The Shanghai Moon (32 page)

“Ma, Clifford’s been rotten from the day he was born. I’m surprised Kwan Shan didn’t kick him out of the house years ago.”

She rolled her eyes. Once again I’d failed to understand something basic. “It would be better if you could choose your relatives. Get ones you want, throw away bad ones. But you can’t. The child you get is the child you have to keep.” Her narrowed eyes told me that, by the way, I should consider myself lucky this was true. As if to emphasize her point, she added, “It was when Kwan Shan left Chinatown that her son became involved with gang boys.”

I wasn’t having any. “I thought you said his bad behavior made her move away.”

“Now she will not come back. She is ashamed to show her face.”

“She’s probably just happy in her nice new apartment. With a garden. Near her grandchildren.”

“What mother could be happy when her youngest son is a White Eagle?”

“Ma—what?”

“I said—”

“I know what you said. Armpit’s a White Eagle? Since when?”

“Auntie Ro, at the pharmacy, told me. Her brother-in-law, who makes tattoos, drew a white eagle on Clifford three days ago. Auntie Ro says that means he is accepted as one of them.”

It sure did. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, have you been home for me to tell you? I’m sorry, Ling Wan-ju, I must not have noticed.”

When I got to my office, I found Bill shooting the breeze with the Golden Adventure ladies. They all but batted their eyes when he said good-bye. Well, good. Anything to keep them thinking I was a worthwhile subtenant.

“How did you talk your mother into going?” he asked as we went down the hall.

“Believe me, I didn’t. I told her I didn’t want to have to worry about her. She said, ‘Oh, this is for you, not for me?’ and I thought she was mad. Next thing I knew she was looking for her MetroCard.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“I hope that’s for the mess and not my mother?” I could tell it was, though, by the way he’d stopped inside my door and was staring around.

“All these papers were on your desk? That’s amazing.”

“Oh, give me a break. They went through the files, too.”

“I’d sure like to know what they were after.”

“So? Get to work and I’ll start digging.”

Bill headed for the bathroom with his toolbox. He can be a pain, but he has his good points. One is, he has some manual skills I’ve never mastered: hammering nails straight, driving a stick shift. And lifting fingerprints. He can do that, too.

“Rough, dry surfaces.” He examined the sill and bars. “I don’t know how much I can get.”

“It doesn’t matter. Just be thorough. And do as much as you can from outside. And take your time.”

While Bill was playing with powders and brushes, I picked up papers. The scattered folders and any papers whose provenance was obvious I refiled. Then I went through what was left. What I was doing was in the nature of carving away the marble to get to the statue. By clearing up everything I could, I was hoping to discover what wasn’t there.

“Tell me about the Shanghai cop,” Bill called through the window as he worked. “Is he any good, do you think?”

“Hah! A story in itself. Oh, my God, and a big one!” I stopped in the middle of my piles of paper. “I didn’t tell you about Alice.”

“What about Alice?”

“It’s long. And bad. And involves the Chinese cop.” I described Inspector Wei, which made him grin. Then I told him about the likelihood Alice Fairchild was involved in the jewel theft with Wong Pan, and the grin faded.

“That would explain a lot,” he said. “And change everything.”

“It sure would.”

“Is Mary looking for her?”

“You bet. I called her again, too, but of course she didn’t answer.”

The locksmith showed up right as Bill was finishing. He raised his eyebrows at the fingerprint powder all over everything. “Run-of-the-mill B and E?” he said to me. “How come you rate?”

“Homeland Security,” Bill offered without looking up.

An hour later my window had a case-hardened dead bolt and bars, my office was neater than it had been in months, and we still had no idea what had gone on. All my papers were accounted for. If the burglars were after anything besides making a mess and driving up my blood pressure, I couldn’t see that they’d had much success.

Neither had Bill, it looked like. “A partial palm. A smear. And what might be a thumb up by the lock.”

“I bet that’s mine. Oh, well, that wasn’t the point. What’s ‘case-hardened’?”

“Your pal Mulgrew.”

“What?”

“A cop who’s lost all human emotion.”

“Okay, be like that.” I took out my phone and dialed. I spoke briefly in Cantonese with Armpit Kwan’s heartbroken mother in New Jersey. Then I called the cell phone number she gave me for her heartbreaking son.

“Yah?” Well, it was the right number. That was Armpit: nasal and aggrieved.

“Hi, Clifford. It’s your cousin Lydia.”

“I don’t have—”

“Lydia Chin, Armpit. You do have: Our mother’s fathers were second cousins twice removed.” Or something. Whatever it was, he didn’t know it, I’d bet on that. “Your White Eagle homies broke into my office this afternoon and I want to know why.”

“Lydia Chin?” Armpit paused in pretend thought, which is the only kind he has. “Oh,
that
Lydia.”

“Why, Armpit?”

“Why what?”

“My office!”

“Aw, cuz, you’re tripping.”

“Don’t let’s go through all that. They were here, they made a mess, and you’re going to tell me why.”

“I don’t know shit about anything.”

“That’s
all
you know about anything, but I want to hear it anyway. You want to meet uptown where no one knows us, or you want me to come find you in Chinatown?”

“No way I’m meeting you.”

“Then I’ll find you, and your new friends will see us together.”

“No way you’re finding me, either.” Armpit was stuck in a groove.

“Cousin, I’m a private eye, remember? I can do pretty much everything the cops can do”—I put a little weight on “cops”—“and I don’t have to be as careful about legal niceties.” I wondered if anyone had ever used “nicety” in conversation with Armpit before. “I can trace your phone. No, don’t hang up, it’s already too late. And I can also lift fingerprints.”

A half-second delay. “So?” He was buying it, so I stepped it up.

“I have three sets of prints here. Later I’m going to send them to a private lab I use. Unless I have something better to do, like talk to my cousin. One set’s small. The kid, Armpit. You sent in a kid, and once I know who it was you can bet I’m telling his parents. And their family association, and their village association, and whatever tong their village association headman belongs to. And the beauty of it, Cousin Clifford, is that all those people, who will then go out of their way to give the White Eagles as hard a time as they possibly can, will know it was
your
cousin who jammed the White Eagles up. And the White Eagles will know it, too. Now: uptown, or right there where you are?”

And bless Armpit’s cowardly, probably stoned, and inarguably stupid little heart, if he didn’t suggest a pizza place on Union Square. Which was a good thing, because while Bill could lift fingerprints, we had no way to ID some ten-year-old from prints even if he’d left any, which he didn’t. The point of Bill dusting and lifting was to make sure the locksmith, the travel ladies, and any curious onlookers above could confirm we’d dusted and lifted. Also, though certain technologies available to the police are in fact available to PIs, I couldn’t trace a cell phone call. So it was good he’d told me where to meet him, because right at that moment I had not the first idea where Armpit was.

Bill and I subwayed up to Union Square. We found Armpit Kwan in Vinnie’s Pies, stuffing into his pasty face a slice mounded with every ingredient anyone ever thought to put on a pizza.

“Who’s he?” Armpit sullenly demanded as Bill dropped into a chair.

“Bill Smith,” I said. “Another detective. What’s that?”

“Pizza, dumb-ass. I didn’t say I’d talk to him. Just you.” Or words to that effect, extruded through crust, salami, peppers, and pineapple. Sauce plopped onto Armpit’s shirt, joining something brown from yesterday, or last week, or whenever his heartbroken mother had last done his laundry.

“Well, you will talk to him.” I was grateful for the garlic in the air. Like most gang nicknames, Armpit didn’t choose his own, and it didn’t come from nowhere. “He and I work together.”

“Shit, Cousin Lydia. I thought you were a big tough girl. Didn’t know you were working for a
baak chit gai
.” The term he used means literally “chicken roasted without soy sauce.” It’s what the gangs call white people these days.

“Actually,” Bill said, “I work for her. I’m the muscle. So she doesn’t have to get her pretty hands dirty.” He crowded Armpit a little. Armpit pulled back, but all that got him was pressed against the wall.

“Listen,” I said. “I want to know what the White Eagles were after in my office. And whether they got it. You tell me that, I’ll even pay for your pizza.”

“Oh, big whoop.”

“And if you don’t,” Bill said in a friendly fashion, “I’ll cram it and the box it came in down your throat.”

“Fuck you!” Armpit, starting to rise, clonked into a badly colorized photo of Sicily.

“Armpit! Sit down! Bill, leave him alone. He’s my cousin. He’s cooperating.” This was about the cheesiest good cop/bad cop routine Bill and I had ever done, but Armpit was a cheap date.

“Well, you lose, cuz.” Armpit sank back, gave Bill another glare, and curled his lip at me. “I don’t know what the deal was.”

“Armpit, I know you’re just a wannabe with that gang, but I need to find out—”

“Fuck you! A wannabe?” He yanked up his sleeve to expose his red, swollen shoulder, where a misshapen eagle screamed in for a landing. If this was Auntie Ro’s brother-in-law’s work, I hoped he had a day job. “You don’t get one of these if you’re a wannabe. I’m
made,
baby.”

Made? Chinatown gangs were recycling Mafia slang?
Where’s your cultural pride?
I wanted to ask. Instead, I said, “I don’t see how that can be true, if you don’t know anything about what went down today.”

Trapped like a rat. Bright spots flared in Armpit’s cheeks. “I didn’t say I don’t know
anything
. I said I don’t know what the deal was, and I fucking don’t.”

In a flash Bill grabbed his wrist. “Clean up your language. Ms. Chin doesn’t like to hear that.”

Armpit tried and failed to pull away. “Ow.” He stared in offended amazement.

I said, “What does that mean?”

Armpit swung back to me. “Huh?”

“You don’t know what the deal was, but you don’t not know anything? Does that mean something? I hope so. Because if it’s just words, I have to tell you, Bill hates words.”

Bill let Armpit go and reached for his Coke, which he downed probably so he wouldn’t laugh out loud.

“Hey!” Armpit protested as his caffeine and sugar vanished. “Lydia!”

I gave him a benign smile. “It-tee-bit-tee fingerprints. Four fulls and two partials. Whose can they be?”

“Jesus Christ, cuz, you’re a pain in the ass.
What
?” Armpit said as Bill leaned toward him. “Oh, screw it. I don’t know the deal because we didn’t plan the job. We don’t give a shit—all right!—about your office, cuz. Some guy hired us.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I don’t!
Dai lo
didn’t tell us.”
Dai lo
, literally “big brother,” is a Chinatown gang leader’s title. “He just said we’d get good money to distract the travel ladies, open the place up, and let this guy in.”

“Let him in? The White Eagles didn’t search the office themselves?”

“Why would we? What the—What do you have that we could ever want?”

“What did the guy want?”

“How would I know?”

“Does your
dai lo
?”

Armpit rolled his eyes.

“Find out.”

“What?”

“Find out. Who it was, what he wanted.”

“You’re crazy.”

“No, Bill’s crazy,” I said. Bill leered crazily. “I’m just your cousin with some little kid’s fingerprints.”

“I can’t.” Armpit’s voice rose in pitch as it lowered in volume. “I can’t ask
dai lo
shit like that. What if he doesn’t know? If the guy didn’t tell his name, ever think of that?
Dai lo
will think I’m trying to make him look bad.”

“Explain you’re being blackmailed. Fishface Deng, he’s your
dai lo,
right? He’ll understand.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“Yes, of course. But whatever it takes, Armpit. By tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, man. Don’t do this to me.”

“What’s the problem? You’re made. You’re on the inside. Congratulations, by the way.”

Armpit ran his greasy hand through his hair. “It’s new,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“The tat. Just got it.”

“Yes, so I understand. You’ve achieved your goal, Armpit. Now achieve mine.”

A look of desperation stole into his red-rimmed eyes.
“
Dai lo
needs guys he can trust. For this big score coming up. That’s how come.” He pointed to his shoulder. “It’s my chance. Don’t screw me, cousin.”

The third-stringer called off the bench into the big game. The understudy stepping into the spotlight. Who could fail to be moved? “Okay, you can have until tomorrow night.”

“Oh, man! Oh, no, come on, give me a break.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“This bullshit”—he cringed away from Bill, but Bill only smiled encouragingly—“what happened in your office. If I rat it out,
dai lo
will kill me.”

Sad to say, that might be literally true. And if I thought my mother was displeased when I’d sent her out to Queens, just wait until she learned I’d sent my cousin Clifford on to his next life.

Armpit pushed, sensing my wavering. “And the big score. I don’t want to screw my chances, you know, in that. There’s serious money involved. And besides money . . .” He stopped, with the wide eyes of a punk who, even stupid and stoned, realizes he’s said too much.

“What, besides money? What is there for guys like White Eagles, besides money? Well, cheap sex and bad drugs. Is that what you’re afraid you’ll be missing?”