The Misfortune Cookie: An Esther Diamond Novel (26 page)

I put my hands on my emotion-flushed cheeks, feeling a little dizzy again as I considered the geometrically expanding possibilities for death and destruction contained in the misfortune cookies. “I hadn’t even thought of that! I was just so panic-stricken to realize
he
was in danger.”

“Perfectly understandable, since you are fond of him,” said Max. “But Lucky, who is
not
fond of Detective Lopez, more readily perceived the extended ramifications of your story.”

I sighed in despair. “What are we going to do, Max?”

“For now, I urge you to go home and get some sleep.”

“What?”

“There’s been a new murder and an attempted murder. As we feared, the killer is augmenting his attacks, now that cursing his victims with death has proved to be such a convenient solution to his problems. Therefore, it behooves us all to be alert and effective. You seem overwrought and fatigued, so I strongly recommend rest.”

“But how I possibly
rest
when—”

“Your young man is safe tonight,” Max assured me. “Remember, from the killer’s perspective, the attack on Detective Lopez is in motion now, and the murderer is awaiting results—unaware that we have confiscated and neutralized the murder weapon. He will not attempt another strike until he realizes the first one has failed, and that seems likely to take some time. Uncle Six, after all, did not immediately activate the curse; it took a matter of days. The murderer presumably anticipates that possibility with this methodology. In fact . . .” He seemed to lose his train of thought, and he wound up staring off into space for a few long moments. “Hmm.”

“Max?”

“It’s very subtle, isn’t it?” he murmured. “If not for Lucky’s keen instincts, murder would never even have been suspected.”

I was looking at his gentle, bearded face, but not sure what I saw in his distracted expression and slightly unfocused gaze.

“The beauty . . . the patience . . . the indirectness . . .” He nodded and murmured, “Yes. Subtlety.”

“Max?” I prodded. “Something has occurred to you, hasn’t it?”

He blinked and looked at me, as if surprised to discover me sitting right in front of him. Then he said briskly, “I must do some research. And perhaps an experiment. And you, my dear, must go home and get some rest. We’ll speak again tomorrow. Shall I call a taxi for you?”

I realized that he wanted to do the kind of work he did best when alone and undisturbed, and also that he was right about my needing rest. I could barely hold a thought or form a coherent sentence by now. I was so wrung out, I really
wouldn’t
be of any use to Lopez—or anyone else—if I didn’t get some rest.

I went home, squandering more money on cab fare rather than brave the subways and icy streets in my state of anxious fatigue and Alicia’s tiny dress. I didn’t expect to hear from Lopez tonight, partly because it was pretty late by now, and partly because he was probably working. Even if the NYPD thought Joe Ning’s death was accidental, they presumably still had to investigate when a tong boss took a dive off a sixth-floor balcony. And although it wouldn’t be Lopez’s case, he would take an interest in it because of his own Ning investigation—which meant he’d probably want to be at the crime scene tonight, along with a bunch of other cops.

And I was glad of that. Because I found it comforting to picture him surrounded by many cops tonight while they worked the crime scene and canvassed witnesses.

With that soothing image of him, I was actually able to get a good night’s sleep, despite having thought when I crawled into bed that there was no way my jittery nerves would let me slumber. In fact, I was still dead to the world when my phone rang the next morning, startling me awake.

Hoping my caller was Lopez, I reached for my cell on the bedside table and answered without opening my eyes. “Hello?”

“Oh, did I wake you, Esther? Sorry. I thought you’d be up by now.”

The voice was familiar, but not the tone. “Ted?” I said groggily. “Is that you?”

“Yeah.” He gave a dispirited sigh.

Accustomed to his (often groundless) optimism and enthusiasm, I was surprised by how low he sounded. “Is something wrong, Ted?”

“Things aren’t looking good, Esther. I’m not going to tell the cast and crew for a few days, since I don’t want to spoil the holiday for them. But since this isn’t
your
holiday . . .”

“Yes?” I prodded, remembering that Chinese New Year’s started today.

“I just wanted to let you know that, well, you might want to start looking for another job. I don’t think the film’s going to be able to go forward.”

That got me to open my eyes and sit up. “What? Why? Ted, what’s happened?”

“I’ve lost my backer,” he said sadly. “God, that’s two in a row. In the same month! Can you
believe
my luck?”

“What do you mean, you’ve lost your backer?”

“He died last night.”

For a moment, I wondered if Danny Teng had gotten himself killed while out looking for trouble in the wake of Uncle Six’s swan dive off a balcony . . . and then it hit me.

“Uncle Six was your new backer?”

Of course.

“Oh, I guess you heard about what happened?” Ted said morosely.

Danny was Joe Ning’s enforcer, his lackey, despite his boast to me at Benny’s wake that he worked for himself. He’d been on our set each day at the behest of his boss, Uncle Six, who was the one who was investing in the movie and wanted an eye kept on it.

I also realized now why Ted had never returned to my costume fitting last night.

“When you were helping Danny get out of the store, he told you, didn’t he?” I said. “That Uncle Six had just died.”

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Ted. “I went with him to the Nings’ place, sure he must be wrong.
Hoping
he was wrong. But, no, Uncle Six was dead.” After a moment, Ted added, “It’ll have to be a closed-casket service, of course.”

After a fall like that, I supposed so.

I asked, “Did you have a contract with Uncle Six? Anything like that?”

“No,” said Ted. “He didn’t really work that way.”

“Oh. I guess not,” I said.

Maybe the film would have been some sort of money-laundering scheme for the tong boss . . . But, actually, I suspected it was instead a perfectly legitimate business interest. A matter of face. Of stature. As one of the most powerful men in his community, it was Joe Ning’s rightful place to support a young ABC filmmaker who was employing Chinatown talent and telling a story about the life of dreams and ambition, sacrifice and hardship, guts and true grit that people lived in the narrow, overcrowded streets of their famous and infamous neighborhood.

And although I didn’t think much of Ted’s writing or direction, I could understand what this film meant to him. In a way, I could even imagine what it might have meant to Benny Yee and Uncle Six.

“I’m really sorry to hear about this, Ted,” I said sincerely. “But what about John’s idea for getting new investors?”

“Maybe . . . I don’t know, Esther . . . I need to step back and take a break. Think things through, you know? Maybe when your luck keeps turning so sour, it means you’re chasing the wrong fate.” He added, “After everything that’s happened, I really feel like this movie is cursed.”

Luck . . . fate. . . . cursed . . .

Something was taking shape in my mind. Pieces of the puzzle were tumbling together, a jumble of stuff that
almost
made sense . . .

And then Ted said the thing that showed me the pattern.

“Can you do me a favor and tell your friend—Detective Lopez, I mean—that I don’t think I’ll be needing those location permits, after all?”

“
Lopez,
” I said, my blood running cold.

“Please tell him I really appreciate his help.”

Lopez, helping with the film, to try to make things right with me.

Ted continued, “But I’d hate for him to do any more for me at this point.”

Benny and Uncle Six, putting up the money for the film.

“Not when I’m not even sure,” Ted said, “whether we’ll be going forward.”

Luck . . . fate . . . cursed . . .

Those three men had all received a misfortune cookie.

“Oh, my
God,
” I murmured breathlessly, feeling the chill down to my bone marrow now.

We had been looking in the wrong direction. This wasn’t about the criminal underworld, a power struggle in the Five Brothers, or an attempt to liberate a tong boss’ homicidal younger brother from the prison where Lopez had helped put him.

Benny Yee, Joe Ning aka Uncle Six, and Detective Connor Lopez . . .

The
film
was what those three men had in common!

They had all helped Ted realize his dream by keeping the troubled production rolling forward, against the odds and despite multiple setbacks.

“When you just keep having the worst luck over and over,” said Ted, “there must be something inauspicious about your project.”

“The worst luck . . .” I repeated slowly, remembering something else now.

“I guess I sound very Chinese today,” he added wryly.

“That’s what everyone keeps saying about her,” I murmured, thinking aloud. “Mary had the worst luck. It was just one thing after another . . .”

“I know,” said Ted. “By now, I almost feel like I brought it on her by casting her in the film.”

“Maybe you did,” I mused.

“Pardon?”

“It was as if she was cursed,” I said slowly.

“Um, I hope nothing bad has happened to
you,
Esther?” he said anxiously. “You sound a little strange.”

“Ted, I need Mary’s phone number,” I said briskly. “It’s important.”

Crisis, critical moment

“I
t was a small box of gourmet fortune cookies. A gift from Lily Yee,” I told Max, relieved that he was taking my news much better than I had expected. “Mary Fox thought Ted’s mother was trying to make her feel welcome, since she was the only person in the cast or crew who wasn’t Chinese.”

“Ah, I think I see,” Max said gravely, his expression sad but resigned. By the time I had arrived at the bookstore to share my information, a couple of hours after Ted’s call had awoken me, Max had already come to some sobering conclusions of his own. He continued, “Because Mary wasn’t Chinese, she was the only one whom Lily could count on
not
to recognize the Chinese symbols in the fortunes that lay within those cookies?”

“That’s what I think,” I confirmed. “Even someone like John, who wasn’t any good at his Chinese lessons, can read at least a hundred characters. Out of the entire cast and crew, Mary was the only person who Lily could be positive would never recognize any of the Chinese symbols for bad luck, injury, illness, and harm that must have been written on those fortunes.”

And, indeed, she did not. The actress, who enjoyed an occasional treat, kept breaking open those fortune cookies, with no idea that
they
were the cause of her various problems. And I didn’t tell her the truth when pumping her for information by phone this morning, under the chatty guise of wanting to wish her well and get her insights into Alicia. Fortunately, she had eaten the last of the cookies only minutes before breaking her leg, so no more mystical misfortune would be inflicted on the poor woman. Mary was safe now.

“When I
think
of what Lily put Mary through, Max . . .” I shook my head in appalled revulsion.

Chinese New Year celebrations were underway in Chinatown. With various streets closed off for the festivities and traffic so heavy on the thoroughfares, Max and I had abandoned our taxi from the West Village before we reached Canal Street. It would be faster to walk the rest of the way. So we were proceeding to Yee & Sons Trading Company on foot, bundled up against the weather. It was sunny out, a good day for a colorful celebration, but cold.

“Mary’s a trooper, though. A real pro,” I said with admiration. “She kept coming to work despite the rash, the anaphylactic shock, being run over by a food cart. It must have driven Lily crazy that her curses were working, yet the actress didn’t quit and production kept rolling forward.”

As we reached Canal Street and waited for the light to change so we could cross, I continued, “I think that must be why Lily started in on Benny next. If she was going to take the risk of cursing someone else with bad luck, someone who actually might
recognize
some of the symbols she used, then it needed to be worth the risk. If she got rid of Ted’s backer, then the project would collapse. So it must have seemed worth chancing.”

Benny was raised in the US and probably no scholar, but he was very superstitious. Maybe Lily had played on that. If you convince a man who believes in bad luck that he’s cursed with it, perhaps it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Had Benny’s business losses and misfortune in the final weeks of his life been Lily’s doing? I suspected they must be, since Benny’s losses ensured that Grace Yee couldn’t continue supporting the film after her husband’s death and had to sell the loft where Ted’s production was based.

I also thought I knew who had told Grace Yee about her late husband’s affair with his secretary. Lily probably hadn’t expected the hysterical scene at the wake. I thought she must have intended to distract Grace from the subject of the death curse . . . which Grace had found suspect enough to take home with her before she gave it to John.

“I think Lily wanted Ted to get more serious about working in the store and someday taking it over,” I said as Max and I crossed Canal Street, along with dozens of other pedestrians. “He dropped out of art school. He needed her to rescue him when his band went bust. Enough was enough, from her perspective. And
now
he was devoting all his time and energy to filmmaking. Whether or not his mother realized how lame his script was, she must have known how disorganized the production was and how bad Ted was at running things.”

I recalled Susan’s noisy hostility to Ted in a public restaurant after Officer Novak shut down our illegal filming in Doyers Street. It was probably far from being Ted’s first absurdly careless screw-up on this production, and it obviously drove his family crazy.

“Even so . . .” I shook my head. “Escalating to
murder
just to try to halt Ted’s film? It’s crazy.”

“Also evil,” Max said.

“Does Lily seem that unbalanced to you?”

“I don’t know her well, Esther. And I must confess that my judgment has been clouded by her resemblance to a woman I admired very much,” he said with mingled sorrow and self-recrimination.

“Li Xiuying.”

Max seemed surprised that I remembered the name. “Yes. And Li Xiuying would be . . .” He smiled a little wryly. “. . . critical of my foolishness, rather than flattered or sentimental, if she knew that my memories of her had interfered with my efficacy when lives were at stake.”

I recalled that John’s father also seemed to have a soft spot for Lily; and I remembered how warmly she had greeted Uncle Six at Benny’s wake despite obviously not having been pleased to see him arrive. “Lily Yee isn’t just a woman who physically resembles someone you admired, Max. She’s also one who uses her beauty and her charm with experienced skill.”

Even Mary Fox, with whom I had spoken this morning, thought Ted’s mother was “the sweetest lady,” though I now knew Lily Yee had inflicted just about everything but plague and boils on her.

I could hear Chinese music coming from the park, blaring through loudspeakers. In the narrow streets and lanes around us, I heard the rhythmic pounding of drums and cymbals—the traditional accompaniment to the lion dancers, who were roaming the neighborhood now. As we left Canal and turned down a side street, we came upon one such company. An immense orange lion was bobbing, bounding, and leaping around gracefully outside of a tofu shop, demanding his due. People were gathered around watching, while the musicians who traveled with the lion played the hypnotic percussion music for his performance. The two men who wore the costume—one as the head, one as the body—worked so well together, it was easy to forget that the prancing, beautiful creature was a two-man puppet rather than an enchanted four-legged beast. Its massive, dragon-like head was decorated with gold, red, and white fringe, and it was batting its long eyelashes flirtatiously at the various spectators and passersby on this street—including me and Max; but we were too preoccupied to appreciate the performance. As we approached, a smiling shopkeeper came outside and offered the lion a red envelope of lucky money and half a head of cabbage.

“Lily is also a more
daring
woman than I would have guessed,” I said to Max after we were far enough away from the musicians that we could hear each other’s voices again.

Like the rest of Chinatown, this street was very crowded today. I took Max’s arm so we wouldn’t get separated as we made our way through the dense throng of people.

Lowering my voice so we wouldn’t be overheard, I continued, “She’s tried to murder a cop, and she’s killed two tong bosses. It’s not really what you expect of a softspoken widow who runs a retail shop.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “Lily may not be acting alone. In any case, it’s the shop that should have alerted me sooner. The disorientation that everyone experiences in the store. It was a cue that mystical energy was at work there, but due to . . . to my compromised judgment, I didn’t recognize it.”

After calling Mary this morning and getting confirmation of my new theory that this whole murderous mess was about sabotaging Ted Yee’s film, I had put on heavy layers of sensible winter clothing and raced over to Max’s to try to convince him that Lily Yee was our villain. I had expected to encounter considerable resistance, given the interest he had shown in her. Instead, I was surprised to find that he had formed a similar theory since last night, albeit via a different path of investigation.

He had realized last night that the misfortune cookies were the product of a subtle and devious personality whose motives we had entirely overlooked in our pursuit of more obvious ones elsewhere. Combined with his uneasiness about Lily’s confusing emporium, he had stayed up late researching his suspicions and experimenting with a potential solution.

“I believe the store is mystically warded,” Max said as we turned another corner, getting closer to Yee & Sons. “In its natural state, it is indeed a large establishment, but probably rational and orderly in its layout. The effects of mystically manipulating
feng shui
elements are what make it such a puzzling place in which everyone gets confused and lost. Except for members of the Yee family, who are presumably protected from the effect with a countermeasure. Probably something quite simple, such as a charm or blessing bestowed at periodic intervals, perhaps under the guise of a family ritual that Ted, who seems to be innocent in all this, considers benign.”

“Well, your theory would explain why an airhead like Ted can always find his way around that place while habitually competent people like John and Lopez can’t even find the second floor,” I said. “But why would Lily turn her own store into such a maze, Max?”

“To conceal what’s going on there,” he said grimly. “The creation of fatal curses. The disorientation is a side effect of this concealment, not a goal in itself. In fact, I postulate that it is an
unwelcome
side effect, since it is noticeable and inconvenient—but a side effect which its creator is apparently not experienced or skilled enough to mitigate or eliminate.”

“The effect is recent. I know that much,” I said. “She hasn’t been doing this forever. John said the store didn’t used to be like that—so confusing, so hard to navigate. Which means that cursing people with death probably isn’t a lifelong habit. It’s something she turned to recently—after Ted, instead of settling down to run the store now, decided to make movies.”

And rather than let her grown son live his own life—or just kick him out of her house if she disapproved of his pursuits—Lily had inflicted illness and accidents on a lead actress in his film, imposed financial problems on Benny before murdering him, killed Ted’s next backer, too, and tried to murder Lopez for helping expedite Ted’s filming permits.

If we found any misfortune cookies at Yee & Sons today, I’d be very tempted to shove them down Lily’s throat.

“Here we are.” As we reached the front door of Yee’s Trading Company, I looked at Max with concern. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Max smiled sadly and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “She is not Li Xiuying. She never was. I merely . . . danced with a ghost for an evening or two.”

“Oh, Max . . . Li Xiuying must have been quite a woman.”

“She was remarkable,” he said wistfully. Then he cleared his throat. “But she has been gone a long time, and there are people here and now who need our protection—as she would certainly remind me. So, come,” he said firmly. “We must put an end to this dreadful business.”

“Yes.”

When we entered the shop, though, rather than immediately launch into a confrontation with Lily, who was standing near the cash register, we just stared in bemused surprise.

Apparently the Yee family had turned a corner of some sort since I had spoken with Ted this morning.

Lily stood there with her long black hair tumbled down her back, rather than in a tidy bun. Her beautiful face, free of makeup today, was ravaged with emotion and streaked with tears. And Ted, always so easy-going and cheerful, was now shouting at her in anger.

When he saw us, he cried, “Esther! You would not
believe
what my family has been doing!”

“Inflicting terrible curses on anyone who tries to help you make this movie?” I guessed.

Lily shrieked in horror, covered her face with her hands, and sank to her knees, sobbing copiously. Which wasn’t really the reaction I had been expecting.

Ted’s jaw hung open as he stared as me. “You
know?
”

“We figured it out a little while ago.” Since Ted wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, I asked, “How did
you
find out?”

Over his mother’s wailing sobs, which he ignored, Ted said, “After I talked with you, I was ready to tell Mom my decision. That I’m going to quit making the film.” With an exasperated look at his sobbing mother, he said, “
She
thought that meant I’d work full-time in the store now and eventually take it over. But I explained that will
never
happen. Never!” He looked at Lily and shouted, “Get that through your head, once and for all!”

“After all I have done!” she shrieked.

Ted said to us, “I’m thinking of going into graphic novels. I’ve always loved comic books, and it would be a great format for
ABC.
In fact, I think I could get a whole series out of Brian’s search for identity! See, I’d change the story so that—”