The Blue Dragon (3 page)

I
t was an awkward visit. So much of the conversation had to be translated. Each of my questions caused considerable discussion before Mrs. Zheng would consent to answer.

A few important pieces of information emerged. Ted’s wife had died in childbirth. Mrs. Zheng disliked Sandy Ferris and didn’t want her to be with the child. Mrs. Zheng had seen her son earlier the day he died—in the afternoon.

The angry woman had nothing to say about any of the other tenants. But she
turned up her nose when the Wens in apartment 3A were mentioned. There was much Mr. Zheng did not translate for me. During the long and animated conversations they had with each other, I glanced at the child. What would he remember of his father?

We were similar, this child and I. But he was being raised in a Chinese home. He knew his grandparents. He spoke the language. And perhaps, unlike me, his face would never be strange to him.

A photograph of Ted sat on a table nearby. He was in his late teens or early twenties, I guessed. He was handsome and smiling and with a woman I presumed to be the child’s mother. The child. I thought of him as only “the child.” I hadn’t gotten his name—only his long and now curious look.

Coming out of the Zhengs’ apartment I spotted what had to be Steven Broder,
fiddling with his key at the door of apartment 2B. He was wearing black pants and a white shirt and tennis shoes. In his hand were a black jacket and a pair of black shoes.

“Mr. Broder.”

His head twisted around, and he looked at me curiously.

“I’m Peter Strand.”

He still looked puzzled.

“Investigating…”

“Oh yes,” he said, relieved.

“Do you have a second to talk about Ted Zheng’s death?”

“A second, maybe a second and a half.” He paused in front of the door. It was obvious we were going to have our conversation in the hall. “I don’t have much to say.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes, of course—he lived in the building.”

“You knew him a little better than that,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it was a little more than a hello in passing, wasn’t it?” I had detected a defensive attitude, and I instinctively probed in the same direction that had gotten me that reaction.

“What are you getting at?” he said. “Listen, I’m doing a double today. I don’t have much time, and frankly, I wasn’t born with a lot of patience.”

He started to turn to put his key in the lock. It was difficult, having to juggle his belongings.

“What I mean is that you hired him to paint the apartment, right?”

“I didn’t. Norman did.”

“Did you like Ted?”

“I didn’t think much about him one way or another.”

“Did you see him that night? The night of his death?”

“No,” Broder said with quick certainty.

“You’re sure?”

“What is this? I really know nothing about his death. I don’t know much about his life. Now, I’m sorry if that seems callous, but unfortunately, life goes on, and so do I.”

“I’m sorry about the inconvenience. Sometimes people see things they don’t know they see and—”

“I’m sure that all makes for a very nice philosophical discussion, but I don’t have the time. Talk with Norman.” He’d finally gotten his key into the lock and was about to disappear.

“I have,” I said.

He paused for a moment. He looked at me as if for the first time, up and down, appraisingly. “That’s just fine and dandy.”

“Weren’t you a little closer to Ted?” I asked, probing without grounds.

“Not me, sweetheart.”

Steven Broder was gone.

I waited at the door. In a moment I heard loud voices inside.

The Sandy Ferris who opened the door to apartment 1B on Saturday morning was a woman with bright-red hair and freckles. She had clear, bright-blue eyes and a smile. She wore a white T-shirt through which her obviously unencumbered breasts were visible. Below, an expanse of flesh, including her navel, revealed itself before disappearing into the loose waistband of a pair of tan shorts.

I suppose I expected an aura of grief wrapped in sackcloth. I didn’t get that, nor did I get the image Norman Chinn had painted, of an all-American girl, the type you’d find on a Wheaties box.

“Come in,” she said, and as I did, a gray cat with yellow eyes leaped to the back of the sofa, wary eyes focused on the stranger. The inside of the apartment was stark. Yet it had the requisite furniture—a sofa, side table with lamp, an upholstered
chair. All from the same unidentifiable time period.

The large photograph stood out as ornament. It showed two barely clad individuals. One was Sandy Ferris, whose slender body seemed nevertheless to explode out of a skimpy bikini. The other was a muscular and handsome Ted Zheng. He too seemed to be attired in the minimal amount of fabric necessary to avoid arrest.

“Mexico,” she said. “Acapulco.”

I nodded.

“I’m sorry about Ted,” I said.

She shrugged.

I interpreted it to mean “what can I say?” rather than that it was of no consequence to her.

“Sit down,” she said, nodding toward the sofa. The cat came across the back of it and down the arm to greet me. Its nose touched my fingertip. Then it rubbed its
face across my hand. It leaned its soft body into my palm as I ran it along its back.

I wasn’t aware that I had thought so much about what kind of person Sandy Ferris would be. This was a social worker? This was a woman who had just lost her lover? Whatever I’d had in mind to ask her had vanished at the sight of the real person. It wasn’t just the apparent sexuality and strange attractiveness that unnerved me. It was…yes, I expected sackcloth. I expected mourning. I did not expect sunlight and a sensuous woman.

The gray cat found its way into my lap.

“How long have you lived here?” I asked.

“Less than a year,” she said, still standing. “Can I get you something? Coffee?”

“Thank you.” That might give me a moment to get my mind together.

“He’s lived here for a few years,” she said from the kitchen. “I think it was late last fall that I moved in.”

“So the photograph is recent?”

“Yes. February. We scraped some money together and went to Mexico.”

“Where did you meet?”

“Where I work.” She came in with two cups. “This is about an hour old,” she said, sincere apology in her voice. “He wanted to get some help—day care or something—for his child.”

“What about Mrs. Zheng?”

“Oh, she loves the boy—don’t get me wrong.” Sandy settled into the sofa at the other end. “But it’s all so Chinese. Ted wanted his son to have a chance in America. Learn English before he went to school. He wanted Mark to be an American. Football, hamburgers, big-screen
TV
s. Mrs. Zheng isn’t likely to let that happen. Ted really struggled when he was young.”

“Struggled?”

“He said he always felt caught between the cultures. He wasn’t educated the way he felt he should have been to succeed. He said
he could have been a great businessman. But no one took him seriously. He used to say that he spoke English like a peasant.”

“The police seem to believe that he was dealing drugs.”

Sandy frowned. “No. Ted played with them. Parties. We’d go out. He’d do something to get in the mood, to stay in touch with the others.”

“Didn’t that mean he was hanging out with some pretty shady characters?”

“All middle-class partygoers,” she said. “Like me. Not gangsters, not murderers. What we did was small. Really small.”

“You party a lot?”

She smiled. “Weekends. Life’s short. I work hard during the week. At night I try to forget all my troubles…”

“And try to get happy.”

“Yes,” she said, smiling, tilting her head and seeming to invite me to continue in that direction.

The cat rolled over on its back. I patted its belly. It wanted more.

“Ted’s family. How do they feel about you?”

“The father is nice, polite. His mother hates me.” She shrugged. It was her line now: “What can I say?”

“How did Ted get along with others in the building?”

“Pretty good. He did work for some of them from time to time.”

“Who? What kind of work?” My ignorance was only partially feigned.

“He would find buyers for some of Mr. Emmerich’s seemingly endless supply of antiques. He’d do some odd jobs for Ray. And painting for Steve and Norman.”

“Anyone else?”

He helped Miss Siu’s sister move in. And he helped Miss Siu get her pamphlets out. She’s going to run for city supervisor.”

“What about the Wens? Nobody seems to mention them.”

“I don’t know much about them,” Sandy said. This reply was different. The tone wasn’t casual, though Sandy tried to make it sound that way. It was hard for her to keep her teeth from clenching.

“Did Ted know them?”

“I don’t know,” she said coldly.

“When was the last time you saw Ted that night?”

“About midnight. He said he was going out for a while.”

“He did?”

“Yes.”

“At midnight?”

“Before, I think.”

“Unusual?”

“No.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No.”

“Who he was going to meet?”

“He didn’t say he was going to meet anyone.”

“Did he often do that?”

She was no longer the open, friendly, flirtatious young girl. Sandy Ferris was uncomfortable.

“I told the police everything.”

She seemed like a little girl. Now very unsure of herself. She had pulled her legs in, her body in full retreat.

“Did you tell them you had a fight?”

She waited. “Yes…sort of. It wasn’t serious. He said he was going out for some fresh air. I didn’t like him to smoke inside. Sometimes he’d only be gone for ten or fifteen minutes. This time it was longer.”

“And it was before midnight?”

“Eleven thirty.”

“You know that exactly?”

“Yes. I remember looking at the clock.”

“Why did you look at the clock?”

“I don’t know. Why do people look at the clock?”

“Maybe sometimes they look at a clock because someone else did. Ted looked at the clock, didn’t he?”

I was prepared for either answer. But one would be more telling than the other.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you didn’t worry when he didn’t come back?”

“Well…”

“Because he’d stayed away before?”

“Yes.”

“And did you tell the police that?”

“Yes.”

Seemed logical that the police, already determined to put him in their drug-dealer scenario, would take his strange comings and goings as support for their theory.

But if he’d left, actually left the building, Ray would have known it.

“Were you aware of any problems he might have had with the other tenants?”

Her hand went to the sleeping cat, still on my lap. Her palm swept back the smooth gray fur. I wasn’t sure of her intent. It seemed intimate. I was growing uncomfortable.

“No,” she said softly.

“Are you going to stay here?”

“I don’t know,” she said wistfully. “I don’t know if it matters where I live.”

She said it plainly, not with self-pity.

“Thanks for giving me the time. I’m really sorry to put you through—”

“You don’t need to go.”

“I need to go,” I said. I really did. “I might need to talk to you again,” I said.

“Please. Anytime. I’m up late.”

I extricated myself from the sleeping feline.

I used the stairway to go from the first to the third floor, wanting to get a better
sense of the building itself. It was a dark and dreary stairway.

I passed apartment 3B, the empty one. I was too early for the Wens, so I decided to check it out. The door opened without effort. Inside, the sun illuminated what appeared to be a relatively new paint job.

It had the same layout as Norman Chinn’s. It was starkly white. On the floor was a drop cloth. I kicked the canvas, which also had newish spots of lime and lemon as well as dozens of other trampled-upon colors. In the folds of the cloth I noticed a piece of thin yellow cardboard. Just a torn edge. It was from a box. I recognized the color and a portion of the name Kodak.

I put it into my pocket as I looked around for signs of a struggle or blood. If there had been a struggle, there was nothing in the apartment to reveal it. There was no blood. I checked the bathroom. There were ashes in the sink. There was
a cigarette butt floating in the toilet bowl. I poked it with a hanger. Filtered, but otherwise unidentifiable.

Of course it seemed strange that the first person I’d see after noticing this was someone with a cigarette.

M
ay Wen was attractive. I guessed her to be in her late twenties or early thirties. But even if I were good at telling ages, it would be next to impossible to tell what lay beneath the heavy application of makeup. It was around noon on Saturday, and it looked to me as if she could be on her way out to a midnight soiree.

She puffed on a cigarette as we stood waiting in the living room for David Wen, her husband, to emerge from the bedroom.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” she said. “My boss is throwing a little brunch.”

“It won’t take long,” I said. “How well did you know Ted Zheng?”

“One couldn’t not know him,” May said. “He’s always around, always in your face.”

“Did you like him?”

“I didn’t dislike him,” she said. “But we didn’t socialize, if that’s what you mean.”

Her deep-colored lipstick matched her deep-colored fingernails. Her tight-fitting slacks were made of something shiny. Patent leather maybe. Latex. She spoke English like a native. No trace of an accent. I thought she might have come from Hong Kong, but what did I know?

“Did he ever work for you? Do odd jobs maybe?”

“No,” she said vaguely.

“Painting? I understand he sometimes did that around the building.”

“No, I do all the painting,” David Wen said, coming into the living room carrying a Moschino suit bag and matching suitcase.
He extended his hand. David couldn’t have been more different from May. He was dressed casually. He wore jeans, loafers without socks and a baggy sweater. Nice smile. Poised.

“We didn’t know Ted very well,” David continued. “We saw him in the hallways. Seemed okay.”

“He was okay,” May said. Her smile was to an imaginary audience, one her husband didn’t see.

“I think he had a crush on May,” David said. His tone was indulgent, amused, not jealous.

Her smile was hateful.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. He seemed like a nice guy. I’m sorry about his death. Gruesome. Right here in the building.” He shook his head.

“Did either of you see him on the night he died?”

“No,” May said.

“No,” David said. “I was out of town. I remember coming home the next day and May telling me about it.”

“You travel in your job?”

“Some,” he said.

“Some?” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “You practically live at the Ritz-Carlton.”

“I’m not gone all that often. It’s just that when I am, it’s for long periods of time.”

“How well did he get along with the others in the building?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about the others in the building,” May said. “Actually, this isn’t my ideal place to live.” She shot her husband a glance.

“We’re looking.” This was a response to May, despite his looking at me when he said it.

“Did the nature of Ted’s death bother you much?”

“No. These things can happen anywhere.”

I got the sense that this was an attractive couple riding high on the trends, living in the now of their choice. They wanted desperately to be or at least appear successful. This too made them seem an unlikely couple for Chinatown. Here, it seemed an older Chinese culture was struggling to hold on to its own way of life. These two didn’t look like they wanted the old ways.

Now I was well ahead of my schedule. Too much ahead to intrude on the Siu sisters.

I went out for a walk. I had about an hour to kill. While I walked through the narrow and crowded streets, gathering in the smells, the faces, the foreign signs, I fingered the torn edge of the Kodak box in my jacket pocket. A connection with Ted. He’d been the one painting the apartment. When I returned to the Blue Dragon, Ray was waiting.

“What have you learned?” he asked, smiling. He was glad to have a co-conspirator. I was feeling a little smarmy with the association. But then, what was I doing? What business did I have digging into these private lives? And wasn’t I beginning to enjoy it?

“Nothing much, but I have a question.”

That made him happy.

“Ask me.”

“Do the tenants socialize with each other?”

Ray looked puzzled.

“I mean, do the Siu sisters have dinner with the Zhengs, for example?”

A broad grin. “Noooooo,” he said, shaking his head, laughing. When the laughter stopped, he looked particularly serious. “Very strange, these people. Very different from each other. I see them come in. Sometimes I see them on the stairs. They don’t talk.”

“It’s unusual to have Caucasians in apartments here in Chinatown?”

His lips formed a frown that was intended to convey the seriousness of his thought.

“Quite true,” he said, as if he were someone else suddenly. He grinned. “Miss Ferris. Mr. Broder. And Mr. Emmerich. Mr. Emmerich very different. He own this building once upon a time. Not so odd for him to live here. He live in China and he tell me one day he likes Chinese better than his own.” Ray looked around the tiny lobby. “Strange, special place.”

“Ted knew everyone though? Everyone?”

“Oh yes,” Ray said. “Ted know everybody everywhere.”

For all appearances, the Siu sisters lived in a copy shop. Stacks of brightly colored sheets of paper occupied nearly all the flat surfaces in the living room. LINDA SIU FOR SUPERVISOR, read the top sheet on one of the stacks. There were various
proposition numbers on them. Most of the other stacks were obviously intended for a Chinese audience.

“Thank you for seeing me,” I said to the two of them. They were polar opposites. One shrunk back, frightened. The other grabbed my hand the way a plumber or football player—or a politician, I guess—might. Firmly.

The shrinking violet was Barbara Siu. The glad-hander was Linda. She was the one running for a city supervisor slot, an important and prized office in San Francisco political circles. Dianne Feinstein launched her career from that board. She became mayor, then a powerful United States senator.

Certainly Linda Siu seemed serious about making a run. As I was to find out, she was a serious person in all respects.

There was no obvious place to sit down. For a moment I thought we’d have whatever conversation I was permitted while we
stood there in the narrow pathway carved from the overwhelming abundance of political propaganda.

They led me, however, into the kitchen, where we sat around a small red Formica-topped table. The kitchen, smelling of ginger, pepper and other spices that I could not recognize, was a propaganda-free zone. It too was cluttered, but with things normally found in kitchens—or fairly normal.

As we sat, Linda asked, “You are aware that this is an active police investigation? Your involvement could be counterproductive, not to mention foolish.”

“I’ve talked with the police. They’ve given me guidelines,” I told her. “Other than interfering with their gang investigations, I have their blessing.”

The demure sister readied some tea. Linda sat stiffly, hands folded on the table like a teacher waiting for the class to stop fidgeting.

“Then we might as well begin. What is it that you’d like to know?” she asked.

“I’d like to know how well you and your sister knew Ted Zheng.”

“Fairly well. As well as you might know a neighbor, but not a friend,” she said brusquely. “Ted helped me from time to time.”

“Helped?”

“I say help, but what I mean is, he was paid to provide services—handling some of the copying arrangements, making some deliveries.” She shook her head, more in frustration, it seemed, than sadness. “He was organizing a group of people to distribute flyers and buttons and hang banners. I don’t know what I’ll do now.”

She shook her head again, this time to dismiss the thoughts. She seemed aware that she had veered away from the moment and was revealing an inherent coldness. Her concern was for her loss, not his or his family’s.

“And your sister?” I asked as Barbara came to the table with the teacups and saucers.

There was some family resemblance. Barbara’s face, for lack of a better way to describe it, was trapezoidal. She reminded me a bit of a fish underwater—hesitantly coming forward, then darting back. Linda’s face was flatter. Yet I wouldn’t doubt they were sisters for one moment.

“My sister,” Linda said, “had little to do with Ted. He was kind of a blustery kind of fellow. Full of energy. Loud sometimes. I think my sister was frightened of him.”

“Did she have reason?” I looked at the quiet sister, but Linda answered.

“No, not at all.”

“What do you have to say, Barbara?”

Linda spoke again, this time to her sister, and in Chinese. Barbara spoke in return, now pouring pale green tea from the white teapot.

“She says he was a nice young man,” Linda said, smiling. “She is sorry to hear that he has died. She said he brought her flowers once.” Linda seemed surprised. “I didn’t know that.”

“When was the last time she saw him?”

More Chinese.

“She saw him that day. He came here to deliver some more pamphlets.”

“Did he seem upset or worried or anything?”

I waited for the translation.

“No, he seemed normal.”

“What about you?” I asked Linda.

“I’m not sure I saw him at all that day. I come and go. I work hard. Sometimes I don’t know what day it is. But under no circumstances did I see anything I thought suspicious.”

“He seemed very likable. I think everyone in the building liked him,” I said, seeing if I could get any response.

“Well,” she said, thinking as she spoke, “he was a likable sort. Young, immature—but his heart was in a good place, I suppose.”

“Who were his friends in the building? You know, who did he hang out with?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“There was some indication that he used drugs,” I said.

“Most people do, of one sort or another. I never saw him out of control.”

“Are you a photographer by chance?”

She looked puzzled. Shook her head.

“I was thinking someone told me there was someone in the building who was an avid photographer.”

“There might be. I don’t know the other residents all that well.”

“No one seems to know each other, but they all seem to have known Ted Zheng.”

She was silent. It wasn’t a question. And she wasn’t going to answer it.

“I would think a politician like you would get to know everybody.”

“Is that what you think?” she said curtly. “Thinking doesn’t make it so, Mr. Strand.”

A phrase my third-grade teacher had used.

“You have no thoughts about Ted Zheng’s death?” I pressed.

“As I said, thinking doesn’t make it true.”

“Yes, but it might help us start down the path as we seek the truth,” I said, hoping the sarcasm would bridge any gap in cultures.

“I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

“How’s your campaign going?”

“Quite well, thank you,” she said.

It was clear my time was up. That was fine by me. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

“Thank you,” I said, standing, my tea just now cool enough to drink. “I won’t take up any more of your time.”

“How soon will you be wrapping up your investigation?”

“Oh, I’ve just started,” I said. “Unlike the police, I think the solution to this matter lies inside this building.”

She blinked. For a split second, I saw surprise. For just that moment, I had a peek through the mask.

When I left, I passed by Mr. Emmerich’s door. It was ajar as usual. I noticed that he was moving about. I crept a little closer to the door and looked in. He was moving an urn to the window. It couldn’t have been an easy task. It contained a large fern and, I suspected, a decent amount of soil to sustain it.