China Trade (32 page)

Instead, I sat where I was, drank the rest of my tea, and told Mary about the case. I guessed it didn’t matter, now. I heard myself talking, about Nora, about Chinatown Pride, about Bic and Trouble and Dr. Caldwell—who had been picked up by Bernstein from the 19th on a conspiracy-to-murder charge an hour ago, according to Mary—as if I were a long way away, as if all this were some story that might or might not have actually happened, but in any case hadn’t happened to me.

As I talked, the anger burnt itself out rapidly, like a fire you can start but just can’t keep lit. The numbness took over
again. I knew I was way beyond the end of my strength, running on fumes and habit. And the need to be tough.

Mary waited until I was through. Then she asked questions and I answered them. She went away, came back, asked some more questions. She went away again, for a long time.

Finally, she came back. “You can go home,” she said.

“I can?”

“It doesn’t make anybody happy, but nobody can think up a reason to hold you. Get out of here before someone does.”

I started to stand. As soon as I moved I realized I was badly stiff and sore and, I found, dizzy enough to grab onto the table.

“You going to be all right?” Mary asked, concern peeking out grudgingly around the edges of her voice.

“I’m fine.” I stood on my own two feet, and didn’t fall down, so that must have been the truth. “What about Bill?” I asked her.

“He has a different problem.”

“What problem?”

“He wouldn’t tell us anything. He kept saying it was your case, it was up to you. He made my lieutenant mad. They booked him for obstructing an investigation.”

“Oh, Mary, come on! I told you what you wanted to know. What’s the point?”

“Gives the guys something to do.”

“You’re really going to make him spend the night down there? I have to call his lawyer and everything?”

Reluctantly, she said, “I’ll call over and see what I can do.”

“Thanks.”

“Not that I feel like doing either of you any favors right now. You made me look pretty stupid. We could have lost people. There’s going to be an investigation. This whole business is going to be trouble for a long time.”

“I thought it was a good idea.” I was too exhausted to defend myself. “You thought so too, didn’t you?”

“No. I let you talk me into it.”

“I’m sorry, Mary. I really didn’t know.”

“No,” she said. “You really didn’t think.”

T
H I R T Y - F I V E

I
stumbled home through the empty streets of Chinatown. Shutters were down, gates were locked, boxes of rotting rejects from the fish and vegetable sellers cluttered the sidewalks. At least in this season they didn’t stink.

It wasn’t late, not really. Just past eleven. My mother would be watching the news on the Chinese cable channel. I could have a bath, steam up the tiled room with Mr. Gao’s mountain herbs. I could sink down into the hot, hot water, listen to the silence, look at nothing. It was achingly tempting, though I knew that it really wouldn’t work. I knew what I’d be seeing would be Matt Yin’s hard smile, and what I’d hear would be Mr. Gao, telling me that danger can mean different things to different people, and that I should keep away from Bic.

The high nasal voice of the Chinese newscaster pierced through the door as I turned my key in my mother’s multiple locks. It was a little loud, and anyway it was what I expected to hear. Until I was actually through the door I didn’t hear the other conversation going on inside, the one being carried out in quieter, more casual tones, as befits a discussion between mother and son.

“Ling Wan-ju!” my mother called out, as I shut the door behind me. “Come say hello to your brother. He stayed late waiting for you.”

I stood frozen for a moment in the little vestibule. I felt
like a piece of machinery whose gears wouldn’t catch. Then the reserve fuel tank kicked in, and anger shot fireworks through my system again.

I stepped out of my shoes, stalked into the living room without bothering with my slippers. Standing in my leather jacket and formerly decent black pants, now streaked with parking strip mud and dust, I stared down at my mother and Tim, side by side on the flowered couch.

My mother, unperturbed, barely looked up from her mending. “Why are you so late?” she asked, and broke a thread with her teeth.

“I was working.”

“Hmm.” Tim cleared his throat, shifting a little in his seat. Or maybe he was squirming. Good, you creep, I thought. Squirm. “That’s really what I wanted to talk to you about, Lydia,” he said, in a lawyer voice. “That’s why I came over. We’ve decided it’s gone far enough, this detective thing—”

“Investigator,” I said in English. “Licensed private investigator.”

“Whatever.” Tim switched to English too. “We really think you have to stop this, Lydia.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“The family. Ted, and Ma—”

“Andrew? Elliot?”

“It’s not as though we had a meeting or anything,” he hedged. “But you know how everyone feels.”

“No. I know how
you
feel. And boy, do I know all about that, Tim.”

“I want you children to speak Chinese,” my mother interjected crossly. She’d been watching us like a spectator at a ping-pong match.

“I think this is better done in English, Ma,” I told her in Chinese. “As a matter of fact I think it would be better in private. Come on,” I said in English to Tim, and started to head for my room.

“Absolutely not!” My mother’s tone was the one you
didn’t argue with. “Anything you have to say to your brother you can say in front of me. In Chinese,” she added.

“Is that how you want it?” I asked Tim. In Chinese.

“I …” He looked uncomfortable, but he said, “Sure. Why not?”

Chinese then. “Because this is about you. This is about how little you trusted me. This is about how you were so worried that I was going to screw up and make you look bad that you hired someone to watch me! A white p.i., a guy who called himself Jim Johnson while he was messing around in my case but I’ll bet his name is something else. He’s not very good. But I’m sure he has a license and I’m sure he’s experienced because fancy uptown lawyers don’t hire just anyone, do they?”

I was sputtering and I knew it and it made me even angrier. I could feel my cheeks burning. Tim just sat there stony-faced, probably the face he used across the negotiating table from an opponent he disliked but whose case was stronger than his. He looked like he was trying to think up a strategy.

“Lydia, I—”

“Don’t bother!” I cut him off savagely. “You had him following me. That’s how you knew I’d met with Trouble, isn’t it? He reported to you on every move I made.”

My mother said, “Trouble? The
dai lo
of the Golden Dragons? Ling Wan-ju, what a terrible thing to do!”

“Don’t worry, Ma,” I said bitterly. “He won’t be a problem to anyone anymore.” I said to Tim, “When I caught on, your guy stopped following me, but he kept popping up in all sorts of other places involved with this case. What was he supposed to be doing, keeping an eye on me? Or solving the case so it would go away?”

Tim stared at me for a moment before he answered. My mother was mercifully silent.

“Both,” Tim finally said. “In the beginning he was supposed to follow you, see what you were up to and use whatever you found to solve the case himself. After you spotted him I told him to keep working on the case but to keep away from
you so you wouldn’t get lucky again. He has a lot of experience, Lydia. Much more than you have.”

“ ‘Lucky’?” I could have punched his pompous face. “And you thought that would make a huge difference? How much experience he had?”

“Lydia, you’re just a kid! You’re—”

“I’m two years younger than you and I’ve been in this business six years! How long have you been a lawyer? Do you know this experienced guy of yours got someone killed?”

That stopped him. It stopped my mother too, who my antennae told me had been on the verge of cutting in. There was no sound in the apartment except the Chinese newscaster, giving us the market closings on Taiwan.

Tim broke the silence, one weak word.

“What?”

I told him about Jim Johnson, about his visit being enough to inspire Trish Atherton to try to sell out Roger Caldwell, and about the end of Trish Atherton’s life on the floor of the office in the darkened museum.

When I finished, the room flooded with silence again. I was suddenly exhausted: empty and tired and disappointed and almost too weak to stay on my feet.

Finally my mother spoke.

“Ridiculous,” she said.

“What?” I echoed Tim. I had no idea what her meaning was.

“It’s ridiculous that anyone your brother hired could be held responsible for such a thing. If this happened it’s because the girl was greedy. I’m not at all surprised, with the sort of people you associate with. It’s because of the profession you’re in, Ling Wan-ju. Your brothers wouldn’t have to look after you if you were more sensible. And more obedient,” she added. “Your brother was trying to protect you. You should be grateful to him.”

She began to fold her sewing, with deliberate, satisfied movements. Tim said nothing. He sat on the couch next to our
mother, looking defiant and uncomfortable, but not looking wrong.

“I’m going to bed,” I said, and turned and walked away from them.

I locked the door to my room, something I’ve almost never done since the last of my brothers moved out. Dropping my clothes in a heap, I crawled under the covers, curled up tightly, and worked on not crying myself to sleep.

T
H I R T Y - S I X

W
hen I woke up in the morning Tim was gone. I had my hot bath, the one with the mountain herbs, and I soaked in it a long, long time. I heard my mother bustling around, and I let the sounds rattle in my head. They were reassuring sounds. She was my mother. Lots of people didn’t have mothers. Bill didn’t have one anymore. I’d never heard the story, but I knew that for many years they hadn’t spoken, and they’d never really reconciled. I’d always thought how sad that was.

When I was ready, when I felt soft and limp and warm, and finally, in some way, clean, I got out, dried, dressed, and went to talk to my mother.

The table was set, breakfast for one. There were two steamed dumplings, a bowl of congee with tiny pieces of pickled radish, rice sticks, sweetened milk. On one of my mother’s best dishes, one her older sister had brought from China when she came to live with us in America, an orange cut in eighths spread itself like a blossoming flower.

My mother just happened to wander from the kitchen
into the living room with a pot of hot tea as soon as I entered from the other direction.

“Sit down,” she ordered me. “Everything will get cold.” She poured my tea.

“Okay, Ma,” I said as I pulled my chair up to the table. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know what you mean. Eat your breakfast.”

I picked up a rice stick, dipped it in the milk, and talked about it anyway. “I appreciate that you love me. I appreciate that you’re worried about me. I’m even willing to admit it’s barely possible those are Tim’s motivations too. But this is what I do. I’m not going to stop just because you make me
dim sum
.”

She stood with the teapot in her hand, her lips a narrow line. “Always talking,” she said. “Always knowing best. If you don’t eat you’ll get so thin finding a husband for you will be even harder.”

She turned and disappeared into the kitchen with the teapot.

“You know, you solved the case for me, Ma,” I called behind her.

“What are you talking about?” she muttered, as if she didn’t care much what I answered.

“Something you said the other day. It came back to me just at the right time and gave me an idea. It was absolutely perfect. It solved the case.”

“Well, then.” She turned the water on in the sink and started making domestic noises with pots and pans. “If you listened to your mother more often you would solve many more cases.”

I picked up a dumpling in my chopsticks. That was practically permission, I thought, as I dipped it in scallion sauce and took a bite. From a Chinese mother, that was just about carte blanche.

* * *

I called Bill after breakfast. On the sixth ring I was about to hang up, but he answered.

“Smith.” His voice was deep and rumbly.

“You sound like you’re asleep,” I told him.

“I was,” he said groggily. “Are you okay?”

“Better than you. I didn’t spend the night in jail.”

“I didn’t either. Only half of it.”

“I’m sorry about that. I really am. Nobody ever went to jail for me before.”

“That you know about,” he corrected me. “Anyway, it wasn’t so bad. They had me in a holding cell with two unlicensed Senegalese street vendors. I learned half a dozen words of Waloof.”

“Tell them to me.”

“There’s only one I’d repeat without being afraid you’d punch me.”

“I wouldn’t punch you. You have too much credit with me right now.”

“Come over and let me earn some more. I have a present for you.”

“No kidding, really?”

“Well, I don’t have it. But I could go out and get it and be back by the time you get here.”

“I have to go see Nora first.”

“Oh.” He paused; I could hear him striking a match, pulling on a cigarette. “Want me to come along?”

“No. I need to do this by myself.”

“Okay. Call me when you’re done?”

“Definitely.”

Before I went over to Chinatown Pride I called the Fifth Precinct. Mary wasn’t in yet, they told me; she’d had a late night.

I called her at home.

“I have a peace offering,” I said.

“It’s going to take more than that.”

“Can it be a beginning?”

“What is it?”

“The other p.i. The one who called himself Jim Johnson.”

“You know who he is?”

“No. But I know someone who does.”

“Who?”

“My brother Tim.”

“What?”

I told her what.

When I finished, Mary said, “I don’t believe he did that.” She sounded almost sympathetic.