MANDARIN PLAID (Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series) (13 page)

T
WELVE

I
t took six rings before Bill answered the phone.

The fact that his service didn’t pick up meant he was there; the fact that it rang so long meant he was probably at the piano. He hates to stop when he’s practicing, and playing the piano is one of the few things that makes him feel really good.

He doesn’t think I know that about him, but I do.

After the sixth ring I felt so guilty about interrupting him that I started to hang up, but just before I let go of the receiver I heard his voice.

“Smith.”

I yanked the receiver back. “It’s me,” I said. “Have lunch with me.”

“Anywhere, anytime. Are you still in disguise, with lipstick?”

“Purply lipstick, and eyeliner, too. And something else, but it’s not a disguise.”

“You’re being cryptic.”

“It’s new. You’ll love it.”

“I never know when you say that if it’s good or bad.”

“Me, either.”

“I’ll take a cab. Where are we eating?”

“In the Village,” I said. “Graziella’s. On Greenwich, across from the bookstore.” I added, “I’m buying.”

“Great. Why?”

“To even the score between us.”

“Won’t work.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re always racking up new debt.”

“Have I recently?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you about it over lunch.”

We hung up and headed for lunch, me taking the subway from the Upper East Side—although along with my snazzy new haircut I felt Ed Everest really should have ordered me a limousine—and Bill taking a cab, or so he claimed, up from downtown.

The haircut was the shortest I’d ever had. It radiated out from my crown, coming forward to form a row of pointy bangs high on my forehead and little points in front of my ears. At the nape of my neck was another, softer row of little points. You couldn’t exactly see my naked scalp, but you couldn’t have found a hair on my head longer than three quarters of an inch.

I looked at my reflection in all the shop windows on the way to the subway and was surprised every time.

As I trotted down the subway steps I heard the sounds of drumming. On the platform, a muscular black percussionist tapped, beat, and pounded three upturned plastic tubs, a wooden box, the concrete in front, the steel shutter behind, and anything else he could reach. He looked sweaty and breathless, with popping eyes, as though the warp-speed movement of his arms and hands had gotten away from him. But the exhilarating satisfaction I felt as I followed the sounds told me this man was a master, in complete control. The illusion of spin-out desperation was thrown in just to thrill the audience. I stood completely enthralled until my train pulled in. Then I dropped a dollar in his box and scrambled aboard as the doors began to close. I caught sight of myself in the train’s window and ran my hand over my head, still surprised.

I thought hard all the way downtown. I didn’t like what I was thinking, but it got more and more difficult to convince myself I was wrong.

I was buttering a piece of fresh, hot bread when Bill came into Graziella’s.

“Oh,” he said, pulling out a chair and sitting down without taking his eyes off me. “Wow.”

“What do you think?”

“Wow.”

“You said that.”

“It’s the only word I can think of.”

“That means you like it?”

“It’s inspired. In fact, it’s inspirational. It inspires me—”

“Don’t tell me.”

“What made you do it?”

“Duty.”

“To your public? To the goddess of beauty? Who is the Chinese goddess of beauty, anyway?”

“We don’t divide them up that way. And in this case, it was my duty to our client.”

“We don’t have a client.”

“We did. Once a client, always a client.” I told Bill about my visit to Everest Models.

“So, see,” I finished up, “I had to get the haircut so Ed Everest wouldn’t suspect we were on to him.”

“Ah.” He nodded gravely, looking impressed with what I’d said. “Extremely clever. Except for one detail.”

“What’s that?”

“We’re not on to him.”

“Ah ha.” I bit into my buttered bread. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

The waiter, a short, swift man in a black vest and red bow tie, skidded to a stop beside our table at that moment and recited the specials for us. We ordered linguine with white clam sauce for Bill and spinach ravioli for me. Then Bill asked his question again.

“Are we on to Ed Everest?”

“I’m not pretty, you know,” I answered him.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re gorgeous. Amazing. Sensational. Spectac—”

“Oh, leave it alone,” I demanded. “My nose is too big. My eyelashes
don’t exist. My skin is dark and my shoulders are wide. I’m a peasant girl from Guangdong. All my ancestors are peasants.”

“So peasants are beautiful.”

“Will you stop? Chinese people have standards of beauty like anybody else!”

“And … ?”

“And I don’t meet them.”

“Okay,” Bill said, although I could see he didn’t think it was okay at all. “Where is this going?”

“Ed Everest wants me to be a model.”

“Ed Everest,” Bill said, “is a model’s agent. If you’re a model, he makes money.”

“No, he doesn’t. He won’t make any money off a wannabe-model who looks like me.”

“Well, admitting for the sake of argument that you’re right—and I can see I could be in trouble here either way—you obviously think he’s up to something. Any idea what?”

“He told me I needed a set of photographs. A book, they call it. He said he’d send me to his photographer to get them done.”

“Oh,” Bill said. “I begin to get it. How much was that going to cost you?”

“No, that’s what I thought, too. But he said he was going to pay for it. As an investment in me. He said when I was rich I could pay him back.”

“Is it just possible he knows more about your modeling potential than you do? No, I guess not,” he said, catching sight of my sour expression.

“He said he didn’t know Dawn Jing,” I said. “But Andi Shechter said he did. And Robert, the genius who cut my hair, also cut the hair of a Chinese woman who sounded like my description of Genna to him. A woman sent by Ed Everest.”

“You described Genna to him?”

“Well, I’ve never seen Dawn.”

“Quick thinking.”

“But he said that wasn’t the name she was using.”

“Not Dawn Jing?”

“Right. She’s calling herself Pearl Moon.”

Bill frowned slightly, without comment.

“Think of it this way,” I said. “Suppose, instead of being a sensitive, empathetic, postfeminist New Man, you were a regular guy.”

“Your thesis is flawed.”

“Never mind. You take a woman to dinner, to the theater, for drinks afterward. You buy her flowers and perfume. What do you think?”

“Me, Mr. New Man, or the Regular Guy?”

“The Regular Guy.”

“She owes me.”

“Men,” I told him, “are only interested in one thing. That’s what you mean by ‘owe.’ ”

“The first part of that statement is false. But the second is true.”

“Ed Everest is going to do my book. He told me to get makeup and clothes if I needed them. He already paid for my haircut. I owe him. In Chinese tradition,” I said, “the moon represents the female principle. And the pearl stands for the fulfillment of desire. She owes him, too.”

The waiter came speeding from the kitchen, bringing our pasta. The scents of garlic, clams, and oregano swirled around our table.

“Ed Everest,” Bill said to me, when the waiter left, “can’t be going through all this just to get laid.”

“No,” I agreed. “There are too many wannabes out there. He doesn’t have to spend like this. All he’d have to do is tell them he heads an agency. They’d fall at his feet.” I edged my fork into my ravioli, plump little pockets shiny with sauce. “The receptionist at UlTress told me none of the Everest girls is famous. She also said we’re all quirky.”

“What does that mean?”

“I bet it means they’re all like me. Women who have no chance of ever being models. Dreams, but no chance.”

“Genna Jing wanted you to model.”

I stopped and considered that. “She was at least half kidding. And with her it was
because
I walk like a truck driver, not in spite of it.”

“There may be other truck driver lovers out there.”

“Not enough. Think about it. Who do you see in the magazines?
Whose pictures go by on the sides of buses? Those women weigh ninety-two pounds and they have cheekbones you could ski-jump off of. Plus they’re fifteen. And maybe there’s one Asian a season. Maybe. No.” I scooped up some more ravioli. “No legitimate agent would waste his time on me.”

“Does that bother you?”

The question caught me completely off guard. “What?”

“Does it bother you?”

I looked at him, but I wasn’t seeing him. I was seeing all the girls in my high school: the popular ones with their flat hips and flawless skin, and their secret, dead-on instincts about eyeliner, about haircuts and hem lengths; and the other ones, chubby or with thick glasses or who wore the clothes their mothers bought them. They were the ones who hesitated with their trays in the cafeteria, looking for someone who wouldn’t mind sitting with them; the ones who didn’t come to the Saturday night dances or, if their mothers made them, spent the whole night standing miserably alone against the wall.

And I was seeing myself, somewhere between the two groups, fraudulently passing on the fringes of the one, desperately, guiltily grateful not to be in the other.

“That’s not the point,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

We were both silent. I don’t know what Bill was thinking; I was thinking about things I’d wanted, really wanted, in my life, and what desperate, dumb things I’d done sometimes to get them.

“These women all owe Ed Everest,” I finally said. “But I’ll bet he’s not the one who collects.”

Bill nodded. “A new angle on an old game.”

“Doesn’t it look like it?” I asked. “Ed Everest takes women who’d give anything to be models, women nobody else will touch. He lays it on thick. ‘You can make it, baby, but only if you want it really, really badly, and do what Ed says.’ You should have heard him, Bill. He almost made
me
believe it.”

“Then he spends money on you, enough so that he has leverage.”

“And he still has your dreams for leverage, anyway,” I said.

“And then he takes you places, introduces you to people. To men,” Bill said. “Some of those men, he tells you, are very important
in the industry. He suggests you be nice to them.
Very
nice to them.”

“Then you find that men are calling the agency especially to request that you come be nice to them. You’re not sure you want to do it this way, but Ed says, ‘Don’t you want to make it, baby? This is how the game is played. And besides, Ed has a tidy little investment in you, sweetheart. You just go along, that’s a good girl. I do for you, you do for me.’ ”

“And before the girls know how it happened, they’re hookers and Ed’s pimping them any way he can.”

“Damn!” I growled. “Damn him! Can we get him, Bill? Do you think we can shut him down?”

“Get enough on him to bring the cops in, you mean?”

“That’s just what I mean. I know—we’ll give it to your friend Krch. That’ll put him in a good mood.”

“I don’t think so, unless he can prove I was masterminding it.” Bill sat back and reached for a cigarette. Then he looked around at the size of the restaurant and the No Smoking signs on all four walls. He slipped the pack back in his shirt.

“Better for you anyway,” I said.

“But not as good for you. I’m not sure I can concentrate anymore without a smoke.”

“I’ll be through in a minute. We can go pollute the air in the outside world. But Bill, listen. This would explain about Dawn, wouldn’t it?”

“Explain why she might be desperate enough to try to extort money from her sister? I think so.”

“To get out of this life. And it would explain why Ed Everest said he’d never heard of her, when I was Marie Leclerq. The last thing Ed needs is some legit operation looking for one of his models. Because he doesn’t really have any models. He just has hookers.”

I choked a little bit on that last word. It surprised me; hookers aren’t news to me. I know some I go to as sources; I’ve worked on cases involving others. But I kept seeing Genna—her elegance, her practicality, her determination—and wondering what it was in Dawn that had kept her dream so desperately alive but made it impossible for her to find a way to make it come true.

“I want to find her, Bill,” I said. “If she stole Genna’s sketches
because she needs money to get out of this, then I want to find her and get her out of the way before we bring the cops in.”

Bill nodded. “If that’s what you want,” he said, “then there’s something you should know before we go any further.”

There was something in his tone that made me think I wasn’t going to like this. “What’s that?”

“Remember I said on the phone I’d dug up something? Well, it ties the murder of Wayne Lewis to whoever stole the sketches.”

“It does? How?”

“Lewis was killed by the gun that shot at you.”

T
HIRTEEN

I
’m calling Andrew.” I dropped my napkin on the table and pushed back my chair.

“You’re going to tell him about this?” Bill asked.

He had run down for me how he’d found out about the gun, and which of his NYPD sources he was in debt to over it. The route had been devious and he owed more than one favor now, because he hadn’t wanted to do the obvious thing: suggest to some friendly detective that the two ballistics reports be compared. The NYPD doesn’t do that automatically: only if they think there’s a real reason for it, like two crimes with similar MOs, and even then someone has to notice the resemblance. That usually happens if the crimes are committed in the same precinct, and especially if one detective happens to catch both cases.

These cases, though, were very different: a shooting in Madison Square Park where no one was hurt, and a homicide in Greenwich Village. And no friendly detectives. The NYPD had no reason to connect the cases as things stood, and Bill had wanted to keep it that way, because if they made the connection, the road from Wayne Lewis to Genna Jing would not be long.

Especially if he and I stood like signposts on it.

“So I cashed in three or four chips,” he said, “and I got copies of both reports without having to tell anyone why. I compared them myself.”

“I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Ever seen a ballistics report?”

“No,” I admitted.

“It’s just a list. Bore, groove, riflings. Accessible even unto such a one as I.”

“And these two were the same?”

“Close enough for jazz. .44 IMI Samson cartridges.”

“Does that mean something special?”

“Israeli-made. Unusual on the street. Not cheap. Made for the Desert Eagle, which is a good gun, by the way. High accuracy, low recoil. Maybe a little flashy, but it’s not cheap either.”

“Does this mean the shooter used a Desert Eagle?”

“No, but it means he’s a high-end shopper.”

“Or she is,” I said glumly.

Which was when I decided to call Andrew.

“He may know where to find her,” I said, standing. “Dawn. I’m not going to tell him why. I’m just going to tell him he has to help us.”

Bill said nothing, just watched me as I wormed my way between tables to the back of the restaurant, where the phone was. He was probably wondering what made me think Andrew would help us just because I told him he had to.

It was a very good question.

“You’re crazy,” Andrew said, curt with impatience. Getting him on the phone had been easy; asking him to help me out and then listening to his answer was turning out to be harder. “No way.”

“Andrew—”

“Lyd—”

“Listen to me!”

“Why? Last time I listened you talked me into letting you do something that almost got you killed.”

“
Letting
me?” Anger surged in me. “How exactly were you going to stop me?”

“I don’t know. But someone obviously has to stop you, since you don’t have the sense to stop yourself.”

“Oh, as opposed to all my big, smart older brothers, right? God, Andrew, I hate it when you do this!”

“Do what?”

“Follow the party line. You’re the only one I can count on, and then you start with this same stuff. Come on,” I said, half-pleading, “I don’t want to fight with you this way.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, either, Lyd.” Andrew’s voice dropped, as though he wasn’t quite sure even he wanted to hear what he was about to say. “But you scared me. I don’t want you to get killed.”

“I scared you?” A little light bulb suddenly went on for me. “Andrew? You’re mad because you’re scared?”

“Lyd …” Andrew paused. I gave him room. “When you started doing this,” he went on, slowly, “this detective stuff, I was the one who encouraged you. Now I’m not so sure that was a good idea. I didn’t want to be like Tim and Ted. But maybe they were right.”

“Andrew!” I said in a shocked voice. “Tim and Ted are
never
right.”

“Well, there’s that,” he admitted. “But they worry about you because you’re their little sister. And you’re my little sister, too.”

“And you’re my big brother, and I worry about you. Like the time you and Tony went camping in Montana, and I was sure you were going to get eaten by bears. But I didn’t tell you not to go.”

“That wasn’t very likely, those bears.”

“But it was possible. It’s not likely that I’m going to get killed, either. But if I do—”

“Don’t say that.”

“—If I
do
, I’ll get killed doing what I wanted to do. How many people can say that? This is what I want to do, Andrew. This makes me happy. Don’t you want me to be happy?”

“I want you to be alive.”

“Well, let’s make a deal. I’ll do what makes me happy, for me,
and I’ll do my very best to stay alive, for you. And you can go camping anytime you want,” I added.

“Lyd—”

“Okay, good. It’s a deal. Now listen: speaking of worrying about little sisters …”

“No.”

“Andrew, come on, this is important. I think Dawn’s mixed up in something bad. Genna’s trying to protect her even from us knowing about her, but that’s only making it worse. If we find her, we may be able to help.” That is, I added silently, if she didn’t actually kill Wayne Lewis.

“Mixed up in what?” Andrew’s voice was curious.

“I can’t tell you. Bad things.”

“Worse than stealing her sister’s sketches and shooting at you?”

“Yes. But that doesn’t mean she’s dangerous,” I threw in quickly. “It could mean she’s in danger.”

“Oh, good. And if I help you find her, you could be in danger, too.”

“Maybe not. After I talk to Dawn I might be out of this case.”

“I thought you’d been fired already.”

“But you knew that didn’t mean I’d quit.”

“And if I helped you find Dawn, you would?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“That’s the best I can do.”

There was a long pause. “Lydia—”

“Don’t start from the beginning, Andrew. Yes or no?”

I heard his breath sigh out. “Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t know where to look for her anyway.”

I was momentarily speechless. “You mean we went through all that and you can’t even help?”

“Serves you right. No, really, Lyd, I don’t know. Genna’s my friend. I never even met Dawn.”

“I thought you knew everybody.”

“Not Dawn Jing.”

It was my turn to sigh. “I want to find her, Andrew. Genna must
be really worried about her or she wouldn’t have tried to steer us away from her. Don’t you know anything that might help?”

“Not that I can think of.”

“Damn. I—oh!”

“Oh what?”

“Oh she’s using a different name now. Did you know that?”

“No. How do you know?”

“Someone told me. I think it’s her. Maybe it’s a wild goose chase—it could be someone else entirely. But I think not. Pearl Moon: does that mean anything to you?”

“Lydia, are you serious?” Andrew sounded as though I’d told him I’d just grown a second head. “Pearl Moon? She’s Dawn Jing?”

“You know her?”

“She’s Dawn Jing?” he repeated.

“Why?”

“My god.”

“What, Andrew? Can you find her?”

“Pearl Moon, probably. She’s really Dawn Jing?”

“I don’t know. I think so. Why is that so weird?”

“You’ll see.”

“Do you have her number, or do you know where she lives?”

“No. But there’s a club I’ve seen her at a couple of times, late at night.”

“Where?”

“Oh, no, forget that. I’ll take you.”

“No.”

“You don’t know her,” he said reasonably. “You’d need someone to point her out.”

I still said, “No.”

“Then no.”

I could see what this was: a childhood game of did-not/did-too, in another dialect. I never liked that game; it always seemed like a dead-end to me. But whenever Andrew started it, I used to play him to a draw, just to prove I could.

But proving something to Andrew was not the point right now. Besides, I had the feeling I’d already won.

“All right,” I said. “All right all right all right.”

“Good. Come here tonight, about ten o’clock. We’ll go from here.”

“Of course. Anything you say, third brother. And thanks.”

“Oh, sure,” he sighed. “Anytime I can help my little sister put her life on the line. Just do me a favor, okay? If you do get killed and you come back and haunt us all, just please don’t tell Ma I helped?”

“Deal,” I said.

I found Bill on the sidewalk outside the restaurant, finishing a cigarette.

“You paid the check,” I accused.

He shrugged. “I’m getting used to it.”

We fell into step together, walking west.

“I’m exhausted,” I told him.

“Andrew wore you out?”

“Andrew, and this whole case. I hope we find Dawn and I hope she had nothing to do with the murder, and I hope whoever killed Wayne and shot at me in the park is easy for the cops to find and they take up Ed while they’re at it and we can forget this whole thing.”

“It’s nice to know your hopes and dreams,” Bill said.

“He was scared,” I said. “Andrew.”

“Scared?”

“That I’d get killed. That’s why he was so mad. He was worried about me.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” I watched the new green leaves wiggling against the blue sky. “I suppose it is. I suppose it’s good to have someone worried about you. But all they ever do, my family, is try to put a fence around me.”

“To keep you safe inside.”

“I guess. But I don’t want to be inside.”

“Or safe.”

I looked up sharply. “What?”

“The fence is only half the problem,” he said. “Isn’t it?”

I stopped on the sidewalk. Bill stopped, too. His face was half bright with the afternoon light, and half in shadow. I felt the sun’s warmth on my side and knew mine was that way, too.

I started forward again, briskly, over the old slate sidewalks and
past the brick-fronted houses of the West Village. Bill caught up and fell into step beside me, his long legs giving him a pace that was easier, but no faster, than mine.

We were silent beside each other until we were within a block of Wayne Lewis’s apartment on the tree-lined street where the sidewalks were mottled with shadow and golden sunlight.

“How are we going in?” Bill asked.

Our plan was to talk to Wayne Lewis’s neighbors, to get some sense of who he’d been, what his life was like, what he’d done to get himself killed. Until Bill had told me about the gun, I’d harbored the faint hope that this might be just an academic exercise. Now that hope was gone. Neither of us had any real idea what we were looking for, but when we left the restaurant we headed west as surely as the setting sun.

I thought about Bill’s question. What he was asking was what game we were going to play, what identities we were going to take on. What we were going to pull, this time. My case, my choice, though if I chose something he thought wouldn’t work or was too weird, I’d have to convince him.

I came to a decision. “We’ll go in straight,” I said. “You and me. Private investigators.”

Bill’s eyebrows rose a little. “You’re kidding.”

“We shouldn’t? Why not?”

“No reason. It’s probably what I’d do. But you never go in straight.”

“This time,” I said. “I’m confused enough. And I’m tired.”

We stood for a few moments in front of the building where Wayne Lewis had lived, the building where he’d died. Four stories, red brick, just like three to the west and two to the east of it. The windows had pretty French-blue shutters; the tall ones on the parlor floor had window boxes, too. Lewis’s, on the ground floor, had bars.

His French-blue door was highlighted with yellow crime scene tape.

“Where to?” Bill asked.

“Upstairs neighbor,” I said, and so we started there.

As it turned out, we ended there, too.

The neighbor on the first floor was a Mrs. Edith Lattimer. We rang her bell and waited.

A dog started yapping immediately. Along with the sound of a door being unbolted we could hear a voice, shushing the dog: “All right, Bobo. Now you be quiet.”

The building’s front door opened. A chunky woman with short gray hair organized into waves narrowed watery blue eyes at me and Bill. “Yes?”

“Mrs. Lattimer? I’m Lydia Chin,” I told her, smiling reassuringly. “This is Bill Smith. We’re investigating—”

“It’s about time. Come this way.” She turned back into the building.

Bill and I exchanged looks. “Ma’am?” he asked.

“It’s been at least twenty minutes since I called,” she complained over her shoulder, opening the door to her apartment and leading us through. Her voice had the gravelly depth of alcohol. “I thought I was going to have to call again. I had to when I heard the shots, you know.”

“The shots?” I asked, following her.

“Yesterday. When Mr. Lewis was killed. Didn’t they tell you that when they sent you, that I was the one who called yesterday, too?” She glared at us. “Nobody’s really in charge, are they? Nobody really cares. You’d think after yesterday, the police might show more interest. But it’s just the same as always. I’m not surprised. This whole neighborhood is going to hell. It wasn’t like this years ago, you know. It was safe and friendly. And clean. Now it’s filthy. You knew who your neighbors were then, not these damn yuppies moving in and out like a revolving door, with their damn music.”

As we passed through the kitchen, she plucked a half-empty glass of clear liquid from the counter. “You knew who your cop on the beat was, too. I don’t suppose either of you ever walked a beat. Cops don’t do that anymore. You just ride around in cars, while all sorts of things happen on the streets.” She stopped to glare at us again, but not to let us answer. A small poodle bounced around our feet, sniffing and panting. “That’s his dog, you know,” she told us, making it sound like an indictment. “The police just left him here yesterday. Just walked away and left him. You’d think they’d be more concerned, but why
should they? Nobody gives a damn about people, why should anyone care about a dog? Poor Bobo.” She pulled open a door in the back wall. The poodle charged out onto the wooden deck. Mrs. Lattimer followed, leaving the door open.