by S. J. Rozan
“Won’t, or can’t?”
“Won’t. He has the juice, but he says traitors like Kairong are scum and deserve to rot. She can’t believe it—a collaborator like him calling Kai-rong a traitor. Then she says she’s hated the general for a long time, but never more than now.
“That entry ends there. The next one—the last—is from the next morning. Totally different. Even her handwriting changes, back to that beautiful calligraphy again. She writes she’s got a plan. Here:
“ ‘I spoke with Major Ulrich. I said I’ll bring the list the police want. He’s promised to stop them from hurting Kai-rong, and also to say nothing to the general—though his price was high! And would be higher if he knew everything I’m planning, which of course I didn’t tell him! Though I don’t believe he’d stop me out of loyalty to the Japanese or friendship for the general. Such a nasty man.
“ ‘But Rosalie agreed to his price, for Kai-rong! What choice is there? As soon as the car’s ready I’ll take little Li to his Aunt Rosalie—they love each other so much! He won’t cry when I leave him there. If Kai-rong really does have this list, I know where he keeps it: in that leather case he’s shut quickly, twice, when I entered his room without warning. The first time was years ago, soon after he came home. He teased and made a game of it, he keeping his secret, me trying to guess. I said it was letters from his secret love. He turned red as a rose! That was the moment I knew he did have a secret love. Oh, what days those were, when we laughed! I had so much, and I didn’t know! I thought I was miserable, locked inside the villa walls. Kairong warned me, but I wouldn’t listen. Of course he was right—I had no idea what misery was.
“ ‘The second time was less than a month ago. Rosalie was with Cook when I arrived, so I went to see Kai-rong. He swiftly closed the case as I entered. Our game of years ago came flying back, and jokingly I demanded to know what was in the secret case. I suppose I was hoping to recapture that time. But he didn’t even smile. He said I must never ask, and never say a word to anyone that the case was here.
“ ‘I’ve never asked myself what Kai-rong was doing on his trips to the north. More than once Father told Kai-rong he was wrong, that there was no wheat or salt, no kerosene or coal to be brought from Russia or Mongolia. He wanted Kai-rong to give up this idea of northern opportunity and stay in Shanghai, but Kai-rong insisted and kept traveling. I thought he was only stubborn. As I’ve always been, right or wrong.
“ ‘I think Rosalie knew. She said she’d been afraid something like this would happen—why would she be, if she had no idea, if she thought it was only business he was traveling for?
“ ‘I hear the gravel crunch—the car’s rolling up the drive. Soon the houseboy will come to say the driver’s ready, and Amah will bring little Li. I look at these pages and feel like laughing. How many times did Teacher Lu tell me the practice of calligraphy would steady my nerves? He made me so angry—all the old ways made me angry! And yet, why have I been rattling on, writing down every thought in my head, if not to calm myself for the day to come?
“ ‘I’ll pack up my pens now—if I can’t find Kai-rong’s list, I swear I’ll invent one! Rosalie will be ready. I won’t tell her my fears. What good would that do? She’s beside herself with worry as it is, and with the new little one growing inside her she has more than enough to think of. Major Ulrich’s price is very hard on her, but she’d give any treasure, all treasures, to save Kai-rong. Oh, how I wish I’d just once felt a love like that! The value of the thing will mean nothing—though it’s everything to that German vulture!—but the tie to her mother will make it painful to give up.
“ ‘Here’s the knock on the door. So many pages in this book still empty! Maybe they’re fated to stay that way.
“ ‘And maybe not. Soon, we’ll see.’ ”
Stunned, I read the last lines again, and again. “My God! Bill!” I finally stammered. “ ‘The value of the thing will mean nothing, but the tie to her mother—’ ”
“I’m with you.”
“Major Ulrich. Who was he? What happened to him?”
The car’s rhythm changed; I looked up and needed a moment. Bill was pulling into a parking lot. Dark-clothed people flowed slowly down the path to a synagogue’s open door. “Go on in,” Bill said. “I’ll call Professor Edwards. Maybe this is a trail he can follow.”
So I left Bill outside under the gray sky, while I put my hat on and went in to say good-bye to Joel. And to Mei-lin, too.
22
I understood nothing that went on at Joel’s funeral except the rabbi’s eulogy, which was in English. He praised Joel as a devoted family man, a tireless member of the synagogue he’d helped found, an enthusiastic Hebrew school teacher, a volunteer always ready. All of which he probably was, though I’d heard him find fault more than once with his slacker son, and grumble about another insufferably boring Men’s Club meeting. The only thing the rabbi said about Joel’s professional life was that he was “well respected.” Joel would have rolled his eyes at such bland anonymity. What he was, was a damned good investigator who got a kick out of his work. And taught me a lot. And had an annoying habit of giving orders and sticking his nose into everyone’s personal life. But the Joel I knew, the rumpled, dogged detail man always ready with uninvited advice, who started or ended every conversation with some awful off-key rendition of a Broadway song, that Joel wasn’t mentioned. You change in death; I’d noticed this before. It’s as though the whole you isn’t good enough to deserve all this sadness, so the suspect parts get pared away until you’re something more wonderful-sounding, though flatter and a lot less you.
Besides the eulogy, everything else was a matter of Hebrew prayers. When the congregation quieted, the cantor’s voice rose, then hushed, swelled, fell away again. A chill went through me. Here was a sorrow too deep for speech, an ancient grief that could only be told in song. That sorrow, I thought, wasn’t just for Joel. Five thousand years of tragedy called through that voice; and yet it also was for Joel, for this one, unique loss.
I tried to follow, doing what everyone did, as far as I could. At times the congregation stood, or responded to the rabbi in unison. More than once the entire thing seemed to break down into what I had a sneaky feeling might have been Joel’s favorite part: a murmuring, swaying, every-man-for-himself chaos. Every-woman-for-herself, too, where I was; a low curtain divided the room down the center, women on the right, men on the left. I could see Bill over there, wearing a black yarmulke. I took one quick peek to find him and turned away, because I wasn’t sure it was okay to look over the curtain. At that, I heard Joel’s exasperated voice in my head: Chinsky, if it wasn’t okay, we’d have put a higher curtain.
Oh, give me a break, Pilarsky, I thought, as I had so many times, and was surprised to find the woman next to me giving me a quick hug. She held out a pack of Kleenex. Finally it dawned on me I was crying. Good going, Chinsky, that’s some detective work.
I thought about suggesting to Joel that he could only stay in my head if he promised not to sing, but maybe it’s impolite to set conditions on the dead at their own funerals. So I sat a little longer, and stood a little more, and Joel had nothing else to say, and then we must have come to the end because people started filing out.
In silence and with me wielding Kleenex, Bill and I drove to the cemetery in a line of cars. We stood as a pine coffin with a Star of David on the lid—a box that looked too small for Joel—was lowered. There were more prayers, and some people spoke, including Joel’s now-grown slacker son who broke down in tears and couldn’t finish. Joel’s wife, Ruth, and his children wore black ribbons on their lapels; the rabbi ripped each one in half. Rending the garments, a funeral custom among my people, too. Ruth lifted a small carved box and poured a stream of sand into the grave. “From Israel,” whispered the kind woman I’d been sitting beside, who turned out to be a cousin of Joel’s. “It’s a mitzvah to be buried with soil from the Holy Land. Joel brought it back with him years ago. But not from Jerusalem,” sh
e added with a smile. “From the beach.”
Everyone was offered the chance to throw a shovelful of dirt into the grave. I wasn’t sure, if I were Joel, that I’d see this as an act of friendship, but I took a turn. In the heavy, damp air, that simple exertion pulled a trickle of sweat down my spine. Then it all was done. We left Joel there and made our way to the gate.
“Lack of cheeriness seems to be the order of the day,” I said to Bill as I climbed into the car.
“You okay?”
“I keep wondering about this.” I tapped the envelopes. “Whether Joel would be happy we’re following a hunch. I think more likely he’d chew me out for letting my imagination run away with me.”
“Well, let me ask you this. Was he always right when he chewed you out?”
I gave Bill a long look. “You know, for the Marlboro Man, you’re pretty smart.”
“Speaking of which, would you mind if I had a cigarette?”
“Of course I’d mind. It’s not good for you. Though I have to admit, if I smoked, I’d be puffing away right now.”
“You mind when I do things that aren’t good for me?”
I stared. “I take it back. Smart. What was I thinking?” I closed my eyes and leaned back against the headrest, just feeling the car roll along for a while. Then I asked, “Listen, assuming Joel would be wrong and the Shanghai Moon’s a good hunch, did you get Dr. Edwards? What did he say?”
“He has no idea about Major Ulrich beyond what we already know, but he’s intrigued. He’s going to put a graduate student on it and get back to us.”
“When?”
“Soon. She’s his ace researcher, so it just depends what there is to find.”
“Great. Can I nap?”
“Sure, but only if you want to stay in the car while I talk to the roommate from Zurich. We’re here.”
I sat up. “Here” was the Pilarsky home, where Ruth and her family would be sitting shiva for seven days. Strictly speaking, we weren’t here. Cars already lined both sides of the street; Bill had pulled into a space a block away. He was opening his door when I asked, “Do you think I should go in?”
“What?”
I smoothed my black linen skirt, which suddenly seemed very wrinkled. “Maybe they blame me.”
“Blame you?”
“I was working with him. I was on the phone with him right before.”
“Do they seem to? His sister-in-law called you to go on with the case.”
“But maybe—”
“Lydia? I don’t think they’re the ones who blame you.”
I looked away. “If I’d rushed up there like he told me to—”
“You couldn’t have—”
“But he told me—”
“Did you ever wonder why he called you in?”
“On this case? Because I’m Chinese.”
“Did he only call you in on Chinese cases?”
“No. But—”
“Did I ever call you in on a Chinese case?”
“No. But—”
“You don’t do what people tell you to.”
“What?”
“That’s you, all the time. You don’t, and by and large it’s a good thing. I know your mother hates it. In a daughter it’s probably irritating.”
“That’s an understatement.”
“But a partner—an associate, fine, whatever—who doesn’t follow directions is a huge plus. I like knowing if you make a move, it’s because you really think it’s the right one. Not somebody told you to. Even me.”
This was seriously new to me. I said slowly, “Joel was always on my case for not doing things the way he would have.”
“It can be frustrating day to day. And he did have that mentor thing going, with you. But he didn’t stop calling you.”
“As opposed to you.”
“No, hey. Okay. I stopped calling you because—”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What isn’t?”
“Calling me. We’ll talk about that later, maybe.” I saw, on his face, the resolve to explain himself warring with the relief of not having to. It was almost funny. “What I meant, you don’t get on my case. About how I do things. One of the last things Joel said to me was ‘You and Bill work well together.’ ”
“Did that come as news?”
I thought about it. “Not news. More like one of those pop-up reminders on your cell phone screen.”
“My cell phone doesn’t have those.”
“Yes, it does; you just don’t know how to make them work.” I opened my door. “Let’s go. We need to pay our condolences, and find this guy from Zurich.”
As I walked toward the house I heard, Good going, Chinsky.
23
I’d never paid a shiva call before, so I didn’t know what was normal after a Jewish funeral, but the chaos in the house, I thought, would have appealed to Joel. A small boy, shirt untucked, chased an older girl who kept slowing down so she wouldn’t lose him. Women ferried from the kitchen to the dining room with casseroles, salads, breads. Men poured glasses of whiskey or juice. People stood, sat, ate, talked. No one rang the doorbell; you just walked in. Except for the contents of the casseroles, and the black cloths draping the mirrors, it was just like dropping by after a funeral at Wah Wing Sang.
I spoke to Ruth, who sat on a plain wooden stool in her living room. I’m not sure what I said, though “sorry” came into it a lot. I introduced Bill and she thanked him for coming. As I was offering my sympathy to Joel’s son—I told him Joel had talked a lot about him, which made him smile—someone tapped my shoulder.
“Lydia? I’m Leah. I’d have recognized you anywhere.”
I turned to find an angular, gray-haired woman smiling beside me. “Well,” I said, shaking her hand, “I do sort of stand out in this crowd.”
“Not just that. Joel described you perfectly.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“ ‘Small, quick, restless.’ He also once said, ‘Much smarter than she knows,’ but I’m sure by now you know.”
“She doesn’t.” Bill arrived with a beer, and a seltzer for me. “But it won’t help to tell her.”
I was afraid I was going to have to squelch this debate about my IQ, but Leah waved over a stocky bald man from across the room. “This is David Rosenberg. From Zurich, that you wanted to talk to. David, this is Lydia Chin, the investigator Joel was working with. And this is her partner, Bill Smith.”
In less somber circumstances I’d have objected to Bill’s unauthorized promotion back into his old job, but in less somber circumstances he’d have smirked. As it was, we all shook hands, and Leah, after suggesting we might have more privacy on the screened porch, left us. We settled ourselves in creaky wicker chairs and watched some kids making a mess of their good clothes by digging in the dirt. A few overgrown shrubs symbolically marked the boundaries of the Pilarsky backyard. Toward the rear rose a surprising and well-tended vegetable patch featuring an even more surprising scarecrow dressed in an old gray suit of Joel’s.
“That’s a little spooky,” I said.
“His daughter Amy once said it was scary how many years Joel could wear the same suit,” David Rosenberg said. “So Joel wondered if it would scare the birds, too.”
“Does it work?”
Rosenberg gazed at the scarecrow with a sad smile. “I don’t think Joel ever scared anything, in person or in effigy. Leah said you have questions for me?”
“Yes. You were one of the last phone calls Joel made. Not long before he died.” I tried for clinical detachment, but I could hear I hadn’t made it. “Alice Fairchild said she’d gotten Joel’s name from a contact in Zurich. Could that have been you?”
“Yes. She called me a few weeks back to ask if I could recommend an investigator who knew his way around Forty-seventh Street. Because I’m originally from New York.”
“Is that why Joel called you? Something about the case?”
“I wish I could say something that could help y
ou, but we really didn’t talk about much of anything.” Rosenberg looked out at the scarecrow again, maybe thinking if he’d known this was his last conversation with his friend he’d have made sure to cover all kinds of topics. “I’ve already told this to the police. He called to thank me for sending Alice his way. He asked about her. I’ve known her for years, slightly. To say hello at cocktail parties, that sort of thing. She didn’t say why she needed an investigator, and I didn’t think it was right to ask.”
“When Joel called, how did he sound? Was he upset, worried?”
“No. Nothing about the conversation seemed urgent. He sounded in a good mood.”
Bill asked, “Can you remember that conversation in any detail?”
Rosenberg shrugged. “I’m a journalist. Remember is my middle name.” He closed his eyes and, one hand going back and forth as though he were following a Ping-Pong game, he started to mutter.
“. . . hey, David, how are you . . .”
“. . . hey, great to hear your voice . . .”
“. . . how’s Ingrid . . .”
“. . . how are Ruth, the kids . . .”
“. . . when are you coming to New York . . .” At that David Rosenberg paused but didn’t open his eyes. “. . . met with this Alice Fairchild day before yesterday, wanted to thank you . . . interesting case, Shanghai ghetto, stolen jewelry . . . called in that Chinese girl . . .”
“. . . the one with the mother? . . .”
“. . . yeah, keeps me young . . . this Alice Fairchild, you know her well? . . .”
“. . . no, just hello, good-bye . . . she asked about a PI a few weeks back, gave her the best I knew . . .”
“. . . gave her the only you knew, bubbaleh . . .”
“. . . well, if you know the best, who needs the rest? . . .”
“. . . you say that to all the boys . . . she tells me she was born in Shanghai herself, missionary family . . .”
“. . . I know, met her sister a few years ago, like Mutt and Jeff . . .”
“. . . asset recovery, strange work for a shiksa . . .”
