MANDARIN PLAID (Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series) (23 page)

“Or blackmailed him,” Bill said.

“Not unless she absolutely had to.”

“What do you mean?”

“Blackmail is what she uses when money won’t work. The button supplier and the factory, she just paid them. She tried to bribe me at first, but I laughed at her. That must’ve been a bad move. I guess it made her mad.”

“I don’t think she gets mad,” I said. “She’s too icy. I think she just switches tactics. She tried to bribe me, too.”

“I didn’t know that,” Andrew objected.

“I didn’t tell you. I think you were too busy yelling at me that night for something else, anyway. So you think Mrs. Ryan bought Wayne off?” I asked Brad.

“Sure. And I can’t imagine how that could be connected to someone killing him. I don’t really think it is. But Andrew said even if it wasn’t, there’s enough trouble already that I’d better just tell you about this.” He looked from me to Bill. “Is it helping you at all?”

“I think so,” I said slowly. “Though I don’t know how.” Actually, I had some idea how, but I didn’t want to share it with Brad and Andrew before I’d gone over it with Bill.

“Listen,” I said to Brad. “There’s another thing. Genna got a call this morning—do you know about that?”

“A call? There were lots of calls before I left, but none that stood out. Who was it from?”

“The people who stole the sketches.”

His face paled. “Oh, my God. Did I pass that on to her? What did they want?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping you did. I—”

Andrew’s phone rang, slicing through the loft like a sudden cold wind. Bill’s back stiffened and his head went up. Mine did, too.

Which just goes to show how good our instincts are. It was Genna.

“She wants to talk to you,” Andrew said, bringing the portable phone over to where I sat.

I grabbed it. “Genna? What happened?”

“Oh, God, Lydia.” Genna’s voice sounded thin and tight as a wire. “They called again. It’s all terrible. I wanted to call you right away, but John—God, why did I
listen!
—anyway, I’m waiting for them to call but I don’t know what I’m going to do, because I haven’t got that kind of money—”

“Genna!” I said as sharply and loudly as I could, as I heard her words break into sobs. “Don’t! Get control of yourself, Genna. Tell me what happened. How much money do they want?”

I heard Genna draw in a ragged breath. In a shaky voice she said, “A million dollars.”

“A million dollars?” I practically shouted. Bill, Andrew, and Brad all stared; Andrew’s mouth dropped open. Then everyone leaned closer to me, as though that would help them hear the words spilling jerkily into my left ear. “For your sketches?” I asked, unbelieving.

“No, not for the sketches, of course not!” Her voice got wilder. “Oh, Lydia, please help me! You have to go with me to Mrs. Ryan. Please, will you?”

“You’re going to ask Mrs. Ryan for money?”

“She’s the only person I know who has money like that!”

“Why would she give it to you?”

“She
has
to,” she wailed. “They’ll kill him if she doesn’t.”

I suddenly went cold. “Kill who?”

“John.”

T
WENTY
-S
IX

I
filled in Andrew, Brad, and Bill in rapid-fire shorthand as Bill and I got ourselves together and waited for the elevator.

“We’re coming,” Andrew said, as it arrived.

“No way.” Following Bill, I stepped inside. “Don’t argue, it’s too serious. I’ll call you as soon as I can. Really, Andrew.” I kissed his cheek and pushed the
DOOR CLOSE
button.

Miracle of miracles, it worked.

The elevator had barely landed before Bill and I had shot out the door and were racing up the street and down the avenue to Genna’s building. Her elevator was slower and the wait was excruciating, but we finally got to her floor. Genna was at the empty front desk, waiting for us, and she swept us into the conference room and yanked the glass door shut. None of us sat.

The conference room was more chaotic than last time, more fabric pinned to the walls, more boxes of buttons and buckles piled on the table. An armless, headless dressmaker’s dummy leaned drunkenly in the corner, swathed in Genna’s crinkly gold cloth.

“What happened?” I asked, as soon as the door was closed.

Genna’s soft skin was ashen, her eyes red and her makeup smudged; but she was still beautiful. Her ruby-nailed hands twisted around each other as she said, “They called. This morning.”

She stopped, as though that was information we could have done something with. But it wasn’t. “And?” I prompted.

She swallowed, realizing she was going to have to go on. “I wanted to call you right away, but John—” Her voice broke, but she lifted her head and continued. “John didn’t want to. He said you hadn’t … hadn’t done us any good the first time.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

She swallowed again. “He said he’d do it himself.”

“Do what?”

“Make the payoff. They told us where to bring the money. He went to do it.”

“How much money?” Bill asked.

She frowned at him as though she didn’t understand the question. But she answered it. “Fifty thousand dollars. The same as before.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“John got it. From his bank. Oh, what’s the difference?” she burst out. “It all went wrong, and now they have John and they’re going to kill him if I don’t give them a million dollars!”

“What went wrong?” Bill pressed.

“Oh,
stop!
” Genna entreated. She turned to me. “Lydia, do we have to talk now? I’ll tell you later. On our way. Because they said there’s a deadline—”

“When?” I asked.

“Eight hours from when they called. Tonight.”

I glanced at Bill. His eyes told me what he wanted. “There’s time then,” I said. “It will help if you tell us what happened.”

Genna slapped the back of the chair next to her with a small, impatient gesture. She looked toward the ceiling, fighting back tears. “They called,” she said, her words forced from a tight, constricted throat. “This morning. They said they were ready to deal again.”

“Man or woman?” asked Bill.

She looked at him, not in a friendly way. “A man.”

“Did you recognize the voice?”

“Of course not!”

“Go on, Genna,” I said, to come between them.

She set her mouth and brought her eyes back to me. “They told us where to bring the money. The same amount as the first time.” Flicking her eyes to Bill, she said, “We went to John’s bank. He took it out, in cash the way they wanted, and he went to take it to them.”

“Where?” Bill asked.

“The East Side. A phone booth at Thirty-fifth and Third. He was supposed to just leave it. He promised that was all he’d do.”

I asked her, “That was when you called me the first time?”

She nodded. “After he left. I thought … I’m not really sure what I thought. Except that you could help. I wanted … I’m not sure.” She
seemed about to say something more, but she didn’t. Her eyes wandered from me, to the window, to the fabric-pinned walls. Then, as though she’d been going on fuel she’d suddenly run out of, she slumped into the nearest chair. Her eyes brimmed with tears; she squeezed them shut, tried not to cry.

I sat down, too, so she wouldn’t feel like we were looming over her. Bill pulled out a chair and perched on the arm. “What went wrong?” he asked, in a very gentle voice.

She opened her eyes to him with something like surprise. With a catch in her throat, she said, “He followed them.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“They said so. When they called. They were really mad. ‘Twice,’ they said. ‘You tried to screw us twice. That’s not very smart.’ I tried to tell them we didn’t have anything to do with that other time in the park, we didn’t even know who took that money, but they didn’t believe me. ‘Anyhow it doesn’t matter,’ they said. ‘Talk to your girlfriend, jerk.’ Then they put John on. ‘I’m sorry, baby,” he said. ‘But I was just so pissed that anyone would do this to you. I wanted to find them and break their necks.’ ”

Genna put her hand to her mouth and once again fought against tears. “Then—” her voice broke. She started again. “Then they took him away. And the man came back. ‘So he thought he was Rambo, your boyfriend. Charging in here, what a jerk. But you’re lucky.’ I asked him why. I didn’t feel lucky. ‘Because his momma’s rich,’ the man said. He sounded to me as though he was smiling. I hated him. ‘So you get another chance.’ They told me not to tell the police. They’d probably be mad that I even called you. But if we’d called you in the first place John wouldn’t have … anyway, they said to bring a million dollars to them in eight hours or John …” She lost her battle for control and broke down into sobs.

I rose from my chair, went and put my arm around her. Bill handed her a handkerchief. After a short while her shoulders stopped shaking. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

She seemed ready to talk again, so I asked, “Where? Where do you have to take the money?”

“I don’t know,” she said, in that deep, cloudy voice you get when you’ve been crying. “They said they’d call and tell me. So now,”
she blew her nose again, then looked helplessly at her hands, “I have to go see Mrs. Ryan. To ask her for the money.”

My eyes met Bill’s. Then I turned back to Genna.

“Maybe we should go to the police,” I said gently.

“No! Lydia, we
can’t!
They told me not to!”

“Genna,” I said, “we think we know who’s behind this.”

She didn’t answer at first, just stared. Then she whispered, “What? Who?”

“Roland Lum,” I said. “The factory owner, in Chinatown? He’s involved somehow. If he didn’t steal the sketches, he probably knows who did. He knows something, anyway, and the police should—”

“No!” She shook her head wildly. “No police! I don’t even care who it is! I just want John back.” She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth. “I shouldn’t have called you. I’m doing this wrong. Oh, God.”

“No,” Bill said, calm and reassuring. “No, it’s all right.”

She raised her eyes to his, probably more for the tone of his words than for their meaning.

“There’s nothing the police could do now,” he said. “They’d go to the factory and to wherever Roland lives, but you can bet he’s not there. At best they’d be useless, at worst they’d alert him. Later, when we find out where the payoff is supposed to be, let’s rethink calling them. But not now.”

Genna nodded. She wiped her eyes again, then stood and began to pace the conference room, but stopped after a few steps, her face confused, as though her action made no sense to her. She stood, looking helpless and lost, surrounded by her work.

“Okay,” I said, standing. “We’ll go. Together.”

Her smile was so full of relief and gratitude, I was embarrassed to have it shining on me.

“I’ll wash up quickly,” she said. She took hold of the door handle.

“Wait,” Bill said. “Tell me one more thing.”

She turned to him.

“The phone booth. Where?”

“Thirty-fifth and Third.”

“You’re sure?”

“You think I could forget that?”

“No, I’m sorry. What corner? Northeast, northwest … ?”

She looked quickly from me back to Bill. “Why?”

“I’ll go there,” he said. “Maybe I can pick up a trail.”

“No! That’s dangerous for John. That’s how they caught him—he was following them.”

“I’m better at this than he is,” Bill said matter-of-factly. “And they won’t be expecting anything from that end. I won’t get too close. But it could be important.”

Genna looked at me. “Lydia? Do you think this is a good idea?”

“Yes,” I said quietly.

Genna’s eyes went down to the carpet. “On Third. The west side of the street, up the block toward Thirty-sixth. In front of the cleaners.”

“All right. Let’s keep in touch,” Bill said to me. “My service, your machine. What’s Mrs. Ryan’s phone number?”

Genna gave it to him. She went to the washroom to splash cold water on her face and repair her makeup. Bill and I talked briefly while he waited for the elevator.

“You think she’ll give them the money?” he wanted to know.

“For her own son?”

“You’re the one who met her.”

“I can’t believe she wouldn’t. You think John’s all right?”

He had no way to answer that question, and we both knew it.

“I’ll see you later,” he said. He kissed me quickly as the elevator door opened. Then he got inside and left.

T
WENTY
-S
EVEN

G
enna and I caught the next elevator. From the door of her building, I dashed to Sixth Avenue and stuck my arm in the air. A cab swerved across two lanes of traffic to screech to the curb for us.
Genna and I piled in the back and told the Sikh cabbie to take us to York as fast as he could. He grinned, and drove as if he’d been waiting for a challenge worthy of his skills all day.

“God, Lydia,” Genna said in a tight, strained voice as the cab sped up Park Avenue. “Why did John do that?”

“You mean, why did he follow them?”

“Why didn’t he just leave the money? What’s wrong with him?”

Genna was perched on the edge of the seat, as though if she leaned back her weight would slow the cab down.

So, I realized, was I.

“I don’t know,” I said automatically, and knew I was lying as soon as I said it. I went on, telling the truth. “But I would have done it. Bill would have, too. Some people—I don’t know, we can’t hold ourselves back.”

“You don’t want to,” she said, peering through the window as if she could stare the other cars, the ones that were delaying us, into nonexistence.

“What?”

“You don’t want to. If you hold yourselves back you never get that rush. It’s not that you can’t keep out of trouble. You like it.”

I didn’t know how to answer that, or even if I had to. Or even if she was talking to me.

“But John’s not like that,” she went on. Our cabbie blew a blast on his horn and charged through a narrow gap in the traffic.

“He’s not?” I was surprised. “I thought he was a hothead. That scene he made, when you wouldn’t take his money—”

“No. He blows up at people, and he wants his way. But he looks before he leaps.”

My thoughts went back to the bright and noisy interior of Maria’s on Canal, and a pastry Roland Lum and I had shared. “That’s not what I’d heard about him.”

Genna shot me a look. “From who?”

Good point, Lydia, I mused. Consider the source.

The cab made a sharp right that threw me against the door and Genna against me. She and I didn’t speak again until, after another few minutes of the kind of driving that leaves a lot of honking horns
behind you, we slammed to a stop in front of Mrs. Ryan’s York Avenue building. Genna threw the grinning cabbie a twenty, and we scrambled out without waiting for change. It was almost too bad, I thought, to reward that kind of driving; but he’d gotten us here.

The delicate side chairs were still lined up with nervous precision along the edge of the lobby carpet. Genna spoke to the concierge, who called upstairs, had a conversation we couldn’t hear, and then waited an interminable time with the handset pressed to his ear. Genna tapped her foot and threw looks around the lobby as though she might find something there, something beyond framed prints of lighthouses and trout, something that might help.

The concierge finally hung up his handset. He said, “I’m sorry. Mrs. Ryan isn’t in.”

Genna looked at me, sudden fear widening her eyes. “Oh, my God. What do we do now?” she whispered.

“Yes, she is.” I pushed past Genna and put both hands on the concierge’s polished counter. “If she’s not there, what was the long wait about? That was when the maid went to ask if she’d see us. Well, this is critical. It’s about her son. Call her again.”

The man fixed his eyes on me. They were blue, and bored. “Mrs. Ryan,” he repeated, “is not in. To
you
.”

“Call her again,” I repeated, too. “Tell her Lydia Chin has been speaking to Roland Lum, Wayne Lewis, and the man who makes silver buttons.” I didn’t mention Brad; it didn’t seem to me that Genna needed to hear about that right now. “Tell Mrs. Ryan her son John will know everything they told me in about five minutes if she doesn’t let us up. Go ahead, do it,” I demanded as he hesitated. “She’ll thank you.”

He spoke low into the handset, keeping his eyes on me but not letting us hear what he was saying. While he spoke to Mrs. Ryan, Genna spoke to me.

“Lydia? What are you talking about? What man who makes silver buttons? What do you mean, John will know everything in five minutes?”

“That part was the bluff,” I whispered to her. “I’ll tell you about the other part when we get a chance.”

The concierge replaced the handset again. He looked at us with new respect, or at least new something. “East elevator,” he said. “Twenty-third floor.”

When we stepped out into the tiny, hushed lobby, the door to Mrs. Ryan’s apartment was open and the sturdy woman who had let me in the first time was standing there waiting for us. That made three times in one day people had been waiting for me at elevators, I thought. I’d always thought it must be great to be eagerly anticipated everywhere you went. Now I wasn’t so sure.

We stepped down the three steps into the formal living room. The room’s huge mantlepiece was carved from gray-veined white marble, and furniture upholstered in blue silk sat regally on miles of ice-white carpet, but nothing in the room was as cold as the eyes of Mrs. Eleanor Talmadge Ryan, who waited for us at the far end.

She stood, silk-bloused arms folded, near where the glass of the French doors revealed an empty terrace and the wide spring sky and sparkling river beyond. Her eyes swept Genna coldly and perfunctorily, and then dismissed her with contempt. They came to rest on me, and I found myself wondering why she wasn’t wearing a sweater over that thin silk blouse, in a room where I suddenly had to suppress a shiver.

“What can you possibly have been thinking?” She spat each word at me through clenched teeth. There was no preamble, no greeting.

“Mrs. Ryan—”

“I only instructed Joseph to allow you up because I was not prepared to have you make a public scene in the lobby. I have no such qualms about my own home. If you are not out of here and on your way in thirty seconds, I shall call the police.”

She dropped her arms and stalked to the ornate desk that held the phone.

“That will be dangerous for John,” I said.

“What? How dare you? Is that a threat?”

Her pale skin flushed crimson, but she put the phone down. I took advantage of the moment.

“Mrs. Ryan, John is in serious trouble.”

“If John is in any trouble at all, I’m sure it’s entirely the fault of
the company he’s been keeping,” she said, turning the ice-ray eyes on Genna.

Genna bit her lips together. She seemed about to collapse into tears.

“Mrs. Ryan,” I said, “I think you’re pretty despicable and I know you don’t care much for me either, but we have no time for this. John’s been kidnapped. They’re demanding a ransom of a million dollars by tonight or they’ll kill him.”

Genna gave a tiny gasp when I said that, as though she hadn’t heard it before.

Mrs. Ryan, however, did not gasp. Her eyes widened and a blast of arctic anger flew from them. “Why, you cheap chiselers!” she exploded. “Get out of my house!”

“Mrs. Ryan—”

“Can you really have thought I would believe that? My goodness, whatever happened to the subtle, diabolical Oriental?” She calmed down and smiled a frozen smile. “On the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone else dreaming up a scheme this cold-blooded. Where is my son?” she inquired almost pleasantly. “Is he out of town, for just long enough for you two to think you could carry off this little plot? Disgusting.” She picked up the phone again.

I saw fear on Genna’s face, felt amazement on my own. “What are you doing?” I demanded.

“Calling the police,” she answered calmly. “Not just to throw you out. To have you arrested for extortion.”

You? I thought. Arresting people for extortion?

“No!” Genna burst, in a sob. She ran to the desk and wrenched the receiver from Mrs. Ryan’s hand. “You can’t! They’ll kill him!”

Mrs. Ryan, her mouth curling in revulsion, stepped quickly away from Genna. “Helga!” she called loudly. “Helga, come in here!” She stepped back again, as though she were afraid Genna was going to strike her.

Genna, however, stayed by the desk, squeezing the receiver in her trembling hands. “You have to believe us,” she begged. “They said they’d kill him. We had nothing to do with it. I’m afraid …” Her words trailed off with a catch as she wiped a tear from her cheek. She gave the receiver in her hand an uncomprehending stare, then, still
looking confused, gently replaced it where it belonged.

“You’re not even a good actress,” Mrs. Ryan sneered. She seemed to have recovered some of her composure, although she kept a lot of white carpet between herself and Genna. “If there were any truth to this idiotic story, why wouldn’t the kidnappers call me directly? Why are you here at all?”

Genna swallowed. “Because it’s all my fault.”

“Oh, how touching. And what am I supposed to understand by that?”

“John was helping me. He wouldn’t have gotten in trouble if I hadn’t needed him.”

“He wouldn’t have gotten in trouble, Miss Jing, if he’d never met you.”

Just as I was about to say something I knew I’d be sorry for, the solid woman in the sensible shoes appeared at the head of the carpeted stairs. “Did you need me, Mrs. Ryan?” she asked placidly.

Mrs. Ryan fixed a stare at Genna and me. “Yes. These ladies are just leaving. Show them out.”

“No.” Genna raised her head and squared her shoulders. “Mrs. Ryan,” she began in a creaky voice that got stronger as she went, “you have to listen. If you don’t want to, then you’d better go ahead and call the police because I’m not leaving otherwise.”

Good going, Genna! I cheered silently. “Of course,” I put in, to help, “if the police do come, they’ll be interested in how you knew Wayne Lewis, and whether your relationship with him had anything to do with his drug business.”

Genna turned to me, her eyes open with surprise. Mrs. Ryan sent a wave of frigid air my way. I didn’t look to see what Helga’s reaction was, but after a moment Mrs. Ryan said to her, “Helga, you may go.”

“Yes, ma’am.” And calmly Helga went, showing not a shred of unsatisfied curiosity.

“Mrs. Ryan knew Wayne?” Genna turned to me. “What do you mean drug business?”

“Later,” I said. “I don’t think Mrs. Ryan wants to talk about Wayne right now. I think she wants you to tell her about John.”

Mrs. Ryan’s face was harder than the white marble mantle. She didn’t speak.

“Mrs. Ryan,” Genna began earnestly, “please, just listen. A few days ago someone stole sketches of my work for next spring. They wanted money. Maybe it was stupid of me to give it to them, but so many things had been going badly for me lately that I just couldn’t take anymore. If things had been better, I’d probably have refused. Anyway, everything went wrong, and they never got the money. They called today and asked for more. John went to deliver it, but he didn’t just leave it. He followed them and they caught him. That’s why they called me, and that’s why I’ve come to you.”

Genna delivered this whole speech in tones entreating but controlled, looking Mrs. Ryan straight in the eye.

Mrs. Ryan was silent for a few moments after Genna was done. She folded her arms across her chest again. “Miss Jing,” she said, in a voice like ice floes cracking, “the fact that your story has a beginning, a middle, and an end doesn’t impress me in the least. But I believe we can strike a deal.”

“A deal?” Genna sounded as though she’d never heard the word. “We’re talking about John’s life.”

“I doubt that. But I’m prepared to give you a million dollars.”

Genna blinked. “What?”

“If you’re that interested in my money, you shall have it. We can call it a loan. An investment in your ridiculously named business. The loan will accumulate interest at a rate of ten percent per annum, but you need pay neither interest nor principal as long as you stick to the conditions.”

“What conditions?”

“That you never see my son again.”

“I—”

“If you do, Miss Jing,” Mrs. Ryan’s raised voice drowned out whatever Genna was trying to say, “the entire loan amount will become due immediately, and you can rest assured I shall make it my business to collect. In fact, I shall publicize the fact that you were willing to sign away the man you love for money.”

Genna’s face was pale with horror.

“Mrs. Ryan—!” I began hotly.

“You keep silent!” She turned on me. “This entire scheme was probably your idea. This woman and my son have been together long enough that if she were capable of inventing such idiocy on her own, she would have done so before this.”

Mrs. Ryan strode around the desk and sat down behind it. She opened the writing drawer and pulled out a sheet of elegantly deckle-edged paper. Across it she quickly stroked a gold-tipped fountain pen. When she was through she handed the paper to Genna. Genna took it slowly and ran her eyes over it, only seeming half aware of what she was doing.

“That’s not any kind of contract,” I said, pressing my feet hard into the carpet to keep from dashing over, yanking the paper out of Genna’s hands and tearing it up. “It wouldn’t stand up in any court.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” Mrs. Ryan answered. “If the case were argued to a conclusion. If Miss Jing could afford the legal assistance it will take to fight the lawsuit I’ll bring the next time she and my son are seen together. I can keep a good number of lawyers in business for a very long time, Miss Jing,” she said, smiling for the first time at Genna. “Can you?”

Genna numbly shook her head. She handed the paper back to Mrs. Ryan. Mrs. Ryan gave Genna a pen—not the fountain pen, but a ballpoint from inside the drawer—and Genna leaned over the desk to sign it.

“Genna!” I protested. “You can’t sign that!”

She turned her head slowly to me. “I have to, Lydia,” she said in a distant voice. “It’s the only way to get the money for John.”

“You may as well drop that fiction now,” Mrs. Ryan snapped, seizing the paper the moment Genna picked up her pen. She slid it into the desk drawer, then locked the drawer with a golden key. Genna, breathing shallowly, watched the paper disappear.

Mrs. Ryan lifted the receiver from the phone and pressed in a single speed-dial digit. “Mr. Morse, please,” she said after a pause. “This is Mrs. Ryan.” Another brief pause, then, “Fine, thank you, Peter. And you? Very good. Peter, I need a loan. Large but short-term. One million dollars, and I believe it must be in cash.” Another pause, during which she smiled condescendingly at Genna. Then she
spun in her chair so that her back was to us, and she spoke in low tones. Genna, her eyes fixed on Mrs. Ryan’s silk-clad shoulders, studiously avoided my gaze while the conversation went on. “No,” I heard Mrs. Ryan say. “No, absolutely nothing. No, just an opportunity I can’t pass up. I know it is. Pardon me? Yes, quite beautiful.” She paused. “Yes, of course I have.” She dropped her voice again and murmured some sentences I couldn’t quite hear. Then, “We’ll collateralize it from the Dreyfus—yes, thank you, Peter, I’m sure you would, but I can—very well, thank you, I appreciate that. Yes, I’m sure. Perhaps later in the week, over cocktails? You’ll enjoy it. No, not anything we’ve discussed, something quite new. Yes, thanks. That would be fine. I’ll be here.”