Then John, who was scanning the crowd, drew in a quick breath. “Look who just arrived.”
Ted followed his gaze, then said with pleasure, “Oh, good, he’s here.”
Other people in the hall were also murmuring about the new arrival, as were members of the Yee family.
Lily paused in her conversation with Max to look in the same direction as everyone else. I noticed that her warm, animated expression suddenly grew cold.
Ted whispered to John, just loud enough for me to hear, “I really need to talk to him.”
Quite curious by now, I watched as the crowd parted to let a short, homely, plump older man in a cheap suit approach the coffin to pay his respects. He bowed three times before Benny with his palms pressed together, then paused at the altar before coming over to greet Grace Yee and her family.
My business with Ted was concluded, so I was reluctant to continue intruding on the family. I tugged on John’s arm to pull him some distance away from them. Max remained with Lily, whose gaze was fixed coolly on the new arrival. It was clear from everyone’s behavior that he was an important man. Grace Yee seemed particularly pleased to see him. Despite her sore leg, she rose from her chair to speak with him.
“Who is he?” I murmured.
“Uncle Six.” John’s answer made me think of Fleming’s Double-Oh-Seven or Star Trek’s Seven-of-Nine.
“Who?”
He smiled. “It’s what people call him. Real name, Joe Ning. He’s head of the Five Brothers tong.”
“Ah.”
“‘Uncle’ is respectful, a way of saying he’s everyone’s benefactor. And six is a good number. It represents wealth, prosperity, and success in business.”
“He doesn’t look wealthy and successful,” I noted.
“He’s one of the most powerful men in Chinatown,” said John. “But he’s traditional. He’s ruthless about maintaining his power, but he doesn’t flaunt his wealth.”
I noticed that Uncle Six was soft-spoken and his manner was humbly courteous. He took time to speak to each member of the Yee family. Due to Max’s proximity to Lily, Uncle Six even made a point of patting Nelli on the head. She accepted this cheerfully, then went back to looking around the room with interest.
When Uncle Six greeted Lily, I was surprised by how friendly she seemed; it was a contrast to the negative way she’d reacted to his arrival. I supposed she didn’t want to slight such an important man, especially not when the rest of the family seemed so pleased by his arrival.
Now that he was closer to us, I could see his features more clearly. His face was chubby and a bit froglike, but there was nothing cute about it. His eyes were too shrewd and intense for that—and also cold, even when he smiled, as he was doing now. Watching him as he spoke with more members of the family, I found it easy to believe that Uncle Six was a ruthless man.
“He’s showing a lot of respect, spending this much time with them,” said John. “It’s a little surprising, since he didn’t like Benny. But it’s good for the family. They’re regaining some of the face they lost when Benny’s girlfriend showed up and Mrs. Yee jumped her. Plus there was this whole thing with a white girl flying through the air and landing on the corpse.”
“You’d have had another body to embalm if I hadn’t done that.”
“True. And killing someone at a wake is such bad manners, the Yees would never be able to regain face if you hadn’t walloped Grace and tackled the girl.”
“I didn’t wallop . . .” I realized he was kidding and rolled my eyes at him. “Anyhow, surely going to prison would have mattered more than losing face?” Having recently been jailed, I had strong feelings on the matter.
“Not around here. Almost nothing matters more than losing face,” John said seriously. “If anything, it’s a custom that’s even stronger in Chinatown today than it was back in the old country. You can survive a prison sentence, or the death of a family member, or anything else as long as you still have face. But without face, life is very tough in Chinatown. And the Yee family is well established, so they have a lot of status to protect. It’s a lot more visible to everyone in the community if they lose face than if a penniless, unknown sweatshop worker with no connections does.”
“Hmm. So maybe Mrs. Yee thought she’d lose more face by letting Benny’s overdressed girlfriend weep over his body in front of all these people than by clobbering the girl in the middle of her husband’s wake,” I suggested.
John smiled and shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe for a few minutes there, Mrs. Yee just wasn’t thinking at all. She’s got a hot temper, after all.”
“So I gathered.” I changed the subject. “By the way, thank you for introducing me to Ted.”
“You’re welcome. I think it would be fun to have you on the film.”
I asked a little more about the Yees and learned that Lily’s late husband, Benny’s younger brother, had died of cancer several years ago, after a long battle with the illness. He had been a successful merchant who’d left Lily a thriving Chinatown souvenir shop that was bequeathed to him by his father—who had cut Benny out of his will for being involved in the criminal world.
It seemed like a complicated family. But as John had said, most things in Chinatown were complicated.
Uncle Six finished paying his respects to the Yee family, then started to mingle with the crowd. He was obviously very well-known around here. I saw Danny Teng approach him and, from then on, stick to him like a burr, which the old man accepted as if accustomed to it. But I also saw perfectly respectable-looking people warmly greet and chat with Uncle Six, and I recalled what John had said about the complex nature of Chinatown’s tongs.
Ted joined me and John then, and the three of us talked a little about his movie. It was called ABC and was the story of Brian, a young man trying to find his own path as a first-generation American in a Chinese immigrant family. His conflict was represented by his attraction to two very different women: Mei, a FOB (Fresh Off the Boat) immigrant living and working in Chinatown, who represented the Old World that Brian found restrictive; and Alicia, a modern American woman who represented the New World and freedom.
I made sure that “freedom” did not mean I’d be expected to take off my clothes.
Ted assured me it wasn’t that kind of movie.
“It’s about ideas and culture, identity and meaning, old values and new temptations.” After a moment, he added, “There are a couple of love scenes, though. That’s okay, right?”
I started to say that it was absolutely fine, as long as certain private parts of my body remained private; but I closed my mouth when I saw Lily approaching us. Max accompanied her, with Nelli at his side.
Lily asked Ted to go find his sister. “It is time to go home.”
Ted said, “Actually, I want to stay a little longer and see if I can talk some more to—”
“We are leaving now, Ted,” Lily said firmly. “Please tell Susan, and then get our coats.”
Ted sighed, said he’d see me tomorrow, and then went off to do as he was told.
Max said to me, “Perhaps we should also depart, Esther.”
I nodded, and John offered to give us a lift home, which we accepted; the hearse was a very convenient way to transport Nelli.
Max turned to Lily and took her hand in a courtly gesture. “It has been a great pleasure to meet you, Lily, and I hope we meet again soon.”
“I hope so, too,” she said with a smile. “You have been very kind.”
We said our goodnights, then made our way to the private back rooms again, where Lucky was waiting to confer with us. After we recounted the evening’s events to him—he’d heard some of the shouting and wondered what was going on—we discussed possible murder suspects.
“You met Danny Teng?” John said to me with a grimace. “I feel like I should apologize to you for that, since it happened in my family’s
place of business.”
“Yes, normally a girl has to go into an alley after dark to meet someone like him,” I replied.
“Who is this guy?” Lucky asked with a frown.
“Dai lo of the Red Daggers,” said John.
“Dai lo?” I repeated.
“Gang leader.” John added, “Literally it means ‘big brother.’”
“The Red Daggers.” Lucky nodded. “I heard of them. Bunch of street punks with matching tattoos. Always in a lotta messy trouble. They’re enforcers for the Five Brothers. So, comin’ to Benny’s wake, that guy’s probably just paying his respects, like a good soldier.”
“Probably,” John agreed. “There were other Red Daggers there, too, but they stayed out in the lobby. My father, who’s a braver man than I am, asked them not to come into the visitation room. I think he said their attire might insult the family, or something like that. He’s an elder, so he got away with it, and they stayed out there. But, obviously, he couldn’t ask their dai lo not to come inside and pay his respects directly to the deceased. Danny would lose face, and that wouldn’t be forgiven.”
“This ‘face’ thing really complicates life,” I said.
“You bet,” said John.
“Yes, but having social credit—in other words, maintaining face—is crucial, because social relationships have been the central structure of Chinese society for thousands of years,” Max said, speaking up for the first time since we’d taken our seats in here. He had been unusually quiet and obviously distracted, which I attributed to Lily Yee’s mysterious influence. “The family, the clan, and the community in Chinese society are much more important than the individual. And people in China survived centuries of warring states, civil wars, volatile warlords, foreign invasions, unjust rulers, and colonial domination by relying on their social and personal relationships—rather than on laws or government—for protection, justice, and mutual aid.”
John nodded. “Traditionally, that’s how Chinatown has always functioned, too.”
I was pleased to see Max behaving more like his usual self, so I didn’t interrupt as he continued lecturing—which he was prone to do.
“Therefore, if one person loses face or is dishonored, it doesn’t reflect only on him, but on the whole social fabric in which he is merely one thread. His family, his clan, his guild or brotherhood—any or all of these will endure shame because of his shame. Thus their influence will be reduced and their position damaged in all their social relationships, making them vulnerable and weak, diminishing and even endangering them.” Max said pensively, “It’s a strong enough system to have worked effectively for many centuries, but it is not an easy way of life.”
“And tonight Esther helped the Yee family save face,” John said with a smile, lightening the mood, “when she prevented Grace Yee from committing murder at her own husband’s wake.”
“Good work, kid,” Lucky said to me. “I been to two funerals where someone got whacked before the stiff was even in the ground. I just hate it when that happens. People oughta show more respect for the dead.”
9
An evildoer
Since John had just raised the subject of Grace Yee, I said to my companions in the offices of Chen’s Funeral Home, “Speaking of the merry widow . . .”
“What about her?” asked Lucky.
I posed my Crime and Punishment theory about Grace (i.e. the spouse is always whodunit). But I was skeptical now, after what Susan had said—which information I summarized for Lucky’s benefit.
“So if the wife didn’t know about Benny and his secretary . . .” The old mobster shook his head. “Then what’s her motive? Would she kill him just because she thought he might be playing around with someone?”
“I suppose she could be an extremely clever woman who was just pretending not to know, in order to divert suspicion away from herself when she killed him.” However, I was skeptical about this theory, too, and I added, “But that level of self-control and planning really doesn’t match the woman who flew into a rage and tried to pulverize the girlfriend’s skull tonight in front of many witnesses.”
“And the niece—Susan?—said Benny had played around before, right?” said Lucky.
“He had,” John confirmed. “I don’t really follow gossip about that kind of thing, and even I knew.”
“Why would the missus kill him this time, when she didn’t kill him any of those other times?” Lucky asked. “I don’t see it.”
John added, “Plus, she gave me the death curse from the cookie as soon as I asked her for it. If she was behind it, wouldn’t she be cagey about it? But she seemed relieved to get it out of their apartment. Pretty much the way I’m relieved that Dr. Zadok is taking it out of here tonight.”
Lucky looked at Max. “What do you think, Doc?”
“Hmm? Oh.” Max looked distracted again as he patted the pocket where he had put that menacing slip of paper earlier tonight. “I need to take it back to my laboratory to study its properties.”
“No, I mean, what do you think about Mrs. Yee?” Lucky clarified.
“A lovely woman,” said Max. “Very, um . . . That is, she reminds me . . .”
“He means Grace Yee, Max,” I said quickly. “Benny’s widow.”
He blinked. “Oh. Er, yes, of course. I only exchanged a few formal words with her, so I didn’t form much of an impression. Well, not beyond noting that she seems to be a woman of volatile temper.”
“And cursing someone with death in a fortune cookie,” Lucky said, “is a plan. Cold and calculating. Not something you do in a fit of temper.”
“If a curse is what we’re talking about here.” I looked at Max.
“Well, you all know what I think,” John said, shaking his head.
“Yeah, yeah, we heard from you, Mr. Mundane,” said Lucky. “Now the ball is in the doc’s court. Right?”
“Indeed,” said Max, rising to his feet. “I shall take this fortune to my laboratory now and try to determine forthwith if it has mystical properties . . . or was merely a vicious mundane prank.”
“Let’s go,” I said, eager to find out whether Evil was going to intrude on my film role—because tomorrow, I was going to convince Benny’s nephew to cast me in ABC even if I had to get Nelli to sit on his chest and show him her fangs in order to persuade him that I was right for the part.
We said goodnight to Lucky as we donned our coats, gloves, and hats. Then John, Max, Nelli, and I made our way through the silent Italian portion of the funeral home and back out into the wintry night. A thin blanket of fresh snow coated the sidewalks now. It had stopped coming down, but the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up.
Shivering a little even inside my warm coat, I took Max’s arm and huddled close to him and Nelli, following John as he led the way back to the parking garage.
“Lily Yee made quite an impression on you,” I said quietly to Max.
“Hmm?” He’d obviously been lost in thought again. “Oh. Yes . . .” He was silent for a long moment, then said, “She reminds me of someone.”
“Someone special, I gather?”
“Yes. Someone who was quite special.” It was too dark to see his expression, but his voice sounded sad.
“Is Lily a lot like her?”
“In appearance, very much so. In circumstances, not at all, I suppose.” He thought it over. “In other ways . . . I don’t know her well enough to say.”
“Who was she, Max?” I asked, curious about someone who was obviously a powerful memory for him.
“Li Xiuying,” he said on a sigh. “Beautiful Flower.”
“What happened to her?”
“Oh . . . she died.”
“How?”
He shook his head. “It was a long time ago, Esther.”
I was even more curious now, since Max wasn’t usually reticent a
bout his past. On the contrary, he could be loquacious to a fault. But I could tell that if I pursued this subject, I would be intruding on something he didn’t really want to talk about. Max was not a moody man by nature, so I realized there must be heartbreak behind the name Li Xiuying. I supposed he would tell me about it when he was ready—or perhaps not at all.
I was a little concerned about him, but not hurt that he didn’t choose to confide in me. After all, I kept a number of things private about my relationship with Lopez. We all have things we’d rather not discuss, not even with someone we trust.
After we reached the parking garage, Nelli hopped readily into the back of the hearse and settled down. The streets were less crowded now, and the shift in the weather had improved visibility, so the drive back to the West Village was uneventful. John, Max, and I talked a little more on the way home about our impressions of the wake and the visitors, but the conversation was desultory.
When we got to the bookstore, John offered to drive me to my apartment, but I declined. I knew Max would go down into his laboratory now, rather than upstairs to bed (he lived above the shop), and I was as eager as he was to find out whether the death curse had mystical properties.
So I entered the bookstore with Max and Nelli, shed my coat, and warmed up with a quick cup of hot tea. Nelli lay down by the gas fireplace, though Max didn’t ignite it for her, and promptly fell asleep.
Max pulled the death curse out of his pocket, still in its little plastic bag, and turned it over in his hands, studying the black piece of paper and its sinisterly graceful white symbol.
“I don’t suppose it gives off a vibe or something?” I asked.
“Alas, nothing so self-explanatory,” he said.
“So how do you plan to determine whether that thing is mystical?”
“I’ve been thinking about that all the way home.”
“Oh! I thought you were thinking about . . .” I paused, not wanting to bring up Lily Yee’s name again. I concluded awkwardly, “Exactly that.”
The Misfortune Cookie: An Esther Diamond Novel Page 14
