Reflecting the Sky (9 page)

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Authors: S. J. Rozan

BOOK: Reflecting the Sky
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“Young guy? White tee shirt, black pants?”
“You saw him, too?”
“I followed Steven Wei back out to the plaza. I saw the guy cursing after the cab, but I wasn’t sure.”
“What happened in the fortune-tellers’ place?”
I got a strange fortune, I suddenly thought, about swiftly running water; but that wasn’t what he wanted to know. “An old woman prayer-seller gave Wei a paper prayer. He read it and then hightailed it back to the plaza. I followed in time to see him grab a cab, see your young guy, and then see you going into the subway. How did you know how the subway works, by the way?”
“I didn’t. I figured I’d lose him, but I thought maybe I’d at least get to see which way he went. As it happened he needed a ticket, so I stood on line at the next machine and bought one to the same place he did.”
“Where?”
“How do I know? Wait, I wrote it down.” He searched the papers in his pocket for a scrap that he unfolded and read me. “Choi Hung.”
“Where’s that?”
“That way.” He pointed vaguely north.
“Never mind, I’ll look on the map later. Then what?”
“Then I followed the guy and put my ticket in the machine the same way he did. He taught me a lot, actually.”
“You followed him all the way home?”
“Not home. He was going back to work.”
“How do you know?”
“Because that’s where he went. When we got off the subway he made a call from his cell phone, but he didn’t stop walking while he talked. I wasn’t nearly close enough to see the number, but he didn’t seem happy. Then I followed him up a long, hot hill and down the other side, like the king of goddamn France. Then there we were at Thundering Mountain Film Studios. He’s a stuntman.”
“No kidding?” I pictured the kid’s muscular arms and chest under his white tee shirt. “How do you know?”
“I waited until he’d gone in and asked the guard. I wasn’t sure you’d want me to approach the kid myself, and I wasn’t sure the guard would let me in anyway. So I told the guard the kid had been making eyes at my girlfriend, and I was pissed off, and who the hell was he?”
“What made you think the guard spoke English?”
“What did I have to lose if he didn’t? And he did, some. Enough to practically laugh in my face. He said the kid’s name is Iron Fist Chang, and not for nothing. He said ol’ Iron Fist may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but he’s one of Thundering Mountain’s lead stuntmen, a big-league kung fu expert. But, the guy said, I shouldn’t worry about my girlfriend, because Chang’s got a cute little Filipina girlfriend of his own. Plus of course he could have as many girls as he wanted, being a Thundering Mountain stuntman and all.” He sipped his beer. “He sort of implied that any girl who’d fall for the likes of me was bound to be beneath the notice of a guy like Iron Fist anyway. I considered popping him one for insulting my girlfriend.”
“You don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Lucky for him.”
The waiter arrived and from his tray set down a bamboo steamer, a plate with a quartered sandwich, and a tall frosted glass of lemonade.
“All right,” I said. “That’s good. A name is much more than I thought we’d get. I just wish we knew a cop to give it to.”
Bill nodded as he reached for some potato chips from my sandwich plate. “I don’t like this,” he said, more somberly. “We’re working blind. Following Wei this morning was irresistible, but maybe we should back off.”
“On principle I hate to back off, but you might be right.”
“On principle you hate it when I’m right. But we don’t even have a client.”
“Disregarding the first part of that statement, let me correct you on the second part.” I told him about my conversation with Grandfather Gao.
He sipped thoughtfully at his beer. “So that was authorization to proceed?”
“From him, yes, that’s about as direct an order as we can expect to get. Though it isn’t quite clear to me what we’re supposed to proceed to do.”
“Protect his interests.”
“Name one.”
“You’re the one who’s known him all your life.”
“So it’s my job to figure this out?”
“It seems only fair. You’re the Chinese person in this situation.”
“I’m the Chinese person in most situations. But I’ll think about it.” I drank some lemonade, wondering what genius had first thought up this tart, sweet, perfect drink.
Bill reached for a steamed pork bun. “I have to admit I feel a little stupid,” he said. “There we are watching Steven Wei, and there he is calling you.”
“How about that? Don’t you just hate to miss those important calls?” I bit into a pork bun myself, tasted the sweet, spicy meat at the center of the warm bread. “Well,” I said, “you won’t have to worry about that any more.” I lifted a box out of the shopping bag that was still sitting patiently at my feet. “This is for you.”
He took the box, opened it, and held up the cell phone from it. “Hot damn.”
“You don’t have to pretend to be happy about it. I know you hate those things. But you really need one here.”
“No, I love it. Now I can be like everyone else. I was beginning to feel different. Like I stuck out somehow.”
“Oh, yes, well, this will be sure to cure that. The number’s on it.” He took the phone out of the plastic it was wrapped in. “Flip it open, press the red button, and dial 5786-2224.” With a glance at me he did as I told him. He finished dialing and put the phone to his ear as my pocket began to chirp.
I whipped out the phone I’d gotten for myself. “Hello?” “I guess it works,” Bill said, both across the table and in my ear.
No one else in the bar so much as looked at us.
 
Our new subway expertise notwithstanding, we took the ferry to the Hong Kong side, to grab a cab up to the Weis’. The ferry ride was still breezy and beautiful, the sun still gleaming off the sharp edges of skyscrapers, though a thick gray fog now wrapped Victoria Peak at the top of the island, dulling the harbor water.
“The richest people in Hong Kong live up there,” I told Bill, pointing at the hillside as it disappeared upward into the mist. “That’s how you know you’ve arrived, when you can buy a house up there. And the guidebook says it’s like that half the time, damp and yucky and no view at all.”
The cab ride from the ferry dock was longer than the morning’s ride because traffic was thicker, but we still got to the Weis by twenty to three. I had been in favor of taking a few minutes to question the desk man on the subject of just who had told him to let us up earlier, but Bill was against it.
“He may be in on it,” he said, “and if we start spooking them with questions they may back off from making this trade. If we need to we can think about a way to approach him later. Right now we don’t want to miss the phone call.”
“When you’re right, you’re right,” I grumbled. “And let the record show I said that.”
But he wasn’t all that right. When we got up to the Weis’, it seemed we’d missed the phone call. Not the one we’d been expecting, but another one.
Li-Ling Wei, gray-faced and silent, let us in. The living room been straightened up, and a quick glance down the hall suggested that the other rooms had been, too. Well, it’s what I would have done, something to keep busy, something to do. Someone had made tea, but according to the three half-full teacups, no one had really drunk it. Out the living-room window, here on the hillside on the twenty-sixth floor, the mist that shrouded the Peak was beginning to descend, torn shreds of clouds floating by, not quite transparent, not quite opaque.
Steven Wei was pacing, but he stopped to squeeze Li-Ling’s hand as she returned from the front door. He led her solicitously back to an armchair which she looked at with fearful eyes, as if, in this world that had so radically changed, it might come to life and attack her. Natalie Zhu, across the room, sat composed and still, looking as though she hadn’t moved since we’d left. Her face was an impassive mask carved from ice, but behind their delicate glasses her eyes took in every move Bill or I made.
“There’s been a phone call,” Steven Wei said, after we’d all spent a few seconds too long looking at each other, saying nothing. “With a demand.”
“You told me that,” I said. “The jade. We brought it. Though—”
“Not the jade. Half an hour ago. A different voice. Saying that Harry was all right but they wanted twenty million dollars for his return. They are giving me until tomorrow afternoon to raise the money.”
“Twenty million dollars?” I stifled a gasp and did the quick arithmetic; that was two and a half million, American. “Do you have that kind of money?”
“No,” Steven Wei said simply.
“What about the jade?”
“They said they didn’t know what I was talking about.”
I looked at Bill as the meaning of this sank in.
“Did you—?” Bill began.
“Ask for proof? They hung up too fast. I was too startled. No.” The way Steven Wei’s eyes dropped when he said this, and the look Natalie Zhu gave him, implied they’d been through this unpleasantness already.
“When the other call comes,” Natalie Zhu said, a woman used to solving the problem at hand and not wasting time over earlier mistakes, “then we will ask.”
“And if they refuse?” Steven looked up rapidly. “My son—”
“Steven. Why would they refuse? The people holding Harry will expect to have to give proof. The others will be unable. We will make no payment until we are sure.”
We, I thought? He’s not your son. I stole a look at Li-Ling Wei. She perched on the edge of the chair, her eyes wide and a little wild, staring at the floor. Her arms hugged herself over her round stomach. She seemed on the edge of tears. I wanted to go over there, put my arm around her, tell her it would be all right, but I wasn’t sure that would be welcome.
And much as I hoped it would be all right, I wasn’t sure about that, either.
I suddenly wasn’t sure about anything: what to do, what to say, whether to give them the jade, whether Bill and I should be here at all. It was a dizzying, unmoored feeling, not helped by the view from the Weis’ living-room window, which reminded me that I was high up in the air, in a pencil-slim building on the side of a mountain, floating over a harbor thousands of miles from home.
Bill moved into the room. His hand brushed mine lightly, casually, an accidental touch as he passed by. Some accident. The roughness of his fingers, the scent of his sweat, even the temperature of his skin were all completely familiar, exactly what I knew they’d be. They brought me back to solid ground.
I flushed. He carefully didn’t look at me, which was a good thing. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that he could tell, without words, what I was feeling and, still without words, do something about it. Even if what he did about it made me feel better.
Well, I’d worry about that later; now, back to business. I opened my bag to take out the jade to show Steven and Li-Ling. They were both clearly having trouble keeping themselves together; the jade might reassure them a little. But before my hand closed on the box, the intercom at the front door buzzed.
Steven Wei threw a look at Natalie Zhu, then jumped up and grabbed the handset. Li-Ling rose awkwardly from her chair and stood with her hands pressed together. “Yes?” Steven barked in Cantonese. “What?”
The desk man spoke; Steven Wei seemed to be having trouble understanding him. “What?” he repeated. “Who?”
The answer came. Steven Wei lowered the handset, looked blankly around the room. Natalie Zhu began to stand, ready to take over and handle whatever situation this was. But Steven raised the handset again, spoke to the desk man, and hung up. He turned to face us.
“I told them to let him come up.” He spoke woodenly, waiting for a response.
“Who, Steven?” Natalie Zhu said sharply.
Steven Wei looked at her as though her question were as incomprehensible to him as whatever it was the desk man had said. He gestured helplessly at the intercom and repeated what he’d been told. “It’s Franklin Wei,” he said. “From New York. My brother.”
Bill lit a cigarette; otherwise, no one moved and not a word was said in the Wei apartment until the doorbell rang. When it did, I was the one standing closest to it, so I was the one who opened it.
A round-faced man stood in the hall wearing a Ralph Lauren polo shirt, khakis, and a tentative smile. My eyes widened before I could help it. Except for another inch in height and a pair of horn-rim glasses, I could have been looking at Steven Wei. The unlined face, the short, neat haircut, the way the smile lit up his face—a smile I had seen on Steven Wei just once, standing in this same hall—they were all the same.
“Hello,” he said in Cantonese. “I’m Wei Fu-Ran. Franklin. Are you Li-Ling?” He held a large bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates; he offered me both.
“I’m Lydia Chin,” I answered in English, not responding directly to anything he’d said in Chinese. “You’d better come in.”
Franklin Wei’s eyebrows came together as he heard my tone of voice. He waited politely for an explanation, but the smile remained. He entered the apartment and caught sight of his brother, Steven.
Under other circumstances, it could have been a funny moment. Two men, nearly identical, unaware of each other’s existence until a month ago, one of them completely astounded by the other’s unexpected arrival, the other about to be shocked by the situation he was walking into. This could make for a great Chinese comic opera setup, except a comic opera wouldn’t center on a kidnapped seven-year-old boy.
Where to start? Well, there was the obvious. In English, I said, “Franklin Wei, this is Steven. Steven Wei, this is Franklin.”
Franklin Wei shifted the chocolates to his left hand and held out his right. Steven Wei, on autopilot, put out his own hand, and they shook, brother to brother, man to man.
“I know. It’s a shock,” Franklin said to Steven, continuing in English. His English had the cadences of a native New Yorker’s; his Chinese, like mine, had the ease of being raised among native speakers. Obviously neither language was a foreign one to him; I wondered which he thought in. “I called your office. When they told me you were home, I couldn’t resist the surprise. Sorry.” He grinned.
I wasn’t sure, if things had been different, whether Steven would have enjoyed the joke, but he wasn’t returning his brother’s grin now. Franklin Wei glanced around the room, then back at Steven. “Did I interrupt something? Hey, I really am sorry. This was really rude of me, huh? I just thought it would be kind of a kick …” He trailed off in the silence.
This seemed manifestly unfair to Franklin. Here he was thinking that the frowns and the furrowed brows in this room were because he hadn’t called before he came. Someone should clue him in. He was, after all, family.
“There’s a problem, Dr. Wei,” I said. “It has nothing to do with you.”
Natalie Zhu stirred in her chair. I expected her to stand up, stop me, to take charge and take over, but all she did was watch me, and wait.
So I went on. I introduced everyone in the room: Bill, Natalie Zhu (whom I called first by her Chinese name, and then Natalie), and the real Li-Ling. Then I said to Franklin, “We’re in the middle of a bad situation.”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “Did I screw something up?”
“No. But your arrival may be one more shock than anyone was ready for.” I told him about the kidnapping, and the frightening complication of the new phone call. As I spoke I kept waiting for someone to stop me, to tell me this was not any of Franklin Wei’s business and certainly none of mine. But Li-Ling Wei just stared at the floor, as though she was being forced to listen again to something she had not wanted to hear the first time; and Steven Wei, glancing occasionally at Natalie Zhu, saw that she was making no move to end my telling of the story and said nothing himself.
“Jesus,” Franklin Wei said softly when I was through. “Damn.” He looked at his brother. “I’m really sorry.” There, I thought, how’s that? You fly all the way to the other side of the world and wind up saying nothing but
I’m sorry
. “Is there anything I can do?”
Steven Wei shook his head. “There is … we’re waiting for the next phone call. At three o’clock.” He looked at his watch, as did everyone else, when he said that. “A few minutes,” Steven Wei said unnecessarily.
Franklin Wei took a handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe sweat from his face. The movement rustled the paper around the bouquet of flowers he still held. Li-Ling Wei seemed to awaken at the sound. She stood and, moving slowly but steadily, took the flowers and chocolates from the man who looked so like her husband. Bowing in thanks, she carried them into the kitchen, returning with the flowers in a vase of water.
Franklin Wei looked at me. “I know who you are now,” he said. “Grandfather Gao told me you’d be here. You brought Dad’s jade. And the ashes.”
“That’s right,” I said.
“Truth is,” he said, “I was kind of surprised Dad wanted to be buried here. Not as amazed as when I found out about you guys—” Franklin turned to Steven, trying for a smile “—but the way Dad felt about the old traditions, the way he used to laugh at all that? It just surprised me, him wanting to come back here. So I thought I’d come along … well, hell, man. I wish it weren’t like this.”
Steven Wei obviously wished it weren’t like this, too. I was a little thrown hearing Franklin Wei, high up here in the air above Hong Kong, refer to “Grandfather Gao,” but I thought, why not? Given the longtime friendship between Grandfather Gao and old Mr. Wei, Grandfather Gao must have been a frequent visitor at the Weis’ Westchester home. A lot of Chinatown kids used the honorific
Grandfather
for Gao Mian-Liang, so why not this sunny, suburban, all-American Chinese boy?
Steven Wei was thrown, too, but by something else. “Laugh at the old traditions?” he said. “Father?” As he spoke, my mind returned to this morning’s search of the apartment, to the room with the wall safe. I saw the camphorwood trunk, the armoire, the teak bench so like the one in Grandfather Gao’s shop. The bed had been narrow, piled with brocade bolsters between the curving head- and footboards, and on the deep red wall, next to a pair of painted scrolls, hung a small shrine to Tin Hua, goddess of the sea. The room was quiet, dark, full of the pull of years. It was of a different nature from the pale-blue-and-ivory sleekness of the rest of the apartment, and I had assumed it had belonged to old Mr. Wei. “My father loved the old ways,” Steven was saying. “He was never so happy as when he was telling us stories about the home village or talking in the tearoom with his friends. He loved the old music, and the classic texts.”
Franklin and Steven Wei looked at each other. And ending any immediate chance of either finding out more about the other’s view of the man they both called father, the telephone rang.

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