China Trade (33 page)

“He thinks I’m a jerk. He was afraid I’d make him look like a jerk.”

“He looks like a jerk to me already.”

That was definitely sympathetic. “Thanks, I appreciate that. Anyway, go tell Tim the NYPD is interested in talking to Johnson. It’ll help make the case against Caldwell.”

“Caldwell’s not doing so well already. His lawyer is looking to bargain and he hasn’t even been indicted. Why hasn’t Johnson called us? He must know he’s a material witness.”

“Because he’s not a public-spirited, cooperative type of p.i., unlike some other people.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Sorry,” I said quickly. “Can I ask you one more thing, and then I’ll get off the phone so you don’t get tired of me?”

“What’s that thing?”

“Is there any chance you found my gun?”

“Your gun? You’ll be lucky if I don’t pull your license! Anyway, no, we didn’t find it in Trouble’s place or the gang apartment. It was just a .38 revolver, right?”

“But mine.”

“Well, not anymore. That’s not a fancy enough piece for these boys to be seen with. They probably sold it the day they stole it.”

“Damn. Well, thanks anyway. Listen, Mary?”

“I thought you were hanging up.”

“I am. It’s just that when you go see Tim, try to keep a low profile, okay?”

“You mean don’t embarrass him? I can’t believe you care, after what he did.”

“Well, he wouldn’t have done it if it weren’t really important to him. I’d like to take him outside and slug him, but I’d rather he not lose face in front of the people in his office.”

“You’re unbelievable. I’ll call you later.”

I hung up, overjoyed that she’d ended this call the way we’d been ending calls to each other all our lives.

I didn’t call Nora. I just went straight over. This was going to be hard enough, but doing it on the phone would have been impossible.

In the surly door, up past the peeling paint. I knocked on the open door of Nora’s office. She looked up from the paperwork cluttering her desk. Her pen stopped in her hand.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.” Her look was serious. I stepped into the office and closed the door.

“Mary was here last night,” she said, before I said anything.

“She told you about Matt?”

“Why didn’t you tell me, Lydia?”

“I would have, Nora. I just wanted to solve the case for you first, so I could give you good news at the same time as the bad news.”

One corner of her mouth lifted ironically. “That’s not such good news either, is it?”

“No. Mary told you about that too?”

“Yes, and then Mrs. Blair called this morning. She said as long as it was going to come out she wanted to tell me herself.”

“What’s going to happen?”

“You mean, about the theft? Nothing. If we don’t file a complaint there’s no crime. The boy who actually broke in here is dead, I understand. We’re certainly not going to prosecute Mrs. Blair and Lee Kuan Yue. I wish she’d just
asked
. Just
taken her gift back. So it would have looked strange. How bad would that really have been?”

“That’s what this was all about, on all sides, wasn’t it? Face. Reputation. People desperate to protect their good names.”

“And other peoples’.” Nora shrugged. “Well, it’s over. We’re not going to do anything at all, now. Especially since there’s nothing to recover anyway.”

I didn’t understand. “Nothing to recover?”

“The porcelains.” She gave me a strange look. “Mrs. Blair destroyed them. Didn’t you know?”

“She
what?
”

“So that they wouldn’t be a threat any more to her husband’s reputation.”

“My god.” I felt a little sick. I flashed to the silver-framed photograph of Hamilton Blair that Mrs. Blair had removed from her mantel, because she was angry with him and because she thought he must be angry with her.

It hadn’t occurred to me at all to wonder what he was supposed to be angry with her about. I’d thought she meant the theft.

“But they weren’t hers,” I said. “I mean, they weren’t his. They were
stolen
, Nora; that was the whole point. You can’t just destroy stolen goods.”

“The records at the Kurtz are gone,” Nora pointed out. “Now the porcelains are gone. Now it’s over.”

I frowned. I didn’t like it, but she was right.

“How did you find out?” Nora asked me. “That Mrs. Blair was responsible?”

“Did she say I did?”

“She was very impressed with you and your partner, she said. She congratulated me on hiring you. She said you reminded her of herself when she was young, except you were braver.”

I sat up a little straighter and tried to keep my chest from swelling. “She’s being very generous. Anyway, we didn’t figure
it out. We were close but on the wrong track. Once we knew about the laundered porcelains it started to come together, but I’m not sure we’d have gotten it if she hadn’t come out and said it.”

“How did you know about the laundering?”

“Dr. Browning.” I thought of Dr. Browning, his anxious solicitude for his little ones, their gleaming small presences in his dim, musty room. I thought about the reason Hamilton Blair’s ghost was angry with Mrs. Blair. I made a decision. “He remembered something he’d forgotten about the Kurtz museum. It tied things together for us.”

“Poor Dr. Browning,” she said. “It’ll break his heart when he hears that those pieces were destroyed.”

“It will,” I agreed. And cause him to treasure the tiger cup I still had in my office safe even more deeply, when I gave it back.

Almost as deeply as Mrs. Hsing would treasure hers.

“You should have told me about Matt,” Nora said then, her eyes on mine. “I could have helped him.”

“He thought he was helping you.”

“And you. And you thought you were helping both of us. And now look.”

“Has …” I hesitated to ask, but I did anyway. “Have they found him?”

She shook her head. “He’s completely disappeared. I think he may have headed back West. He has a lot of friends out there, in all sorts of places.” I was silent, not wanting to ask the next question, not feeling I had any right to the answer. Nora answered it anyway. “I told Mary all the ones I knew. But I think he has a lot of friends I don’t know about.”

“You sort of hope it, right?” I asked quietly.

“I don’t know what to hope. I don’t know how to think about this at all.”

I didn’t either, know what to hope or what to think.

Nora got up, turned on the electric kettle. We sat in silence until it boiled. Spooning jasmine tea into a creamy white
pot, Nora said, “There’s going to be a major investigation at the Kurtz. One of the Board members called me this morning about being on the outside committee.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“Probably. The more credentials we acquire in the outside world the better it is for CP.”

“Caldwell’s other assistant,” I said. “Steve Bailey? I don’t think he knew anything about it. It would be good if you could clear him. He loves this work. It would be a shame if he came out looking bad and couldn’t work in this field anymore.”

“That’s one of the things we’ll try to do, then. But I don’t know anything about investigating.”

She handed me one of the thick cups. I tasted the tea. It took me a minute to understand what she was saying to me.

“Nora? You want me to be involved?”

“We’ll need a professional investigator. You already know about this case.”

“I can’t believe you ever want to work with me again.”

“You’re pushy and headstrong.”

“That’s what my mother says.”

She smiled. “But no one can say you’re not discreet.” Her face got serious again. “You just have to learn to trust other people, Lydia.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, sipping my jasmine tea. “I’m working on it.”

When I left Chinatown Pride I called Bill. He was home, so I went over. I walked along Canal Street through the sunny, cold day, stopping to glance at the earrings and scarves, the electronics parts and the leather jackets the shopping crowds were pawing through. Two tall black men were selling Rolex knock-offs from a stand set up on a pair of cardboard boxes. I watched them stamp their feet and blow puffs of steam out with each breath. I wondered if they were the Senegalese vendors Bill had spent the night with, and what Waloof sounded like.

At a Korean fruit stand a few blocks from his place I
stopped and bought flowers. He buzzed me in and held the apartment door open while I came up the steps.

At the top I handed him the bouquet.

He kissed my cheek. “You brought me flowers?”

“The etiquette book says always bring flowers to people who spend the night in jail for you.” I unzipped my jacket. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

“I had no idea how much you wanted to tell them. I thought it was safest just to keep my mouth shut. You would’ve done it if it’d been my case.”

“Oh, you think so?” I flung my jacket and hat on the sofa.

“I know it. That’s why I bought you a present.”

He lifted a ribbon-tied shoebox from his desk.

“Wait,” I said. “I want to tell you some stuff first, that you probably don’t know.”

“This must be important stuff. I’ve never seen you turn down a present before.”

“I’m not turning it down. I’m saving it.”

“Okay. Sit down, and tell me the stuff.”

I started with Matt’s disappearance. He already knew; he’d called a friend in the NYPD and asked him to check on the situation.

“I don’t know how I feel,” I said. “He gunned down two people in cold blood. I saw him do it. I ought to want him caught.”

“But you don’t.”

“I don’t know,” I said again, helplessly.

“You don’t have to want anything. The police are going to do what they do and they’re going to find him or not. You can’t stop them and you can’t help, can you?”

I shook my head.

“Then you don’t have to decide how you feel.”

I looked into his deep brown eyes, just looked for awhile. “You know,” I said, “sometimes you’re particularly smart.”

“Don’t spread it, you’ll blow my cover. Open your present.”

“No, there’s still something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Jim Johnson.”

“You’re kidding. You smoked him out?”

“Not exactly. I found out who he was working for.”

“Who?”

I told him who, and why, and what the scene with Tim had been like.

“My mother thinks he was worried about me. But that wasn’t it. And it’s not the point anyway,” I said at the end. “Even if he
was
worried about me, it’s because he thinks I’m no good at what I do. Otherwise he wouldn’t think I’d screw up. Is he right?”

My question caught Bill off guard. “Is Tim right? About what?”

“Me being an incompetent, lousy detective.”

Bill lit a cigarette, shook out the match, looked at me with an expression I wasn’t sure how to read.

Finally he said, “Open your present.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“It’s the same subject.”

He reached for the shoebox and handed it to me. I took it; it was surprisingly heavy.

“Lead Nikes?” I asked doubtfully, weighing it in my hands. I untied the ribbon and lifted the lid.

Under one layer of crumpled red tissue paper and nestled on another was a Smith & Wesson Model 10 .38 revolver.

I lifted it out, broke it open. It was empty, so I took aim, fired, let the hammer click. It fit my hand perfectly. I opened my mouth to say something and realized there was a lump in my throat. Oh, come on, Lydia! I thought. You’re getting choked up about a
gun
.

“I didn’t like you running around with a .22,” Bill said. He was grinning. “I asked Mike when I called about Matt Yin whether there was any word that they’d found guns anywhere they’d searched. He told me no, so I figured your .38 was gone. So I got you a new one.”

“You can’t do that,” I stammered.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you can’t
do
that. You can’t just buy me a gun and give it to me in a shoebox. There’s paperwork. There’s all sorts of things, i.d. and things—”

“I know. We have to go do the paperwork. The guy who runs the gun shop where I got it is a friend of mine. I promised I’d bring you in this afternoon. We’d better go or he’ll kill me. And we need to get all that done in time for dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“Doesn’t the etiquette book say you have to take your employee to dinner at the end of a case?”

“Oh, I’m taking you?”

“There’s a clam house in Hoboken where they make linguini with calamari that’s been haunting my dreams.”

“I thought I haunted your dreams.”

“No. You haunt my every waking moment. My dreams are still my own. But I’ll tell them to you if you want.”

I put the gun carefully in the box, put the box carefully on the coffee table. I got up, walked over, and kissed him. The kiss made me think of another, on a bench by Central Park under the glow of a streetlight.

“You know,” I said, “I think someday I might want you to do that. But not now.”

I stood up and straightened my shirt. “Right now, I think we should go do the paperwork Then maybe I’ll take you to dinner. There’s this clam house in Hoboken where I hear they make great linguini.”

I picked up the gun in the shoebox. We put our jackets on and we locked up Bill’s place. Sunshine glowed off glass and chrome and the cloudless blue sky seemed huge, endless, and full of possibility as we walked out onto the New York streets.

If you enjoyed
China Trade
, read on for an excerpt from
Concourse
, S. J. Rozan’s next exciting mystery featuring Lydia Chin and Bill Smith…

O
N E

A
t Mike Downey’s wake the coffin was closed.

In the large front room at Boyle’s Funeral Home, dark-dressed women kissed each other’s cheeks, murmured gentle words. The older men stood together in small groups, looking uncomfortable in out-of-date suits; the younger ones, Mike’s friends, passed a surreptitious flask, and told each other stories about Mike they’d all heard a hundred times, and laughed too loudly at the stories.