Trail of Blood (22 page)

“In my next memory, one of the men has seized Lao-li and is slapping him repeatedly. Aunt Rosalie threw herself on him, this man. A second man tore her away, but she didn’t stop shrieking and struggling. It took both the men to force her to the ground. All this time the leader was beating Grandfather and shouting for treasures.

“Then the old houseboy—Number One Boy, who had been with the Chen family for decades, a thin man made skeletal by hard times—Number One Boy lifted a stool and smashed one of the men holding Aunt Rosalie down.

“The man crumpled. The other released Aunt Rosalie and ran at Number One Boy. Aunt Rosalie, hair wild and clothing torn, scrambled to her feet.

“The leader shouted, spun around, and fired.” Zhang Li’s eyes closed. He was silent so long I thought he’d finished, and I wondered whether I should say something, but Bill caught my eye and shook his head. Finally Zhang Li spoke again.

“Aunt Rosalie fell. Everyone turned to stone. Then Number One Boy seized the fallen man’s rifle and fired at the leader. But he was a houseboy, not a soldier. He missed his mark. The leader shot back, also wide, splintering a chair. The fallen man crawled to his feet. Their leader shouted an order, and they all turned and ran. Number One Boy chased after. I heard more shots, and finally silence. Number One Boy didn’t return.

“After that . . . I have a picture in my mind of myself and my cousin kneeling beside Aunt Rosalie, in silence. I thought he’d reach for her, try to embrace her, start to cry. He did none of those things. He didn’t move at all. I recall Uncle Paul saying in a soft voice that Grandfather was alive, then taking Aunt Rosalie’s hand. But I’d reached her first, and I knew she was not.

“Uncle Kai-rong returned two days later. We were barricaded in the kitchen. When we heard voices in the house, Uncle Paul told Lao-li and myself to hide in a cupboard. He and Grandfather Chen seized cleavers and waited. Only when they were sure it was Uncle Kai-rong did Uncle Paul unbar the door.

“Uncle Kai-rong was devastated. Disbelieving. He wept over the garden grave Uncle Paul and I had dug for Aunt Rosalie in the dead of night. He begged her forgiveness. Then he gathered Lao-li and myself to him and said, ‘You are the treasures.’ He repeated it: ‘You are the treasures.’

“Within days, Mao’s army arrived, and order was restored in Shanghai. Number One Boy, who had been shot dead beside the gate, was sent back to his ancestral village for burial. Aunt Rosalie was given a proper funeral and reburied in the Jewish cemetery, though there were so few Jews left in Shanghai by then that some rites could not be performed.

“Uncle Paul left Shanghai a few months later, to go to America, after Mao Tse-tung made it clear Europeans were not welcome in the People’s Republic. Lao-li and I grew up in the villa, watched over by Kai-rong, whom I called uncle but who treated me like a son. Until, as young men, we came to America.”

A New York silence—quiet framed by a distant siren, an air conditioner’s hum—suffused the room. “An old story,” Mr. Zhang said softly, “from long ago. But”—he reached for my teacup, to refill it—“you are still wondering about the Shanghai Moon.”

In truth I hadn’t been. I’d been thinking about Rosalie and Kai-rong, and how they’d never gotten to say goodbye.

“Uncle Paul,” he said, “cradling Aunt Rosalie after the intruders fled, found red marks at her throat. To Grandfather, or perhaps to himself—certainly not to Lao-li or to me—he said, ‘The Shanghai Moon. They were after the Shanghai Moon.’ Weeping, he called down curses upon the gem and swore he wished it had never been made.”

“She’d been wearing it?” I said. “I thought—”

“Though the intruders found the villa empty and bare, they continued to scream for treasure. Then suddenly, after the struggle with Aunt Rosalie, they fled. Why? Unless by ‘treasure’ they meant the Shanghai Moon, and they’d gotten what they came for. Such was Uncle Paul’s reasoning. Uncle Kai-rong agreed. He cursed the gem as Uncle Paul had, and called on it in turn to curse those who now possessed it. He ordered us never to speak of it again.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling how tissue-thin the words were. “What terrible things for a child to live through.”

“Many children live through terrible things. The world is a harsh place. All we can do is try to ease one another’s way.”

“I suppose you’re right. And I have to say, the loss of a brooch seems so . . . trivial, in the context of this story. Of those terrible days.”

“Yes. And no. Uncle Kai-rong would have given a dozen, a hundred, Shanghai Moons, to have his Rosalie back. But it took on a different meaning to my cousin. In Uncle Kairong’s presence we never spoke of it, and we never spoke between us of that day, but repeatedly, to me, in the months that followed, Lao-li vowed he would recover the gem. He was a young child who, as you say, had seen terrible things. The dream of recovering the Shanghai Moon gave him comfort. I—a child also, not much older—saw no harm in his taking refuge in that dream. I did not forsee the obsession it would become, or the trouble it would lead to.”

“Trouble?”

“As we grew to manhood, my cousin’s attention was absorbed in the study of gems and precious metals. The Shanghai of the People’s Republic, gray and stern, bore little resemblance to the wild city of the years before the war, or to the war years’ profiteering frenzy. Luxury and opulence were banished. The European jewelers had fled, and Chinese jewelers found themselves doing little beyond repairing senior cadres’ watches. Nevertheless, Lao-li found a jeweler willing to take an apprentice. After a day of Piaget screws and gears, by night he instructed Lao-li secretly on gems, their cuts, weights, colors, and flaws.

“Uncle Kai-rong was himself a senior cadre, busy with extending the generous, fierce hand of revolution to all of China. We remained in the villa—shared now, in correct Maoist fashion, with three other families—planting bok choy and beans among the sweet potato vines, giving to the poor the eggs from our chickens. For a long time, life was difficult but satisfying. Uncle Kai-rong assured us the sacrifices we were making would uplift the Chinese people through a thousand generations.”

“Why didn’t you dig up Rosalie’s jewelry? And what about the treasures your grandfather had buried?”

“Grandfather Chen’s scrolls and porcelains were retrieved and sold abroad to feed the masses. But the villa garden itself was nourishing many mouths. Uncle Kai-rong would not permit the destruction of crops to search for the jewelry, the location of which none of us knew. He felt Aunt Rosalie would have wanted it that way. As crops were plowed under or new furrows dug, of course we searched, but we were never successful.

“Then, as my cousin and I entered our twenties, the winds of the Cultural Revolution began to blow. Everyone was scrutinized, anyone could be denounced. Uncle Kairong was a powerful man, but his class background was incorrect. And powerful men have enemies. Being cowards, his did not take aim at him directly but whispered and hissed, inflaming others. We started to hear rumors, threats. One day, returning from his work, Lao-li was set upon by a mob in the street. Perhaps you can imagine the attitude of the Red Guards toward a young Eurasian jeweler from a landowning family?”

I could. “What happened?”

“These were the Cultural Revolution’s earliest days. Some people were not yet terrified and cowed. He was rescued by neighbors and returned to us, not badly hurt. But over the months the direction of things became clear. Uncle Kai-rong, forseeing dunce caps and years of reeducation in the countryside for Lao-li, sent him to America, and me with him. He did this at great risk and no doubt would have paid a high price. But he cheated the Red Guards: He fell ill, and died not six months after I and my cousin arrived here.”

“How did he die?”

Mr. Zhang smiled sadly. “We were told his heart failed him. I have no doubt that is true. Many years before, he’d lost his Rosalie. Now he lost his son, and myself. And finally, to the Red Guards, he lost his greatest love: China. I think he saw no reason to go on.”

“Mr. Zhang, your family’s story is extraordinary.”

“No, Ms. Chin. There are many like it. Every family has its own tangles of love and consequences.”

“But not all families’ stories run through times like those.”

“That may be, though from what I’ve seen that makes their stories no easier. In any case, do you now understand why it’s implausible that this ministry official who stole Aunt Rosalie’s buried jewelry—”

“Wong Pan.”

“Why Wong Pan is unlikely to have the Shanghai Moon?”

“Because it wasn’t buried with the other pieces. But yesterday you asked me about it.”

“For Lao-li’s sake. The search for the Shanghai Moon has given shape to my cousin’s life. It’s a delusion and has been from the beginning. But it’s kept him from despair in the darkest times.”

“So you’ve indulged his fantasy and, as I understand it, financed the hunt.”

“The path he’s followed hasn’t led to the treasure he seeks. But as he wouldn’t abandon this path, I have not wanted him to walk it alone.”

“He’s lucky to have you, Mr. Zhang.”

“And I to have him. Through my young years, all I had of my own family were memories, growing faint. My mother, my father, my brother had left me behind and were gone. Yet unlike the thousands of war orphans starving alone in the streets, I grew up wrapped in the warmth of family. I was a mouth to feed, a cry to hush, but never for a moment was I allowed to think I was a burden. No, the opposite. I was part of the family’s joy. This is a debt I can never repay. If I’ve spent money over the years helping my cousin keep hope alive, and so enabling him to live a life, with a wife and children of his own, it is no price at all. In our children and our grandchildren, the Chen, Zhang, and Gilder families still live.”

I glanced at Bill, then back to Zhang Li. “I do have more questions, Mr. Zhang. But first, there’s something else. You say your mother, your family, had left you behind.”

“I’ve never blamed them. Perhaps my mother hoped to be able to come back for me, but . . . it was wartime.”

“She did hope that. Still, what you think is not exactly what happened.”

“What are you saying? How can you know anything about those times?”

“We’ve found . . . documents. Your mother’s diary, for one thing. And . . .” I hesitated. I didn’t want to come out and say,
And your father murdered your mother, your brother told us so
. “And some other things. I’ll give them to you. They tell most of the story, and I can fill in some of the rest.”

“My mother’s diary! But Ms. Chin! How could you possibly have found—”

Another thing he might not need to know: Uncle Paul had it all along. “We did a lot of digging. I’ll make you copies of what we have.”

“Oh, my. I’d be very grateful.”

“But now, Mr. Zhang: What do you know about a German named Ulrich? A soldier?”

“Ulrich? I don’t think I know that name. Who is he?”

“He’s mentioned in your mother’s diary. He protected Chen Kai-rong in jail. For that Major Ulrich was promised the Shanghai Moon.”

“Promised it? By Aunt Rosalie?”

“And your mother. We thought there might be a chance he’d actually gotten hold of it. But if Rosalie was wearing it years later, when the intruders came . . .”

Zhang Li just shook his head.

Another dead end,
I thought, wondering if the disappointment I felt was anything like what Mr. Chen had felt over and over through the years.

“Tell me one more thing, though. Why did you ask Yaakov Corens not to speak about the Shanghai Moon?”

“Ah, Yaakov Corens.” A shadow of a smile. “I was younger then. I thought in America my cousin might abandon his fixation. Begin to live in the present and leave the past behind. But only if the past really was behind us. Though he didn’t know the name of the Shanghai Moon’s maker, I did, having heard Aunt Rosalie and Uncle Paul as they debated selling a bracelet in our rooms in Hongkew. Many of the Jewish refugees from Shanghai came to America, and for a jeweler to come to the diamond quarter in New York would be reasonable. My cousin knew that as well as I did. I was afraid finding Yaakov Corens would only inflame his obsession, so I searched for him in secret as soon as we arrived. As it turned out, he’d gone first to Australia and only recently come here himself.

“Yaakov Corens was a true gentleman, as I’ve said. He understood why I was asking and he readily agreed. To this day Lao-li doesn’t know who the maker was.”

“But it didn’t work. To help end Mr. Chen’s obsession.”

“No,” Zhang Li said sadly. “It did not.”

27

“You did that thing again,” I said to Bill as soon as we were back out on Mott Street.

“Smoked too much?”

“Cut it out! Sat off to the side and watched.”

“You realize, of course, that that’s why I smoke? Purely as tradecraft, a tool—”

“Oh, stop it! What did you think?”

If he’d given me another smart-aleck answer, I might have socked him. Luckily, he didn’t. “He’s hiding something.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“I’m wrong?”

“No.” I sighed. “I think you’re right. I had the same hunch, and I was hoping
I
was wrong.”

“Maybe we both are.”

“At the same time? That’s ridiculous.”

Bill shrugged.

“But what’s he hiding?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you think that whole sad story’s not true. I wouldn’t be able to stand it.”

“I think what he said was true. His voice, his body language . . . But there’s something anyway. Something he’s not saying. Something that’s also true.”

“So what are we supposed to do? Part of me wants to try it Joel’s way. Just go back up there and squeeze him until he gives it up.”

“And the other part of you says he’s an old Chinese man and you’ll get nowhere.”

“Right. So—” I broke off and dug out my phone, which was tinkling the
Wonder Woman
song. “Hi, Mary.”

“Where are you?”

“Who wants to know?”

“Lydia—”

“Mott Street. What’s up?”

“I’m at the precinct, with Wei De-xu. Can you come up?”

“That’s your Chinese cop?”

“Meet us in Interview One.”

“Why? I was about to—”

“Forthwith.”

That’s cop for “right now this minute.” Mary hardly ever talks cop to me.

“Your surveillance on Mr. Chen! It turned up Wong Pan?”

“No.”

“Then can’t I—”

“No. I’m taking De-xu to meet the captain, but we’ll be done by the time you get here.”

“You guys are on a first-name basis already? What will Peter think?”

“Girlfriend, he won’t care.” She clicked off, so that was that.

“Nuts,” I said to Bill, annoyed. “That was Mary inviting me to the precinct forthwith.” Generally I’d jump at a chance to stick my nose in police business, but Mr. Zhang’s hidden secret was on my front burner, and meeting a cop from Shanghai sounded like just a lot of politeness and more tea.

“ ‘Forthwith’ isn’t an invitation,” Bill said.

“Hey, she did say, ‘Can you?’ I didn’t ask if you could come, but since she’s the one who called you in the first place—”

“Thanks anyway. I have some things I could more profitably be doing.”

“Like what?”

“I’d like to try out these intruders on Professor Edwards, just in case there’s something in his sources about people breaking into the Chen villa.”

“You’re just looking for an excuse to stay out of a police station.”

“That, too.”

“Well, go ahead. It can’t hurt. Write if you get work.”

The desk sergeant, a woman named Anna Bilankov I’d met once or twice, nodded and told me to go up. I took the worn concrete stairs two at a time and turned left at the top. I knew where the interview rooms were; I’d stood on the witness side of the one-way glass a few times, with clients, and sat in the customer seat once when the Fifth’s former captain thought I’d been misbehaving just a little. The door to Interview One was half open, so I pushed through it.

“Oh,” I said, as Mary stood up grinning from one side of the table and a Chinese woman about ten years older, four inches shorter, and infinitely tougher than either of us bolted up from the other.

Mary said, “Lydia Chin, Inspector Wei De-xu.”

I shot her a glower, then bowed to Inspector Wei, who had already bowed crisply to me. “Inspector Wei De-xu,” she announced in English. “Special Crimes Group of Shanghai Police Bureau.” She thrust out her hand. When in Rome. Her grip stopped just short of powdering my bones.

“Lydia Chin Ling Wan-ju, private investigator. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Investigator Chin. Detective Kee telling much about you.” Wei De-xu—whose given name, meaning “virtuous order,” could go either way—wore her thick hair in a heavy-banged Cleopatra framing a tanned face. She was dressed in road-movie civvies: black jeans, black T-shirt, black leather jacket. And black motorcycle boots. I bet no one messed with her in Shanghai. “One man killed, is your friend. Please accept sympathy from Shanghai Police Bureau.”

“And please accept mine on the loss of your colleague.”

“Inspector Sheng Yue. He is talented officer. But too eager, unfortunately.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Sheng Yue is leaving Shanghai too fast. He doesn’t has all informations.”

Mary gestured us to sit and asked if I wanted tea.

“Luckily for me, I just had some.” I turned to Inspector Wei. “Is the tea as bad in Shanghai police stations as here?”

“Of course.” Wei picked up an almost empty NYPD mug and threw back a last swallow. “Even it’s bad, we drinking all day.”

“I’ll get you some more,” Mary offered and left.

“You must be exhausted,” I said. “After that long flight.” I knew better than to get into anything substantive before Mary came back.

“Shanghai Police Bureau doesn’t sending me here to sleep. From now, going to meeting with—Midtown Squad?” She pronounced the words as though their meaning were esoteric.

“That’s right,” said Mary, returning with a pot of hot water, another mug, and a handful of teabags. “Inspector Wei is about to have the privilege of meeting Detective Mulgrew.”

“Detective Kee telling about him also.” Wei’s predatory smile nearly made me feel sorry for Mulgrew.

“Before we go up there, though,” Mary said, “there’s something I want you to hear. From the inspector. Have you talked to Alice lately?”

“No, she’s ducking me. She fired me twice. She’s afraid I’ll get hurt.”

“Is that what she said?”

I looked from Mary to Inspector Wei. “Hey. What’s up?”

Mary nodded to the Shanghai cop. Dipping a teabag as though she were fishing in her mug, Wei said, “Assistant Deputy Minister Wong Pan working in Shanghai Culture Bureau, Modern History Section. Has responsibility, artifacts, relics, all recent antiquity of Shanghai.”

Now there’s a government concept,
I thought:
recent antiquities.
But apparently, that wasn’t the problem.

“How Wong Pan is flying off to United States after stealing jewelry?” Inspector Wei asked. “Why not gets stopped leaving, or at Customs arrival? Why no record, passenger list, exit paper?”

“How could he get out so cleanly is the point, Lydia,” Mary said. “The theft was noticed within hours.”

“Because,” Wei answered her own question, “Wong Pan has false passport, visa. New identity. Wu Ming. Stupid name. How he gets identity papers?”

I said, “I imagine it’s as easy to get those things in Shanghai as anywhere.”

“No. Not so easy.” Wei gave me a steely look. Then she laughed. “Not so easy because some way, China still backwards. Technology some things hard to find. Easy in Europe. Easy in Switzerland.”

“Switzerland? Wait—you’re not saying you think Alice Fairchild had anything to do with it?”

“Shanghai Police Bureau information, very fews in Shanghai capable making papers, none of these did. In U.S., say, ‘word on street?’ ” She looked to Mary with evident pride in her American slang. “Word on Shanghai street, Wong Pan getting papers from Europe. One other word, getting help from European woman. Small, good clothes, short hair with gray.”

“Well, that . . . but it could—”

“Be anyone,” Mary finished for me. “Except as far as we know, there’s no one of that description connected with this case but Alice Fairchild.”

“Attorney Fairchild leaving Shanghai immediately after Wong Pan,” Wei pointed out.

“She was chasing him. Because he stole her clients’ jewelry.”

Mary said, “Or because he skipped out on whatever deal they had.”

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Uh-oh, what?”

Mary and Wei both leaned forward, eyes identically glowing.

Reluctantly, I said, “The phony heirs.”

“What is ‘phony heirs’?” Wei leaned closer.

“Yes, Lydia, what?” Mary demanded.

I caught them up fast, so their matched cop eyes wouldn’t drill holes through me.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Mary’s voice edged toward the danger zone.

“Tell you what? My client’s clients were lying to her?”

“You didn’t think it was a problem I should know about?”

“What I thought was, it was a problem for my client that I didn’t understand. My job isn’t the same as yours.”

“Catching Joel’s killer?”

“Joel hired me to work for this client. Until I’m sure she’s involved in something—”

“And when you’re sure? What are you planning to do when you’re sure?”

“
If
I’m sure,” I said, “you know I’ll tell you.”

Mary and I locked eyes. “I know how stubbornly loyal you can be. Your clients—”

“If I were you, I’d be grateful for how stubbornly loyal I can be. Like to my best and oldest friend, for example.”

Wei De-xu frowned. Whatever was going on between Mary and me wasn’t helping her catch her killer. She cleared her throat. “I have theory of crime.”

Mary sat back. “Go ahead.”

“In Europe, peoples hear about jewelry. Go to Attorney Fairchild, make scheme together. Attorney Fairchild flying to Shanghai, suggest scheme to Wong Pan. Corrupting official, bad crime in China.”

Ah, the wily
lo faan
, tempting the naive Servant of the People. Wei practically smacked her lips at the thought of bagging such a fiend.

Grudgingly, I said, “Also . . .”

“Also?” Mary repeated.

“I hate this!”

“So?”

“Yes, yes, all right. Is there still hot water in that thing?”

“Are you stalling?” Mary passed me the pot and a mug.

“Probably.” I unwrapped a teabag. “It’s just, the clients may not be lying. Alice may be lying. About having clients.” I added milk and waited to see if it curdled. “Last time I talked to her, I told her three things. That the clients were phony, that Rosalie and Kai-rong had a son and I’d met him, and that it looked like Wong Pan had tried to call her. She said the call might be coincidence—which is true, by the way,” I added, just to keep their minds open, “and she told me she’d call the clients and get back to me. And she fired me. But beyond one ‘Oh, my God,’ when I told her about Rosalie’s son, she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t ask his name or what woodwork he crawled out of, how I found him, anything.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“Well, he’s a genuine heir with a strong claim on Rosalie’s jewelry. If she’s actually doing asset recovery for real clients, she’ll need to contend with him. And if her clients are phony, I’ve inadvertently found an heir anyway. So she should have been more interested.”

“But if it’s not recovery, it’s theft—”

“Then she wouldn’t care who Mr. Chen is. The fact that he exists and knows the jewelry was found could make the pieces harder to sell. That could be a problem later on. But her problem right now hasn’t changed. She needs to find Wong Pan.”

Mary and the inspector traded gratified looks. I drank my foul tea and tried to calm down. If Alice Fairchild was a liar, a thief, and a swindler, it wasn’t Mary’s fault, or Inspector Wei’s.

They just didn’t have to be so damn happy about it.