The Shanghai Moon (43 page)

And suddenly I was struck by a bolt of lightning.

I grabbed Bill’s arm.

“What?”

“Wait.” I ran it through in my mind once more, to make sure I was right. I was. “Joel’s fishy thing. It
was
in the call with David Rosenberg. Oh, damn! Why didn’t I see it sooner?”

“I don’t see it now. Care to explain?”

“Alice asked him for a PI!”

“And?”

“In Zurich! At a cocktail party. Before she left for Shanghai. Before she met Wong Pan, before he skipped out. Before this all started!”

Bill didn’t answer. I could see in his eyes he was doing what I’d done, playing the conversation with Rosenberg over in his mind.

Three more funeral cars rolled by, holding more solemn children. Nieces, nephews? Cousins? The kind I had, so many and so distant that even my mother couldn’t run down the lines of connection? But it didn’t matter; family was family.
Better if you could choose relatives,
my mother had said.
But you can’t
.

“But you can!” I burst out as the second bolt hit. I saw not the black cars in front of me but other funerals, plain pine boxes, garden graves, winding sheets. Swampy water and bricks weighting bodies down.

“You can what?”

“You just said it. Families are complicated things.” I whipped out my phone and dialed Rosenberg’s number.

“Hello, Ms. Chin. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks.” If you didn’t count the guns, the sidewalk scuffle, the police station, C. D. Zhang’s depressing revelations, and the jolts from the lightning. “But I have to ask you something. When you talked to Joel, you told him Alice had asked about a PI in New York. Did you tell him when she asked?”

“Not precisely. I think I said a few weeks back.”

“Thank you! Talk to you later.”

“Wait. Are you in a rush, or shall I tell you what I’ve learned about the forged documents? My reporter’s spoken to his street source. I was waiting until my information was complete, but I can give you what I have now if you’d like.”

“Oh. Oh, yes, please.”

“Alice Fairchild probably did have them made, in Zurich. There were a Chinese passport and a U.S. visa in the name of Wu Ming.”

“Thank you. And”—a wild guess, but it was so clear to me now—“a Swiss passport, too?”

“Yes. How did you know that? For herself, though why—”

I interrupted. “In what name?”

“Helga Ulrich.”

“Thanks! Good-bye.” I speed-dialed Mary. “Unbelievable!” I said to Bill while I waited.

“What is?”

“How stupid I am.”

Mary answered her phone with “If you’re in trouble, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t tell you. Listen, this is important.
Alice Fairchild has a Swiss passport in another name. She’s probably registered at a hotel using it.”

“What name?”

“Helga Ulrich.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Swiss. No, seriously, it’s a long story.”

“Do I want to hear it now?”

“No, you want to go looking for Alice.”

“You’re right, but first tell me how you know this.”

I was tempted to remind her PIs have an ecological niche in the crime-fighting world, too, but I just gave her the facts.

“Oh,” she said grudgingly. “Not bad.”

“You’re welcome. ‘Bye.” I clicked off before she could ask what I was up to next, even though I didn’t know what I was up to next. But fresh adrenaline was sizzling in my veins. Turning to Bill, I said, “Alice has—”

“I was eavesdropping. Helga Ulrich?”

“How about that?”

We stood on the sidewalk and discussed how about that. We were on our way to a hell of a theory, I thought, when we were interrupted by my phone ringing again. It wasn’t the
Wonder Woman
song but, hoping it was Mary calling from some landline to tell me my tip had panned out and they’d found Alice, I answered anyway.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s your cousin, cuz. I got some shit for you. You want it?”

Crabby because it wasn’t Mary, I said, “If that’s all you have.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Warily, he said, “That shit you asked about before, I don’t know nothing, like I said.”

“Armpit—”

“Just listen! That fat dude, got picked up today when
dai lo
got grabbed—anything you can do about that, by the way? Cuz?”

“No.”

“I just thought, since you’re tight with the cops—”

“You thought wrong. Keeping them off you is about all I can do, and it’s getting harder every minute. Armpit, I’m busy here. You have something for me or not?”

“Jesus, take a chill pill. That fat guy, like I say. Warren says he saw him. With
dai lo
, twice. You know, at meetings I couldn’t make.”

Or wouldn’t have been invited to if you were the last White Eagle standing
. “You’re telling me Wong Pan and Fishface Deng knew each other. It’s nice to have that corroborated, Armpit, but we’d kind of figured it out by now.”

“Shit, cuz! Cut me some slack, will you? I’m trying to help you out here. The second time, Warren says the fat dude was with a lady.
Baak chit gai
.”

Oh. “Who?”

“No idea. But you want to see her, she just went into old man Chen’s store.”

Bill and I charged to Bright Hopes on a dead run, as far as that’s possible in weekday Chinatown. I called Mary, got voice mail, left a message, and stuck my phone in my pocket so I could dodge grandmas, school kids, and melon vendors. Drenched in sweat, we pushed into and through
Bright Hopes past a first smiling, then confused Irene Ng, who gave us a token “Wait.”

“It’s okay. We were invited.” I threw open Mr. Chen’s office door.

Three heads turned.

“Lydia!” Alice Fairchild’s voice was filled with dismay. She sat opposite Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang, the same as when I’d met them in here. The differences between that meeting and this were, one, no one had served tea; and two, Alice was rather impolitely pointing a pistol at the two old men.

“Alice, put it down,” I said quietly.

“Lydia, go away!” Hysteria edged Alice’s words. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m just asking these gentlemen for money. I need money.”

“For your sister, right?” I spoke gently. “She told me you were taking good care of her.”

“You talked to her? To Joan? Lydia, for God’s sake, leave her out of this!”

“But she’s what it’s about, isn’t she? Only she’s not your sister.”

Alice’s eyes widened. She didn’t answer, but she also didn’t let the gun waver. Her finger was on the trigger, not beside it where a practiced shooter’s would be. I’d have bet it was the first gun she’d ever held. So I went on in a calm, reassuring voice, because nothing’s as scary as a scared amateur. “You’re Major Ulrich’s daughter. Your mother died in Chapei Camp. Alice Fairchild died, too, didn’t she? You’re not really Alice Fairchild.”

For a long moment no one moved.

“Chapei Camp made a lot of orphans, and orphans didn’t do well,” Alice said quietly. “The Fairchilds took me in. They had nothing, the same as everyone else, but when my mother died they took me in and loved me and saved my life.

“Then a few months later Alice died. Joan was very sick. In her fever she called me Alice and cried when I said I wasn’t. So we all started to pretend I was her sister. For her sake. Lydia, I know you have a gun, and Bill, you, too. Please put them on the table here. One at a time, please, Lydia first.”

“But after the war?” I said, to keep her talking. “The Japanese must have known who you really were.”

“Do you think they cared? Father—Reverend Fairchild—told the Americans the Japanese records were wrong. That’s all, just wrong. That’s all there was to it. Thank you,” she said when I put down my rig, as though I’d poured her tea. “Now Bill, please.”

Bill put his .38 beside my .22. As he straightened he stepped back, to spread Alice’s field of vision.

Alice turned to the old men, who’d been sitting in silence, Mr. Chen with wide, frightened eyes, Mr. Zhang less visibly scared but not looking as unperturbed as usual.

“Now, gentlemen, I’m very sorry, but really, I need a lot of money. Joan’s very ill and she needs to stay in her own home. I’m not going to put her in an institution. They’re like the camp, those places, crowded with people you don’t know, nothing beautiful, everyone sick . . .”

The hysteria had crept back into her voice. Conversationally, I said, “You made some risky investments a few years ago. Was this why? Because Joan needed money?”

“Tom died. His pension stopped. I’d tried to tell him, to help him plan, but he said Joan would be all right. He
didn’t know, he had no idea how much it costs when you’re sick . . . So I tried to make it up. But I couldn’t. Now. Now.” She turned to Mr. Chen. “I know you were going to pay a million dollars for the Shanghai Moon, and I’m sorry that money’s been confiscated, but you’ll get it back. I was supposed to get half of that, and I really need it. Please.”

That “please” wasn’t a request; it was an order for the old man to go fetch her money. No one moved, though. Alice frowned. To distract her, I said, “And the Shanghai Moon was at the root of everything. Your father had been offered it, to save Kai-rong.”

Mr. Chen blanched. “
What?
What are you saying?”

I raised my hand gently, telling him to stay calm. “But he never got it, did he?” I asked Alice.

“He told my mother about it.” She smiled a bitter smile. “It was going to make us rich. Rich! He was arrested on his way to meet Rosalie.”

“How do you know that? You were a child.”

“Oh, my mother repeated it, over and over, every day in Chapei Camp. How my father’s greed sent us there. And how the Germans could have gotten us out but they didn’t. Germans! I hated them. They left us to rot in that horrible place, left my mother to die.”

“Holocaust asset recovery,” Bill said. “That’s why you do it. To get back at the Germans.”

Expressionless, she looked at him. “My mother had a silver dressing-table set, with grapevines on it. A mirror, combs, and brushes. A magnifying glass, and a delicate thing for stretching the fingers of kid gloves before you
put them on. When she got sick, I had to ask the camp commander to take them in exchange for medicine.
Ask him!
Then she died. Over the next few years we traded everything away. When the camp was liberated, I had nothing of hers.”

“But the camp was run by the Japanese,” I said.

“We didn’t have to be there! The Germans could have saved us!” Alice’s shrillness made Mr. Chen jump. Mr. Zhang put a hand on his arm. Alice went on more calmly, “It was their fault. And Rosalie’s and Mei-lin’s, for tempting my weak, greedy father.”

“But what was the point of getting Joel and me involved?”
Where the hell was Mary?
“Why not just sell the jewelry after you and Wong Pan stole it?”

At the mention of Joel she lost a little starch. “It wasn’t worth enough. Joan needs much more money than that. Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang had to believe Wong Pan had the Shanghai Moon and was desperate to sell it before I caught up with him. So they wouldn’t ask why it wasn’t offered on the open market.”

“You knew who they were?”
Mary? Girlfriend? Any time now
.

“Of course. But they had to believe I didn’t. That Wong Pan was ahead of me. I thought it was a clever plan, but I’m a plodding lawyer, not a strategist. Joel called that morning to ask why I’d inquired about a detective before I’d even left Zurich. I put him off with a promise to come in and talk about it. Then I called Wong Pan. Just to say we had to hurry. I didn’t know he’d already made a deal with the White Eagles, already gotten a gun from them,
already killed that Shanghai policeman. Lydia, I’m so sorry.”

“I knew it. I knew you didn’t mean to have anything to do with killing Joel.” I tried to sound as if I’d had faith in her all along. “Alice, put the gun down. This can all be worked out.”

“No. I’m going to jail, I don’t doubt it. And I should. So many bad things were my fault. But I’ve got to take care of my sister first.”

“I’m very sorry.” Mr. Zhang spoke up, and he really did sound sorry. “But my cousin and I don’t have the money you’re asking for.”

“You were going to pay a million dollars for the Shanghai Moon. I’ve looked into your history of chasing it. That was part of my research for my plan. Like asking about a detective.” She shook her head sadly.

“Yes. And earlier today we had it, and could have given it to you. Now it’s gone. Even the police don’t know where.”

“Someone stole it, Alice,” I said. “Before the noodle shop.”

“What are you talking about? Who?”

“We don’t know. So you see—”

She shook her head. “No. No.”

“Yes. I—”

“No!” In rising panic, she said, “There must be more! Anyone willing to spend that much, there must be more.”

“No.” Mr. Zhang’s voice was gentle with regret. “No more.”

Maybe I should go for the gun,
I thought,
even in this crowded room, before Alice totally loses control.

Suddenly her face brightened. “Jewelry! Oh, yes! I’ll take what you have here and sell it, and Mr. Chen, I’m sure you’re insured! Everyone will be fine! Oh, I wish I’d thought of this sooner!” Smiling happily, she stood and gestured for Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang to get up. Mr. Zhang rose and helped his cousin, whose pale face was sweating.

Okay,
I thought.
We’ll go to the front, and someone will see this crazy lady with a gun and call the cops. Or I’ll distract her and Bill can jump her. Or Mary will finally turn up.

I followed Bill, who followed the cousins, with Alice behind us. Irene Ng’s confusion when Bill and I charged in was nothing to her shock as our little parade came out.

“It’s all right, Irene,” Mr. Zhang said soothingly. Mr. Chen didn’t speak.

“Lock the door,” Alice told Irene. The young assistant seemed rooted to the spot, but Alice moved the gun an inch or so, and Irene hurried to the front.

Mr. Zhang spoke again, calmly. “Irene, please open that case”—he pointed to a display of diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds in gold settings—“and put everything into a bag.” Irene’s wide eyes found Mr. Chen, who managed a nod. With shaking hands she unlocked the case, took a velvet sack from a drawer, and slipped necklace after bracelet after ring into it. I glanced at Alice, hoping her hands weren’t shaking, too.
All right
, I thought,
bystanders, it’s time to show some Chinatown spirit. Get involved! Call a cop
! I mean, here was a daylight robbery on Canal Street. Someone had to care.