by S. J. Rozan
“Wait!” called the receptionist when we stalked through the outer office, and Ting’s assistant said something similar as we strode past her and I threw open his office door. Ting, in shirtsleeves at his computer, looked up.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Ting, they—”
“It’s all right, Delia. Go back to work.” He stood, waited for his assistant to leave, and came around the desk, saying calmly, “I’m sure you know this is not all right. What do you think you’re doing?”
“What do you think you’re doing?” I thrust the phone at him with the video cued up and hit play.
Ting went pale. “What the hell is that?”
“Stop it! This is bullshit! Where is she?”
“I have no idea.” He looked at me. “You think I did that?”
“Oh, no, why would we? Just because you’re going to lose a fortune if you don’t get a commitment on that building by the end of the month, and just because you already tried to blackmail Natalie, but I guess that wasn’t moving fast enough for you—”
“Wait. Who told you that?”
“Who do you think? Where is she, Ting?”
“I don’t know.” He looked at me cautiously. “I leaned on her, yeah, okay. So she’d persuade that pretentious bitch sister of hers. But this—I had nothing to do with this. I don’t do this kind of shit!”
“Just like you had nothing to do with the dead window supplier?” said Bill. “Or the union rep’s wife with the broken arm, or the slashed truck tires? You don’t do that shit either?”
“I didn’t! None of it!”
“Really? Lucky you, then, that all these things happen around you. What is it, Ting, you have a fairy godmother?”
Ting clenched his jaw and glared at Bill, Bill stared back, and I stood rooted to the spot.
“Oh my God,” I said. “Oh my God. He doesn’t have a fairy godmother. He has a tiger mom.”
38
Ting switched his glare to me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It means,” I said, “that I’m an idiot. Tan.” I turned to Bill. “I told you her suddenly picking up and leaving Hong Kong bothered me. You thought she might be an informant. But I—”
“What are you talking about?” Ting snapped.
I ignored him. “She said she left there—and arrived here—during the Dragon Boat Festival. That’s in June. Loo told me that within three months of her starting at the Li Min Jin, Big Brother Choi invited her to go to the cemetery on Qing Ming to sweep his wife’s grave.”
“Her, who?” Ting said.
Bill ignored him, too. “Which tells you…?”
“The Dragon Boat Festival is in June. Qing Ming is in March. If she came to the Li Min Jin three months before Qing Ming, that would have been January. So where was she between June and January?”
“In a safe house, until whatever storm it was blew over?”
“No! For God’s sake, she’s not an informant. She left Hong Kong because she was pregnant.”
Bill let out a slow “Ohhhh.”
At the same time, Ting exploded. “Who? What are you talking about? What the hell does this have to do with me?”
“Tan Lu-Lien,” I told him. “Your mother.”
“Are—” He threw up his hands. “You’ve completely lost me. My mother was Maria Ting, and my father was Ke Ting, and who the hell are you talking about?”
I stared. Could it be possible he didn’t know? “Tan Lu-Lien,” I said, “came here from Hong Kong in June 1984 and, if I’m right, gave birth in Flushing Hospital on November 28. The name she gave the hospital”—I held up my hand to stop him from speaking—“was Maria Ting. She claimed she was undocumented.”
“Undocumented, that’s bullshit. My mother was an American citizen!”
“Maria Ting was. Tan Lu-Lien, Maria Ting’s cousin, probably came here on a tourist visa. We’ve met someone who remembers your birth, and your mother. It wasn’t Maria Ting. It was Maria’s friend. Your mother gave her baby—you—to Maria and her husband as soon as she brought you home from the hospital. They were your mother and father from that moment, but they’re not your biological parents.”
“You’re crazy. I have a birth certificate with their names on it. Not adoption papers! I’m…” He trailed off. He might be a smug, scheming operator, but he wasn’t stupid.
“Nothing I’m saying contradicts any of that. A woman told the hospital she was Maria Ting, married to Ke Ting. She had her baby and gave him to the Tings and they took him. No one needed to know and no one knew. The baby was you, and I think the woman was Tan Lu-Lien.”
He went back behind his desk and sat heavily, staring at the glass surface, or the floor below it. He didn’t look up as he said, “Get out.”
I was tempted to do it, but I had a sudden flashback to my brother in his office, telling me the same thing. For the same reason: He’d needed to mull over what I’d said. My brother, who’d told Mel he thought I could help.
“Listen,” I said, trying for the place where gentle meets firm. “I know this is a lot to take in. If I’m right—and I am, Jackson, I know I am—this explains the violent incidents. And why they only happened around events that got made public, that Tan Lu-Lien could read about. She kept her eye on you, Jackson. She stayed in touch with her cousin. She even visited for a while. I’d bet it was her money that sent you to private school.”
Ting shook his head. “Dad said—he said he’d inherited money from a distant cousin and wanted to spend it on my education. But why?” Now he did look up. “What the hell? Give a baby away and disappear from its life like that? But still come around? And what do you mean, it explains—oh, shit…” After a long moment he said again, “Oh, shit. The Li Min Jin?” He wasn’t stupid, no, but it had taken him time to catch on.
“You’d have seen her at Choi Meng’s funeral,” said Bill. “At the foot of the coffin. Short hair, hard face—”
“That woman? You’re trying to tell me that’s my mother? Oh my fucking God.”
“I think she disappeared,” I said, “because she didn’t want you to have any connection with the tong. And to give you a chance to grow up respectable. A success. I think she watched and helped out where she could.”
He nodded, though I wasn’t sure he was convinced. “And—my father? Was Ke Ting my father?”
“Possible but unlikely, unless he’d been in Hong Kong the winter before you were born.”
“He came here at the age of four. After that he never left the country. If it’s not him, who is it?”
“I don’t know. Tan will have to tell you.”
Ting drew a long breath. “You said she ‘helped out.’ You didn’t just mean money, did you? You meant, the window guy. The union rep’s wife. All that.”
I nodded. “And,” I said, “Natalie Wu’s kidnapping. What you just saw.” I added, “Your mother’s known Nat since she was a baby, too.”
“Don’t call her my mother! Oh, God.” He stood and walked to the window. After a long moment, he seemed to gather himself. “Is this true?” he turned and asked me, straight on. “It’s not bullshit?”
“I’m sure it is. It took me too long to figure it out, but I’m sure it’s true.”
He didn’t ask for proof. That would come later, I thought: Mrs. Reyes, DNA tests. Right now we were in the middle of a crisis, and Jackson Ting, to his eternal credit, realized his role.
“Okay,” he said. He drew a few long, steady breaths. “Okay. I’ll call Mel. I’ll tell her to say we came to an agreement. My—that woman—will let Nat go, and then I can negotiate for real with Mel.”
I was pretty sure that at this point Mel would never sell Jackson Ting the building, so this was a short-term solution. But at least it would get Nat untied from that chair and out of wherever that was. Which I was also pretty sure was somewhere in the building.
Ting made his call to Mel. “Those investigators are here. They showed me the video. I had nothing to do with it, Mel. Dammit, no, nothing. Just liste
n. Just listen! I’m going to say we made a deal. That you’re selling me the building and it’s all good. They’ll let Nat go, and you and I can talk about the next step.”
Don’t say it, I silently ordered Mel, while Ting listened to whatever it was she was saying. Pretend there’s a next step to talk about.
Apparently she got my ESP instructions, because Ting said, “Good. All right. I’ll get in touch with—” He looked over at me. “What did you say my—that woman’s name is?”
I told him, and he told Mel. “Tan Lu-Lien. What? No, I can’t. This isn’t the time, Mel. It’s very complicated. I’ll tell you later. I—”
“Jackson,” I said. He looked at me again. “Ask Mel if she has Tan’s phone number.”
“Tan’s phone number,” he said into the phone. “Do you have it?” Back to me: “No.”
“Then we’ll have to go down there.”
“Where? To the building?”
“Yes.”
“All right,” Ting said into the phone. “We’re going to Chinatown. No, don’t. What the hell good will that do? No. Mel—oh, all right, do whatever you goddamn want, you always do.” He clicked off.
“She’s not going down there, too?” I said.
“Of course she is. Mighty Mel to save the day! God, she never changes.”
So few of us do, I thought, as Ting grabbed his suit jacket off the hook on his door. We passed through his assistant’s office, where he told her to cancel his appointments for the rest of the day, and the reception area, where the receptionist got to see that the boss was going out. We waited impatiently for the elevator, trotted to the garage, retrieved the nose-out car, and sped along the FDR to Chinatown.
39
On the way downtown I called Mel. “Don’t come. Leave this to us.”
“Are you crazy? That’s my sister down there.”
“It won’t help.”
“Forget it.”
“Mel—”
“No.”
“All right,” I said. “At least don’t go into the building before we get there. Meet us by the park.”
I hung up and Bill said, “She’s going to be there?”
“She’s made a career out of rescuing Nat. Why would I expect her to sit out the big one?”
Before we’d gone another half block my phone rang again. Mary. I let it go to voicemail and listened as she left her message. “Hey. Call me. Something very interesting.”
She didn’t sound angry or harried, the way she would, for example, if she had word of a kidnapping and had word that I had word of it too. I risked the call. “Hey. What’s up?”
“I’m looking for Natalie Wu.”
Isn’t everyone, I thought, wondering if I’d been wrong, but I just said innocently, “How come?”
“Because,” said Mary. “On the note that came with the rock when your brother was shot at? Surprise, surprise. We found her prints.”
Surprise was right. “Oh. Um.”
“I had Forensics go over the rock from Ironman’s shooting again, just in case, but no. Still just the one set, the ones we can’t match.”
“Wow. I wonder…”
“Yeah, me too. She’s not at home, and her kids’ nanny says she doesn’t know where she went. Do you know where I can find her?”
“No, but if she turns up I’ll call you.” For more than one reason.
I relayed this intelligence to Bill. Jackson Ting, in the back seat, said, “Rock? Note? Who was shot at?”
“My brother Tim,” I told him. “Long story. I’ll tell you later.”
“People are shooting at people?”
I turned around. “Seriously? Chang Yao-Zu is dead, Natalie’s been kidnapped, you’re offering a fortune for a building full of gangsters in the middle of a power struggle—a building some of the gangsters think there’s already a fortune hidden in—and you’re surprised people are firing guns around? Two people were shot at,” I told him. “Neither of them was hit. I don’t know if that was planning or incompetence.” Actually, as I’d told Tim, I was pretty sure it was planning, at least in his case.
Because of the note.
With Natalie Wu’s fingerprints on it.
I turned to face forward again.
Bill said quietly, “You know that makes it more likely she’s actually in on this?”
“I know,” I said. “But you saw her face. Mel says Nat’s not a good actor. I don’t think she is, either. I think that fear we saw was real. But,” I added, “if I find out she shot at my brother, I’ll give her something to fear.”
We exited at the Manhattan Bridge and swung onto Canal Street. Where we were going was a few blocks south, but it’s nuts to actually try to drive into Chinatown in the afternoon, especially if you need to park. On Canal, Bill made a swift and illegal U-turn, pulled up to a yellow curb, and propped the DELIVERY sign from his glove box in the windshield. I jumped out and, taking a page from Bill’s book, handed Old Shu the fish seller twenty dollars to tell any inquisitive traffic cop that the car was waiting for the shop guys to pack up boxes of fish.
“Forty,” Old Shu said in Chinese, with a grin. “I might have to pay the cop.”
I was going to tartly suggest he give the cop a fish, but instead I slapped a second bill onto his outstretched palm.
A block later we were on the corner by the park, and a minute after we arrived Mel came striding down the sidewalk. I guessed she was experienced in Chinatown’s impossible traffic, too.
As was the man following closely in her wake. My brother, Tim.
“Tim,” I said when they reached us. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t start. This whole thing’s been a bad shock for Mel. You think I was really going to let her come down here alone? She needed a friend.”
The idea of anyone letting—or not letting—Mel do anything was absolutely oxymoronic, and I’d have thought, given the past week, that I met the “friend” requirement. I’d grown up with Tim, though, and I could recognize a nonnegotiable decision when I saw one, even one based on a ridiculous premise. Not for nothing is his zodiac animal the ox.
The ox then noticed my traveling companions. Distaste curled his lip. It was clearly aimed at both men, but it was Jackson Ting he stepped a little too close to. “Ting. What are you doing here? Come to gloat?”
“Not now,” Ting said. “This isn’t the time. You want to fight, I’d be happy to wipe up the floor with you later, Chin, but there’s more important things going on at the moment. You saw that video? Then what’s your problem?”
“Wow, check it out, a line he won’t cross,” said Tim. “I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“Knock it off, Tim,” I said. “Jackson’s help is what we need right now.”
“Jackson?” Tim glanced from me to Ting and back again, raising his eyebrows. To Ting he said, “You claim you had nothing to do with this. So what good do you think you can do here?”
“If your sister’s right, I’m the one the kidnapper will listen to. What’s her name again?” He turned to me.
Tim snorted. He sounded just like our mother. “You don’t even know her name, but she’ll listen to you? Impressed with yourself much?”
“Tim,” I said, “shut up. I’m not going to tell you to get lost, though I wish you would, but this kind of thing is in my wheelhouse, not yours. Bill, Jackson, and I are going to handle this, and if I can’t stop you two from coming along, all right, but you will not say or do anything unless I tell you to. Is that clear?” I aimed at the easier target first. “Mel?”
Mel’s mouth was a taut angry line, but she nodded.
“Tim?”
“I—”
“Tim?”
After a moment, my brother slowly nodded, too.
I spoke to Jackson Ting. “Her name’s Tan Lu-Lien. She’s temporarily—very temporarily—head of the Li Min Jin.”
“Head? You didn’t tell me that.”
“No, I didn’t. Let’s go.”
I starte
d off. Bill was right with me. I didn’t look back to see who else was coming, though I was pretty sure it was the entire regiment. We hadn’t made it to the corner when my phone rang. I wouldn’t have answered it but “Bad Boys” told me it was Linus.
“Hi,” I said. “Something?”
For all his love of fooling around, Linus also knows when to get right to business. “Not earth-shaking,” he said. As usual, I heard the echo of the speakerphone. “But something. The voice is definitely a man’s, no distorter or anything. Trella thinks there might be a British accent overlaying the Chinese one—that is, he’s a Chinese speaker whose English is British English. The phone’s a burner, with a SIM card. It has GPS, but it was off.”
“A SIM card. So the phone probably wasn’t bought here.”
“Correct. Likely it’s from overseas.”
“Any idea where?”
“If I had them here—”
“If you had them there, it would be because we already caught the kidnapper. But this is great, Linus. What about the video? The room?”
“Just about zilch. The light’s fluorescent. The room might not have windows, but it’s hard to say. Machine noise in the background, but that might not even be from the same room. Or the same building. That’s it, that’s all I got. What about you?”
“Struck by lightning. Tell you later. About to enter the lion’s den with Bill and a whole mob of civilians.”
“A mob?”
“Well, three. But one of them’s Tim.”
“Seriously? Uncle Tim and you doing something together? Trell, did you catch that? But what’s he got to do with this? And the lion’s den, what do you mean? What’s going on?”
“Later. I promise. This is really helpful, your intel. Keep at it. Let me know if you find anything else.”
“Will do. Whatever you’re doing, good luck.”
“You, too.”
I relayed Linus’s information sotto voce to Bill as our mob strode down the sidewalk. The others didn’t need to hear it yet. I wasn’t sure what it meant, though I had my suspicions. If I was right, we’d know soon enough.
Then there we were, at the building at the center of it all. I rang the bell, and as soon as Beefy pulled the door open I said in Chinese, “We’re here to see Tan Lu-Lien.”
