Reflecting the Sky (4 page)

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Authors: S. J. Rozan

BOOK: Reflecting the Sky
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He stood abruptly, looked around, a man who wanted to take some action but didn’t know what to do. “What … how could this have happened? The security men … Who let these people upstairs?” He stood and headed for the speaker by the front door.
“Steven.” Natalie Zhu spoke calmly, but the tone of her voice stopped Steven Wei in his tracks. “There is no point in that at this moment. You will find your doorman was bribed, or one of your maintenance men was involved. What will this tell you? There will be time for that later. Sit down.”
Steven Wei stood for a moment, his hand stopped in midreach for the speaker handset. He slowly turned and returned to his chair.
Li-Ling Wei was Steven’s wife; Bill and I knew that. “Who’s Maria?” I asked.
“Maria Quezon,” Steven answered mechanically, a beat late, looking around as though he were unsure where the question had come from. “Harry’s amah. She’s Filipina.”
“An au pair, you would call her,” Natalie Zhu added.
I’d call her an amah, just like you do, I thought. What makes you think I don’t know what
amah
means? And Bill, for your information, used to live in the Phillipines.
I took a deep, slow breath. Calm down, Lydia, I told myself. Don’t take your adrenaline rush out on these people.
“And they’re not here,” I said. “And they don’t answer their cell phones. And the apartment’s been ransacked. The police—”
“Calling the police would be a mistake.” Natalie Zhu looked right at me. “With respect, Ms. Chin, you are not from Hong Kong. You cannot be expected to know how to handle … situations … like this.”
“I know that this house is torn apart and three people are missing,” I retorted. “And I know kidnappings for ransom aren’t uncommon here.” There, I thought, let’s get it on the table.
“True,” Natalie Zhu agreed, unruffled. “And victims are usually returned unharmed once the ransom is paid. Unless the families involve the police.” Emphasis, it seemed to me, on the
unless
.
“But those families are rich.” Steven Wei shook his head. “I’m not rich. Who—?” He lifted his hands, his words all tangled.
Natalie Zhu looked at him. The look may have been sympathetic, but her voice was sharp. “Someone with an exaggerated idea of your wealth. The death of your father was widely reported; Lion Rock is a respected, established firm. Also, the kidnapping may have been easy, which makes the risk less.”
Steven Wei didn’t answer, just looked at her, as though he hadn’t understood a word she’d said.
“What do you mean, easy?” I asked.
Natalie Zhu turned to me. “If they had help.”
“The amah?”
“It is possible.”
“No,” Steven said. “It’s not. Maria—”
“Maria has been with you all of Harry’s life, Maria loves Harry like her own son, yes, of course,” Natalie Zhu said almost contemptuously. “Steven, she may have a brother in trouble, a sick mother at home—you have no idea, have you?”
Steven Wei looked a little sick himself.
“What are you suggesting?” I said. “We just sit here and wait?”
Natalie Zhu looked straight at me, then turned her head deliberately to Bill, so that we’d know she hadn’t forgotten he was there, too. “Yes,” she said.
We didn’t wait long.
And we didn’t wait silently. Natalie Zhu, turning back to me, said, “We have been assuming you are the emissaries sent from Gao Mian-Liang with Harry’s jade. Is that correct? May I see some identification?”
“And we’ve been assuming you’re Steven Wei and his lawyer,” I said, handing her my passport. “But I suppose you might be impostors.”
Bill caught my tone and gave me a glance as he handed her his passport, and Steven Wei’s face reddened, but the corner of Natalie Zhu’s mouth tugged upward and a quick look flashed in her eyes, something like approval, I thought. “Yes, we could.” She snapped her briefcase open—she carried no handbag—and took out her identity card, motioning for Steven Wei to do the same.
“Natalie …” Steven Wei’s protest flared and faded, a spark unable to set a fire.
“Steven, she is right.” She flipped through my passport and handed it back. “She is also Lydia Chin. Thank you. I do not mean to offend, but of course, in a situation like this …”
“Of course.”
She looked from me to Bill and back again. “Do you speak Chinese, or shall we continue in English?”
“English, if you don’t mind,” Bill said before I could answer. “Can I smoke?” No one said anything. “I guess that’s a yes,” Bill said. He bent down to pick something up off the floor. “Is this an ashtray?” It seemed to me that the object in question could be nothing else. Both Steven Wei and Natalie Zhu looked at it, Wei finally nodding.
“If we’re not calling the police,” I said, “maybe Mr. Wei could look through the apartment and see if anything is missing?”
Steven Wei, looking lost, cast a look at Natalie Zhu. She met his eyes; something unspoken passed between them. Natalie Zhu said, “A good idea,” and stood. Wei looked anything but happy, but he stood, too. He gave one long look around the living room, then moved heavily toward the bedrooms.
I followed, saying nothing, but watching where he looked, where he searched. He opened certain drawers, certain jewelry boxes: In one bedroom, the one that held a large painted Chinese armoire and a carved teak bench, he moved a heavy camphorwood trunk away from the wall to reveal a safe. Spinning the combination, he looked inside, sifted through the contents, and closed the safe again.
“Nothing is missing,” he finally said, standing in the hallway, looking around. “There’s not much of great value, and nothing is gone.” He met my eyes, looked away, looked back, as though it were important that I comprehend what he was about to tell me. “We live comfortably. But I’m not a wealthy man, nor was my father. I don’t understand this.”
I didn’t know what he understood, or for that matter what I did. I opened my mouth to make an answer, but the phone rang.
It froze us all. Natalie Zhu thawed first. In two steps she reached it, grabbed it up, and demanded,
“Wai!”
—“Speak!” in Cantonese.
The caller evidently did, and then Natalie Zhu began again, still in Cantonese. Relief sounded in her voice, but it didn’t last long. “This is Zhu Nai-Qian. Where are you?” Pause. “They are not with you?” Another pause. “No, we have not. Here, you had better speak to Wei Di-Fen.” She lowered the phone, said, “It’s Li-Ling,” and handed the receiver to Steven Wei, who was already on his feet.
“Are you all right?” Steven Wei spoke quickly and low to his wife—also in Chinese—listened, spoke again. He turned to me and Bill when he hung up.
“They went out early,” he said, switching back to English. “Li-Ling wanted to buy some sweets, to have with tea when you came.” His look was accusatory, as though that made this our fault. “Maria and Harry went with her, and Maria took Harry to play in the park. He was too excited to stay up here, just waiting.”
I had gathered most of this from Steven Wei’s side of the Cantonese conversation, but I let him continue to tell it.
“Li-Ling went to the park to meet them, but they weren’t there. She waited, then walked around to the church. Harry … he likes to climb on the rocks there. Then she went back to the park. Then she went back to the bakery, in case they’d gone to meet her. That’s where she called from.” He looked at each of us in turn, as though one of us could make something of what he’d said, find an answer in it. No one spoke.
“I told her to come home,” he said.
Now there was silence for a time. Natalie Zhu returned to her straight-backed chair. Steven Wei paced, sat, stood, sat again.
Questions ran around in my mind, things I wanted to know; and I could see Bill had questions, too, because I know him well enough to see what he’s thinking, sometimes, from the look in his eyes, the way he moves. But I kept my questions to myself, for now, and so did he.
As much to keep moving as to have another look around, I put the cushions back on the couch. If the cops weren’t coming there was no point in leaving the place looking like a monsoon had hit it. I stood the furniture up, put the hibiscus blossoms back in their vase, and went and got more water for them. Two silver-framed photographs lay on the floor, as I came back from the kitchen with the flowers I saw Steven Wei bending over, picking them up, rubbing his thumb along the frame of one. Putting the vase down, I went over to look.
The smaller photo, with the soft-toned contrast and stiff formality of a studio portrait, showed a middle-aged man in a suit and a tie standing behind a seated woman with a toddler on her lap. The clothes dated the picture to about thirty years ago, and the faces of the child and the standing man were both Steven Wei’s face.
The other picture was also a family grouping. Steven Wei, arms around his knees, was seated on a picnic blanket on a hilltop next to a pretty woman who wore a scarf to keep her hair from blowing in the breeze. The ocean sparkled in the distance. A little boy wearing a white kung fu
gi
and a big grin had thrown a kick and was holding the pose, probably hoping the photographer would get on with it before he fell over. Two old men also sat on the blanket, the one from the formal portrait and another, thinner but otherwise almost identical in looks. And the lawyer, Natalie Zhu, who sat a little ways apart. This picture was not more than a year or two old, and the little boy’s face, like those in the other picture, was also Steven Wei’s.
Bill had drifted over from the window to look over Steven’s shoulder, too. I glanced at him; then Steven seemed to notice both of us. He straightened, set the photos on the sideboard, and walked stiffly back to his chair.
I was still watching Bill. He stood at the window and smoked, looking as though he were doing nothing in particular. Then, pressing out his cigarette, he said, “Can I ask you something?”
Steven Wei looked around and found the question addressed to no one else. “Yes?”
“Why did you go out this morning? You knew we were coming. Your wife went out shopping, and the amah took Harry out to play, but where did you go?”
Bill’s tone was mild and conversational, but if I’d been Steven Wei, my own guilt at not having been here would have made me defensive and furious at the question. Steven Wei flushed crimson. “My uncle asked me yesterday to come to the warehouse early today, with Natalie,” he said crisply. “To go over some bills of lading and other papers. There is a large shipment coming in from China tomorrow, and one going out to New York in a few days.”
“Antique furniture, am I right?” Bill asked.
“Some antique, some new,” Wei said, obviously not caring whether Bill had it right or not.
“And the paperwork couldn’t wait, until this afternoon, say?”
Steven Wei had clearly been asking himself the same question since he’d seen his torn-apart living room. “The paperwork my father used to take care of will have to be done by someone else now. These are Lion Rock’s first shipments since my father passed on. Uncle Ang-Ran apologized about the timing, but the ship for New York sails in two days whether the paperwork is right or not. He is not an expert at the regulations involved, and he doesn’t speak English well.”
“And you are an expert? You’re an accountant—is this sort of thing your specialty?”
Steven Wei looked at Bill like you’d look at a gnat you’d been swatting at but hadn’t managed to get rid of. “I’ll learn. I’ve left my previous position to take over Father’s duties. I’ve inherited most of his share of the firm.”
Bill nodded, then asked, “Did you get done this morning what you went to do?”
After a long look, Steven Wei replied, “Not entirely. But Uncle Ang-Ran thought he could complete it and did not want us to be late to meet you.”
I thought it might be time to step in here. “Your uncle?” I asked Steven Wei. “Your father’s partner?”
“Wei Ang-Ran,” he told me; and I could tell from his voice that he was struggling to even be civil. Under the circumstances, I couldn’t blame him. “Father’s younger brother.”
“And what about your brother?” Bill asked.
The room resounded with a horrified silence. I wondered if you could be deported from Hong Kong for gaucheness.
“You mean my father’s other son?” Steven Wei finally asked.
Bill, the broad-shouldered, slouching image of American laissez-faire, nodded. “I imagine it’s a touchy subject,” he said, vastly understating the glaringly obvious, “but I was just wondering. Is he taking over the New York end of the business?”
I kept my mouth shut, letting him play out the hand. Natalie Zhu, sharp-eyed, seemed to be doing the same.
Steven Wei slumped back in his chair, the fire gone out again. “I’ve never met him,” he said. “He’s two years older than I. A doctor, from what I understand. My father seems to have left him a small share of the business also.” He glanced at Natalie Zhu, who, her mouth pursed in distaste, nodded but said nothing. “I understand he plans to come to Hong Kong for Father’s funeral. I was hoping to talk to him then. To buy him out. My uncle is childless, and so, I understand, is this—is my brother.” He clearly found the word difficult to say. “I had always planned that Harry would inherit Lion Rock Enterprises.”

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