Dim Sum Dead (3 page)

I trotted down the street, passing vendors and shoppers, looking ahead for any sign of the missing thief, or Wesley’s antique mah-jongg set, or Officer Stubb’s police buddies. In about a block I reached a dead end and I could only turn left or right. In such cases, I make it a habit of always turning to the right. I jogged down the stalls on the one side, and wove my way through the stalls on the other. Nothing.
Nada.
Zilch.

I should have turned left. Figures. It was just that kind of day. I doubled back and raced over to the next block, feeling the sense that too much time had slipped away and I’d never be able to make this one up to Wesley. I was just too lame. So of course, I kept running. I retraced my steps and did the entire circuit one more time, telling certain vendors I knew to keep a lookout for the box.

And when I found myself at the very end of the Third Street Promenade, all the way south, near the entrance to Santa Monica Place shopping mall, I stopped. I had been running around in circles for fifteen minutes, and running pretty hard.

I leaned over, hands on my knees, and gulped some air. My ankle hurt. In all my racing around, I hadn’t seen Wesley, who I was sure must be halfway back to the house by then, unaware of this disaster. I was no longer chilled. My long hair was still pulled back in a braid, but now several stubborn wisps had pulled free and were curling up around my face.

“Madeline?”

Silently, Officer Stubb had glided to a stop beside me.

“Officer?”

I was waiting for my breath to slow down a bit and didn’t look up directly.

“We’ve got everyone on it, but the fact is, we seem to have lost your man.”

I nodded, head still bent over.

“We’ll keep looking. I’ll write up a report. You’ll need it for insurance, that sort of thing.”

When the nice cop starts giving you advice about insurance, you can pretty much kiss your stolen possessions good-bye.

“Okay. Thanks anyway.” I stood up. “You want me to spell mah-jongg for your report?”

“That’s a good idea. And I’m going to need a way to contact you.”

“Right.” In case they found my box? I wasn’t holding my breath. I wrote down “mah-jongg” on one of my business cards and handed it to him. He thanked me again and pedaled away.

Well, that was that.

I had left my car parked in the oceanside parking structure, which I realized I could reach by cutting through the mall. I pulled open the glass entrance door and walked into Santa Monica Place.

The trilevel skylit galleria was designed by architect Frank Gehry. Like most of L.A.’s landmarks, Santa Monica Place looks familiar to out-of-towners. It was the mall in
Terminator II
and was often seen on
Beverly Hills 90210.
Yes, I’m afraid even our shopping plazas have screen credits. I checked my watch—twenty past ten. The large shopping
mall had just opened for business.

I stopped inside the entrance and flipped open my cell phone. I had to tell Wesley the bad news sometime.

“Wes here,” he said. That’s his phone schtick. I liked it, so businessman and cordial.

“Madeline here,” I replied. “I’m still in Santa Monica.”

“Whazzup?” He said it in that disgusting, guttural slangy way that had become popular in a series of beer commercials. We are annoying in this way. We pick up on every fad and buzzword and insist on torturing each other with them. Yes, we are cruel.

“Whazzup?” I said back, being as obnoxious as he was. “Wes, get ready for a big fat horrible story.” I was standing near a large planter in the mall.

“What’s up?” he asked, his voice instantly full of concern.

I told him the tale.

“So that’s it?” Wes asked when I finished. “Your cute bike cop didn’t come through?”

“I wish Stubb hadn’t stopped me, Wes. I was this close to grabbing the guy.” Okay, slight exaggeration. “And I recognized the son of a bitch.”

“You did? What do you mean?”

“That guy fingering the chard—did you notice that guy? At Maria’s stand. What was his problem?”

And as I was venting and generally acting cranky, standing just inside the mall entrance with shoppers flowing by in ones and twos, I looked up. And there he was. The son of a bitch. He was walking out of Robinsons-May, holding something bulky in a large navy blue Robinsons-May shopping bag.

“Wesley, Wesley, Wesley,” I hissed rapidly into the phone, interrupting whatever he was saying. “It’s him.” He was only about a hundred feet away, walking deeper into the mall, away from where I stood.

“Call the cops.” Wes had that stern sound I rarely hear.

“Call you back,” I said, and clicked off.

I followed the chard guy, but it was easy this time. The mall was hardly busy this early in the morning. And, even better, the chard guy wasn’t on alert. He hadn’t seen me. He didn’t think he was being followed. He was acting all normal,
walking slowly, trying to fit in.

I tried to stay back, walk softly, and match his pace as he strode past the shops. I made sure I was never close enough for my reflection in the window to bounce back at him as we passed by Brookstone, Card Fever, and The Limited. I was careful not to tip him off. Soon, I had followed him all the way through the mall, and we were coming to the opposite entrance.

I crept a little closer. Not a great move.

My cell phone rang.
Wesley.

Chard man stopped and began to turn.

I peeled off neatly into an open doorway. Lenscrafters. Swell. I punched the
YES
button, which answers my cell phone, and then immediately punched the
NO
button hard, holding it until the cell phone was shut down. I had no time to argue with Wes.

And when I’d managed to shut my phone up, I peeked out the door.

He was gone.

What can I say? I ran out after him, but he had vanished. And, believe me, I instantly began to doubt myself. Had I really seen him? Was I post-traumatic nuts? I stood at that mall entrance, looking up and down the walkway. Nothing.

And then something caught my eye. A school-age kid was standing by the parking structure not far away. He was pulling a bag out of the trash can by its cord handles. The top of a large Robinsons-May bag emerged.

“Alex!”

The boy’s mom called his name sharply.

“Mom, I found something,” he said, pulling the bag out.

I ran over to the boy, desperate to check that bag.

His mother yelled, “Put that back, Alex. Don’t take things out of the trash.”

“That’s my bag.” I heard my own voice ring shrill across the sidewalk as I rushed up to the trashcan.

“It’s
mine.
” Alex held on to it with both hands.

“No, kid, it’s mine,” I shouted, grabbing for the handles.

The mother hustled herself over in a few steps. “Look,
lady,” she said to me. “My son found—”

“
That’s…my…bag.
” I shouted, emphasizing each word. “It’s mine. Look in the bag if you don’t believe me.”

The mother was in a difficult spot. On the one hand, she rightly bitched to her kid that he shouldn’t be taking trash out of trash cans. On the other, she couldn’t stand to have some stranger take something away from her boy. The life of a parent is terrible ‘ard, I say.

But I was bigger than Alex, and I was more determined. “Let
GO
!” I pulled at the bag with force.

“Hey, hey!” The mother was aghast at my rudeness. She suddenly realized I was going to escalate this fight over trash. “Let go of the bag, Alex,” she instructed her kid more urgently. What a monster I was. I was willing to steal garbage from a baby. “Let go. This woman is crazy. Let her have all the trash she needs. Remember what I told you about Santa Monica?”

Oh, my word.

“Aw, Mom.” But Alex obviously remembered how homeless people dig in the trash. He let go of his prize.

They both glared at me with Republican stares, but I didn’t care. I turned my back on them and started to look inside the Robinsons-May bag.

It was there. My box. Wesley’s box. The hidden-behind-a-wall box. The stolen box. I had it back at last.

“
S
omething was definitely wrong about that guy,” I said as I moved around my kitchen looking for a big bowl.

Holly looked up. “Yeah, I’ll say.”

Holly Nichols, tall and fair-skinned and currently platinum blond, has been our full-time assistant almost from the beginning. Over the past seven years, she has received frequent promotions and various impressive job titles because she has proven to be indispensable. Holly is that perfect catering chameleon. No matter the party need, she ably tends bar or twists balloon animals or sallies forth to collect a delinquent bill with awe-inspiring enthusiasm.

Holly, wearing hot pink capri pants and a pair of stacked platform thong sandals, gave me a look. “Like, he stole your stuff.”

“More than that,” I said.

“Okay.” Holly paused in front of the glass door to the large pantry. “Like he stole your stuff and then left it in the trash.”

“Well, it’s obvious. He saw the dagger and the silver case. That’s all he wanted. So he had to ditch the mah-jongg set. He just hid it in that department store bag until he could find an inconspicuous place to dump it.” I looked over at Wes, who was brooding as he worked. “What do you think, Wes?”

“I think I was crazy to bring that stuff to the Farmer’s Market in the first place. I was excited, and I wanted you to
see it.”

“Aw, Wesley…” I knew he was feeling bad.

“I didn’t want to leave the case in my parked car,” Wes continued. “I figured someone might see it and break into the station wagon. Great thinking.”

“You can’t blame yourself,” I said. “We were out in public in daylight. No one can predict random crime.”

“I hadn’t expected we’d find a knife inside. So I didn’t realize…”

Wes felt bad for getting me in trouble, and I felt bad for getting him in trouble.

“I’m sorry I lost your stuff, Wesley.” Guilt is a really bad feeling.

“That stuff wasn’t even mine, really,” Wes said. “I was planning to give it back to the home’s previous owner.”

We’d been talking about this most of the day.

“Maybe we should put this aside for a minute and get back to work,” I suggested.

“Right. You’re right.”

Wes resumed measuring ingredients for the Chinese Turnip Cakes we were preparing. Tonight, being the first night of the Chinese New Year, seemed to demand we create something extra-special for the mah-jongg club.

We were gathered, as we so often are, in the kitchen of my old Spanish house in Whitley Heights. I live in a historic area that straddles the Hollywood Freeway near the Cahuenga off-ramp. In the twenties and thirties, celebrities and film people built Mediterranean mansions and modest Craftsman-style bungalows side by side over the low brown-green foothills. These days, it’s still a cool neighborhood, home to an eclectic mix of dog lovers and gay couples and studio folk, from art directors to musicians to that woman who does all the cartoon voice-over work.

Unfortunately, in the past fifty years, downtown Hollywood has taken a nosedive in class. The streets below Whitley Heights have become funky and colorful. Someone more sensitive to grime might even describe them as dirty and dangerous. But I like to think of the transitional nature of these streets as a blessing in disguise. To those of us who
couldn’t afford to buy a house in any other upscale section of the Hills, nearby Hollywood has kept home prices down. And here’s the genius part. This area is poised to make a comeback soon. Really. I know I’ve been saying this for years but, believe me. And then who will have the prime real estate investment, eh?

My house is set up on its hillside perch amid old California Live Oaks. It has a lovely old red-tile roof and a rounded stucco wall and a dozen steps up to its arched front door. It was built years ago by Ben Turpin, the silent film comedian who was wildly popular for his “googly eyes.” A few years ago, Wesley helped me remodel. After knocking out walls and running wild through a secondhand restaurant supplier, the meager-sized kitchen has been transformed. It is now one capable of producing professional quantities of our gourmet chow.

I looked over the kitchen, my spiritual center, really. The workspace was neatly fitted with brushed aluminum appliances, its walls a clean graph of white ceramic tiles, its counters made from yards of genuine butcherblock we’d recovered from an old bakery going out of business. And while I know it’s not cool to become overly fond of inanimate objects, I have a crush on my refrigerator. It’s one of those Traulsen restaurant units—the kind you see in some delis. The door is made of glass so you can see inside, and it’s lighted. Wes tells me I like to keep an eye on my produce lest it go limp on me.

“So what about that chard guy?” Holly asked.

“The cops never found him,” I said, as Wes pulled out his recipe book. He had less curiosity than a mushroom.

“Well, it’s not like it’s a big mystery.” Holly had sifted a huge sack of flour out onto her work surface and was now pushing up the sleeves of her thin sweater. At close to six feet tall, she was narrow as a breadstick. She was letting her stick-straight whitish blond hair grow out these days, and then clipping it back in odd, off-balanced little tufts, with several tiny barrettes in various hues. “I mean, didn’t you say the police took that old antique case so they could fingerprint it?” she asked, making her point. “They’ll figure out who the chard guy is.”

“Maybe.” I looked up, struck again with guilt. “But I doubt we’ll ever see that old Dragon dagger again. Or the silver case. I’m so sorry, Wesley.”

“Please, Mad. I told you. It was my fault.”

Wes and I had spent most of the afternoon at the Santa Monica police station giving descriptions of what we could recollect. In the end, we were told to go home. They would keep the box, probably just overnight, and dust it for prints. They’d get in touch if they needed more information. One of the department’s clerical people looked at my ankle. She had a first-aid box and gave me some disinfectant cream and a Band-Aid. And that was that.

As Wes and Holly kept reminding me over and over since we came home, muggings happen every day. I know that. It’s just shocking, that’s all. It’s shocking when crime brushes against you, even petty crime. But we had a party to prepare for this evening. I had to readjust my focus. And so, we got back to work.

As befitted the Chinese New Year’s holiday, our host requested a special feast. Buster Dubin asked us to prepare dinner for twenty. He expected to have four games of mah-jongg going at once, and was ready to set up a fifth if necessary.

“Holly, I think that’s plenty of rice flour,” I said.

She looked up from her work and said, “Cool.” And then she sat down on a tall stool nearby. “So tell me all about this Chinese New Year’s thing.”

I deferred to Wesley, a man with too many advanced degrees and the kind of memory for detail that can be infuriating when he’s remembering
to the word
what you said to him nine years ago, but in all other regards is quite a lovely resource. While Wes explained Chinese New Year, I turned on the computer at my corner desk and found the website I was looking for.

“Chinese New Year is like a combination of Easter and Thanksgiving,” Wes said.

“Except, without the turkey, Pilgrims, or cross,” Holly guessed.

“True. But food has high significance. Everything that is
eaten during this two-week Chinese holiday holds auspicious meaning. Imagine that everything you eat or drink in the next two weeks will influence your life for the next full year.”

As I clicked a few links on my computer screen, I quietly set down my can of Diet Coke.

Holly stared at her half-bitten peanut butter cup. “Gosh.”

Wesley laughed.

I found what I was looking for on the ‘Net. It was a clever little site that allows you to send a virtual fortune cookie by e-mail in honor of the Chinese New Year. I typed in my message and chuckled. This would be fun. The recipients will check their e-mail before the party. They’ll see a picture of a little golden fortune cookie. They click on the cookie and the animated cookie cracks open and reveals the fortune.

I tried it first before I sent the e-cookies out. My evil little message:
Be willing to taste anything once.
Well, what would you expect from me?

“By the way,” Wes said, walking over and noticing what I was up to, “there is nothing Chinese about the fortune cookie. The fortune cookie is an American invention.”

“But it’s a lot of fun,” I said, turning my mind back to predictions of the future. “It will put all the players in a good mood. And I’ve got a more authentic Chinese fortune-teller coming to the party—Lee Chen.”

Lee was an old friend of mine. I could hardly wait to see her. She and I met several years ago, and although I hadn’t seen her lately, I always felt a special bond with Lee.

“So,” Holly asked, looking up at Wesley, “we’re making…New Year’s Turnip Cake?”

She had the list of ingredients and was measuring and setting them up on the kitchen’s center island. She read off the ingredients to make sure she had them all. “ ‘Eight Chinese dried mushrooms,’ check…‘one-half cup Chinese dried shrimp,’ check…‘two teaspoons
Shao Hsing
rice cooking wine,’ got it…‘one teaspoon sugar and two cups rice flour,’ got it.”

“Good.”

“Now, what all is
this
?” Holly squinted at the page with my slanty scribbling on it. “‘6 ounces
lop yok
, store-bought or homemade…’” She looked up. “Do we have to make some
lop yok
now?”

“I stopped in Chinatown. Look in the fridge.”

“For?” Holly asked.

“
Lop yok
is Chinese bacon.”

“Excellent.” She brought over the raw bacon, along with a large glass pie pan that we needed to steam it before slicing.

“And the main ingredient?” Wes asked.

Holly scooted over to the list and read: “A two-pound law book.” She grinned at him.

“That’s
law bok,”
Wesley corrected promptly. “Chinese turnip.”

Sometimes, whilst cooking, I do believe Wesley may on occasion lose his sense of humor. Holly and I shouldn’t tease him, but it’s so damn tempting to get a rise out of the guy.

“Not a law book? You’re sure?” Holly looked at him.

“Turnip cake,” he continued, “is made with Chinese turnip which is called
law bok.
It’s a type of
daikon
radish. There is also a
daikon
radish called Japanese
daikon
radish, which is similar to the Chinese turnip in appearance.” Wes snickered to himself. “Actually, to make matters even more confusing…”

“Could they be?” Holly whispered to me.

“…translated into English,
law bok
means turnip. Some produce vendors do not realize there is a distinction.”

I could imagine the illuminating lectures to which Wesley Westcott must treat such poorly informed vendors and smiled.

“Is it this ugly thing?” Holly asked. She held up a mottled whitish root, about ten inches long and four inches around.

“Right, Holly. The Chinese turnip is more blemished-looking than the Japanese
daikon.
”

Holly looked at the root, perhaps to memorize it.

I turned my attention back to the
lop yok
, quickly cutting the raw slab of bacon into thirds. Some people remove only the rind of the Chinese bacon, leaving all the fat. But I find
this too rich. I discard the layer of fat under the rind as well. Steaming for about twenty minutes makes it soft enough to dice finely.

“So, Wesley,” Holly said, “why do we serve
law bok
cakes on Chinese New Year?”

I loved to hear Wes talk food talk as we worked together in the kitchen.

“Eating cake is a ritual at Chinese New Year—very symbolic—but turnip cakes are a little more like fried polenta than your basic chocolate layer.”

“That’s the only trouble I have with Chinese food,” Holly said, as she began to grate the fresh
law bok.
“Who can embrace a cuisine that doesn’t glorify chocolate?”

“When our turnip cake is cooled,” Wes continued, “we’ll cut it up into bite-size pieces. Then we’ll pan-fry it fresh when we get to Dubin’s house, and serve it Dim Sum style, sizzling hot with oyster sauce.”

“So what is the special meaning behind turnip cake?” Holly asked, putting a little more arm muscle into her grating.

“Ah, well. Rice flour symbolizes cohesiveness.”

“Who couldn’t use a little more cohesion,” Holly commented. “That’s nice.”

“The round shape represents unity of family.”

“Cute,” Holly said.

“And the slight rising of the cakes indicates rising fortune,” Wes finished.

“Wesley Westcott, you are freaky!” Holly said.

I nodded. Well, he is.

And I added, “That’s what makes Chinese New Year’s Turnip Cake the perfect dish to serve the mah-jongg group tonight. Gamers are so superstitious.”

Carefully, I lowered the bacon on its glass plate into the boiling pot and replaced the lid. Meanwhile, Holly joined me at the stove. She placed all the grated Chinese turnip along with a quart of water in a heavy pot, and then set it on medium-high heat.

Wes was finishing up with the dried mushrooms and shrimp, placing each in a bowl of water for the thirty minutes
it would take to rehydrate them.

I cleaned up a bit and worried a bit, too.

No matter how hard I tried to distract myself with work and cooking and friends, I couldn’t shake the disturbing events of the morning. Surely, on the dawning of the Chinese New Year, this mugging must have some deeper meaning. And, as we finished preparing the Chinese Turnip Cakes, I hoped the signs for our own good fortune might be more auspicious.

“Did you ever get a call back from the police?” I asked Wesley.

He shook his head.

I thought it over one more time. The chard guy got rid of the mah-jongg game as soon as he could, but the dagger and the silver box were missing.

I felt really bad, and I couldn’t tell what was making me feel worse—the idea that I had allowed myself to be ripped off in broad daylight at my favorite outdoor market, or the thought that another punk in this big, bad city had his hands