money, and he gives it to Genna, and she thinks it’s his?”

Dawn nodded. “And what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. Now explain it to Sinbad over here.” She slung her purse over her shoulder. “You guys have been enough trouble for one night. See you around.”

“How did you meet John?”

“How do you meet guys in this business?” she threw back, impatiently. “Everyone’s a friend of a friend. I really don’t remember. I never dated him, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She stopped and gave me a hard look. “Genna has no idea we know each other. I’d like to keep it like that.”

“That’s how you knew what happened? About the stolen sketches, and in the park?”

She shrugged her rhinestone-strapped shoulders. “John needed the ransom money. He had to get it somewhere.”

“One more thing,” I said.

“Oh, really?”

“What was the relationship between Ed Everest and Wayne Lewis? That Ed came to Wayne for?”

“Ed went to Wayne for lots of things. Wayne and I run—ran—a much higher-class operation than Ed does.”

“That’s no answer.”

“Wasn’t much of a question. Oh, all right,” she said, probably in answer to the flash of annoyance on my face. “Wayne didn’t think I knew, but he was selling names to Ed.”

“Names?”

“Yeah, sweetie, names. Johns. Creeps and losers who wanted me that I didn’t want to deal with anymore. For a price, Ed bought their names and numbers and pimped—” with a glance at Andrew and a small smile, she amended her words “—and introduced them to his girls.”

She stood. Bill pushed back his chair and stood, too, which
made Andrew and Tony rise. I was the only one sitting. Dawn looked down at me.

“I didn’t steal the fucking sketches. If you find out who did, let me know. Otherwise, have a nice life. And don’t forget what I said about the shoes. A really hot pair.” She tilted her head in Bill’s direction, so I’d know what she was talking about. Then she walked away.

Bill, without a word to us, gave her a moment, then turned and followed her as she melted into the crowd. I stayed where I was. Andrew turned to me, looking a little dazed.

“I thought she was a model,” he said weakly.

“Jesus H. Christ,” said Tony, staring after Dawn. I was surprised to hear from him. Tony hadn’t said a word in the last half hour. Tony knows all my brothers, and he’s met my mother once, briefly in a crowd at our apartment last Chinese New Year. Andrew had brought him so that Tony could get a look at our whole family and understand better why Andrew’s still in the closet as far as Chinatown’s concerned. When Tony’s with more than one Chin, he ends up silent a lot. Maybe he thinks it’s safer that way.

“You thought Dawn Jing was a model,” I said to Andrew. “What about Pearl Moon?”

“No,” he said. “No, not her. I knew about her.”

“Knew what?”

“Knew that.” He gestured in the direction Dawn had gone. “That she was a call girl. That’s why I was so blown away when you said they were the same person.”

“Why?”

“Well,” he pursed his lips in thought, “I guess I was thinking, for Dawn to steal the sketches and for Genna to be willing to pay her off, Dawn must be a pretty … I don’t know, pathetic human being. Not a … not someone like her.”

“Someone pathetic,” I said. “A little sister.”

Tony stifled a grin.

Andrew said, “Don’t start that! That’s not what I meant.”

“Wrong,” I said. “It’s just what you meant. But never mind. I can’t think in here. As soon as Bill comes back, let’s leave.”

“Where did Bill go?” Andrew asked.

“To get Dawn’s phone number,” I said. “So we can find her if we need her again.”

“How do you know that?”

I looked at Andrew blandly as the band counted down and crashed into the beginning of a new set. I asked, “Where else would he have gone?”

I was, of course, right about that. Bill was back inside of five minutes. I was glad to see him: the band had cranked up the volume to where even the music itself bounced madly from wall to wall, looking for a way to escape.

Bill dropped himself into his chair again, lit a cigarette, and tossed the matchbook to me.

“Oh,” I said, my voice loud but almost lost against the band. “Gee, thanks. This is in case I need a smoke? You’ve given up leaning across the table?”

“Dawn’s number’s inside,” Bill grinned. “She said if I ever wanted the real thing to just give her a call.”

“The real thing?” I demanded. I felt my cheeks getting hot. “Instead of what?”

He made a palms-up gesture of complete innocence. “Just doing my job, ma’am.”

“You seem to enjoy your job.”

“And she seems to enjoy hers.”

“Yes,” I said. “She certainly does. Can we get out of here, guys? I think this place is just too cool for me.”

We emerged from underground into the night air of Union Square. There we split up.

“What are you going to do now?” Andrew wanted to know, as we stood casting odd shadows under high yellow streetlights.

“I have no idea,” I told him.

“Lyd—”

“Not only do I have no idea,” I said, “I don’t want to hear any of yours.”

“I was—”

“Andrew. Darling. Third brother, whose very footsteps I idolize
and adore. Go home. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

So Andrew and Tony headed the few blocks north and west, to their loft, and Bill and I started south, toward his apartment and mine.

The night was hazy, with that cool of early spring that’s only a little warmer, but so much softer, than the chill of winter. We walked in silence down nearly deserted University Place. The blocky buildings on our left loomed over mist-draped Washington Square Park across the street. On a night like this, that park, with its bare trees and curving walks and cast-iron streetlights, seems achingly turn-of-the-century to me. I almost think that just by stepping inside the low railing that surrounds it, I’d become part of a world of gaslights and long dresses and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves.

But, of course, I wouldn’t.

And if I did, I’d probably find I was the chambermaid.

“What’s up?” Bill asked, after we’d left the park behind and cut between the unmistakably twentieth-century apartment towers south of it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m depressed.”

“Why?”

“I love that park.”

He glanced at me sideways. “That park’s not going anywhere.”

I stepped up onto the curb. It was a very high curb; for a moment I was only six inches shorter than he was. “Neither are we,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, Andrew and his bright ideas,” I said. “Dawn is Genna’s pathetic little sister, Dawn must have stolen the sketches because she’s desperate, Genna must be protecting her. And I bought it! That’s not Genna and Dawn. That’s what Andrew thinks of little sisters. I can’t believe I didn’t tell him to go soak his head. Look at all the time we’ve wasted!”

“Are you sure we’ve wasted it?”

“Of course we have! We spent all day looking for Dawn, and now we found her and guess what?
She
was the red herring all along!”

“You don’t think she could have been lying?”

“Oh, sure. She could have been a Martian, too. Green slime with
three heads, actually, not a slinky sexpot Chinese call girl at all!”

“Really?” he said. “I didn’t notice.”

“With a better haircut than mine!”

“Not much better.”

“What?” I demanded, turning and blocking his path. “You really think hers is better?”

“No.” He smiled. “I don’t think anything could be better than you in a new haircut in the middle of the street in the middle of the night.”

He reached and, at the back of my head where my hat didn’t cover it, he touched my new haircut. At the brush of his fingers, my whole scalp tingled, and my spine, and the tips of my toes.

He looked at me. I looked at the sidewalk. Then I reached for his hand and moved it away, down where hands belonged, in the space between people. I held it in mine. His was warm. Mine was cold.

He shrugged, and smiled again. “Sorry,” he said. “I thought …”

I shook my head. I knew what he thought. What I didn’t know was what I thought.

“
I’m
sorry,” I said. “I’m upset. It’s not you. It’s really not. I just want to walk.”

He nodded, and we started forward, still holding hands.

“Let’s change the subject,” he said, after we’d made our way across the expanse of Houston Street and through the empty blocks of Soho, past gated-up boutiques, grimy-faced tenements, and trendy restaurants where weary waiters were putting the chairs up on the tables.

“We haven’t said anything,” I pointed out.

“Good. Let’s change that.”

“To what?”

“To your hot dinner date.”

I looked at him swiftly. “It wasn’t like that.”

“What was it like?” He asked the question casually, with a lightness of tone I couldn’t quite buy.

“Roland’s a client,” I said. “Or he wants to be. That’s all.”

“That’s not what your mother thinks.”

I stopped and turned again, letting go of his hand. I drew a breath; he waited. “What’s between you and me,” I finally said, speaking
quietly, searching his eyes, “or isn’t, doesn’t have to do with my mother.”

He was silent, and so was I. A truck grumbled and bounced over the potholes of Canal Street.

“That’s not true,” I contradicted myself. “It has to do with her, but not because of what she wants or what she tells me to do. Because of who I am and who you are. Where we come from and what we know. It’s different, Bill. I can’t make it the same.”

“It doesn’t have to be the same.”

“It has to … to intersect at some points.”

“Doesn’t it do that?”

“Others,” I said. “More than how we work together, more than how we feel about each other.”

“More than how we feel about each other?” His voice was soft. His words were mine, and I was surprised to hear them.

“I—that’s not what I meant.”

His eyes, also soft, held mine. I felt the tingle again.

“I think it is,” he said.

I knew he was going to kiss me. I knew it was a bad idea. I didn’t move to stop him.

Maybe other trucks went by; maybe the sun rose and set again; maybe the Martians landed. I wouldn’t have known. When we separated, the night was still lit with a sodium-vapor glow and the buildings hadn’t changed at all.

I stepped back, not by much, an inch or two. “I just can’t,” I said.

“You just did.”

I shook my head. “Not with you,” I said. “With someone else, someone I didn’t care so much about, if I felt like this I’d be jumping in a cab to your place, even though I knew it wasn’t going to work out. I can’t do that with you.”

“You don’t know it won’t work out.”