Chin - 01 - China Trade Read online

  China Trade

  Lydia Chin & Bill Smith [1]

  S. J. Rozan

  SJ Rozan (1993)

  * * *

  Rating: ★★★☆☆

  Tags: Mystery

  Mysteryttt

  * * *

  It’s a city within a city, of smells, sounds, dark shops, and close-knit families; it’s a world all its own. And in all of New York’s Chinatown, there is no one like P.I. Lydia Chin, who has a nose for trouble, a disapproving Chinese mother, and a partner named Bill Smith who’s been living above a bar for sixteen years.

  Hired to find some precious stolen porcelain, Lydia follows a trail of clues from highbrow art dealers into a world of Chinese gangs. Suddenly, this case has become as complex as her community itself—and as deadly as a killer on the loose…

  ### From Publishers Weekly

  Rozan’s debut novel, focusing both on china, the porcelain, and on the homeland of many inhabitants of New York City’s Chinatown, introduces likable Asian-American PI, Lydia Chin. Lydia, hired by the Chinatown Pride museum to recover stolen antique porcelains, confronts the leaders of rival Chinatown gangs in hopes of flushing out the robbers. With information gleaned from a meek scholar who habitually steals tiny porcelains from prominent collections, Lydia discovers an antiquities-laundering business that crosses all socioeconomic strata. Her sidekick, full-time sleuth Bill Smith, provides an element of sexual tension; the resolution hinges on a silly scheme in which Lydia sets herself up to be attacked by a hit man and rescued by her cooperative NYPD pals. Rozan shows a knack for characterizing Chinatown’s denizens, apothecaries, shops and food, but her story has more flavor than substance.

  Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

  ### From Booklist

  It’s always exciting to read the first novel of a newcomer with a distinctive voice and the talent to put a new spin on an established genre. Such is the case with this page-turning mystery introducing Lydia Chin, a Chinese American private investigator living in New York City’s Chinatown. When the Chinatown Museum is robbed of a set of rare porcelains, the chair of the board of directors calls in her friend Lydia, despite the opposition of Lydia’s brother, Tim, a board member embarrassed by his sister’s occupation (not suitable for a respectable Chinese woman) and afraid that her failure to solve the crime will make him lose face. Working with her sometime partner Bill Smith, Lydia finds a connection between the shadowy underworld of the tongs (Chinese gangs) and the black market in stolen art, which leads in turn to violence and danger—definitely unsuitable surroundings in the eyes of Lydia’s family. Rozan’s Chinatown setting has the ring of authenticity, and Lydia is a true original. A very promising start to what shapes up as a top-flight series. *Stuart Miller*

  CHINA

  TRADE

  S.J. ROZAN

  O N E

  I jumped a pothole in Canal Street as I dashed between honking cars and double-parked ones. A cab driver trying to beat the light screeched on his brakes and cursed me, luckily in a language I don’t speak. Pinballing along the sidewalk from fish seller to fruit merchant to sidewalk mah-jongg game, I charged up Canal and down Mulberry. I pushed my way through the throngs of shoppers, who’re mostly local this time of year because Christmas is over but we’re coming up on Chinese New Year. I hopped curbs, squirmed sideways, and tried not to elbow old ladies as I raced to the old school building on Mulberry opposite the park. When I finally got there I stopped. I drew in sharp, cold air until my heart slowed and my breathing was back to normal. Then I calmly climbed the stairs and rang the bell.

  I hate to be late.

  I especially would have hated to be late to a business meeting with one of my own brothers. Though given the way this all turned out, it’s obvious to me I should never work for my family again.

  In Chinatown, though, it’s not that easy. They can’t not ask you, and you can’t say no.

  Not that it was Tim who’d asked me. He hadn’t been the one who called, and he hadn’t been mentioned. That told me a lot: It told me he didn’t approve of hiring me, though he hadn’t stopped it. Well, he couldn’t, could he? “Don’t get my little sister, she’ll screw up and I’ll never live it down.” No, he would have to pretend he thought I was the greatest private investigator since Magnum P.I. in order to save his own face; but I knew what he was thinking.

  My family all thinks it.

  The heavy wooden door, left over from when the building actually was a school, swung open. Well, maybe “swung” is too ambitious a word; it was more like it moved grudgingly aside. Nora Yin, one foot holding the grumpy door, stepped forward, took my arm, and steered me in.

  “Hi, Lydia. Thanks for coming so fast.” She gave me a real, if worried, smile. Nora was tall for a Chinese woman, and broad-shouldered. She’d been a year ahead of me in high school. Nora had never passed notes in math class and had been a volleyball star besides.

  “Well, you said it was important, and I wasn’t in the middle of anything.”

  And hadn’t been for two weeks, I didn’t add. Business was slow.

  “We’re in my office.” Behind her, the door clicked sullenly shut. “Come on.”

  The building was the headquarters of Chinatown Pride, a group of community organizers, social-service deliverers, and general troublemakers. I liked them a lot. Their offices were on the third floor. The old gym and auditorium, which they used for public programs, were on the first floor, and their small museum was sandwiched between. They had bought the building from the city for a dollar. Now, looking at the peeling paint, listening to the stairs squeak, I wasn’t sure who’d gotten the better deal.

  “How’s Matt?” I asked Nora as we climbed. I hadn’t seen Nora’s younger brother Matt for years now, but he’d been my first boyfriend. We’d had the sort of sweet, exhilarating romance that young teenagers carry on mostly in public, partly because you have no place to go, and partly because you’re not sure, not really sure yet, that you want to go there.

  “Okay, I suppose. He’s still in California. I don’t hear from him much.”

  Her voice had a chill in it that I was sorry to hear. They’d never been close; Matt was intense, impatient, a street-hockey player who’d scorned school. He’d sneered at Nora curled up in the Yins’ cramped living room doing and redoing her homework, and at her weekend volunteer projects. Nora had despised Matt’s cigarette-smoking friends and the hours wasted on street corners. After, to no one’s surprise, Matt had gotten involved on the fringes of a now-defunct gang, he’d been shipped off to live with relatives in northern California.

  They didn’t think much of each other, I mused as we rounded the final landing, but family was family. I fight with my brothers all the time, especially Tim and Ted, but I’m not sure I’d like it any better if they just sort of pretended I didn’t exist.

  “Well,” I said, “if you talk to him, tell him I said hi.”

  Nora shrugged at that, then put on her professional face to enter her office at the top of the stairs.

  There were three people waiting for us there. The one nearest the door—a white, middle-aged man, stoop-shouldered, with thick gray hair—stood promptly as Nora and I came in, his eyes on Nora’s worn vinyl floor like a little boy not entirely sure of what well-mannered behavior was but earnestly trying to remember. He held an earthenware teacup, the kind without a handle, and the air was fragrant with jasmine tea.

  Nora stopped inside the doorway to do the introductions.

  “Lydia, this is Dr. Mead Browning. Dr. Browning was on my thesis committee, from the Art History Department.” Nora’s Ph.D. thesis subject was Images of Woman in Tang Dynasty Art, and her committee, I’d heard, was a triumph of her diplomatic skill.

&n
bsp; Dr. Browning smiled bashfully when he shook my hand. He didn’t meet my eyes, but probably that was my fault. My mother always says I stare.

  Next to Dr. Browning a slim, sixtyish Asian woman remained seated as she extended her hand to me. She wore a soft, perfectly fitted black wool dress, small gold earrings with what looked like real pearls in them, and a single strand of what also looked like real pearls around her neck. I don’t know anything about pearls; maybe they only looked real because of the air of grace and authority of the woman who wore them.

  “And this is Mrs. Mei-li Blair,” said Nora. “Mrs. Blair, this is Lydia Chin.” Nora moved around her desk to sit in the old swivel chair behind it. The chair squeaked like the stairs. I shook Mrs. Blair’s hand, thinking her name was probably supposed to mean something to me. Her hair had turned almost completely to silver and was cut into a satiny cap of exquisite precision. My hair, when it turns, will probably go messily gray, and my haircuts won’t hold their organization any better when I’m sixty than they have since I was twelve.

  The other person in the room was a man, Chinese, two years and two days older than me. He perched on the windowsill and fumed. That was Tim. I offered to shake hands with him, too, but that just seemed to annoy him. Nora hid a smile.

  I stuffed my yellow hat into my jacket sleeve and hung the jacket on the back of my chair while Nora poured me tea. Then she got right down to business.

  “We’ve had a robbery,” she said. “We’re hoping you can help.”

  “A robbery? When? Was anybody hurt? Why didn’t you tell me?” Before I could stop myself my eyes flew to Tim, searching for bruises, cuts, signs of an armed struggle.

  “We are telling you, Lydia.” Tim’s voice was exasperated. “And it wasn’t a robbery, it was a burglary. No one was here and no one saw them. No one was hurt,” he added, sort of extraneously. “People don’t usually get hurt during the commission of a burglary.”

  “Sometimes they do,” I said, before I could tell myself to shut up. “Violent criminal activity often happens in the course of the commission of non-violent crimes.” I was suddenly appalled to realize I sounded as pompous as he did.

  “I’m a lawyer, Lydia,” Tim reminded me pointedly. “I know something about criminal behavior.”

  I squelched the obvious crack. “Well, tell me about your burglary.” I looked back to Nora and smiled.

  Nora picked up her cue. She shrugged at the semantic difference between “robbery” and “burglary.” “Someone broke into the basement and stole some things,” she said.

  “What things?” I asked. “What do you guys keep in the basement?” So far as I knew, Chinatown Pride wasn’t exactly rich in assets. I couldn’t imagine anything from its basement being worth hiring a private investigator to find.

  Nora looked at Tim, who looked out the window, frowning. “I have to tell you,” Nora said, “that Tim doesn’t approve of the way we’re going about this.”

  “You don’t actually have to tell me,” I said. “I guessed.”

  “As CP’s legal counsel he believes we should have called the police,” Nora went on, before Tim could say anything. “The Board did meet and discuss doing that, but for what seem to us like good reasons we don’t want to. We want to see what you can do first.”

  “Well, I’ll be glad to help however I can,” I said cooperatively, professionally, and maybe just a touch smarmily, for Tim’s benefit. “What was stolen? And why aren’t you telling the police?”

  Nora’s eyes, this time, went to Dr. Browning. He looked quickly down at his teacup. Nora turned back to me. “A month ago the museum got an unexpected gift. The Blair porcelains—do you know about them?”

  I shook my head. Tim barely hid a frustrated sigh. Now that wasn’t fair, I thought. I can’t be expected to know about everything there is. If he weren’t CP’s legal counsel I’ll bet he wouldn’t know about the Blair porcelains either.

  “What are the Blair porcelains?” I asked Nora as though it were a natural question.

  Nora turned to Mrs. Blair, who took up her silent offer to be the one to answer me.

  “My husband, Hamilton,” Mrs. Blair said, in a voice that was quiet but not weak, “was a collector of Chinese export porcelains. Upon his death three months ago, I was faced with a decision about the future of his collection.” She stopped to sip her tea. She had a slight Chinese accent in her British-inflected speech: English was not her native language, but she had been speaking it, quite correctly, for a long time. “My husband, Miss Chin, was something of a recluse. He collected strictly for his own pleasure—and mine, insofar as I could appreciate the beauty of the objects he loved so. The main pleasure I took from the collection was watching Hamilton’s excitement and joy as each new piece came to us.”

  She stopped again, and though she drank, I didn’t think thirst was what had put the catch in her voice.

  She lowered her cup and continued. “I didn’t share Hamilton’s passion for these porcelains, but he was devoted to them. After he died, it did not seem right to me that an aging woman in an empty house should be all the companionship the pieces he had loved so much would have.”

  I finished my tea and half-turned to put my cup down on the coffee table. As I did I noticed Dr. Browning smiling slightly, looking at his knees. There was a little color in his cheeks, too.

  Mrs. Blair went on: “There were many options for the disposition of the collection, and I had no basis for a decision. I consulted Dr. Browning, whom I had not met but whom Hamilton had greatly respected. After discussions with him and with Nora, I had given the entire collection to the museum here, as a gift.”

  I was astounded. “To CP?” I bit my tongue to keep from asking, Something that valuable?

  Mrs. Blair smiled. “My family is from Hong Kong, not Chinatown, but I am Chinese. My brother owns an import-export firm further up Mulberry Street, but until Dr. Browning told me about Chinatown Pride, I had no idea there was a museum of any sort in this neighborhood. I feel, and Nora confirms this, that my ignorance is not unusual. If my gift can help raise this museum’s profile in Chinatown and in the city at large, I would consider it an honor.”

  Nora turned to me. “When we started the museum,” she said, “we wanted people—kids, especially—to come here to learn about what an ancient civilization they come from. To start being proud of being Chinese, instead of ashamed of being different.”

  “And it works,” I said, recalling giggling groups of third graders poking each other in awe at the Peking Opera costume exhibit the day I’d taken my oldest nephews there. “It’s beginning to catch on.”

  Nora nodded. She gestured the teapot around, but Mrs. Blair and Dr. Browning didn’t want any more and Tim only drinks Lipton’s. “The museum’s grown slowly,” she said. “The Blair porcelains are the most important gift we’ve ever gotten. There were other museums that were hoping for this collection and consider themselves better equipped to display and protect it. The Blair collection has quite a reputation among porcelain experts, even though almost no one has actually seen it.”

  “They haven’t seen it?”

  “As I said,” Mrs. Blair spoke in a voice that was used to not having to be raised to be heard, and that was also, it seemed to me, used to being understood the first time, “my husband was a recluse. He found most people tiresome, greedy, and hypocritical. Without honor, and full of secrets. His collection was his refuge. Porcelain, he often said, had no secrets: It is surface beauty applied over a perfect foundation. My husband did not invite other people to share his refuge.”

  Nora looked at me with a steady gaze. “Lydia, I don’t know how much you know about the museum world, but if it gets around that we couldn’t hold on to this gift it would mean a tremendous loss of face for us. We might never get another donor to consider us again.”

  I began to get the importance of this to Nora and CP. “That’s what was stolen? The Blair porcelains?”

  “Not the whole collection,” Nora said. “Two
crates.”

  “How much is that?”

  “Nine pieces,” Dr. Browning unexpectedly answered. His voice was thin and reedy, and almost apologetic. “A tenth of the whole.”

  “It’s about as much as two people, or possibly one person, could carry away,” Nora added.

  “Crates?”

  “About this big.” Nora made a box the size of a small trunk with her hands.

  “Where were they stolen from?”

  “Our basement. We had an alarm system put in and iron grilles on the windows. The grilles were cut and the alarm system had been disabled. It never went off.”

  “Disabled? How?”

  “A device that kept the signal transmitting even though the wire was cut. Apparently it’s not hard to do.”

  “No, it’s not,” I said absently. I knew that was true, though I didn’t, myself, know how to do it. “But it takes planning ahead. Who knew the porcelains were here?”

  Nora glanced at Mrs. Blair. “As far as we know,” Nora said, “only Tim, myself, Dr. Browning, and Mrs. Blair.”

  “What about the rest of the Board?”

  “Since the theft everyone knows. But they didn’t know when they were coming or when they got here. Those were the kind of details I dealt with, as museum director. No one asked. But,” she added, “whoever took them doesn’t have to be someone who knew what they were stealing.”

  “You mean, they might have been just regular old thieves, and they happened on the Blair porcelains?”

  “Well, it seems to me if they had come because of them they’d have taken them all. Dr. Browning says the things in those boxes aren’t even particularly special.”

  Dr. Browning shook his head. “Not any more than the rest of the collection. It’s all very, very special, of course.” He looked up suddenly, his gray eyes wide, as if he were afraid he’d be misunderstood.