Curse of the Jade Lily (4 page)

“That’s when things got really ugly. The Europeans literally raped China. Stole everything that wasn’t nailed down and a lot that was. Great Britain held loot auctions every afternoon because it wanted to make sure that ‘looting on the part of British troops be carried out in the most orderly manner.’ That’s an actual quote. It was through a loot auction that the Jade Lily fell into the hands of Colonel G. Nicholas Chaffee, a British serving officer.

“Chaffee was one of those
‘Take up the White Man’s burden’
kind of guys. Once the Chinese were subjugated, he volunteered for duty in India—apparently he wanted to help keep the natives in check following the Indian Famine. But while on his way to Bombay, Chaffee’s ship sank—no one has ever been able to figure out how or why—and Chaffee drowned. Chaffee’s widow quickly sold the Lily to the ninth Earl of Huntington for the princely sum of one hundred and fifty pounds. He was killed when the British captured Baghdad from the Ottoman Turks in March 1917 during the First World War. He was run over by General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude’s command car—I am not making this up. The Lily then became the property of his brother, the tenth Earl of Huntington, who was military attaché to the British Embassy in what was then called the State of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes but we know as Yugoslavia. His wife prominently displayed the Lily at social functions and delighted in telling guests about the curse until she died of an undiagnosed ailment. Soon after, the earl gave the Lily to his daughter Lady Julia as a wedding present when she married a Serb politician. A week later, Yugoslavia was invaded by the Nazis. Are you following me?”

“You make the Lily sound like one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” I said.

“I’m just saying, bad luck follows the Lily,” Heavenly said. “For example, Lady Julia and her husband fought with Tito’s partisans against the Nazis—apparently she was one helluva girl. However, they protested when Tito took control of the country after the war and established a constitution patterned after the Soviet Union’s. They were both shot. The Lily then fell into the hands of the politician’s sister, who had no idea what it was. She packed it up in a box and stored it in a bank vault in Sarajevo, where it was forgotten until her daughter, Tatjana Durakovic, rediscovered it following her mother’s death in 1992. Unfortunately, before Tatjana had a chance to cash in on her find, the Yugoslav Wars broke out, and what a happy little bloodbath that was.”

“How many dead?” I asked. “One hundred thousand?”

“Twice that. Most of Tatjana’s family was among them. Eventually, the war ended, Yugoslavia was divvied up along ethnic lines, and Tatjana’s little part of the world became Bosnia and Herzegovina. Unfortunately, by then the bank in Sarajevo had been looted and the Lily stolen. Tatjana immigrated to the United States, met a nice guy, married, became a U.S. citizen, and now is running a resort on the south shore of Lake Superior in Ontonagon, a small village in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. But the story doesn’t end there.”

“I didn’t think it would.”

“Somehow—I don’t have the details—the Lily fell into the hands of Dr. Arnaud Fornier, a French oncologist who dabbled in Asian art. Dr. Fornier sold the Lily at auction to Leo Gillard, an American. The publicity and money the good doctor earned from the sale convinced him to retire from medicine and open a gallery specializing in jade. However, he didn’t have the resources necessary to acquire true jade artifacts for his many newfound customers, so he resorted to forgery. Dr. Fornier is now doing time in La Santé Prison in Paris for art fraud. He represented himself at trial, never a good idea.”

“No, never,” I agreed.

“Meanwhile, the man who bought the Lily from him, who lived in Chicago, by the way—”

“Lived?” I said.

“Leo Gillard died last summer,” Heavenly said. “He took part in a yacht race that starts at Navy Pier in downtown Chicago and ends at Mackinac Island. The race had been run for over a hundred years without a single fatality until he fell off his boat and drowned. The weather was perfect, too. People were so shocked, they thought his crew must have mutinied and made him walk the plank, but there was no evidence of such.”

“And so,” I said.

“And so the Lily became the property of Gillard’s son, Jeremy, who apparently believed enough of the curse that he loaned the Jade Lily to the City of Lakes Art Museum. The museum is using the Lily to promote its anniversary. There was also talk of making it part of a traveling exhibit that could be displayed by other museums, for a price of course.”

“Until it was stolen.”

“Until it was stolen,” Heavenly repeated.

“Which you had nothing to do with.”

“Nothing at all.”

“Then why are you here? Better yet, why am I here?”

“Because you’re going after the Lily. It is your intention to buy it back from the artnappers and return it to the museum.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so, but here’s the thing, McKenzie—the Lily belongs to Tatjana Durakovic. She had pretty much forgotten about it until she saw all the publicity that the City of Lakes generated. Now she wants it back.”

“Ahh,” I said. Suddenly it all made sense to me. “You represent Tatjana.”

“Yes.”

“Did she come to you or did you contact her?”

Heavenly shrugged. “Does it matter?” she said.

“How much is Tatjana paying you?”

“Twenty-five percent of whatever the Lily realizes at auction. We believe it will sell for a lot more than the insured value. The other day a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old jade water buffalo sold for over four million pounds.”

“How much is that in real money?”

“Six-point-six million dollars.”

“A tidy sum,” I said. “What do you want from me?”

“You understand that the Jade Lily is Tatjana’s property. It was stolen from her.”

“That’s not my concern.”

“McKenzie, I’m asking you to do the right thing.”

“What’s the right thing?”

“After you make the exchange, after you buy the Lily from the artnappers, bring it to me. I’ll give it to Tatjana.”

“No.”

“No? Just like that, no?”

“If Tatjana wants the Lily, tell her to hire a lawyer.”

“C’mon, McKenzie. Think about it.”

“Nothing to think about. I’m not going to break my word to the museum.”

“I’ll give you ten percent of my end.”

Instead of answering, I just smiled at the suggestion.

“That’s what I thought you’d say.” Heavenly’s lovely face became very sad, very serious. “But I had to ask.”

“Where does that leave us?”

Heavenly patted my knee again. “Don’t worry, McKenzie. We’re still friends.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you won’t help me, I’ll get the Lily from the thieves myself.” Heavenly’s smile suddenly became as luminous as ever. “Failing that, I’ll just have to steal it from you.”

“Do you know who has the Lily?”

Heavenly leaned in close. “Do you know the secret to a successful relationship?” she asked. “Secrets.”

Heavenly kissed me full on the mouth. I might have resisted except, well, my hands were cuffed behind me.

“See you around, McKenzie,” she said. Heavenly slid open the door to the van and stepped out. “Tommy, take McKenzie back to Lake Calhoun. Don’t be foolish enough to give him the keys to the handcuffs until you’re safely driving out of the parking lot.”

*   *   *

Heavenly’s thugs—they were far too pretty to be called that, but still—did exactly as she told them, the one named Tommy handing me the key through the window of the van before driving off. I unwound the cuffs and dropped them into the pocket of my coat—you never know when they might come in handy. I walked through the cold toward the South Beach. It was nearly 5:00
P.M.
and already dark; the lights of the city’s skyline glistened like stars against the snow and ice. My cell phone played the Ella Fitzgerald–Louis Armstrong cover of “Summertime” just as I reached the Jeep Cherokee. I answered the way I always did.

“McKenzie,” I said.

“What the hell is going on?” a voice asked. It was a young man’s voice—he made no attempt to disguise it electronically or otherwise.

“Did you get a good look at me walking around the lake with the rose?”

“We got a good look at the people who jumped you and dragged you off. What was that about?”

We,
my inner voice said.

“It would seem someone else wants the Jade Lily,” I said.

The caller paused. While he thought it over, I climbed inside the Cherokee and fired it up.

“Who?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Names were not exchanged.”

I can’t say why I lied, but the caller seemed to believe me. After another pause, he said, “It doesn’t matter. Once you pay for the Lily, we don’t care what happens to it. Just don’t fuck with us.”

“Who? Me?”

“You think this is funny? You think this is a game?”

I pivoted in a slow circle in my seat, looking through the SUV’s windows, trying to take in everyone around me, looking for someone, anyone, who was speaking into a cell phone. I saw nothing to arouse my suspicion.

“No,” I said. “I really don’t.”

“We’ll call again when the money is ready. Make sure they get it right. One million two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, half in twenties, half in fifties. Nonsequential bills.”

“Do you have any idea how much cash that is?” I said. “Do you know how much it weighs? Ninety-five pounds give or take.”

“Exactly ninety-seven pounds fourteen-point-four ounces,” he said. “Have them divide the money into three bags, the same amount and the same weight in each bag.”

“You’ve done this before,” I said.

“Have you?”

“No.”

That caused him to pause.

“Yes, yes you have,” he insisted. “Otherwise how would you have known about the money?”

“Just a lucky guess.”

He paused again.

“I told you, McKenzie,” he said. “This isn’t a game. You know what will happen if you try to play us.”

“No. What?”

He hung up without responding.

*   *   *

As soon as the conversation ended, I called Mr. Donatucci.

“What happened?” he asked.

I told him that the artnappers made contact. I didn’t speak of Heavenly. I wanted to see if Donatucci mentioned her first, see if he had kept me under surveillance despite his promise not to. At least that’s what I told myself.

I explained about the money.

“Three bags suggest three partners,” Donatucci said.

“These guys seem to know what they’re doing,” I said. “But…”

“But what?”

“They don’t know who I am.”

“We guessed that when they demanded you walk around the lake with a rose in your hand.”

“I don’t mean they don’t know what I look like,” I said. “I mean they have no idea who I am. They know nothing about my background. To them I’m just a name.”

“I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

“Me neither.”

“What next?” Donatucci asked.

“Follow their instructions, I guess. Also, I need to speak with someone who can give me a crash course in analyzing ancient jade artifacts so I can identify the Lily, make sure it’s not a fake before I give up the money.”

“Then you’re going to go through with it?” Donatucci asked.

“Why not?”

THREE

I’ve known Nina Truhler for four years, three months, and eleven days—yes, I’ve kept track. We had talked seriously about marriage, although not since year three. I thought that might change when Nina’s daughter, Erica, went off to Tulane University in New Orleans, but it hadn’t. I also thought we might move in together, she with me or me with her, at least until Erica came back for the summer or holidays, yet that didn’t happen, either. I loved her desperately and told her so many times; she said the same to me, and I believed her. “So what’s the problem?” our friend Shelby Dunston asked often and with increasing frustration—like many married people she didn’t think it was possible for us to be truly happy unless we were also married. The truth was we were both very contented in our relationship and both very afraid of somehow screwing it up. Nina had been married before, and the experience soured her on the institution. As for me, my mother died when I was in the sixth grade, and although I was well raised by my father, I was pretty much left to my own devices. After so many years living a solitary if not downright selfish life, I didn’t know if it was possible to live hand in hand with someone else. So we just kept living the way we always had, her on one side of the city, me on the other, together yet apart. It wasn’t perfect. On the other hand, I always knew where I could get a free meal.

Rickie’s, the jazz-club-slash-restaurant-slash-neighborhood-tavern that Nina had built and named after her daughter, was crowded. It was pushing six, and the quick-drink-after-work crowd was overlapping the early-dinner-before-the-movie/theater/ballet gang. It was Monday night, so the upstairs performance and dining area was closed, a red sash fixed across the staircase. That meant all of Nina’s customers were gathered downstairs. Nearly all of the tables, booths, and comfy chairs and sofas were filled, as I knew they would be. What I didn’t expect was the lights and cameras. A film crew had set up in the far corner near the staircase, and a young man dressed in a black sweater with a white ghost stitched over his breast was interviewing—Erica?

“What’s going on?” I asked no one in particular. I received an answer just the same.

“It’s a cable TV show,” a young voice said.

I turned to find Victoria, Bobby and Shelby Dunston’s fourteen-year-old daughter, sitting alone in a booth and nursing an IBC root beer.

“Vic?” I said.

“Hi, McKenzie.”

I slid into the booth across from her. “What are you doing here?” I said.

“I was interviewed, too.”

“For what?”

“The ghost show.”

“You have to help me out here, sweetie.”

“There’s this cable TV show that goes around investigating paranormal activities in, I don’t know, haunted houses, I guess.”

“What are they doing here?”