by S. J. Rozan
“Good morning,” Mel said to the woman. “Tan Lu-Lien, this is Lydia Chin and Bill Smith. Lydia, Bill, Tan Lu-Lien.”
“I’m happy to meet you,” I said in Chinese. “Chin Ling Wan-Ju. Have you eaten yet?” This is a standard greeting. No one who asks it really wants the answer; it’s the Chinese equivalent of “How are you?” The answer to the English question is “Fine, thank you,” and to the Chinese, “Yes, thank you,” and in neither case does it matter whether the answer’s true.
Tan Lu-Lien offered an affirmative, grunted reply.
“Is Mr. Chang here?” Mel asked. “He’s expecting me.”
“Chang Yao-Zu is upstairs. I’ll take you up.” Tan Lu-Lien looked us over. Two women and a White man: not the usual thing in the headquarters of a Chinatown tong. With poorly hidden distaste on her sharp face, she stepped aside to let us in, leaving Beefy to shut the door. She turned and led the way through the wide lobby to the staircase in the back. I considered pointing out that she wasn’t the usual thing, either, but that seemed like a bad way to begin a relationship.
The building’s interior was well kept, if workaday. Vinyl floors, exposed pipes on walls that had been painted and repainted for over a hundred years. Fluorescent light fixtures hanging from an acoustic-tile ceiling, which I assumed was as much for fireproofing as it was for noise, the fire codes having changed more than once since the building’s construction. A staircase, vinyl treads with metal nosings, ran up the center of the building in the back. Doors opened off the hallways of the U-shaped floors above. Nestled into the tight turns of the stairwell was an open-cage elevator.
I didn’t think open cages were legal anymore in New York, and I didn’t think I wanted to ride in this one, but Tan Lu-Lien pulled back the gate, Mel and Bill stepped inside, and if I didn’t get in too, I’d have to race them to the top floor. So I entered, Tan stepped in behind me and slid the gate shut, and we rose so shakily and slowly that I was convinced my instincts had been correct, and besides, I could have beaten them without running.
We slid up past floors of more vinyl tile and fluorescent lights. The air smelled of cigarette smoke and chicken broth. Through open doors on the second and third floors we could see groups of men drinking tea, reading newspapers, and playing cards, mah-jongg, or xiangqi. Some looked up to watch us rise; some just continued their games. Higher up, most doors were shut; these were probably the bedrooms where the tong put up visiting overseas members or new immigrants who hadn’t yet found places of their own.
The elevator rattled up to the top landing and settled to a wobbly stop. “I’m seasick,” I whispered to Bill once we got out. He snickered, but low—laughing in the house of the dead is in poor taste in every culture.
Opposite the elevator stood the floor’s single door. Unlike the other doors we’d risen by, this one was wide, made from solid-looking red-painted wood, with an elaborately carved frame and a gold-lettered black plaque above. The doorframe rested uneasily in the aging plaster wall surrounding it. Beside it sat a folding chair, no doubt for the tong soldier guarding the place. The soldier, however, wasn’t there. Bill looked from the plaque to me. “Upright People Will Advance,” I said.
“The Li Min Jin motto,” said Bill.
“Also,” said Mel, “it’s a warning. About who gets to enter the boss’s lair.”
Tan, meanwhile, was looking around in impatience. “Chang Yao-Zu told me to bring you up here,” she said, as though that fact alone should be enough to cause Chang Yao-Zu to appear. But he didn’t. “He was here.” Tan pointed to the chair. She called out, “Yao-Zu!”
Chang Yao-Zu still did not appear.
Frowning, Tan hesitated, then, with a look back at Mel, knocked on the red door.
No answer.
She frowned more deeply and knocked again. Again, nothing.
“It’s all right. He’s probably busy,” Mel said.
Or he’s avoiding his new landlady, I thought. Be interesting to know why. Tan tried the knob, but the door was locked.
Mel reached into her shoulder bag, withdrew the portfolio, and extracted a set of keys. Tan’s eyes narrowed. She reached out to prevent Mel from violating the sanctum but the look Mel flashed as she stepped to the lock was friendly, warm, and full of warning. It stopped the tong soldier cold. It was the difference, I thought, between Mel’s smiling lips and her stony eyes. Would it be hard to learn to do that? Maybe she’d teach me.
The door had two heavy locks and Mel turned each with a different key, though the upper one seemed to have been unlocked because she had to turn it back again before the door swung open.
In total contrast to the utilitarian drabness of the lower floors, the room we entered might have been a classical scholar’s study. Curved rosewood chairs, a low writing desk, a feng shui mirror on the wall opposite the door to reflect evil spirits back out again. Brushes in a brush holder, scroll paintings on the walls, carpets on the floor, latticework over the open window.
It was not the normal scholar’s study state of affairs, however, for a bleeding body to be sprawled across the tea table.
8
The body was that of Chang Yao-Zu, top tong lieutenant, the man Tan Lu-Lien had expected to find sitting outside the door. The man Mel Wu had arranged to meet, because he had a message for her from her uncle.
The NYPD detective who ran up the six floors to the crime scene and arrived not even winded was Mary Kee.
Chris Chiang was behind her, but not by much. I was pleased, though, to see he was panting just a little. Mary’s a big old jock, hard to keep up with.
Mary and Chris weren’t the first cops on the scene. A couple of uniformed officers had raced over from the Fifth Precinct on Elizabeth Street in answer to my 911 call. They had a little trouble getting in the building until Tan Lu-Lien shouted down the stairwell to Beefy blocking the door and the other men milling behind him. I watched as Beefy looked up at Tan, nodded, and escorted the two officers to the elevator, leaned in to press the button, and sent them up.
Tan had already shouted in Cantonese that no one was to leave the building until she said so. A certain amount of grumbling had risen, but Beefy had walked over, stood with his back to the door, and crossed his arms. No one had challenged him. By now heads were poking out of doorways and men were in the halls on every floor. Tan didn’t answer the shouts, in Cantonese, of “What happened?” and “What’s going on?” but she also didn’t insult anyone by saying “Nothing.”
The cops in the elevator eventually made it to the top floor. They took one look around and called for a detective, the ME, and a Crime Scene team. I’d gently herded Mel Wu and Tan Lu-Lien out into the hall, and Bill had remained just inside the open door on the off chance that whoever killed Chang was still in the apartment and might make a run for the fire escape. Since the lattice was swinging free and the fire escape window was open, it was likely that run had already been made, but fortune favors the prepared mind. Now that the cops were here, one of them shooed Bill into the hall and took his place. The other stayed with us, throwing around suspicious glares until Mary and Chris arrived, when at Mary’s instructions he went back down to help Beefy guard the door. That would not be the beginning of a beautiful friendship, I suspected.
Mary threw around a few suspicious glares herself. As she and Chris stepped into the apartment, she said she’d be speaking to each of us and not to leave. Mel and Bill and I stood near the door, Mel presumably because she didn’t know quite what to do and was taking her lead from us, Bill and I in case there was anything to see or overhear. Tan started to pace the U-shaped hallway.
When Tan had made it to the hallway’s farthest reaches I whispered to Mel, “Who is she?”
“Lu-Lien? She’s—the traditional title for the position she holds in the tong is White Paper Fan. The person who gives financial and business advice to the tong leader.”
“She’s the tong CFO?”
“I guess you’d say that. When he first came to New York and took ov
er, Uncle Meng handled the money himself. I think that was the reason he let her in in the first place, even though she was a woman. He couldn’t keep doing everything, but he didn’t know which of the tong soldiers he could trust with the money.”
“Sounds like he was watching his back all the time,” Bill said.
“I don’t think it was that bad. Certainly not after a few years. But when Tan came—she’s also from Hong Kong, though she wasn’t with the Li Min Jin there—Uncle Meng was hugely relieved to have the help. I think he also liked the idea of someone who’d owe her entire position to him.”
“How did the tong members feel about that?” I asked.
“I imagine there was a lot of resentment, until they all started making money. Apparently she’s quite a financial whiz. She straightened out whatever residual messes remained and began investing. It was her idea to incorporate the Li Min Jin as a nonprofit. For years now she’s been Uncle Meng’s third in command. Now with him and Mr. Chang gone…” Mel trailed off, maybe thinking again about what we’d seen inside the door. Her silence was just as well. Tan’s pacing had swung her around near us. She passed us with a scowl and kept on going. I wondered if the scowl was for a reason or was just her resting face.
A ruckus downstairs made us all peer over the railing. Ironman Ma was at the door, causing a standoff between the cop and Beefy about whether he could come in. “Let him in!” Tan called in Cantonese, but the cop suddenly didn’t speak the language—or English either, when she tried that. As things got heated, I suggested to the cop in the hall with us that Mary would want to handle this. He hesitated, then opened the door.
“Mary?” I said. “Ironman Ma’s downstairs. He wants in, but the cop won’t let him.”
Mary straightened up from where she’d been bending over the body, gave me a look, came out, and yelled down the stairwell to the cop to let Ironman in and bring him up. She gave me the same look again as she went back in.
“What?” I muttered, but not loud enough for her to hear. Mary’s work focus is like her athletic focus. She doesn’t take disruption well.
Ironman Ma didn’t go near the elevator but came charging up the stairs, leaving his cop escort in the dust. The cop at Big Brother Choi’s door stepped in front of him to stop him from entering the apartment. “Ma!” called Tan Lu-Lien, waving him over. Passing Bill and me without a glance, he stalked over to her at the end of the hallway. They spoke together in urgent, whispered Cantonese.
Two Asian officers I didn’t know appeared at the front door downstairs. I assumed Mary had called for them. Chris Chiang came out of the apartment, winked at me, and trotted down. I peered over the railing to see him and the officers set about canvassing the men in the building. Chris started with Beefy himself.
With Tan and Ironman at the end of the hall, I took the opportunity to ask Mel, “How are you doing?” She was pale, but calm.
“All right, I guess.” She shook her head. “Except for funerals, I’ve never seen anyone dead before. Especially not…”
“I know. Sit down. Don’t think about it.”
She gave a shaky smile and remained standing. “I’m not sure what else to think about.”
“Well, think about this. Was the room—except for the body—more or less as you expected?”
The elevator rattled up again, disgorging a Tyvek-suited trio: the ME and two techs carrying crime scene gear. It creaked back down to pick up some more. Wise of them not to all try to ride up at once.
Mel nodded. “The best light is in that room, so it was Uncle Meng’s study. Those paintings on the wall, he did them. My sister and I used to watch him paint. We’d sit and have tea and sweets at that low table—” She put her hand to her mouth. Not the distraction I’d been going for.
Bill picked up the ball. “How about the rest of the room? Did you see anything obviously wrong, anything out of place or missing?”
“Well, isn’t that interesting,” came another voice. “I was about to ask that myself.” Mary stood at the open red door. “Ms. Wu, if you’ll come with me, please.” Looking down the hall, she raised her voice. “Ms. Tan, you’ll be next. And then you, Mr. Ma. You two”—she pointed at me and Bill—“don’t leave.”
As if. Mary stepped aside so Mel could enter Big Brother Choi’s living quarters. She closed the door behind them.
Ironman Ma remained at the end of the hall, leaning over the stairwell, hands gripping the railing. Tan Lu-Lien resumed her pacing. When she swung around near us I asked in Cantonese, “Big Sister Tan, are you all right?” Under other circumstances, because she was older than I, the proper respectful title might have been “Auntie,” but that seemed a little weird here.
Tan wasn’t crazy about “Big Sister,” either, or maybe she just wasn’t crazy about me. She snapped a hard look and paced on.
Under the beady eye of the uniformed cop, Bill and I stayed silent. After maybe ten minutes, Mary opened the door, let Mel out, and gestured Tan in. For some reason that got me another evil look from Tan before she vanished inside.
“That must have been hard,” I said to Mel after the door had closed. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “The detective wanted to know why we were here. She seemed surprised when I told her I own the building now.”
“Everyone in Chinatown is going to be surprised. Not everyone is going to be happy.”
She smiled wanly. “Some people outside Chinatown may not be so happy, either.”
“Jackson Ting.”
“For one. God, I wish I knew what Mr. Chang had wanted to tell me.”
“Did you tell the detective he’d called you?”
“Yes. She was very interested. She asked the obvious question, whether I thought that had anything to do with his death. Could he have been killed to keep him from telling me whatever it was. But I have no way of knowing. She said if anything occurred to me or I find out anything, to let her know.” Mel took a deep breath. “Listen, they said I could leave, and I think I will. I took a quick look around because the detective asked me to, and she asked if I’d come back and look more thoroughly after the forensics people are done, but that might be a while and…” She trailed off, then started again. “I’m sorry I got you two into this.”
“It’s certainly not your fault. Call me later, okay?”
“Yes, I will.” Mel turned, squared her shoulders, and started down the stairs. As she made her way along each hall to the next flight, her unhurried steps and her calm look projected a composure I was sure she didn’t feel.
After another minute or so Mary opened the apartment door. Scowling still, Tan Lu-Lien brushed passed us and headed downstairs.
“Mr. Ma!” Mary called. Ironman straightened, set his jaw, and strode over. When he reached us, though, he stopped.
With tilted head he said, “Lydia? Lydia Chin? Is that you? What are you doing here?” He grinned an endearing lopsided grin. I found myself smiling back.
“Hi, Ironman. Yes, it’s me. This is my partner, Bill Smith. We came up here with Choi Meng’s niece.”
“Choi Meng’s niece? I thought I saw her. Did she leave? Poor kid, this must be hard on her. Bill, pleased to meet you. Edison Ma, but everyone calls me Ironman.” He turned up his palms as though embarrassed at the nickname. I was willing to bet he was anything but. He said, “Lydia, you look great. How long has it been?”
Mary, still standing in the open doorway, snapped, “Mr. Ma? Can you and Lydia have this reunion later? I have a dead man here.”
Ironman’s face hardened in a flash. He stepped forward and followed Mary in.
9
A few minutes later the door opened and Ironman Ma came out. Before he could say anything Mary said, “Okay, you two. Inside.”
Ironman gave me a glance and mouthed I’ll call you. I nodded and walked in past Mary, followed by Bill.
“You’re not going to interview us individually to see if our stories match?” I said.
“If you haven’t gotten them straight
by now you’re not the gumshoes I thought you were. Come through here. Don’t touch anything. Crime Scene hasn’t done the bedroom yet.”
“What killed him?” I asked as she led us past the body, now covered, the ME packing up his tools, and the techs dusting, measuring, and photographing. We entered the bedroom on the left.
“A kitchen knife,” she said.
The bedroom was large, taking up the whole wing of the floor on the west side. It was furnished with a carved-screen platform bed, some handsome wardrobes and cabinets, and a thick carpet figured with clouds and dragons. Poems in calligraphy and scroll paintings of herons and frogs, pine trees, and paths through misty mountains hung on the red walls. At the room’s far end Big Brother Choi had set up his family altar with candles, incense, ancestor tablets, a bowl of oranges, and a small Buddha statue.
A table beside the bed held three silver-framed photos. In one, a young man stood formally beside a seated young woman, both of them looking serious in Qing robes. A marriage photo? Another photo showed the same couple in the 1950s. Their pose was similar but more relaxed, and in front of the woman stood two small children. Everyone was now dressed in the latest fifties fashions. The remaining photo was of a different young woman, beautiful and smiling.
“Who are these?” I asked Mary.
Mary smirked. “There are advantages to being an actual cop. I get to ask the questions first. Mel Wu told me.” She pointed. “Big Brother Choi’s parents. Them again, with Choi and his sister—Mel Wu’s mother. This one here is Choi’s wife.”
I looked at that photo. It looked like it had been taken around the same time as the one on her grave.
“Mel Wu told me he was devoted to her,” Mary said. “Why are you two here?”
“Didn’t Mel Wu tell you that, too?”
“Don’t start.”
“We were supposed to be a cross between moral support and bodyguards,” Bill said, stepping in.
“Go on.”
“She’d asked Mr. Gao if he thought it would be okay for her to come up here alone, and he said it would be better if she didn’t.”
