Ghost Hero

THIS BOOK IS FOR DAVID THOMPSON AND BILL REINKAMISS YA, FELLAS!

CONTENTS

Title Page

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Also by S. J. Rozan

Copyright

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big m’goi, xie xie, and thank you to

Steve Axelrod, my agent

Keith Kahla, my editor

Dr. Qian Zhijian

Xin Song

Reed Farrel Coleman, Nancy Ennis, Ed Lin, Jonathan Santlofer, Lisa Scottoline, Keith Snyder, Joseph Wallace

Steven Blier, Hillary Brown, Belmont Freeman, Max Rudin, James Russell, Amy Schatz

Betsy Harding, Royal Huber, Tom Savage

The Museum of Chinese in America

And a wish for good fortune to

Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei

1

In a relentlessly chic and tranquil tea shop on the Lower East Side, I sat sipping gunpowder green and trying to figure out what my new client was up to. That the client, Jeff Dunbar, sat across the table laying out the case he was hiring me for, helped not at all.

“It’s about art,” he’d begun, stirring sugar into his straight-ahead American coffee after the pleased-to-meet-yous were over.

“Art?” I’d tried to sound intrigued, as opposed to baffled, by this revelation. Dunbar had called the day before, saying he needed an investigator and had seen my Web site. I’d expected, when we met on this chilly, bright spring morning, to hear a problem that was personal—cheating fiancée, two-timing wife—or professional—industrial espionage, embezzling employees. Straying spouses and shady secretaries are my daily bread and the Web site says so. It doesn’t mention art, a specialty outside any of my areas of expertise. If this case was about art, I had to wonder, why call me?

Dunbar sent a dollop of milk to join the sugar. “I’m a collector. Contemporary Chinese art. Do you know much about that?”

Oh. This had to do with my contemporary Chineseness? “Not much, no.”

He nodded and settled back. “It’s a cutting-edge collecting area. Not really inside the PRC, even among the new rich, but in the West. Chinese painters, especially, but also sculptors, photographers, installation artists—they’re all hot.” His voice was pleasant, measured, as though lecturing at a symposium on the globalized cultural marketplace. He looked the part, too: thirtyish, short dark hair, polished shoes, the only business suit in sight. That his art and his prospective detective were both Chinese couldn’t be coincidence, but the detective’s ignorance seemed okay with him. My antennae went up. There’s a class of Westerners who “like rice”: They’re attracted to Asians, or, really, to their own exotic fantasies. If Jeff Dunbar had chosen Chinese art, and me, for that reason, he was about to get a fast good-bye. And stuck with the check.

But he didn’t look it, and he wasn’t acting it. Those guys invariably wear something Asian, at least a tie with a double-happiness pattern. They order tea. And, during Zen-like pauses, they gaze soulfully into my slanty eyes. Jeff Dunbar came across as a guy in a boring suit conducting a business meeting.

I decided to see where this was going. “Tell me about this art. I don’t think I’ve seen much of it.” I ransacked my brain, came up with little besides misty mountains and pine trees from five or six dynasties back. “Is it like classical art? Ink on paper, that kind of thing?”

“Interesting you should ask that. Mostly, no. A lot of artists now work in Western media—oils, acrylics. But the paintings I’m concerned with happen to be inks.” He set his cup down. “There’s a painter named Chau Chun. Referred to as Chau ‘Gwai Ying Shung’—Ghost Hero Chau. Have you heard of him?”

“I’m sorry, no.” I added, “Your pronunciation is very good. Do you speak Chinese?”

“Thanks. Yes, I minored in it in college. It occurred to me that people who spoke the language would be increasingly in demand.”

“And you majored in?…”

“Art, of course.”

Of course, except for the half-second pause before he said it. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. You were telling me about Ghost Hero Chau.”

“Yes. Well, Chau was a young professor at the Beijing Art Institute in the 1980s. His work from that period is very valuable.”

“How valuable is ‘very’? ”

“A piece will sell for around half a million. A little more, a little less, depending.”

Yes, I thought, that would be “very.”

“A lot of artists his age were doing experimental work in those days,” Dunbar went on, “but Chau always worked in traditional media with traditional techniques. He made brush-and-ink scrolls: mountains, plum blossoms, lotus ponds. Classical-looking, and also traditional in another sense: They were political, but in arcane ways. Hidden symbols and metaphors, that sort of thing.”

“That’s traditional? I didn’t know that.”

“Nature painting with coded commentary goes back to the Yuan Dynasty. About eight hundred years,” he added, in case I didn’t know my dynasties. “The commentary’s aimed at educated people of the painter’s political persuasion, but the coding gives the painter deniability. But don’t worry, Ms. Chin. I didn’t expect you to have any expertise in this field. That’s not why I called.”

“I have to admit that’s a relief. So tell me, what can I do for you?”

“Recently, some new paintings of Ghost Hero Chau’s seem to have surfaced. Again, inks, and again, political, criticizing the government, the Party, the economic free-for-all going on in China and the social disasters it’s causing.”

“I’m surprised that’s allowed. Criticizing the government can get you in trouble over there.”

“Very much so, if you’re an activist lawyer, say. Or a writer. Artists, less often.”

“What makes them special?”

“Oh, it could be liberalization. Those hundred flowers finally blooming. Or,” he smiled, “maybe it’s that the artists are cash cows. The West loves political work. Collectors pay a fortune and the government takes a cut.”

“It does?”

“Well, so does ours, from our artists. We call it taxes. They call it something else but the result’s the same. Also, there’s national pride. Sky-high prices make China a player in the art world.”

“But if the paintings are critical?”

“Ah, but with visual works, you can always say seeing something as antigovernment misses the point. That it was meant as ironic, tongue-in-cheek.”

“Deniability, like in the Yuan Dynasty.”

“Exactly.”

“And that’s what the artists say? To keep the government off their backs?”

“It’s what the government says, to explain why someone’s allowed to say in paint what a writer gets years of hard labor for saying in words. Of course, writers’ manifestos aren’t going for half a million U.S. dollars. The artists who get in trouble are the ones who don’t keep their mouths shut. The ones who let their work do the talking are pretty safe.”

“I see. So people like this Ghost Hero Chau are insulated by money. I guess I’m not surprised.”

But Dunbar shook his head. “Chau’s a special case. For one thing, if what I hear is true, the new paintings are here, in New York.”

“If what you hear is true? You mean you haven’t seen them?” I was getting a glimmer of what this was about.

“That’s right. I haven’t, and no one seems to know where they are. I’m hoping you can find them.”

“Because I’m Chinese?”

“That sounds like racial profiling, doesn’t it?” He smiled again. “I suppose it is. It occurred to me, if I wasn’t having any luck tracking the paintings through art channels, there might be another way. I did an online search for a Chinese investigator.”

I might have taken offense, but after all, that’s why my Chinese clients come to me, too. “Tell me something, Mr. Dunbar. If no one’s seen these paintings, what makes you think they exist?”

“Rumors. The collecting community’s always full of rumors. Backhanded, of course, because everyone’s trying to beat everyone to the prize.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Oh, someone sidles up to you at an opening and asks if you’ve heard this nonsense about the new Chaus, the Ghost Hero’s ghost paintings that don’t exist. They’re hoping you’ll say, Yes, they do, I saw them. If you do, they’ll ask where, as if you must be crazy, and when you tell them, they’ll laugh and say you’ve lost your touch, someone’s passing off fakes and you fell for it. Ghost Hero Chau, for God’s sake. Then it’s, Oh, look at the time, I’ve got to go, and before they’re out the door they’re speed-dialing whoever you said had the Chaus.”

“And that’s been going on?”

“Variations of it. For about a week now. But I’ve spoken to the galleries and private dealers—I’m sure everyone else has, too—and I’ve gotten nowhere. Only one gallery assistant even admitted to knowing what I was talking about, and then he backpedaled. I think he realized he was in over his head. The Chinese contemporary world’s pretty small and his boss must be as eager as anyone to find these paintings. If I end up with them because this kid put me on the inside track, and his boss finds out, he’s up a creek. Plus, I just started collecting. He might be willing to go out on a limb for one of the big collectors, but he doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground.”

A creek, a limb, and a hole in the ground. Maybe these were nature metaphors with hidden political meaning.

“So what do you think, Ms. Chin? Can you find them?”

“Mr. Dunbar, you’re not even sure these paintings exist. Why not wait until they either surface, or it all turns out to be smoke? I guess what I’m asking is, Why is paying for an investigation worth it?” It’s not that I wanted to talk myself out of work, but something wasn’t adding up here.

Jeff Dunbar regarded me. “Do you collect anything, Ms. Chin? Stamps, coins, Barbie dolls?” He added, “Guns?” Racial profiling, but carefully politically correct about gender.

“No.”

He leaned forward. “For a collector, the hunt’s as much of a thrill as the find. I want these Chaus, if they’re real. But I also want to be the one who finds them, and finds out if they’re real. Especially since I’m the new kid on the block. Does that make sense?”

“I guess so,” I said, though the collector’s passion, to me, is like gravity: I admit it has a pull but I don’t understand it.

“Also,” he said, “there’s a time issue.”

Ah. Time is money. And money does talk.

“Asian Art Week starts Sunday. All over town: The auction houses, the museums and galleries, two big Armory shows, and a show the Chinese government’s sending over called Beijing/NYC. Mostly classical art and antiquities, but a lot of contemporary, too. The big collectors, the critics, the curators all come. From everywhere—Asia and Europe, as well as here. If these Chaus exist, whoever has them might be planning to unveil them then.”

“To make a splash.”

“That’s right.”

“And you want them so you can make the splash.”

“I told you the collecting world’s small? It’s also closed and clannish. Some things I’m interested in I never get a shot at, because when they show up, I’m not the one who gets the call. I want that to change. If I had the new Chaus, trust me, that would change.”

“All right. But there’s something else. I don’t know much about this, but wouldn’t an artist, or a dealer or somebody, whoever has these paintings, either just put them on the market, or not? I mean, one or the other. Rumors, mystery, paintings no one’s seen that may or not be real—is this how the art world works?”

“Normally, no. But as I said, Ghost Hero Chau is a special case. The possibility of new paintings by him would be bound to stir up all kinds of mystery and rumors.”

“And why is that?”

Dunbar sat back. “Are you familiar with the uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989?”

I thought for a moment. “A democracy movement that never got off the ground, crushed by the Party. That’s about all I know.”

“Correct. They sent the army in against the protestors. Hundreds of people were killed. Including Ghost Hero Chau. Ms. Chin, he’s been dead for twenty years.”

2

Back in my office an hour later, I watched Bill Smith take an evaluative sip of coffee. He used to bring his own, but last week I’d bought a coffee press and a grinder and a pound of beans to store in the tiny freezer in my tiny fridge. Bill and I have had our ups and downs over the years; buying all this coffee-producing stuff was, for me, a big commitment.

“Excellent,” he pronounced.

“What a relief. So…” I leaned back in my creaky chair, cradling my jasmine tea, which was also excellent. “… what are we going to do about the late great Ghost Hero Chau and his new paintings?”

“Well, my first thought, you won’t be surprised to hear, is that they’re fakes.” He sipped his coffee and gave a happy sigh.

“I suggested that to the client. He agreed they could be.”

“If Chau’s dead, and the paintings are new, they sort of have to be,” Bill pointed out. “If they’re real and they’re new, Chau’s unlikely to be dead. Unless he painted them twenty years ago and they’re just turning up now, so they’re not really new. Or he’s dead and he just painted them, so he really is a ghost.”

“Dunbar says no.”

“No real ghost?”

“You sound disappointed.”

“It would be something different.”

“Sorry. No old paintings. Dunbar says the content refers to the problems of modern China. Internal migration, freedom of expression, corruption.”

“The content,” Bill said thoughtfully. “But it’s coded, isn’t it? He’s sure he’s reading it right?”

“Well, he’s not reading it at all, because he hasn’t seen them. Those are the rumors.”

“Rumors. Which the whole collecting world’s heard, but the dealers haven’t.”

“Dunbar thinks the dealers almost certainly have but won’t admit it until one of them’s got the paintings in his hot little hands.”

“Okay, so tell me this: Why is Dunbar coming to an investigator instead of an art expert?”

“And an investigator with no clue about art. There, I just had to say it before you did. But it’s not about whether the paintings are real or fake. It’s about finding them. Which he thinks I can do because I’m Chinese. He thinks I can boldly go where no muscle-bound barbarian has gone before.”

“Undercover in the teahouses and rice paddies of your people. Eavesdropping behind crimson columns. Parting the stalks in a bamboo grove.”

“I actually think that’s what he means.”

“Well, good for him. How much does he say these paintings are worth?”

“Chaus from the eighties sell for three to six hundred thousand. And if these are real and new, meaning Chau’s still alive, they could set off a feeding frenzy.”

“Ah. Now chasing something that may not exist starts to make sense. Though I think your client’s being a little cute about his motivation.”

“By which you mean?…”

“The thrill of the hunt, being the new kid in town, wanting the big boys to take him seriously. All that.”

“You think it’s baloney?”

“I think it’s worse than that, but if I use those words I might not get more coffee.” He held out his mug. “You said there was something off about him.”

“Well, there was. I remember the art majors from college. The studio majors were on their own planet, of course, but even the dorkiest history-and-crit major was hipper than this guy.”

“People change. Maybe he swerved to the right after he graduated.”

“Then why is he collecting cutting-edge art?”

“Now he has a little money and he’s loosening up again?”

“What are you saying? You think I’m wrong about something being off?”

“You’re never wrong about that. I’m just giving you a hard time.”

“Oh, good, in case I might forget who you are. So what do we think he’s up to?”

Bill considered briefly. “Well, one possibility: it’s exactly what he said. He’s looking to make an end run around everyone else and snap these paintings up. But—”

“But you think it’s about money, not the pure love of art.”

“That didn’t cross your mind?”

“Actually, it more than crossed it. It lodged there.” I drank some more of my excellent tea. “In our entire conversation, he didn’t once say anything about wanting to see the paintings. Wondering what they were like. How they might be different from the older ones, better or worse. What a thrill it would be if Ghost Hero Chau really were alive, and still painting.”

“So. He may be a collector, but he’s not a lover. He’s gambling they’re real and he wants to corner the market. You’re shaking your head. Why?”

“I don’t think he’s a collector, either. I ran a background. No Jeff Dunbars his age in any of the databases. He gave me a business card with no business on it, only his name and phone number. Not even an e-mail. Now, that could mean he’s rich enough not to work, rich enough he doesn’t want anyone to know who he really is. Collecting art would go along with that, and I guess so would paying my retainer in cash—”

“How much, by the way? Unless it’s none of my business.”

“Since I’m paying you out of it, it can be your business. A grand against two days plus expenses. More after that, or we settle up if I find them sooner.”

“A trustful sort of fellow, handing over cash like that.”

I shrugged. It was a lot, but clients paying in cash are not all that rare. Many people like to avoid a paper trail leading to a PI.

“But the phone,” I said, “is a prepaid cell.”

“Ah. Now that’s damn dubious, I’d say.”

“And the suit didn’t scream ‘too rich to work’ either.”

“Shiny and threadbare?”

“No, no. Perfectly fine, but strictly off the rack. A good rack, but not super high-end. Remember, I’m a seamstress’s daughter.”

“You do your mother proud.”

“Leave my mother out of it. And frankly, if he were a Getty or something—not to display my lack of self-esteem but why is he coming to me? All the big guys have Asians on staff.”

“Because you’re better?”

“But how would he know that? Seriously, I’m thinking he’s just a working stiff, and his work has to do with China. He said he learned Chinese because he thought it would be useful. I bet he’s in import-export, or he’s American legal counsel for a Chinese firm, something like that. That’s probably where he heard about the paintings—at work. He’s using a phony name because he doesn’t want his bosses to know he’s on the hunt, and he came to me, not one of the big boys, out of the same instinct. He’s not the new collector on the block. He’s not on the block at all. He just wants to cash in on the Chaus.” I finished my tea and looked at Bill. It was a sensible theory and he nodded.

“Or,” I said.

“Or.” Bill didn’t stop nodding, but he waited for me to say it.

“Or he’s not looking for the paintings at all. He’s looking for the painter.”

Bill lit a cigarette and dropped the match in the ashtray I keep around for him. “So. Why?” He streamed out smoke. “Chau owes him money? Stole his girl?”

“Twenty years ago, when Chau was thirty-five and Dunbar was ten?”

“Maybe it wasn’t Dunbar. It was his daddy. A multigenerational family feud. Your people go in for that, don’t they? God knows mine do. Maybe this is the Hatfields and the McChaus.”

“Okay. But still. Chau’s well-known to be dead.”

“An obstacle, but not insurmountable. Maybe he’s been reincarnated. Another thing your people go in for.”

“You’re mocking my people.”

“In case you might forget who I am.”

“Fat chance.” We sat in silence for a few moments. Then I said, “Here’s what I propose: we take the case. But, whatever we find, we don’t tell the client until we know what’s really going on.”

“Or, you could tell the client to go climb a tree and branch off.”

“Are you kidding? May I remind you I haven’t worked in nearly a month? There was that fistful of cash, you remember.”

Bill didn’t respond to that. He and I have both sent clients packing, retainer or not, when they were up to something we wanted no part of.

I sighed and looked into my empty cup. “I realized something. While Dunbar was talking.”

“Which is?”

“The collecting thing … I don’t get it. I never have.”

“Okay.”

“But the hunting thing? Being the one to chase something down? Find it first, discover a secret? That I do get. I think,” I admitted slowly, “that’s why I’m in this business.”

Bill cocked his head and grinned. “That’s your big insight?”

“What do you mean?”

“If that’s news to you, you’re the last to hear it.”

I felt myself redden.

“No, come on,” Bill said. “You keep telling me I do this so I can be Sir Galahad, riding in and saving the town. Why can’t you have a less-than-pure motive, too?”

“I never said Sir Galahad. I said the Lone Ranger.”

“The effect is the same, and Sir Galahad doesn’t have to wear a mask.”

“No, just a tin suit. Anyway, my motives are pure and we’re taking the case.”

“So I can be Sir Galahad and you can be Indiana Jones?”

“The Lone Ranger! And Indiana Jones, in case you missed it, is a guy. Why can’t I be Lara Croft?”

“Okay, but she doesn’t have a whip.”

“I’m so not going there. And for your information, we’re taking the case because at the end, when I’ve found the secret and you’ve saved the town, I can keep Jeff Dunbar’s retainer and maybe even send him another big bill. Coffee-making machinery doesn’t come cheap, you know. And a constant supply of beans? Please.”

“Well, if that’s what’s at stake.” Bill finished his coffee. “So okay, boss. What’s our first move?”

I sat back and gazed at the ceiling. “I wish I knew more about Chau. Or Chinese art. I Googled, but Chau’s story is pretty much what Dunbar said it was, and I didn’t find anything else helpful. The only lead I have is this gallery assistant who backpedaled.”

“Well, let’s go lean on him.”

“Sure, but what if he doesn’t give? I don’t have a clue where to go next.”

“Art, according to Dunbar, is not why he hired you. Chineseness is.”

“Yes, but he’s wrong. Seriously, whatever’s going on, who says anyone involved is Chinese except me and Ghost Hero Chau? It’s art I need.”

Bill looked at me for a few moments with something in his eyes I couldn’t read. Then he shifted his gaze to his coffee cup, and the press, and the grinder. “Well, okay,” he said, and took out his cell phone. The coversation was friendly and brief: he ascertained the callee was in and would remain so, and that was that. He put the phone away and stood. “Come on.”

* * *

We subwayed up to a neighborhood I don’t usually have much business in, the part of the Upper East Side that’s waist-deep in old money. Bill, though, negotiated the sidewalks like he was right at home. That’s because he was. He lives as far downtown as I do—and was born in Kentucky, for Pete’s sake—but a lot of New York’s museums and galleries are up here. Bill is one of those rare New Yorkers who actually spends time in museums and galleries, looking at art.

We weren’t going to a gallery or a museum, though. At a brownstone on Madison near Seventy-fifth Bill pressed a buzzer. A man’s voice popped from the speaker: “Hey! Come on up!” and, buzzed in, we climbed a curving staircase from the days when this was someone’s grand home. On the second floor, in the open doorway of an elegantly spare office—gleaming wood floor, sunlight pouring through wide street-side windows—stood a tall and grinning Asian man.

“Bill Smith!” he said. “Way cool! Come on in.” He shook Bill’s hand, then turned to me. “Hi. I’m Jack Lee.” His words held no trace of any Asian accent, but not a New York one, either.

“Lydia Chin.”

“Bill’s partner, I know.” Jack Lee’s hand was big, his grip solid. “Come on, sit down, you guys.”

Jack Lee was around my age, nearly as tall as Bill, and in weight somewhere between us, which made him a string bean. Loose-limbed and lanky, he wore a beautiful multicolored silk tie and ironed black jeans, but no jacket. His white shirtsleeves were neatly rolled back, revealing muscled forearms. Closing the door, he pointed us to wood chairs set around a low table piled with art books. Most of what was in the waist-high bookcase behind the desk were art books, too, though some had the staid leather bindings and stamped lettering of law manuals.

Bill and I sat, and Jack Lee started to do the same, but stopped halfway. “Uh-oh. F for hospitality! I don’t have coffee or anything for you guys. Drank it up, haven’t replenished. You want something? There’s a good place a block up.” He rattled off words like a drum solo.

“Not me, I’m fine,” I said. The minimalist chair was surprisingly comfortable.

“Me, too,” said Bill. “I just had a really good cup of coffee.”

“Cool. I’m second-generation ABC from Madison, Wisconsin,” Jack Lee said to me as he sprawled onto a chair. ABC, that’s American-born Chinese. I’m first generation, myself. “I may look Chinese, but think of me as an All-American midwestern college-town boy. That way you won’t be too disappointed.”

I had to smile. “I’m already not disappointed.”

“But she wasn’t expecting anything,” Bill put in.

“Baseline zero, try not to make it worse, Jack, I get it. So, what can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “What do you do?”

Jack Lee raised his eyebrows at Bill. “You didn’t tell her?”

“I never tell her anything. Keeps the relationship fresh.”

“‘Fresh’ isn’t the word I’d have used,” I said.

“Got you. Well, the big secret he wants me to spill is, I’m a private eye.”

“Oh.” I blinked. “No kidding?”

“Yeah, how about that? And Bill’s been promising to bring you up here for months now. You know, so we can share mysterious Chinese trade secrets. I was starting to think you didn’t exist. That he’d invented a kick-ass Chinese partner to string me along, keep the top-shelf bourbon flowing.”

“Kick-ass?”

“He was lying?”

“Not about that, no,” I said.

“I was just waiting for the moment of maximum impact,” Bill said. “I thought it would be most efficient for you to share those mysterious secrets while you worked on a case.”

“Hey,” said Jack, “you mean this isn’t just a social call? You come bearing work?”

“We might.” Bill turned to me. “Jack, as he says, may look Chinese, but that’s actually beside the point. He’s an art expert.”

“‘Expert’ is too strong a word,” Jack corrected, with Chinese modesty but an American grin. “But it’s my field. Art history, Asian art concentration.” I’d already taken note of the framed University of Chicago Ph.D. on the bookcase—which included the words “summa cum laude”—so that wasn’t news. “Life plan was to be a big-deal dealer. Came to New York to go the gallery route. But I couldn’t take it.”

“It involves sitting still,” Bill said, in explanation.

“Sad but true. So now instead of selling art, I corral it. Chase down the lost, stolen, or strayed. Bodyguard a vase on its way someplace. Check a bronze’s provenance. Make sure the dish that comes back from the restorer is the same one that was sent to be restored. Much more fun, and it keeps me out of trouble. And out of galleries. Still, galleries have their uses. That’s where I met your partner. At a Soho opening, last fall.”

I said to Bill, “You hate openings.”

“The gallery owner was a friend of mine. He’s helped me out over the years. I had to go.”

“And he’s a client of mine,” Jack said. “So, so did I.”

I looked from one to the other. “And you guys bonded over white wine, Chex Mix, and art?”

“For that show,” Jack said, “‘art’ is too strong a word. Installations made from rusty tools and broken dolls. Pretentious, ugly, and lethal.”

“See,” said Bill, “there’s that Chinese problem you have, where you won’t speak your mind. Same as Lydia.”

I knew he was expecting me to roll my eyes, so I just sat politely, listening to Jack.

“Pretty much everyone seemed to be impressed, though,” Jack said. “A lot of nodding and murmuring. ‘The juxtaposition is thrillingly unnerving.’ ‘He brings out the feminine side of steel.’ I was checking my watch to see if I could leave yet when I spotted a guy having as hard a time as I was keeping a straight face.”

“Not my fault,” Bill protested. “There was a critic waving his hands, going on about a piece made from doll heads and buzz-saw blades. Then he cut his thumb on it.”

“It was the start of a beautiful friendship. Cemented in the bar next door.”

“Though I warn you,” Bill said, “Jack drinks martinis.”

“Does that disqualify me from something?”

“Not by itself,” I said.

“So.” Jack crossed one long leg over the other. “Now that you have my CV, do you know why Bill brought you here? Besides the Chinese trade secret thing? Because if we get into that, of course we’ll have to throw him out.”

“Of course. Let’s save that for later, in case we need it. Tell me, is contemporary Chinese art on your CV?”

Jack glanced at Bill, then back to me. “Up to a point.”

“Ghost Hero Chau. Is he before or after that point?”

“Ghost Hero Chau.” Jack steepled his fingers in front of his chin. “He’s your case?”

“His paintings. Or, some new paintings that are supposed to be his.”

“Re-eally?” Jack drew the word out, giving me an odd look.

“I know, he’s dead. But that’s what my client says. New paintings.”

“Who’s your client? Okay, never mind,” he said in answer to my you-know-better smile. “But is he Chinese?”

“No. WASP, even more midwestern suburban than you are.”

“Ouch,” said Bill.

“But that’s why he came to me. He searched online for a Chinese investigator. He thinks it’ll help.”

“Hmm. Hmm, hmm hmm, hmm hmm,” Jack said. “What’s his angle? He’s been offered them and he wants you to prove the pedigree before he buys?”

“No. He hasn’t even seen them. He wants me to find them.”

“Re-eally.” Again, he drew the word out like taffy. “Why?”

“The thrill of the hunt. And, he’s the new kid in town and wants to make his collecting bones by getting his hands on them.” To the look on Jack’s face, I said, “No, we don’t buy it either. We think he just wants to corner the market and flip them during Asian Art Week. Obviously, he’s gambling they’re real, or the market’s not worth cornering.”

“And you came to me for what? Background?”

“Yes,” said Bill. “And Chinese trade secrets.”

“Which you’ll never hear, Kemosabe,” Jack retorted. I snickered as Jack looked from Bill to me. “Ghost Hero Chau. Do you guys know much about him? Why they call him that?”

“He was involved in the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989,” I said. “He was a big deal professor, but he stood with the students. He died when the army came in. After he died, according to my client, he was a ghost, but a hero.”

“That’s how he put it?”

“It’s wrong?”

“It’s incomplete. For months after Tiananmen, there were rumors Chau was still alive.”

I gave Bill a quick look. “Oh. So if the rumors are true, the paintings could actually be his.”

“It’s unlikely, though.” Jack rearranged himself again, throwing one leg over a chair arm. “The PRC government admits to two hundred and forty-one people dying by the time Tiananmen was over. Rioters and hooligans, every one of them, threats to the public order and enemies of the revolution. But about a thousand more were never heard from again. The government says they were more rioters and hooligans and they ran away. Their families say they were killed, but no one’s been able to prove it. Those people are the ‘ghosts.’ But Chau was one of the two hundred and forty-one. He’s on the official list, his body was identified, he’s buried in his hometown.”

“Then where did the rumors come from?”

“People claiming they’d seen him. In different parts of the country, over the next few months. Rumors were flying everywhere that summer. They had a news blackout; no one knew what was going on. For anyone looking for a symbol to rally around, Chau would’ve been perfect. The rumors were probably started by underground student leaders trying to keep the movement going. Eventually, though, they died out.”

“Were there paintings?” Bill asked.

Jack’s thin face had been wearing a brooding look, but now he broke into a grin. “Smith, two points! No. That’s one of the things that finally convinced people it wasn’t true. If Chau had been alive, he could’ve signaled that and rallied people by making new paintings. Even under another name, his work’s that distinctive. But there weren’t any.”

“Okay,” said Bill. “Now I have another question. How come you’re a walking encyclopedia about Tiananmen Square? Which happened when you were eight?”

“Nine.” Jack considered him. “If I told you we studied Tiananmen at art school because the Beijing art school was in a leadership role in the movement, would you believe me?”

Bill shook his head solemnly. Jack turned to me.

“I would have,” I said. “Except I never believe anybody who asks if I’d believe him if.”

Jack regarded me another moment, then ejected himself from his chair. He strode the length of the room, turned, covered the distance again. He stopped with his back to us and stared at the full moon glowing from the only thing hanging on the wall, a Japanese woodblock print. “Okay.” He spun around. “Weighing the demands of client confidentiality against the possibility of actually solving the client’s case, and against the impossibility of maintaining confidentiality when I bump into you guys every ten minutes in the course of this investigation, here’s the answer: I know all that because my client told me.”

“Client? What client?”

He grinned and folded his arms. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. I have the same case.”

3

For the rest of our discussion we repaired to the café on the next block because Bill and Jack both thought the situation called for caffeine. Bill also wanted a smoke. I, of course, was completely self-sufficient and needed nothing, but I went along for the ride. Jack ordered and waited at the counter while Bill and I colonized a table. “The truth,” I said, as I unwound my scarf. “Did you have any idea?”

“That Jack had a similar case?”

“The same case, he says.”

“No. And I’m not sure I like it.”

“Why? You have a problem with him you’re not telling me about?”

“Absolutely not. Jack’s a wild man, but he’s stand-up. He’s also really good at what he does.”

“Then why have you been holding out on me?”

“Holding out what?”

“Him.”

“It’s my job to make sure you know every Chinese person in New York?”

“Oh, forget it. What is it you’re not sure you like?”

“Two people with enough sudden interest in the same set of facts—no, rumors—to hire investigators.”

“Maybe his client’s interest isn’t sudden.”

“Or maybe it’s not two clients. Maybe it’s the same client, hedging his bets.”

I’d thought of that, too. “That would be a weird vote of no confidence. In both investigators.”

Jack came back to us, spread mugs around, and plopped onto a chair. “Okay,” he said. “Cards on the table?”

“What do you mean? Share information? You’re suggesting we work the cases together?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think we can go that far. This is the race to the pole! Scott and Amundsen. Mush! You guys can be Scott.”

“Who won?”

“Amundsen.”

“Not only that,” Bill said, “Scott died on the way back.”

I said, “I thought you liked this guy.”

“I thought I did.”

“No, listen.” Jack tested his two-shot macchiato. “There’s an obvious conflict if we work together. Whose client gets the gold from the mummy’s tomb when we find it?”

“Let me point out that, personally,” I said, “I haven’t been hired to deliver the mummy’s gold. Just to locate it.”

“Ooh, Talmudic,” Jack said with admiration. “But I still see a conflict. I mean, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“But what I said before is true—we’d be running into each other anyway. It would get embarrassing after a while. And if I blow you off, tell you I never heard of Ghost Hero Chau, who you gonna call?”

“Ghost Hero Busters?”

“My client. The minute you scratch the Chinese contemporary art surface, you’ll find him. He’s the go-to guy. Bernard Yang, at NYU.”

“Oh. I think his name came up when I Googled.”

“Told you. You’d show up in his office looking for background on Ghost Hero Chau. Next thing, he has a cow and calls me. Then I have to say I have no idea who you are but I’ll check it out, which is a lie and makes me look a step behind besides. Or I have to tell him I know all about you but no worries, which makes my judgment in not warning him suspect. Or, I do warn him, and tell him to pretend he’s out of town when you call. Then I have to pretend to you I didn’t do that, and—man, you guys are putting me in a bad position. Some friends you are.”

“We’ll make it up to you,” Bill said. “When this is all over I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Not good enough.”

“I’ll buy you a drink,” I said.

Jack brightened. “Now you’re talking.”

“Well,” I said to Bill. “At least they’re different clients.”

Jack said, “That’s why I asked before if yours was Chinese.”

“Is Yang Chinese-Chinese, or ABC?”

“Chinese-Chinese. From the mainland, here about twenty years.”

“From the mainland, Bernard?”

“No, Ji-tong, but he’s an American now. Hey, is your name Lydia?”

“No,” I admitted. “Chin Ling Wan-ju.”

“Ling Wan-ju? ‘Sparkling doll?’”

“More like the buzz-saw blades,” Bill put in.

Jack stuck out his hand to me. “Lee Yat-sen.”

We shook hands a second time. Maybe it was from his coffee mug, but now his grip seemed not just strong, but warm. “Named after Sun Yat-sen?”

“My mother’s a great admirer. What about you?” Jack asked Bill.

“Charlie Chan Smith. Your Professor Yang, what’s his interest?”

“Moral outrage.” Jack leaned forward, bony elbows sticking out. “Yang also taught at the Beijing Art Institute, back in the day. He wasn’t involved in the democracy movement—cautious kind of guy—but of course he knew Chau. They were friends, and he admired Chau’s work. He thinks these new paintings are fakes and all the mystery’s just a way to build them up.”

“For what purpose?”

“For some forger and some dealer to make a lot of money.”

“And that makes him so indignant he’s willing to pay an investigator to expose them? Before they’re even on the market?”

“They may never come on the market. Lots of art is traded privately. Yang says Chau died for his beliefs and he shouldn’t be resurrected to fill someone’s pockets.”

“So Yang’s doing what, salving his conscience for not marching shoulder to shoulder with Chau back then?” Bill asked. “He doesn’t have a horse in the race?”

“That’s the implication.”

“Okay.” I looked up from my spice tea. “The reason my client gave for hiring me sounded fishy and I told you what we think his real one is. Yours sounds fishy, too.”

Jack nodded. “It does.”

“And?”

“My completely theoretical, backed-up-by-nothing hypothesis?”

“You have another one?”

“No.”

“Then that one.”

“I think he’s got a closetful of Chaus from the Art Institute days. They’d lose value if there’s been a miracle, the guy’s alive, these new ones turn out to be real and more keep coming.”

I thought about that. “Is he a collector?”

“No. He has some nice pieces in his office, probably a few more at home. But he’s an academic. He advises collectors, but he can’t afford to collect in a major way. What that means, though, is that if he does have a stash of Chaus, they’re probably his whole retirement fund.”

“So if these new ones are frauds, he’ll want to expose them. If they’re real, he’ll want to know fast, so he can unload what he has.”

Bill said, “Then why not say that? Protecting his investment by exposing frauds wouldn’t be illegal, or even immoral. He might even be doing someone else a favor. Like Lydia’s client.”

“Who is who, by the way?” Jack asked. “I did show you mine.”

I raised an eyebrow but played it straight. “Jeff Dunbar. Freelance rich guy. Sez him.”

“You don’t think so?”

“He’s invisible in the databases. His cell phone’s a prepaid. And he doesn’t look all that rich.”

“Hmm. So what’s up?”

“I think being found sniffing out these paintings would get him in trouble with someone, and he doesn’t trust his PI’s discretion.”

“I hate that in a client. And I have another question. Don’t take this wrong, because I know you’re kick-ass and all. But why didn’t he come to me?”

“Nice guy, your friend,” I said to Bill. “Too bad he’s so insecure.”

“You say he chose you because you’re Chinese. I’m Chinese and I specialize in art—Chinese art, even. Any collector in this area looking for a PI, my name would pop up like the answer in a Magic 8-Ball.”

“But,” Bill said, “anyone not in the art world searching online for a Chinese PI would have nothing to go on but a Chinese name.”

“Which Chin looks like, and Lee, not necessarily.”

“Plus,” I said, “it comes earlier in the alphabet.”

“She’s very competitive,” Jack said to Bill. “Is she insecure?”

With great dignity I ignored that. “So Jeff Dunbar’s likely not a player in the art world. We’d figured that out, thank you very much. Still, he could know the value of these paintings and be hoping to make a quick buck.”

“Why not just tell you that? Why the song and dance?”

“Good question.”

“But you didn’t ask?”

“Not yet.”

“Because?…”

“The whole situation intrigues me. If he knew I hadn’t bought his lies he’d drop me and find someone else. That would be no fun.”

Jack’s gaze rested on me, level and appraising. He broke into a big grin. “You’re right,” he said to Bill. “Kick-ass.”

“Hey, listen,” I said. “Your client’s not so straightforward, either. If all he’s doing is protecting his investment, why did he give you a story?”

Jack looked surprised. “Face,” he said, as though it were obvious. “Come on, he knew the guy. Chau died standing up to the tanks, Yang’s making a cushy living in the capitalist heartland. Sounds better to tell me he’s offended at the crass attempt to cash in on Chau’s rep than to admit he doesn’t want his nest egg to take a hit.”

“A very Chinese motive,” I admitted. “So. Interesting situation.”

“Generally, or specifically?”

“Both. Specifically: I wonder what your client will do if we find the paintings, and it turns out they’re real?”

“Be unhappy. Just like yours will be, if it turns out they’re fakes.”

* * *

We shook hands in the cool spring sun outside the café, wished one another luck, and headed off in opposite directions.

“Nice guy,” I said to Bill. “We’ll clobber him.”

“One of your best qualities,” Bill said. “Your cooperative spirit.”

“I cooperate. I share.”

“You didn’t share our other theory. That Dunbar’s not looking for the paintings at all, just the painter. And you didn’t tell Jack we have a lead on that gallery assistant.”

“You’re his friend, and you didn’t either.”

“I’m your partner. Your case, your choice.”

That was how we worked: The one who brought the case in took the lead. It had been that way since back when we weren’t partners, just PI’s who called each other in from time to time. But not really, I suddenly realized. From the start we’d discussed, argued, poked holes in each other’s theories and plans. We operated from a two-person consensus, not a hierarchy.

“If it were your case,” I asked, “would you have told him that stuff?”

Bill grinned. “Probably not.”

On the next corner I took out my phone and called Baxter/Haig, the gallery where our lead worked. I spoke to an ennui-filled young woman, then clicked off and told Bill, “On the late shift today. In at noon.”

Bill checked his watch. “Okay, then, I have an idea.” He told me about it, I liked it, and we both headed off to fulfill our parts. I went to the Met’s Asian art galleries to inspect classical ink paintings, for an idea of what these new Chaus, real or fake, might look like.

Bill went home to shave.

4

The half hour I spent drifting through the museum’s quiet rooms mostly just reminded me how ignorant I was. I read exhibit labels and bought a book that talked about brushstroke angle and ink saturation. It also discussed the concept of veiled commentary, just enough to confuse me. I looked at the paintings with it in mind, but I had trouble following how plum blossoms that were borderless gray wash instead of opaque white with black outlines expressed the sympathy of Buddhist monks for exiled officials.

What did intrigue me, though, were the poems. Because this was familiar stuff.

Chinese classical paintings often have poems on them, either the poem that inspired the painting, or one inspired by it. Sometimes the poem’s by the painter, sometimes by someone else. I knew that, but I’d never spent much time with the poems. Now I tried reading them as political commentary, too. The ones in the exhibit were mostly short couplets—“Crickets and ants are on the Great Road,” that sort of thing. After a few, it hit me: All the old men of my childhood talked like this. Even today, if I drop in at Grandfather Gao’s herb shop, we’ll sit over tea and he’ll come out with something like, “A swirling feather cannot come to rest until the wind dies down,” or “Beating the grass for game may stir the sleeping snake.” Half the time I have no idea what he’s talking about, but the other half, it turns out he’s saying something I really need to listen to.

I leaned in to study the poems. The crickets and ants, those must be the riffraff you encounter everywhere, even on the Great Road. The wild goose whose call, unanswered, echoes outside the poet’s hut is his yearning for his hometown, far away. The poems made me feel considerably less dim than the paintings did. I was reading one about centipedes and spiders that ended, “Pity the ones caught in the world’s web/Those with poison are not lenient with each other,” when a voice in my ear whispered, “Don’t turn around. There’s a ghost behind you.”

“No, it’s only you,” I said to Bill, whose reflection I’d seen in the glass as he was sneaking up on me. “It’s just that, spiffed up like that, you look so unreal.”

“You’re adorably ephemeral, too. Shall we go?”

A bus, a subway, and a little walking—together faster than a midday cab—put us in the heart of the Chelsea gallery district. This part of lower midtown, way over west, is where the art dealers fled after SoHo went all upmarket.

Baxter/Haig occupied prime real estate, the ground floor of a renovated warehouse on West Twenty-fifth. We pulled open glass doors and strolled into a high-ceilinged space hung with huge, vivid canvases. The paintings all offered clichéd—or, I suppose, iconic, depending on your point of view—images of China. Tiered pagodas, terraced rice fields, moon-gated gardens, the slithering Great Wall. Busy folks swarmed everywhere, numerous as insects. Another icon/cliché: the vast industrious Chinese masses. Only when I looked closely I saw these weren’t people. They were American cartoon characters. Mickey Mouse, in his white gloves, harvested rice. Donald Duck, along with Daisy, Huey, Dewey, Louie, and an army of shirted and pantsless waterbirds, strolled the Wall. Yosemite Sam inspected the terra-cotta warriors. Outside the Temple of Heaven the Simpsons posed for a family photograph.

Bill, jeans exchanged for pressed wool slacks, lifted his eyebrows in bored recognition as we walked around. Giant letters on the wall announced this show as COLONY: NEW WORKS BY PANG PING-PONG.

“Please tell me that’s not his real name,” I whispered.

Bill glanced over a price list and artist’s statement he’d lifted from the reception desk. “You’re in luck. Pang’s his family name. He uses the name ‘Ping-Pong’ as an integral part of the ironic self-referential essence of the meta-situation on which his paintings comment.”

“Oh,” I said. “That’s much better.”

Besides us, the giant room held only five people. Four were in the back, among the canvases: an elegant older woman in high-heeled boots, frowning at the Fantastic Four in Buddhist robes; the rotund man beside her, gesturing and murmuring in what seemed to me a smarmily intimate fashion; and a pair of young men whose clothes and haircuts were so painfully hip they had to be art students. The place had the hushed, intense feel of a library. No: the anxiety-tinged air of a classroom during a final exam.

The gallery’s fifth occupant was a fashionably emaciated, lank-haired young man at the front desk. When we came in he gave us the narrowed eyes of a proctor; when that didn’t chase us out, he iced us, going back to whatever important work he’d been doing before we’d had the effrontery to walk through the door. This charmer, as I knew from my Googling, was Nick Greenbank, the fellow we wanted to see.

We took an unhurried, but in Bill’s case pointedly apathetic, turn around the gallery. I tried to interest him in this painting or that, showing him details like Captain America and Superman in coolie hats. He shook his head and waved me off each time, until finally he sauntered back over to the desk, me in frustrated tow.

It’s hard to ignore Bill when he looms, though Nick Greenbank did a better job than most. Finally looking up from his computer screen in badly hidden exasperation, he asked, “Can I help you?”

Bill leaned on the counter, smiled, waved a hand around, and in a conversational tone and a thick Russian accent, said, “Thees ees crep.”

“Vladimir, please!” I hissed. “I’m sorry,” I said distractedly to the affronted young man. What had affronted him was Bill’s rude dismissal of the work; what was distracting me were the blindingly ostentatious gold rings on Bill’s fingers, which matched the chains around his open-shirted neck, but which I was sure he hadn’t been wearing a few moments ago. “Mr. Oblomov hasn’t had much exposure to recent Chinese works. I brought him here hoping—”

“She vass hoping I buy, den she make fet commission. But I don’t buy crep. Leessen, boychik.” Bill leaned in closer and dropped his voice. “I like beautiful. Vy you tink I let her take me around? She ees beautiful, dah? Now, deess Chinese, dey used to paint beautiful. Pine trees, bamboo, all dat. Not Meekey Fucking Mouse. Now I hear”—he let the smile fade and drilled the young man with his eyes—“I hear det von of dem still does.”

Bill can do a good eye-drill, especially in Russian gangster mode. Nick Greenbank blanched, making his already-pale skin a nice contrast to his black silk shirt.

“You’re talking about classical Chinese art.” He swallowed and tried to recover, drawing on reservoirs of disdain to soothe his rasping voice. “From the dynasty periods. We don’t handle that. I suggest—”

“I suggest you pay attention, boychik. Dere’s a fellow I’m very, very interested in.”

From a position a discreet step behind Bill, I frantically but subtly signaled to little Nick. Don’t cross the dangerous Russian mobster, I tried to say with my eyes. There may be people whose eyes could say that; I’m not one of them, but I did manage to get across some sense of panic. Nick paused, looking both confused and apprehensive.

“He vass dead,” Bill mused. “Now he’s not dead. Chau Chun, but you know dat, dah? Dey call him da Ghost Hero.”

“I don’t know—”

“Dah, you do!” Bill smacked his hand on the counter. The impact wasn’t hard enough to make the art students or the booted lady turn around—the round gent had vanished—but Nick yanked his head back as though he’d been bitch-slapped.

“Now, come on, boychik. Someone hass a bunch of paintings, supposed to be by diss Ghost Hero Chau. You”—Bill’s jabbing finger stopped just short of Nick’s nose—“know who dat iss. You tell me, I buy, you get fet commission, just like her. You play stupid games, I get annoyed. My friends, dey get annoyed, too.” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. Then he lit a match. He didn’t bring the flame to the cigarette, though, but instead lifted his arm and swept a slow semi-circle. “Ven dey get annoyed, dey can be very annoying, my friends.” Unhurriedly, he drifted the match in until it was very near Nick’s nose. Nick seemed paralyzed; nothing moved but his eyes, which crossed, watching the flame. After a moment, Bill grinned and shook the match out. “I forget, diss iss America, can’t smoke any damn place.” He opened his fingers and dropped the match on Nick’s desk. “So,” he said, unhurriedly restoring the cigarette to the pack. “Be a good boychik. Who hass dese paintings?”

“I—” Nick shook his head, glancing frantically to the back of the gallery. The art students and the booted woman showed no signs of having noticed. Nick whispered, “I could get fired!”

“Hah!” Bill bellowed, poking me in the shoulder. I staggered. “Fired! Good sense of humor, dah?” Bill’s arm repeated the semicircle. “Fired! He gets fired, gallery gets fired! Ha! Dat’s pretty funny!”

“No! All right, listen, I don’t know who’s got them—”

Bill sighed and shook his head.

“No, really. But I know who knows.”

“Oh?” Bill smiled. “Now vee get someplace.” He leaned on the counter again and placidly waited.

“This girl,” said Nick. “She’s at some gallery uptown, I don’t remember. Wait, Gruber, I think that’s it. Anyway I have her number.” He was thumbing a BlackBerry as he spoke. “I met her at an afterparty, some opening. She was trying to impress me.” He said that as though that was the usual reaction to meeting Nick Greenbank at an afterparty. “She tried to show me work from some studio visit. Bunch of Chinese-American artists, a group open studio. Like I’d care.”

“You vouldn’t? Vy not?”

“Hybridized,” Nick scoffed. “Mongrel work, no real grounding in place. We don’t handle Chinese-American shit, just real Chinese.”

Bill had better wrap this up fast, I found myself thinking, or I might have to shove my Chinese-American fist down Nick Greenbank’s throat.

“Here, Shayna Dylan, that’s her.” Nick turned the phone so Bill could see the screen. Bill entered Shayna Dylan’s number into his own phone. Nick, meanwhile, had managed to reinflate his punctured superiority. “She’s an airhead. Yadda-yadda about this shit, and then she drops that my boss saw her photos, too, and got all excited, wanted to know where the open studio was. So then I said, okay, whatever, and looked at what she was trying to show me. Of course I knew right away what he was hot for. Not the crap she was photographing. There were three Chaus, hanging on the wall behind.”

“You could tell dey were dat? From a tiny picture on a leetle phone?”

“Chinese contemporary is what I do. It’s the hottest area around.” When Bill still looked skeptical, Nick added defensively, “Chau Gwai Ying Shung had a very distinctive style. Unmistakable, if you know what you’re looking at.”

“And boychik knows?”

Nick made a comically insincere attempt at a modest shrug.

Bill winked. “Did you tell da pretty girl? Vat she hed pictures of?”

“Of course not. She’s too dumb to know, why should I tell?”

“But your boss, he’s seen dem? Meester Bexter, or Meester Haig?”

“There’s no Baxter,” Nick said smugly. “Doug Haig bought him out years ago.”

Bill nodded. “And Haig has seen dese paintings?”

“On that girl’s phone, absolutely. But you mean, did he go out there, wherever the open studio was? How would I know? I certainly wouldn’t have gone. There’s no question these pictures are fakes.” With a curled lip, as though the artist had made a career blunder, he said, “Chau’s dead.”

“Dey could be real, chust old,” Bill suggested. “From da old days.”

“Oh, yeah, right.” Condescending to connect the dots for the muscle-brained mobster, Nick explained, “If you happen to have a pile of vintage Chaus, and you’re some bridge-and-tunnel freak who wants to make it in the art world, you sell them. Get a studio in Manhattan. Where someone who matters might actually see your work. Trust me.”

“Vell, maybe you don’t sell dem iff you love dem?”

Nick looked at Bill as though he’d said the Easter Bunny was hopping through the door. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

Bill’s eyes flared. Nick shrank back. Then Bill relaxed. “Yess, of course,” he said soothingly. “You must be right. Terrible rotten fakes. But I vant to see dem anyvay, dah?” He looked at me, as though for confirmation, and then back to Nick before I could answer because what did he care what I thought, anyvay? “I appreciate your help, boychik. Now I tink ve go talk to Meester Haig. Dat vass him, in da beck, dat fetso?”

So Bill had noticed the round guy, also, his proprietary air and how he’d disappeared. Nick panicked. “Yes, that’s him, but you can’t tell him! You can’t tell him I told you! If he does care—if the paintings are real—”

“Den vat? He vouldn’t vant to sell dem to me, make fet commission?”

“He doesn’t have them.”

Bill stopped. “Oh? How do you know det?”

“He may be negotiating with the owner but if he had them I’d know, I’d have accessioned them.”

“Maybe dese paintinks are so important, da big boss accessioned dem himself?”

“No! He doesn’t know how to use the computer. He won’t learn. He thinks it’s beneath him.” Nick allowed himself a superior smirk. Then he remembered why we were talking about this. “But please, you can’t—”

“Oh, hush, hush. Vy so upset? Ve don’t say nothing. Ve say ve’re looking, not ve found. Don’t vorry, boychik.”

With that Bill turned and headed back. I threw Nick a commiserating look and hurried after.

“I think we’re supposed to wait until the guy in the front calls the guy in the back,” I whispered as we crossed the gallery.

“Oh, I promise you, he did,” Bill said.

He was right. Before we reached the rear office another emaciated assistant, this one a harried-looking young woman, came trotting around a wing wall. She established position in front of the opening and, though she looked like a mild breeze could blow her over, she didn’t move. Bill walked right up to her and grinned.

Nervously, she said, “Mr. Oblomov?”

“Dah, dat’s me.” Bill winked at her. “Leetle Neeky gafe you a ring?”

Her uneasy smile faltered but didn’t fail. “Mr. Greenbank said you wanted to talk to Mr. Haig. I’m sorry, Mr. Haig’s in a meeting. I can give you an appointment—no, stop! Wait, you can’t go in there!”

Bill had wrapped his hands around her arms and slid her aside. “Sure ve can, sveetie. Meester Haig, he can’t vait to see us.”

Bill, with me trotting behind, strode through the outer office—presumably, hers—and gave a perfunctory two knocks before throwing open the inner door. The portly man we’d seen in the gallery could be found now leaning over a table, or rather, leaning over a young Asian woman who was seated at the table. His thick hand rested on her shoulder, thumb gently rubbing the back of her neck. He wore black slacks and a dark blue band-collared shirt buttoned up to his double chins. His clothes fit him so well, despite his bulk, that they’d clearly been made for him. The young woman, in a demure long-sleeved dress, seemed to be trying mightily to click through photos on a laptop, not reacting to his touch or the closeness of his mountain of flesh. I caught a sheen of perspiration on her brow. Both their heads turned sharply when the door flew open, hers in hope, his in anger.

“Dammit, Caitlin!” he roared. “I said no interruptions!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Haig.” The assistant trembled. “He wouldn’t—I couldn’t—they didn’t—”

“No, I vouldn’t and she couldn’t and ve didn’t,” Bill agreed, striding forward, hand thrust out. “Vladimir Oblomov,” he beamed. “Heppy to meet you.”

Haig obviously didn’t share Bill’s delight. Staring at Bill, Haig said, “Caitlin, go. We’ll talk later.”

“I really am sorry, Mr. Haig. I—”

“Go!” He waved Caitlin off like a bad smell. She faded meekly out the door. After another few moments of eyeball-chicken with Bill, Haig took his hand off the young woman’s shoulder and growled, “You, too. Get out. This work is shit.”

She looked up at him, not comprehending. “But, Mister Haig.” Her English was heavily Mandarin-accented. “You say you interested.”

“In you, honey. Not in this crap you do. Last night was fun but the magic’s gone. Get lost.”

“But my paintings—”

“Won’t be shown at this gallery. Eco-humano-we-are-the-worldo? Are you serious? Unfortunately I think you are. Beat it.” The young woman sat openmouthed. “Your English doesn’t include ‘beat it’? ” He turned to me. “Tell her what it means.” Taken by surprise, I said nothing, barely managing to keep my own jaw from dropping. “What the hell’s the matter with you people? What is this, Chinese Don’t Talk Day? You, honey. Leave.”

Uncertainly, the young woman stood, her face ashen. “I come all way from China because you say—”

“I said I’d give you a shot. I did. It’s over. Leave and I’ll do something for you: I’ll forget your unpronounceable name. Hang around and argue, I’ll remember it and you’ll never show anywhere in New York, not even in the grade Z galleries that specialize in this shit. Never, honey. Ever.” A two-second pause. “Why are you still here?”

Her cheeks flushed scarlet. Blinking fast, she gathered up her laptop and her handbag and made a stumbing exit. As she passed I could see tears glazing her eyes.

Haig surveyed us. He took obviously displeased note of Bill’s open shirt, his rings and chains. I used the time he spent staring at Bill to breathe, lower my blood pressure, and unclench the fist that wanted to punch his lights out. After he’d made his point, he turned his small, devouring eyes from Bill to me. I forced myself to stick my hand out. “Lydia Chin. I work with Mr. Oblomov when he’s in town.”

Haig’s smirk said he knew exactly what my work involved. While his damp, fleshy hand groped mine, Bill, uninvited, pulled a chair up to Haig’s worktable. After forever, Haig’s fingers opened and I found myself wondering how soon I could wash. Bill, blissfully uncaring, craned his neck to see the prints spread along the table. He picked one up to have a look. Though he held the purple-and-green extravaganza only at the outermost edges, Haig still snapped, “I’m sorry, I have to ask you not to touch that. If you want to see something I’ll be glad to show it to you.”

Bill’s eyes met Haig’s. Slowly he put the print down. “Forgiff me.” He gave a thin smile. “Sometimes I forget American rules.”

“Yes, well, no harm done.” Haig’s smile was as bogus as Bill’s. “So.” He seated himself at the table, too. “Now that you’ve invaded my office and ruined my meeting, who the hell are you and why shouldn’t I throw you out?”

“Leetle Neeky don’t tell you?” Bill spread his hands in surprise. “Vladimir Oblomov. I’m new collector.”

“How nice. So what?”

“Sorry about meetink, by da vay. Looked interestink.”

“Forget it. She’s pathetic, and so’s her work. You saved me a wasted afternoon. Which doesn’t mean I owe you anything.”

“No,” Bill said, grinning. “But I’m looking for someting, maybe you hev it.”

“If I don’t throw you out, and if it’s a question of what’s in our inventory, Nick has the complete catalog and can sit you down with a PowerPoint presentation.”

Bill shook his head cheerfully. “Leetle Neek tells me he got no idea vat I’m talking about. Dah?” Bill looked at me and I nodded. “But I’m theenking, Meester Haig, he knows everytink about dese Chinese. Maybe he can tell me.”

Haig waited, and finally asked, “Tell you what?”

Bill’s smile split his face in two. “Tell me vether you got new paintinks by Chau Gvai Yink Shunk.”

It took Haig a few moments to figure out exactly what Bill had said, he’d managled the Chinese so badly. “Gwai Ying Shung? The Ghost Hero? New? What are you talking about? Chau’s been dead for twenty years.”

“So efferybody says. But I hear somebody has new paintinks.”

“You mean, just found?”

“No, Meester Haig, I mean chust painted. New.”

“That’s absurd.”

“So you don’t know nothink?”

“Of course not. Mr.—Oblomov?—if someone’s told you that, they’re joking. Or they’re trying to separate you from your money.”

“Taking edventage?” Bill seemed unable to comprehend the idea. “Of Vladimir Oblomov?”

“Almost certainly.” Haig gave Bill a patronizing smile. Then it faded, replaced by a contemplative look. He sat back, folding his hands and crossing his ankles. “If there were new Chaus,” he said, as if rolling this idea around in his mind for the first time, “of course that would have to mean that Chau was alive. I suppose that’s possible. In the sense that anything’s possible, I mean.” He frowned to himself, then asked, “Who did you say told you about these paintings?”

“I don’t remember.” Bill’s smiling apology was patently false. “Chust, I hear dis, and I tink, Vladimir, iff dere really are such tinks, you vant dem very much, don’t you?”

Haig nodded slowly. “Mr. Oblomov, wanting is one thing. Being in a position to have? That’s another.”

“Vat are you saying? You’re esking iff I hev money?” Bill pointed to himself with a be-ringed finger. “You Americans, alvays beating da bush. Meester Haig, my friend, I got lots uff money. Lots uff money, and lots uff friends vit lots uff money. Iff Chau got new paintinks, I vant dem. And I’m, vat you said, in a position to have dem. In fect,” he leaned forward, lowering his voice, “I’m not in no position not to have dem. If you see what I mean.”

I saw he meant nothing at all, but Doug Haig wasn’t so sure. Also, he’d heard the word “money” a number of times.

“Well,” Haig’s pudgy hand rubbed both his chins, “why don’t we do this? I’m intrigued. I’ll check around. Leave me your contact information, and if I come up with anything, I’ll give you a call.”

“Dah.” Bill nodded. “Dat sounds fine. You got pen?” Bill always carries pen and paper with him, but he waited patiently while Haig, after an irritated look, swiveled his chair to his desk and picked up a pen and one of his own business cards. Bill gave him my cell phone number, then stood to leave. “You find da Chaus,” he instructed Haig amiably, “den you call Brown Eyes here. Vould be a pleasure to do business vit you.”

In the crashing silence of Doug Haig not urging us to stay we strode through the office, trailed by Caitlin’s nervous gaze. As we were recrossing the gallery to Nick Greenbank’s desk, I heard Haig bellow, “Caitlin! Get in here!” At least the gentry weren’t allowed to behead serfs anymore.

Leetle Neek had his eyes glued on us from the moment we emerged from the inner sanctum, but when we got back to his desk I can’t say he greeted us like long-lost friends.

“I was right, wasn’t I?” he asked, smug even before the answer. “He thinks they’re fake?”

“He says he never heard uff dem. But he says he’s goink to look.”

“But you didn’t say anything about me?”

I just shrugged, but Bill said benevolently, “No, boychik. Vat you tell me, eet’s our leetle secret. Dah?”

“Dah. I mean yes!”

“Good boychik. Now, vile your boss—charmink man—ees looking, ve’re going to see your leetle Shayna. Meanvile, if you suddenly theenk of something maybe I should know, you giff Brown Eyes a call, how about dat?” Bill reached over the counter, lifted a pen from a steel tube, peeled a Baxter/Haig business card from a steel box, and scribbled my number again. He tucked the card in Nick’s shirt pocket and patted him on the cheek. “Okay. Now chust tell me diss. Your little Shayna, ven ve get dere, iss she going to say she hass no idea vat dat cute guy from Baxter/Haig iss talking about? Or maybe, Shayna don’t even remember no cute guy from Baxter/Haig?”

“She’ll remember me,” Nick said savagely, already angry with Shayna for stabbing him in the back.

“I’m gled for you. But you’re not gonna remind her? You’re not thinking right now, maybe you’ll give dat cute Shayna a call? Because I’ll be very disappointed iff I get dere and Shayna suddenly vent home sick.”

Nick shook his head. “No, no.”

“And diss won’t be, vat do dey say in English, a vild bird chase? Vee get up dere, Shayna don’t got no photographs on her phone, and vee come back here and little boychik iss da vun vent home sick? Because…” Bill swept the room with his arm one more time.

“No,” said Nick. “It’s what I said. You ask her where that open studio was that Doug Haig got excited about. That’s who has the Chaus. But I’m telling you—”

“Fakes, yess, yess, thenk you, boychik. Now, you get back to verk, so Meester Haig, he don’t fire you, dah? Hah, fire you! Det’s pretty funny.” Bill socked me in the arm again, turned, and left. I hurried after him. Too bad Bill had told Nick to stay put. He looked bad enough to go home sick.

5

Bill and I stayed silent until we’d rounded the corner onto Ninth Avenue and put another block between us and Baxter/Haig. Then I exploded. “That sleazy, twisted, pervy horn-dog! Ugh ugh ugh. Creeparama! Can I burn his gallery down myself?”

“After we’re through.”

“That poor woman! Unbelievable! All the way from China and she had to put up with that! And your rings are hideous. Where did you get them?”

“Chinatown, where else?”

“And the accent? Did you get that in Chinatown, too?”

“Come on, girlchik. Dat’s vun of my besst.”

“Vun uff your most ridiculous, enyvayz. I can’t believe either of them bought it.”

“Haig was hearing the clink of coin. That drowns out a lot. And little Nicky saved his boss’s business. He’s a hero.”

“Thanks a bunch, by the way, for giving both those jerks my phone number.”

“That was payback for ‘Oblomov.’ Russian Lit. 101?”

“First time it’s ever come in handy.”

We’d almost made it to the subway when Bill’s phone rang. “Well, it can’t be either of those, um, jerks.” He checked the screen and told me, “Jack.” He answered, listened, stopped walking, and said, “Jesus Christ! Are you okay?”

I stopped, too. “What happened?”

He waved me silent, listened another few moments, then said, “Okay, we’re on the way,” and clicked off.

“On the way where?” I demanded. “What happened?”

“Someone took a shot at Jack.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later we were back on Madison. For a few moments we hung back, getting the lay of the land: warning cones, crime scene tape, glass-covered sidewalk. A crowd milled, snapping cell phone pictures of the glittering shards of Jack’s front window. As we watched, the door to the stairs opened and a pair of unmistakable NYPD detectives emerged, sticking notebooks away. Without discussing it, but by mutual consent, Bill and I waited until their car pulled out. That seemed to cue the crowd, too. The sidewalk began to clear and we made our way to the door. A few seconds after we buzzed, Jack appeared above us, sticking his head out the ragged opening where his window used to be. “Oh, look! It’s Job and Calamity Jane! Go away.”

“No,” Bill said.

“Oh. Well, all right.” Jack disappeared and a moment later we were buzzed in.

“Wow,” I said, walking into his office. As opposed to the mess on the sidewalk, this was the same serene and tidy place I’d seen two hours ago, except for the sharp glass daggers sparkling in the otherwise empty window frame, and the long thin groove in the plaster ceiling. “Is repelling debris one of your superpowers?”

“I swept up because you were coming. Wanted to make a good impression.”

“You did that already today.”

“Good, because I don’t think it would work out now. Look, you guys, does this kind of thing happen to you much?”

“Never,” Bill answered.

I shook my head, too.

“Liars.” Jack waved an arm. “The chairs are safe, if you want to sit down.”

Bill settled onto a chair. “Chilly in here.” Jack, his leather jacket on and halfway zipped, glared at him.

I hesitated, but it was the more Chinese move to risk my tender behind to an overlooked glass splinter than to imply I didn’t trust Jack’s housekeeping. “So what happened?” I asked as I sat.

Jack didn’t sit. He spoke while striding the room. “I was at the desk going through auction catalogs online—tracing Chau’s sales history, thanks for asking—when POW! the window exploded. I ducked and covered”—he threw his long arms over his head, to demonstrate—“and waited until it stopped raining glass. When nothing else happened I peeked up to check on the Hasui.” He tapped the Japanese print on the wall as he passed it. “You’re lucky it’s okay. If anything had happened to it I’d have been really pissed.”

“At us?” I protested. “We had nothing to do with it.”

“No? I run a genteel uptown art investigation business for three years with nothing worse than papercuts, then Bill Smith introduces me to his kick-ass Chinese partner and people start shooting at me. Coincidence? I don’t think so.” He stopped and stared at Bill. “What are you dressed as?”

“Beeg-time Russian gengster.”

“Are you serious? You look like you got run over by the bling truck.”

“What do the police think?”

“About your outfit?”

“About someone shooting at you. Try to stay on point here.”

“Hah! They think it was random. Someone showing off, maybe trying out his new gun, just happened to hit my window.”

“A gangbanger? On Madison Avenue?” I was incredulous.

“Not a gangbanger. A private-school wannabe. Some punk brings Daddy’s gun to St. Snooty’s, shows his goods to a hot cheerleader, has an accident.”

“You’re on the verge of talking dirty,” Bill warned.

“The cops took the slug,” Jack thumbed over his shoulder at the furrow in the ceiling, “which was a twenty-five, by the way. But unless a matching one turns up in a stiff someplace, I don’t expect to hear from them again.” He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck with a scratched hand. “Look, you guys, I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”

“Point, cock, pull,” Bill said.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Did anyone see anything?” I asked. “Gunshots aren’t an everyday thing up here.”

“If they did the cops didn’t find them. No one heard the shot. Lots of people heard the glass break.” He pointed accusingly at the empty window frame.

“A twenty-five’s pretty quiet,” Bill said. “Relatively speaking.”

“I think it’s a dumb theory,” I said. “About the private-school kid.”

“I happen to agree with you, but the police don’t. Or at least, they’re refusing to budge until I come clean.”

“Come clean about what?”

“The real reason, of course! Which must be related to my shady profession. They jumped all over me. Like getting shot at was my idea.”

“They wanted to know about your enemies, that sort of thing?”

“Me? Enemies?”

“Oh, right, of course. So what did you tell them?”

“What you’re trying subtly to ask is, did I tell them about the case, about Ghost Hero Chau?”

I nodded, admitting it.

“I would’ve, if I’d had an idea how to say it and not sound like a wackjob. ‘This ghost is painting pictures and two clients want to find them, one who wants them to be real and one who doesn’t. I think one of them, or someone else, or the ghost himself, is responsible for this outrage, Inspector Lestrade.’”

“Works for me,” Bill said.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t think it would work for the Nineteenth Precinct.”

“That’s why you didn’t tell?” I asked.

Jack stopped crisscrossing the room. He stood for a few moments, looking at me. “No.” He threw himself into a chair, legs splayed out, arms dangling. “I didn’t tell because it’s not just my case. Not that I owe you guys anything, but I thought I ought to wait until we talked.”

“We appreciate that,” I said.

“Besides, I’m a private eye. Don’t we have some kind of code? One for all, all for one, none for the cops? Something like that?”

“Something like that,” Bill said.

“Okay. I waited, we’re talking. So what the hell’s going on?”

“I can’t imagine,” I said. “This case is barely started. Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re working on that could’ve—”

I stopped because he was shaking his head. “I don’t have any other open cases. I’d just started this one and all I’ve done is a little research.”

“It doesn’t have to be an open case. It could be an old case, someone you made unhappy who’s been stewing about it and finally decided to get you.”

“This isn’t how art people get you. They’d either have stabbed me with a jeweled dagger in the heat of the moment, or they’d cool down and get all baroque about it. Start rumors about what a stoner I am, what STD’s I have, how I plagarized my Ph.D. thesis. That kind of thing. So they could see it happening. Art people like to watch.”

“What about an old girlfriend?” Bill asked.

“I don’t date girls who carry guns.”

“That seems a little narrow-minded,” I said.

Jack turned to me in surprise. For the first time since we’d arrived, he smiled. “Really?”

Now I shrugged, to cover the fact that I was a little surprised that I’d said that, myself.

“Personally, I consider it sound policy,” Bill elbowed back in. “So look: If this is the case that got you shot at, then what about this case?”

Jack said, “My money’s on you guys.”

“If it’s us,” Bill asked, “why didn’t they shoot at us?”

“That’s a damn good question. Second only to: How do I get them to next time?”

“Look,” I said. “When this kind of thing happens it’s usually because someone’s cage has been rattled.”

“I thought you said this kind of thing never happens.”

“Um, hypothetically. The point is, Bill and I hadn’t rattled anything yet.”

“If you’re asking what I’ve rattled since last night, the answer is also nothing.”

“Last night?”

“When I was hired.”

Reluctantly, I said, “Oh. Well, that makes my theory that it’s you a little shakier, if they could have shot at you any time since last night, but they waited until now.”

“You mean, until after I met you. Hah!”

A short silence; then Bill said, “Okay, here’s the big question. Do you want out?”

Jack frowned. “What? You mean me? Are you nuts? Ditch a client? Never.” He sat up and pounded the arm of his chair. “And besides, no one shoots at Jack Lee and gets away with it!” He slumped back again. “There, isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?”

I nodded approvingly. “And well delivered, too.”

Jack squinted at me. “It’s really true, what Bill said? You’re not afraid of anything?”

I glanced at Bill in surprise. “A complete fabrication,” I told Jack. “I just hide it well.”

He kept his narrowed gaze on me. Finally he said, “Anyway, quitting, besides ruining my self-image, would only mean I’d be out of the loop. I wouldn’t feel any safer, just lonelier. No, I want to be right in the middle of finding out what the hell is going on here. Right in the middle, with one of you guys on each side. With a gun.”

“You mean, we should work together?”

“Why not?”

“For the same reasons as this morning.”

“This”—arm waving from broken window to drilled ceiling—“makes it not the same as this morning. Look, you don’t trust your client and I don’t trust mine. It’s perfect. Though at least I didn’t just meet mine today.”

“No?”

“I’ve known Dr. Yang for years. No way he’d shoot me. He doesn’t shoot people anyway, just vaporizes them with his eyes. But there’s definitely something he’s not telling me. Listen, you guys, if people are firing away in the middle of Madison Avenue, this whole thing is even farther from what we thought it was than we thought it was. Don’t!” He pointed at Bill, who’d been about to speak. “You know what I mean. What I’m saying is,” his voice and eyes grew serious, “I don’t trust my client, but I trust you guys.”

“You just met me this morning,” I said.

“Technically correct, but I’m willing to take a chance. How about it? If we combine our info and resources maybe we can figure out what’s going on before we all get killed.”

“What do we do when we find the paintings?” I asked.

“We worry about it then.”

We sat in silence. A chilly breeze charged through the empty window frame and spiraled some papers off Jack’s desk. He gave them a glare but didn’t go after them.

I looked at Bill. His eyes were telling me your case, your choice. I knew that; what I was searching for was but I wouldn’t recommend it. I didn’t see that.

“Okay,” I said.

“Yes!” Jack fist-pumped. “Porthos, Athos, Aramis.” He pointed at each of us. “The Three Musketeers.”

“Weren’t there really four of them, though?”

“We’re better.”

“Okay,” Bill said, standing. “Good to be working with you, Aramis. Come on, you need a drink. I’ll buy you a martini.”

Jack cocked his head. “A pickletini?”

“For me to pay for that,” Bill said, “there’d have to be blood.”

Jack spent a few minutes locking his computer and his Hasui in a closet, in anticipation of the emergency window repair and the inevitable sawdust. Then we headed downstairs. Jack spoke to the manager of the ground-floor chocolate shop. “Sorry about the mess,” he said, giving her his key for the window crew.

She shrugged in a very French way. “Some excitement. Good for the neighborhood.”

While that was going on, Bill crossed the street. He prowled the sidewalk, looking at Jack’s building from various spots. Jack and I followed on the next light.

“Something up, Sherlock?” Jack asked.

“That shot came from over here.”

Jack scanned the ground. “Footprints?” He sniffed. “Gunshot residue still in the air?”

“The length of the track in your ceiling. A shot fired from your side of the street would’ve gone straight up. Probably right through the floor above.”

“And plugged poor Mischa, who rebuilds violins up there. I’ll be sure to tell him how lucky he is. Listen, not to diss your detecting genius or anything, but the police already worked that out.”

“Which must be why they think their ‘random’ theory’s reasonable. If you were at your desk, there’s no way anyone over here would’ve seen you.”

Jack gave Bill another brief look, then glanced across at his own window. “Well. Damn. Do you think maybe they’re right, then?”

“Not for a minute. I think it wasn’t real.”

“A mass hallucination? Group hypnosis? No, wait, you mean it was me! A grab for attention? A cry for help?”

“If it were you it would’ve been more theatrical.”

“Well, thanks for that, anyway. Though how much more theatrical could it get?”

“You weren’t supposed to get hurt. Just scared.”

“A complete success, then! Can I ask who? Why?”

“You can ask, but I can’t answer. Someone who wants you off the case.”

Jack sighed. “Though it hurts my ego to say it, there are other people in New York who do what I do. Scare me off and my client would just hire one of them. Why not shoot at my client and scare him off? Then he’d fire me and run away, and we’d all be happy.”

“I don’t know.”

“Maybe,” I said, “we should ask him.”

“Dr. Yang?” said Jack. “You want to go charging down to NYU and ask Dr. Bernard Yang why someone’s shooting at me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I think that’s a damn good idea.” He took out his iPhone and poked a number. When he spoke it was obvious he was leaving a message. He clicked off and said, “Voice mail. He’s probably in class. I said to call me.”

We headed up the street. Both Bill and Jack seemed to know exactly where we were making for. I could only assume it was one of their male-bonding taverns.

“So,” Jack asked, “what did you guys do today? Tell me you haven’t been goofing off while someone tried to take me out.”

“Hey,” said Bill. “We’ve been busting our accents working this case.”

“Actually,” I said, “if you can hold off on that drink, when you called we were on our way to see someone.”

Jack stopped. “You have a lead?”

“We got it from our other lead.”

“You have leads? That you didn’t tell me about?”

“We weren’t working together then.”

He waited, then said, “Are you going to tell me now, or do I only get to know things that happen from now on?”

“Sure,” I said. “We leaned on a kid at Baxter/Haig and he broke like a twig.”

“Baxter/Haig? That repulsive little Nick something?”

“You know him?”

“He’s been there a long time. Haig’s a walking oil slick and he generally hires people from the same toxic gene pool. Baxter was better, but in the end he couldn’t stand Haig—”

“No, really?”

“—and he demanded to be bought out. Haig must have found someone else to finance him and now the place is all his.”

“He had to be financed?” Bill asked. “You don’t think he bought Baxter out himself?”

“Doug Haig only spends other people’s money. Count on it.” He looked Bill over again. “So Nick whatever, he was what the Russian gangster gag was for?”

“Greenbank. Gangster and his art consultant.” Bill thumbed at me. “Worked, too. He gave up Shayna Dylan. A gallerina at Gruber. You know her?”

“Nope. Must be new.”

“She’s reputed to have photos of these Chaus on her cell phone. Nick doesn’t know where she took them.”

“Gallerina?” I asked. “Is that really what they’re called?”

Jack nodded, verifying.

“Does that make Nick Greenbank a gallerino?”

“No,” said Jack. “It makes him a yellow-bellied sapsucker, if he gave up his girlfriend.”

“She’s not his girlfriend. According to him he hardly knows her.”

“My judgment doesn’t change.”

“Stubborn consistency in the face of facts,” said Bill. “I like it.”

“We also talked to the monumentally revolting Doug Haig himself,” I said. “You should have heard Bill say ‘Gvai Yink Shunk.’”

“Sounds like a Yiddish curse. You’re not telling me Haig bought it?”

“What Haig bought was the idea that I could buy anything I wanted,” Bill said. “And that what I want are the Chaus.”

“Well, he’s a greedy enough bastard that I can see that. Blinded, by the radiance of rubles, to the ridiculousness of your Russian ruse.”

“Not bad,” Bill said.

“But I’m guessing he wasn’t any help, or we wouldn’t need to see this gallerina.”

“Not only wasn’t he any help,” I said, “he completely destroyed a woman we interrupted his so-called meeting with.” I replayed the scene for Jack.

“Wow,” he said when I sputtered to a halt. “I guess he made you mad.”

“I’m going to stick a pin in the pompous pig and watch him deflate like a balloon.”

“Okay then. As soon as we’re done with the case.”

“That’s what Bill said.”

“That doesn’t make it wrong.”

“Then let’s get done fast.”

“All right.” Jack executed a sharp U-turn. “We’ll go to Gruber. And after that, you’ll still owe me a martini. How’s that?”

Bill said, “Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

* * *

Jack’s instinct was to step into the street and hail a cab, but I stopped him. We were only twelve blocks from Gruber Arts. It was faster to walk.

Three people making tracks on a midtown sidewalk is like running a team obstacle course. Especially when the other two have long legs and one of them is on an adrenaline high from being shot at for the first time. There was no way I was being left behind, though. Jack reached our destination first, me second, and Bill, who’d stopped to light a cigarette, last.

Gruber Arts was one of about a dozen galleries stacked vertically in a limestone-faced building on Fifty-seventh Street, the heart of New York’s uptown gallery district. For an artist, to have any gallery is a great thing, even in the East Village or Williamsburg. If yours is in SoHo or Chelsea, you’ve arrived. If it’s uptown, you’re annointed.

“Okay.” Jack spoke as the elevator rose. “I’ll provide covering fire and you two go in and take out the enemy.”

“You know,” I said, “this getting shot at thing may have had more impact on you than we thought.”

“Either that,” Bill said, “or Jack knows the gallery owner and is offering to distract him while we talk to Shayna.”

“Her,” said Jack. “Jen Beril. Lots of white wine under that bridge.”

“Maybe Shayna Dylan’s just a step on the way to her,” I suggested. “Maybe Jen Beril’s the one who’s got the paintings and is going to be unveiling them next week.”

“Contemporary’s not a period she generally deals in. Her focus is strictly pre-Republic, mostly Tang through Yuan, but she’ll extend as far as the Han in one direction and the Ming in the other.”

I blinked. “Show-off.”

“I’m overcompensating for not knowing how to shoot. Anyway, believe it or not, I did think of that. I’ll probe discreetly. Are you guys going to use funny accents?”

“Lydia always uses one,” said Bill. “She’s a New Yorker.”

“Oh, I have to put up with that from a guy who sounds like Barney Fife?” That wasn’t really accurate; Bill’s speech still carries a trace of Louisville, but only a trace. But civic pride was at stake here.

“Vell, don’t vorry. I tink I better make like Vladimir Vladimirivich Oblomov. In case da pretty girl compares notes vit Leetle Neek.”

Jack snorted. “Oblomov? Russian Lit. 101?” The elevator opened and both men stood aside for me to step out first. At a door labeled GRUBER ARTS I waited with great dignity for these white knights to fight over who got to open it. Luckily for them it was a double door.

The atmosphere inside the gallery was infused with the same serenity as Jack’s office, and for a similar reason: There wasn’t much there. Plexiglas cases on white pedestals held here a porcelain vase painted in delicate peonies, there a pottery camel piled with Silk Road trade goods. Three scroll paintings hung on the walls, all of misty mountains and rushing streams. Acres of polished wood floor attested to the value of the art on offer: In Manhattan, nothing says wealth like empty space.

The young woman at the reception desk wasn’t as immediately imperious as Nick Greenbank had been, but we didn’t inspire in her a strong need to be of service, either. She glanced at us through golden hair curtaining the sides of her face. “Yes?” Her copy of ARTnews stayed open in front of her; clearly she intended to get back to it soon.

“I’m Jack Lee. Is Jen here?”

She arched an eyebrow. “Can I ask what this is about?” Her glance slid over me as though I’d been oiled, lingered a few moments on Bill, then returned to Jack.

“Jen knows me,” Jack said in affable nonanswer.

The young woman raked her fingers through her glistening hair. She gave Jack, and Jack alone, another microsecond look, then pressed a button on the phone. She murmured into it, and a few seconds later a white wall at the far end of the gallery swung open, revealing a room of bookshelves and files. Another golden-haired woman, also dressed in black, walked across the floor with the ease and dignity I’d been trying to muster at the elevator. On her it was natural, and she was twice my age, and in heels. She wore her hair pulled smoothly back. Her skin was silkily smooth, too, though I suspected both the gold and the silk had help. Smiling as she reached us, she took Jack’s hand in both of hers. “Jack! To what do I owe this pleasure?” She and Jack shared a double-cheek kiss.

“Hello, Jen. These are friends of mine. Lydia and Vladimir.” Bill and I shook her hand in turn. “I told them about the Han tomb figures.” Jack nodded toward a glass case in the corner, occupied by clay figures about six inches high. “And I wanted another look at those Luo Pings anyway. So here we are.”

“It must be kismet, how lovely. I was going to call you. I have a Jin Nong I’ve just gotten, a lotus pond, from the same year as the one at the Met. Shayna, will you take charge of Lydia and Vladimir? If you need me”—she included me and Bill in her smile—“we’ll be in my office. Come.” She took Jack’s arm and drifted off to the back.

A cloud crossed Shayna Dylan’s face as Jen Beril made off with first prize. But she dutifully stood, though I thought leaving the magazine open was a little pointed. Hair cascading over her shoulders, she led us across the floor to the glass case.

“It’s a complete set,” she said, sounding a little weary, as though she wished she didn’t have to tell people things this obvious. “From a duke’s tomb. Five musicians and three dancers. All women. In the Eastern Han, as you probably know, the musicians were often women.” She was examining Bill with a newly appraising gaze. “And the dancers, always. The Han understood that beauty and grace could go hand-in-hand with talent and power.”

I made a note to ask Jack if that was true. About the Han, I mean.

“The musicians would have had their instruments when they were placed in the tomb. But the instruments were wood and wood rarely survives burial.” She was speaking exclusively to Bill, so I decided I might as well actually look at the figures. Traces of colored paint still clung to them; they must have been riotous when they were new. Even now, their odd, flat faces, squared-off edges, and empty hands didn’t detract from their exuberance. Shayna took a step closer to Bill. “But I’m sure you know that. Are you a collector?”

“Not of antiquities,” I said, partly to hear my own voice to make sure I was still here.

Shayna turned slowly to me. “Oh?” She couldn’t have been less interested and still conscious.

“I wish we were. I love these old pieces. So much history, such subtlety.”

“Yes.” Shayna gave me a cold, customer-is-always-right smile.

I sighed. “But Vlad is the real collector.” Bill grinned like the Cheshire cat, to underline my meaning: He was the one with the money. “He gets bored easily. He’s only interested in what’s flashy and new.” I looked Shayna up and down, then gave Bill a smile sweet enough to cause a toothache. “Our focus is contemporary Chinese art. Because that’s what Vlad loves.”

“Oh?” Shayna said in a totally different tone, swiveling back to Bill.

“Dat’s right.” Bill winked. “Lydia doesn’t like it, but I can’t get enuff.”

“Is that so?” Shayna eyed me with pity. “Well, many people are skittish. Unhappy with anything outside their comfort zone.”

“Absolutely,” Bill agreed. “But dey don’t know vat dey’re missing. Me, personally, I don’t care about comfort.”

“No?”

“Not exciting, comfort.”

“I can hear the passion in your voice.” Shayna swept her glossy hair. “I feel the same way.”

“Dah. I tink I could tell dat as soon as ve came in.”

“The edgy, the transgressive. The very newest. That’s what I love.”

“Iss dat so?”

Their eyes met with a spark that made me want to remind them they were talking about art.

“Vell,” Bill smiled, “iss possible you could help me out vit something.”

“I’d certainly like to try.” Shayna shifted her weight from one Jimmy Choo to the other, thrusting forward, ever so slightly, the hip that came between me and Bill.

“Sveetie,” Bill said to me, “dis von’t interest you. Ve came here so you could look at dis stuff.” He waved a vague hand. “Take long time, look at vatever you vant.” His hand came to rest on Shayna’s elbow. He steered her across the prairie of gleaming floor, toward her desk, where he, with no hesitation, slipped behind the counter to sit beside her as though he were working, too.

Which he certainly was.

* * *

I spent twenty minutes wandering lonely as a cloud, absorbing ten centuries of my heritage. What Bill was absorbing, I didn’t know. Or Jack either, until the rear wall swung open and he emerged with Jen Beril. They were both smiling, though her smile tightened as she glanced around the gallery and took in the situation. Jack’s smile, on the other hand, widened.

“Shayna?” Jen Beril’s voice rang across the oak-floored miles with the silver sound of tinkling icicles. “Have you shown our guests what they wanted to see?”

Shayna’s head, and Bill’s, popped up, both with guiltier looks on their faces than the situation seemed to warrant.

“Absolutely,” Bill answered.

“Yes,” I agreed from beside a shelf of snuff bottles. “We’ve seen more than enough.”

I wouldn’t have been surprised if my words had just echoed and faded away; by now I’d concluded I might be invisible. But Jen Beril said, “I’m glad,” and Bill stood, though he didn’t look happy about it. I waited, kind of icily myself, until he walked over to where I was. Just as he reached me I turned and stalked away, to the door. I yanked it open and strode with great majesty down the hall, where I punched the elevator button. Before Bill and Jack had left the gallery I’d stepped through the closing doors and started my descent.

6

Bill and Jack came out onto the sidewalk laughing. I was behind them, sitting on a planter near the door. They stopped and looked around; I let them be confused for a minute, then I spoke up.

“All I want to know is, did you see the photos on her phone? The rest can stay in Vegas.”

They spun around like a two-man dance routine. “Awesome,” Jack grinned. “I wish I’d seen the whole thing. Do you guys run that gag often?”

“It changes,” Bill said. “Sometimes she’s the boss, and I’m all crude and Neanderthal.”

“It’s easier that way,” I said. “Closer to reality.”

“I was expecting the art-consultant routine that you pulled on Nick Greenbank.”

“One look at Shayna, I could tell this would get Bill next to her faster. Cutting me out made her day.”

“Did you know it was coming?” Jack asked Bill.

“I just go with the flow.”

“Hey, I wasn’t the one who hauled out the Uncle Vanya accent and the Jersey Shore jewelry when we started this,” I said. “So? The photos?”

“Not yet. We were interrupted at a delicate moment.” Bill looked at Jack, who shrugged an apology. “But I’m buying her a drink later.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Hey, she’s not the kind of girl who shows her phone to a guy on the first date.”

“Why not? She shows everything else.”

“Oh, snap,” said Jack. “Do I smell the sickly sweet scent of jealousy?”

“Impatience. What good is later going to do us? Why didn’t you just swipe the phone?”

“I thought about it. But seeing the photos wouldn’t have told us where they were taken. Or would it? Is there some way—could Linus—”

“You ask that as though, if there were some way and Linus could, you’d actually go back up and steal it.”

“I would.”

“Who’s Linus?” Jack asked.

“Well, there’s not, so don’t bother.”

“Who’s Linus?”

“My cousin.”

“Ah.” Jack nodded sagely, as though that had clarified something. “Who’s Linus?”

“Linus Wong,” Bill said. “Runs a computer security business. His motto is, ‘Protecting people like you from people like us.’”

“He’s a hacker?”

“At heart.”

“Really. Is he good?”

“The best,” I said stoutly.

“In that case,” Jack said, “I think we could use him anyway.”

“Why?”

Jack leaned beside me on the planter. “Shayna’s the daughter of one of Jen’s big collectors. Jen’s assistant is out on maternity leave, so she gave Shayna the fill-in job to keep Shayna’s daddy happy. Shayna knows enough about the art to avoid making a fool of herself, and she’s decorative enough that a lot of collectors don’t care what she knows. But she’s also wildly ambitious. According to Jen, who’s counting the days, she’s everything you think she is.”

“You mean, a man-eating coldhearted calculating—”

“Yes.”

“—backstabbing brownnosing—”

“Exactly.”

“—kind of woman who, if she had a date with a new guy, would totally Google him.”

“Totally.”

“Ah. And might share valuable information with the new guy, if she thought there was something in it for her?”

Bill said, “Getting to spend an hour with me at Bemelmans Bar isn’t enough in it for her?”

“If you’re planning to expense this you’d better choose someplace cheaper than Bemelmans Bar.” I took out my phone. “I’m not sure we have time, though. She’s probably Googling already.”

“No,” said Bill. “I thought of that. I never quite gave her my last name.”

I stared. “You thought of that? I had no idea you even knew what Google was.”

“I don’t know how to play the accordion, either, but I’ve seen it done often enough to know it’s possible.”

I looked at Jack. “Two Chinese people standing here, and the white guy talks in convoluted metaphors.” I called Linus.

“Hey, Cuz! What’s going on? Hey, Trell, it’s Lydia!”

I heard Linus’s friend Trella call a greeting across the room—his parents’ garage, actually, where Wong Security operates from—and I said “hi” back, which Linus passed on. “I’m calling on business, Linus. I have a job for you guys. You busy?”

“We’re always busy. Big growth industry I’m in here. But never too busy for you. Especially if it’s gonna be fun.”

“Well, you tell me. Bill needs a new identity.”

“Awesome! He steal a billion from the Colombian cartel? Or he’s on the run from the FBI?”

“He wants to date a pretty lady.”

“Oh. You know, lots of people do that without being in Witness Protection. Besides, I thought … I mean…”

“It’s business, Linus. We have a case. I have a case. Anyway,” I said, suddenly annoyed at myself and not sure why, “we think she’ll Google him, and we want to be careful about what she finds.”

“Business. Gotcha. Way cool.” Linus sounded a little unconvinced, but he asked, “What do you need? I can’t do, like, Social Security numbers. I can do a driver’s license, but it’ll take time.”

“I don’t think we need that. This isn’t a background check. I just want whatever she finds to make him look like what he says he is. Vladimir Oblomov, Russian with cash. Probably in import-export, something where there’d be money sloshing around. If you implied he was connected to the Russian mob that would be okay. He collects contemporary Chinese art, that’s the important detail. He can keep a low profile, she’ll believe that, but we want him to pop up enough that when she searches, she takes him for real, a collector, and rich.”

“Rich?”

“Loaded.”

“Excellent. How long do I have?”

“A couple of hours.”

“Piece of cake. Call you when I’m done.”

I thanked him and pocketed the phone and, his “piece of cake” echoing in my ears, I said to the guys, “I’m hungry.”

“Well,” said Jack, “we could go have lunch. Or, we could grab a pretzel and go downtown and talk to Dr. Yang.”

“I thought he was in class.”

“He was. He called while I was in with Jen. He’s back in his office and available for the next couple of hours.”

I hopped off the planter. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Again, Jack started to hail a cab; again, I stopped him. “You have some elitist problem with mass transit? You enjoy breathing car exhaust? The six train will get us to NYU in ten minutes.”

“Sorry. Occupational hazard. In my business the clients look at you oddly if you come up out of the subway. Like you might be a Martian.”

“Those come down from spaceships. Listen, did Jen Beril have anything to say about the paintings? You asked her, right?”

We stopped, not for pretzels, but for gyros from the Rafiqi’s truck. Garlicky lamb, with white sauce and hot sauce, wrapped in pita—fantastic, if you can keep it from dripping on your shirt.

“I asked her,” Jack confirmed, as we made our many-napkined way down the block. “She said because it was me she’d admit she’d heard the rumors.”

“Nice to be so important,” Bill said.

“Wouldn’t it be? What’s really going on is, she’s major in antiquities and classical but she’s not a name in contemporary. If the Chaus do exist, she has zero chance of getting her hands on them—she wouldn’t know where to look and no one’s going to bring them to her. So she’s watching this action from the sidelines. Some day she might need a favor from me, so why not help me out?”

I asked, “Is it really that calculated? You guys looked like you actually liked each other.”

“What’s love got to do with it? Seriously, sure we like each other. She really would have called me to see that Jin Nong just because she knew I’d be interested, even though I can’t buy it. But if she had any chance at getting her paws on the Chaus, you’d better believe she’d have iced me faster than you can say ‘Frost Jack.’”

“You didn’t just make that up.”

“Not bad, right?”

“He’s used it before,” Bill said.

“So”—I led the descent into the subway—“having decided she could afford to be helpful, how helpful was she?”

“Hard to say. She heard the buzz at an opening last week, but she can’t remember who from. Contemporary Chinese sculpture, at Red Sky Gallery in Chelsea. We can go over there later if you want, though I’ve seen the show and it’s awful.”

“She didn’t hear it from Shayna? Right at her own front desk?”

“Interestingly, no. Possibly interestingly also,” Jack said, swiping his MetroCard, “Red Sky is a couple of ambitious, currently penniless young guys on the top floor of the same building with Baxter/Haig.”

The six train, obviously not wanting to make a liar out of me, swept in, scooped us up, and hauled us down to Astor Place. We picked our way along the student-clogged sidewalks over to Washington Square Park, where we manuevered past a steel band, a fire-eater, a mournful guitarist, and about a million dogs and their walkers to reach the nineteenth-century department store turned temple-of-learning where Dr. Yang was holed up.

Jack took us up to the fourth floor and along a hallway lined with posters of Japanese anime characters and Hong Kong movie stills. Bulletin boards held tacked-up announcements for summer study programs in Taipei, Seoul, and Ulaanbaatar. I stopped at a theater bill featuring an angry Asian woman waving a big dripping knife, for a show called Alice in Slasherland.

“I can’t help noticing there are no misty mountains.”

“This isn’t the art department.” Jack knocked on a door. “It’s A/P/A Studies. Asian/Pacific/American,” he expanded, ostensibly for Bill’s benefit, though I’d have had to stop and think about it, myself. “Culture in context.”

The door opened, revealing a large park-facing office with bookshelves and big windows. Behind the desk sat a tallish Asian man with brush-cut gray hair. In front of us, her hand on the doorknob, was a young, also tall, Asian woman. Her high-cheekboned face lit. “Jack! Daddy didn’t tell me you were coming.”

“Hi, Anna. He didn’t tell me you’d be here, either.” Jack and Anna exchanged a quick kiss.

“Hello, Jack,” said the man behind the desk, in a deep and Mandarin-inflected voice. He didn’t smile, just gave me and Bill a narrow-eyed glance; apparently we were another thing nobody had been told about.

I looked around. Artwork hung on the walls, divided by bookcases like battling siblings better off separated. I found a canvas of subtle gray stripes soothing, and a calligraphic scroll seemed downright antiquated until I realized the flowing ink strokes formed, not Chinese characters, but character-shaped English words. That struck me as funny, but maybe I was missing some profound point. The neon-colored oil of a garish peony in a parched desert, on the other hand, would definitely take some getting used to.

“Are you hot on the trail of something?” Anna asked Jack.

I shifted my focus from art to people in time to see Dr. Yang flash a warning look behind Anna’s back. “Not really,” Jack said. “These are friends of mine. They’re interested in new Chinese art so I thought they’d better meet Dr. Yang.”

Anna’s smile widened to include me and Bill. “Hi, I’m Anna Yang. The great man’s daughter.” We shook hands all around. “He is a great man, too,” she said. “He can be opinionated, though. But I guess that’s what people want, his opinions. Just don’t let him bully you.”

Professor Yang frowned. “I don’t bully.”

“Yes, Daddy.” As Anna Yang walked back to her father’s desk, I considered her. Her smile seemed genuine enough, but I got the feeling it wasn’t telling the whole story. Her eyes weren’t joining in. Anna kissed her father’s cheek and said to us, “Sorry I can’t stay to offer dissenting views in case you need them. Jack, I’ll see you sometime soon?”

“You have anything new? I’ll come out and take a look.”

“You mean, if I don’t, you won’t?”

“Go all the way to Flushing to see work that’s ten minutes ago? Oh, okay. Soon.”

Anna smiled and left, closing the door behind her.

At a nodded invitation from Dr. Yang, Jack and I settled into the office’s two visitor chairs, leaving Bill to lean against the windowsill overlooking the park.

“How’s she doing?” Jack asked Dr. Yang.

“It’s a difficult situation,” Dr. Yang replied. I didn’t know what the question referred to, but I could tell that wasn’t an answer.

Jack tried another: “Any word from Mike?”

“Would we expect that?” With those words and a sharp shake of his head Dr. Yang closed out the subject of his daughter. “Jack, go down the hall to the faculty lounge and bring your friend a chair.”

“It’s all right, sir,” Bill said. “I like the view.”

Dr. Yang swiveled to Bill for a moment. “Very well.” He turned back to Jack. “Tell me how I can help you.”

Jack paused before he answered. I hadn’t known him long, but I’d gotten the impression that, with the possible exception of flying bullets, nothing fazed him. This hesitation was something I hadn’t seen before.

He plunged. “You probably guessed it’s about Chau Chun.”

Dr. Yang’s face darkened. “Jack. I asked for discretion. Did—”

“I know,” Jack said. “I’m sorry. But Lydia and Bill are also investigators. I didn’t go to them. They came to me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I brought them here so you could meet them, and they could meet you. In a minute they’ll leave and you and I can talk privately. This morning a man I don’t know, a collector, hired Lydia and Bill to find the new Chaus.”

I’d have given Bill a raised-eyebrow glance, asking if he’d known he and I were going to leave in a minute, but I was busy watching Dr. Yang for his reaction to this news.

He wasn’t delighted, that’s for sure. His brow furrowed and his dark gaze fixed first on Jack, then on me, Bill, me again. He could give Bill’s eye-drill a run for its money. In case he was unsure which of us to address, I helped him out.

“We went to Jack for background. We had no idea he’d been hired to do the same thing.”

“And now you do.” Dr. Yang shot Jack an angry look, then asked me, “What does your client want with the paintings?”

“Just to find them. He wants to beat out the other collectors.”

“How does he know about them?”

“Rumors, he says.”

“He hasn’t seen them?”

“No. How do you know about them, Dr. Yang?”

“The same way. Rumors.” Dismissing the question, as well as, it seemed, my right to ask it, the professor stared at the gray-striped canvas on the wall. Maybe he needed to be soothed. “Who is he?”

“My client? I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything more than that he’s a collector. New in the field, he says.”

Dr. Yang gave an impatient head shake. “Why does he want the paintings?”

“Because they’re worth a lot.”

“They’re worth nothing. They’re forgeries. He can stop wasting his money.”

Hmm. Paying me was wasting my client’s money? “If you haven’t seen them—”

“Chau Chun is dead!”

“I know that’s what everyone says, but—”

“He is dead!”

“Isn’t it possible—”

“No. It’s not.” The force of his glare almost knocked me off my seat. He pinned me with it another moment, then let out a long breath. “I was there.”

Jack’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Did you need to know it?” The professor swung the Jupiter-gravity stare to Jack. “That I held my friend’s hand as he died?”

The room crackled. “I’m sorry,” Jack said. “But I think I did need to know. I thought you weren’t involved in the democracy movement.”

“In the movement! No. I was a painter. I cared only for my art. My students. And my friends.” Dr. Yang turned to the sardonic canvas of the barren desert with the bright, impossible bloom. After a long moment, he spoke. “The students—Chau’s, and mine, everyone’s, from the universities of Beijing and from the countryside—had been occupying Tiananmen Square for days. With such hopes, such sense of power and possibility! Chau was with them from the first, teaching his classes on the paving stones, believing with them that things could change.” Yang’s face darkened. “I thought he was a fool.”

None of us spoke, waiting.

“Then the rumors: tanks, troops, the army on the way. People laughed. Send the army against a peaceful protest? That was the old way. This is the New China. But people coming in from the countryside reported it breathlessly. Tanks, massing nearby, undeniable. The crowd became uneasy. Then the loudspeakers, the warnings: Clear the Square! Public order will be maintained! The mood changed again. Anger and defiance. The students were doing what the law allowed. They would stay!” He shook his head. “People went to the Square, people of influence, to beg them to leave. I went, also, to Chau, to our students. What you’ve done is noble and courageous, I said, but you’ve lost. Go home, wait for another chance. They wouldn’t go. This is the chance! I stayed, trying to persuade. Finally, the tanks came.” Another long pause. “The soldiers were weeping. When the order came, some fired into the air, over the students’ heads.”

In the silence, Dr. Yang stared at the painting, but we could all tell he wasn’t seeing it. Finally he spoke again, in changed, cold tones. “There, Jack. Is that what you needed? Tell me, does that help you?”

In a quiet voice, but a firmer one than I could have found, Jack said, “I’m sorry. I appreciate how hard that must have been. But it does help and I wish you’d told me sooner. For one thing, if you were with Chau when he died, it makes it a lot less likely that he’s alive and painting these paintings.”

“Less likely? It was never possible!” Dr. Yang pressed his palms on his desk as though he had to keep it from lifting off. “Is that the hypothesis you’ve been working on since I hired you? That Chau’s not dead and the paintings are real? That’s a problem, Jack.”

“Maybe. There’s another problem, too. Someone shot at me.”

“Someone—what?”

“Shot a bullet through my office window. About two hours ago.”

It took Dr. Yang a moment to catch up. “I—was anyone hurt?”

“No.”

“Who was it?”

“I have no idea. Or what the point was, either.”

“Did you call the police?”

“Of course. Bullets in my ceiling?” Jack added, “I didn’t mention you.”

Dr. Yang’s lips compressed into a thin line. He nodded curtly and said to me and Bill, “Will you excuse us?”

If I’d conjured up a semireasonable excuse to stay I might have tried it, but it wasn’t hard to see that nothing would work. Bill pushed away from the windowsill and I stood from my chair. “Of course,” I said. To Jack: “We’ll be outside.”

Jack gave a distracted nod. He and Dr. Yang sat staring at each other as we left.

* * *

I shut the door behind us, then said to Bill, “Can I listen at the keyhole?” He didn’t dignify that with an answer. We sat on a bench and watched students walk by. “What did you think?” I asked.

“Tough customer.”

“I had professors like him in college. I did well in their courses because I was scared not to. But from your I-Spy perch by the window, I mean.”

Bill came up with this trick and we do it routinely at interviews now, especially the first time we meet someone: We try to sit far enough apart that the person can’t see both of us at once. Then one talks, the other watches. We can’t always pull it off, but it’s particularly convenient when the interviewee doesn’t have enough chairs.

“He’s way more angry than I’d have expected,” Bill said.

“Jack said he’s an angry kind of guy.”

“Still. Now we know he’s Jack’s client. So what? It may be irritating but it’s not a disaster. He’s overreacting.”

“Maybe.” In my mind I heard Dr. Yang’s dark voice as he told his story. “What he told us; it makes his reason for hiring Jack more convincing, doesn’t it?”

“You mean, protecting Chau’s rep?”

“Protecting Chau, I get the feeling. The way he couldn’t, back then. Maybe he’s so furious out of helplessness. This situation is getting out of control. The way that one did, and look what happened.”

Bill nodded. “Possible.”

“And speaking of protecting people, here’s another question: What about his daughter? Anna? You saw how he stopped Jack from telling her what was up. Why wouldn’t he want her to know?”

“She seems to have her own problems. Whatever Jack meant when he asked how she was doing and if anyone had heard from Mike. Sounds like her boyfriend ditched her. Maybe Yang doesn’t want to complicate her life right now.”

I thought about Dr. Yang as an overprotective dad. High walls and lattice-screened windows came to mind, but Anna’s affectionate teasing didn’t strike me as coming from either the cowed and timid or resentful and rebellious young woman that that approach would have been likely to produce. She’d probably been wrapping him around her finger her whole life. “Well, maybe,” I suggested, “he really is only protecting his investment while he pretends to care about his dead friend, and he feels guilty enough about it that he’d just as soon his daughter doesn’t know.”

“Maybe so.”

“What did you think of the art in his office?” I asked, but my phone rang, so Bill didn’t get a chance to answer. I flipped it open. “Hi, Linus.”

“Hey, Cuz. So, Bill’s all hooked up. Vladimir Oblomov, shady Russian, Chinese art honcho. You want to hear?”

“Of course.” I did; but also, he clearly couldn’t wait to tell me.

“First I went to the Wikipedia pages for two hot Chinese artists. Wow, you know how weird that stuff is? Anyway, I made Oblomov a buyer on one and a seller on the other. Bill might want to check out their stuff, you know, so in case his squeeze wants to talk about them.” He gave me the artists’ names. “Then I made a Web site for Vassily Imports. They sell food from Russia and, like, Eastern Europe and the Stans. Caviar, black bread, pickles, cheese—whatever, I looked up what one of the real sites sells and made it like that. Oblomov is on the board of directors, and he’s also VP for International Corporate Communications. No one ever knows what that means so I figured it was cool. And the Web site, I made it so it sort of takes you in circles if you try to go too deep. So if you were really trying to find who the boss man is, you couldn’t. That’s the shady part, you dig? Then I grabbed a shot of Bill from when we went to the park that time and Photoshopped it into some gallery opening in Hong Kong I found online, then put the whole thing on Flickr and tagged him along with the other VIPs. I got him listed on Yahoo.com and WhitePages, but no address, no phone. You think she’ll pay to do the search? I might be able to get something in there, but only maybe.”

“No, I don’t think she will. By the time she Googles him it’ll be after he’s called her. She won’t be trying to find how to contact him, just to make sure he’s not some kind of phony.”

“Good luck with that.” I could hear Linus’s grin. “So, anyhow, the next thing, Trella opened a blog on JournalScape, backdated like six months: She’s an art student, yadda yadda yadda and OMG she met this Oblomov dude, older but God is he loaded. They kicked it for a while but it cooled.”

“Good, Linus.”

“And I started a Facebook fan page for the Russian mob and made him one of the fans.”

“What?”

“Kidding! Joke! Winking emoticon!”

“Oh.” I breathed out. “Thanks, Linus. This all sounds terrific. Send me a bill.”

“Nah. Family’s free. Just tell me if it works?”

I promised to do that, and clicked off.

“You’re in business,” I told Bill. “When Shayna Googles Vladimir Oblomov, she’ll get more than if she Googled the real you.”

“As it should be.” He checked his watch. “This is probably a good time to call her. She gets off in half an hour.”

“Well, then, absolutely. She has to have time to check out Linus’s hard work.”

Bill did call Shayna, who, from where I was sitting, seemed delighted to hear from him. The first thing he said was, “Eet’s Vladimir Oblomov,” as if he had no idea she didn’t know his last name. Things went all murmuring from there, which was a little revolting, so I got up and checked out the posters and flyers on the walls. This might not have been the Art Department, but apparently a lot of events coming up around Asian Art Week considered themselves of interest to A/P/A Studies students. Auctions, lectures, panels, gallery shows, led off by a glittering benefit gala I couldn’t imagine college students attending except as cater waiters. Capping the week was “Beijing/NYC,” which my client had mentioned: an offering of the government of the People’s Republic to the art lovers of New York. Paintings, sculpture, photography and installations, all so new their paint, or ink, or gluey emulsion, wouldn’t be dry. I was considering the civilized nature of cultural exchange when Dr. Yang’s door opened and closed, leaving Jack standing in the corridor.

“Aramis,” I said. “How’d it go?”

“Wow.”

“You look a little dazed.”

Jack shook his head slowly. “All I could think while he was reaming me out was, thank God he wasn’t on my thesis committee.”

Bill, spotting Jack, whispered some ridiculous sweet nothing into his phone and thumbed it off. I asked Jack, “Why is he so upset? It’s not your fault we went to you. Did you explain your reasoning, why you told us about him?”

“Reasoning’s not high on his list right now. But I gather he’d have preferred door number two: I tell you guys ‘Ghost Hero Chau? Never heard of him,’ and then call Dr. Yang and tell him to hide under his desk if you come by.”

“We wouldn’t have bought it,” Bill said. “Seriously, Jack, an artist who died at Tiananmen, whose paintings are worth hundreds of thousands—”

“Worth nothing, says Dr. Yang.”

“No, I mean the ones from twenty years ago. The real ones. What I’m saying is, this is your field. By the time we got to you we already knew enough about Ghost Hero Chau that we wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said you never heard of him. So we’d have wondered why you were lying.”

“Cool. Would you have tapped my phone or something?”

“We’d have gotten Linus to,” I said.

“Well, don’t bother. I have some pretty fancy blocking equipment up there.”

“On your cell phone, too?”

“He can tap a cell phone?”

“He can do anything as long as it plugs into something.”

“Well, now, that sounds useful.” Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and started down the hall. Bill and I flanked him. “Anyway, in all humility I mentioned that to Dr. Yang. That you guys came to me for the same reason he did. He wasn’t impressed. He doesn’t care what you think of me and he thinks I should’ve stonewalled you until I found the Chaus.” Jack shrugged. “Maybe he’s right.”

“It’s not about what we think of you,” I said. “It’s about what we’d have thought of him, meeting him under even less auspicious circumstances than we did, after you led us right to him when we tailed you to find out what you were hiding.”

“Tailed me? The hell you say, little lady. Maybe your hacker cousin’s all that, but a penny-ante surveillance? I’d have slipped you like a greased pig.”

“Who’re you calling a greased pig?”

“He’s the greased pig,” Bill said, peacemaking. “You’re the farmer trying to hold on to the pig.”

“That’s a charming image. Is it a midwest suburban thing?”

“Anyway,” Bill told Jack, “I’ve tried shaking her. She’s hard to lose. And look at it this way: If you’d done that, we wouldn’t owe you a martini.”

“On the other hand,” I said, “if he’d done that, he might still have a client.”

Jack looked at me, surprised. “I still have a client.”

“You do? Up one side and down the other, but he didn’t fire you?”

“Through the steam coming out of his ears he reluctantly conceded I’m still the man for the job. Partly because if he cans me and hires someone else, that’s yet another person who knows he’s looking for these paintings.”

“Why is that such a problem?” Bill asked.

“Beyond the idea that his possible real, as opposed to stated, motivation doesn’t put him in the best light? I don’t know.”

“I’m having second thoughts about my second thoughts about his motivation,” I said. “After that story.”

“I know.” Jack nodded.

“Tell me this,” Bill said. “How much of his anger was with you, and how much was with us for even knowing about the paintings?”

“He’s pretty pissed at you,” Jack admitted. “Especially for not telling him who your client is.”

“Did you tell him?” I asked.

“I thought about it, because we don’t even think Jeff Dunbar is your client’s real name, do we?”

“No, but—”

“Oh, chill. I didn’t. I would’ve, but he threw me out before he got to the bamboo under the fingernails. Anyway, we had a bigger fight to have. He wanted me to ditch you guys from now on.”

“He did? Even though the cat’s out of the bag?”

“Yup.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, I don’t carry a gun and I’m not used to getting shot at.”

“And he said?”

“He went through the whole thing we did, how the gunshot probably had nothing to do with this case. I stopped him halfway and said that wasn’t the real point.”

“It’s not? What is?”

“Come on. If we’re all looking for the same thing, and we know it, how ridiculous is it to be sneaking around trying to outsmart each other?”

“Sneaking around is kind of what we do,” I pointed out. “How did he respond?”

“He was still against it. So I had to use my other big, as it were, gun. I said, maybe it was a mistake not to play dumb when you came to me, and if it was I’m sorry, but that ship’s sailed. Now aren’t I better off if I know what you guys are up to? Your client most likely wants to make off with these paintings, find someone to authenticate them, and sell them fast. If he can, they’ll be on the market with a provenance. Very soon they’ll be almost impossible to debunk. If Dr. Yang’s out to protect the memory of his friend, that would not be the outcome he was looking for.”

“Well, but here’s a question. How could someone authenticate them? If Dr. Yang saw Chau die. How can this still be an issue?”

“They’ll say he’s mistaken. He’s exaggerating. That it was chaos in Tiananmen when the tanks rolled in, he doesn’t know what he saw. They’ll say he was with Chau until the shooting started, then he ran away, now he’s out-and-out lying. How can he prove none of that is true?”

I thought about the clenched muscles in Dr. Yang’s jaw. “When he talked about holding his friend’s hand? I don’t think he was lying.”

“Maybe not. But it’s not proof.”

“But Chau’s buried in his hometown, didn’t you say? What about DNA from the body?”

“You’re going to ask the PRC government to exhume an enemy of the people so you can prove he’s still alive?”

“Besides,” Bill said, “DNA’s only useful if there’s something to compare it against. Unless someone’s got Chau’s toothbrush, that wouldn’t help.”

I thought about it. “Well, so what did Dr. Yang say?”

“He wasn’t happy. He didn’t like being backed into a corner and he was furious at the idea he might not be believed. But he couldn’t argue. He told me to go ahead.”

“With us?”

“With you.” Jack looked from me to Bill. “Though if your client disappears with these paintings before Dr. Yang gets a shot at them, you guys, trust me: I am so dead.”

“So the reason you gave him for going ahead with us, it’s actually true?” I asked. “Not the synergy of shared effort? The serendipitous sparks when bits of data collide? You’re just keeping an eye on us?”

“Damn correct. Also, Athos here still owes me a martini.”

7

We headed north where Bill, to no one’s surprise, knew a quiet bar.

“Let me ask you something,” I said to Jack. “After the Tiananmen story I’m inclined to think Dr. Yang’s motives are legit. But I’m hung up on his reaction when Anna asked what you were doing. If he’s being noble, why doesn’t he want her knowing about it?”

“I’m not sure. But things between them aren’t the greatest right now and she has her own problems.”

“That’s what it sounded like. Can you tell?”

“It’s not a secret. She went to Beijing last year to study. Dr. Yang was against it but she can be bullheaded when it comes to her work. There were old-school masters she wanted to get to before they’re gone.”

“Given his experience, I’m not surprised he felt that way. But things have changed over there.”

“Maybe not so much. She met a poet. Liu Mai-ke. Part of a loose network of activist artists. He—”

“Wait.” I stopped walking. “That’s the Mike? Mike Liu?”

“You know about him?”

“Who’s Chinese and doesn’t?”

“I’m not Chinese,” Bill said. “Fill me in.”

“A dissident,” I said. “He wrote an open letter to the government about artists’ rights. Last fall. They closed down his Web site, but too late, and the letter went viral. Mike Liu Mai-ke. But he’s in prison.”

Jack said, “And it’s sort of her fault.”

“Hers?” I began to see why Anna might have her own problems. “I thought it was the letter. Wasn’t that what the trial was about?”

“The letter went up a few weeks before he met Anna. They shut down his Web site, followed him, tapped his phone, things like that, but they didn’t arrest him until after they were married.”

“Married? Wait, Jack—Anna Yang’s married to Mike Liu? Why didn’t I know that?”

“They realized their mistake and now they keep it quiet.”

“What mistake?”

We stepped apart for a pair of hand-holding students. “They were married at a wild wedding banquet in a hip café in Beijing,” Jack told us. “Tout le art world, also tout le dissident world, was there. Even Doug Haig.”

“He’s a friend of theirs?” The needle on my Anna Yang respect-o-meter, which had jumped, started to slip.

“Haig? Somebody’s friend? He goes to China four or five times a year just to scoop up the hot new artists. He was in Beijing then, and it would’ve been mass career suicide for every artist there if he wasn’t invited. The whole thing was less marriage ceremony than art world happening anyway. Everyone drinking, shouting slogans, singing revolutionary songs. Belting out ‘La Marseillaise’ and ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ in Chinese. Tweets flying, photos on Facebook, MySpace, mad blogging.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Probably was. After the wedding Anna and Mike planned to ship out here to meet the in-laws.”

“The Yangs? They weren’t there?”

Bill said, “I bet they couldn’t get visas. That whole crowd that left after Tiananmen, China doesn’t want them back.”

“Right,” said Jack.

“Even for their daughter’s wedding?” I said. “Hey, you guys, don’t look at me like that. It’s sad.”

“Gets worse,” Jack said. “One reason Anna and Mike got married, besides true love, is they figured marrying a foreigner was the only way a troublemaker like Mike could get a passport. Big mistake.”

“He couldn’t?”

“Not only couldn’t he, when he applied he got arrested. It dawned on them too late that the marrying-a-foreigner thing, the public-wedding-banquet thing, the who’s-who of the dissident world all-together-now on YouTube, that was the problem.”

“Oh. That’s what you meant, realized their mistake?”

Jack nodded. “Mike had been small potatoes. Now suddenly his political writing, his poems, the open letter, they were high-profile. The PRC couldn’t let him travel and they couldn’t ignore him. They decided to deal with him publicly, as a warning. He was convicted of subversion of the state. He got seven years, and Anna got kicked out of the country.”

I looked around at the students strolling under the early spring trees. “Poor Anna. And poor Mike. And why do I get the feeling there was a lot of I-told-you-so when she got back?”

“Great heaping piles of it. Dr. Yang had been against the whole thing from the start. Not that he knew Mike from Adam, or cared. It was the idea of Anna involved with a dissident, on the other side of the world, where he couldn’t protect her—I’m just sayin’, that was no semester to defend your thesis.”

“What about Anna’s mother?” Bill asked. “Did she object, too?”

“She and Anna are pretty close. She was in on it longer than Dr. Yang, watching the romance bloom. She wasn’t happy, either, because she was afraid Anna would get hurt. But she tried to soften Dr. Yang up. When Anna got back, she bombarded the Chinese consulate, her senator, everyone she could think of with phone calls, letters, e-mails. Eventually Dr. Yang gave in. He was furious, but she’s his little girl. He called some people he knows, and he knows some serious people. But no one could do anything. The PRC’s not backing down.”

“Even though Mike Liu’s small potatoes?”

“Because he is. He has no huge international following, no one claiming he belongs to the world, not to China. They’re calling this a purely internal matter and no one’s cashing in the political chips to challenge that.”

The swirling student traffic thinned as we walked north. We stopped for a light a few blocks away, across the street from Union Square.

“Now I get it,” I said. “Why Dr. Yang might not want to tell Anna about the Chaus. Stir up the whole subject of dissident artists.”

“Anna’s sort of back to a normal life. Basically, she’s making art and waiting for Mike. Between you and me I get the feeling Dr. Yang hopes she’ll forget him and fall for somebody else. Also between you and me, though, Anna’s still in touch with dissident groups here and in China, not a word about which she breathes to Dr. Yang.”

“Poor Anna,” I said again. “And poor Mike.”

Jack’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t even know Mike. He might be a self-righteous confrontational jerk with a martyr complex.”

“He’s a political prisoner. That makes him one of the the good guys. And I hardly know Anna, either. Is he really that bad?”

“No idea. I never met him. From what I hear he’s a serious, sweet guy. Talented writer, too.”

“Then why did you say that?”

“You felt bad for him. I was jealous.”

“Go get arrested, I’ll feel bad for you, too.”

“Getting shot at’s not enough?”

“That’s getting old.”

I got no answer because Jack’s and Bill’s phones both rang at once. I wouldn’t have put it past Jack to orchestrate that but it was for sure beyond Bill.

Jack finished his call first. “That was Jacqueline. At Chocolat. They finished the temporary window and she told them to hang around so I could approve it. About that martini—”

“We’d have to put it off anyway,” Bill said, folding his phone. “I have a date.”

It took Jack a beat, but he caught up. “With Shayna Dylan? Seriously?”

Bill gave a modest shrug. “I’m too sexy for Vladimir’s shirt.”

“Hah,” I scoffed. “You think Shayna dating you is about anything as high-minded as sex?”

“Um, well, good luck,” Jack said to Bill. He glanced at me and added, “With everything. Talk later, when you’re done? I’ll be in my office, doing whatever I was doing when all hell broke loose.” Then, habit overcoming reason, he stepped into the street and hailed a cab.

“I still think it’s weird,” I said as Bill and I crossed to the subway, Bill to go uptown, me to go down.

“That Jack prefers cabs?”

“No, he had a deprived childhood where they don’t have subways. But based on what he said, I can see why Dr. Yang didn’t tell Anna what he’s doing, but it doesn’t seem like it would be a big deal if she found out. And why does he care if we know?” A thought occurred to me. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh what?”

“‘Based on what Jack said.’ Maybe he’s holding out on us. Maybe something completely else went on in there besides what he told us.”

Bill looked at me. “I guess it’s possible. I don’t think so, though. That wouldn’t be like him.”

“You haven’t known him that long, have you? Just a couple of months?”

“No, that’s true. But, for example, I knew you were on the level from the minute I met you.”

“Proving my point: You’re a rotten judge of character.”

“You may be right,” he said. “Because I’m actually looking forward to my date with Shayna.”

8

Bill and I split up at the subway entrance, promising to call each other later. I caught the N and stood the few rattling stops to Chinatown, meditating on my client. I didn’t think Jeff Dunbar had given me his real name, or any reason to trust him, but I’d taken his money. Maybe he had a right to know someone else was on the trail of the paintings and I was working with that someone else’s PI. Or maybe that was just an excuse to call him, because there were some things I wanted to know, too.

I got off at Canal, called, got voice mail, left a message. I wondered if Dunbar was in his office, doing whatever he didn’t want me to know he did, and whether he’d have to slip away to call so the people he did it for wouldn’t find out about me, either. A lot of people in this case, I reflected, not supposed to know about each other. I was putting the phone away when it chimed. That meant that while I was underground someone left a message the phone had just found.

“Ms. Chin? This is Samuel Wing. I’d very much like to speak with you. Would you give me a call at your earliest convenience?” I had no idea who Samuel Wing was, but he had a nice voice, a Mandarin accent, a desire to talk to me, and a phone number. So I called it.

“Ah, Ms. Chin, good to hear from you. I’d appreciate a few moments of your time.”

“Can I know what this is about, Mr. Wing?”

“Certain paintings. I don’t want to say anything more over the phone, but I’m fairly sure you’ll be interested.”

Unless the guy was going to try to sell me a hot Picasso, I was fairly sure he was right.

“I’ll be happy to come to your office,” he said. “Canal Street near Broadway, is that correct?”

He’d done his homework, the well-spoken Mr. Wing. “Yes. six-nine-three Canal, buzzer number two.”

“Fifteen minutes? Is that convenient?”

For me, very. For him, that either meant his base was downtown—office or home—or he was already in Chinatown, hanging at the noodle shop or the tea house, waiting for me to stroll by. I checked the faces of the noodle-eaters and tea-drinkers on my way up the block, so if one of them appeared in my office attached to Samuel Wing I’d know I’d been, if not quite ambushed, at least waited for a little hard.

I pushed through the street door at 693, checked my mailbox, and waved to the ladies at Golden Adventure Travel. This is really their space, this whole ground floor, and their name is on the door. I’m their subtenant and buzzer number two has no name on it at all. That way, if anyone should chance to see a client of mine come in here, he can always claim he was looking into a package tour to the casinos of Macao.

In the office I put on the kettle and closed the barred airshaft window. Mr. Wing might not enjoy the Hong Kong back alley atmosphere: Beijing opera CD’s; crying babies; spring onions and pork stir-frying in sesame oil. I switched the computer on and checked the phone. Interesting: no calls. My landline message gives my cell phone number, which is where I’d assumed Samuel Wing had gotten it. Evidently I’d been wrong. Putting that away for further thought, I speed-dialed Golden Adventure.

Andi Gee answered. “Hi, Lydia! What’s up?”

“I have a guy coming in I don’t know. Can I check the panic button?”

“Sure. Hey, girls, Lydia’s checking the panic button. Don’t panic!” I pressed my foot down on the button Bill wired under the desk the last time I had a little trouble in here. I’ve never used it, but I like to check it occasionally to make sure it works. A loud buzz sounded down the hall and also in my ear, where Andi said, “Works great! You get problem, you press, we come save you!”

“No, you don’t! You call the police.”

“Yeah, yeah. Who this guy? He dangerous?”

“I doubt it. Just a precaution.” Because, I didn’t tell her, someone already got shot at today.

I turned to the computer and searched the local databases for a Samuel Wing. I came up with four, none of them jumping out at me as possibly connected to this case. I archived them anyway, to recheck after I’d met him.

Of course, he might not be local.

Or his name might not be Samuel Wing.

I did a little more computer work, since I had the time. Precisely fifteen minutes after we’d hung up, here came the buzzer, and when I asked who was there, I heard, “Samuel Wing.” Between the panic button and the .22 in the small of my back, I felt I was ready. I buzzed him in and stuck my head out the door so he’d know where to head for.

“Ms. Chin?”

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wing.” We’d spoken so far in English, so I kept it up. His accent told me it wasn’t his first language, but my bilingual phone message would have told him I speak Cantonese. I guessed we weren’t speaking that because he didn’t, and he wasn’t trying Mandarin because if I wasn’t fluent that might embarrass me.

Samuel Wing sat, pulling at his trouser knees in that way men have. He was thin, medium-height, fiftyish, gray hair, nice suit. Not a face I’d just seen on the block. Looking around, he said, “What an interesting office.” Actually, I have fairly standard, if battered, desk and filing cabinets, plus laptop, lamps, and Lucky Tiger Tofu Factory tear-off calendar. If you were an anthropologist from outer space this room might be interesting, but I wasn’t sure what Samuel Wing was getting at until, nodding with satisfaction, he said, “Very discreet.”

So it wasn’t the office, it was location, location, location. “I find my clients appreciate that. Can I offer you some tea?”

He seemed pleased to find this courtesy extended. Before I was old enough to walk I’d understood that no Chinese people could decently sit down together, for business, gossip, or companionable silence, without tea. Even Jack Lee, from the midwest suburbs, had felt inadequate when he’d realized he had no refreshments for guests. I’d been a little surprised not to have been offered anything by Dr. Yang, but maybe the rules were different for angry academics.

I scooped some oolong into a pot, poured water from the kettle, and while the tea steeped I brought out the Chinese-client cups: bamboo-painted porcelain with lids and no handles. They add a touch of elegance to my office. That I buy them by the dozen in the basement of Kam Man supermarket because I break them regularly was not Samuel Wing’s concern.

“How can I help you, Mr. Wing?”

“It is I, Ms. Chin, who can help you.”

I was perfectly willing to believe that and only slightly annoyed at his smug air, as though by turning the tables like that he’d made a clever pun.

“It’s come to my attention, Ms. Chin, that you have an interest in certain paintings.”

“I’m an art lover,” I said, swirling the tea in the pot. I poured for both of us.

He smiled. “Of course.” He lifted, sniffed, and tasted his tea, cradling the cup in one hand and shifting the lid aside with the other in a move my mother had made me practice my whole childhood. He sat in silence to permit the tea to occupy his thoughts and senses. “Quite good,” he said, as though he hadn’t expected that. Just because of the back-room-on-the-alley thing? Another sip, and then he replaced the lid and set the cup gently on the desk. “I’m speaking specifically, of course, about the paintings of Chau Chun. Chau Gwai Ying Shung, the Ghost Hero.”

“Yes, I thought you might be. May I ask how my interest in Chau came to your attention?”

“No, I’m sorry, that must remain confidential. Nothing so dramatic as an electronic surveillance or anything of that nature, I assure you,” he said with a dry smile. “In any case, this is an interest that the people I represent would prefer did not go further.”

“Really?” I sipped and said, “I thought, Mr. Wing, you’d come here to help me.”

“I have. The people I represent are prepared to show their gratitude if you abandon your search for these paintings.”

“Are they? Who are these people?”

“I apologize, but that also must remain confidential. But they’re serious, I assure you.” He took a wallet from his jacket pocket, fat with crisp new bills. He fanned a few out: They were hundreds. “Whatever compensation you’ve received for your efforts thus far, my principals are prepared to exceed it. They believe ten thousand dollars is a fair recompense for the trouble you’ve taken.”

Well. Now there was an intriguing offer. I could hand Jeff Dunbar back his thou and kiss not just him good-bye, but also the slimy Doug Haig, the angry Dr. Yang, and whoever was making like Annie Oakley uptown. Ten large, that would buy a lot of coffee beans. Jack could go ahead and find the new Chaus by himself. And Bill wouldn’t have to date Shayna anymore.

“I’d be interested to know, Mr. Wing, why these people care so much.”

“Yes, I’m sure. Although you don’t expect that I’m prepared to tell you?”

“No. But you can appreciate that I’d have to know who, and why, before I could consider your generous offer.”

“Actually, no, I don’t see why that should be true. In this country, don’t they say ‘money talks’? Is this”—he lifted the cash—“not loud enough? I think, though I’m merely an agent acting on their behalf, I can confidently say my principals would be prepared to … raise the volume. An additional fifty percent, would that be acceptable?”

Part of me wanted to see how far I could push this. For one thing, how high Mr. Wing’s “principals” were willing to go would be the true gauge of their interest. For another, I didn’t know what the going price of integrity was these days.

But I’ve never been one to string a man along. “I’m sorry, Mr. Wing. I value your principals’ directness and their generosity. Please express my great regret at being forced to decline.”

Samuel Wing didn’t put his wallet away. “Ms. Chin, I’d urge you to reconsider.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. But you might be.”

“Excuse me?”

“Another expression they use in this country, I believe, is ‘the carrot and the stick.’ This”—raising the wallet—“is the carrot.”

“You’re telling me,” I said slowly, “that you also have a stick? Mr. Wing, are you threatening me? In my own office, while you’re drinking my tea?”

“No, of course not.” He smiled at the absurdity. “But I’d very much like to report to my principals a successful conclusion to this affair.”

“You can report,” I said, “that you delivered the message you were sent with. You can report that I considered the offer most generous and I was sorry I had to decline. And you can report that you got the hell out of here.”

I stood. He didn’t, immediately, but spoke looking up at me. “Ms. Chin, your loyalty to the client who’s already paid for it does you credit. As does your natural curiosity. However, I very much hope you’ll reflect on this conversation. When you do, you’ll come to understand where your true interests lie. You have my number. I expect to hear from you soon.” He tucked his wallet away, and stood. “Thank you for the tea. It was delicious. Good day.”

He pulled open my office door, strode into the hall and out onto Canal Street. Before the street door closed behind him, I saw him turn right. I counted to ten, not to calm myself down, but to give him a chance to get far enough that he wouldn’t notice me. Then I hit the street, too.

I ambled a block behind him for a while. At Hudson, he turned north. He didn’t look around and, intriguingly, he didn’t take out his cell phone. I hoped he’d take advantage of the spring weather to stroll back to wherever he was going, but three blocks later, he flagged a cab. I watched it roll up Hudson, then headed back to my office. I called Bill, got voice mail. Well, I certainly wouldn’t want to interrupt his tête-à-tête with Shayna. I left a message telling him to be careful and to call me when he came up for air. Then I called Jack.

“Lee.”

“Chin.”

“Hey.”

“Hey. Should I stick to one syllable, or can I use sentences?”

“Whatever flies your flag.”

“How’s your window?”

“Smaller than it used to be. Plywood and plastic. But at least it won’t rain in here before I get a real one. I put the Hasui back on the wall so I could contemplate the peaceable life I had before I met you. Is that why you called?”

“No. Is it bulletproof?”

“The Hasui?”

“The window.”

Pause. “I don’t think so. Does it need to be? I thought that act was over.”

“It never hurts to be prepared. I just had a visit from a gentleman calling himself Samuel Wing. Does that name mean anything to you?”

“No, but I get the feeling it’s about to.”

“I don’t know. He offered me a boatload of money to abandon this search.”

“Re-eally?” In a way I was beginning to recognize, Jack drew the word out. “How big a boat? The QE2? Or a kayak?”

“I’d say the Staten Island Ferry. He started at ten thousand, went to fifteen at the drop of a ‘no.’ He’d have kept going if I let him.”

“Well, that’s not chump change. What’s his angle?”

“According to him, he doesn’t have one, he’s working for ‘some people.’ His ‘principals,’ he said, would pay handsomely if I dropped the case. Then he suggested rather pointedly I’d be sorry if I didn’t.”

“Damn. Did he suggest specifically that he’d shoot your uptown partner?”

That tripped me up. It had taken years for me and Bill to start using the word “partner.”

“Um, no,” I said.

“That’s a relief.”

“It wasn’t clear exactly what would happen. Earthquakes, tornadoes. But Mr. Wing made himself suspicious to me in oh so many ways.”

“Tell me one.”

“He came here with a fat wallet stuffed with hundreds. I booted him out with it untouched but he didn’t call in to report to his principals.”

“How do you know?”

“I followed him, dummy.”

“Oh, of course you did. And you saw him not call?”

“For at least ten minutes. If they were so anxious to have me sign on that they sent him with cash, not just the promise of cash, wouldn’t they have been anxious to know my answer? Also, his language is Mandarin, he drinks tea like a mainlander—I gave him the lidded-cup test—but he knows enough about New York that he walked north of the tunnel before he tried to get a cab.”

“Which says he’s been here awhile.”

“Bill told me you were smart.”

“On the other hand, I’ve been here all my life and I don’t think I could pass the lidded-cup test.”

“Your mom didn’t make you practice?”

“Who were we going to impress in Madison?”

“I’ll teach you. So I’m thinking Mr. Wing’s from China, but he’s spent serious time in New York. Also, he didn’t threaten my mother.”

“Well, now, that is suspicious. What?”

“Think about it. A pro working for people who want to intimidate a Chinese woman, the first thing he’d do would be threaten my family. I don’t have kids, but a couple of my brothers do, and I have an aged mother. He didn’t mention any of them.”

Jack was silent for a few moments. “So he’s an amateur. Not actually an enforcer.”

“Exactly. I don’t think he’s used to threatening people and I don’t think he’s working for anyone. Except, possibly, for someone who’s also not used to threatening people.” I paused as a thought struck me. “At least, not with violence. Maybe with failing grades.”

“Wait. You think he’s working for Dr. Yang?”

“Is it crazy?”

“I think it is,” Jack said slowly.

“Not all that many people know I’m looking for the Chaus. And only one, as far as I know, is seriously upset about it. Samuel Wing had my cell phone number.”

“Which I didn’t give Dr. Yang. If that’s what you’re calling to ask.”

“I wasn’t. Honestly, I wasn’t. That only just occurred to me. I was calling to tell you to watch your back.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“Really really? Because I’m starting to get the feeling you don’t trust me.”

“Bill says you’re stand-up.”

“He said I was smart, too. Do you always believe him?”

“Ninety-nine percent of the time.”

“What happens the other one percent?”

“I’m wrong.”

“Well, you’re wrong now. I’m the good guys. We have a deal. I didn’t have my fingers crossed or anything.”

My cheeks burned. Good thing we were on the phone. “Dr. Yang might have sent this guy without telling you. Just because I don’t trust your client doesn’t mean I don’t trust you.”

“Methinks you’re protesting too much, but I’ll take it. I’ll also take the warning at face value, and I appreciate it.”

“It really was why I called.”

After an awkward moment, Jack asked, “What did Bill say?”

“About Samuel Wing? I left him a message. He’s incommunicado, tied up with Shayna Dylan.”

“You think she’s into that?”

“Yuck!”

“Sorry. Listen, what I’m doing up here—and I’m telling you this because now that you think I’m offended you’re afraid to ask because it’ll sound like you’re checking up on me—is I’m trying to track any recent interest in Chau, see who the buyers and sellers have been, the last few years.”

“Oh. Thanks, and thanks.”

“Nothing interesting’s coming up, though. I’m ready to move on. If you’re not planning to spend the rest of the day with gangsters or at the pistol range or something, do you want to go over to Red Sky and see if we can find where the rumors came from that Jen Beril heard? They’re open until six, which believe me is plenty of time to see the current show.”

“You know, that’s a really good idea.”

“You don’t have to sound surprised. Red Sky, forty-five minutes?”

“In the same building as Baxter/Haig, right? Meet you outside.”

I’d been heading back along Canal while we talked, to my office. I had some time, so I clicked the computer on to try a couple of things.

First I checked my archived Samuel Wings. Two were in their twenties, and one was eighty-three, so I scrapped them. The fourth, in a stroke of luck, had won a bowling tournament on Long Island last year. His smiling puss was in a newspaper photo, and I’d never seen it before. So much for that. I moved on to my next bright idea.

New York City has devised all sorts of online and phone-related ways of making itself more user-friendly over the last few years. Some work and some don’t, but as a PI it’s my duty to keep up with them. I’d never used this one before and I was eager to try it.

Three-one-one is the city’s information number. You can ask all sorts of questions and get all sorts of answers. Or you can do it online. Tap a few keys, for example, and you’re at the find-your-stuff page, which exists to hook you up with the bus, train, or taxi you left your stuff in. I went to “taxi,” filled in a form that asked for the medallion number, which I’d memorized from the top of Samuel Wing’s cab, and the time of day, plus a description of the stuff in question and a way to get in touch. It claimed it would automatically text the cabbie or his garage. I could only see this working under two conditions: the cabbie was conscientious and honest; or the searcher was offering a reward. I went the reward route, not describing my stuff but suggesting there’d be something in it for the cabbie if I found what I was looking for. Then I locked up the office and headed west again.

9

In the slanted sunlight I walked past cheap electronics stores, hawkers of bootleg purses and bogus perfumes, and immigrants at sidewalk tables waiting to paint your name in bright brushstrokes and surround it with carp or dragons. Or to fold long leaves of grass into curled pythons; or dollar bills—that you supplied—into butterflies. As I passed them, the painters and folders, I wondered about their lives back in China: whether they were landscape painters, calligraphers, weavers, what their work was like when it wasn’t butterflies and tourists’ names. Whether they kept up that work here, on their own, when their Canal Street day was done.

Another few blocks and the crowds thinned out. I’d considered walking up to Chelsea, but decided I’d hate it if Jack beat me to the gallery. The subway got me there in a flash. I took up a station in front of the gallery building to wait.

Actually, not directly in front, a few yards east. I’d glanced into Baxter/Haig and seen that Nick Greenbank was still guarding the gates. It wasn’t like it would blow my cover if he saw me; there was no reason that, in my role as an art consultant, I shouldn’t accompany yet another client to yet another gallery, even one that happened to be in his building. But I’d had a thought and I was working out its implications: Doug Haig, and little Nick himself, courtesy of Vladimir Oblomov, had my cell phone number.

A few minutes more waiting and thinking, and here came Jack, unfolding from a taxi at the curb. I was about to make a subway-vs-cab wisecrack but, luckily for him, my phone rang. I checked the readout: my client, Jeff Dunbar. I held up a finger to Jack and answered.

“Sorry to take so long returning your call,” he said. “I was in a meeting.” He spoke eagerly. And gave me a bit too much of an explanation for someone so eager. “Do you have something to report?”

“A number of things. Can we meet later?”

“You’ve found the paintings?”

“If I had I wouldn’t keep you in suspense. No, but I want to discuss some other issues.”

“What kind of ‘issues’? ” His voice became wary.

“I’d like to meet you later, if that’s all right. It’s important or I wouldn’t be calling.”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” He paused. I could have suggested a meeting place but I was curious what would happen if I left that to him. He gave it a few seconds; then since I wasn’t coming through, he said, “There’s a bar on West Street and Eleventh called The Fraying Rope. Do you know it?”

“No, but I can find it. About an hour?”

“Yes, that’s fine.”

“See you then.” I clicked off, aware of Jack hovering at my elbow. “Excuse me,” I said as I put the phone away. “Do I know you?”

“Not well enough.” He was grinning, so I guessed the twin traumas of the gunshot and Dr. Yang’s dressing-down had faded. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Though I’m actually five minutes early.”

“I was ten.”

“Does anyone ever get over on you?”

I sighed. “People do it all the time. That’s why I have to win when I can.”

“I guess that’s not unreasonable. Uh-oh. Eagle-eyed Nick’s spotted us.” Cheerily, Jack waved through the glass door.

I turned to see Nick Greenbank scowling. I waved, too, and said to Jack, “Good thing he doesn’t have Vladimir Oblomov’s cell number or he’d be calling him to rat me out for two-timing.”

“He doesn’t?”

“No,” I said. “He has mine.”

Jack’s eyebrows went up. “Oh. Oh ho ho ho. Is that an apology?”

“No way. But it’s an interesting fact.”

“That’s true. Should we discuss it with him?”

“I think so.”

“Any special gag?”

“I haven’t thought of one. He knows you, right? He knows what you do?”

“Yes. Does he know what you do?”

“Not unless he Googled me. I was here as Vladimir’s art consultant.”

“Nick doesn’t have that kind of enterprise. If you were convincing, he believed you.”

“So how do you want to go in?”

After a second he grinned. “Winging it, like you and Bill. Walk this way.” He turned and pushed through Baxter/Haig’s oversized doors.

Nick’s scowl fizzled around the edges as we approached. He was clearly happier expressing his disdain through an inch and a half of glass.

“Hi, Nick.” Jack stuck out his hand. “Jack Lee. We’ve met a couple of times.”

“I remember.” Nick gave Jack a perfunctory limp mitt.

“And you know Lydia Chin. She’s a consultant, she was here this morning. With Vladimir Oblomov. The Russian guy.”

Nick licked his lips. “Yeah.”

“The thing is, Lydia’s an old friend of mine. This Vladimir, he was making her nervous. So she asked me to check up on him.”

“Is that why you’re here? He hasn’t been back or anything. Made me nervous, too.” Nick gave a weak laugh, seeming relieved that he and I were on the same side.

“From what I found, he’s a nervous-making guy,” Jack said. “Though actually, no, we didn’t come here to talk about him. We weren’t headed here at all. We’re going upstairs to see the show at Red Sky. ‘Bright Sun, Still Sea, Green Homeland’? ”

Nick nodded. “It’s good. If any of those three guys gets a following over the next year, we might take him on.”

“Really, you liked it? I hated it. But no accounting for taste. Anyway, on the way here, something weird happened. Lydia got a phone call. So we thought we’d stop and see you before we go up.”

Nick looked unhappily bewildered, as though he wasn’t sure what to respond to: the fact that Jack hated a show he liked, or the weirdness of me getting a phone call. In the interest of progress I helped him out. “A man named Samuel Wing. The odd part is, he called my cell phone. I keep that number kind of close. But Vladimir gave it to you before.”

It took Nick a minute. “You think I gave it to him?”

“Yeah,” said Jack, leaning on the counter. “Yeah, Nick, I do.”

“Oh, Jack, back off!” I snapped. “You know that he-man stuff drives me nuts. I may have to put up with it from clients, but not from you.” Jack, startled, turned to me. I spoke to Nick. “I don’t know what makes some guys think I need a prince riding to the rescue all the time. Is that how I come across to you? I mean, because I’m small, or what? Anyway, Jack has it wrong. As usual. He thinks I’m upset. So he can, I don’t know, beat you up and save me or something.”

Jack started to protest. “I thought—”

“You always do. Do you ever ask? No.” I gave him an exasperated glare, and gave Nick, pointedly, a smile. “If this Wing guy were just some jerk, maybe I’d be mad. But it turns out he’s kind of a big deal. A new collector with lots of money. It might develop into something. So I was wondering who he’s a friend of. I told Jack that, but of course he didn’t listen.”

As I chattered, Nick caught on. If a new collector had come into my art consultant life, I might want to show my appreciation. I could practically see the gears grinding as he tried to figure a way to get in on it. In the end, though, he shook his head. “It wasn’t me. I don’t know the guy.”

“Oh. That’s disappointing. I’d hoped—”

“But what about Doug? Did you give him your number?”

“Mr. Haig?” I said that as though it were a new and clever thought. “Well, yes, we did.”

“Then it was probably him.” If Nick couldn’t pocket my gratitude directly, at least he could make sure I knew which gallery to bring my new client to.

“Well, then, I’d like to thank him. He’s in the office?”

“Gone for the day. He’ll be back in the morning.”

“Oh, I have a meeting in the morning. Give me his cell, I’ll call him now.” I took out my phone and waited.

“Sorry, no can do.”

“What?” I acted like this was a first, being refused someone’s cell number.

Nick squirmed but shook his head. “He really doesn’t like that.”

“Oh.” I blinked. I glanced at Jack, who still stood there looking confused. “Well, I guess it doesn’t matter. I’ll catch up with him sometime. Just to thank him.” I waited, giving Nick another chance, but he didn’t bite. I stuck the phone back in my bag, said, “Jack, are you coming or what?” and walked out.

Jack followed me out of Baxter/Haig and then in the door to the upstairs galleries. Once Nick couldn’t see us, he laughed. “Hey, Porthos, nice work.”

“Same to you, Aramis.”

“Why, thanks. Can I hit the elevator button, or is that too macho for you?”

“No, go right ahead.”

He did. “A real twerp, Nick, and an ass-kisser and backbiter besides. He’ll rise to the top in no time.”

“Is that how the gallery business works?”

“What business doesn’t?”

“Oh, good, another cynic.”

“That’s just so you won’t miss your real partner while you’re working with me. I’m actually an upbeat, positive sort of guy.”

“I don’t miss him a bit,” I said, though I was wondering a tad edgily how long Bill needed to extract some simple information from Shayna Dylan. “If you’re all that positive, though, tell me something. What am I supposed to think about the work in that gallery?”

The elevator arrived to fetch us. As it started jerkily up, Jack said, “Where, Baxter/Haig? The Pang Ping-Pong show? You can think whatever you want. Wait. Are you asking what I think?”

“Of course I am.”

“Ah. Well. His technique, especially in the control of line weights in the smallest details, is terrific. That’s real old-school stuff. And his color choices are fresh and his composition can be really strong.”

“So you like it.”

“No.”

“No?”

“Just judged visually, it’s great to look at. But the content’s a one-liner. He’s been doing this for years and he’s done. Nothing new to say. If you look at the most recent ones you can tell even he’s getting bored.”

“You can? How?”

“The composition’s slipping. Those three along the back wall? Too overall even, too balanced. Busy, bright, and sarcastic, but no aesthetic risk.” The elevator bumped to a halt. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I guess I expected a wiseass answer. Not something that serious.”

“Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.”

I was saved from having to comment on Jack’s face by the elevator door, which slid open into a huge loft. I stepped out and stood, taking in the skylights, the unpainted concrete floors, and the art.

Behind the reception desk, giant silver springs curved upward, topped with mylar strips streaming in the breeze made by rotating silver ceiling fans. To the right, multicolored acrylic tanks held multicolored plastic fish standing on their tails; occasionally one did a pirouette, then they all stood motionless again. To the left, taking up fully a third of the room, little patterned red boxes on big white wheels scooted through a forest of blue posts plastered with Chinese product labels.

“I can’t wait for you to explain this to me,” I whispered to Jack as a smiling young Asian man left the desk and came over to greet us.

“Inexplicable,” Jack said. “Hi, Eddie. Lydia, this is Eddie To. This is his gallery, his and his partner Frank’s. Eddie, Lydia Chin.”

“Hey, what’s up, Lydia? Jack, I’m surpised to see you back here. Frank said you didn’t like this show.” Eddie To, lithe and small, wore round black-framed glasses and a diamond stud in his ear. He had no more of a Chinese accent than Jack did. Or me.

“Hate it,” Jack said. “Especially the dancing fish. I thought you ought to know, though, that Baxter/Haig is planning to poach your artists once their prices rise.”

“Why, Jack. I’m touched by your concern, but not to worry. Doug Haig puts the moves on all our artists just to keep in practice. Mostly it’s caca. Even that big giant diva Jon-Jon Jie’s been running around lately telling people how much Haig loves him.”

“Jie? I don’t know him.”

“Yes, you saw his show. Last winter. Don’t deny it. ‘Extra/ordinary.’”

“Wait. Blades, arrows? Animal skins? That’s him? He’s from Texas.”

“So? They have divas in Texas.”

“Haig’s taking on Chinese-Americans?”

“Not. That’s the point. Haig will string him along and then break his heart. Frank and I are keeping out of it, we’re hoping it might make a man of him.”

“Haig?”

“As if. Anyway,” Eddie To said slyly, “I’m not sure the time is ripe for dear Doug to try something new. Not that I’m one to take joy in another’s misfortune—”

“You’re not?”

“All right, I am.” He lowered his voice, though we were alone in the room. “If you listen, you can hear the walls murmuring that Doug Haig is deep in doo-doo. His backers, who helped him buy Brad Baxter out? The walls say they’re getting antsy. The art market’s not gushing cash as fast as they thought it would and they’re tired of waiting. Or maybe they’re just tired of Doug Haig pawing all their women. Haig’s already discreetly had a fire sale of some older work he’s had around. I guarantee you the chance of him stepping outside his comfort zone to start showing Chinese-Americans right now is exactly less than shit.” Eddie raised his voice to a normal level and spread his arms to the work in his gallery. “Now, these fine fellows are from China, so technically they’re Doug Haig’s natural prey. But utilizing our super-secret weapon, Frank discovered them, so we’re counting on a little Chinese loyalty.”

“What’s your super-secret weapon?”

“Jack. If I tell you it won’t be a secret. Oh, all right, since you insist. You remember when Frank was in Beijing two years ago for the China Contemporary conference? He struck up a warm friendship with the head of the Art History Department at the Central University in Hohhot. So warm, in fact, I had to wonder if my domestic bliss was threatened.” He gave a little sigh.

Jack asked, “Where’s Hohhot?”

“Inner Mongolia,” I said. When they both looked at me, I added, “Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.”

“Whatever positions Frank offered Dr. Lin,” Eddie To went on, “the only one he agreed to, as told to me, was to be our exclusive consultant in the field of bleeding-edge Chinese art. Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang. And doesn’t Doug Haig wish he knew. Q.X. is the only reason we find artists Doug the Slug hasn’t gotten to yet. We have to keep him secret or he’d be stolen in a heartbeat.”

“How secret can you keep him, if he’s an expert in Haig’s field?”

“Please. Haig doesn’t have a field. He has a market. He doesn’t speak Chinese and Lord knows he doesn’t go to conferences. He’s above all that. So maybe we can remain a step ahead long enough to get established and stay out of the poorhouse. Possibly even to be able to afford some of the artists Q.X. has found us who, by the time we get to them, are beyond our means. Though as I said, with the gentlemen in this show we’re counting on gratitude and a Chinese sense of duty.”

Jack said, “I think you can count on their prices not rising.”

“Oh, Jack, you’re such a stiff. Hey, Frank named the spotted robot after you.”

“Really? If that’s a bribe he’d be better off naming them after critics.”

“Don’t be absurd. You’re a tastemaker.” Eddie cocked his head. “Odd for a stiff, hmm? Anyway, he did name a few after critics. The one that keeps crashing into that post, like it can’t see it? That’s Gross, from ARTnews.”

I watched a red box drive itself into a blue post, back up, and do it again. “Why is the spotted one Jack?”

“Its job is to tail the striped one.”

Sure enough, wherever the striped red box went, the spotted box zoomed after a few moments later. “They all have jobs?”

Eddie To went to the desk and brought over three stapled sheets. “Artists’ statements. English on one side, Chinese on the other.”

“The Chinese makes more sense,” Jack said. “Especially if you don’t read Chinese. Listen, Eddie, love chatting with you but we’re here on a case.”

“Seriously? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you working. I’ve had to watch the robot to get any sense of what you do.”

“Here’s your chance. I want to ask you something.”

“Well, isn’t this exciting? Frank will be jealous. How can I help?”

“You’ve heard the rumors that there are new Chau Chuns floating around?”

“Of course. Who hasn’t?”

“Jen Beril heard them, too. She heard them here, at your opening last week. She just can’t remember who from.”

Eddie To clutched his chest. “That’s just heartbreaking.”

“Why?”

Eddie pointed an accusing finger toward the elevator. “Ms. Thing made her entrance—vogueing in the doorway like RuPaul—took one quick spin, guzzled some Vigonier, and left. Frank would’ve named a robot after her but none of them’s enough of an ice queen. Of course I mean that in the nicest possible way.”

“Do you remember her talking to anyone?”

“I remember it well. Though obviously she doesn’t. Shows you where I am on the food chain. The only person she spoke to was—me.”

“It was you who told her about the Chaus?”

“Was that bad of me? I was trying to impress her with my up-to-the-second inside-track type of knowledge.”

“I’m sure she was impressed. Where’d you hear it?”

“Yes, so impressed I’ve slipped her mind entirely. Remind me not to save the Vigonier for her next time. She can suck up Chablis and like it. As for me, to go back an earlier conversational motif, I heard about the Chaus from the wellspring of all self-importance. Jabba the Hutt down there on the first floor: Doug Haig.”

* * *

As soon as the elevator door closed behind us I exploded. “That revolting creepy fat sleazebag ugly creepy liar!”

“You said fat, so I know you don’t mean Eddie. And you said ‘creepy’ twice, by the way.”

“Doug Haig! He is creepy twice. He told Eddie To about the Chaus last week? He acted like the first he’d heard of them was from Bill.”

“You guys believed him?”

“Not at all. Unless Nick’s wrong, Haig found out about them from Shayna Dylan, even though she doesn’t know she knows. But Haig’s spreading the rumors himself? I mean, what is that?”

“Why? Rumors create buzz and buzz drives up prices.”

“And brings you people like Vladimir Oblomov, and then you act like you don’t know what he’s talking about?”

“Maybe Haig already has a buyer.”

“Then why not say, ‘I already have a buyer’? instead of, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, you silly Russian, there are no such paintings’? And besides, you aren’t telling me Doug Haig would put loyalty to an existing buyer above profit from a brainless mobster? Especially if it’s true he’s in trouble.” The elevator opened at the lobby. “No,” I said, “here’s what I think. I think Haig absolutely does know about the paintings. I think he’s seen them and I bet he knows where they are. But he hasn’t got his hands on them yet, so he can’t sell them, to Bill or anyone else. Something makes him pretty sure he will, though. So he’s trying to create buzz now, for then. Then he’ll try to reel Vladimir in, and whoever else. But I don’t want him to find them.”

“If you’re right he’s already found them.”

“Don’t split hairs! I mean, to get his hands on them! I want to steal them out from under him.”

“For our clients, you mean.”

“Yes. Absolutely. For our clients. And also, as part of my plan to reduce Doug Haig to a grease spot on his own gallery floor.”

“Remind me,” Jack said thoughtfully, “not to get in your way.”

“Don’t worry, I will. Besides,” I said, starting to calm down, “my client’s whole point in hiring me was to get to these paintings first. Not to have to bid in public against some crazy Russian.”

“Bill’s not really a Russian, you know. And are you sure that’s what your client’s after?”

I looked at him. “What?”

“Phony name, prepaid cell, thin cover story—it must have occurred to you he was hiding something.”

“Yes, and we told you—”

“What you told me isn’t worth hiding. That’s a lot of trouble to go to just so his own PI doesn’t find out his name.”

“We—”

“Look, I know you’re smart because Bill’s smart and he says you are. No way you guys haven’t been wondering about Dunbar’s angle. He wants something else, not just the paintings. Most likely, it’s the painter.”

In the setting sun the spring breeze was chilly. I zipped my jacket. “Yes,” I admitted. “That’s how we figured it.”

“I wish you’d just told me.”

“Does it matter? To the investigation?”

“Maybe not. But to me. ‘All for one, one for all’? ”

“I’m sorry. Really.” I looked off down the street, then back to Jack. “But I didn’t know you. I wasn’t sure…”

“How far you could trust me?”

“I guess so, yes.”

Surprisingly, he grinned. “Well, that’s good.”

“It is? Why?”

“Bill must have told you you could trust me. In fact, you said he said I was stand-up.”

“He did.”

“But you still had reservations.”

“Yes. I’m sorry. I—”

“Au contraire, it’s excellent. Because what that means is, you and Bill aren’t quite as tight as I thought. And that means maybe there’s room for someone else to slip in there.”

I felt my cheeks grow hot. “Jack—”

“Okay, never mind, I was out of line, sorry.” He spoke briskly but he was still grinning. “I’m all about business. So what’s our next move?”

“Our next—I—” Oh, stop stammering, Lydia! You’d think a smart good-looking ABC PI had never come on to you before! “We—” While I was collecting myself so I could be all about business, too, Jack’s cell phone rang.

He checked it, told me, “Dr. Yang.”

I said, “Don’t tell him yet.”

Jack made a face at me while he said, “Professor. How are you?” Then his tone changed. “I don’t … No, we’re…” Dr. Yang was obviously talking, Jack trying to get a word in sideways. “What are you … I think … That’s … No.” He raised his voice. “I’m sorry, it’s just not acceptable.” The volume seemed to have an effect; Jack got to say a whole sentence. “I think you owe me a real explanation. A few hours ago we … No, I … Wait, I’m … Hello? Dr. Yang?”

Jack lowered the phone. He stared at it for a moment, then looked at me. “He fired me.”

“Fired you?” I was momentarily wordless, too. “Did he say why?”

“He changed his mind.”

“That’s it? Changed his mind?”

“So he says.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“You think?” Jack rubbed the back of his neck and breathed, “Damn! You know, I was already thinking you guys weren’t good for my health. Now I’m not sure you’re good for business.”

“Did he say it was because of us?”

“I didn’t mean specifically, I meant in a jinxy sort of way. Dr. Yang didn’t say anything. He changed his mind.”

I shook my head. “Something’s going on.”

“I know. Two hours ago he was so mad he’d have ripped the stripes off my sleeves if I’d had any, but he didn’t fire me. But just now he was perfectly calm. He didn’t say it was my fault, or your fault, or anybody’s fault. He just said he didn’t want this looked into anymore and he didn’t need my services.” Jack frowned. “I have half a mind to go down there and make him tell me what the hell is up.”

“And the other half?”

“Is smarter than that. It wants to think.”

“Is that the half that has Doug Haig’s cell phone number?”

He looked at me. “Both halves do. How’d you know?”

“You didn’t help at all when I was trying to pry it out of Nick Greenbank.”

“I may have to rethink.” Jack took out his phone. “You might be good for business after all.”

I tried not to notice the little glow I felt when he said that.

10

As it turned out, Doug Haig wasn’t available, at least not to us, not right then. While Jack was leaving a message I had another thought.

“If I bought you a martini,” I said, “would you mind drinking it by yourself?”

“That’s got to be the most ridiculous offer anyone’s ever made me. Or maybe, the most oblique brush-off.”

“You don’t get oblique from me. I’m not that clever. What I was thinking was, I have a date with Jeff Dunbar. At six, at this bar on West Street. I’d be very interested to find out if he’s someone you know from the art world. You obviously can’t come to the meeting, but there’s no reason you couldn’t be sitting at the bar.”

“Keeping an eye on things! Observing without being observed! Like Bill did in Dr. Yang’s office.”

“You caught that?”

“Did Mao wear a jacket? You guys do that all the time?”

“Whenever we can.”

“Hmm. I guess a partner can come in handy.”

“Come on,” I said, starting down the sidewalk.

“Where are we going?” He didn’t move.

“This bar,” I stated the obvious. “On West Street.”

“The Fraying Rope?”

“You know it?” I stopped. “Is it famous?”

“Among certain people. It’s a bogus waterfront dive in a new condo building down there. Cheap beer, plywood paneling, and a stuffed fish on the wall, but no danger of running into any actual longshoremen.”

“I think I hear a faint a note of disdain. You’re a fan of longshoremen?”

“I don’t know any. Neither does anyone at The Fraying Rope. A pretentious crowd that plays it safe, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Look at you, moralizing.”

Jack grinned. “Wow, I am, aren’t I? Sorry. They do make a good martini, I’ll give them that.”

Leaving aside the question of how many trips to The Fraying Rope his assessment of the crowd and the martini was based on, I asked something else. “How did you know that was where Jeff Dunbar said to meet?”

“The area’s changing but it hasn’t changed yet. Most of the West Street bars are the real thing, genuinely sleazy. Your man Dunbar doesn’t sound like the sleazy bar type.”

“No, you’re right, he’s more the new condo type. Not particularly pretentious, though. But plays it safe, definitely that.”

“Okay, you’re on,” Jack said. “Just one thing.”

“What?”

“The subway’s four blocks east. When it gets us downtown The Fraying Rope will be four blocks west again. Your date is in fifteen minutes. Let’s take a cab.”

In order to maintain a harmonious working relationship I gave in. Anyway, it was a lovely afternoon for a cab ride down by the river, with the trees freshly green and the water sparkling. We left the cab a block north and Jack strode on ahead of me. By the time I pushed through the door of The Fraying Rope, he was already leaning over a martini, as relaxed as if he’d been hanging out here all his life and actually liked the place.

From what I could see, Jack had nailed it. Cheesy ersatz-nautical. Actually, ersatz-cheesy, too. Not just the stuffed fish, but the linoleum floor, the plaid lamps with ship’s wheels, and a variety of thick, looped, fraying ropes. The jukebox played Jimmy Buffett over a noise level loud but bearable. Glossy-haired blondes sipped pink drinks, and frat boys in suits or polo shirts swigged from beer bottles with lime slices in them. Chrome stools lined the bar, and cane chairs surrounded coffee tables. One of the stools was under Jack, and one of the chairs held Jeff Dunbar.

I spotted him right away, but lingered in the doorway as though I hadn’t to give Jack a chance to notice me. Jeff Dunbar waved, discreetly. I waved back and crossed the room to his table, though Jack had shown no sign he knew I was there.

“Mr. Dunbar,” I said as I sat. “How are you? Interesting place. Is it your local?”

“Friends brought me here, and I liked it.” Neatly sidestepping the question of whether he lived nearby. “I’m hoping you have good news for me.”

A waiter drifted over and I ordered cranberry juice. Dunbar was drinking one of those lime beers.

“I have news,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s good. For one thing, I thought you ought to know that someone else had the same idea you did.”

“What idea?”

“There’s another PI on the case.”