Ghost Hero

“I need a reason?”

“Many daughters would not. Do you have a date with the white baboon?”

“Have you ever known me to dress up for him?”

If she’d been anyone else I’d have had her. That I didn’t put on heels and a skirt for Bill should have signaled a lack of interest in what he thought of me, and should also have reassured her because he wasn’t getting any free peeks at my legs.

But this was my mother. “Pah. When you see him you look like a gang boy but he doesn’t stop calling you. He is a hyena with no understanding of beauty.”

I splurged on a cab, because of the shoes.

Outside Baxter/Haig I smoothed my skirt, elegantly mussed my hair, and pulled back the heavy glass door. I gave Nick Greenbank a sweet, sweet smile. He returned a scowl and muttered, “He’s here.”

“Yes, I know he is,” I said.

Little Nicky called the back office. When he hung up he jabbed his head in that direction, with a spreading smile so nastily predatory I began to wonder if Doug Haig had said to send me in, the bear trap was set. Nevertheless, I sashayed to the back where I was met by jittery Caitlin. She knocked on Haig’s private door, got a barked, “Come!” and opened it.

And there was the bear trap: Mighty Casey Woo.

20

Woo sat in a chair in the corner of Doug Haig’s inner office, where the take-out coffee he was sipping didn’t threaten the art. He smiled at me, a smile uncomfortably similar to Nick’s.

Doug Haig, meanwhile, sat examining a gold-and-pink pastel drawing just long enough for me to get it that the work on his table was far more important than I was and then slipped it with great care back into a portfolio, at which moment he finally looked up at me.

“Mr. Haig,” I said, blasé and serene. Or I hoped I conveyed that impression. My heart was racing and my brain was outpacing it in an attempt to deal with this turn of events. “Thank you for seeing me.” I nodded to the corner. “And Mr. Woo. What a nice surprise.” I pulled out a chair at Haig’s worktable, sat primly and waited.

Wielding his chunky fingers with impressive delicacy, Haig tied the portfolio’s boards shut and laid it flat. He rejiggled his bulk to face me, showing Woo his wide back.

“Yes,” he said. “Well, Caitlin told me you said I’d be happy if I met with you. So far, I’m not.”

“You’re an impatient man. And,” I added, my brain reorganizing data like crazy, “you have such interesting friends.”

“A busy man. And my friends aren’t your business.” Haig didn’t look in Woo’s direction, as though the man weren’t there.

“No,” I said. “It’s not my business. It’s yours, and they’re not your friends. When Mr. Woo and I met, he told me he had an investment to protect. This is it. Your gallery. In my mind I had things more complicated than they needed to be. Now I get it. Tiger Holdings is your investor.”

“I don’t know why my financial arrangements were on your mind at all. You can’t really be expecting me to discuss them with you? Now, if you’re here about buying the Chaus for Mr. Oblomov, I’m not in a position yet—”

“I think you are.”

He stopped. “I am what?”

“In a position to sell them. Well, let me qualify that. You have them. But it’s true you can’t sell them yet. And without my help I don’t believe you’ll be able to.”

Woo sat forward. “You have Chaus? This true, what she say?”

“Why is he here?” I asked Haig.

Still without a glance at Woo, Haig said, “Certainly not at my invitation.”

“And yet, here he is. You, who threatened to have Vladimir Oblomov thrown out yesterday, you who bullied a terrified young woman into leaving just because you could, you’re putting up with this coffee-swilling klutz in your pristine inner sanctum. It’s killing you, I can see that. But there’s nothing you can do. He’s here because his boss is getting impatient. You owe Tiger Holdings a lot of money and they’ve heard about the Chaus.”

Woo, who’d let “coffee-swilling klutz” whizz right by him, jumped again on “Chaus.” “You have Chaus? You have, don’t tell Mr. Lau? That don’t make him happy.”

Haig’s tongue darted out and licked his lips. He didn’t seem to like the thought of Mr. Lau being unhappy.

“Why, Mr. Haig,” I marveled. “They’re afraid you’ll cheat them. Mr. Woo’s here because Mr. Lau—that’s the boss, right?—isn’t going to let you make a move anymore without him knowing about it. They suspect you of being the lying, cheating worm you are. I bet Woo’s even supposed to follow you home. At least he buys his own coffee. Mr. Woo, please sit down.” Haig whipped his head around. Woo, out of his chair, stopped uncertainly. “Mr. Woo, you won’t get what you want by physical intimidation. Not because Mr. Haig is a brave man by any means, but because you can’t squeeze blood from a turnip. Do you know that expression in English? Well, it doesn’t matter. Please sit down. I’m here to help you both.”

After a moment, Woo sat, scowling. Haig, who’d paled at the word “blood,” slowly turned back to me, showing great self-control by not rearranging his chair to bring Woo into his line of sight. Maybe he was braver than I gave him credit for.

“As I say,” I told Haig, “you’ll need my help to sell the Chaus. Without me,” I spoke to Woo, “he can’t sell them and Mr. Lau can’t get his money back.” I gave him a significant look. I wasn’t sure what it signified but he seemed to be. When I turned back to Haig, Woo stayed silent.

“Your help?” Haig said, starting to recover. “I cannot think of a situation in which I’d need your help. Oblomov’s not the only interested party, you know.”

“I do know that. But finding a buyer’s not the problem, is it?”

“Ms. Chin. If I did have the Chaus,” he flicked an involuntary glance in Woo’s direction, “why couldn’t I sell them? And if you think I can’t sell them, why are you here?”

“You do have them,” I repeated. “You knew all about them, even where they were, when Vladimir and I were first here, but you didn’t have them yet. Now you do. But you can’t sell them because you can’t get them authenticated. And I’m here because I can help.” I crossed my legs, letting my skirt ride up a tiny bit. Oh, Lydia, sometimes you’re just so cheesy.

Haig zeroed in on my leg-crossing operation. When it was over he switched his attention back to my face. “I can’t imagine how.”

I fingered the jade on its gold chain around my neck and smiled again. “Then I’ll explain. You can’t get the Chaus authenticated because they’re not authentic.” Movement in the corner caused me to turn my head. “Mr. Woo, sit down!” He scowled, but after a moment, he sat. “Thank you. You didn’t know they were fakes? Don’t worry, we can still make Mr. Lau happy.” I turned back. “But you, Mr. Haig, you knew all along. Anna Yang painted them, Bernard Yang’s daughter. Please, Mr. Haig, don’t insult me by looking affronted. Or surprised. Thank you. Or by asking me how I know this or anything else I’m about to say, because of course I’m not going to tell you. You’ve asked Dr. Yang to authenticate them, but he won’t. But maybe I should be more precise. You didn’t ask him to determine whether they’re authentic. You asked him to say that they are. To put his stamp of approval on them, so you can sell them for the fortune they’d be worth if they weren’t fakes. Your threat, if he didn’t, was that you’d claim Anna Yang already rooked you, sold them to you as real, using his name to pull the wool over your eyes. You’d look like a fool and be stuck with worthless junk paintings—which by the way you stole, she didn’t sell to you, but that’s another issue entirely and in fact I commend you on your resourcefulness.”

Haig made a strangled sound.

“Please, Mr. Haig, this really will go better if you just let me finish.” I bounced my high-heeled foot impatiently.

“Again, thank you. You’d be stuck, but Anna Yang’s reputation would be ruined and her career would be over. You thought that would be a persuasive argument, forcing Dr. Yang into this bit of chicanery. But it wasn’t. His own reputation means more to him, it seems, than you were banking on. More than his daughter’s, and more than her career. In any case, there’s a rift between them since her wedding in Beijing. Apparently, when she married that dissident poet, Liu Mai-ke, it was without her father’s permission.”

Haig’s eyes widened.

“You didn’t know that?” I asked. “You were at the wedding banquet. I’ve seen the footage on YouTube. It didn’t strike you as odd that Dr. Yang wasn’t there?”

“I understood he couldn’t get a visa. May I speak now? Well, thank you. That wedding was a ridiculous public spectacle. I went because I had to go. A lot of my artists were there. It would have been unseemly for me to refuse. I assume she did it for the notoriety and he did it for the green card, and I really don’t care. Unless you’re accusing me of some crime in connection with that, too? I should have you thrown out of here on your compact little ass for the slander you’re slinging around.”

“Who would do that? Nicky Greenbank? Call him, why don’t you? Or maybe you’ll ask Mr. Woo for a favor? He’d probably enjoy it. But no, why would you? I’m right. Whatever hole you were in with Tiger Holdings that got you so hot and bothered you had those paintings stolen, you’re still in it if you can’t get them authenticated. You’re desperate and you’re wondering what I’m here to offer you. Not, I assure you, my compact little ass.”

We stared at each other: he calculating, though pale; me smug, though I was getting tired of my heart racing.

“What, then?”

I smiled, taking my time before I spoke. “Vladimir Oblomov, as I’m sure you noticed, is an oaf.”

“Oh, my. Really?”

“I promise you. An oaf with money. I do a lot of work with Russians. They’re all the same. Vladimir’s different only in his interest in Chinese art. He’s a complete ignoramus, but he’s decided it’s his ‘field.’ Probably because Americans and Europeans collect it, but none of the other Russians do, so he can be a big cutting-edge deal. If the Chaus were real, or he thought they were, he’d buy them in a flash. At whatever price I told him was a good one. Which, of course, you and I would agree upon in advance.”

“Lovely. And you’re planning on getting around the eight-hundred-pound forged-painting gorilla exactly how?”

I leaned forward, hoping my eyes were glittering. “I can get them authenticated.”

For a moment Haig didn’t move. Then he shifted his vastness again, crossing his legs at the ankles. Woo sat up straight. I held up a finger to shush him. Haig said, “You have something to hold over Bernard Yang better than what I have?”

I tick-tocked my finger back and forth. “Not Dr. Yang.”

Haig frowned. “The only other name in this area big enough to be believed is Clarence Snyder, in Chicago. These paintings are goddamn good, but I don’t think they’re good enough to fool him. Are you telling me you have him in your pocket? Or”—Haig’s small eyes caressed my legs—“you can put him there?”

“Mr. Haig, if you weren’t a potential source of a lot of money I’d slap your face and walk out of here.” I said that, but I didn’t pull my skirt down. “But you’re also a narrow-minded moron. Yang and Snyder aren’t the only two big experts. There’s Lin, in Hohhot. And him, yes, I can get to him.”

“Lin? Who the hell is Lin?”

“You see? That’s what I mean. You’ve never heard of him, and though that speaks much worse of you than of him, it makes you assume that he’s nobody. Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang. At the Central University in Hohhot. Of course Hohhot is a minor Chinese city, and the University isn’t Shanghai U., so you don’t know a thing about it. Beneath you, right? Lin’s a rising star. Young, but he’s built himself quite a reputation in late-twentieth-century Chinese art, which is a big study area at Hohhot. You can Google him. His work’s largely theoretical and historical, not involved with the gallery and commercial world. You’d know him if you went to conferences, if you studied in the area, if you were actually interested in the art in any way except as a money trough you can wallow in.”

“Oh, spare me.” The acid in Haig’s voice practically dissolved the words. “The opinion of a slutty art consultant whose clients are third-rate Russian pigs doesn’t interest me in the least. I’ll look at this Dr. Lin. If he’s as impressive as you say maybe there’s something there to talk about. But if he’s a true expert he’ll know the paintings are fake. Why would he do it?”

“Because, frankly, he cares as little for Hohhot as you do. Although his is an educated opinion. As things stand, though, he’s forced to stay there. There aren’t very many positions he could rise to in China. There are tenured professorships in his area in Shanghai and Beijing, but they’re full. Or he could open his own gallery, but in China that involves dealing with the government, which makes even Hohhot seem appealing. Go ahead, check him out. Have little Nicky or poor scared Caitlin take a look and give you a full report. But be quick. For one thing, you want these paintings ready for sale next week, don’t you? To take full advantage of all the sharks in the water. For another, he’s here now.”

“He’s here? Who’s here? This Dr. Lin?”

“In New York. He got in two days ago. For Asian Art Week. And he wants to stay.”

An unappetizing, upper-hand look of understanding settled on Doug Haig’s face. “He wants to stay?”

“There you go,” I said approvingly. “Now you’ve got it. He came here hoping for an offer from a university or college. He did get one from Oberlin—they have a major art collection, and ties to China—but it’s in Ohio. Really, he’d rather be in New York. If someone here were to offer him a job, in an area of expertise so esoteric he’d be able to get past the INS—for example, writing a catalogue raisonné on a few decades’ worth of contemporary Chinese art—if, even, they agreed to sponsor him for his green card—it’s entirely possible he might overcome his scruples and authenticate some paintings that are, anyway, as you so eloquently put it earlier, goddamn good.”

I gave it a few beats while I watched Doug Haig’s gears creak. “Of course, if he accepts Oberlin’s offer first—”

“Yes, all right, I get it. When can you have him here?”

“As it happens we’re meeting for coffee in the morning.”

“Does he know you’re here on his behalf right now?”

“His behalf? I’m not here on his behalf. Or yours. Or, god help me, Vladimir’s. I’m here for me. No, Dr. Lin has no clue. He has a serious poker up his compact little ass. He’s a lot like you—he thinks he’s all that. The difference is, he is. Still, if he gets any whiff that he’s being played, it’s all over. When he comes here you’ll have to handle him very carefully. I’ll be here to help, of course.”

“How kind of you. All right, I’ll check on him, as I said. You call early tomorrow and I’ll let you know whether I want you to bring him over.”

“I’m a busy woman.” I got up to leave. “Being a slutty art consultant is a fast-paced life. I may have another appointment, any number of other appointments, by the time you get around to calling. We’ll do it this way: Unless I hear from you I’m going to bring Dr. Lin here at ten a.m. If you decide you don’t want to see him, don’t. Do whatever you think best, but in my opinion, not seeing him would be a big, big mistake. Mr. Woo, I think you can see how this arrangement will benefit Mr. Lau, also?”

Woo shook his head. “Not so sure.”

“Don’t worry.” I smiled. “I’m sure Mr. Lau will be happy. Gentlemen.” I nodded to them both and left them staring after me as I walked away.

21

I dropped the hip-swinging as soon as I got around the corner, and I called Bill.

“How’d it go?”

“Give me Oblomov.”

“Vat’s wrong?”

“Unexpected glitch. We need a meeting. Can you be ready soon?”

“Girlchik, I vass born ready. Meetink vit whom?”

“I’ll set it up and call you back. Wear the bling,” I added. “All of it.”

Next, I called Jack.

“How’d it go?”

“You guys use the same dialogue coach? Listen, there’s a problem. Haig’s gallery is the investment Mighty Casey Woo’s protecting from Vladimir Oblomov.”

“Woo’s the investor?”

“His boss. A Mr. Lau.”

“Damn. How do you know?”

“He’s there. Woo. He’s sticking to Doug Haig like a bad smell. It seems his boss is worried Haig will dispose of the Chaus without cutting him in, as soon as he finds them.”

“Haig? Double-dealing?”

“I know, it rocks your world. It didn’t make either of them happy when I announced I knew he’d already found them.”

“Either of them, Woo or his boss?”

“Either of them, Woo or Haig. His boss wasn’t there. Woo’s probably on the phone to him right now. Bill and I are going to go up and see him. Vladimir and I, I mean. Actually, this might turn out not to be a bad thing.”

“You don’t think so? Gangsters wanting a piece of Haig?”

“As far as I’m concerned everyone can cut him into lots of little pieces.”

“Be practical.”

“I’m trying. Right now, I think we should go ahead. Momentum’s on our side.”

“Sometimes they call that the slippery slope.”

“You want out?”

“Why do you guys keep asking me that? Anyway, you can’t do this without me.”

“We’d do something else.”

“See,” he sighed, “in every species on earth, it’s that carefully calculated who-needs-you attitude on the part of the female that keeps the male strutting, sticking his neck out trying to prove himself.”

“It’s not calculated. It’s instinctive. Are you still in?”

“Was there ever any real question?”

“And so the real reason I’m calling: Did you speak to Dr. Yang?”

“Which is the real reason I’m still in. After the trouble he gave me? Now that I’ve talked him into getting with the program, the rest of this is going to be like taking candy from a baby.”

“That usually results in a lot of deafening squalling.”

On that encouraging note, we hung up.

* * *

I smartphoned my way to the Tiger Holdings Web site and checked out Lau’s photo so I’d know him when I saw him. Then I called. By dropping “Baxter/Haig” a couple of times, I leapfrogged through levels of secretary to the secretary to the man himself. When I hung up Vladimir Oblomov and I had an as-soon-as-we-can-get-there appointment with Lionel Lau.

We got there soon, meeting at Lau’s midtown building so we could saunter in together.

“Does your mother know you dress like that?” Bill asked when he saw me.

“You mean, parading my well-rounded calves for all the world to see?”

“And your dimpled knees, and not inconsiderable amounts of thigh.”

“She thought I looked very nice. She just hoped I wasn’t meeting you. You should consider piercing your ear, by the way. A nice diamond stud would complement the rings and chains.”

“Uh-huh. In your dreams.”

On the twenty-ninth floor the elevator opened into a hushed lobby. Glass doors guarded by a pair of marble lions announced “Tiger Holdings” at the far side of a carpet no bigger than a town square or softer than a summer evening. Bill peered around in smiling, fellow-gangster approval at the gaudy gold dragons on crimson columns, the blue-painted vases big enough for assassins to hide in, and the young woman at the desk, whose scarlet lipstick accentuated her Ming-princess cheekbones and porcelain skin.

“Lydia Chin and Vladimir Oblomov for Lionel Lau,” I told her. She arched an eyebrow and spoke into an elegant 1930’s desk phone, listened, then pointed a fingernail at the door behind her. A moment later it opened and a familiar squarish Asian man beckoned us in. I smiled at him. “My, my. So nice to see you again. I’m sorry, at the bakery I didn’t catch your name.”

He didn’t offer it now, either, just scowled and stood waiting. He and Bill sized each other up with identical nice-to-meet-you-I-wouldn’t-try-it looks. I ignored the rising scent of testosterone and walked past them into a large room where a wall of windows spread Manhattan below me. Bill followed me in. The young man shut the door and stood beside it.

I smiled at the man who stood between us and the view: an older, sharp-nosed Asian gent who looked exactly like his Web site photo. He wore short graying hair and a fine navy suit my mother would have admired.

“Mr. Lau? Thank you for seeing us. I’m Lydia Chin. This is Vladimir Oblomov.”

Bill came forward and enthusiastically shook Lionel Lau’s hand. “Meester Lau! A real pleasure, dis is.”

Lionel Lau, face impassive, returned the handshake in a more restrained manner and gestured us to large leather chairs. As we sat, he asked in accent-free English, “May I offer you tea?” He might be shady, Mr. Lau, but he was Chinese.

Before I could answer, Bill said, “Yah, tenks, but you got real tea? I mean bleck, vit a sugar cube? Dis tea you people drink, she like it,” he thumbed at me, “but it don’t got no punch, you know vat I mean?”

The younger man darkened, and internally I questioned the wisdom of throwing around the word “punch,” but Lionel Lau just said, “Mr. Zu, will you see to it, please?” Young Mr. Zu stuck his head out the door and spoke briefly to the Ming princess.

Bill cheerfully shifted his chair so he could see both Lau and Zu. “Dis iss big honor, Mr. Lau. Vassily Imports got great respect for Tiger Holdinks. My boss tell me, ‘Oblomov, you verk hard, you lucky, someday you be like Lionel Lau.’”

“I appreciate the compliment,” Lionel Lau said, sitting behind his ornate desk. “In that case, however, I wonder why you—or your boss…” He waited, but Bill did nothing but grin, so Lau continued, “… would want to interfere with one of my business ventures.”

“You mean, det gellery. Vere Fetso has de Chaus.”

“I do.”

A knock sounded, and Zu opened the door to a young woman who brought a tea tray to the sideboard, bowed, and backed out. Zu lifted from it a smaller tray with a glass of tea in a silver-handled holder and a bowl of sugar cubes, and brought it to the coffee table near Bill. From the larger tray he poured green tea into tiny cups, brought one to Lau and one to me. There was no cup for Zu; he must not drink on duty.

I gave the tea my full attention, out of courtesy to our host. It was sharp, sweet, and uncomplicated. “Lovely,” I said. Bill was busy positioning a sugar cube between his teeth and noisily sucking his tea across it, so after a second sip, I spoke. “Mr. Lau, we appreciate your situation and we don’t mean to cause trouble for you.”

“No, sir!” Bill stored the sugar cube temporarily in his cheek. “Vassily Imports vant to be friends vit Tiger Holdinks. But problem vass, my boss, he vanted Chaus, too.” He shrugged. What can a working stiff do? He went back to his tea.

“The problem runs deeper than you might think,” I told Lau. “We came here to warn you that there’s about to be unavoidable trouble at Baxter/Haig.”

“Warn me? Are you making threats?”

“No, I’m sorry, that was a bad choice of words. Perhaps ‘alert you’ would have been better. This trouble, you see, is unavoidable because the forces involved are some with whom Vassily Imports will go some distance to remain in good standing.”

“Da,” Bill agreed. “Big shots, you know?” He winked at Lau.

“If keeping these relationships untroubled involves Vassily Imports stepping aside in certain situations, I’m sure you can see that that’s an investment well worth making,” I went on. “And worth urging others to make.”

“Ms. Chin—”

“Vat she sayink, Meester Lau—she beat across da bush all da time, I know—she sayink, vat’s about to go down at Baxter/Haig, pleeze, you and Meester Voo chust stay out uff it, okay?”

“Vlad, please,” I said. “Mr. Lau, we’re in a position to help some friends with an operation that matters a great deal to them, and we’d like to do it. To this end Mr. Oblomov’s employer has already abandoned his pursuit of the paintings. We do understand, however, that Tiger Holdings has a significant and legitimate investment in Baxter/Haig.”

“All my investments are legitimate,” Lau said. When Bill and I glanced at each other, Lau added, “If Mr. Woo’s eagerness to complete his assignment had led you to think otherwise, I apologize. As, I’m sure, would he, if he’d understood that he’d upset you.”

“His willingness to shoot me was a trifle upsetting, yes,” I said. “In view of his self-restraint an hour ago in Mr. Haig’s office, though, it’s possible he and I just got off on the wrong foot. I’m willing to let bygones be bygones.”

“I’m glad to hear it. Rest assured I’ll be speaking to him about his approach. However, that’s really neither here nor there concerning my investment in Baxter/Haig. I’m sure you understand, I must protect my business interests.”

Bill said, “By heving Voo, or some udder jeckess, henging around dere all da time?”

“If that’s required.”

Shooting Bill a dark look, I said, “In that case I think you’ll understand the value of the arrangement we came here to discuss.”

“And what would that be?” Lau placed his teacup on his desk and tapped his fingertips together, the very picture of a reasonable executive willing to consider a deal.

“As I understand it, if Mr. Haig can’t repay your loan, you’ll own the gallery.”

“That’s correct.”

“Vell, dere you go,” said Bill. “All de paintinks, dey gotta be worth lots uff money. You don’t need Fetso to sell de Chaus.”

“Technically correct. But if I wanted to own a gallery I’d have bought one. Art isn’t my business. I’d much prefer it if Doug Haig could sell the Chaus, pay off his debt, and go about his business while I go about mine.”

“He can’t, though,” I said. “They’re worth nothing. They’re fakes.”

Lau regarded me steadily. “Mr. Woo said you told Haig you could get them authenticated.”

“Mr. Lau, my … arrangement … with Mr. Haig is predicated on Vassily Imports’ relationship with the other forces I mentioned, and is not as straightforward as it appears. Tiger Holdings would be best served to stay far from the proceedings. In view of the fact that you do have a legitimate investment to protect, however, Vassily Imports is prepared to guarantee that, should Mr. Haig’s debt to you become uncollectible, his assets will simultaneously become a great deal more valuable than they are at the moment.”

“I’m not sure, Ms. Chin, just what you mean by that.”

“She mean, iff you stay beck und vatch from da sidevays—iss dat right Eenglish?”

“Sidelines,” I said.

“Da, de sidelines. Iff you don’t mess us up, Meester Lau, you end up vit golden goose.”

“And if I choose not to permit whatever is about to happen to go forward?”

“Den, my friend,” Bill smiled, clinking his empty glass gently onto the silver tray, “I tink you find yourself vit goose egg.”

22

I called Jack as soon as Bill and I hit the street.

“Life and limb still intact?” Jack asked.

“Yes,” I said. “All we need to do now is find a golden egg for Lionel Lau before he makes fritters out of all of us.”

* * *

When I heard the buzzer at nine-thirty the next morning I didn’t ask who it was, just buzzed to let Jack in. I looked up when my office door opened and, fast, slid my chair closer to my desk, making sure I could reach the panic button. The stranger in the doorway was tall and Asian, but that was about all he shared with Jack Lee.

“Ms. Chin?” The man spoke in nasal, accented tones. “I think you expect me, we have appointment?” Disdain written all over his tanned face, he stood just inside my door in a cheap suit a few years out of date. It fit poorly over his wide shoulders, and his shirt strained over the early stages of beer belly. Polished loafers and showy tie said clueless foreign fop. His hair, combed straight onto his forehead, was Extreme Nerd. Black-framed yellow-tinted glasses rested on his nose, below which drooped a thin Fu Manchu mustache. He held himself tightly, as though stepping into my back-alley office was an action he didn’t think he should be asked to undertake. “Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang,” he announced with impatience. “You want see me, so I understand. Or maybe,” suddenly relaxing the rigid pose, walking in and sprawling onto a chair, “I should send Aramis in?”

“Well,” I managed. “Don’t you look splendid.”

“Do I?” Jack grinned. “If I didn’t know better I’d have thought you didn’t recognize me there for a minute.”

“I must admit you’re quite the apparition. How did you get to be that color, stage makeup?”

“Insta-Tan.”

“That stuff’s bad for you.”

“Line of duty. Like Bill drinking with Shayna.”

“And padding in the jacket? Or you gained twenty pounds overnight?”

“In the jacket and under the shirt. You don’t buy the Daniel Dae Kim shoulders?”

“I’d have to wonder where you were hiding them for the last two days. The real question is, where did you get that terrible suit?”

“At a thrift shop, for occasions like this. Hey, as great as Linus’s Photoshop work is, I thought I ought to look at least something like the real Dr. Lin.”

“You think his mustache is that ridiculous? And he has that bad taste in clothes?”

“I also needed to look not like me.”

“Ah, and chic would have given you away.”

“Don’t you think? I told you, Haig and I have met.”

“Only once, you said.”

“But we’ve been in the same room any number of times, grabbing off the same hors d’oeuvre trays. Haig’s generally too self-absorbed to notice anyone he’s not on the make for, but in case I did something unforgettable I don’t remember I wanted to play it safe. Also, there’s Nick. Be a bummer if that little punk derailed us.” He took off the glasses and handed them to me. “Near the hinge,” he said. I examined the decorative screw holding the earpiece on and found the tiny camera lens in its center.

“How do you—”

“Remotely. From my pocket.” He held up a pen and clicked the top as though he wanted to write something. “You just took a picture of the junk on your desk.”

“Hey, very cool. If the glasses weren’t so ugly I’d get myself a pair.” I handed them back.

“Come on. You can’t tell me any of this is nearly as bad as Bill’s bling and his accent.”

“Can’t I? But as long as it works on Haig. Which, let me remind you, Bill’s bling did.”

Jack grinned at me for another few moments. Then, as though I’d said something unbearably foolish, his smile vanished into a look of arrogant irritation. Jack Lee disappeared. Lin Qiao-xiang stood stiffly and replied, “In that case, we go now, see if can make this work, too.”

Dr. Lin apparently shared Jack’s penchant for cabs, and I didn’t want to argue with so eminent a foreign expert. Also, I had those heels on again. We pulled up in front of Baxter/Haig, where Jack, without a care, got out, leaving me to pay the driver. On the sidewalk I once again smoothed my skirt, mussed my hair, and let my lips bloom into a superior smile. I waited for Jack to open the gallery door for me, but in his role as self-important overseas hick he was gawking through the glass at the art inside. So I yanked the handle and stalked into Baxter/Haig. Jack blinked and hurried after. I was surprised to see Nick at the front desk so early, but maybe Haig liked his first-string players here for VIPs. “Mr. Haig’s expecting us,” I told him nicely.

Jack didn’t even look at Nick, so busy was he rotating his head and craning his neck to take in Pang Ping-Pong’s giant canvases. The yellow-tinted glasses threatened to fall off, so he had to hold them on. If that meant his hand was in front of his face, well, he wasn’t just a pretty face anyhow. Not that he gave Nick much opportunity to inspect him. Jack found himself immediately drawn to the canvas on the far wall. I myself loomed at Nick’s counter much the way Bill had, though at five-three it’s not as easy for me. Still, I managed to fill a good deal of Nick’s field of vision, and by the time he was off the phone with the inner sanctum Jack was safely tucked behind a protruding wall, leaning forward to study a painting of Spider-man dancing one of the Eight Revolutionary Ballets.

“He says you can go on back,” Nick resentfully admitted.

“I’m delighted,” I chirped. “Is that charming Mr. Woo still with him?”

Nick curled his lip, which was answer enough.

I marched toward the rear, calling across the room, “Q. X., come on now, we have a meeting. We can look at the art later.” Jack joined me with an air of fusty impatience, as though I’d been the one holding up the proceedings. Jumpy Caitlin came out to meet us and escort us into the presence of the potentate.

Doug Haig, as usual, was examining art on his worktable, from which, as usual, he didn’t look up immediately. Mighty Casey Woo, in what might by now have become usual, clogged up the corner chair, drinking a Coke. When sufficient eons had passed for all to understand who was boss, Doug Haig raised his head to take in the vision of Jack and myself. The waiting time, I was not pleased to note, was about half of what it had been for me alone, now that I was accompanied by Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang.

“Mr. Haig,” I said when he’d finally laid a sheet of tissue paper over his drawing and languidly fixed his attention on us. “This is Dr. Lin, from the Central University at Hohhot, in Inner Mongolia, China. Dr. Lin, I’d like you to meet Mr. Haig.” Did I put emphasis on the “Dr.” and the “Mr.”? Perhaps a tiny bit.

Haig extended a pudgy paw, but Jack, as though he hadn’t seen it, snapped Haig a bow. Speaking that nasal, accented English, he said formally, “It is great honor for small scholar as myself to meet such eminent American art dealer.” He managed to make “small scholar” sound like “King Tut” and “art dealer” like “ditch digger.” He held the bow a few moments; by the time he stood straight again Haig’s right hand had folded itself over his left as though it had been on its way there all along.

“The pleasure is mine, Dr. Lin, to meet such an eminent authority. I’ve been looking forward to this for some time.” Haig gave a bland smile. “Just yesterday, in fact, I was talking with Clarence Snyder. He speaks very highly of you.”

“Dr. Snyder, generous man. Must call him later, thank him for helpfulness. Never lets friend down.”

Jack sat, his jacket gaping over his chest-padding. He surveyed Haig’s office with a fusion of burning envy and icy disdain. “Very interesting work, this gallery,” he said, speaking like a man who’d been in and out of every important art venue in New York before coming down to this one. “Pang Ping-Pong, of course, does no new work now, five years, just recycles. Still, I suppose he still sells well in West? Here, though,” he gestured at the drawings on the table, “this work new, maybe good. Find in China? You travel good deal to China, Mr. Haig, so I understand. More than most dealer.”

“I have to,” Haig answered. “To find the artists before other dealers do. I can’t say I enjoy your country all that much”—a thin smile—“but those trips are my edge. How about you, Dr. Lin? Is it possible for you to travel outside China often?” He added innocently, “Does your schedule allow it?”

Schedule, my eye: that crack was about power, reminding Dr. Q. X. Lin who wanted what from whom. As Jack’s about Pang Ping-Pong and the work on the table had been, reminding Haig who had what to give.

“Inside China, travel often,” Jack said stiffly. “Outside, as you say, no time. Two years ago, go to conference in Berlin. This second trip to U.S.”

“And how do you like it?”

“Like very well. Trip too short, only two week. Would be better, much longer. So much to see in U.S. In New York.” Through the yellow lenses he stared straight at Haig.

“Yes,” Haig said, “and for a scholar of your eminence, I imagine the U.S. holds a great deal of opportunity. It would be a shame if you couldn’t take advantage of it.”

“Speaking of taking advantage,” I said, “I mentioned to Dr. Lin the paintings you were telling me about, the ones you thought would interest him. The unattributed works that might be by Chau Gwai Ying Shung, the Ghost Hero? I suggested we might take advantage of the fact that we were in your neighborhood to come look at them.”

“She tell me,” said Jack, “you not sure, authenticity. She say, if someone, large knowledge, all parts of field, appraises, authenticates, paintings extremely valuable. If true Chaus, of course, I don’t need her tell me that.”

“No question about it,” Haig said, wetting his rubbery lips and giving me a look that said no one really needed me to tell them much of anything. “This is my area, of course, but I’m not an authority, not in the academic sense.” He managed, in keeping with the ongoing war of intonation, to make “academic” an insult. “From the moment I saw these pieces I was convinced of their authenticity, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting them on the market on the basis of only my own instinct. If, on the other hand, they were to be examined by an academic authority who came to the same conclusion I did, I’d feel on firm ground going forward. And,” he added, with a cold smile, “I’d be quite grateful.”

“I see.” Jack nodded.

“In fact,” Haig said, as though the idea had only just occurred to him, “an expert like that could be a great asset to this gallery. Over the years I’ve acquired a great deal of work—artists I handle and also work I’ve bought for my own collection—but my passion seems to have outpaced my paperwork. I’m afraid there’s a tremendous amount of scholarship to be done within these walls. I’d do it myself but I just don’t have the time.”

“I see,” Jack said again, more slowly. “How much time, Mr. Haig? How long you estimate this scholarship takes?”

“At least a year,” Haig said without hesitation. “Perhaps two.”

“Long time. If paintings she tell me about turn out be real, I suppose you very busy to sell them, have even less time for scholarship?”

“Absolutely true. If they’re real, I’ll definitely need expert help in the gallery into the forseeable future.”

“So fascinating,” Jack reflected, as though all of this were of purely abstract interest. “All this conversation, make me very curious, see paintings. Is possible you have time, can show me?”

“Dr. Lin, when I heard you were in New York I demanded that Ms. Chin bring you here. I refused to take no for an answer.” History Rewrites R Us. “I’ve canceled all my other appointments for this morning. A gentleman of your erudition, your cultivation—it would be my pleasure to show you the Chaus.” Not the alleged Chaus, the putative Chaus, the I-know-damn-well-they’re-not Chaus. For a moment I longed to forget the whole plan and have Jack take one look at the paintings and say they were garbage, just to see Haig’s face.

Haig didn’t get up right away; first he looked from me to Woo. I could see in his eyes the hope that somehow, magically, we might leave, that he might not have to share his treasure with us, to have our peasant eyes raking over his resplendent paper and ink. You posturing prig, I wanted to yell, they’re fake, remember? And you stole them, remember that, too? I didn’t say anything, though, just stared back at him, tired of smiling. Woo slurped his Coke and acted as though he hadn’t heard a word of the entire conversation. Haig sighed, threw a long-suffering glance to Dr. Q. X. Lin, and rose. He moved with a surprisingly bouncy gait, as though his bulk were partially helium. At a set of flat files along the wall he unlocked a drawer, extracted a large leather portfolio, and brought it back to the table. He laid it carefully down, unzipped it, and took out a cardboard folder. The folder was tied with a cloth ribbon and I almost busted a gasket waiting for his ceremonial undoing of the bow. Finally he lifted the top board and slowly slid out an ink painting.

The left third of the paper was covered with grasses and rocks, some in shadow, some seeming to glow backlit in sun. Cicadas dotted them. You could almost hear their rhythmic singing on the hot, peaceful afternoon. They didn’t react in any way to the fierce tiger clawing the center of the page while his ferocious face half-entered the painting from the right. Three rows of Chinese characters, written vertically in the old style, occupied the space above the tiger’s head. I saw Jack’s eyes widen and wasn’t sure whether that response was from Q. X. Lin or Jack Lee.

“Well,” Doug Haig spoke with satisfaction, “Ms. Chin, I see you’re impressed, anyway. Dr. Lin, do you like it?”

“Quite amazing,” Jack said, sounding as though he meant it. “Control of line, sharpness where brush lifts from page—see here?—black of ink, fierceness of eyes of tiger. Extraordinary.” He leaned close, then stood up again. “Is possible I may see others?”

Of course it was possible. Doug Haig slid them out one by one. A stream rushing down a mountainside in great clouds of mist; plum blossoms on a tree limb echoed by a few fallen to the ground; and the willow branch and wren that had started it all. The paintings each had lines of Chinese verse on them, sometimes tucked in the corner, other times blazoned across the top. I cocked my head to read them—nature poems, all, with themes of courage, loneliness, resolve—while Jack moved back and forth along the table, scrutinizing one painting, then another, leaning down, then stepping back for a longer view. Done with the poems, I examined the images also, knowing little about what I was looking at, except for two things: the tightly controlled brushstrokes in the wild, idiosyncratic compositions gave the paintings a tension and an exhilarating energy; and though I’d only seen real Chaus briefly online during my research, these paintings looked just like those.

“Mr. Haig,” Jack said, after a long silence. “These paintings, astonishing. May I ask, where do you get them?”

“They came to me from a client,” Haig blithely lied. “He’s not a collector. The paintings were left to him at the death of a relative. He’d like to sell them if they’re worth anything.”

“Worth anything?” Jack peered at the willow-and-wren painting once more. “If real Chaus, among most accomplished, impressive work of Chau. Mature period, probably painted close to time Chau died. But Mr. Haig. Verses here, by Liu Mai-ke. Who puts?”

“Liu Mai-ke?” Haig mangled the Chinese so badly he was temporarily unable to understand himself. “Who—that poet? Anna Yang’s husband? The one who’s in prison?”

“Yes, dissident, in prison. Married to American artist, daughter of Professor Bernard Yang Ji-tong. Anna Yang her name?” He looked at me and I nodded. Back to Haig: “You don’t know, these his poems? Oh, my apology. I thought you can read Chinese.” A smarmily superior smile. “Mr. Haig, who puts Liu poems on Chaus?”

“I—I don’t know. But does it matter?” Haig had gone from ashen to an angry flush, but Jack’s “Chaus”—not alleged Chaus, not putative Chaus—hadn’t escaped him and he recovered fast. “But it’s an old Chinese tradition, adding poems to paintings.”

“Yes, goes back to Yuan Dynasty. Starts as protest against barbarian invaders.” Again, Jack stared straight at Haig.

Haig chose to ignore the “barbarian” reference. “Perhaps the original owner was an admirer of Liu’s.” Damn right she was. “I can’t see that the poems will affect the value of the paintings, though. If they’re real, I mean.”

“On contrary. In China, you, me, her, even him”—jabbing a thumb at Woo—“all detained, security officers find this. But here in West,” Jack went on before Woo could protest his inclusion in the mass arrest, “Liu poems add to value. Dissident poet, dissident painter—if Chaus real, Western collector eats up. Right expression?” He looked over his glasses at me. “‘Eats up’? ”

“Yes, Q. X., that’s right. He’s practicing his slang,” I explained to Haig, “for when he gets a chance at a long stay in the U.S. He has a job offer from Oberlin College, you know.”

“Yes, long stay. Maybe professor, Oberlin College. In Ohio,” Jack muttered, gazing at the arching willow branches and the singing wren. He looked up. “Mr. Haig, you understand, this exact period, my field? Of course, don’t want put myself forward, just small scholar of Inner Mongolia.” Which he managed to make sound less remote than “Ohio.” “But possible, I can be of service, help you and client. If you allow me?”

“Allow you? Dr. Lin, let me understand—are you offering to appraise these paintings?” Haig’s innocent surprise would have done credit to Shirley Temple.

“If would be useful to you,” Jack said gravely.

“It would be exceedingly useful. My client and I would be very, very grateful.”

Jack said nothing.

“Of course,” Haig hurried on, “you’d have to permit me to compensate you for your trouble. And also, the minute I find out these paintings are real—if they are—the burden on me will increase tenfold, as we said earlier. I’ll need that expert we were talking about, need him right away.”

“Ah,” Jack said. “Of course. Well, just let me look little while longer. Just need few more minutes, be sure.”

“Sure?” Haig’s voice had risen a whole register. I almost laughed.

“Impossible, of course, be totally sure, anything in this world,” Jack retreated. “Looking now, things to say, definitely not Chau. Don’t find, well…”

“Yes, of course. Please, take your time,” Haig said, so obviously meaning the opposite that even Woo snickered.

Jack leaned down once more, this time over the waterfall painting. Haig’s eyes stayed riveted on him as though he were afraid Jack was a mirage and might evaporate. Woo and I sat silent, on the edge of our respective chairs.

We all jumped when the phone rang.

Jack raised an offended eyebrow at this infringement on his concentration. Haig, scowling, spun to the desk and grabbed the receiver. “What, Nick? I said not—what? Who is?” He listened briefly, then smiled. “No, Nick, you don’t know what deal he’s talking about, because I didn’t tell you. Well, how delicious. By all means, send him back.” He hung up, gave me a special, slimy wink, and announced, “We have a visitor. I’m sure you won’t mind, Dr. Lin. This will be very interesting.” A moment later we heard Caitlin’s timid knock, and after Haig’s barked “Come!” the door opened to admit Dr. Bernard Yang.

23

His clenched jaw broadcasting equal parts determination and fury, Dr. Yang took one step in and stopped short, apparently unprepared for the population explosion in Doug Haig’s office. Haig waved Caitlin away and, all relaxed geniality, held out welcoming arms to the professor. “Dr. Yang! It’s an honor, sir. Please, please, come in.”

“Mr. Haig. I’ve come about our … business. But perhaps this is not a good time.” Dr. Yang seemed to take a tighter grip on the portfolio he held.

“No, it’s an excellent time. To receive a scholar as prominent as yourself? A perfect time. Dr. Yang, you probably already know Dr. Lin, from China?” Haig didn’t even attempt “Qiao-xiang.”

Without missing a beat, Jack bowed low, and Dr. Yang, in reflex, bowed also. Bent over, Jack said, “Have not yet had pleasure, meet reknowned Dr. Bernard Yang.” Slowly, he straightened. Dr. Yang straightened also, looked at Jack, and frowned. I realized I was holding my breath. “Lin Qiao-xiang,” said Jack, his voice about as nasal and accented as he could make it without sounding like Mr. Moto. “From Central University in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia.”

“Dr. Lin,” Dr. Yang answered after a pause. “I’ve heard of you, of course.”

“This old friend, Lydia Chin,” Jack said, indicating me.

“Dr. Yang and I have met, Q. X.,” I told Jack. “An unexpected pleasure to see you here, Professor.”

“Unexpected, yes.” Dr. Yang glanced from me to Jack again. “What exactly is—”

“Dr. Lin and I were just looking over some paintings,” Haig said. “Perhaps you’d like to see them, also?”

Jack cooperatively stepped away, which put him out of Dr. Yang’s line of sight. I wanted to catch Jack’s eyes behind Dr. Yang’s back but I was afraid to. Then I realized that at that moment we could have had a shouting match about anything we wanted right out in the open. When Jack moved, Dr. Yang had caught sight of what was on the table, and he’d lost all interest in us.

The professor leaned over the paintings, moving from one to another, his face draining of color as he examined them. Of course, I thought; this is the first time he’s seen them, seen the quality of his daughter’s work. Doug Haig’s face, on the other hand, was suffused with a gloating joy so powerful I wanted to break a chair over his head. “These are the paintings I was telling you about,” he said casually to Dr. Yang. “The Chaus.”

Dr. Yang slowly straightened up and took a step closer to the triumphant mound of flesh that was Doug Haig. In a dark and quiet voice he said, “These are not Chaus.”

“Really? I’m surprised to hear you say that. Considering what Nick told me about your willingness to … reopen yesterday’s discussion. Also, considering what Dr. Lin said about these paintings.”

Not that Dr. Lin had actually said it yet, but Haig turned confidently to Jack.

“Don’t like to contradict eminent scholar,” Jack said, looking away from Dr. Yang as though embarrassed by his own effrontery. “But my belief, paintings are Chaus.”

“They are not.”

“Your belief, Dr. Lin?” prompted Haig.

“My opinion.” Jack spoke more strongly. “Professional, academic opinion.”

“Which Dr. Lin, as my consultant, will be putting in writing,” Haig assured Dr. Yang. “So while you’re welcome in the gallery anytime, of course, Professor, it turns out you needn’t have troubled yourself to come here today. In fact, unless you’re interested in the art once we have it on exhibit”—he pointed at Anna’s paintings— “you don’t need to bother to come back. Ever.” Haig gave the professor a smile he must have stolen from the Cheshire cat’s evil twin.

The vein I’d seen pulsing in Dr. Yang’s forehead yesterday was pounding away now. “I’d like to speak to you privately, Mr. Haig.”

“Yes,” Jack said, “can see you have many private thing to discuss. I must be getting to next meeting now, also. Mr. Haig, tomorrow maybe will call you—”

“No,” said Haig. “Dr. Lin, you’ve only just met your distinguished colleague. You two must have so much to talk about, I won’t hear of your leaving. Dr. Yang, whatever you have to say, I’m sure Dr. Lin will be utterly fascinated. Please, speak freely.”

It was like being at a train wreck; I couldn’t turn away. I had the sense that Dr. Yang, if he’d known a martial art, would be practicing it on Doug Haig as the rest of us watched.

“All right,” he said icily, eyes still on Haig. “Dr. Lin, I believe what I’ve brought will interest you, too.” He gestured to the table and waited. Jack, quicker to catch on than the rest of us, started to replace Anna’s paintings in their portfolio to clear a space. Haig gave a strangled gurgle and almost slapped Jack’s hand. With great ceremony, handling them delicately by their edges, he placed the paintings on the far side of the table where they were out of the way but still visible. Dr. Yang didn’t spare Haig a glance, just waited until he was done. Then he laid down the portfolio he’d brought, unzipped it, and from its inner cardboard folder pulled another ink painting.

The paper, with a fine toothed surface, was the same as Anna’s. The pure black ink, powerfully thick or delicately thin, or soft gray wash where the artist wanted it to be, looked identical. The meticulously controlled brushstrokes created exactly the same tension with the wild composition. The painting’s subject, three large carp peering up through the water under a bridge, and the accompanying poem about flashes of silver and gold as fish jump and return to the same spot in the everchanging stream, put it in the same nature-metaphor category. But it wasn’t the same.

Anna’s paintings were undeniably beautiful. Next to this, though, they seemed childish, naïve. Her lines and forms had an arbitrary quality I wouldn’t have understood if I hadn’t seen this painting, where every stroke of ink was the right one, nothing was missing, and nothing was extra.

“This,” said Dr. Yang, in his hard, quiet voice, “is a Chau.”

Haig stared. Jack and I stared. Even Woo was out of his chair, tilting his head to see this wonder. No one moved or spoke until finally, with a grunt, Woo sat back down again. He resumed slurping, proving that in the face of the miraculous the world does go on.

Haig, as though unable to believe what was happening, said, “Dr. Lin?”

Jack looked up at him, nodded, looked back down. “Would have to examine, of course. But can be almost no question. Amazing. So skillful, so accomplished. Chau, but even better than any known. As though … Dr. Yang, where this comes from?”

“That doesn’t matter.” Dr. Yang dismissed the question, and Jack. His eyes riveted to Haig’s, he said, “It’s a Chau and I’ll authenticate it.”

“I also!” Jack said, the man from Hohhot suddenly seeing his year in America slipping away. “After examine, of course.”

“Well.” Haig folded his arms over his balloon belly. “Well. Dr. Yang, how do I know this is truly a Chau?”

“Dr. Lin just said it was. Isn’t that enough for you? Although I suppose it’s reasonable to mistrust his judgment, since a moment ago he was prepared to authenticate my daughter’s paintings as Chaus.” He spoke with disgust, including in it both Jack and Haig, and probably me, too. Not Woo; he was beneath the professor’s contempt.

Dr. Yang’s scorn rolled right off Haig, whose supercilious air didn’t change. Jack, the offended academic, widened his eyes and began to protest. “My daughter’s,” Dr. Yang repeated firmly. “They’re very good. But they’re not Chaus.” I almost smiled. Even under the circumstances, the father can’t resist praising the daughter. “There are differences. A real expert could tell you.” Quick, angry glance at Jack. “The control of the quantity of ink on the brush, to keep a line solid or break it up, as the artist chooses. The change of brushstroke angle around the sweep of a curve. If all that’s too subtle for you, Mr. Haig, you can look to the poem. This, here, is Chau’s calligraphy. That’s Liu Mai-ke’s, my daughter’s husband’s, as is the poem, though it was put there by my daughter in imitation of Liu’s hand. Chau uses poems by classical masters, as he always did. This poem is by Wang Wei. But I’m sure you can see that.”

I was sure Haig couldn’t, and I was sure the professor knew that, too. I was tempted to give Haig a pass, though. I could read the Chinese, but my classical education was so poor I couldn’t have told Wang Wei from Liu Mai-ke. Or, for that matter, from A. A. Milne.

“Yes, all right,” Haig said, not even pretending to study the painting. “And you’ll say all that? When you authenticate it?”

“I’ve brought a letter.”

Haig seemed to try to put the brakes on, to think about this miracle the way he would any transaction. “What’s the painting’s provenance?”

“It’s from my personal collection. It was painted the year Chau died. I brought it with me from China. That, too, is in the letter.”

“I see. All very interesting. And Dr. Yang, you’re offering to do what? Consign the painting to me? On what terms?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I wouldn’t expect you to agree to anything as fair as a consignment. No, I’ll give it to you. In exchange for these.”

“Well.” Haig rubbed his chins. “Well. A true, unknown Chau. Authenticated by two major experts.” He looked at Jack, who nodded quickly. “If handled correctly, I imagine it could bring upwards of eight hundred thousand dollars.” He looked from the carp painting to the others. “Oh,” he said, as though a thought had occurred to him, “but these can be authenticated, too. Can’t they?” Again, he looked at Jack. Jack swallowed, threw a quick look at Dr. Yang, and nodded again.

“They are not Chaus!” Dr. Yang barked.

“So you say,” Haig answered equably. “Another expert says otherwise. And there are four of them. Not quite as good, but still, with proper attribution, they’ll be worth close to two million together. I’m not sure the bargain is a good one, Dr. Yang.”

Dr. Yang ground his jaw, making the vein in his forehead pop again. “Mr. Haig,” he said quietly, “your greed doesn’t surprise me. I was prepared for it, though I suppose I’d hoped to find it less boundless than it appears. Consider this: One painting authenticated by Dr. Lin and myself will be worth a good deal more than four authenticated by Dr. Lin alone and challenged by me. Challenged also by the painter, my daughter, who, I must tell you, is prepared to sacrifice her career rather than allow you to commit this despicable crime. Since this situation is to some extent her fault, not for making the paintings but for failing to grasp the dangers of people’s greed and malevolence, I’m prepared to permit her that sacrifice. However, if we can find another answer, that would be preferable.” The professor slipped his hand into the portfolio again and brought out another painting.

On a page laid vertically, a path wound through pine trees and floating mists to a craggy peak. At the mountain’s foot a river rushed, and on its banks stood a tiny figure, staring upstream. The three or four brushstrokes of which he was made created a palpable sense of longing. I read the poem, about yearning to see the spring in the poet’s hometown, far away, and was surprised to find my eyes as misty as the mountain.

Haig had no such reaction. What filled his eyes were dollar signs. He practically broke into a happy dance when Dr. Yang brought out a third painting, this one so traditional in subject even I recognized it: The Three Friends of Winter. Curving branches of pine, plum, and bamboo swept across the page, the leaves of each delicately mounded with snow. Three Friends paintings are always about persistence and endurance, but the poem was about standing in the snow alone after bidding an exiled friend a last farewell.

Haig, after a long look at these paintings, didn’t ask either expert about them. His only question, with almost comical inevitability, was, “How many more are there?”

Dr. Yang shook his head. “There are no more.” He lifted the top board of the portfolio. We could all see it was empty. “I brought three from China. There are no more.”

“And you’ve been hiding them all these years. You bad boy.” Haig smiled. “Now the world will get a chance to see them. How wonderful. Professor, I believe we do, after all, have a deal.”

* * *

Jack and I left Baxter/Haig soon after Dr. Yang brought out the last painting. Jack hailed the first cab he saw. It happened to be going in the wrong direction, but I was right there with him. As the cab sped around the block I threw myself back on the seat and kicked off my shoes. “What was he thinking? Three Chaus, in Doug Haig’s hands?”

“Well, he read Haig right on that: One wouldn’t have done it.”

“I almost had a coronary! I thought you said he was with the program.”

“I thought he was.”

“And now he’s freelancing, too.” I rooted through my bag, then stopped to ask Jack, “Hey. You think we got away with it?”

“With Haig and Woo, yes. Who knows what was going on in Dr. Yang’s head—who ever does, witness the three paintings—but what would he gain by ratting us out?”

“He wouldn’t have Lin to worry about?”

“He’s better off if Haig does believe in Lin. He said it himself, two experts are better than one.”

I found my cell phone. “I’m calling Bill. And then I’m calling my client. If they all start doing improv this isn’t going to be easy.”

I did call Bill, brought him up to speed.

“Holy cow,” he said. “Three?”

“I don’t know what was more beautiful,” I said. “The paintings, or Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang trying to ad lib around them.”

By the time I got off the phone with Bill the cab was nearing Jack’s office, so I put off the other call. “You’ve been quiet,” I said to Jack. He’d taken off the glasses and run his hand through his hair, spiking up Dr. Lin’s prissy man bangs. “Are you about to say something serious? Because the mustache is a problem.”

“I can’t take it off without solvent, so deal with it. No, just thinking.”

“About what?”

“The paintings.”

“It’s a shame,” I said. “Three new Chaus, falling into those hands.”

“Three new Chaus,” he nodded. “It sure is.”

24

I paid the cabbie and we climbed the stairs to Jack’s office. “The new window’s not bad,” I said, seeing it for the first time. “Trim all painted and everything.”

“The new window stinks. My entire fee for this case is going for a real one.”

“You think you’re getting paid? By Dr. Yang?”

“He gave me a retainer. Damn lucky, because you’re probably right, I shouldn’t expect anything else.”

“He might even sue you,” I said cheerfully. “To get the retainer back.”

I called my client while Jack went off to the bathroom to use his solvent.

“Ms. Chin!” Dennis Jerrold was cautiously eager as ever. “News?”

“Yes, Mr. Jerrold. Things have changed. We need a meeting.”

“What’s wrong? Are the Chaus about to be unveiled?”

“No. The good news for you is, it looks like the fake Chaus with Mike Liu’s poems on them won’t be shown at all.”

“That is good news. In fact, it’s terrific and it’s better than I expected. So why do I get the feeling I’m not supposed to celebrate?”

“Don’t pop the champagne yet. As I said, things have changed. There are three real Chaus that just turned up, and they will be shown.”

“Oh. You’re right, that’s not great. Turned up from where?”

“I can’t tell you that. But they’re real, they’re authenticated, and they’re going on the market. However, I think I can still do right by you.”

“Oh? How’s that?”

I repeated, “We need a meeting.”

Bill showed up at Jack’s office twenty minutes later. I buzzed him in and met him at the door.

“Am I in time?”

“Plenty,” I said. “Jerrold will be here in half an hour.”

“Not for that. To see Jack’s outfit.”

“The outfit, yes,” said Jack, coming out of the bathroom in black jeans and a white Oxford shirt. His wet hair was combed back and his face showed every sign of being freshly scrubbed. He pointed to the padded jacket and discount pants hanging over a chair.

“That’s all I get?”

“Can get accent also.” Jack bowed, speaking in Lin’s nasal tones. “Small scholar of Hohhot does not wish to disappoint.”

“He was great,” I told Bill.

“Vass he chust as great as Vladimir Oblomov, do you tink?”

“Oblomov, forgive me say so, but is coarse man,” Jack said. “Dr. Lin Qiao-xiang, much more refined.”

“Dah, you mean, sissy. Real man tuff like Oblomov.”

“Could you two pretend your native language is English?” I broke in. “We have work to do.”

The English thing was put off a little, though, because for our next trick, Jack and I listened in while Vladimir Oblomov called Lionel Lau.

“Meester Lau, Oblomov here. Pleasure to talk to you.… Chust fillink you in, need to esk a favor.… Good, Meester Voo already told you about Chaus? He did great job, by de vay, keepink his mouth shut.… Oh, yes, two million dollars, cute leetle Lydia says.” I gave Bill the stink-eye, but he was in character, so he just shrugged. “Vun tink, now, Meester Lau. Dose friends I vass tellink you about? Dey vould be very grateful, you do dis vun tink for dem.…”

* * *

Although Dennis Jerrold tried to keep his face pleasantly neutral as he stepped into Jack’s office forty-five minutes later, it wasn’t hard to tell he found the surroundings more congenial than my Canal Street back room. Well, nuts to him. “Hi, Mr. Jerrold,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

“Thanks for making the meeting place so convenient. Is this your office?” That question, addressed to Bill, must have been diplomacy, because he couldn’t have been serious. Even bling-free, Bill does not look like an uptown-office kind of guy.

“Mr. Jerrold,” I said, “if we’d known from the start where you worked we could have made all our meetings more convenient. No, this is Jack Lee’s office—you met him, remember?—and he was supposed to be back here by now. I don’t see why we shouldn’t start without him, though. Would you like some coffee? Tea?”

He wanted coffee, of course, and so did Bill, and I made myself some green tea from the supplies Jack had replenished specifically to make this afternoon run smoothly.

“The paintings,” I said. “The Chaus you hired me to find. There are four, we found them, they’re fakes, and as I said on the phone, they won’t be authenticated and they won’t be sold. Though they’re really beautiful, as it happens.” I sipped my tea: high-quality, but I’d made it too strong.

“Beauty’s not the point,” Jerrold said.

“That’s the problem with politics,” said Bill.

“Yes, fine, we’ll debate that some other time. Where did they come from?”

“I can’t tell you who made them,” I said. “What I can say is, they do have Mike Liu’s poems on them, and not only would showing them next week have embarrassed the PRC, it seems that was the whole point.”

“That’s why they were made?”

“No, but it’s why they were going to be shown. If you want to tell your boss, and he wants to tell Mr. Jin at the Consulate, and you want to modestly take credit for saving the PRC some serious face, we’ll back you up.”

“Well, I’ll certainly do that if it’s the best I can get. Though I’d really like to know—”

“You’re not going to know, so forget it.”

He pursed his lips. A sticky point in the negotiations; pass it by, accomplish something else so you and the other party can feel good about each other, return later. “But don’t we still have a problem?” We. Give the other party the sense you’re on the same team. “You said there were three real Chaus about to come on the market.”

“Yes. From a private collection.”

“The interest in Chau brought them into the open?”

“In a way, it did. I don’t think we can stop their sale. But forewarned is forearmed. We can tell you where they’ll be shown and who’s doing the authentication. You can tell the people at the Consulate. They can get their own experts, pooh-pooh the whole thing, whatever they want to do. Cast some doubt, be wet blankets.”

“All right,” Jerrold said, setting his cup down. “I think—”

I was interested to know what he thought, but I wasn’t destined to find out. The door popped open and Jack popped through it.

“Hi!” he said. “Mr. Jerrold, sorry I wasn’t here to greet you. Welcome to my world.” He pulled off his leather jacket. “Hey, coffee! What a great idea.”

He poured himself a cup and joined us, looking particularly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

“We were just telling Mr. Jerrold about the new Chaus,” I said.

“The new Chaus!” Jack took a quick sip of coffee. “Hey, this is pretty good. You must have made it.”

“No, Bill did.”

“Oh. Well, it’s good anyway. The new Chaus. I have a couple of things to say about them, myself. They’re new.” He sat back, beaming.

“Yes,” I said. “We know that part.”

“No, you don’t. You mean unknown. I mean new.” He jumped up and went to his desk, where he switched the computer on and rotated the monitor so we could all see. “These photos from the spy camera aren’t great but they’re good enough.” On the screen, with a couple of mouse clicks, he called up the three paintings Dr. Yang had brought to the gallery. He added close-up details from each, and tiled everything on a single screen. “These paintings”—he tapped the screen with the back of his hand—“are new.” He sat back down. “You said in the cab I was quiet. I was thinking. What I was thinking was, if Dr. Yang brought those paintings with him when he left China, I really am Lin from Hohhot.”

“Who’s Dr. Yang? Does he have these? Who’s Lin?” My client was confused.

I ignored him. “What do you mean, Jack? We know he had three. Anna said so.”

“Who’s Anna?”

“He might.” Jack ignored Jerrold, too. “But not those three. You saw them.”

“They’re beautiful.”

“They sure are. Chau never painted like that.”

“I thought all his paintings are supposed to be beautiful.”

“They are. But they don’t look like that. They don’t have that pared-away quality, like the painter knows exactly what matters and what doesn’t. Or that sense that he knows what he wanted to do and he did it and he doesn’t give a damn if you like it.” Jack grinned. “But they would have. In Chau’s mature period. If he’d lived.”

“What are you saying? You think these are fakes, too? Just better fakes?”

“No.” He clearly wanted to keep the suspense going, make us keep asking, but he also clearly couldn’t wait to tell. “This very issue was part of the full and frank exchange of views I had not an hour ago with Dr. Yang. They’re not fakes and they’re not old. They’re Chaus. From his mature period. Painted within the last year. Chau’s alive.”

You could’ve heard a pin drop, if anything as messy as a loose pin were to be found in Jack’s office. Then we all recovered at once.

“Jack—”

“Jack—”

“Mr. Lee!” My client was the guy with the loudest voice. “The Ghost Hero? He’s alive?”

“Dr. Yang admitted it. He’s an old friend of Chau’s. Smuggled out of China around the same time, as it turns out, and by the same smuggler.”

“What?” I said. “No. That story—you were there—”

“He said the story was true. But the man who died was someone else.”

I sat openmouthed. Meanwhile Jerrold, with impressive diplomatic cool, said, “Where is he?”

“Chau? I can’t tell you.”

“Mr. Lee, you—”

“No, I mean I really can’t. Dr. Yang absolutely drew the line at that. I’m assured, though, that he’s been an American citizen for many years, under a shiny new name, living a shiny new life. Painting only in private, never showing. He was more than happy to give his old bud Dr. Yang those three paintings, though, to help him out of a hole. Like everyone else, he’d heard all the rumors about new Chaus, and he felt responsible for Dr. Yang’s troubles.”

“What troubles?”

“Trouble’s all fixed, don’t worry about it,” Jack said, though worried wasn’t how Jerrold looked.

“Whatever that means,” Jerrold said, “this guy’s a fugitive from a friendly foreign power and I want to know where to find him.”

“You won’t find him. You could ask Dr. Yang, but,” Jack surveyed Jerrold, “I guarantee you wouldn’t last a minute.”

“I’d like to try.”

“Oh, Mr. Jerrold!” I broke in. “Really, what good would it do? Are you thinking that turning Chau over to the Chinese government would help your chances for promotion? If it’s true he’s a U.S. citizen, the Chinese government can’t touch him.”

“It is true,” Jack affirmed. “Dr. Yang’s one, too. Very efficient smuggler.”

“We could agree to extradite them.” Jerrold wasn’t giving up.

“For Tiananmen crimes?” Jack was enjoying himself. “Just wait until that hits the news. You’re with the government, Jerrold, so maybe you don’t know this, but we’re supposed to be the good guys. The Chinese government, during Tiananmen, they were the bad guys. Friendly foreign power, feh.”

Jerrold fixed Jack with a hard stare. “You said they were smuggled in. If they entered the country illegally I could—”

“No, you couldn’t.” Bill got in the act. “Twenty years ago someone in the INS obviously decided whatever they were using for paperwork was good enough. Maybe even someone in your own Department told them it was. Gave Chau and Yang political asylum. While you were playing Little League.”

“Pop Warner,” Jack corrected. “Pee-wee football, not baseball, right? All thuggery, no finesse. Give it up, Jerrold. We have two smuggled Chinese Tiananmen intellectuals, right under our noses, and you can’t touch ’em.”

Dennis Jerrold, his face grim, watched Jack smile and sip coffee. A few moments of silence, then, “I want the smuggler.”

I took a quick look at Jack, then said, “What?”

“The smuggler, Ms. Chin.” Jerrold sat back in his chair. “Chau and Yang, whoever Yang is, may be U.S. citizens, they may be political heroes, they may be untouchable. Fine, you win. The smuggler’s something else. Undocumented aliens coming into this country, that’s a hot-button topic. For all we know the smuggler has been running a snakehead operation, flooding our shores with undesirables for two decades now.”

“I doubt it.”

“I don’t care. No matter what heroes he smuggled in, no one will think the smuggler’s a hero. The press on netting a human trafficker—it’s all good. The PRC government won’t be happy about Chau being out of their reach, but the smuggler’s a good consolation prize.”

“Forget it.”

“No, you forget it. Entering the country illegally is a felony. If you know the smuggler’s identity and refuse to reveal it you’re committing one, too.”

“You’re not law enforcement,” Bill said.

“So I’ll call the Justice Department.”

“We’ll call our lawyers. This could go on a long time.”

“Are you all prepared for that? Long legal cases are expensive. This office is nice, but it’s a little minimal. And Ms. Chin’s? You don’t strike me as people with a lot of discretionary funds. I doubt if it will be good for the investigation business, either, to be involved in a drawn-out legal proceeding in which I paint you as less than patriotic. Give me his name.”

“How would we know?” I said. “Jack just found out about Chau an hour ago.”

“You’ve all apparently known about Yang, whoever that is, for much longer than that. Tell me who smuggled him in.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Me either.”

“Me either.”

“For people who lie for a living you all do it pretty damn poorly.”

I sipped my tea. It had grown bitter. “Mr. Jerrold,” I said, “giving the PRC the smuggler’s name might win you a promotion. It could also get the smuggler killed.”

“That’s the risk he took. Listen well. Even before I bring the Justice Department in—which I will do, believe me—I can make your lives miserable. Like to travel? I’ll put you on the terrorist watch list, you’ll never get on a plane again. In fact, no one in your family will. Any of your families. I’ll put them all on the list. Or get a bank loan, a college loan, a mortgage … Not to mention your licenses, gone in a flash. You guys are screwed. Accept it. I want that name. Then we’ll all be friends again.”

“We were never friends,” I said.

“So we’ll never be friends. I don’t give a damn.” He waited another few moments, then took out his phone. “Okay, I’m calling Justice.”

“Wait,” said Jack.

“Yes?” Jerrold lowered the phone. “I’m waiting.”

“I want to make a deal.”

“What deal?”

“Jack!” I yelped.

Jack shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lydia. It would be hard enough on my family if I got arrested, but the rest of this stuff? You’re from a Chinese family, you know. My sisters, their kids. My dad’s an academic, flies everywhere all the time. I can’t let this happen to them.”

“He can’t do it,” Bill said.

“I sure as hell can,” said Jerrold. “What deal?”

“Listen, Jack—”

“Oh, shut up, you guys. I’m sorry. I’m not big and tough like you. I’m a wimp and I can’t do it.” To Jerrold: “I’ll give you the smuggler’s name. But I need to get something in return.”

“How about, you and your family don’t end up on the terrorist watch list?”

Jack shook his head. “Not enough. Once it gets out who gave this guy up—”

“It won’t get out.”

“Bullshit. Of course it will.” Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “I need to live in this community. The Chinese community, I mean. So does Lydia. Bill, well, what’s the opposite of collateral damage? What I’m saying, we need something sweet to counteract the stench of ratting a guy out.”

“I’m not ratting anyone out,” I said.

“That’s not the way it’ll look.” Jack didn’t meet my glare.

“What do you want?” Jerrold asked.

“Who would you take this to? Jin, at the Consulate?” At Jerrold’s nod, Jack said, “Call him. Get him over here.”

“First of all, I don’t just call the Cultural Attaché and tell him ‘get over here.’ Second, I’d need to hear what you have to say before I approach Jin.”

“You won’t. I have a deal to offer, and if I need to get a lawyer to help me offer it I’ll do it in public. You’ll get what you want, in the end, but I’ll make the whole thing as embarrassing for the State Department as I possibly can. That won’t do anything for your promotion, will it?”

“Promotion” was the magic word. Dennis Jerrold dialed the Consulate of the People’s Republic of China.

25

It was a tense twenty minutes up there in Jack’s office, waiting for Jin. I tried to talk to Jack but he cold-shouldered me. He made fresh coffee. Bill had some of the coffee. Jerrold, as though he were at the dentist, leafed through an art book. I didn’t have more tea; the last thing I needed was caffeine to blend with the adrenaline already sizzling through me. I kind of felt like I was at the dentist, too.

Finally, the downstairs buzzer buzzed, and Jack answered it. He waited at the door as he had for us—was that only the day before yesterday?—and stepped aside to admit a sour-faced, bald Asian man. Jerrold rose to his feet. I did, also, before I could stop myself. Bill didn’t.

“Mr. Jin. Thank you for coming.” Dennis Jerrold executed a creditable bow, which Jin returned.

“Mr. Jerrold. You say, important.” Jin looked around the room, then strode forward and took a chair.

Now Bill did stand, because there were only four chairs, and five of us. He went over to lean on the sill of the new window.

“It is important.” Jerrold brought Jin a cup of my bitter green tea. He introduced each of us, and Jin gave us each an unsmiling nod, remaining seated. Jerrold said, “These people have a … proposal for us.”

“Bill and I don’t,” I said.

“Lydia, you might as well get in on it, because it’s happening anyway,” Jack said. “And it’s not a proposal. It’s a deal. In response to a threat.”

Jack brought Jin into the loop in a couple of sentences. Jin listened intently, interrupting only once—“Alive? Chau Chun is alive?”—and after Jack was done he sat grimly sipping tea. No one else spoke, either, until Jin finally said to Jerrold, “You cannot arrest Yang? Make him tell you location of Chau?”

“I’m sorry.” Jerrold, shamefaced, apologized to Jin for the rule of law. “He’d get a lawyer immediately. I have certain … pressures … I can put on people”—he gave Jack a look—“but in this situation I doubt if they’d work. And if we did find him, Chau I mean, there’s not much we could do anyway.”

Jin pursed his lips, gestured at Jack. “What he say. Your government will not extradite. Is true?”

“I’m afraid it probably is. The events surrounding the Tiananmen riots are seen differently here from the way the Chinese people understand them—”

Jin waved him off with his teacup. To Jack, he said, “What do you want?”

Jack took a deep breath, and said, “Mike Liu.”

This was beyond pins dropping. You could’ve dropped a piano through the ceiling and no one would have noticed.

Just to make sure Jin knew who he was talking about, Jack gave him the Chinese version. “Liu Mai-ke. I’ll give you the smuggler’s name if your government frees Liu Mai-ke.”

“What the hell—” Jerrold started.

“Listen! There’s going to be a big Free Liu Mai-ke rally next week. Designed to embarrass the PRC government.” Jack turned to Jin. “Those paintings, the phony Chaus, have Mike Liu’s poems on them. I don’t suppose you knew that.”

“No, I did not.”

“Well, they do, and they’ll probably have the paintings at the rally.”

Jerrold pointed accusingly at me. “I thought she said they wouldn’t—”

“As Chaus. They won’t be exhibited or brought onto the market as Chaus. But they may well be shown as, I guess you’d say, homages. Just because they’re not authentic doesn’t mean they won’t be used to make a political point.”

He looked to me. I gave an irritated shrug. From Jerrold came a sharp, exasperated breath.

“And the real Chaus,” Jack said. “They are going on the market. At exactly the same time as the rally. Which is smack in the middle of Beijing/NYC. Mr. Jin, your government is going to come off looking pretty bad, with Chaus and fake Chaus and Mike Liu’s poetry all over the place, at exactly the moment when you’re spending a lot of money to look good. Here,” he added, “in New York.”

New York, the Cultural Attaché’s turf. From which, presumably, he’d rather not be called home in disgrace. You could tell from his stony face that these words were not lost on Jin.

“Or,” Jack said, settling in his chair, “you can disarm the whole thing. Mike Liu’s been off people’s minds for a while now, so it won’t look like you’re yielding to pressure. Say he’s sick, how’s that? The PRC and the Communist Party can demonstrate your great humanitarian compassion by releasing him. Once he’s out, he’s useless as a symbol. Nothing to rally about, no reason to show the fake paintings.”

“And the real ones?” Jerrold demanded.

Jack shrugged. “Not a lot we can do about that.”

“You can tell me where they are. I might be able to delay the sale until after Beijing/NYC. There’s pressure, and there’s pressure. As you know.”

Yeah, I thought, and I’d like to see you try it on the guy who ultimately owns them now: Lionel Lau.

“You guys are both diplomats.” Jack was beginning to look pleased with himself again. “I’m sure you can spin this to your bosses. Explain how you saved the PRC all kinds of face. What a media crisis you averted. Get your own experts to refute the new Chaus. Beijing/NYC can go on, all the approved artists can sip white wine with the critics, and the PRC can sit back and rake in millions from the sale of tame art. Win-win. How about it?”

Jerrold exchanged a glance with Jin. Damn these people. I sent Bill a look, and then I said, “Not yet.”

Everyone turned to me.

“Jack, if you’re selling our souls here, the price isn’t high enough. Mr. Jerrold, we’ll give you the name of the smuggler, God help us. We’ll also tell you who has the new paintings. But Mike Liu doesn’t only get released from prison. He gets kicked out of the country. Well, come on, people. What’s to keep the PRC from grabbing him up again as soon as this is over? You get what you want once Mike Liu lands here.”

Way to raise the stakes, Lydia. The first to speak, coming from left field, was Bill. “If you agree to this,” he said, “I can get the sale of the real Chaus delayed.”

“What?”

“There’s pressure,” Bill said. “And there’s pressure.”

“You said you couldn’t—what are you—” Jerrold was practically sputtering.

“Mr. Jerrold, you’re a reputable diplomat.” Under the circumstances Bill’s tone wasn’t nearly as sarcastic as it might have been. “I’m sure you understand what I’m saying when I tell you, you don’t want to know.”

“But he can do it, I guarantee,” I said. “And the last thing is, as part of this deal, the State Department has to agree to accept Mike Liu. To give him asylum.”

“No asylum!” Jin barked. “Stupid poet. That make him sound like political prisoner.”

As opposed to what, I wondered, but I kept silent. I could see on Jerrold’s face that he’d heard the same thing I had: If Jin was negotiating the terms of Mike Liu’s release, he’d already agreed to it.

In Chinese, Jerrold asked Jin to step into the hall with him. That was almost funny, Bill being the only person here who didn’t understand what he said; but I got the feeling the language choice was more out of courtesy than secrecy anyway. They left together, Jerrold holding the door for Jin. We three sat in silence, and after a while Jerrold came back in, picked up one of Jack’s chairs, and carried it into the hall. Holding the door and carrying chairs? Maybe there was more than one reason why he was still staff, not line. Jerrold set the chair in the hallway alcove. Jin sat and took out his cell phone.

“This is a conversation Mr. Jin would understandably rather keep private,” Jerrold said, coming back into the room and closing the door behind him. “We’ll wait.”

Once again, I wondered, As opposed to what?

If the twenty minutes before Jin had arrived were tense, the forty Jin spent in the hall gave new meaning to I-need-to-jump-up-and-run-around-the-room-screaming. I didn’t, though. I passed the time thinking about my mother’s reaction to my face in The New York Times anywhere near the words “federal indictment.” I don’t know what Bill was thinking, but after about half an hour he pulled out a cigarette and nailed Jack with a look that squelched any protest Jack might’ve made. Jack glanced at the new window, but being only temporary, it didn’t open. He sat back, rubbing his neck.

Finally the door opened and Jin strode back in. We all shot to attention, but Jin waited while Jerrold retrieved his chair from the hallway. He settled himself, not looking any more jovial than before.

“Have spoken, my superiors,” Jin said. “Liu Mai-ke, pah, stupid man, bad poet. Nothing but irritation, stirs up other stupid people. Unlikely will be rehabilitated. People’s Republic better without him. Will send him here. You”—he pointed a thick finger at Jack— “will tell us name of human trafficker. You”—moving to Bill—“will stop sale of Chaus.”

“Delay,” I said.

“You”—the finger swung to me—“will be silent!”

“And none of you,” Jerrold added, visibly relieved and palpably taking charge, “will go anywhere until this deal is complete. Just in case you were thinking of running out on us. Or warning anybody.”

“No problem,” said Jack.

“You bet, no problem. This whole process shouldn’t take more than twenty-four hours. Let’s go.”

“Wait,” I said. “Go where?”

“Don’t worry, the quarters are comfortable. And the food’s not bad, and it’s on us. Now, either you all accompany me voluntarily, or I’ll ask the Nineteenth Precinct to detain you in their quarters. I’ll have to call Justice to get that to happen, and the whole process is kind of a pain, so I’ll be even more aggravated than I am now. How aggravated do you want me? If this all works out, you’ll be home in your own beds tomorrow night. If it doesn’t, you’ll want to practice being guests of Uncle Sam, anyway.”

Which is how I came to be spending the night—without my cell phone—in a government-contracted four-star hotel on the Upper East Side. I ate grilled salmon in a small but, as promised, comfortable room with a giant TV, a lovely view over the East River, a disconnected phone, and a State Department security officer outside my door. Jack and Bill, I understood, were billeted together down the hall. Because they were both large guys, I hoped their room was bigger.

26

Morning’s usually a busy time for me. I wake up early, go running, or rollerblading, or to the dojo. Get my blood moving before the action starts. Not today, though. The sunrise over the East River was gorgeous, the hotel bathrobe was comfy, the shower was fabulous, and breakfast was quite tasty, featuring a selection of premium teas. Lunch wasn’t bad either. I was climbing the walls by the time the security officer knocked on the door at midafternoon to tell me the car was here.

Yesterday’s final negotiation—besides one phone call to my mother, to tell her I was working overnight—was that we’d all, including the Yang family, be at the airport to see Mike Liu arrive.

“They’re putting him on a plane that gets in at five,” Jerrold said. “Direct flight. You don’t trust me to call and tell you he’s here?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

So we all piled into a black government limo, Jerrold up front with the driver, Bill and me in the normal backseat, Jack in the one facing us. Which meant we all had to stare at each other on the hour-long drive.

When we finally got to Newark after sixty particularly long minutes, the car dropped us and went off to park in some special diplomat place. Jerrold flashed credentials and we were led through blank hallways and up an elevator, then shown to a room with a one-way window overlooking the vast space where people wait to meet international travelers.

Jerrold checked his watch. “Plane should be just landing.” The door opened, admitting Mr. Jin and Dr. Yang. The professor glared around the room, with just slightly more discernible anger and contempt for Jack than for the rest of us. Jin and Jerrold bowed to each other. No one spoke. We all stood at the window, watching the crowd below. A normal crowd, no press, no Mike Liu welcoming committee. That was part of the deal, too. And Jin had won on the no-asylum demand, but Mike Liu, being married to an American citizen, could start his naturalization process this same afternoon.

An unbroken stream of people pulled suitcases or pushed piled carts through the doors, looked around, got their bearings in America, and went on. Some spotted people waiting for them in the crowd; some had to look deeper, because their people were farther back. If your people happened to be Anna and Mrs. Yang, you’d have seen them in a second, Anna leaning over the waist-high barrier, her mother standing beside her. Anna was in constant motion, rising on her toes, tilting left and right, as though at a ball game tied in the final minutes when everyone’s on their feet and you can’t see. Finally, she saw.

The glass in our window was ballistic, an inch thick, but I’d swear I heard Anna shout Mike’s name. A man just through the doors stopped. He was thinner and paler but otherwise looked exactly like the photos I’d seen of Mike Liu. Appearing dazed, he searched the crowd. Anna jumped, waved, shouted all at once. He spotted her, pushed his way over, and enveloped her in a huge, crushing hug. The little group disappeared out the terminal doors.

“Okay,” Jerrold said. “That was touching. Now you owe us. And this information had better be good. Or—”

“We know,” I snapped. “The terrorist watch list, the Justice Department, our families, we know.”

Jack turned from the window. “Don’t worry. It’s good.”

He waited for Dr. Yang, but the professor’s mouth was drawn into a hard, flat line. He shook his head slowly: He wasn’t going to speak.

So Jack nodded, rubbed the back of his neck, and gave Jerrold and Jin the name they’d been waiting for.

He said, “Doug Haig.”

27

The debriefing was, well, not so brief. The four of us—the Three Musketeers and Dr. Yang—sat alone in separate rooms waiting for Jerrold, or Jin, or Jerrold and Jin, to stride in and hurl questions at us. We each told the story as we had it. I gave my version, messing up the details that were mine to mess up, forgetting the answers that were mine to forget. Our versions were unavoidably different, just as we’d planned. Nothing’s more suspicious than four people whose stories match exactly, especially if three of them are supposed to have gotten the facts secondhand. Bill and Jack were pros, so I wasn’t too worried about them screwing up. It was Dr. Yang, the academic with a certain professional stake in the truth, and little experience at interrogations, who concerned me. On the other hand, he had the most to lose; he was capable of improvising—witness the three paintings, when the plan had been for him to bring one—and as Jack pointed out, he had the scariest scowl.

To Jerrold, on his first visit to my windowless room, I gave the details of the investigation we were claiming we’d done. We’d looked into the situation, so the story went, after Dr. Yang told us about Doug Haig arranging for him to slip out of China. We didn’t know about Chau then, I said, but his story must be substantially the same. I told Jerrold what was there to be found, most of it on the Web, which is where PI’s do our background investigations these days, didn’t he know that? All the evidence, of course, was circumstantial: records of Haig’s China trips, meetings he’d had with young artists who’d been caught up in the Tiananmen violence or denounced afterward. Some of the information I directed Jerrold to was real. Haig had made a lot of trips, talked to a lot of people. The patterns that pointed to political activity, though—phone records, surveillance reports from not-quite-identified, now defunct Chinese agencies, newspaper photos documenting Haig’s presence in this town or that—had been planted by Linus, to shore up reality.

It wasn’t the nature of the evidence against Haig that brought the steam out of Jerrold’s ears, however. It was Haig. “He’s an American citizen!”

“You were thinking a Chinese person pulled this off?”

“I can’t turn him over to the Chinese government! And you’re not giving me anywhere near enough to arrest him here.”

“Mr. Jerrold, we didn’t promise we’d make your case for you. We just said we’d give you the smuggler’s name. You’ll have to do your own police work. Maybe you can get Haig to confess.”

“Oh, sure! On what basis?”

Actually, I had no idea, so I held my tongue, and he stomped out. The really lucky break in all of this was that neither Jerrold nor Jin knew Haig particularly well. If they had, they’d never have bought for a minute the fantasy that Doug Haig would lift a finger, especially in the face of danger, to rescue anyone.

Finally, disgusted with my inability to deliver damning details, Jerrold told me I was free to go. I called Bill and Jack from the airport monorail, left messages on both their phones, and settled in for the ride home.

28

Threading through the boisterous crowd to reach our center-of-the-action banquette, a waiter lifted down a single-barrel bourbon, neat; a martini with three olives; and a pink cosmo in a wide-mouthed glass.

“Oh, come on, you guys,” I said to Bill and Jack. “I’m supposed to drink that?”

“Do it,” Jack said. “Don’t be a wimp.”

“Speaking of wimps”—I picked the glass up and sniffed at it—“Jack, I said it before but I’ll say it again: You were fabulous.”

“Completely convincing,” Bill agreed. “Except you said ‘smuggler’ about three dozen times.”

“I was trying to plant the seed and I wasn’t sure Jerrold was catching on. I’m sorry, Lydia, but your client does seem a bit thick.”

“He works for the government,” I reminded him. “Your client, on the other hand, has an instinctive genius for the con. As do you. Jack, you so sold it!”

We all clinked glasses. Jack said, “I’m not sure that’s a good thing.”

“What, that your acting talents are Oscar-level?”

“That I can be that convincing as a sell-out lily-livered spineless rat.”

“Bill was convincing as a Russian thug.”

“I’m talking about acting.”

“Guys?” That was a fourth voice. We looked up to see Eddie To standing at our table. “What just happened?” I slid over and Eddie slipped in next to me. He was introduced to Bill, whose hand he shook; then he looked around the table, blinked, and said, “Frank and I just had a long conversation with a gentleman, and I use the word dubiously, named Lionel Lau.”

“So he did call,” Jack said.

“Just the way you said he would. It’s a good thing we were prepared or we’d have both been on the floor in a swoon. He represented himself as the new owner of Baxter/Haig, which he’ll be liquidating as soon as he can. No, as soon as we can. He wants Red Sky to handle the sale of the current inventory, for a fee.”

“A fair one?”

“Jack. Those works, I’d have paid him to have our name associated with. But very fair, thank you. And he tells us we’re welcome after that to whatever artists are willing to sign with us, their existing contracts becoming null and void upon the dissolution of the gallery. Apparently Frank and I were highly recommended as experts in the field.”

“Is that wrong?”

“No, of course it’s not wrong. It’s merely miraculous.” A waiter appeared at his elbow. “Would it be out of line to order champagne?”

Jack said, “I don’t think so, no.”

The waiter was dispatched for some Tattinger’s and a selection of munchies.

“Furthermore,” Eddie To continued, “two also dubious gentlemen are reported to have appeared at Baxter/Haig within the hour, waving badges and wanting to discuss various things with the proprietor.”

“Who reported that?”

“Caitlin Craig, when she called to inquire whether we’d be needing administrative help.”

“Haig’s nervous assistant?” I asked. “She’s leaving the sinking ship already?”

“It seems so. Do you think we should take her on?”

“She probably knows a lot about the inventory. You’d have to nurse her through a case of PTSD, but it might be worth it. I wouldn’t touch Nick Greenbank, though.”

“Uck. Not with surgical gloves. But that’s on principle. You have something specific in mind?”

“We think he was Lau’s inside man. Probably ever since Haig first borrowed money from Lau. He’s how Woo knew about me.”

“Who’s Woo?”

“Never mind,” said Jack. “Just do this: Get things in writing with Lionel Lau and stick to the letter of the contract. In case of a tie, do it his way.”

“Jack, what are you telling me? The man’s a crook?”

“Yes.”

“In the art world? How can that be?”

“And I’d suggest that when you’re done with the liquidation, you be done with Lau, too,” I said.

“I see. Well, you people have certainly proved to be fonts of wisdom so far. I’ll tell Frank to do as you say.”

The waiter returned with a champagne flute, and plates of prosciutto-wrapped figs, tiny merguez lamb meatballs, and boiled peanuts with salt and seaweed. This hip multi-culti bar was one of Jack’s favorite haunts. Bill and I had let him pick the celebration spot because he’d had the hardest role in the con.

Eddie To lifted his glass, watched the bubbles rise, and took a swallow. “Yum. So tell me, besides being unable to pay his debt to a crook, is Haig in trouble? The men with the badges—has being a douchebag become a crime?”

“It hasn’t, but he is,” said Jack. “It won’t last, though. For what he’s accused of, there’s no proof.”

“Did he do it?”

“No. The trail’s long, but it’s mostly fresh brushstrokes to fit the picture we wanted to paint.”

“Careful,” I said. “That’s awfully close to a nature metaphor.”

“Well,” Eddie said, “lucky for Haig, then.”

“Sure,” Jack said. “He only has two problems. One’s Lau, but he expected that. His plan, if he couldn’t pay him off, was to let Lau have Baxter/Haig and walk away. Find another sucker to finance him and start again.”

“You speak of that plan in the past tense. As though it were over.”

“It is. The other problem interferes. The PRC government’s seriously irritated with him. I don’t think he’ll be getting any more visas.”

Eddie To’s eyes lit up behind the round glasses. “Doug Haig, PNG in the PRC?”

Jack nodded and stuck the silver martini sword into his mouth so he could pull the olives off.

“Can it be?” Eddie said. “Doug Haig’s edge, gone? The era of Haig Hegemony over the field of contemporary Chinese art, coming to a close?”

“The sun sets on every empire,” I said.

“Drink your cosmo,” said Jack.

I held my pink drink up to the light as Eddie had his champagne and squinted at it.

“I’m not sure I want to hear any more,” Eddie said. “It almost sounds like you people framed Doug Haig for something he didn’t do.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Are you serious? I just don’t want to know too much because I don’t want to be arrested when you are.”

“We already were arrested,” I said. “And look at us now.”

“You were?”

“Well, close.”

Eddie waited, but no more explanation was forthcoming. “All right,” he shrugged and said. “The fact that Frank and I have suddenly become Rulers of the Universe is only one of the thunderbolts Lau threw. Among the items he wants us to unload are three new Chaus.”

“He told you you can’t do that until after next week, right?” said Bill.

“‘Unload’ is the least important word in that sentence.” Eddie frowned at Bill. “Three! New! Chaus! New. Previously unknown. In fact, previously unpainted. Lau says they’re new, like really, really new. He says Chau’s alive.”

“Well,” I cautiously brought the cosmo closer, “there’ve always been those rumors. And Bernard Yang is ready to authenticate these as real, and possibly new. Of course, authentications are often disputed.”

“These won’t be,” said Jack.

“Not that they’re Chaus, no. But that they were painted in the last year or so. I just want Eddie to be prepared. He may get a different opinion from Dr. Snyder, or from the real Dr. Lin.”

“There’s a fake Dr. Lin?” Eddie asked.

Jack didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, “He won’t.”

I’d been about to taste the pink thing, but I stopped. “Jack? What are you saying? Those are the Chaus from Anna’s room. From the Tiananmen days. They’re not new.”

Jack paused before he spoke. “When I told Dr. Yang about the plan, after the first burst of Jack-that’s-insane, he started arguing details. He said those three Chaus were Anna’s, given to her before she was born so she’d never forget what’s important. He couldn’t give them away, they weren’t his. Anyone else, I’d have thought he didn’t want to part with them because they’re worth so much. But Dr. Yang would do anything for Anna. So I thought maybe he wasn’t interested in any scheme that would get Mike Liu out of prison.”

“Mike Liu’s getting out of prison?” Eddie broke in.

“He’s out, Eddie.”

“Let Jack finish,” I said.

“But—” said Eddie, looking like the Red Queen had just suppressed him.

“It’s not public yet,” said Jack. “So keep it in your hat. It will be, in a few days.”

“I—” Eddie stopped. “Am I supposed to have any idea what we’re talking about?”

“No.”

“Oh. Fine.” He reached for a fig.

“So I asked him,” Jack said. “About Mike. He told me to back off. He’d opposed the marriage because he didn’t want Anna involved with a Chinese dissident, something he knew something about. But now Mike’s his son-in-law, now he’s family. I said, then for his son-in-law’s freedom, Anna’s happiness, and incidentally her career, this was his best shot. Now, Eddie, here’s what matters to you. Where Dr. Yang got stuck every time was at claiming Chau was alive. I told him we had to, that we had to make them want badly something that they couldn’t get, so they’d demand second best, which was the smuggler. He dug in and fought me. I thought his problem was the old idea of exploiting his friend.”

“But?” I said.

“Finally he told me he had to think and he’d call me. When he did and agreed, I thought I’d just worn him down. Then at the gallery he pulled those paintings out, and I got it. You were blindsided because he brought three. For me it was the paintings themselves.”

“Jack, really, you’re not saying—”

“Yes, I am. The line quality, the composition—everything about those paintings screams the same painter, twenty years later. When I was supposed to be up the street having coffee while you guys messed with Jerrold’s head in my office? I really was with Dr. Yang. I had to know. Then I came back and read from my script the way we’d made it up. Except it was all true.”

“My God. Jack, really?” I stared at him. “The Ghost Hero is alive?”

Jack looked into the clear liquor of his drink, possibly because it was more attractive than the three pairs of bugging eyes around the table. Well, two—mine and Eddie’s. And one narrowed: Bill’s. He doesn’t bug. Jack went on: “That’s why Dr. Yang didn’t want us to say it. Because it’s true.”

“Oh.” I sank back against the banquette.

Eddie To sat openmouthed and speechless.

After a moment, Bill said, “The same smuggler? Around the same time?”

“That’s right. Exactly what we said. Chau’s been underground for twenty years. Painting, never showing, just the way we had it. He’s a citizen, so he’s not actually in danger, but Yang didn’t want to out him.”

“What made him change his mind?”

“He talked to Chau.”

“Oh,” I said again.

“Chau told him to get over himself. He said this was for Anna, what was the big deal? If a lot of problems could be solved by people thinking he was still alive, so fine. And by the way, don’t use Anna’s paintings from China, here are three actual new ones.”

“Why?”

“He said Dr. Yang had never made a false attribution in his life and he wouldn’t let him start now. If he was going to have to sign off on paintings as new to make gangsters happy—by which, apparently, he meant Jerrold and Jin as well as Lionel Lau—they were going to be new.”

“You know,” I said, “I think he really may be a hero.”

“But not a ghost. The only thing he asked was that Dr. Yang not say where he was if at all possible. He likes his new life.”

“Jack,” said Eddie. “Jack. The Ghost Hero lives, he’s still painting, and Red Sky will be showing the first new Chaus in twenty years? Do I have that essentially correct?”

“You do.”

“Oh. My. God! Jack, if I weren’t already married to Frank I’d marry you. You could marry us both! I’m sure Frank won’t mind. Jack, will you marry us?”

“No. But maybe you should go home and break the good news to Frank.”

“I will. I will.” Eddie gulped the rest of his champagne and stood. “Though I get the feeling you’re throwing me out. You want to be alone with your co-conspirators? Are you starting another conspiracy? I don’t want to know. I’m leaving. Will you come to the opening? All of you. The wine will be excellent. It’ll be invitation-only. Yes, I’m going. Frank! Oh, Frank!” He practically ran out of the bar.

29

The next morning I slept in. That’s unlike me, but the celebration had gone on and on. After the drinks, Jack took us to a Lebanese restaurant for tajines and loud music from a joyous three-man band. Then I suggested coffee and tea at Silk Road. Then Bill had an after-hours club he recommended. The sun wasn’t yet crawling up over the horizon by the time I got home, but it was nearing it. And I’d had a pink drink.

“Ling Wan-ju,” my mother said, as I stumbled into the kitchen in search of the tea I knew she’d made. “You’ve slept quite soundly. Perhaps you came in late last night. I didn’t hear you.”

Uh-huh. “Pretty late.” I kissed her, grabbed the teapot, and poured a cup.

“How is your case going?”

I took a sip, felt the heat cut its way down my innards. “It’s over, Ma. It worked out well.”

“You were successful?”

“Yes, we were.” Caffeine began kick-starting my brain.

“I see. That is good. Professional success is important. No matter what one’s profession.”

Uh-huh, again.

“Now that the case is over,” my mother said, her back to me as she sorted dishes from the dish rack onto cabinet shelves, “I suppose you will not be seeing the other detective? The Chinese one?”

“Jack? I guess I hadn’t thought about it.” I hadn’t, and I had to say, my first reaction to the idea wasn’t positive. “But Ma, I thought you didn’t like him.”

“Ling Wan-ju.” She turned, wearing the wide-eyed look. “I do not know him.”

This was true, and was the point at which, normally, I’d have given up. Now, though, maybe prompted by the still-circulating remains of my cosmo, or maybe by the not-yet-faded flush of victory, I found myself soldiering on. “Ma, you just seriously flip-flopped on the subject of Jack. A few days ago you were completely disenchanted when you found out he was an investigator, and second generation, too.”

“I do not understand what you mean by ‘disenchanted.’ I have not been under a spell.”

Bilingual communication failure: The Chinese word I’d dredged up to express that thought was obviously not quite right. “If you spoke English I wouldn’t always be using the wrong Chinese word,” I said. “I meant ‘disappointed.’”

“If you spoke better Chinese, you would not, also. I was disappointed. I was hoping you had met a young man in a respectable profession. First generation, or possibly Chinese-born. More Chinese than American.” She shut the cabinet. “However, you have not. You have met this Lee Yat-sen. You seem to enjoy his company. He appears to be a respectable young man.”

“How do you—oh, no. You had someone Google him, didn’t you?”

“Someone” could only be one of my brothers, and her affronted look told me I was right. “Ling Wan-ju, I don’t know that word, goo-goo. I asked your brother on the telephone if he knew this Lee Yat-sen. He called me back to tell me that he had heard good things about him, as far as that is possible in your profession.”

My mother never tells me which brother she’s talking about; I’m supposed to just know. In this case, it could have been any of them, until she hit that last snide remark. That made it Tim, and I snorted.

My mother pursed her lips. “Your brother is concerned about you, Ling Wan-ju. He is interested in your happiness.”

“He just doesn’t want me to embarrass him.”

“Bringing shame to your brother would cause you sorrow, would it not? So in this concern, he is interested in your happiness.”

I could only stare. The woman was a natural wonder.

“Your brother cares for you,” she insisted again. “All your brothers do.”

“I suppose you’re right. Sometimes they have odd ways of showing it, though.” I sighed and finished my tea.

“That is a privilege of family. To express concern and be understood, even if the expression is odd.”

“Yes, Ma.” I got up, kissed her again, and went off to get dressed and face the day.

30

Three nights later, there was another celebration. As Asian Art Week opened with grand fanfare, and Beijing/NYC debuted to critical praise, the East Village communal studio in Flushing threw a party to welcome Mike Liu to New York. The PRC government had already issued a press release to the effect that, for humanitarian reasons involving his health, lawbreaker Liu Mai-ke had been released from his obligation to the Chinese people to serve his sentence and, by the benevolence of the government and the Party, been sent to the West for medical treatment. The press release had been Xeroxed a few hundred times at different sizes and pinned up all over the studio’s corridors, where it had been painted and drawn on by the artists. In some places it was covered with glitter; in others it was folded into origami animals. A giant copy was suspended from the ceiling and hung with bells that tinkled in the breeze whenever the door opened. It kept opening, too, to admit the hippest of the hip; literary and art world stars; Chinese community movers and shakers; and all the downtown glitterati, every one of them dressed in black. The only other color you could see, spotted throughout the crowd, was red, the color of luck and joy.

The party was roaring by the time we arrived, me in black silk pants and sleeveless black blouse, with a chunky red glass necklace; Jack in black suit jacket, black jeans, white shirt and red tie. Bill was a bit out of place, in a charcoal suit with a gray shirt and no tie, but at least he wasn’t wearing Vladimir’s bling.

“I thought about it,” he’d said when he picked me up. “But if Jack won’t wear the fat suit, you’re not getting the bling, either.”

“How is it I’m so lucky?” I’d climbed in the car and we’d fetched Jack and made tracks to Queens.

Unlike our first visit to the studio, entrance tonight was through the loading dock doors. The party and its thumping soundtrack spilled out onto the sidewalk and into the street. “Hey, Jack!” Francie See waved from behind a long outdoor table crowded with wine bottles. “We’re taking turns playing bartender. Hi, Lydia, Bill. What can I get you?”

Jack asked for Cabernet, Bill took a beer, and I got a Pellegrino with lime—I was forced to glare at Jack when he asked if I wouldn’t rather have a cosmo—and we strolled on inside. Almost no one at this shindig understood the part we’d played in freeing Mike Liu, which was how we wanted it. As far as we knew, just he and Anna, Pete Tsang, and Dr. Yang had any idea at all. Of them, Dr. Yang knew the most, but even he was sketchy on the whole Lionel Lau thing. The less anyone knew, we’d decided, the safer everyone would be.

“Is that Mike Liu?” I pointed down the hall to a thin man with glasses. He was animated, laughing, talking. Radiant, you might say, as was Anna, at his side. “Gee, he doesn’t look sick. Let’s go get introduced.” We headed over, but Mike and Anna were swept up by a writer I recognized from a profile in The New Yorker. “Oh,” I said. “I guess we’ll be later.”

“That’s the way it goes when you’re on the B list,” Bill shrugged.

Jack said, “Oh, really? I wouldn’t know.”

“Jack?” Someone had stepped out in front of us, an Asian woman in a red cheongsam. She raised her voice over the music to say, “Hello, Ms. Chin. Hello, Mr. Smith.” It took me a moment, then I realized: Anna’s mother.

“Mrs. Yang!” I said. “You look wonderful.”

Her bearing was still subdued, dignified, but she no longer looked grim, as she had when we’d met her in Anna’s living room. “Thank you. May I speak with you for just a minute?” She included all of us in her gaze, so we followed her through the door of the nearest open studio. It happened to be Francie See’s, where the bowl-and-tap painting we’d seen the birth of was pinned to the wall, joining all the other paintings of water, infinitely yielding and yet, in the end, invincible. Mrs. Yang turned to face us.

“I wanted to thank you. For all you’ve done for Anna, and my family.”

I said, “Dr. Yang told you?”

“Yes, he did. He keeps no secrets from me.”

“Oh. Well, you’re very welcome.” The guys seemed to have elected me spokesperson, or maybe I did that myself; so to be properly Chinese about it, I went on, “We’re honored to have had the opportunity to help. We were lucky to be able to come up with a fitting solution to the problem.”

“Fitting.” Mrs. Yang gave a small smile. “Yes, some solutions are more fitting than others. Anna’s so happy now that Mike is here, it’s hard to remember that my husband and I once opposed this marriage.”

“You wanted to protect her,” Bill said. “I’m sure she understood that, even if she didn’t like the way you tried to do it.”

“Of course she did,” I said. To my surprise I found myself channeling my mother. “That’s a privilege of family. To express concern and be understood, even if the expression’s odd.”

The look Mrs. Yang gave me was definitely odd. So was what she said: “And beyond family? Can one be understood, do you think, and maybe even forgiven, for expressions of concern that are … odd?”

I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t know what we were talking about. Bill just drank his beer, so I guessed he didn’t either. Jack, though, leaned down, kissed Mrs. Yang’s cheek, and said, “Forgiveness is always possible, even without understanding. When there’s understanding, it’s inevitable. Go back to your son-in-law’s party, Yang Yu-feng.”

After a moment she smiled; then she bowed. Jack bowed back, and she left the room.

I said, “Um?”

Jack smiled as he watched Mrs. Yang make her way down the hall. “She’s the one who shot at me.”

“What?”

“That’s what she wants to be forgiven for. She said he has no secrets from her. But she kept a few from him. She knew Anna had made the paintings, and what Anna and Pete were planning to use them for. That’s why the target was me, not Dr. Yang. For one thing, I’m not sure she could bring herself to shoot at him, even if no one was supposed to get hurt. For another, it didn’t matter that there are other people who do what I do. By the time Dr. Yang found and hired one of them the Free Mike Liu rally would’ve happened and the paintings would’ve been shown. She just wanted to buy time for Anna by scaring me off.”

“No, seriously? Where would Mrs. Yang even get a gun?”

“Oh, I don’t think she personally did it. She hired it.”

“Okay, then where would she get a person with a gun?”

“A gun, and a high slime factor. Right here, in the studio next to Anna’s.”

“Jon-Jon Jie?”

Jack nodded. “I’m sure Mrs. Yang paid him well. And he probably thought that this would, long-term, give him something to hold over Dr. Yang. For when he wants a show reviewed or something.”

“Gunshots in the middle of the day on Madison Avenue? He’d take that kind of risk?”

“Come on, he’s a Texas cowboy.”

Bill said, “What are you going to do?”

“About her? Nothing. I forgave her. The end. About him?” Jack shrugged.

“Jack, he shot at you!” I said.

“Can’t prove it. Besides,” he grinned, “he’s got enough problems. Every artist here knows he stole the paintings. He has an expensive lease on a Manhattan studio, and he’s about to lose his gallery. He’ll never drink white wine in this town again.”

“You don’t think Eddie To will take him on?”

“Not in this lifetime.”

Probably conjured by my magical powers, Eddie To right then passed the doorway in the company of a familiar-looking Chinese woman. He took a step backward and leaned in. “Hey! Is this you guys’ cabal office?” He led the young woman in. “Hu Mei-fan, this is Jack Lee, Lydia Chin, and Bill Smith. You need to meet them, they’re very dangerous.”

Hu Mei-fan smiled shyly, a smile that suddenly vanished when she got a look at me. Flushing, not meeting my eyes, she said, “We have met.”

In Doug Haig’s office, yes we had. “No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Mei-fan’s a painter, fresh off the boat from Beijing.” Eddie said as the young woman gave me a grateful smile and an almost imperceptible bow of the head. “Really good. We’ll be giving her a show later this year, Frank and I. After, you know…” He winked and touched a finger to the side of his nose. “About which, by the way, Drs. Snyder and Lin said exactly what you said they’d say.”

Jack asked, “They’ve seen the paintings? They’re here?”

“Snyder’s here for the week’s festivities. Lin’s in Hohhot. I sent him photos. Not so easy for him to travel, you know. Though now that he’s advisor to the top dogs in Chinese contemporary, he thinks his government may cut him more slack. Listen, if you people don’t have any crimes to plan right at the moment, let me buy you a drink.”

“Drinks are free here, Eddie.”

“All the more reason to get you the best. Come on, come say hi to Frank. Lydia and Bill, you haven’t met him yet. He’s right over there.”

We started out of Francie’s studio. “You guys go ahead,” I said. “There’s someone I want to talk to. I’ll catch you up.”

“Cool.” The four of them walked away down the corridor. Only Bill gave me a lingering glance, and I gave him a tiny head shake. To which he responded with a minute nod. I was tempted to wink, just to confuse him, but the man I wanted to speak with was turning the corner and I went after him.

That man was Dr. Yang, and I found him outside. A few yards away, under a streetlight, a half-dozen people were taking a cigarette break.

“Getting some fresh air, Professor?”

He turned to me. “Ms. Chin. Good evening.” He gestured at the others. “I used to smoke. After I stopped, I realized one of the things I missed most wasn’t the cigarette itself, but the excuse to leave a room for a brief, unquestioned period.”

“I understand the feeling completely. But if you were hoping for an unquestioned period right now, I’m afraid I’m going to mess you up. I have a question.”

He didn’t give me permission to ask it, but he didn’t turn away. So I said, “Chau Chun is alive.”

“Is that the question?”

“No, Jack’s got me convinced that’s true. But the other day in your office you gave us a very persuasive account of holding your friend’s hand while he died. Either you’re a terrific actor, or that story was also true.”

“Performance has never been one of my talents.”

“I disagree. I saw you in Haig’s office. But that’s not the point. That story was true.”

“Yes.”

“But it wasn’t Chau Chun who died.”

“No.”

“But,” I said, “Chau Chun was there.”

A long pause. Dr. Yang looked down the quiet street. “Yes. He was there.”

“And he’s here now.”

“Tonight? At this party? No, he—”

“No, Dr. Yang. Here. On this sidewalk. With me. You’re Chau Chun.”

The professor didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t react at all.

“It was Yang who died,” I said. “You took his identity. That’s why there were rumors about Chau for months afterward. People saw you before you managed to leave the country.”

“You’re stating these hypotheses,” the professor said quietly, “as facts. My students learn early on not to do that. You said you had a question.”

“I have. What really happened that day?”

“I have a question, also: What gives you the right to ask that?”

“I could say, I just risked an awful lot to save your reputation, your daughter’s career, and your son-in-law. But that’s not really it. I took this case from the start to find out what was going on. I’ve found a lot, some of it complicated, little of it what I expected. But there’s still something else. There’s still something I don’t know.”

“And do you have to know?”

“Do you mean, will I shrivel up and die if I don’t find out? Probably not. But I might keep looking, now that I know it’s there to be found.”

“Are you that tenacious?”

I told the simple truth. “Yes.”

Another long pause, and I gave him time for it. “What happened,” he finally said, “was what I told you. Chau had been in the square for days with our students; teaching, painting, chanting, encouraging. Yang went to persuade the demonstrators to leave. ‘Violence will serve no purpose,’ he said. ‘We can build the movement with our art.’ As they debated, the tanks came. There was gunfire, there was running, there was blood and screaming.” The professor fell silent again, and again I waited. Staring into the night, he said, “Yang was shot. The gentle peacemaker. Bleeding to death on the paving stones. I held his hand.”

The door behind us opened. Music thumped out of the party as a couple left laughing.

“But I didn’t take his identity,” the professor said. “He gave it to me.”

“I’m sorry?”

“As he lay there. His name and his papers. ‘They know you, Chau,’ he said. ‘They’ll come for you. Everyone knows you’ve been here from the beginning. And Yang the Coward, back in the studio, everyone knows about me, too. Take my papers.’ I refused. I told him he was being foolish, that I’d get him a doctor, that he’d be fine. ‘I’m dying,’ was his answer. ‘It doesn’t matter. But they’ll come for you.’ ‘Then let them come.’ ‘And Yu-feng?’ he said. ‘They’ll come for her, too. Your daughter, born in prison and taken away? Don’t let me die with that fear in my mind.’”

“So you did what he asked.”

“Yes. I exchanged our papers. He thanked me, and he died. Thanked me! Do you understand? I made my way out of the square and back to our offices, to do another thing, the last thing he asked of me. On his wall were three paintings I’d made for him to celebrate his faculty appointment. I took them. ‘I have no gift for your child. Take the paintings. From you to me, and now from me to your daughter.’ I stayed until he died, and then I did that.”

“But his body,” I said. “It was identified as Chau’s.”

“By me! Who better? I presented myself at the Public Security Bureau in the morning, claiming to seek information on my friend. It was chaos there, frightened people whose loved ones hadn’t come home. They showed me bodies, a roomful of them, all laid along the floor. I recognized one of our students. And Yang. ‘Chau Chun,’ I said. ‘From the Art Institute. A painter.’ That was all they needed. All they wanted. I left Beijing within the hour, making my way circuitously to my hometown, to my wife. We went into hiding until it was safe to contact Xi Xao, the man who came to you as Samuel Wing. He brought us here. My wife needed false papers made. I didn’t. I used Yang’s.”

Overhead the stars were bright; before us the street was empty. Music pounded from the artists’ studio, where a poet’s freedom was being celebrated.

“That’s why you wouldn’t give Anna’s Chaus to Haig.”

“They weren’t mine,” he said simply. “I’d been painting all along, in any case, in a rented studio.”

“And also, what Jack said was true. Your professional pride demanded those paintings be new, if you had to say they were.”

He regarded me. “I think you know something about professional pride, Ms. Chin.”

A compliment from the fierce professor? I tried to keep myself from falling over. “Does Anna know?”

“That I am Chau? No one knows but Xi Xao, my wife, and myself.” Slowly, he asked, “Will you tell her?”

“No.” I didn’t have to think about it at all. “This story isn’t mine to tell. Except to my partner. And my friend.” Interesting, what I’d just heard myself say. I’d have to consider that later. “But they won’t share it, I know. Chau Chun is Anna’s hero, though. Now that she knows he’s alive, she’ll want to meet him.”

“Many people will want to meet him. It will pass. Anna has other things to think about now. A career. A family. Thank you, Ms. Chin.”

“On behalf of Bill, Jack, and myself, you’re welcome.” I bowed. “Maybe we should go back inside now.” I added, “Dr. Yang.”

He held the door for me. Probably it was the lights, and the music, and the giddiness of the party as we walked in, but I imagined I saw a sparkle in the professor’s eyes as we went in search of his family.

ALSO BY S. J. ROZAN

THE LYDIA CHIN/BILL SMITH NOVELS

China Trade

Concourse

Mandarin Plaid

No Colder Place

A Bitter Feast

Stone Quarry

Reflecting the Sky

Winter and Night

The Shanghai Moon

On the Line

OTHER NOVELS

Absent Friends

In This Rain

SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

A Tale About a Tiger

Building

AS EDITOR

Bronx Noir

The Dark End of the Street (with Jonathan Santlofer)

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

GHOST HERO. Copyright © 2011 by S. J. Rozan. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.minotaurbooks.com

e-ISBN 9781429974639

First Edition: October 2011