A Drop of Chinese Blood (8 page)

“This is not something that can be discussed over the phone. I need an appointment. It has to be today. I can do it this evening, it doesn’t matter how late.”

“Today is not good, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll pay. Will fifteen thousand yuan get me in the door?”

“For fifteen thousand yuan, you get to take the door home. Let’s say two o’clock.”

“I’ll be there.”

At ten in the morning, I walked down the hall, out the side door, through the courtyard, and into my uncle’s workshop. By ten o’clock he was always dressed, in his workshop, looking at plans for bookshelves. If there was a chance of catching him in a decent mood, this was it.

“Good morning, uncle. You have a two o’clock appointment. We’re selling the front door for fifteen thousand yuan.”

That got his attention. “A client? What do they want? Maybe I won’t take the case. I’m busy these days. Tell them I’m sick of blackmail cases.”

If he was busy, I was the sultan of Brunei. “No, you’re not busy, and we’re about to starve unless you take this one. Don’t even contemplate passing it up.”

“Why? You’ve lost your job? I knew it would happen sooner or later.”

“No, I haven’t lost my job.” The image of Fu Bin tiptoeing into the file room flashed before my eyes. The Third Bureau front office must have told him to try everything possible to get me: malfeasance, dereliction of duty, abuse of office, excessive spitting. It was a matter of pride. The more they looked and couldn’t find anything, the more frustrated they must have become. That explained why Fu Bin kept poking around, treating other officers to drinks, undoubtedly trying to wheedle complaints out of them about me. Why he didn’t get me for spending time at Gao’s was a mystery, now that I thought about it. I never saw him at Gao’s, also a little odd. Everyone drifted there sooner or later. There wasn’t a lot else to do in Yanji.

“Good,” my uncle said with obvious satisfaction as if he’d won an argument. “You’re still employed. Then tell the client to go away.”

“Not on your life. We have debts. Our debts have debts. If we don’t start paying them off, we’ll be on the street. Us and all of these tools.”

Before leaving with the cream puff prince, my wife had run up an enormous phone bill with calls to every capital city in the world, mostly to Bern. We didn’t know anyone in Bern, at least I didn’t. Later I found out that the prince was there at a swank hotel getting refresher training in wedding cake design. The phone bill wouldn’t have been that bad, but she also cleaned out my bank account and sold the house—without access to any sort of legal proof of ownership—to a real estate developer who had plans to knock down all the buildings in the neighborhood and build a condominium complex called Happy Meadows. The sale was illegal, and the developer knew it. He also knew people in high places who didn’t care about legal title or proof of ownership. It was costing me plenty of time and effort to keep the bulldozers at bay. I didn’t have the money to bribe anyone back to my side again. A nice gambling win would have helped, but that was a question of the odds, and my luck was running the wrong way lately.

My uncle couldn’t understand why MSS Headquarters didn’t weigh in on my side. “All they have to do is send someone over to the developer’s office to break a piece or two of furniture,” he said whenever the subject came up. “Your people have forgotten how to break furniture?”

He also didn’t understand how my wife had been able to rob me blind, but he knew it was a sensitive issue and rarely raised the subject. As it happened, he chose this moment to do so. “You let her lead you around by the nose, and all the while she was playing with someone else’s pastry?”

“I was preoccupied.”

“So it seems,” he said.

“It’s pointless to talk about that now. What’s done is done. Water down the drain. She’s gone. Good riddance. Anyway, it’s only money.” It was a lot of money, some of it won during a rare lucky streak at Old Gao’s but most of it from a trip to Macau many years ago. I had kept it at home, since laundering it would have raised flags I didn’t want raised. I had thought a lot about what to do with the money; having my wife take it with her hadn’t been on my list of options.

“Only money.” My uncle ran his fingers across the teeth of his Turkish saw. “Well, it’s your business, you’ll figure it out.” He didn’t think I’d figure it out; that much was obvious by his tone of voice. He cleared his throat. “You’re right. Money brings nothing but unhappiness. The worst cases I ever had to handle were about money. Sex came in a close second.”

“What about this case?”

“This case?” He picked up a pencil and prepared to redraw an old set of plans for bookcases with vertical shelves. “I don’t like the sound of it.”

“What sound? The only sound so far is fifteen thousand yuan rustling in an envelope.”

“Even so, I might not take it.”

Take it or I’ll break your arm, I thought. I picked up a crowbar from against the wall and hefted it in my hand. Aloud I said pleasantly, “We’ll see. At least you can give her a hearing.”

“Her? Where is she from?”

“I don’t know. She didn’t give anything away over the phone. From her voice, I’d say she is from Yunnan.”

My uncle groaned. “Kunming,” he said more to himself than to me. “A woman from Kunming.” He groaned again.

“Something happen to you in Kunming?”

“Another time. Fix up the office so it’s less of a dump. If she has drug money, we’ll know soon enough. Drug people are fussy about room hygiene. Can’t you hang up next time?”

At two o’clock, there was a knock on the front door. My uncle was at his desk in the office, reviewing drawings for three pairs of rolling bamboo bookshelves. They were part of a contract for an open-air library to be built on Hainan Island. He insisted that he couldn’t work under contract, but I had finally convinced him at least to submit a bid.

I opened the door to a young woman, fashionably dressed, holding an embroidered handkerchief to her nose.

“I didn’t realize you lived in an industrial area,” she said. The accent was even lighter in person than it was over the phone. “I hope you keep the windows closed. It smells like there is a rendering plant next door. Surely that’s illegal.”

“Industrial area? You must mean the neighbors. They are fond of piglets, at least the husband is. He thinks they are good for his vitality. It leads to a lot of squealing.”

The woman lowered the handkerchief and gave me a determined frown, though it didn’t detract from her many good features. “I’ve heard this neighborhood is up for redevelopment. It can’t happen too soon.” She put the handkerchief back over her nose, which was small, like a button. Her mouth, by contrast, was wide, with the result that the lower half of her face was mostly occupied. Her lips were the color of cherries—I’m no fan of clichés, but that’s what they were, the color of ripe cherries—and full. She was wearing a hat that made her look taller than she was, though I wouldn’t want to call her short even in her bare feet. Not that her feet were bare at the moment. They were in expensive shoes, probably handmade, probably from leather that could double as butter. Though it was a warm afternoon, she had on a long coat that must have cost multiples of what she had agreed to pay just to step into the house. The coat matched the color of her lips. A sudden craving for fruit came over me.

“Are we going to do this interview on the front step?” This put a bit more of Yunnan in the air, but not much.

“No, of course not.” For the second time in a week I had nearly left a beautiful woman standing outside. It was a bad habit that needed breaking. “Please, come in. May I take your coat?”

Underneath she had on a short-sleeve bright yellow sheath, with a small gold brooch pinned on the left. The hemline was slightly above her knees, which were pretty good for knees. I’m trained to observe, and I can’t help doing it even off duty at my front door, looking at a beautiful woman. Other than the brooch, I noticed, she wasn’t wearing jewelry—no earrings, no necklace, no bracelet, and no rings. She didn’t need anything flashy, and she knew it.

“If you’ll follow me to the office,” I said.

My uncle was complaining to himself when we appeared at the door. “I doubt they even know how to read on Hainan,” he said, staring at the bid tender. “No one in his right mind makes bookcases out of split bamboo. What the hell sort of book sits on a bamboo shelf?”

I knocked twice. “This is…” It dawned on me that I didn’t have a name to go with the lips.

“Du Hwa,” the woman said. “I take it you are Inspector O.” She stepped into the room, which instantly improved the color scheme.

“Please sit.” My uncle smiled at her. In a heartbeat, I was worried. He never smiled at clients right away, especially not women. I was only moderately reassured when he fell back into his regular client face. He once told me he put on that face at the beginning of a client meeting in order to communicate total control of the situation, whatever the situation was. This time, though, I sensed something was missing. The look on his face wasn’t that of a veteran investigator. The effect was more one of resignation, like a sea bass on realizing it has landed on a large plate covered in Kunming black bean sauce and scallions.

The woman sat in the chair indicated. From outside the window there was a shriek and a brief squeal.

“Our neighbor.” My uncle smiled again.

“Was that the wife?” Miss Du looked vaguely alarmed.

“No, that was the piglets,” I said, hoping to put things back on track. “The wife has a lower register.”

The woman looked around the cluttered shelves. Her gaze lingered for a moment on the dead flowers. “Let’s dispense with further pleasantries, shall we?” From her purse she took a white envelope. “Here is the fee that we agreed would start the soup simmering.”

I took this as some quaint Yunnan saying. Either that or she was planning to stay for lunch.

“Very well, my nephew will count it later.” My uncle flashed me a count-it-twice look. “Now, Miss Du, why don’t you tell me the nature of your problem? Start at the beginning. Just be yourself; don’t try to sound like a police report. We’ll fill in the details once we establish the overall picture.”

The woman sat demurely in the chair. Her lips held a cherrylike look of satisfaction. I had the feeling she recognized an old sea bass when she saw one.

2

“My father is in pieces.”

There followed a prolonged silence. My uncle gave no hint that he was prepared to speak. Miss Du looked as if she might shed a tear—two at the outside—for effect. I put the envelope with the fifteen thousand yuan on my desk and sat down.

“He’s in pieces in my brother’s restaurant freezer.”

Another silence, broken by a brief squeal from next door. This seemed to jar loose a thought from my uncle.

“What sort of restaurant is it?”

Miss Du stood up. “I’m sorry I came. If you think this is funny, I don’t.”

“Funny? Why would I think that? I assume you want to know what happened and who is behind this. To find out, I’ll need to know a lot of things that will make you uncomfortable. I’ll need to know how long the process of your receiving the pieces, or whatever they were, continued.” My uncle sounded annoyed, which I recognized as merely an act to get the upper hand. “Sit down, Miss Du. We can’t talk with you standing there. First of all, I need to know who your father was.”

“You’re assuming he is dead?”

“Ah, good for you. You are sensitive to verb tenses. Well, I don’t know at this point whether he is dead or not. How could I? It will depend on the details.”

No, I thought to myself, it will depend on whether or not he is dead.

“For example,” my uncle charged ahead, “at some point I will no doubt ask if the pieces arrived in any particular order.”

Miss Du gasped and sat down heavily on the red velvet chair. She composed herself quickly, though. I gave her extra points for that. Her next question was completely on target. “Should I assume that these details you’ve mentioned determine the price of your services? I imagine a murder investigation must cost more than a missing persons case.”

“But this isn’t a missing persons case.”

“Why do you say that, Inspector? You just told me you didn’t know what it was. Now you say you do. Am I supposed to be impressed with how quickly you jump to conclusions?” She had clearly regained her composure and then some.

My uncle was unfazed. “Actually, Miss Du, I’m not jumping at all. Your father cannot be described as missing. If what you say turns out to be true, then we already know where he is, in so many words.”

I thought Miss Du would spring up again, but she merely nodded. “What’s the fee?”

“I’m not sure I want to take this case.”

The envelope with the fifteen thousand yuan fell quietly off my desk into the open top drawer.

My uncle sat upright in his chair, a dangerous sign that he was reaching the wrong conclusion about what to do next. “You seem to be hiding something, Miss Du, and I don’t work with clients who hide things. Are you?”

“No, nothing.”

“Then I’ll ask again, who was your father?”

“Du Hua-son.” She leaned toward my uncle, and her eyes sparked. “You may have heard of him.”

From the way my uncle looked at me, I sensed he had dropped his reluctance about the case. Even so, I used my knee to nudge shut the drawer with the envelope.

“Du Hua-son,” he said slowly, “the master forger?”

“Forger?” Miss Du jumped from her chair again, her face flushed. I was out of my chair a split second before she could lunge across the desk at my uncle. I had my hand lightly on her shoulder, careful not to wrinkle the fabric.

“Forger? My father was a world-famous sculptor. He had pieces in the top museums of Europe and Asia. How dare you call him a forger!” She shook off my hand. “If your nephew touches me again, he’ll sing soprano in the karaoke bar.”

“Sit down, Miss Du, and don’t be a fool,” my uncle said firmly. “I don’t know anything about your father’s artistic side. That may be what it may be. I knew him as a master forger and counterfeiter without peer. You can be proud of him. He was the best.” My uncle saluted, albeit from a seated position. “The very best. I’m saddened to learn of his passing.” This was said in a somber tone, as if the man had died intact after a long illness. In the same tone, and with barely a pause, my uncle continued. “A murder investigation is 135,000 yuan plus expenses, which I warn you can be considerable. If I don’t solve the case in forty-five days, however, I return half the fee.”