The Shanghai Moon (17 page)

The racket of traffic crowded into the space his silence made. A flock of pigeons swooped by. I wondered if C.D. Zhang had chosen this corner for its chaos and cacophony.

Quietly, he spoke. “Have you seen the Shanghai Moon?”

“No.”

“No.” He nodded. “This is how it always goes. ‘It’s possible.’ ‘It could be.’ ‘I think, I heard, I was told.’ But in the end . . .”

“Mr. Zhang? What would the Shanghai Moon be worth?”

He fingered his teacup. “There are no accurate records. It would have to be appraised.”

“Sixty years,” I mused. “I wonder if there’s anyone still around who ever saw it.”

“As a boy in Shanghai”—C.D. Zhang looked up—“I saw it myself.”

I stared. “You did? Oh, of course! You were family!”

“Despite the mutual aversion between Chen Kai-rong and my father, yes, we were. But I adored my stepmother, Mei-lin. And more than that I adored being family. I was a lonely boy, a dreamy child in a strict and practical household. I barely remembered my own mother, who died before my third year. My amah and tutors were capable but cold. The social reverberations of Rosalie Gilder and Chen Kairong’s marriage were known to me, a boy of ten, but I
didn’t understand or care. I was excited that it gave me more family to be part of.”

“Were you at the wedding?”

“I was. Rosalie Gilder wore the Shanghai Moon at her throat.” His eyes found the nighttime photo. “Though by then it was already legendary. You read about it, you say. So you know its story.”

“I know it was made from an antique jade of the Chen family, and stones from a necklace that had been Rosalie’s mother’s.”

“Its legend started before it was made. Please understand what an extraordinary event this engagement was in Shanghai. Of course Europeans had always taken Chinese wives. The exotic bride—a mark of wealth and power! And Chinese men with fortunes kept European mistresses. British girls, Germans, White Russians. And Americans! Very popular, American girls. And yes, some Jewish refugees took Japanese officers or rich Chinese as lovers. They were poor and times were hard. They did what desperate girls have always done, and though few approved, no one was surprised. But
marriage
? A Chinese from a noble family and a refugee? It’s hard to say which community was more appalled.”

“Mr. Zhang, the book I read said the engagement was secret.”

“In Shanghai everything was secret, and every secret was known! Over the charcoal stoves in their alleys, the Jewish women whispered that Rosalie Gilder couldn’t be blamed for taking an easy path to good meals and clean clothes—which meant they blamed her deeply. Among my father’s
friends, the wives muttered and the men shook their heads. The Chen lineage, that had served every emperor of the last thousand years, diluted with European blood? The prophecies ran wild: the fury of the Chen ancestors, how their retribution would strike!”

“But the marriage went ahead.”

“It did. And nothing worse happened in Shanghai than what was happening every day. Rosalie Gilder, with her brother, moved to the Chen villa. Where, briefly, they lived a life more comfortable than most of their fellow refugees.”

“Why briefly?”

“The marriage took place in April of 1942. In early 1943, to please the Germans, the Japanese ordered the Jewish refugees to relocate to Hongkew, where they could be controlled and watched. Many already lived there, but many lived and worked elsewhere. Then, with one stroke, businesses were closed and families uprooted. Twenty thousand Jews, many with no way now to make a living, confined together with a million of the poorest Chinese in a single foul square mile.”

“That sounds horrible.”

“Horror, Ms. Chin, is relative. The Germans wanted the refugees exterminated. The Japanese, for their own reasons, didn’t care for that plan. The ghetto was a compromise.”

I supposed, given the choice, he was right. “And Rosalie and her brother had to go?”

“As Chen Kai-rong’s wife, Rosalie Gilder might have been excused. But as it happened, Chen Kai-rong fled Shanghai shortly before the edict was to take effect. That angered the Japanese.”

“Fled? What do you mean? He abandoned her?” This couldn’t be right.

“Ah, Ms. Chin! It was wartime. His loyalty was questioned, he offended a Japanese corporal on the Garden Bridge, a Japanese officer wanted his limousine—I don’t know. But he was gone. So Rosalie and her brother went to live in Hongkew. Taking with them,” he added, “my brother, Li, who was not yet two.”

“Your brother? Why?”

“Because my stepmother, Mei-lin, had disappeared, never to be seen again.”

“What do you mean, she disappeared?”

He gazed at me evenly. “It was wartime.”

Just like that,
I thought.
Your mother disappears forever, and the answer is
It was wartime.

“Why didn’t your brother stay with your father and you?”

“By the time Rosalie went to Hongkew we also were long gone. To Chongqing, where my father, changing allegiances, joined Chiang Kai-shek’s army. As, within a few years, I did myself.”

“You don’t seem old enough to have fought with Chiang Kai-shek.” I’d seen the remains of the Nationalist army marching defiantly through Chinatown every October, and though C. D. Zhang was not young, those men definitely had years on him.

“I joined up at fifteen, not the youngest in my brigade. To my surprise, military life suited me. Soldiers are family, dependent on each other. People helped me and expected me to help them. I could be useful, you see! And appreciated for it! An unfamiliar situation in my life until then.

“However, my talents, such as they were, were more logistical than martial. I was valued in my unit because I could provide. We always ate. Sadly, in actual battle, I was a poor soldier. A disappointment to my father in that as in so much else. But Ms. Chin! Again we stray. My military career, not even a footnote to an addendum to history, is not why you’re here. I fear we’re caught up in the romance of the past. Always more alluring than the mundane present.”

Mundane? Shanghai’s shadows vanished in an instant: Joel was dead, and the Shanghai Moon might be to blame.

“You’re right.” I put my teacup down. “Can we go back to the Shanghai Moon? You saw it. What do you think it’s worth?”

“I saw it, yes, as a boy. But childhood memories are unreliable.”

“Still. You’re an expert in this field, after all.”

“Ah, such barefaced flattery! But all right, I’ll take that bait. As described—as its legend has it—the value of the Shanghai Moon would approach two million dollars. More, if collectors let their hearts rule their heads. And they always do. That truth has brought me a good livelihood. But I deal in gems I can hold in my hand! The Shanghai Moon is a shadow. A quicksand. Tread carefully.”

“It may be too late for that. Mr. Zhang, I’m not the only investigator hired to look for Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry. The other was shot dead in his office.”

The traffic must have stopped for a light, because the room went silent. “Shot dead?” C. D. Zhang paused. “And the search for Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry was the cause?”

“I’m not sure of that,” I admitted.

“And you’re not sure the Shanghai Moon has reappeared, even if it was.”

“No, but—”

“Exactly my point. The Shanghai Moon attaches itself to danger, to romance. The way a shadow attaches itself to substance. My cousin is sure, no doubt.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, I can promise you he is. If he hasn’t said as much, it only means he thinks he’s close to the Shanghai Moon and wants to keep it for himself. It’s always the same.”

“You’re saying he was freezing me out?”

C. D. Zhang just smiled.

“Will he try to freeze your brother out, too?”

“Well, he hardly can, can he?”

“Why not?”

“My cousin’s wasted a great deal of money on this wild goose chase over the years. That money has all been my brother’s.”

“Zhang Li’s been financing him? I didn’t know that.”

“Does it surprise you?”

“Yes. He seemed more, I don’t know, down to earth.”

“They’re both mad, not just the one. Although Brother Li lives in less of a dreamland than Cousin Lao-li, perhaps precisely because the money’s his. He’s seen through some of the more absurd hints and offers, over the years. Chases Lao-li would have dashed off on if he had his way. And this, Ms. Chin, sounds like another of those. That a long-vanished jewel should be involved in a recent killing . . .”
He fixed his eyes on me. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? You’re caught in the web.”

My cheeks grew hot. “I’m trying to solve a murder.” Which didn’t mean he was wrong, but I ignored that. “The book I read said the Shanghai Moon disappeared in the last days of the civil war. I asked them—Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang—about that, but they wouldn’t talk about it. Can you tell me anything?”

“The gem’s disappearance?” He shook his head. “My father and I didn’t return to Shanghai until a Communist victory was clearly inevitable. Even then we were there just hours, racing for a ship for Taipei. My final memories of Shanghai are dark ones: dodging down alleys and lanes, running to meet my father on the
Taipei Pearl,
ahead of the slow, silent march of Mao’s soldiers toward the Bund.”

“How old were you?”

“By then, eighteen. Ms. Chin, let me ask you: Where was Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry found?”

“In a construction excavation.”

“In Hongkew?”

“No, in the area that used to be the International Settlement. On Jiangming Street. Mr. Zhang? What is it?”

C. D. Zhang had gone still. “If I’m correct, what is now Jiangming Street was once Thibet Road. The Chen family villa was at Number 12.”

“You mean . . .”

A long pause. “The story, the romantic one the wives whispered, was that Rosalie Gilder was never without the Shanghai Moon, wearing it always hidden on a chain around her neck. But there was another rumor, counter to
that and equally persistent, that she didn’t take it to Hongkew. She was said to never lock her door, to underscore the fact that the brooch wasn’t there.”

I thought about this. “If she’d buried her jewelry before she went to Hongkew, why wouldn’t she dig it up once the war was over? The Jews didn’t have to stay in Hongkew after that, did they? Couldn’t she go back to the villa?”

“She could, and she did. But after the Japanese surrendered and left China in 1945, tyranny was replaced by anarchy as Nationalists and Communists tore at each other’s throats. Treasure of any kind was better buried, denied, declared already stolen. And after 1949, with the revolution blazing a glorious path into China’s future, it was both vulgar and perilous to admit to wealth.”

“So do you think it could be true?”

“I think, Ms. Chin, that each tale of the Shanghai Moon’s re appearance is credible to those who want to believe.” Then, slowly, came a different smile: indulgent, almost conspiratorial. “I will admit, however, this tale is more compelling than most. What will you do now?”

“I’m not sure. Your brother may yet talk to me: He said he would, though that may have been just to get me to leave. But I don’t know how much use he’d be. Any memories either of them have that could help in the search, they’d have followed already. As you say, childhood memories are unreliable, and they were both very young.”

“Yes.” C. D. Zhang nodded. “They were young. And I suppose Dr. Gilder is too old?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Dr. Gilder. He and I are nearly of an age, though we
barely know each other. I understand his mind has been slipping for some time now. So I suppose he’s of no help?”

“Who’s Dr. Gilder?”

“Paul Gilder,” said C. D. Zhang, surprised. “Rosalie’s younger brother.”

“You still have that car?” I asked Bill the second he answered the phone.

“What car?”

“Any car.”

“Sure. Why?”

“Pick me up. We’re going to New Jersey.”

Teaneck, specifically, our goal was. Where Dr. Paul Gilder, eighty-four, lived with his granddaughter’s family.

“It never crossed my mind he might still be alive,” I said as I snapped my seat belt. “Much less near here. He’s like a fairy tale character. I didn’t expect him to be real.”

“I wonder if he’ll be happy to know that.” Bill pulled the car into traffic.

“According to C. D. Zhang he doesn’t know much. His granddaughter said the same thing: He’s in and out. Why are you stopping here?”

“So you can get a cup of tea for the drive. I’m well trained.”

“Very. But please, no. I’ve spent the whole day with old Chinese men. You have no idea how much tea that involves.”

As we drove I told Bill about my phone conversation with Paul Gilder’s granddaugher, Anita Horowitz. “I came clean with her: told her I’d spoken to Mr. Chen, Mr. Zhang, and
C. D. Zhang, told her about the Chinese cop and Joel, and about Wong Pan and Alice. The whole thing worried her, but she’s willing to let us speak to Paul. Though she doesn’t see how he can help. He’s only lucid sometimes, for one thing, and anything he ever knew, Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang would know.”

“Maybe not, if they were just kids when the Shanghai Moon disappeared.”

“No, but since they came here in ’sixty-six they’ve been in touch with him. They’ll have pumped him long since.”

Bill’s GPS led us to a neat raised ranch with bright plastic toys dotting the lawn. A dark-haired woman answered the doorbell.

“You’re the detectives? I’m Anita Horowitz. Paul Gilder’s granddaughter.” As she stood aside to let us in, a toddler clomped up. She looked from one of us to the other and offered Bill half a cracker.

“Thank you.” He accepted it gravely.

“This is Lily,” Anita Horowitz said. “Lily, these people are here to see Zayde. Can you show them where he is?”

Lily ran off. As we followed, Anita Horowitz smiled at me. “You’ll be pleased to know you have a sterling reputation.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“After we talked, it occurred to me I should find out more about you. I called our lawyer and asked him to check around. I was prepared to send you packing, but he called back with a glowing report.”

“Well,” I said, straightening. “I’m pleased to hear it.”