Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves (29 page)

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her nod. “I still think he's going to be in a tizzy when you show up with me.”

“Let him tizz,” I said. “If he's telling the truth, what difference does it make if I'm there when he gives you the money he owes you?”

“Yeah,” Corinne said. “Somehow I'm not thinking we're going out to dinner tonight on that money.”

Sung was sitting on one of the benches we'd seen earlier in the day. He had his back to us. Two young mothers were perched on an exercise sit-up stand, watching their kids over at the playground, who were getting in a last little bit of play time before it got dark. There was a pair of miniature bulldozers with scoops mounted on short metal poles stuck into the ground, with hinges so the scoops could be swung up and down. One of the kids carefully levered the handles to drop the bucket down and bring up a shovelful of the rubber crumbles that covered the ground. With the arm of the bulldozer fully extended, he maneuvered it around slowly, deliberately, and dumped the whole bucket on the head of the other kid. The mothers were talking and didn't notice this at first. Then, when they did, they both reluctantly stood up and went over to referee.

We'd parked in the lot and were coming up behind Sung. We were only a couple of yards away from him when he turned. He looked at Corinne, then at me.

“I thought I asked you to come alone,” he said in Mandarin.

“Seemed like a nice afternoon for a walk in the park,” Corinne said. At just that moment, there was a low rumble of thunder far off. Maybe rain was coming after all. “We both work pretty hard at the restaurant. Nice to take a day off and go for a walk . . . after you give me my money and the explanation you mentioned.”

“You're not very good at following directions.” Sung was wearing a pair of gray slacks and a cheap gray nylon windbreaker zipped up over his shirt. He had on black socks and tan leather shoes. Just like the night before, when I'd braced him out behind the restaurant, his hair was carefully combed, oily and slick. It looked like he spent as much time on it as Mr. Leong. Though he had a lot more to work with.

I glanced around. One of the mothers was still brushing rubber chips out of her kid's hair. The other was bent over, lecturing her kid. I couldn't see Ms. Masterson or Mr. Cataldi anywhere. I heard a car door slam, then another immediately after. I glanced over toward the hotel parking lot. Two men, both Chinese, had gotten out of a car and were walking in our direction. Both wore dark suits with dark ties. One was short, in his fifties, I was guessing. Even at a distance, I could see his suit was tailored. He walked like a man who controlled things, who was accustomed to getting done what he wanted done, efficiently and definitively. The other man was taller, much thicker. And younger. In his late twenties. His suit didn't fit nearly as well. His hair was cut short, sticking up, like a marine drill sergeant's. He carried himself with an economy of motion. He didn't swing his arms wide or amble. He carried himself like he was going from Point A to Point B as directly as possible, and woe betide anyone who got in his way. He carried himself like he wasn't unfamiliar with physical contact.

Corinne and I had come around to the front of the bench facing Sung. I stood so I could see both him and the line of trees along the back of the park. That's where I was hoping the cavalry would be coming from. Corinne stood next to me. Sung saw us looking at the pair coming up behind him. He swung around again to see them. Then he swiveled back. He stayed seated. The pair came up to us and stopped, maybe five feet away, facing us, with Sung sitting between us. They looked at me, at Corinne, and didn't say anything. Neither of us said anything. One of the kids skidding down a plastic slide over at the play area whooped. The man with the brush cut whose suit didn't fit well—he had to be the bodyguard. The boss was Mr. Expensive Suit. Whose name, it turned out, was Ping. Sung swung around on the end of the seat and turned his head to look at Ping.

“Mr. Ping,” Sung said, speaking English suddenly, “this is my assistant Wenqian.” He opened his palm and lifted it in Corinne's direction. He didn't seem to remember I was even there. Or care.

“Wenqian,” he said. “This is the man we stole from.”

“Oh?” Corinne said. That was all. Her voice was flat, emotionless. I knew she didn't want to give Sung or Ping the satisfaction of sounding outraged. Or incredulous.

“I have spoken to Wenqian,” Sung went on, like he was delivering a lecture. “I have explained that I have returned the diamonds that I took from our inventory, the diamonds that Mr. Ping and his . . .” He paused, searching for the word.

“Consortium,” Ping offered. It was the first thing he said. He said it in English. His pronunciation was precise. He was probably fluent.

“His
consortium
owned,” Sung went on, still in his lecturing-to-slightly-dull-children voice.

“Owned?” Corinne said. “How did they own the company's inventory?”

“I entered into a business relationship with Mr. Ping,” Sung said. “He—”

“You mean you laundered money he gave you.”

“I have made a number of decisions in running my business over the years, Miss Chang,” he said. “I was not aware I needed to clear them with my employees.”

“No need to inform your employees you're working in cahoots with criminals?” Corinne asked. Inside, I smiled.
Cahoots.

“Criminals?” Sung sounded like he was trying to sound surprised. I got the same feeling I had when I'd first encountered him in the alley. It was like he was always acting, always trying to be something he wasn't. He sounded like an amateur actor in a local dinner theater production. He was warming up to his part, the contrite supplicant, asking for forgiveness and admonishing his partner in evildoing to do the same.

“We're the criminals here, Wenqian,” he said. “We are the ones who took the diamonds and left Montreal. In point of fact,” he went on, extravagantly turning both palms over to accentuate his words, “Mr. Ping has been very generous, considering what we've done to him.” Mr. Sung seemed to straighten up and grow a little as he went along. It was as if he were preaching a sermon to Corinne, gently explaining what they had both done and letting her know it was time to make things right.

“I have given Mr. Ping the diamonds I took that rightfully belong to him. I would urge you to do the same.”

Corinne didn't say anything.

I did.

“Er mu bei yi,”
I said. “Sung's mother was a slave girl.”

The expressions on the faces of both Sung and Ping would have been the same if I had spoken Latin instead of Mandarin. They stared at me, frozen. Ping's bodyguard, who'd been gazing off into the distance without any expression at all, slowly, lazily turned his head. He stared at me. Cold, appraising. When I first saw the Curl, from the driver's side of the car the day they'd stopped to threaten me, I'd thought his gaze was reptilian. The bodyguard had an industrial-strength version of that same look. He was looking me over the way a python would a warm little mouse. I tried not to appear too mousy. I didn't think I was sprouting a tail. Or whiskers. I did, nevertheless, feel distinctly like dinner.

“Who are you?” Again, Ping's private school elocution. He'd have been great reading the news on the radio.

I could have gone with any one of the kitchen insults we used every day at the Eastern Palace. Vulgar, full of machismo. It would have had a lot of force. This time, though, I went in just the opposite direction. I used an insult that went back probably five hundred years. In English, it would have sounded Shakespearean. Like Henry VI saying, “Thou misshapen dick!”

But it wasn't in English. It was Mandarin. It didn't sound like much in English. In Chinese, it sounded like I was an elderly librarian, admonishing a young reader not to crease the pages of a book.

“Who are you?” Ping asked again. He looked directly at me.

“A chef,” I said.

Ping turned to Sung. “You know this
laowai?
”

Sung was caught off-guard. He didn't seem exactly sure how to continue on in his dinner theater voice now that he'd been interrupted. “He's . . . ah . . . he's her boyfriend, I believe,” he stammered. He tilted his head at Corinne. “He's . . . he tried to push me around when I first went to talk to her.”

“I didn't try,” I said, still in Mandarin. “I
did
push you around. Your balls remember it. So does your throat. Is that why you're having trouble talking now?”

“Where did you learn to speak Chinese?” Ping asked.

“I learned to speak Chinese in places where it's fairly easy to see when a person's lying,” I said. “Like Sung here is doing.” It wasn't the snappiest response I'd ever come up with. It worked okay, though, considering the circumstances.

Ping looked at me with an expression somewhere between amusement and disdain. His bodyguard didn't change his expression at all. It was time to keep going.

“Sung is lying,” I said. “Through his teeth. You think he—what? Took part of the diamond inventory and just handed over the rest to Wenqian? I assume you know Sung, right?” Without waiting for an answer, I added, “I know he's stupid, but do you really think he's stupid enough to do that?”

“You speak Chinese very well,” Ping said.

“Maybe you're just very good at understanding it,” I said. I liked that. Better than the one about having learned it in places where you could tell when a person was lying. I still wasn't entirely happy with that. I let it go. There were other matters to worry about. A lot of them. The mothers were calling their kids, gathering up their stuff. I couldn't see anyone else around. Of all the people I didn't see, I especially didn't see Ms. Masterson or Mr. Cataldi. I glanced for a second at the back of the park, the only place I could figure them coming from. Nothing.

“Sung took the diamonds,” I said. “He looted them from his own company. He took off with his girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” Ping said.

“She's here now,” I said. “She's staying in the same hotel as Sung, right over there.”

“This is nonsense!” Sung sputtered. He stood up. I took a little satisfaction in knowing I'd been right. That had been her we'd seen leaving the hotel. Maybe I had a future in the detecting business.
Then again,
I thought,
maybe I don't have much future at all past this little meeting.

“I've been completely honest with you,” Sung went on, speaking directly to Ping as if the rest of us weren't there. “At considerable expense, I came out here and found Miss Chang and arranged for her to come here so you can deal with her. As I understand it, your people have already tried to approach her on at least a couple of occasions, with little to show for it.”

Ping slowly blinked. He stared at Sung.

“I've brought you to her,” Sung said. He brushed a piece of lint from his slacks. “I'm done.”

“No,” Ping said. “You're not. No one's done just yet.”

Rule #48: Decide, when things start going downhill, which is the best route to take, and take it, fast.

 

Here we go,
I thought.
It's all going to go downhill from here. Fast. No way it's going anywhere else.
We'd all been just sort of cruising along the crest of the hill, moving slowly without much energy. Now I could feel it in the air, feel the energy start to charge. Now the toboggan was tilting down and gathering speed, and in just a second or two, it was going to move from a gentle cruise to a runaway. Without thinking about it, I'd shifted so my left side was turned just slightly toward Ping's bodyguard. He was going to be the trouble. Most of it, anyway.

I tried to determine if the bodyguard was carrying a gun. His jacket was buttoned. If he had a gun, it couldn't have been in a shoulder holster. An amateur, my father had told me once, might carry a gun in a place he couldn't access easily. A place like his pocket, where he'd have to fish it out. Or under a buttoned jacket. This guy didn't look like an amateur. So if he had a gun, it would likely be on his right hip. His jacket was cut loosely enough I couldn't see any bulge. I tried to keep my gaze over his shoulder, like I was looking past him. That would let me see any movements, ones I might miss if I focused anywhere directly.

“No, my colleague,” Ping went on, “we're not done just quite yet.”

“Then talk to her,” Sung said. He flicked his fingers in Corinne's direction.

“I don't need to talk to her.” Ping's voice was so smooth, I could have drifted off to sleep listening to it. Except I didn't feel all that sleepy.

“I have explained it to you,” Sung said in that voice again, like he was trying to explain quantum physics to a chimp. Patient, slow. “She can tell you where the rest of the inventory is.” He crossed his legs and tugged his pant leg just above the knee to make the crease neater.

“No,” Ping said. “I spoke with another woman who actually does know where the rest of our diamonds are.”

“Who?” Sung said. He seemed to have forgotten about his pants crease. He suddenly looked concerned. His expression was like one of a predator sensing that it might, in fact, have just become prey.

“Zhen-zi,” Ping said. “Your girlfriend. The one who is—as our young, classical Mandarin–speaking chef here mentioned earlier—staying with you at that hotel over there.”

I started to glance in Sung's direction. I wanted to see the expression on his face. But just then a short, sharp scream chopped the air. It came from behind where Corinne and I were facing. Sung jumped, trying to uncross his leg. He wasn't successful. He started to topple. He had to slap his hand on the back of the bench to steady himself. I could sense Corinne flinch beside me. Ping's eyes narrowed slightly at the scream, and the bodyguard lowered his shoulders and relaxed. Experienced fighters react that way to unexpected noises. They don't tense up the way most people do. It wasn't much of a movement, just a twitch, as his shoulders relaxed. I saw it, though.