A Death in China

54?"

Wang Bin scowled at the joke. "I am tired."

"Okay, no disco. But we gotta eat," the art broker said.

"I want to rest before we work."

"Look out there, old man. That's the greatest city in the world. Don't you want to have a good time?"

"I am tired."

"Hey, Pop, let's celebrate a little. We're rich, remember? You and me, we're on a roll now. Packed our little pal off to our Florida buyer yesterday-that's one down, two to go, and money in the bank." Broom rubbed his hands together hungrily and gave the deputy minister another one of his winks. "Let's see the sights!"

"You go ahead," Wang Bin said, stepping away from the window. "I want to sleep."

The deputy minister was dressed for the graveyard when Harold Broom returned at one in the morning.

"Hey there, Pops, you missed a good time." Broom weaved across the room and eased down on the sofa. He kicked off his shoes and scratched at his feet.

"You are drunk," Wang Bin said angrily.

"Don't worry, partner." Broom struggled out of his clothes without assistance, but Wang Bin had to guide the art broker's arms and legs into the dark gray coveralls that they had selected as their grave robbers' uniform.

"Didya see the Post tonight?" Broom babbled. "It made the headline on one of the back pages: VANDALS DESECRATE JEWISH GRAVES AT FLORIDA CEMETERY. Just a little story, no big deal, but they printed part of my poem. Even had a photo of one of the headstones." Broom stretched out on the sofa and groaned feebly.

"It's time to go now," Wang Bin said, standing over him.

"In a minute."

"Now!" said the deputy minister, grabbing Broom's arm.

The art dealer easily shook himself free and pushed the old man away. "Don't fuck with me, Pop! I got a tiny headache right at the moment so I'm gonna rest.

I'm the driver, 'member? We go when I say."

Wang Bin sat down only when he heard Broom start to snore.

Tom Stratton slouched glumly in the Eastern Airlines lounge that overlooked the main runways at the Tampa-St. Petersburg Airport. A long line of jets sat in the slashing rain, the wing lights flicking red and white and red again, the pilots waiting for the weather to clear. Stratton's flight to New York had already been delayed thirty minutes.

Stratton was on his second beer when he got the idea for a modest head start. He found a nest of deserted pay phones in the main lobby near the gift shops.

In a neat brownstone in one of the better neighborhoods of Queens, Violet Bertecelli cracked her shin on a coffee table as she fumbled in the dark for the telephone. When she finally found it, she was in too much pain to say a gracious hello.

"Do you know what the hell time it is?"

"Is this Mrs. Bertecelli? Mrs. John Bertecelli?" asked a fuzzy voice.

"Yes. Yes, it is. Is this long distance?"

"Yes, ma'am," Tom Stratton said. "I apologize for calling at such an hour, but it's morning here in China-"

"What? You're calling from China?"

"Yes, ma'am. Peking. I'm Steve Powell, with the United States Embassy. I handled the arrangements after your husband's unfortunate… "

"Death," Violet said helpfully.

"Yes, of course, back in July. That's the reason I'm calling, Mrs. Bertecelli.

I'm not exactly sure how to go about telling you this, but in recent months there have been reports of irregularities in the shipment of human remains from China back to the United States."

Violet said, "Johnny died of a coronary."

"Yes, I know. But we've had complaints from a couple of families about the quality of the metal on the coffins. In the case of one poor fellow, the hinges snapped off and the lid came loose."

"The coffin was just fine. It was actually very nice. Did you pick it out yourself, Mr. Powell?"

"No, ma'am."

"Well, it was lovely. Everything was just fine with Johnny. They sent him to Riordan's Funeral Parlor and he was buried out at St. Francis with his ma."

"That's excellent," Stratton said. "And our files show he was laid to rest in plot E-seventy-seven."

"No, sir, that's wrong," Violet said. "It's plot number one-sixty-six. I remember 'cause one-sixty-six was Johnny's best-ever score in the bowling league. That's how I remember the plot number."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bertecelli, you're absolutely right. I see it here now, right in the file. Plot one hundred sixty-six.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bertecelli. That was St. Francis Cemetery?"

"That's right. Grand Central Parkway, Queens."

Tom Stratton hung up the phone and hurried to the nearest Eastern ticket counter. The video monitor now showed that his flight to Kennedy Airport would not depart until two in the morning. Dejectedly Stratton walked back to the lounge and ordered another beer and stared out the window to the runways, where the jets still waited in the rain. He prayed that it was storming like hell in Queens.

Wang Bin sat down in a heap on the ground. His chest heaved, and he could feel drops of sweat trickling into his eyebrows. He watched furiously while Harold Broom grappled with the coffin, muttering obscenties from the dank hole where he worked. The sky was cloudy. Cars and trucks raced by on the parkway, drowning out the other night noises. Headlights from the scattered traffic would suddenly turn the tombstones yellow, and cause an eerie dance of shadows across the hillside.

"We need assistance," Wang Bin declared.

"We need a backhoe," Broom growled. "The dirt down here is like concrete." He tossed down the shovel and tried swinging the pick. The musty earth around the coffin crumbled away in hard clods, but the box itself held fast where it had been buried under a chorus of Hail Marys. "Get down here and help me lift,"

Broom said.

But the two of them-Broom, nauseous and half-drunk; the deputy minister, exhausted, his thin arms cramped from the shoveling-could budge the coffin only a few inches and no more.

Broom glanced at his watch. Four in the morning. Time was running out. Wang Bin was right: They needed help.

"Stay here," he said, fishing for the keys to the rental car.

Wang Bin was too tired to object to being left alone, but after Broom had been gone half an hour, he began to worry. What if the fool never came back? What if he got scared and abandoned him? Enough money had been collected already to finance a very comfortable life for a man like Broom… and where would that leave Wang Bin?

He stood up and stretched his aching arms and legs. The headlights from the highway caught him square in the eyes and he turned away grimacing. In the opposite direction the sky was tinged orange by the incredible lights of Manhattan. Wang Bin doubted if he could ever grow accustomed to life in this city; he understood now why David had chosen a rural place, a small and orderly place. A manageable place.

Not far away, a dog barked excitedly.

Where was Broom?

The deputy minister regarded his American partner as a truly despicable man. He had not understood the vagaries of Broom's behavior at the graveyard in Florida, only that the desecrations had been meant as a ruse to confuse the police. The art broker had assured him that no one would check the coffin after they had buried it again, and he had been right. But it was the way Broom reveled in the vandalism that Wang Bin found so utterly repulsive. He would shed himself of the man as soon as possible, and now… now he was stranded in a cemetery, desperately hoping that Broom was greedy enough to come back. Wang Bin needed Broom and this, too, was a foreign emotion. In China, he had been provided everything he needed; here, without his title, absent of his authority, he felt helpless and common. To defer to a man like Broom was disgraceful, but, for now, quite necessary.

Wang Bin's heart raced at the sound of an automobile winding up the road toward St. Francis Cemetery. An involuntary smile came to his lips when he saw Harold Broom, flanked by two tall, slender figures, trudging down the hill.

"Pop, say hello to Tyrone and Charles."

Wang Bin nodded but caught himself before he bowed. Tyrone and Charles were both angular black teenagers, but they appeared very strong. Tyrone sported a red ski cap and Charles was dressed in a white-and-green sports jersey of some sort. It occurred instantly to Wang Bin that the two strangers could handily overpower him and Harold Broom and steal the treasure themselves.

"These gentlemen were testing the back door of a liquor store down the street,"

Broom was saying. "Good thing I happened to see 'em before they got into real trouble. They said they'd be happy to help."

"For how much?" the deputy minister inquired.

"Hundred bucks apiece," Broom said.

Wang Bin said nothing. Broom shrugged. "Whaddya want at four in the morning, Pop? I didn't have time to take out an ad in the goddamn Times. They look like good workers to me. Right, boys?"

Tyrone shrugged and Charles said, "What the hell is this deal?" He gestured at the open grave. "What's the fuckin' story? I ain't messin' with no stiffs."

"Me neither," Tyrone said.

"I'm not asking you to mess with a stiff, pal. I'm asking you to help us get the coffin out of the ground. A little manual labor, that's all. Won't kill you, take my word for it."

"Don't seem right," Charles said, peering into the hole.

Broom said, "Fine! You don't like it? Then beat it. Get the hell out of here!"

Wang Bin looked at him sharply.

"I didn't know you guys were a couple of pussies," Broom said. "Shit. For two hundred bucks I'll go find a couple of men to help with this."

As Broom waved his arms theatrically, Charles calmly seized him by the back of the neck and said, "Shut up, you greasy jive mo'fucker. Give us the bread and we'll dig."

The art broker huddled with Wang Bin as the two teenagers wrestled with the coffin. "You got to know how to talk to these people," Broom explained.

"I don't like them," Wang Bin whispered.

"Of course you don't."

"I don't trust them."

"Relax, Pop."

Broom hopped into the grave. Within minutes, he and the two teenagers had hoisted the coffin of John Bertecelli from the hole and laid it on the ground.

Tyrone sat down on a headstone and said, "So who's in it, Dracula?"

"I don't want to know," Charles said. "Let's split."

"No, man, I want the dudes to open it."

"You can go now," Broom said. "Thanks for the help, fellas."

"Open it, man!"

"No."

"Okay. I'll open it." Tyrone lifted the pick and windmilled it at the coffin.

The lid skewed from the hinges. Tyrone kicked it off with one of his basketball shoes.

"Shit," he said. "It's a mummy!"

Swaddled in plastic, a Chinese spearman stared through wise eyes into the firmament.

Broom stepped forward and said, "That's enough. You've seen it, now get the hell out of here."

"What's it worth?" Charles asked, leaning over the coffin, hands on his knees.

"Let's haul it out of there," Tyrone suggested. "You get that end-"

"No!" Wang Bin said.

The black teenagers looked up to see the old man pointing a chrome-plated pistol at them. They noticed that his arm was rigid. Charles chuckled and fumbled with the statue.

"Why you so uptight?" Tyrone said to Wang Bin. "This mummy must be somebody special for you, that right? Is this your old man?"

"Tell your friend to let go of the artifact," Wang Bin instructed.

"He ain't gonna break it."

The crack of the pistol got the dog barking again. Charles wriggled on the damp ground, clawing at his right arm. Tyrone was speechless.

"Oh shit, Pop," Broom said in a husky voice. "We've got to get out of here."

"I agree," the deputy minister said. "Mr. Tyrone, would you please help Mr.

Broom carry the artifact to our car? If you make trouble, I will shoot your friend again and again until he is dead."

By this time Charles was sobbing, and his New York Jets jersey was sticky with fresh blood. Tyrone gingerly lifted the Chinese spear carrier by the head while Broom-suddenly sober-carried the other end. The two unlikely pallbearers tenuously made their way up the hillside, weaving among the tombstones. Wang Bin held the pistol steadily on his captive and wondered sourly if this was going to be the only way to gain people's obedience.

The first cop on the scene was a patrolman named Sanderson, who borrowed a spool of kite string from one of the neighborhood kids and cordoned off the gravesite using four other tombstones as corner posts. The total effect, Sanderson noted with self-satisfaction, was to convey the impression of an actual crime scene.

All that was missing was the chalk silhouette.

Tom Stratton arrived by cab at 7:15 a.m., a haggard presence among the rabid, coffee-hopped reporters. Because he was carrying a fresh spray of flowers, Stratton was immediately marked as a grief-stricken relative and besieged with questions. Who would want to steal Mr. Bertecelli's body? Had a ransom note been received? Did Mr. Bertecelli practice satanism? How was the widow holding up?

Stratton deflected his interrogators and was relieved when a plump brunette woman identified herself as Violet Bertecelli and began to tell her sad story to the mothlike newsmen. The moment also offered a breather for Officer Sanderson, so Stratton walked up and asked what had happened.

"Some assholes ripped off a corpse here, which is grand theft, presuming the item taken has a value in excess of one hundred dollars. We're looking for two or three perpetrators, at least one of them armed with a pistol." Sanderson shrugged. "Who knows what to think? You want my opinion? Kids. Maybe it's some kind of sick fraternity ritual. Else it could be 'Ricans. They're all into that witchcraft shit. Voodoo, eatin' chicken heads. Could be that. Hey you! Get out of the fuckin' hole!" Sanderson waved his nightstick at a photographer. "Get out of the goddamn grave. What are ya, some kinda sick hump?"

"Somebody said there was an ambulance here," Stratton remarked.

"Yeah, that's the odd thing." Sanderson took out his notebook and read from the top page. "Victim's name was Charles Robinson, aged seventeen. Long juvenile record for b-and-e, shoplifting, boosting bicycles. Nothing like this."

"Was he hurt badly?"

"Naw, you know them people. You got to shoot 'em in the asshole to do any real damage." The cop laughed. "You a relative of Mr. Bertecelli or what?"

"No, I brought some flowers for my grandmother's grave. It's up the hill a ways.

I was just curious, that's all."

"Well, the little shit was shot in the arm. He'll live. I'm pretty sure he was involved in the whole thing. He's not talkin', naturally. Says he was walkin' by the graveyard on his way to church when some crazy Chinaman shot him." Sanderson shook his head admiringly. "You got to give these douche bags credit for imagination. Fuckin' weird, even for Queens."

The retinue clinging to Violet Bertecelli suddenly moved with her to the edge of the damaged grave. She stared at the broken casket and began to wail, accompanied by the sibilance of a dozen motordrive Nikons.