China Trade (4 page)

“You look gorgeous,” Bill told me. “Violence becomes you.”

I thanked him politely, and ordered a club soda with three limes from the waitress who came by.

“I’m getting a burger,” Bill said. “Are you interested in dinner?”

“No, thanks, my mother’s cooking. Something to do with scallions and bean thread.”

“Sounds great,” said Bill wistfully. He’s a big fan of Chinese cooking, but he doesn’t get invited to my mother’s meals.

“I’ll tell you about it,” I promised. I sipped my club soda, trying not, in that after-class thirst, to gulp it all down at once. “Did you come up with anything?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Not even a lead. A suggestion. But it’s better than nothing, because otherwise all I’ve got is nothing.”

The waitress brought his burger, thick and juicy-looking, smelling of the grill. I had that after-class hunger, too.

“A guy I know,” Bill began, fiddling with onions and ketchup, salt and pepper, “who, of course, doesn’t handle stolen art himself, but knows a guy who might know a guy—”

“Of course,” I agreed. I peeled the pulp out of a wedge of lime.

“This guy says that he hasn’t—that is, as far as he knows, his friends haven’t—been offered anything that might come
from the Blair collection. But if he were—well, of course,
now
he’d call me, since he knows I’m looking and he’s eager to cooperate. But if I weren’t looking, and he had a nice piece of Chinese export porcelain for sale—something legitimate, you understand—”

“He sounds like a pain in the neck, this guy,” I interrupted, as Bill bit into the assembled burger. It was dark red inside, just this side of purple. That’s the way I like it best.

“Just a little cautious,” Bill said. “He’s been in business a long time.”

I finished the last of my lime. It was fresh and clean-tasting, but it didn’t clear the salty scent of grilled meat from my head.

“Anyway, if he had something along those lines for sale, he himself—he didn’t know what his friends would do—but he himself would offer it to the Kurtz Museum.”

“The Kurtz? Up on Fifth Avenue? The little townhouse one?”

Bill nodded, put the burger down. “They seem to be known for an extensive collection of export porcelains. They don’t display them all, but they’re apparently still collecting. Their director is an export porcelain expert.”

“An export expert? I like that.”

“He’s also, my friend says, a very aggressive acquisitor.” I didn’t think “acquisitor” was much of a word, but I didn’t bring it up. “He makes periodic buying trips to Europe, and his collecting has singlehandedly brought the Kurtz into the museum world big-time.”

“Does your friend—or his friends’ friends—actually mean to imply that the Kurtz might have stolen the Blair collection?”

“No.” Bill took up a knife and fork, cut a large chunk off the untouched side of his burger, and deposited it on my napkin. “He means that the thieves may know what
he
knows and that we should find out if the Kurtz has been offered any of the stolen pieces.”

“You sure?” I pointed at the burger chunk.

“It’s those almond-shaped waif eyes. I was getting a stomachache from the guilt. Besides, maybe you were starving to death and too polite to say so. Then your mother would be grateful to me for saving your life and invite me up for a ceremonial meal.”

“In your dreams.” I stuffed stray pieces of onion back inside the roll and chomped. The burger was tender, juicy, and completely satisfying. “Mmmmmm. Okay, we’ll go up to the Kurtz tomorrow. Did your friend have a name there?”

“Roger Caldwell. He’s the director. Make that noise again?”

“What noise?”

“ ‘Mmmmmm.’ ”

“Make it yourself.”

“I don’t speak Chinese.”

I finished my piece of burger and Bill finished his. “I have a date with the Golden Dragons’
dai lo
tomorrow morning,” I said.

“
‘Dai lo’?
That’s Chinese for ‘godfather’?”

I shook my head. “ ‘Elder brother.’ But I think the idea’s the same.”

“It’s all set up?”

I nodded.

“My offer still stands. I’ll go with you.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But I’m supposed to go alone.”

“If they were involved—”

“If they were involved they’ll just tell me to get lost and hint at dark things happening to me if I don’t.”

“Or do dark things right then and there.”

“No, I’m going with a guarantee of safe passage, at least for this meeting.” I told Bill about Mr. Gao. “It’s if they
weren’t
involved that their
dai lo
might help us out, if he feels like it. But I don’t think he’d feel like it for a white guy.”

Bill couldn’t argue with me, although a tiny little piece of me wished he could.

“Why did you tell Mr. Gao it was a friend who wanted this favor, and not you?” he asked.

“Oh, Mr. Gao shouldn’t be doing this, setting up a meeting between a respectable daughter of a respectable family and a gangster. If anything bad should happen to me—”

“—which of course it won’t—”

“—which of course it won’t, Mr. Gao would lose face in a big way. This gives him an out: He didn’t know it was me. If I hadn’t given him an out he would have turned me down.”

“But he knew?” Bill lit a cigarette. The shadows on his face jumped in the flickering light of the match.

“Of course he knew. Everyone always knows. But those are the rules. Everyone knows those too.”

And of course, everyone does. It’s just that not everyone always plays by the rules.

F
O U R

T
he address Mr. Gao had given me was a Chinatown tea shop not far from CP’s building. At two minutes to ten the next morning I was there, alone, as Mr. Gao had said I must be, and unarmed, as the phrase “She will be safe” implied I’d better be.

Except for the pudgy proprietor, the shop was empty when I walked in. He lumbered off his stool at the cash register and showed me to a table; then he shouldered aside a curtain into the back of the shop and disappeared.

I took off my hat and gloves, watching myself do that in mirrored walls that reflected endless Lydias, endless chrome chairs, dingy tablecloths, fluorescent lights. They made the small, square room seem, not larger, but confusing and distorted. A single crimson-and-gold New Year’s banner hung unevenly above the door. Smudged handprints clouded a
glass case displaying sweets: almond cookies, bean-paste jellies, mooncakes. I could hear the snapping of sizzling oil from the kitchen behind the curtain, ready to receive three-flavor dumplings, which a tattered sign claimed was the specialty of the chef.

The fresh cold air that had come in with me was absorbed into the damp, rancid smell of corners unscrubbed for too long. No New Year’s cleaning had gone on in here, but four brand-new calendars featuring alluring Hong Kong actresses in uncomfortable-looking poses—and varying amounts of clothing—hung on the rear wall.

I waited, my heart idling slightly higher than usual, my skin prickling a little. Chinatown gangsters aren’t cute, or courtly, like the Mafia you see in the movies. They’re nasty. And the Golden Dragons had another drawback: They were independent. The tongs are the organized crime down here, and the gangs are their foot soldiers. The men in the tongs allow the boys in the gangs a certain amount of freedom of criminal activity—from which the tongs take a cut—as long as they’re available for errands for their elders. Like murder, kidnapping, and the occasional (though rare because they scare the tourists) firebomb.

Some gangs, though, aren’t related to any tong, and have carved out turf on their own. They’re unorganized crime. Nobody controls them.

The Golden Dragons were one of those.

It had been bitterly cold on my way over, and my fingertips were still burning. I would have loved some tea, but no one came to offer me any, or to ask if I wanted something sweet to eat. The proprietor hadn’t locked the door, but nobody came through it. Trying not to tap my foot on the floor, I waited some more.

Finally, the curtain moved. A tall, wavy-haired young man, his face decorated with a sneer and a sparse mustache, sauntered out. He stood and looked at me. I looked back, taking in his leather jacket, tight black jeans, loafers without socks.
Even in this weather, bare ankles. Maybe I could do a paper: Cross-Cultural Expressions of Macho.

The sneer on his upper lip grew; I guessed that made it a smile. Unhurriedly, he crossed to my table, dropped onto the chair opposite me.

“Hey.” He arranged himself in the chair, one ankle on his knee, one arm on the table, letting the single syllable hang in the air between us. I didn’t reach for it. He spoke again, with a predatory smile. “So, you pretty cute. Old Gao didn’t told me that. You Chin Ling Wan-ju, huh?” From his Chinese pronunciation of my name, I could tell he was from someplace where the dialect was totally different from the Cantonese I was raised on. From his English I could tell he hadn’t been here very long.

Keep it bland and neutral, Lydia, I told myself. Don’t look scared and don’t try to look tough. “Yes,” I answered. “Or Lydia Chin. Are you the Golden Dragons’
dai lo?
”

“What, you think I don’t looking like
dai lo?
”

“Are you him?”

He eyed me before he answered. “Why you want meet him?”

Before I could speak, the chubby proprietor pushed through the curtain with a pot of hot tea, two cups, and a plate of black bean cakes. He put them down on the grease-spotted tablecloth and shuffled out.

“So,” the young man said after we were alone again. He poured himself tea, leaving me on my own. “What you want, Lydia Chin?”

Oh, well, why not? “I’m a private investigator. I—”

“What? No kidding!” He laughed. “You kidding. Private eye? Got no trenchcoat, got no gun—hey, you got gun?”

“No,” I said quickly. “No, I’m unarmed.”

“Maybe I better look.” He stood, leaving the smile behind.

I stood too, took off my own black leather jacket, held out my arms while he patted me down from behind, including
places I couldn’t have been carrying a gun. I gritted my teeth and let him finish.

“All right!” I snapped hotly, when it seemed to me he was past finished. I pulled away and sat again. I caught a movement in the curtain and a derisive snort; the proprietor had treated himself to a peek. I poured some tea to give myself something to do while I got my temper under control. Mr. Macho Gangster sauntered back around the table, sat in his former chair.

“Got boyfriend?” he asked.

“You got a name?” I snapped that, too. Calm down, Lydia, I demanded. Or at least learn to fake it.

“Sure.” He picked up the smile where he’d left it. “Trouble.”

“Trouble?”

“Sure. You come looking for me, but I find you.” He chuckled. It must have been an old joke.

“Okay,” I said. “That’s fine with me.” I sipped some tea. It was oversteeped and bitter, and I didn’t need to be warmed up anymore. I put the cup down.

“So,” he said. “How come you looking for Trouble?”

I wanted to answer that I did it for a living. But even more, I wanted to ask what I’d come to ask and get out of there.

“I’m investigating a burglary that happened three nights ago. I want to find out if the Golden Dragons were involved.”

He showed me all his teeth in a smile. “What make you think I say?”

“Maybe I’ll be lucky.”

“Maybe not. But sure, you ask.”

“At the old school building on Mulberry Street. Where Chinatown Pride is now. Three nights ago, two crates of porcelains were stolen from their basement.”

“Porcelains?” Derision crackled in the word. “You think I stealing porcelains? What the hell I do with porcelains?”

“Sell them?”

“Who buy? Why be stupid?” He bit into a black bean cake. Crumbs rained onto his leather jacket. “Look, I got car, got apartments. Got lots of money. Buying girlfriend jewelry,
fur coat. Plenty where that come from, plenty more. Porcelains? Don’t be stupid. Trouble don’t looking for trouble.”

Oh, sure. Just another hard-working Chinatown guy. “If the Golden Dragons didn’t do this, can you tell me who did?”

“Got no idea, of course not.”

“That’s a little hard for me to believe,” I said.

“Why hard?”

“That’s your territory. Are the Golden Dragons such idiots that someone can pull off a burglary right under your noses, and you don’t even get a cut?”

My stomach clenched when it heard my mouth say that. Oh, well. The worst that could happen was he’d kill me for insulting him.

He didn’t kill me, though. He laughed. “Boy, you some private eye. Pretty stupid.”

“I always thought I was pretty smart,” I said.

“You always wrong. Or maybe, you smart for ABC girl. But you pretty stupid.”

ABC, that’s American-Born Chinese. Girl, that’s not me.

Stupid, maybe. “I’m right, aren’t I? This is the first you’ve heard about this. Someone did come into your territory and burglarized that place and you don’t know a thing about it.”

“You lucky you cute,” Trouble told me, his face suddenly turning hard. “And you lucky for know Old Gao. Even you know him, I should blew your head off for talks like that. Talking like Golden Dragons losing face. Golden Dragons got big face around here, you don’t forget! Except,” he said, relaxing, brushing crumbs from his mouth, “except you also wrong, because you stupid.”

“Wrong about what?” I let the rest go.

“Golden Dragons’ territory. That corner not our territory now. You so smart, how come you don’t know it?”

“What do you mean, it’s not your territory? You lost it?” Gangs don’t lose turf in Chinatown without a fight, and those fights are not carried on in secret. If there’d been a turf war over that corner I’d have heard about it.

“No, not lost it. Renting it out.” Trouble grinned a huge grin, as though this was a very funny joke.

Maybe it was, but I didn’t get it.

“Renting it out? What does that mean? To who?”

“Guys from Flushing. Main Street Boys.”

Flushing, Queens, is the fastest-growing Asian community in the U.S., and lots of gangs are active there, but the Main Street Boys were new to me. “Who are they?”