The Misfortune Cookie

15 Yuanfen

Fate, mutual destiny; the force that brings two lovers together or binds two people in a relationship.

“Oh, yeah. This is the one. This is the dress,” said Danny Teng, dai lo of the Red Daggers. “She should wear this in the movie.”

His reptilian gaze slid over me as I stood before a mirror in Yee & Sons Trading Company while wearing a short, tight, sleeveless, Chinese-style polyester dress. It was mostly black, with one red panel. Although the neckline was perfectly respectable, the side-slits in the skirt went up so high that I kept worrying that Danny could see my underpants.

Then again, maybe my half-naked feeling was just due to the way he was undressing me with his eyes.

With my hair hastily piled atop my head and a pair of black go-go boots completing this ensemble, I studied my reflection for a moment, then said to Ted, “I look like a Eurasian hooker.”

“You look hot,” said Danny.

“Does he really get a say in this?” I said in disgust to Ted.

“Huh?” Ted, who had been studying my outfit, blinked and asked me to repeat the question. Then he responded mildly, “Oh. No. This is a directorial decision, Danny.”

“Hey, just giving my opinion as a red-blooded male,” said Danny, relaxing in a chair with his feet up and his hands folded behind his head. “But if the reporter lady wants to keep trying on more dresses, no problem here.”

For the past week—ever since Ted had announced he had a new backer—Danny had spent time on the set with us every single day. Sometimes he was there for over an hour; sometimes, to everyone’s relief, he left within twenty minutes. But at some point each day, he showed up and hung out for a while, making a nuisance of himself by smirking at the men and ogling me and Cynthia. And Ted wouldn’t get rid of him. Our director just asked us to tolerate Danny’s occasional presence and left it at that, offering no explanation for this rude, distracting thug hanging around our set each day.

At first, I had assumed Ted must owe Danny money, and Danny had come to collect. But by the second day, I realized the truth: Danny Teng must be Ted’s new “silent” backer, and he was monitoring his investment.

Oh, great.

Danny sure didn’t look like a guy with money to invest, but I supposed that was probably normal in his line of work. I mean, being well-groomed probably wouldn’t fit in well with a Red Dagger’s daily tasks of extortion, assault, and loan-sharking. Danny’s sleazy appearance was much better suited to credibility when conducting that sort of business.

And Ted, I now realized, was an even bigger idiot that I had supposed. No wonder Susan was always so angry at him!

After all, it only took a very short acquaintance with Danny Teng to realize he would slit someone’s throat without a second thought just for getting on his nerves. So what would he do to Ted if the film lost money? Or didn’t get finished? Or turned out to be lousy (as seemed not unlikely)?

We were all concerned about the situation, but Ted just vaguely kept assuring us that everything would be fine and there was no reason to worry. Since I was worried, though, I was pushing John about the investors’ event he had proposed. John, who shared my concerns about Ted’s (and everyone else’s) safety while Danny Teng was involved in the film, had by now introduced Ted to his NYU film contact. But until Ted took some of the necessary steps, such as preparing a budget and a sample reel, there wasn’t much for anyone else to do besides nag. Which didn’t really work on Ted; if it did, after all, then Susan or his mother would have gotten somewhere with him by now.

We had so far endured more than a week of Danny’s daily visits to the set, and it looked like things would be this way for a while.

Being none too bright, Danny wasn’t quite able to process the information that I was an actress, not a reporter—as he had assumed at Benny’s wake. So now he vaguely seemed to think I was an investigative journalist who was performing in Ted’s film in my copious spare time. I didn’t try to clear up this misunderstanding, since it sometimes meant I could get rid of Danny by asking him for personal quotes about his life of crime for my “newspaper.”

This evening, alas, Ted and I had Danny all to ourselves. Earlier in the day, we had been filming on Hester Street with the regular crew and several cast members. But since tomorrow was the firecracker festival, the first day of the Chinese New Year, this was a busy time for everyone in the production except me. It was sort of like Christmas Eve was for gentiles, I supposed—and me, once again, spared the frantic bustle by virtue of being Jewish. (So at least there’s some advantage, once in a while, in being one of the Chosen People.) Ted had halted work shortly before dark and let everyone else go.

John and Bill went off for their final practice before tomorrow’s big day of dancing in the streets in their elaborate lion costume, surrounded by firecrackers and dense crowds. Others went off to do their final grocery shopping for the holiday, prepare a family feast, or finish cleaning and decorating their homes in time to welcome in the New Year.

And Ted and I walked over to his mother’s store, accompanied by Danny, to choose Alicia’s costume for the scene in which she would show up at a family event dressed in an inappropriately tiny cheongsam (so I was probably destined to wear this chilly dress for that scene, since it certainly suited the script), in a doomed attempt to prove to her Chinese-American boyfriend how “ethnic” she could be. Or something. By contrast, Mei would be dressed with simple elegance and good taste, behaving with modest dignity and grace while Alicia got progressively drunker, louder, and ruder.

Although it was a pretty silly scene, with Alicia being more socially tone-deaf than a rock (or, to give another example, than Danny Teng), I was starting to look forward to doing it. One of the fun things about acting is the chance to do things you’d never get to do in reality (such as fight to the death with a rapier, rule England, or win an international chess tournament) and to behave in ways that you’d never dream of behaving in your own life—and to do it without consequences, either. Alicia would humiliate herself and lose her boyfriend for behaving like a gauche, drunken idiot in that scene; but I’d have fun being outrageously rude and clueless, get paid for it, and maybe go out for a pleasant meal with my colleagues afterward.

Looking at my reflection again now, I asked Ted, “So this is the dress you like best?”

Ted walked around me, a frown of concentration on his face and his hand on his chin, studying me as if I were an abstract sculpture. While waiting for his verdict, I ignored the icky kissing noises that Danny was making. Finally Ted said, “Yeah. I think it looks good on Alicia, and it’ll look good on camera. Are you okay with it, Esther?”

“I guess so. But I’m a little worried about how high these side slits go.”

“Hmm.” Ted examined one of them. “We could have about an inch of it sewn together, if that would make you more comfortable.”

Ignoring Danny’s protests, I said, “That would work.”

To my relief, Danny’s cell phone rang, taking his attention off me. He answered the call while Ted said to me, “How does it feel apart from the side—”

“Holy fuck!” Danny shouted, leaping to his feet.

We both flinched and looked at him.

“No fucking way!” Danny screamed.

I grabbed Ted’s arm and started slowly backing away from Danny, heading for a long aisle down which we could escape this area. I found Lily’s store as disorienting as I had last time, but I didn’t care if I got lost now—I just cared about getting away from Danny. He was obviously a dangerous man to be around when something made him angry—and it was clear that something had just enraged him.

Danny switched to Chinese and was talking rapidly now.

“My Cantonese isn’t that good,” Ted said, “but I think he’s saying, ‘Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t go anywhere.’”

“I don’t care what he’s saying,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here before he takes it out on us, whatever ‘it’ is.”

“Now he’s saying he’ll be right there,” Ted whispered to me as I continued slowly tugging him toward that long aisle nearby. “He says he’s leaving right away.”

Oh, thank God, I thought.

“You two! Don’t move!”

We froze when Danny pointed at us. He had ended his call and was shoving his phone into his pocket, his movements angry and clumsy. His eyes were wild and his face was flushed. Something big had obviously happened.

I had no intention of asking what it was. I didn’t want to know. Given his mood, I just wanted him to leave.

“I gotta go,” Danny said roughly. “How the fuck do I get out of here? This place is like a puzzle!”

“Oh. Well, uh . . .” Ted scratched his head. “You go back down that aisle behind you, turn left, then keep walking until you come to—”

“Just fucking show me!” Danny shouted. “Now! Take me to the goddamn front door!”

“Okay,” said Ted. “Okay. I’ll show you. Calm down and I’ll—” He flinched when Danny started screaming at him in Chinese. I had a feeling the gist of it was, Don’t tell me to calm down, probably accompanied by some choice epithets.

“Okay. Sorry,” said Ted. “Esther, you stay here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I nodded and said nothing, not wanting to attract Danny’s attention by speaking. I held my breath until he and Ted disappeared from view, then let it out in a rush and sank into a chair, wondering what had happened to set Danny off like that.

After my nerves stopped vibrating, I considered changing back into my own clothes, but decided I’d wait for Ted to return. He seemed satisfied with this costume, but I was pretty tired of changing clothes by now; so in case he wanted to take one more look at this dress before settling on it, I decided to leave it on until I was sure we were done here. And since I was a little chilly, I slipped on my coat while I waited.

I checked the time and was surprised to discover how late it was. No wonder I was feeling hungry. I decided I’d pick up some food and go to Max’s place after I left here. Now that I had deposited some of my modest movie salary into my bank account, it seemed like it should be my turn to buy dinner. And I wanted to confer with Manhattan’s resident mage.

I was starting to think we’d been wrong about Evil’s voracious appetite on this occasion. If there had been any mystical murders in Chinatown since Benny Yee’s death more than two weeks ago, we hadn’t heard about them; and between the three of us, we’d been doing our best to follow events closely in this neighborhood. But no one connected to Uncle Six or Benny Yee had died, and there seemed to be no local gossip about mysterious mojo, death curses, or fresh corpses found clutching broken gourmet cookies.

Maybe we had overlooked the fact that killing Benny Yee was just business to someone like Uncle Six. If he had found a clever way to do it, a mystical means that wouldn’t be detected as murder, it didn’t necessarily mean that such a cool-headed man was going to go off the deep end and start sending misfortune cookies to other enemies, too. If Benny had been a high-profile problem for him, then maybe Uncle Six had just wanted a one-time low-profile solution, a method he didn’t intend to use twice.

And since Lucky refused to leave town until we were sure no more cookies would hit the street, so to speak, I thought it was time to rethink our strategy. The Chens loved Lucky, but he was starting to drive them crazy after three weeks as their resident fugitive. They were getting pretty tired of Nelli, too, who was still keeping Lucky company more than a week after Max and I had left her there. Thanks to the disguise John had fashioned for the old mobster, Lucky and Nelli could go outside once or twice a day, but they still had to be careful. The rest of the time, the inactivity and uncertainty of his situation was making Lucky pretty stir-crazy, three weeks on.

There had only been one more Gambello arrest this past week, and that one had occurred out of town. Detectives Lopez and Quinn had driven to Saranac Lake, a town five or six hours upstate by car, to work with local authorities there to apprehend their suspect, so they’d been out of town for a few days. Before leaving, though, Lopez had made good on his promise to help Ted, and the slow process of getting the necessary location permits was now underway.

There was no question of doing a location shoot during the firecracker festival, though. Ted should have applied months ago if he wanted to do that. But it looked like most of the other locations would be approved, thanks to Lopez’s help—though not as fast as Ted had hoped. The wheels of bureaucracy turned slowly, even with grease.

Growing bored, I checked the time again, and was surprised by how long I had been waiting. Realizing Ted must have forgotten about me—and that I probably should have expected it, knowing him—I decided to leave. I grabbed my purse and headed for the stairs, trying to remember the directions that Ted had started giving to Danny before the dai lo had insisted that the director show him the way.

After several turns, twists, and switchbacks, though, I was lost and had no idea where I was. That was when I realized that I was also still in my costume. No longer chilly after I’d donned my coat, I’d been comfortable enough to forget I wasn’t wearing my street clothes.

I wondered if I should just resign myself to wearing Alicia’s party dress for the rest of the night and keep looking for an exit. I’d be chilly once I got outside, but at least I wouldn’t waste additional time wandering around here. Trying to find the clothing section and the dressing room again could turn this into a long evening.

“Oh, great, Esther,” I muttered. “Just great.”

“Hello? Is someone there?” called a male voice—one that sounded familiar.

“Hello?” I called back, trying to figure out where he was. “Who’s there?”

“Esther? Is that you?”

“Yes,” I called. “Lopez?”

“Yeah. I think I’m lost,” he said. “Well, no, I’m definitely lost.”

It sounded like he was somewhere in the area on my left, beyond the tall painted privacy screens and hanging textiles that surrounded me. “Stay where you are,” I called. “Keep talking. I think I can find you if you hold still.”

“This place is like a mystery wrapped up in a maze and concealed in a rabbit warren,” he said. “I’m not even sure what floor we’re on.”

“I think we’re on the third floor,” I called. “So you’re back in town now, huh?”

“Yeah, we got back from Saskatchewan last night.”

“I thought it was Saranac Lake.”

“That place feels like Saskatchewan. I’ve never been so cold in my whole li—Oh! There you are.” He smiled at me as I popped my head around a corner and found him. “Did you bring provisions? I’m not confident about finding our way out of here before the spring thaw.”

“I’m going to call Ted and tell him to come rescue us. He was supposed to come back upstairs and never did. Probably forgot about me.”

“Probably,” said Lopez, who obviously knew him by now.

But when I tried Ted, I got his voicemail. “Oh, for God’s sake. He’s not answering.”

“He’s good at that.” As the flaps of my coat swung open, Lopez said, “I don’t know why you’re risking pneumonia on a night like this, but that dress looks great on you.”

“I came here for a costume fitting.”

“Oh, of course.” His gaze roamed over me, and the store suddenly didn’t feel chilly anymore. “Are you sure you’re not playing a hooker?”

“No, just an exhibitionist.” I put my phone back in my purse. “So why are you wandering around here?”

“I was supposed to meet Ted. His mother told me he’d be up here with you. I had no idea what I was getting into when I said, ‘Okay, I’ll just go upstairs and find them.’”

“Fools rush in,” I said.

“And if Ted’s not up here with you, and he’s still not answering his phone . . . I’d bet real money that he’s forgotten I was coming here tonight.”

“I have a feeling you’re right,” I said. “He didn’t mention it.”

“Great. Well, I’m too busy to waste time trying to track him down. So I’m ready to get out of here.”

“So am I,” I said. “I don’t suppose you remember how you got to this spot?”

“Um . . .” He led me to the other end of this aisle, then stopped and frowned in puzzlement. “I could have sworn I came this way . . . But this is definitely not the stuff I walked past before. I’d remember seeing a few hundred old telephones, radios, and analog TVs. Does anyone buy this stuff?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know that there was stock like this on this floor.”

“Well, if we just keep following along the wall,” Lopez said, “sooner or later, we’re bound to come to an exit door or some stairs.”

“You say that with the confidence of someone who hasn’t spent much time in this place.”

As we passed bookcases filled with about five hundred copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, he said, “Weird. Well, if we get stuck here for a long time, at least we’ll have some light reading material to help pass the hours.”

“Hey, look—stairs!”

We descended these, but when we got to the next floor, we couldn’t find a way down to the main floor. I called out a few times, hoping Lily (or someone—anyone!) would hear me, but there was no response. “I sure hope she hasn’t closed up shop for the night.”

“Probably not, the lights are still on. But if we wind up trapped here overnight, I sure hope there’s something to eat.”

“Me, too.”

“You’re hungry?”

“Starving. I haven’t had . . . Hang on.” I looked around and said, “I’ve been here before. I remember this couch.” It was the elaborate nineteenth-century piece from Hong Kong that I had noticed on my first visit.

“Jesus, at that price, it would be hard to forget,” Lopez said, looking at the tag. “It is made of gold or something?”

“I think if we keep going this way, we can get back down to the main floor.”

“So if you’re hungry,” he said, following me in that direction, “how about I buy you dinner when we get out of here?”

I stopped so abruptly that he bumped into me. I staggered a little, and he caught me by the shoulders. I jerked away from him, saying, “Don’t touch me!”

His removed his hands immediately and backed away. “Sorry, sorry.”

“You’ve lost touching privileges,” I snapped.

“Am I supposed to just let you fall down?”

“Oh, like that would be the worst thing you’ve done to me!”

“I told you why I arrested you,” he said. “Why I had to be the one who arrested—”

“That’s not what I’m talking about!”

He blinked. “Oh. You mean that.”

“Yes, that,” I said. “How could you think I’d go out for dinner with you tonight after you—”

“Had sex with you and then didn’t call,” he said wearily.

“Yes!”

There was a long, tense silence between us.

“Okay. Here it is,” he said. “And you won’t like it.”

“I really, really believe that.”

“I didn’t know it was a week. I wasn’t thinking about time. I was . . . preoccupied.”

I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “That’s it? That’s all you’ve got to say?”

“No . . .” He ran a hand over his face, then sat down on a chair that probably cost more than he earned in a year.

“Don’t sit there,” I said in alarm. “You might—”

“A chair that costs that much should be able to support a person for a few minutes,” he said irritably. “And I’m kind of tired. No, really tired. I can’t even remember the last time I wasn’t exhausted.”

“Fatigue is not going to get you out of—”

“I know. I’m just saying.” He blew out his breath, a weary gesture that made the dark hair hanging over his forehead flutter a little. “It’s been . . . a bad few weeks. Right now, I can’t think of a single person in my life who isn’t mad at me.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve given some of us really good reasons to be mad at you.”

“True enough.”

He did sound exhausted. But I didn’t care.

“Do you have any idea how humiliated I’ve felt? And how . . . how . . .” Okay, if we were going to have an honest talk, I might as well say it. “How hurt?”

He looked at me, his expression softening. I realized his blue eyes were bloodshot again. “I was mostly getting angry from you. But now that you mention it . . . Yeah, I can guess. It must have hurt.” Holding my gaze, he said, “I’m sorry, Esther. I’m really sorry. I screwed up.”

Just like that.

They were the words I’d been waiting weeks to hear. Not eloquent and flowery, as I’d imagined his apology on a few occasions. But stark and sincere. And, as apologies go, sufficient.

It kind of took the fight out of me.

I sat down on a chair that definitely cost more than I made in a year.

After a long moment of absorbing his apology in silence, and realizing that hearing it had helped, I nonetheless knew that I still needed an explanation.

I said, “I don’t suppose . . .”

“What?” he asked.

“. . . that you were abducted by space aliens?”

He gave a puff of laughter. “No. Sorry. Is that what you were hoping?”

“It would have been an acceptable explanation. That, or being dismembered by marauding bandits. Or maybe having your tongue cut out by—”

“I get the picture,” he said. “Ouch.”

“I just kept trying to think of . . . why.”

“My reason’s not as good as any of your theories,” he said. “Or as colorful.”

“Well?” I prodded.

“It’s so complicated, I don’t even remember where it . . .” He gave himself a shake. “Yeah. Wait. I do. When I got to work that morning. Christmas Day. After I left your apartment. I was still floating on cloud nine. Didn’t even mind when Napoli gave me a hard time for being late. All I could think about was . . . well, you. Us. That night. I was sleep-deprived and flooded with good hormones and really relaxed, and I thought . . .”

“What?”

“That it would be smooth sailing for us from now on. You and me. Because, of course, one night of great sex completely fixes everything between two people.” He shook his head. “God, I’m an idiot.”

“You know, it helps a lot of if you use a telephone at some point after the sex,” I pointed out.

He decided to ignore that and press on. “Anyhow, then reality intruded. The way it does. I was supposed to be writing up my report about Fenster’s. That’s why I’d gone to your place that night. To find out what the hell you were doing in the middle of that mess, in the middle of the night, with Max, his neurotic dog, a Gambello capo, and a bunch of really confused elves and reindeer.” He paused, maybe hoping I’d jump in and explain—or maybe just bemused all over again by that image. “So that morning, I still didn’t know what to say in my report, and I didn’t really want to think about it. Not right after we’d . . . I just didn’t want to think about you and a police report in the same space that morning. You know?”

“I appreciate that.”

“So I set it aside. And since it was Christmas Day, there wasn’t much else to do besides paperwork. So I decided to start sifting through the mountain of stuff we’d been collecting on the Gambellos during the Fenster investigation. Someone had to do it, after all, and it was a good way to avoid worrying about out how to keep you out of a police report—again.”

And that was when he found it. While sleepily leafing through scattered pieces of evidence that had been collected in the past week or two because OCCB was looking in the wrong place for the Fenster hijackers, he found solid evidence that Bella Stella was laundering money—and he could connect various members of the Gambello crew to it, as well as Stella herself.

“I was jazzed at first. Barely awake,” he said, “but pretty excited. OCCB had known—or had assumed—for years that Stella’s place was a laundry for the Gambellos. But we’d never had any proof. And suddenly, there it was. Right in front of me. Before lunch on Christmas Day, when I’d only been poking around in that pile because I didn’t want to write a report that was going to mess with my love life.”

Speaking of which . . . Then he remembered that I worked for Stella—and that I considered her a friend. Above all, he recalled that I was broke, down on my luck, out of work after Christmas Eve, feeling low, and counting on working at Bella Stella after the holidays.

“And that’s when I really lost the plot.” Lopez’s voice was heavy with self-recrimination. “I knew what I should do—what I was supposed to do . . . But I stalled. And then . . .” I could see that this was hard for him to say to me. Hard for him to remember or admit—even to himself. “I buried the evidence.”

“You did what?” I blurted.

“I still can’t believe I did it. All I could think about was . . . Look, I’m not putting this on you, Esther. I’m not. It’s all on me. No one else. But all I could think about was what it would mean to you. How upset you’d be. Stella in jail, your job gone, no income . . . And so I did the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“Lopez . . .” I shook my head, having no idea what to say.

Whatever I had been expecting, it wasn’t this. I knew he had fudged some reports here and there to protect me, to keep my name out of things—and that his conscience troubled him over that. Troubled him a lot, in fact.

So if anyone else had told me that Lopez had deliberately buried evidence against the Gambellos . . . I just wouldn’t believe it. No way.

I stared at him in stunned amazement.

I knew it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t known about it, and I certainly hoped I wouldn’t have asked him to do it . . . But when I recalled how angry and upset I had indeed been when he shut down Stella’s that night, I couldn’t pretend that this really was all on him. I knew he’d concealed that evidence for me. And I knew he must have despised himself for it—and must have been wrestling with some pretty complicated feeling about me, too, as a result of that.

He continued, “I was so wrapped up in that . . . that whole thing all day, I didn’t even check my phone for the first time until I was on my way out to Nyack that night to see my family.”

By then, I recalled, Max’s festive Christmas gathering at the bookstore was winding down, and I was starting to wonder why Lopez hadn’t called me yet. It was the beginning of my long, steep slide into tail-chasing craziness.

“That’s when I got your message,” he said. “The one you left me after you woke up. I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t want to. You know? I didn’t want to tell you what I had done. I didn’t want to lie to you. And I couldn’t think about anything else. So I figured I’d call you later, when I wasn’t such a basket case.”

By the time he got to his parents’ house that night for a late Christmas dinner, his exhaustion, his tension, and—above all—his shame had put him in such a rotten mood that he had quarreled badly with his mother, his father, and both of his brothers.

“None of whom are speaking to me yet,” he said. “Though my mom still calls regularly to tell me she’s not talking to me.”

Lopez went straight back to the city early the next morning, leaving his family fuming. He returned to work, though he was supposed to be on leave, because he had to fix what he had done. He couldn’t live with it. So he retrieved the evidence he’d hidden. Then he did the next stupid thing, he said, in an impressive line-up of idiotic moves. He shifted the evidence so that someone else at OCCB would find it.

“I figured we’d still get the right result,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be my fault that you lost your job and your friend went to prison.”

However, no one else spotted the evidence he tried to slide subtly under their noses. This made him so exasperated and guilt-ridden that he quarreled with a number of his colleagues, none of whom knew why he was being such a temperamental ass.

So Lopez finally realized he had to man up, “find” the evidence, and bring it to light.

“There was no other way. I couldn’t face myself, you, my family, my colleagues, my priest—anyone—until I did what I should have done from the start. My sworn duty. My goddamn job. What I’m supposed to do.”

He was still worried about how I’d react, though. So he decided the best way to handle the problem would be to raid Bella Stella immediately, since I had told him that I wouldn’t be working there until after the holidays. That was why he started pushing and prodding impatiently for a quick bust, which further irritated all his colleagues and his boss.

“Everyone was ready to kill me by then. I don’t why they didn’t just drop me off a cliff one night and cover their tracks,” he said. “And New Year’s Eve was an idiotic night to run a big operation, of course. But we couldn’t do it before that, because of the way I’d messed around with the evidence for days. And I wouldn’t let them wait until after that, because I didn’t want you involved in the bust—and I knew you’d be working after the holidays.”

Now, as if finding someone else to blame for his woes, he glared at me. “How was I to know that a shift had opened up and you’d be working there that night? Not just working, but dancing on tabletops—”

“Oh, would you let that go, already?”

“—while I was going through hell because of you. Because of the way I felt about . . . because I didn’t want you to . . .” He made a disgusted sound. “Well, no, mostly because I’m an idiot.”

“At least that’s one thing we can agree on,” I said mildly.

“So I was caught totally flatfooted when you started saying, in front of all of Bella Stella, Esther—”

“Oh, how did you think I would react to seeing you in those circumstances, after you hadn’t even—”

“I know, I know. Never mind. But when you said that I’d gone a whole week without calling you . . . It was news to me. I was so squirrelly, I hadn’t clocked that at all. I had no idea it had been a week since we’d . . .” He shrugged. “I was thinking about you constantly and worrying about all kinds of stuff. But not about that—about how long since the last time we’d talked.”

“We didn’t talk that night,” I said. “You had your way with me and then left.”

“We talked a little.” After a moment, he said, “Anyhow, that’s it, Esther. Everything. All of it. Well, until I arrested you.”

“You did get me out of jail, though.” I wasn’t angry anymore. I was stunned, sad, amazed, sympathetic, and worried, but not angry. I was still a little irritated, though. “Not to harp on this, Lopez, but you should have called. Everything that was going on, all the stuff you’ve described . . . It didn’t occur you to that you should tell me at some point?”

“I was going to tell you,” he said defensively. “I was going to get it all sorted out and taken care, clear the decks, shut down Stella’s . . . and then call you.”

“Then?” I repeated. “After—”

“Yeah. After. I was going to explain everything to you calmly, as a done deal, when it was all over. And that’s also when I’d break the news that you’d have to find a new job.”

“That was your plan?”

“It was.”

“That was a bad plan.”

“Yes, I have since figured that out,” he said sourly. “But by the time I found you working at Stella’s that night—where you weren’t supposed to be—I’d been so busy torturing myself and everyone around me, I had no idea that a whole week had passed since we’d slept together. So is there any possibility you could let go of that particular grievance now?”

After my stony silence had filled the cavernous interior of Yee & Sons Trading Company for a few long, awkward moments, Lopez muttered, “I just said the wrong thing again, didn’t I?”

“There are times,” I said, “when I really cannot believe what a guy you can be.”

“Yeah, well, if it gives you any satisfaction,” he said morosely, “you’ve got a lot of company right now.”

I looked at him for a long moment. Then I rose to my feet, walked over to him, took his face in my hands, and kissed him.

He was so startled he froze for a moment—then relaxed and started kissing me back. And it was exactly the way I remembered his kisses—dark and sweet, seductive and dizzying . . . I sank into him, into the dark heat of his mouth, the strength of his arms, the flutter of his breath on my cheek, and the tickle of his hair brushing my skin as we shifted to get closer to each other.

I had been starving for him since the moment I woke up in am empty bed on Christmas Day. And now I feasted.

After a few minutes of making up this way—because sometimes we really were just so much better at this than at talking to each other—we paused to breathe. I gulped in air, resting my forehead against his as I leaned on his shoulders, my legs shaky and my heart pounding joyfully. His arms were tight around me and his legs straddled me as he leaned back a little in his extravagantly expensive chair to meet my gaze. He looked dazed, inquisitive, aroused—and a little wary, as if not sure we were done arguing.

“Men.” I looked down into his wide-eyed gaze and shook my head. “Honestly.”

“This isn’t a trick question,” he whispered, pulling me closer again. “Are you speaking to me now?”

“Maybe,” I murmured against his mouth. “If you buy me dinner.”

He smiled. “I’d like that.”

“Not Chinese food, though,” I whispered, our arms still around each other as we nuzzled and teased a little. “It’s all I’ve eaten lately.”

“Hmm. Well, um . . . I know a good Cuban place that’s not far from here. In the East Village.”

“That sounds good.” Then I remembered where we were and laughed. “But first we have to escape from Yee’s Madhouse.”

“Oh, right.” He let me untangle myself from him, then he looked around as he rose to his feet. “Maybe if we—”

“Hello?” a woman’s voice called. “Detective? Are you still here?”

“Lily!” I cried, recognizing her voice. “Yes, he’s here! So am I. We’re having trouble finding the way out.”

“Ah! I think I know where you are. Don’t move, please.” When she appeared about half a minute later, she said, “I didn’t know you were still here, Esther. But when I was getting ready to close the store, I realized I had not seen the detective leave yet. Here, let me show you out.”

“Thank you,” I said, feeling disinclined ever to come back here again. Not without a compass and a big ball of twine, anyhow.

Once back down on the main floor, we said goodnight to Lily, who seemed to be alone in the store, and went out the front exit. As soon as the icy air enveloped me, I remembered that I was in Alicia’s skimpy costume and huddled deeper inside my coat, shivering a little.

Lopez put his arm around me and pulled me close, trying to keep me warm. “I drove a police car here—one with a heater that actually works, go figure. Come on.”

“Oh, good,” I said. “But are you supposed to use a police car on a date?”

“No, so I’m counting on you not to rat on me.” He guided me to his car, then halted a couple of feet away from it when his phone rang.

As he reached into his pocket for his cell, I said, “That’s not your mother, is it?” The ringtone was different.

“No, it’s Andy—Detective Quinn. He’s not even supposed to be on duty right now, so I don’t know why he’d be calling.”

“And you have to take his call,” I said with resignation.

“Sorry.” He held the phone up to his ear. “Lopez.”

As a gust of wind blew down the street and crept under my coat, I stepped away from him and went around to the passenger side of the car, waiting to be let in.

“What?” Lopez said, looking stunned. “You’re sure? When?”

My heart sank. I knew that look, that tone. We wouldn’t be having Cuban food—or anything else—together tonight.

“Yeah, of course. I’ll be right there,” he said, exactly as I had known he would.

After he ended the call, he looked at me across the roof of the police car. “I’m really sorry . . .”

“I know.”

“I have to go.” He came around to my side of the car, gave me a quick kiss, then said, “I’ll call you.”

I gave him a look.

“I’ll call you,” he said firmly.

I nodded. When he started walking away, though, I frowned. “Aren’t you forgetting something, detective?”

He turned around to look at me. “Huh?”

“Your car,” I pointed out.

“Oh. No, I’m just going a couple of blocks.”

I realized something must have happened on his Chinatown case. I nodded and waved him off, smiling as I watched him walk away with a spring in his step, the bright lights shining on his black hair. Then I looked down into the car, thinking with regret that it would have been nice to go home in a heated vehicle. And get into bed with a heated man . . .

And that was when I saw it.

Sitting on the passenger seat—so that I might easily have crushed it if I had gotten into the car without looking—was a large, prettily wrapped, chocolate-drizzled fortune cookie.