Reflecting the Sky Read online

“He’s been calling me like this for years,” Mark Quan said. “Nothing for months, then just a suggestion: Pick up this pickpocket, look into that cash transfer. ‘Although the crowing of the cock does not bring the sunrise, he fails in his duty if he remains asleep.’”

  Clearly the same Grandfather Gao.

  At that moment our intrepid waiter returned from his mission, discreetly triumphant. He set down a porcelain tea service, including tiny silver tongs to grab tiny sugar cubes with, and poured Bill’s beer into a long thin glass. Mark Quan’s drink came decorated with a sunburst of lemon. I poured myself some tea through a silver strainer that had a bowl of its own to sit in while it waited to be needed again. I sipped; the tea was keemun, strong and slightly sweet, so I added a slice of lemon from a fan of them on a plate. I must have been running on fumes, I realized, as I sipped again and felt every cell in my body perk up like plants that have been waiting desperately for the man with the watering can.

  “Detective,” I said, “can you explain this from a little closer to the beginning? How do you know Grandfather Gao, and why does he call you?”

  Mark Quan sipped from the frosted glass. “He was friends with my dad in the States before we moved here.”

  “You’re not from Hong Kong?”

  He grinned. “Actually I was born here. My folks moved us to Birmingham, Alabama, when I was six months old. But my dad grew up here and always wanted to come back. I was just out of high school when he and Ma decided to make the big move, so I came along to see what it was all about.”

  “I guess you liked it.”

  “Well, you know.” He shrugged. “I just never felt like I fit in Birmingham.”

  I was surprised to hear myself think, I do know. I drank some tea and asked, “And Grandfather Gao?”

  “My dad’s a Chinese doctor. In Birmingham he ran a grocery store; on the side, he treated practically every Chinese person in Alabama. He used to go up to New York to buy herbs from Grandfather Gao. A few times he took me with him. They’d drink tea and talk, and I’d sit there in the middle of all those jars and drawers feeling like I was on the moon. I never understood a word Grandfather Gao said. It was all Chinese nature metaphors. But I liked the shop. It was quiet and it smelled good, and he always gave me tea, like I was a grown-up, too. And candy.”

  I found myself smiling, thinking about the dark shelves, the porcelain jars and the small wood drawers with red Chinese characters painted on them—and Grandfather Gao’s nature metaphors. “I grew up around the corner from the shop. I used to go there all the time.”

  Mark Quan grinned. His eyes met mine; then his grew wide. “Wait,” he said. “Wait, I remember you! You were that little kid!”

  “What little kid?”

  “That was you!” His smile expanded to light up his whole face. The scar on his lip, it seemed to me, became more obvious the bigger his smile grew. “We played chess. My dad and Grandfather Gao, and you and me. There was a blizzard and we couldn’t go home. Remember?”

  “The blizzard?” I said. “That big one? When I was seven?” My mind flew back, leaving the potted palms and string quartet music for the snow-silenced streets of Chinatown at twilight, twenty-odd years ago. “I stopped at Grandfather Gao’s shop about five, on my way home from Chinese school.” I looked from Mark Quan to Bill. “I was so excited. I wanted to tell him about the snow—the snowbanks were bigger than I was, and it was snowing so hard you could barely see the streetlights.” I stared at Mark Quan. “And there was a man and a boy there, having tea and sweets. I was embarrassed, bursting in with all my noise, trailing snow into the shop. But Grandfather Gao seemed delighted and asked me to stay. He said his guests lived far away and couldn’t leave because of the storm, and he’d be grateful if I would stay and help him entertain them. I felt so important. But then Grandfather Gao and the man started a game of Chinese chess, and he suggested I play chess with the boy. And I thought, oh, but this is a big boy like my brothers. He won’t want to play chess with a little girl. I thought Grandfather Gao would be so disappointed in me, because I couldn’t do what he wanted me to.”

  “But he wasn’t,” Mark Quan said.

  “No.” I smiled. “The boy took out the board and the pieces and played with me just as though playing chess with a seven-year-old girl was a normal thing for a big boy to do. That was you?”

  “It was.” Mark Quan, still grinning, took another drink. “I was eleven. And you beat me.”

  “You beat him?” Bill spoke for the first time in what seemed like ages. “Grandfather Gao’s guest?”

  “He was so nice!” I said. “He didn’t treat me like an annoying pest or anything.” As though it had just happened, I remembered the way my stomach had clenched when I thought I’d have to disappoint Grandfather Gao, and the gratitude I’d felt when the boy, without skipping a beat, agreed to play with me. “I wanted to play my best,” I told Mark Quan. “To give you a real game. I didn’t want you to think you were stuck playing with a baby.”

  “It was a good game,” said Mark Quan. “I’m glad it didn’t occur to you to let me win.”

  Bill said, “To her? It never does.”

  They gave each other a boys-only look. I shrugged and looked at the potted palm to see if it had anything to say.

  “After chess, Grandfather Gao made us dinner,” Mark Quan said. “In the little kitchen in the back of the shop. And we ate right there on the table with the carved lion’s feet.”

  “Shrimp with water chestnuts!” I said. “I felt so grown up, a dinner guest.”

  I remembered that meal: Grandfather Gao calling my parents for permission for me to stay; the warmth of the shop and the aromas of food stir-frying in the wok while the blizzard blew outside; and later, getting bundled back into my winter jacket and boots so the two men and the boy could walk me home, the men talking quietly, the boy and I throwing snowballs, laughing and falling down in the deep, soft snow.

  “That was a magical night,” I said.

  Mark Quan sat back and smiled. “Wow. So that was you.” He sipped his drink again as I pulled myself back from Pell Street to Hong Kong. “And now you work for him?”

  “For Grandfather Gao?” I shook my head. “I’m a private investigator. Bill’s my partner. We’re working for Grandfather Gao on this case, but it’s the first time.”

  “Private investigators. He didn’t tell me that.” Mark Quan’s genial expression didn’t change, but he said nothing for a few moments. Then he asked, “What’s the case?”

  “Well,” I said, “we’re not really sure.”

  He looked from me to Bill and nodded. “And you’re not sure whether you should tell me, even if we did play chess?”

  I flushed, but he was right. “Can you tell us a little more about why he called you? You said he’s been calling you for years.”

  Mark Quan rested an ankle on his knee, settled back in his chair. “After I came back here and joined the Department, Grandfather Gao picked me as his contact. It didn’t make some of the old-timers happy. I was the new kid, and an ex-pat besides. Even the idea of my being a cop got under their skin.”

  “It’s not an obvious choice.”

  “It was for me. I wanted to be a cop since I was a kid, but in Birmingham I was short, fat, and Chinese. Here short and Chinese isn’t a problem. And I speak both languages and three others besides, and I started studying kung fu when I was nine and I’ve never stopped, so that cancels out the weight problem.” He patted his stomach and grinned again. I found myself thinking, I wouldn’t really say fat. Solid, maybe. I mean, you wouldn’t call a tree trunk fat.

  “But they don’t like me,” he went on. “They don’t trust me. They don’t think I can think the way people do here. And I’m too much of an American, which means not enough of a team player. Anyone else, twelve years on the Department, my record, he’d be a Lieutenant. I’m lucky I made Sergeant. I’d never have gotten even this far without Grandfather Gao.”

  “Grandfather Gao has influ
ence in the HKPD?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean. But because I’m his contact, whatever he gives us comes through me. Makes them think I’m indispensable.”

  “His contact for what?”

  “Anything he thinks we should know over here. A man in his position hears things.”

  “What position?”

  “Just the way he’s situated in Chinatown. Respected elder, all that. Long-time merchant, senior member of the Three Brothers Association. That’s his tong,” he added, for Bill’s benefit. Polite of him; but Bill already knew that.

  “Last year he passed me something that helped us bust up a bookmaking operation the Strength and Harmony Association was running,” Mark Quan said. “I should have gotten a promotion out of that, but at least I got a nice New Year’s bonus.”

  “The Strength and Harmony Association?” asked Bill. This was one he didn’t know. I knew what it was, but I waited for the answer.

  “One of the triads.” Mark Quan sounded surprised, as though everyone knew that. “They’re a splinter off one of the Big Five, the 14K, from about thirty years ago. Their head guys thought the 14K was getting too sloppy, too loose. Too in tune with modern times. Strength and Harmony keeps up the old ways. Discipline, initiation ceremonies, rankings—Incense Masters, Red Poles, White Paper Fans—all that stuff.” He added, “This wasn’t the first time Grandfather Gao’s messed up their plans.”

  “I didn’t know the triads allowed splinter groups,” Bill said.

  “If they don’t get in the way,” Mark Quan said. “The triad thinking seems to be, the more distractions for the police, the better. The triads deny their own existence, anyway.”

  “Like the Mafia.”

  “Right. And the more of these ambiguous gangs there are, the harder it is for us to prove who’s triad and who isn’t. Like, any Italian in the States can surround himself with a bunch of bums and call himself the don of a Mafia family. That doesn’t make him one, but it still makes him the boss of a gang. The cops will want to watch him. So we keep our eyes on the Big Five, and on the splinters, too.”

  The stunning young woman and her French-speaking companion stood and strolled away to the strains of the string quartet.

  “What reason did Grandfather Gao give you when he told you to call us?” I asked.

  “He said he’d sent you over here to do a job for him and you’d run into difficulties. And, um, wait, ‘If you share the task, you may find joint effort results in mutual advantage.’”

  “He didn’t mention the little bird and the water buffalo, did he?” Bill asked.

  “No,” Mark Quan said. “What he said was that beasts of the same paws roam together, and that many jackals can bring down a tiger.”

  We spent the next half hour filling Mark Quan in on the job we’d been sent to do and what had happened since we’d come to do it. I asked to see his HKPD identification just to keep on the safe side; it seemed unnecessarily rude, however, to mention that the real reason we’d been late arriving was that we’d called the HKPD to check on him, after I’d returned the call he’d made to our hotel and he invited us to meet him here.

  But there was one more thing I just had to do before spilling our guts to this almost-complete stranger. Maybe it was rude, too, though he didn’t seem to think so. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’d do it if I were you.”

  So, whipping out my cell phone, I called Grandfather Gao from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.

  It was about five in the morning in New York, but Grandfather Gao sounded his usual calm self when he answered. I guessed he hadn’t gone back to bed since he’d spoken to Mark Quan. Maybe even since, in the middle of that same New York night, he’d spoken to me.

  I greeted him respectfully and then got down to business: I asked him whether he knew a Hong Kong policeman named Mark Quan.

  “I have known him since he was a child,” Grandfather Gao informed me. “Longer, Ling Wan-Ju, than I have known you, as he is four years your elder.”

  “I met him once, years ago, didn’t I? In your shop, in that big blizzard.”

  I could almost hear him smile. “You have a fine memory.”

  “No. He remembered first. But I loved that night. I never forgot it.”

  “It was very pleasant. If my memory is correct, you won your game of Chinese chess.”

  “Correct as usual, Grandfather. Could you please describe Mark Quan to me?”

  “A man of medium height, caring perhaps a bit too much for the pleasures of the table. This deceives many into thinking his will, also his body, are weak. A small scar on his lip, which to the wise will indicate the truth.”

  “Did you call him to tell him to contact us?”

  “I did. I assume he has done so?”

  “Yes. We’re sitting with him now at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.”

  “Then you will be able to judge whether his appearance is as I say.”

  “It is precisely, Grandfather.”

  “His trustworthiness is also. You may find his goals to be different from your own; but I believe he will prove a valuable ally to you in your work.”

  I considered for a moment and then took the plunge. At the risk of being rudely direct, I asked, “Do you think that what happened here might have involved any organized group?”

  By that, of course, I meant a triad. He knew that, and he answered calmly. “It is possible, yes. If so, it is still more important that you and Quan Mai assist one another.”

  Well, now I knew Mark Quan’s Chinese name, in case I was wondering. I asked, “Grandfather, why would such a group be interested in a little boy like Wei Hao-Han?”

  Although I carefully had my eyes on a potted palm and not on Mark Quan, I could see him, and I saw his eyebrows go up. That told me two things: American born or not, he spoke Cantonese well enough to eavesdrop; and Grandfather Gao hadn’t told him about Harry’s kidnapping.

  “I do not know,” Grandfather Gao answered. “Nor would I hurry to the conclusion that they are directly responsible for what happened. Involvement, Ling Wan-Ju, can mean many things.”

  I braced myself for the inevitable nature metaphor, probably something about birds riding the wind but not bringing the clouds. Surprisingly, it didn’t come.

  “There has been,” I told him, “a second ransom demand. For a lot of money. Not the jade.”

  “Ah? From the same party?”

  “No.”

  A pause. “That is disturbing.”

  Personally, I thought, I find this whole thing disturbing.

  “And Franklin Wei is here,” I said.

  “You knew he was planning to go to Hong Kong, Ling Wan-Ju.”

  “Yes, well,” I said, “there’s a little too much going on here for me.”

  “Then,” said Grandfather Gao, “it would be well to continue your work. The spider takes the time she needs to spin her web, creating order in the midst of chaos. But she begins before she is hungry.”

  Sure, I thought, flipping my cell phone shut, and she spins it out of her own guts.

  So the half hour we spent filling Mark Quan in was also occupied with other things. After the call to Grandfather Gao there was one to the Weis, where Steven Wei, sounding ever more desperate, told me he had heard nothing more from either caller since we’d left.

  “But,” he mumbled, almost as an afterthought, “I have had a call from—from my brother.”

  “Franklin? Why did he call?”

  “To offer me money.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “If the second ransom demand turns out to be real. He has a small stock portfolio, perhaps two hundred thousand American dollars, and a flat in New York he believes is worth close to eight hundred thousand, American. He will call his bank in New York when it opens on Monday to find out how quickly they will give him a loan.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say. “That’s a million dollars. He didn’t even know you existed until a few weeks ago.”

  “He has been married three tim
es,” Steven Wei offered by way of explanation. “But he has no children.”

  There was nothing else to be learned there, and no other messages left for us at our hotel. Over another round of drinks—coffee for Bill this time—we told Mark Quan about our day: the Weis, both Steven and Franklin, the temple, Natalie Zhu and Kwong Hon Terrace Garden. He frowned and nodded and asked questions, and at the end, leaning forward in his chair, his steepled fingers pressed to his lips, he sat silently in thought for a few minutes. Then he said, “I wish they’d report the damn thing. I want to bug that phone.”

  “Is that what you’d do if they had?”

  He nodded. “The calls are probably coming from cell phones, but we might get lucky.” He sighed and leaned back. “Their instinct not to report it isn’t necessarily wrong. This sort of thing happens in Hong Kong more than we like to admit. It’s a business: You pay, you get your kid back, your father, whoever it is. Keep it polite, no one gets hurt and the HKPD doesn’t get involved. Cops hate it, but that’s the best way to handle it from the family’s point of view. Except for that first phone call, I’d say that was how to handle this one, too. But I don’t like that call.”

  “I don’t like either call,” said Bill.

  “No,” Mark Quan agreed. “But if I had to choose one, my money’s on the money, if you know what I mean.”

  “Steven Wei said he didn’t have that much,” I said.

  “I can check on that.”

  “But you think the first call’s the fake?”

  “Yes. But I have no idea what’s behind it. Well.” He put his hands on his knees, looked at us. “There are a couple of things we could do now. One of them is: nothing. We could keep out of the way, wait and see what happens.”

  Bill shook his head. “If I thought this was just business, I’d be in favor of that. But those two phone calls … And Natalie Zhu: I think she was blowing smoke, but she’s right about one thing. You couldn’t grab anyone from that park, or the streets near it, without fifty people seeing you.”

  Mark Quan looked at me. I nodded agreement.

  “Okay,” he said. “Officially I can’t act on the kidnapping because it hasn’t been reported. You guys don’t count. If I called the family and told them what you said, they’d deny it.