China Trade (21 page)

“At eight-thirty? You’re crazy.”

“Hey, I didn’t suggest it.”

“Good.”

He went on, “The last time I was in a fight I was sore for two weeks. I slept a lot. Of course, maybe that’s just me.”

“You sleep. I eat. And I feel fine.” That, of course, was a major lie. “Call me later? Especially if Rosie O’Malley has anything to say.”

“I’ll call you no matter what.”

We kissed again, lightly, the old way; then I hailed a cab and headed downtown. I turned back to see Bill still standing on the corner, watching my cab as he got smaller, finally disappearing in the darkness.

T
W E N T Y - T H R E E

I
didn’t go home. The cab left me off at the noodle shop across from my office, where, being as famished as I was, the need to choose among the various smells and sizzles and steaming noodle vats practically immobilized me. In the end I bought pork dumplings and vegetable chow fun and promised myself I could come back for soy sauce chicken over rice if it was necessary.

The travel agency had long since closed when I unlocked
the street door and deposited my dinner on my desk and myself behind it. I threw my hat and coat on the guest chair. Mouth watering from the gamey pork odor of my dumplings, I grabbed my chopsticks from my pencil cup. I’d eaten two dumplings dipped in hot oil before I noticed the blinking red light on my phone.

I bit off another half dumpling and hit the rewind button. The machine raced backwards through three messages.

The first two were almost the same.

“Ms. Chin? Oh, god. It’s Steve Bailey.” The words were breathless; traffic noise filled the background. “We have to meet somewhere else. I have to see you. Can we … oh god, I don’t know. I’ll call your partner. I’ll call you again.”

Damn, I thought. Steve, where are you? I pressed the button again.

“Ms. Chin? Oh, why aren’t you there? I have to talk to you. Please be there. Please pick up the phone. Oh, god. I’ll call you back.”

That was it.

I pressed the button a third time. The tape was silent for a few seconds; I thought it was a hang-up. Then, just as I reached for the rewind button, came a soft male voice.

“Lydia Chin? This is Bic. Grandfather Gao wants me to tell you I didn’t steal any porcelains. So: I didn’t steal any porcelains. Now stay out of my way and stay out of my life.”

The click of the phone being hung up was the only sound in the room. I realized I’d stopped chewing with my mouth half full. I started up again while I rewound and replayed that message. “Stay out of my way, and stay out of my life.”

Damn! I slammed my fist on the desk, slopping hot oil out onto the mail. Steve and Bic, while I was smooching with Bill on a park bench! What kind of detective was I? I glared at the silent answering machine. The timer that automatically marked each call told me Bic’s had come in barely ten minutes ago. Ten minutes! I should get a cellular phone. Then I could get my Call Forwarding to call it, and then I could smooch with anybody I wanted without…

Oh, I thought. Oh, Lydia. Oh, Lydia, you are an idiot. I grabbed up the receiver, before the phone had a chance to ring again.

I didn’t have a cellular phone. But I had Call Forwarding. And Call Waiting. And Three-party Calling.

And, brand-new from Nynex, Call Return.

I punched the buttons that automatically let my phone call back the last number that called me. Bouncing my foot up and down rapidly as I waited, I reminded myself that a lot of people block this service. I had. Not everyone wants their numbers given out to everyone they call. I listened to it ring, sure I was going to hear a tinny-voiced operator telling me that my call could not be completed.

That wasn’t what I heard.

What I heard was, “China Seas. Your order please?”

I called Bill’s service and left a message telling him what I was going to do. Then I did it.

I wolfed down the rest of the dumplings while I looked at a Queens map. The chow fun I stuffed into the office fridge. It’s good for breakfast anyway.

Out on the street I had to wait a few minutes for a cab. Waving for one reminded me how sore I was and how much I’d wanted to crawl into bed a million times today. But at the same time my skin prickled and my heart raced. Partly that was because I was getting to do something, not just waiting around.

And partly it was because meeting Bic was something I’d really wanted to do.

A cab finally swerved to a stop in front of me, and the driver wasn’t even too grouchy about taking me all the way to Flushing. He was Pakistani; he probably lived there. He could stop off at home for dinner.

I thought about the voice on the phone as my cab played stop-and-go through the streets of Manhattan. I replayed the message in my head the same way I had on the machine.

“This is Bic. Grandfather Gao wants me to tell you I didn’t steal any porcelains.”

I knew that voice.

“This is Bic.”

Why would a West Coast gangster care what Grandfather Gao wanted?

“Stay out of my way.”

We arched over the Queensborough Bridge, one of those few thin, glittering threads that connect Manhattan to the rest of the world.

“Grandfather Gao.”

I knew that voice.

“This is Bic.”

The river, thick and inky, was behind us now.

“Stay out of my life.”

I knew.

In Flushing, the cab dropped me at the end of Main Street. I walked the blocks to China Seas wondering if I should be doing this. If I was right it explained some things. Maybe if I thought about them I could get just as far without seeing Bic face to face as I could by confronting him. He didn’t want to meet me and now I knew why. Maybe you should leave it alone, Lydia.

But there was still a dead boy whose mother had loved him.

And there were still Nora’s porcelains.

Maybe Bic really didn’t have anything to do with those things. But I wanted to ask him.

China Seas had a glowing red-lettered sign above a slick new aluminum-and-glass storefront. I checked my watch. It was twenty-five minutes since I’d left; that made it thirty-five since Bic’s call. I hoped he’d called before he’d ordered dinner, and I hoped he’d been hungry.

I walked in and saw them right away, three gangsters at a table by the front window. One of them was older than the other two, though no older than me, with a nicely tailored suit
where they wore leather jackets. That one had a wide, shiny scar along his left cheek, as Trouble had said, but I didn’t need that.

He didn’t see me come in. He didn’t see me until I was standing right next to him.

“Hello, Matt,” I said in a quiet voice. “Long time.”

His head snapped up. For a brief, motionless moment the entire restaurant seemed to be freeze-framed. Then he leaned back in his chair, and a slow, self-possessed smile took over; but before that, before his guard was up, when he first caught sight of me, I saw a ghost of the eager joy Matt Yin and I used to bring to the times we were together, when I was fifteen.

Or maybe I felt it more than saw it. Maybe the ghost wasn’t Matt’s.

“Well,” he said with a cool gangster smile. “I’ll be damned, guys. It’s Lydia.” He spoke in a slow, easy drawl; I could hear the languid breezes of California in his words.

Chopsticks clinked onto plates. One of the other boys started to rise, hand snaking into his jacket, but Matt touched his arm. He smiled again, recovered now, the
dai lo
in charge. “Lydia. You’re still like that, huh?” He shook his head, smiling. “You’re still like that.”

I wasn’t completely sure what it was I was still like, but I knew I was still like that.

“Move over, Camel.” Matt elbowed the boy next to him. “Let the lady sit down. This was once a special lady, guys. I used to think she was really special.” He winked at the boy, who, sullen-faced, scraped his chair a few inches across the floor so I could sit.

“How long have you been back, Matt?” I asked quietly, once I was seated.

“Maybe eight months,” Matt said cheerfully. “Have you had dinner? God, this lady can eat,” he told the others. “You wouldn’t think so to look at her, but I’d back her against either of you.” He shook his head again, as though at a fond memory. His eyes met mine, and we looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Then he spoke. The smile remained, but his
voice came out as softly icy as a New York January night. “What the hell do you want, Lydia?”

I almost shivered in the chill, but I tried not to let it show. “Does Nora know?”

“How did you find me?” The soft voice ignored my question.

“The miracles of modern technology. Does Nora know?”

“Grandfather Gao told you.”

I shook my head. “I traced your call.”

“No kidding.” He regarded me with raised eyebrows and an ironic smile. “You mean you’re really a detective?”

“Yes.”

“I thought that’s what Grandfather Gao was telling me. But you know, my Chinese has gone completely to hell since I moved west.” He chuckled. “So what do you think? You came looking for Bic and you found your old honey. Surprised?”

“I knew it was you.”

His face fell; he frowned in mock disappointment. “So he did tell you.”

“No, Matt. You did.”

“Me? Oh, please explain this, great detective.” He reached into his pocket for a cigarette. He lit it with a gold lighter, grinning at me as he snapped the top closed.

I realized my shoulders were rigid. I forced them to relax. “I recognized your voice, but I couldn’t place it. But you said ‘Grandfather Gao.’ Why would a West Coast gangster say that? Even Trouble just calls him ‘Old Gao.’ Only a Chinatown kid would say that. When I realized that, I knew.”

One of the other boys snickered. Matt shot him a narrow-eyed look, then relaxed. “Damn.” He grinned. “What a smart-ass. That always was your problem, Lydia.”

“What about Nora?” I asked again.

“My poor fool sister? She has no idea who I am or how lucky she is.” He directed a long, thin stream of smoke well above my head.

“That’s why you wanted that corner,” I said. “Because of CP and Nora.”

“Nora,” Matt said, to the boys at the table as well as to me, “is a bleeding-heart idiot. Trouble would have eaten her alive. Her and the rest of the nerds at Chinatown Pride.” The sneer in his words made the other boys laugh.

“So you took over the territory. To help?”

“Help?” He looked amazed. He flipped the top of the lighter, snapped a flame, watched it dance. “Help her waste her life? Sit around listening to a bunch of FOBs bitch and moan about how great China was and how lousy things are here? Teach them English so they can bitch in two languages, and then babysit their kids while they drop a week’s pay at
fan tan
until it’s time to go back and wash pots in a stinking kitchen? Give me a break, sweetheart.”

I could feel the heat in my face. “Don’t call me sweetheart, Matt.”

“Oh? You used to like that.” He ran one finger lightly over the back of my hand.

I pulled my hand away. “Then why’d you do it?”

He laughed. Leaning forward, he said in a low voice, “I’m here to stay, sweetheart. I learned a lot out west. I met a lot of people. Then—well, then it just got to be a good time to come back east.” Grinning, he flicked cigarette ash onto a plate. “There’s plenty of opportunity here for someone like me. I have big plans. But you’ve got to get respect. You’ve got to have face. What would it look like if I couldn’t protect my own sister? She’s stupid and she’s wasting her life. But if she wants to do it, Bic is going to make sure nobody gets in her way.”

“Does Trouble know who you are?”

“Trouble?” He snickered. “Trouble wouldn’t know his own dick if he saw it in a mirror.”

All three of them laughed at that. Matt narrowed his eyes at me, smiling. “Did I embarrass you? Poor sensitive Lydia.”

Ignoring the comment and the flush in my cheeks, I asked, “Then what are you proving?”

“I’m proving,” Matt said, squashing the cigarette into a
puddle of sauce, “what I want to prove. That Bic takes what he wants. That you don’t fuck with me. And,” he added, “if some meddling little snoop wants to spread it around Chinatown who I used to be.” He paused, shrugged. “That’ll be all right. I’m set up here now. I’m strong. The Main Street Boys will take all comers. Right, guys?”

“Fuckin-A, Bic,” the one called Camel muttered. He took a long pull from a bottle of beer, then leveled a challenging stare at me, as though he was daring me to slap him for using a dirty word.

I almost laughed in his face. That made me realize just how on edge I was.

Turning my attention back to Matt, I forced myself to be calm—or at least to act it—and asked my next question. “That’s why you killed Hsing Chung Wah?”

He stared at me, then laughed. They all laughed, as though I’d delivered a punchline they’d been waiting for.

“So you’re really a private eye?” Matt asked. “License and everything? Little Lydia?”

I kept my voice even. “Is that why you killed Hsing Chung Wah?”

Matt lifted his teacup to his lips. He made a face, poured the tea back in the pot, signaled for more. A waiter appeared instantly with a fresh steaming pot. “And a cup for my girlfriend here,” Matt told him. The waiter brought one.

“Are you going with anyone?” Matt asked me amiably. “Last time I heard from Nora—that was a while ago—you weren’t.”

“I want to know why you killed Hsing Chung Wah.”

Camel spoke, grinning. “Sounds like she’s only interested in one thing, Bic. Not the same what you’re interested in.”

Matt shook his head. “She was always like this. She gets something into her head and she won’t stop. Lydia,” he said, “sweetheart, you’ll never get a man with that attitude. Lighten up.” Before I could say something I might have regretted, Matt added, “I did not kill Hsing Chung Wah.”

I asked casually, “One of them did?” Heart pounding, I
coolly indicated the other guys. Lydia knows the ropes. She knows how this game is played.

“Them? Gee, I don’t think so. Fellas?”

The one who hadn’t spoken lit a cigarette and shrugged. Camel slurped some more beer, said, “Oh, fuck her.”