by S. J. Rozan
“Did you expect me to be?”
“I had hoped you would not. I had hoped an understanding had passed between us.”
I wouldn’t exactly call it an understanding, I thought, just a direct look in the eye, just held an extra second, just a little more contact than was necessary if all you were really doing was throwing us out.
“I understood you would call,” I told her. “I don’t yet understand why.”
“You are investigators,” she said. “Sent by Gao Mian-Liang. Wei Yao-Shi”—Old Mr. Wei—“always spoke most highly of Gao Mian-Liang. Now tell me: Why did Gao Mian-Liang send you here?”
I answered honestly. “He told us it was to deliver the jade and a letter to Mr. Wei’s brother, and to bring Mr. Wei’s ashes.”
“Pardon me, but that seems unlikely.”
“To us, too. Earlier today I called and told him what had happened and asked him, in view of the situation, if there was anything further he could tell us. He said there wasn’t, but that we should do whatever we felt needed to be done.”
A pause as she digested the fact that I’d told Grandfather Gao that Harry had been kidnapped. She might have made an issue of it, but all she said was, “And what do you feel needs to be done?”
“I’m not sure. But I can’t say, Ms. Zhu, that I think this is just a simple kidnapping, or that getting Harry back is going to be as easy as meeting a ransom demand.”
“Nor do I.”
Oh, really? “Well, then,” I suggested, “why don’t you tell me what you do think? And tell me why you’re calling us in secret, instead of speaking to us in front of Steven and Li-Ling?”
“What I think, Ms. Chin, is that Maria Quezon is involved in this. I am speaking in secret because Steven would never permit me to ask that you make her the target of an investigation. But I believe if you find Maria, you will find the child.”
Steven wouldn’t permit it, I thought. Since when does Steven tell you what to do?
“You were the one opposed to calling the police,” I said. “Your position was, play along and everything will be all right. Why have you changed your mind?”
“About the police, I have not. That would be dangerous. But I believe circumstances now warrant that some action be taken.”
“Circumstances?”
“You would make a good attorney, Ms. Chin. You ask questions to which you very well know the answers in order to hear them from your opponent. Circumstances. Two ransom demands, a refusal to prove that the child is being held. You say you are now in Kwong Hon Terrace Garden. Tell me, do you think it would have been possible to abduct Harry and Maria by force from that park at nine o’clock in the morning without the police hearing about it even before we did?”
Filing away opponent for later, I had to admit as I looked around that that last question was a very good one. There were the amahs over by the frogs. There was a pair of Chinese grandmothers who had come in after we had, parking strollers beside a bench and fanning themselves with paper fans. There were three shirtless teenage boys doing chin-ups on the swing set, probably hoping some girls would happen by to impress. It was July; school was out; in the morning, before the day got really hot and most people retreated to air-conditioning, this park was probably even more crowded than this. No, it wasn’t likely a kidnapping could have happened here, or on the crowded streets with their narrow sidewalks on the way to here, and go unnoticed and unreported.
“I have not changed my mind about the police,” Natalie Zhu repeated. “They are not capable of finding Harry without taking action so obvious that the kidnappers will be alerted. But you are in a different position.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“As I say: Find Maria Quezon. You are professionals, trusted by Gao Mian-Liang; that is a high recommendation for your abilities. Perhaps you can proceed without arousing suspicions. I am not familiar with your usual terms of employment, but whatever they are I will accept them. I would ask, however, that you report to me anything you find, however insignificant it seems. Nothing you do must endanger the child. Because you are not from Hong Kong, it is possible you may miss the implications of your actions. But as you say, I do not believe this is simple. Some action must be taken. Will you accept?”
Darn tootin’, I wanted to answer, to balance Natalie Zhu’s formal manner and the fact that I knew she was saying all this to me from three hundred feet in the sky; but I restrained myself. “Yes,” I told her. “We’ll take the job.”
I asked for information on Maria Quezon; she gave me very little. Maria had lived with the Wei family for all of Harry’s seven years, except for an annual two-week trip back to the Philippines, where she had family in the mountain village of Cabagan. She had come recommended by someone, but Natalie Zhu didn’t know who; her sister also worked in Hong Kong, but Natalie Zhu didn’t know where. She had a boyfriend, but Natalie Zhu didn’t know him. She surely must have friends among the other amahs, although Natalie Zhu had no idea of how to go about finding them, since there were one hundred thousand Filipinas in Hong Kong looking after other people’s children. Li-Ling Wei might possibly know, but again, she did not want Li-Ling or Steven to know what we were doing.
“Steven’s strength is also his flaw,” she said. “He is a devoted family man, very loyal. Harry, Li-Ling, and now the expected little one are central to his life. His loyalty extended, of course, to his father, and extends to his uncle. I am honored to say it extends also to myself; and after so many years, to Maria Quezon as well. He will not hear a bad word against any of us. Unfortunately, not everyone returns such devotion in kind.”
Unfortunate indeed, I thought. “I’d like to look through her things,” I said. “In her room. She’s bound to have something that will give us a line on her boyfriend or her sister, something to start with.”
“No,” Natalie Zhu said calmly. “As I said, I cannot allow Steven or Li-Ling to know about this. I will look through her room myself, at the first opportunity. I will let you know what I find.”
I didn’t like that as much, but you don’t argue with a door after it’s slammed shut. “All right,” I told Natalie Zhu. “Call us if you find anything. And if anything happens.”
She gave me the number of her cell phone, the better for secret-keeping, and hung up. I flipped my phone closed and said to Bill, “We’re hired.”
“Well, I’m impressed,” he said. “You really knew she was going to call?”
“From the look she gave me as she was throwing us out. I got the feeling she had something to say, and since she wasn’t saying it there, I thought she’d try later.”
“So what are we hired to do?”
“Find the amah.” I gave him a rundown of Natalie Zhu’s request and her reasoning. “What do you think?” I asked when I was finished.
He lit another cigarette, looked across the park. Two of the amahs, chattering away, were packing up their diaper bags, strollers, and children. “I think it’s bullshit,” he said.
“Funny, I had that same thought. Which part?”
“All of it. Why she doesn’t want Steven Wei to know what we’re doing. Loyalty to the amah only goes so far, when your kid’s at stake.”
“Maybe she’s afraid he thinks nothing should be done at all. Just to sit tight and follow directions.”
“Did you get the feeling he did any thinking for himself when she was around?”
“No,” I said. “And that’s another thing. Sneaking out onto the balcony. Laying it on thick about how good we must be if Grandfather Gao sent us. What happened to the I-give-the-orders, this-is-how-it-is Natalie Zhu we used to know?”
“So what do you think the point is?”
“To use us find Maria Quezon for some other reason, something Steven Wei wouldn’t like. Or—”
“—or to keep us busy. To get us out of the way.”
The amahs pushed their strollers past us on their way out of the park. One of the toddlers, the one who’d fallen, was already asleep, cook
ie crumbs sticking to his round cheeks.
“And she thinks this will be sure to do it,” I said. “Two Americans looking for a Filipina in Hong Kong. This could keep us seriously out of the way. Why would she want to do that?”
“So we won’t interfere with whatever she’s doing.”
“Which would be what?”
“Or,” he said, not answering my question, “there’s another possibility. Maybe she’s not trying to keep us from interfering with her. Maybe she’s trying to interfere with us.”
“With us, with what?”
“Whatever it is we were sent here to do.” Bill mashed his cigarette on the side of the bench. “I wish to hell I knew what that was.”
The cloud cover from the Peak had crept downhill while we’d been sitting here, making the air no cooler but even more unpleasantly sticky. Without the drama of strong sun and sharp shadows, the buildings surrounding the little park were revealed as neglected and shabby. I could see the rust on their metal windows and the cracks in their concrete. A truck straining up the hill left a bloom of exhaust to mix with the damp mist and drift in our direction.
“Grandfather Gao sent us,” I said. “That’s all she knows about us. If she’s trying to distract us it must be because she thinks he had something more in mind than Harry’s jade and old Mr. Wei’s funeral arrangements. You don’t suppose,” a new thought hit me, “that all of this is for our benefit?”
Bill didn’t answer right away. “No,” he finally said. “Or: Maybe it is, but if it is, the parents aren’t in on it. What they’re going through, worrying about their kid, they’re not faking that.”
Well, I thought, you’re more of an expert than I am. I suddenly wanted to take his hand, hold it just a minute; but I knew that was the last thing he’d want, so I pretended instead that I didn’t see what was in his eyes and I said, “I’m calling Grandfather Gao.”
Bill didn’t answer. I took the cell phone out again, but before I tried to call New York on it I called the hotel, just to check, though I wasn’t sure who besides Grandfather Gao himself would have called me.
Someone had, though. I scribbled down the number, thanked the desk clerk, pressed the OFF button, and turned to Bill.
“You’ll never guess.”
He waited, then decided to do it my way. “Steven Wei.”
I shook my head. He went on guessing, and I went on shaking my head. “Li-Ling Wei. Franklin Wei. Iron Fist Chang. The old lady, whatever her name was. The fortune-teller. That god from the temple, Wong Tai Sin. Sorry, wrong number.”
He was out of guesses. I told him: “The police.”
five
The Mandarin Oriental Hotel was just easing out of the afternoon tea business and into the cocktail hour when Bill and I arrived. As soon as we walked into the stately cool of the lobby, I wished I were back in one of my own sharply pressed linen shirts instead of this street-stall flowered blouse, and I wished Bill were still wearing a jacket and tie.
The Mandarin Oriental stood in placid peace on one of central Hong Kong’s busiest avenues like a dowager duchess rising above the hysteria of her household staff. Outside, the building was serious-looking stone, and on the inside dark polished wood, beveled glass, and marble all exuded an air of outpost-of-empire that would take generations to wear away.
Bill and I were admitted by a white-gloved doorman and, when we asked our way to the Clipper Lounge, were gravely shown to a grand staircase by a lobby attendant who must have spent all his spare time shining the buttons on his uniform. The other women I saw, both Chinese and non, were all impeccably turned out, including the kind of high-heeled strappy sandals I would wear only in an emergency. The men, I was surprised to see, generally wore polo shirts—always with some recognizable logo—or dress shirts open at the neck. Few jackets, few ties. Considering it was about two hundred degrees outside, I guessed that made sense. I glanced at Bill. Maybe he didn’t look so out of place, then. Maybe it was just me.
From the top of the stairs Bill and I turned right along a wide mezzanine. Our steps in the plush carpet made no sound to distract our attention from the elegant jewelry stores with diamonds and jade sparkling in their tiny show windows or the tailor’s shops where you could choose a bolt of the finest cloth in the morning, have a fitting in the afternoon, and take your new handsewn suit home with you on the evening plane.
Thinking of the jewelry shop in the mall by the Hong Kong Hotel, I said to Bill, “Look at how those jewels glow and sparkle. They did that in the old man’s shop, too. They sort of call to you, don’t they? As though they were alive. As though they could tell you something, if you spoke the language.”
He peered into the window of the shop we were passing. “High-intensity lighting,” he said. “That high, that close, it would sparkle off tin.”
I looked also, first at him, then at the little lights tucked up above the glass. Another time, I might have made some crack, maybe about the limitations of Western rational thought; and Bill would have come back with something equally silly, probably including a half-real pass at me. But there had been a few occasions for wisecracks and passes in the last few hours that Bill had uncharacteristically let slide. Uncharacteristic, but not completely surprising. Over the years I had seen him in these darker, distant moods more than once. These were the times when I was reminded why he lived alone, and why that was a good idea.
So we walked in silence to the end of this elegant alley and came to the Clipper Lounge. Large potted palms screened groups of low tables and chairs from the unwanted sight of one another and string quartet music was piped in at just the right volume to make conversation easy to hold but difficult to overhear. A stunningly beautiful Chinese woman, much younger than I, sipped a pink drink from a tall-stemmed glass as she sat with a silver-haired Westerner; they were speaking French. Three Japanese businessmen drank beer, ate peanuts, and enthusiastically talked, smoked, laughed, and interrupted each other. I wondered if Bill recognized them from the Tokyo airport smoking lounge, but I didn’t get a chance to ask. A smiling man, polo-shirted under his pale linen jacket, was waving us over from behind a potted palm. We headed in his direction, me strolling nonchalantly as though street-stall blouses were quite the thing on the boulevards of Paris, where I normally frequented.
When we got there the smiling man held out his hand and said, “Lydia Chin? I’m Mark Quan.” The potted palm said nothing.
I offered Mark Quan my hand, told him I was pleased to meet him, and introduced Bill. We shook, we smiled, and then Detective Sergeant Mark Quan of the Hong Kong Police Department Detective Bureau invited us to sit down.
“What can I get you?” he asked, waving a waiter over. He was speaking perfect American English; in fact, it seemed to me to have a tiny touch of Southern drawl.
“Can I still get tea?”
“This is the Mandarin Oriental.” Mark Quan winked. “You can get anything you want.”
He was a stocky man, sun-bronzed in his white Armani Xchange polo shirt, cream-colored linen jacket, and tan khakis. He looked in his early thirties, a little chubbier, maybe, than he ought to be, but with an ease to his movements that gave me the idea that thinking fat was the same as soft might in this case be a mistake. That idea was reinforced by the fact that his friendly smile was knocked a little cockeyed by the faded scar on his upper lip.
He ordered my tea and a gin and bitter lemon for himself. Bill ordered a beer.
“Did you have trouble finding the hotel?” Mark Quan asked when the waiter had marched solemnly away to fulfill his sworn duty to bring us our drinks or die. “You’re new to Hong Kong, right?”
“No, the traffic was just heavy. It took a little longer than I thought,” I answered, matching him small talk for small talk.
“I thought you might rather come here than to the Bureau office,” he said. “It’s comfortable here, and the refreshments are better.” He smiled ruefully. “It’s a little-known fact that the tea in Hong Kong police stations is as bad as
the coffee in American ones.” He settled back in his upholstered chair across the low table from us. The table was a wood-and-brass affair with hinges and handholds. It looked like something the English carried around to have tea on in the far-flung colonies. “So.” Mark Quan smiled expectantly at me and Bill. “What can I do for you?”
I gave Bill a quick, confused glance. He raised an eyebrow, asking me if I wanted him to take the question so I could watch and listen, but I decided not to do it that way. I said to Mark Quan, “I don’t understand. We’re here because you called us.”
“Well, sure,” he said. “I was asked to extend you every courtesy. A drink at the Mandarin Oriental’s a good beginning, but it can’t be all you need. Life’s never that easy.”
“To extend us—Who asked you to do that?”
Mark Quan gave me an inquiring look; then his face relaxed into a smile. “I guess he didn’t tell you he was calling me?”
“Whoever he is, no, he didn’t.”
“That’s like him,” Mark Quan said. “Never gives anything away. Doesn’t tell you anything you don’t need to know, or half of what you do. Kind of drives you crazy sometimes, doesn’t it? But he’s almost always right.”
There was only one man I knew who fit that description, and he fit it perfectly. “Gao Mian-Liang? Gao Mian-Liang called you?”
“That’s right,” Mark Quan said. “Grandfather Gao.”
Bill lit a cigarette. I felt like I needed one, too.
“I guess it’s a lot less of a surprise to me than to you,” Mark Quan went on.
Uh-huh, I thought, I guess.
Bill dropped the match into an ashtray, where it lay in the middle of the hotel’s gilded logo. “He’s called you before, then?” Bill asked, probably just to give me time to get used to this.
