The Misfortune Cookie: An Esther Diamond Novel (15 page)

I made sure that “freedom” did not mean I’d be expected to take off my clothes.

Ted assured me it wasn’t that kind of movie.

“It’s about ideas and culture, identity and meaning, old values and new temptations.” After a moment, he added, “There are a couple of love scenes, though. That’s okay, right?”

I started to say that it was absolutely fine, as long as certain private parts of my body remained private; but I closed my mouth when I saw Lily approaching us. Max accompanied her, with Nelli at his side.

Lily asked Ted to go find his sister. “It is time to go home.”

Ted said, “Actually, I want to stay a little longer and see if I can talk some more to—”

“We are leaving now, Ted,” Lily said firmly. “Please tell Susan, and then get our coats.”

Ted sighed, said he’d see me tomorrow, and then went off to do as he was told.

Max said to me, “Perhaps we should also depart, Esther.”

I nodded, and John offered to give us a lift home, which we accepted; the hearse was a very convenient way to transport Nelli.

Max turned to Lily and took her hand in a courtly gesture. “It has been a great pleasure to meet you, Lily, and I hope we meet again soon.”

“I hope so, too,” she said with a smile. “You have been very kind.”

We said our goodnights, then made our way to the private back rooms again, where Lucky was waiting to confer with us. After we recounted the evening’s events to him—he’d heard some of the shouting and wondered what was going on—we discussed possible murder suspects.

“You met Danny Teng?” John said to me with a grimace. “I feel like I should apologize to you for that, since it happened in my family’s place of business.”

“Yes, normally a girl has to go into an alley after dark to meet someone like him,” I replied.

“Who is this guy?” Lucky asked with a frown.

“
Dai lo
of the Red Daggers,” said John.

“Dai lo?
” I repeated.

“Gang leader.” John added, “Literally it means ‘big brother.’”

“The Red Daggers.” Lucky nodded. “I heard of them. Bunch of street punks with matching tattoos. Always in a lotta messy trouble. They’re enforcers for the Five Brothers. So, comin’ to Benny’s wake, that guy’s probably just paying his respects, like a good soldier.”

“Probably,” John agreed. “There were other Red Daggers there, too, but they stayed out in the lobby. My father, who’s a braver man than I am, asked them not to come into the visitation room. I think he said their attire might insult the family, or something like that. He’s an elder, so he got away with it, and they stayed out there. But, obviously, he couldn’t ask their
dai lo
not to come inside and pay his respects directly to the deceased. Danny would lose face, and that wouldn’t be forgiven.”

“This ‘face’ thing really complicates life,” I said.

“You bet,” said John.

“Yes, but having social credit—in other words, maintaining face—is crucial, because social relationships have been the central structure of Chinese society for thousands of years,” Max said, speaking up for the first time since we’d taken our seats in here. He had been unusually quiet and obviously distracted, which I attributed to Lily Yee’s mysterious influence. “The family, the clan, and the community in Chinese society are much more important than the individual. And people in China survived centuries of warring states, civil wars, volatile warlords, foreign invasions, unjust rulers, and colonial domination by relying on their social and personal relationships—rather than on laws or government—for protection, justice, and mutual aid.”

John nodded. “Traditionally, that’s how Chinatown has always functioned, too.”

I was pleased to see Max behaving more like his usual self, so I didn’t interrupt as he continued lecturing—which he was prone to do.

“Therefore, if one person loses face or is dishonored, it doesn’t reflect only on him, but on the whole social fabric in which he is merely one thread. His family, his clan, his guild or brotherhood—any or all of these will endure shame because of
his
shame. Thus their influence will be reduced and their position damaged in all their social relationships, making them vulnerable and weak, diminishing and even endangering them.” Max said pensively, “It’s a strong enough system to have worked effectively for many centuries, but it is not an easy way of life.”

“And tonight Esther helped the Yee family save face,” John said with a smile, lightening the mood, “when she prevented Grace Yee from committing murder at her own husband’s wake.”

“Good work, kid,” Lucky said to me. “I been to two funerals where someone got whacked before the stiff was even in the ground. I just hate it when that happens. People oughta show more respect for the dead.”

An evildoer

S
ince John had just raised the subject of Grace Yee, I said to my companions in the offices of Chen’s Funeral Home, “Speaking of the merry widow . . .”

“What about her?” asked Lucky.

I posed my
Crime and Punishment
theory about Grace (i.e. the spouse is always whodunit). But I was skeptical now, after what Susan had said—which information I summarized for Lucky’s benefit.

“So if the wife didn’t know about Benny and his secretary . . .” The old mobster shook his head. “Then what’s her motive? Would she kill him just because she thought he
might
be playing around with
someone?
”

“I suppose she could be an extremely clever woman who was just
pretending
not to know, in order to divert suspicion away from herself when she killed him.” However, I was skeptical about this theory, too, and I added, “But that level of self-control and planning really doesn’t match the woman who flew into a rage and tried to pulverize the girlfriend’s skull tonight in front of many witnesses.”

“And the niece—Susan?—said Benny had played around before, right?” said Lucky.

“He had,” John confirmed. “I don’t really follow gossip about that kind of thing, and even I knew.”

“Why would the missus kill him this time, when she didn’t kill him any of those other times?” Lucky asked. “I don’t see it.”

John added, “Plus, she gave me the death curse from the cookie as soon as I asked her for it. If she was behind it, wouldn’t she be cagey about it? But she seemed relieved to get it out of their apartment. Pretty much the way I’m relieved that Dr. Zadok is taking it out of here tonight.”

Lucky looked at Max. “What do you think, Doc?”

“Hmm? Oh.” Max looked distracted again as he patted the pocket where he had put that menacing slip of paper earlier tonight. “I need to take it back to my laboratory to study its properties.”

“No, I mean, what do you think about Mrs. Yee?” Lucky clarified.

“A lovely woman,” said Max. “Very, um . . . That is, she reminds me . . .”

“He means Grace Yee, Max,” I said quickly. “Benny’s widow.”

He blinked. “Oh. Er, yes, of course. I only exchanged a few formal words with her, so I didn’t form much of an impression. Well, not beyond noting that she seems to be a woman of volatile temper.”

“And cursing someone with death in a fortune cookie,” Lucky said, “is a
plan.
Cold and calculating. Not something you do in a fit of temper.”

“
If
a curse is what we’re talking about here.” I looked at Max.

“Well, you all know what
I
think,” John said, shaking his head.

“Yeah, yeah, we heard from you, Mr. Mundane,” said Lucky. “Now the ball is in the doc’s court. Right?”

“Indeed,” said Max, rising to his feet. “I shall take this fortune to my laboratory now and try to determine forthwith if it has mystical properties . . . or was merely a vicious mundane prank.”

“Let’s go,” I said, eager to find out whether Evil was going to intrude on my film role—because tomorrow, I was going to convince Benny’s nephew to cast me in
ABC
even if I had to get Nelli to sit on his chest and show him her fangs in order to persuade him that I was right for the part.

We said goodnight to Lucky as we donned our coats, gloves, and hats. Then John, Max, Nelli, and I made our way through the silent Italian portion of the funeral home and back out into the wintry night. A thin blanket of fresh snow coated the sidewalks now. It had stopped coming down, but the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up.

Shivering a little even inside my warm coat, I took Max’s arm and huddled close to him and Nelli, following John as he led the way back to the parking garage.

“Lily Yee made quite an impression on you,” I said quietly to Max.

“Hmm?” He’d obviously been lost in thought again. “Oh. Yes . . .” He was silent for a long moment, then said, “She reminds me of someone.”

“Someone special, I gather?”

“Yes. Someone who was quite special.” It was too dark to see his expression, but his voice sounded sad.

“Is Lily a lot like her?”

“In appearance, very much so. In circumstances, not at all, I suppose.” He thought it over. “In other ways . . . I don’t know her well enough to say.”

“Who was she, Max?” I asked, curious about someone who was obviously a powerful memory for him.

“Li Xiuying,” he said on a sigh. “Beautiful Flower.”

“What happened to her?”

“Oh . . . she died.”

“How?”

He shook his head. “It was a long time ago, Esther.”

I was even more curious now, since Max wasn’t usually reticent about his past. On the contrary, he could be loquacious to a fault. But I could tell that if I pursued this subject, I would be intruding on something he didn’t really want to talk about. Max was not a moody man by nature, so I realized there must be heartbreak behind the name Li Xiuying. I supposed he would tell me about it when he was ready—or perhaps not at all.

I was a little concerned about him, but not hurt that he didn’t choose to confide in me. After all, I kept a number of things private about my relationship with Lopez. We all have things we’d rather not discuss, not even with someone we trust.

After we reached the parking garage, Nelli hopped readily into the back of the hearse and settled down. The streets were less crowded now, and the shift in the weather had improved visibility, so the drive back to the West Village was uneventful. John, Max, and I talked a little more on the way home about our impressions of the wake and the visitors, but the conversation was desultory.

When we got to the bookstore, John offered to drive me to my apartment, but I declined. I knew Max would go down into his laboratory now, rather than upstairs to bed (he lived above the shop), and I was as eager as he was to find out whether the death curse had mystical properties.

So I entered the bookstore with Max and Nelli, shed my coat, and warmed up with a quick cup of hot tea. Nelli lay down by the gas fireplace, though Max didn’t ignite it for her, and promptly fell asleep.

Max pulled the death curse out of his pocket, still in its little plastic bag, and turned it over in his hands, studying the black piece of paper and its sinisterly graceful white symbol.

“I don’t suppose it gives off a vibe or something?” I asked.

“Alas, nothing so self-explanatory,” he said.

“So how do you plan to determine whether that thing is mystical?”

“I’ve been thinking about that all the way home.”

“Oh! I thought you were thinking about . . .” I paused, not wanting to bring up Lily Yee’s name again. I concluded awkwardly, “Exactly that.”

He didn’t seem to notice, absorbed as he was in examining the dark fortune. “I have an idea . . . I once dealt with a matter which had features not dissimilar to our suspicions about the misfortune cookie.”

“In China?” I asked as I followed Max to the back of the bookstore.

“No, in Sicily. That strange episode was . . . oh, well over two hundred years ago, certainly. Goodness! Where do the years go? Nonetheless, I remember it well.”

I recalled that Max once told me he had been questioned by the Spanish Inquisition in Sicily, which had remained active there until the late eighteenth century. But I decided not to ask him any more questions tonight about memories he might not be keen to revisit.

We entered a little cul-de-sac at the back of the shop where there was a utility closet, a powder room, and a door marked PRIVATE. The door opened onto a narrow, creaky stairway that led down to the cellar.

At the top of the stairs, there was a burning torch stuck in a sconce on the wall. It emitted no smoke or heat, only light; it had been burning steadily ever since I had met Max, fueled by mystical power.

I descended the steep, narrow steps behind him as he said, “The situation in Sicily involved miniature replicas of body parts rather than a written fortune—”

“Ugh! That sounds gruesome.”

“Well, not necessarily. As with fortune cookies—which did not originate in China, by the way, though they have become a part of Chinese cuisine throughout America, whether the meal is humble or grand . . . But I digress.”

Now that he was focused on work, he was obviously feeling much more like his usual self. Whatever memories of Li Xiuying haunted him, they had retreated, and he was chatting with engaged enthusiasm as he reached the final step and entered his laboratory.

“Miniature replicas of body parts are normally part of a positive ritual in Sicily. And
un
like fortune cookies, whose origin was probably in twentieth-century California, the custom is very ancient.”

“What custom?” I asked.

“Sicilians leave these miniature replicas at the shrines of their favorite saints to entreat their blessings for health and their help with healing.”

“Ah-hah!” I said triumphantly, recognizing the nature of this custom. “Sympathetic magic.”

“Precisely.” Max sat down at his workbench and gestured for me to take a seat on a nearby stool. “But during a dark episode in the eighteenth century, an evil adversary started using such effigies to curse his enemies with ill health and injury.”

“It figures,” I said. “Someone always has to spoil a good thing.”

Like fortune cookies, for example. What evildoer, I wondered, whether mystical or mundane, had taken something so innocent, tasty, and fun, and decided to turn it into a menacing messenger of death?

Max continued, “And since these effigies of human body parts were so common in Sicily, it was essential to devise a means to determine whether any given replica was harmless or cursed.”

I looked around the laboratory and guessed, “So you’re going to use that method to analyze Benny’s fortune?”

“That is what I propose,” he said. “I have my notes from those days, and they contain the formula I used. I know it’s here somewhere . . .”

He rummaged around for a few minutes in the bookcase near his workbench, muttering to himself. After he found what he was looking for, he began gathering ingredients for his recipe from 200-plus years ago.

Max’s laboratory was cavernous, windowless, and shadowy. The thick stone walls were haphazardly covered with charts, plans, drawings, maps, lists, and notes, some of which were very old, and some of which had been added since my last visit down here. Bottles of powders, vials of potions, and bundles of dried plants jostled for space on cluttered shelves. Jars of herbs, spices, minerals, amulets, and neatly sorted varieties of claws and teeth sat on densely packed shelves and in dusty cabinets. There were antique weapons, some urns and boxes and vases, a scattering of old bones, and a Tibetan prayer bowl. And the enormous bookcase near where Max was sitting was packed to overflowing with many leather-bound volumes, as well as unbound manuscripts, scrolls, and modern notebooks.

I was always afraid to touch anything in here, so I sat with my hands folded, just watching Max work.

I had forgotten that fortune cookies were not actually Chinese in origin, but I now recalled my father telling us something of the sort many years ago, over one of our regular family meals of Chinese food. There seemed to be several stories about who had invented this combination of cookie and after-dinner entertainment; but regardless of which version was correct, few people disputed that fortune cookies had originated in America, as Max had asserted. According to my father’s account, fortune cookies were virtually unknown in China, despite their long association with Chinese food in the US.

This led me to a fresh thought. “Max, since fortune cookies aren’t originally Chinese, do you think Benny’s cookie might have been created by someone who’s not Chinese?”

He was peering into a small black cauldron that was full of newly measured and mixed ingredients, which he was simmering over a Bunsen burner on his workbench.

“It’s possible,” he said absently, and I realized this theory had already occurred to him. “I am not inclined to think so, since the fortune cookie has been closely associated with the Chinese in America since before Mr. Yee’s birth. But one should nonetheless keep an open mind about—Ah! It’s boiling.”

He reached for a jar with some golden-yellow powder in it, carefully measured a small scoop of the stuff, then tossed it into the boiling brew. A few moments later, the mixture emitted a deep vocal moan, so human-sounding that I hopped off my stool and gaped in alarm, ready to bolt.

“I’m sorry, Esther. I should have warned you,” Max said, noticing my anxiety. “Don’t worry. This is perfectly normal.”

“I wouldn’t say
that,
” I muttered, climbing back onto my stool. As a cloud of yellow smoke wafted through the room, I gagged. “Blegh! What is that
stench?
”

“It’s the sign that the potion is ready.” Max turned off the flame beneath the cauldron. Then he pulled Benny’s fortune out of his pocket and unsealed the plastic bag. Using a pair of tweezers, he extracted the black piece of paper and then held it over the smoking, stinking cauldron. “This is the part of the experiment I’m a little concerned about.”