China Trade (29 page)

“You weren’t afraid of being caught?”

“There was a risk, but once the actual theft was successfully accomplished, it was small. Nora, I felt, would be unwilling to involve the police in an investigation, for the sake of Chinatown Pride’s reputation, and could be persuaded to take another path.”

“And we were that path. Because you didn’t think we could do it.” My blood was beginning to boil, but my voice was steady. After all, she’d almost been right.

“Ms. Chin, please don’t take offense. No criticism of your professionalism was implied. I felt that, because your resources were more limited than the authorities’, and because these pieces were not going to reappear on the market, you would be less likely to come close to the truth. I had not counted on your ingenuity, nor Mr. Smith’s. In a way I must congratulate you.”

I looked to Bill. He was smiling a small, polite, ironic smile.

“However,” Mrs. Blair went on, in stronger, clipped tones, “the situation has changed entirely. If it’s true, as you tell me, that two young people have died, then one’s reputation no longer has much meaning, has it? You will not need the deception you were planning in order to unveil Dr. Caldwell. I am prepared to go to the police and tell them everything I have just told you.”

Her calm and her self-possession filled the room as completely as the soft sunlight filtering through the curtains. My anger faded, and it occurred to me as I looked at her that I’d never met a more courageous person. The thought surprised me, and I put it away for later. “I think,” I said slowly, “that that’s the right thing to do. And I can imagine how difficult it will be, considering the reasons you did all this.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose there will be some satisfaction for me in this, if it results in the apprehension of Roger
Caldwell. I do blame him for tempting a weakening, aging man into an act that, in his final few months, largely cancelled the virtue with which he had struggled to live the lifetime that preceded it.”

“I’m not sure that’s how it works,” Bill said. “I don’t think virtue at the end cancels a lifetime of corruption, and I don’t think it works the other way either.”

Mrs. Blair smiled at him in thanks, but didn’t answer.

“Is that why you removed his photograph?” I asked gently. “Because you’re angry at him?”

She returned her gaze to me and waited before she spoke. “That’s part of the reason,” she said. “I felt increasingly uncomfortable each time I looked at that photograph, until finally I felt I must do something. Partly it was because I was angry with him, yes. For his weakness. And for his lack of trust in me, that he told me nothing of this when he was alive. And partly, after what I had done—and entangled my brother in—I felt he must be angry with me.”

The ghosts, I thought. Like my mother, she’s living with the ghosts. Active presences, real beings who demand room in your life. Are we all like that, Chinese women? Are the ghosts demanding my attention too, and I’m refusing to notice?

The room suddenly seemed alive to me, the diffuse light moving with the not-quite-visible spirits of Hamilton Blair, of Hsing Chung Wah and Trish Atherton, even of my father and my mother’s sister. Not all of them wishing us well, and all complaining, in voices I could almost but not quite hear, of neglect, of abandonment, of loneliness.

Stop it, Lydia. I shook myself mentally. Get a grip. This is theft and murder and cops we’re talking about, not seances. Make a plan. Talk to the woman.

Before I could, however, the parlor door opened. The ghosts vanished, whisking away to corners and shadows as the solid form of Rosie O’Malley appeared, stopping at a respectful distance just inside the room.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, ma’am,” she said, “but there’s a
telephone call. I told him you were engaged, but he says it’s important.”

“Thank you, Rosie. Who is it?”

Rosie O’Malley gave Bill a lightning-fast glance and a tiny secret smile before she said, “The gentleman from the museum, ma’am. Dr. Roger Caldwell.”

“Tell him I can’t speak to him.” The anger in Mrs. Blair’s voice was faint—one tried, I supposed, not to display such strong emotions in front of the servants—but definitely there.

Rosie turned to go.

“No,” I said. “Wait. Mrs. Blair, talk to him. If you can. See what he wants. It might help.”

Her look was all reluctance and distaste.

“I’ll get on the extension,” Bill said, standing. “Be noncommittal. Just let him talk.”

Mrs. Blair looked at him, then stood. “Very well,” she said, smoothing her skirt. “If you think it’s important. I’ll take it in the study, Rosie. Show Mr. Smith to the hall telephone.”

The study was the back room, opening off the parlor. I stood and followed Mrs. Blair into it, trying to establish myself close enough to hear but far enough away that I wouldn’t make her nervous. The small room, dim and wood-panelled, held a desk, a few large framed paintings, and alcoves whose glass-doored shelves were empty. The collection room, I realized.

Mrs. Blair picked up the receiver. “Dr. Caldwell.” Frost hung on her words. She waited.

“Yes,” she said. A pause. “Yes, I know them.” Another pause. “No, I don’t think so.” More pause. I tried to hold my frustration in check. “I don’t see—” Silence as he evidently cut her off. “You cannot possibly be serious.” About what? I demanded silently. “That is unthinkable. I cannot—” I clutched an easy chair so I wouldn’t run over to the desk and grab the phone. “You wouldn’t do that,” she breathed, in apparent disbelief. “There is not—you cannot prove—” Another pause. Involuntarily I stamped my foot. Mrs. Blair looked up. I held up my hands in apology. She went back to the phone. “Even if
I were willing, I would not know—no, it is
not
the same. I have—” A long silence, during which I almost exploded. When she spoke again the disgust in her voice was obvious. “Very well. I will consider what you say. You will hear from me.” Without a good-bye, Mrs. Blair hung up.

Sitting at her husband’s desk, her hand on the phone, she regarded me with a curious look.

“Well?” I said, trying to sound professional and at least a little bit disinterested. “What did he want?”

I heard the parlor door open. Bill crossed the parlor, entered the study as Mrs. Blair answered me.

“He wants me to have you killed.”

T
H I R T Y - O N E

I
felt my jaw want to drop, but I refused to let it.

“Me? Killed?”

“And Mr. Smith,” Mrs. Blair told me, with an equanimity born, I suspected, of breeding and not of the emotions of the moment.

“Roger Caldwell does? He wants us killed?”

Bill and I looked at each other; he shrugged. Then he smiled.

I realized I was grinning from ear to ear.

“Mrs. Blair,” Bill said, “do you mind if I smoke?”

Mrs. Blair, looking very confused, waved away the question distractedly. “No, go right ahead. Ms. Chin, what on earth is there to smile about?”

“This is good,” I said, trying to collapse the smile and cut off the adrenaline flow that had sparked it. “This is very good. Tell me what he said.”

Bill struck a match, lit up a cigarette that I imagined he’d been wanting for some time now.

Mrs. Blair, still looking confused and now a bit impatient, said, “He asked if I knew who you both were. I said I did. He then said that you had information that, if made public, would put him in such a bad position that it was worth his while to take rather radical measures to insure that your silence was maintained. Further, he said, your information would surely reveal my own participation in the theft from Chinatown Pride, and my husband’s crime also. For this reason he was prepared to offer me the following choice: either he would turn himself in to the police, making the best deal he could by offering evidence against my husband and myself, which, he said, would result in my going to jail and the loss of my husband’s good name.

“Or I could arrange to have you two ‘taken care of’ as I had arranged to solve the earlier problem.”

“Did he actually say to kill us?” I asked, looking from her to Bill. “Did he say that?”

Bill shook his head as Mrs. Blair answered, “No, not in so many words. But he said that any solution I devised must be permanent and foolproof. He said he himself could think of only one such solution, and he was sure I could envision the same one. He said he was looking forward to reading the morning
Times
.”

I looked at Bill. He shrugged. “He’ll be disappointed,” he said. “Guys like me don’t get
Times
obits. You?”

“Twenty-eight-year-old female p.i.s? Are you kidding?” I said.

“One question is why, if he did Trish himself, he wants to hire us out.”

My mind went back to the night before, to the gum-chewing black woman cop escorting Roger Caldwell into his own office, past the body of Trish Atherton lying dead on the floor.

“You didn’t see him,” I said. “He looked like he was going to be sick, and I don’t think he’s much of an actor. Whatever
happened between them, I’d bet anything he hadn’t planned to kill her. I don’t think he could do it again with his own two hands. Anyway,” I said, unwilling to dwell on the question when I had a much more interesting one to think about, “we’ll just have to ask him, won’t we? Okay. So what are we going to do about this?”

Mrs. Blair stood up from her husband’s desk chair. “What are you going to do? Can you even ask that? We’ll go to the police at once, of course. Mr. Smith and I both heard the conversation. There can be no question as to his intentions. Roger Caldwell must be arrested immediately.”

Bill and I were looking into each other’s eyes, and I could see by the glint in his that he was thinking along the same lines I was.

“Yes,” I said to Mrs. Blair. “We’ll bring the police in. But I think we should go through with this.”

“Ms. Chin, what are you saying?”

“The contract hit,” I explained. “I think you should do it. And I know just the contractor.”

I called Mary.

“Lydia? For Pete’s sake, where have you been?” she demanded, after some yelling across the Fifth Precinct squad room had brought her to the phone. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Why? Has anything new happened? Between the Main Street Boys and the Golden Dragons?” A sudden fear that I hated to admit to clutched my stomach, dampened the sizzle put in my spine by the plan Bill and I, to Mrs. Blair’s astonishment and disapproval, had worked out.

“No. Nothing. I just don’t trust you when things are too quiet.”

“Ummm.” The good news was that that meant she hadn’t heard about the murder of Trish Atherton and my being mixed up in it. The bad news was that I was going to have
to tell her. “Now, listen,” I began. “And don’t yell until I’m done, okay? There’s a really good idea at the end of this.”

“I don’t like the beginning already,” she said in a cold cop voice. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I’m about to hand you Trouble on a platter.”

“Oh, thanks. That’s just what I need, a platterful of trouble. Or do you mean Trouble, like in the Golden Dragons?”

“That’s what I mean. You want him?”

“What’s he going to cost me?”

“Nothing. It’s a great collar. You’ll be famous. You’ll get a promotion.”

“You’re trying to talk me into something.”

“It’s too good to pass up.”

“If it were that good you wouldn’t be trying to sell it to me before you even tell me what it is.”

Touché. “Okay, here it comes.”

I started to lay it out for her, what we wanted to do. I began with Roger Caldwell and the death of Trish Atherton, which got me the reaction I expected.

“A homicide? And you didn’t tell me? What the hell’s the matter with you, Lydia? You’re turning into the worst kind of cowboy. What are you thinking? What—”

“Mary, come on. We called the cops right away. This guy Bernstein caught the case. He’s a detective. He did all the right things. You know him?”

“No. And I don’t care. That’s not the point. When you get to where there are two bodies involved in the same case you’re working on, get out, Lydia! What’s wrong with you? And don’t give me the thing about this could all be coincidence. I want to know what you’re working on, who it is, what it’s about.”

“I can’t, Mary. But I can give you something better. Let me finish?”

“Lydia—”

“Please?”

She breathed out a sharp, exasperated breath. “Okay, finish. But it won’t do you any good.”

So I went on. I told her about the art laundry scheme, skated cleverly around the relationship of Mrs. Blair and her brother to the situation by saying that Dr. Caldwell knew the Blairs through Mr. Blair’s collection, which anyway was true. I managed not to mention Chinatown Pride and my original reason for being part of this case. I spoke fast, and was eloquent, reasonable, thorough, and persuasive.

“No,” she said, when I was done.

“Mary, think about it. You can take him off the street. Keep the thing from starting between the Golden Dragons and the Main Street Boys. Isn’t that worth a little risk?”

“No.”

“What can go wrong?”

“Besides him killing you?”

“He won’t. You won’t give him the chance. I won’t go anyplace you guys didn’t get the chance to get there first.” Damn, I thought. There goes my English grammar again, and Tim’s not even in the room.

“Lydia, you’re
nuts
. Most people disappear when they hear there’s a contract out on them. You two want to help organize it.” She was silent for a minute, a good sign. “Why not just let Bernstein pick up Caldwell based on the phone call? He could squeeze him and take the Atherton case off the books, anyway. We’ll deal with Trouble some other way.”

“Caldwell’s not the problem now. Bernstein can get him any time. But the Golden Dragons and the Main Street Boys: It’s going to happen unless we stop it, Mary. You know what it’ll be like if it does. We can’t let it.” I added the other thing I was thinking. “And I want Trouble, Mary. This is my chance. And it’s yours, too. You could make Second Grade over this.”

“Or get busted to night paperwork. I think it’s crazy, Lydia.”

Now we were really getting somewhere: “I think it’s crazy,” instead of “It’s crazy.”