Double-Crossing Delancey Read online

  “Do they really? Then why not go for it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. If I could get my hands on lychees from India, it might be worth it.”

  “They are thought to be special, India lychees?”

  “I’ve actually never had one. They don’t export them at all.”

  “Why not?”

  “Some government restrictions, I don’t know. But if I could sell those… On the other hand, this whole import thing probably isn’t right for me.”

  I finished off my Danish, drained my tea. “You sure you won’t reconsider your marks, Joe?”

  Flashing the ruby again, Joe said, “Perhaps if you, oh stunning one, reconsider my offer.”

  I smiled too. “Not in this lifetime. Well, I tried. Thanks for the snack, Joe. I have to go.”

  “There are Danishes yet untouched.” Joe pointed to the pile of pastries still on the plate.

  “I’ve had enough,” I said. “More would be greedy. And I know what happens to greedy people when they get around you.”

  Joe bowed his head, as Charlie had, to acknowledge the compliment. He stood when I did, and remained standing as I worked my way to the door, but then he sat again. As I left he was ordering more tea and reaching for a blueberry Danish. From the distant, dreamy look in his eyes I could tell he was searching for an angle on the lychee nut situation. I wondered if he’d find it.

  Four days later, on the phone, I heard from Joe again.

  “I must see you,” he said. “I yearn.”

  “Oh, please, Joe.”

  “No, in truth. Actually I can help you.”

  “Do I need help?”

  “You do. Let me provide it.”

  “Why don’t I trust you? Oh, I remember, you’re a con man.”

  “Lydia! This is your Joe! My motives in this instance are nefarious, it’s true, but not in the way you think. One: I can be with you, motive enough for any man. Two: We can both make money, motive enough for any man or woman. And three: You can see how smart your Joe is, and perhaps be moved to reconsider my previous offer. Motive enough, by itself, for Joe.”

  “That one’s not likely.”

  “Let me buy you a refreshing beverage and we can discuss the issue.”

  It was a soggy afternoon, and I was, as we delicately say in the

  detecting business, between cases. My office air conditioner thinks

  if it makes enough noise I won’t notice it actually does nothing

  useful, but I’d noticed. I’d finished paying my bills and had been

  reduced to filing.

  I gave up, locked up, and went out to meet Joe.

  Joe’s meeting place of choice was a bench in Sara Roosevelt Park just north of Delancey Street. The refreshing beverage was a seltzer for me and an orange soda for him from the cart with the big beach umbrella. Joe’s Chesire Cat smile was not explained until we sat side by side and with a flourish he poured into my lap the contents of the paper bag he’d been carrying. The ruby flashed as I picked up one of a pair of the biggest, most flawless, most perfect fresh lychees I’d every seen.

  “Where did these come from?” I marvelled.

  “Are you pleased, oh spectacular one? Has not your Joe done grandly?”

  “Where did you get them?” I asked again. They were the size of tennis balls, which for a lychee is enormous.

  “Sample one, my queen,” said Joe.

  “May I really?”

  “They are for you, to lay at your feet. In the spirit of full disclosure I admit there were originally three. I tried one myself, and am left to conclude only that Chinese taste buds and Irish tastebuds must have been created with irreconcilable differences.”

  “You didn’t like it?” I bit into the lychee. It was firm and juicy, sweet and spicy, good beyond my wildest lychee dreams. As I dabbed a trickle of juice from my chin I wondered if Charlie had ever had one like it.

  “Your verdict, please,” Joe demanded. “Is this the lychee that will make us rich?”

  “This is a great lychee, Joe,” I said warily. “Totally top-notch, super-duper, one of the best. Where are they from?”

  Joe had been leaning forward watching me as though I were a race in which he had bet the rent on a horse. Now he leaned back, laced his fingers behind his head and stretched his legs. He grinned through the leafy canopy at the blue June sky.

  “The Raj,” he said. “The star of the Empire, the jewel in the crown. These are lychees from India, oh joy of my heart.”

  I stared. “You’re kidding.”

  He spoke modestly, as befitted a man who had performed a miracle. “Procuring them was not a simple matter, even for your Joe. As you yourself stated so accurately, India does not as a matter of course export its lychees. But having been nearly engaged to a Punjabi princess does have its uses.”

  “You’re not telling me her family still even speaks to you? They’re willing to do business with you?”

  Joe shuddered. “Heavens, no. Her male relatives would long since have sliced my throat, or other even more valuable parts of my person, had not my princess retained a soft spot for old Joe in her heart of hearts. But not all Indians of my acquaintance bear my former beloved’s family good will, and the enemy of my enemy is, after all, my friend.”

  This was baroque enough to be pure Joe. “So you talked some other, what, Indian of your acquaintance into smuggling these for you? As a way to get back at your princess’s family for whatever they were mad at them for?”

  “Something like that. More important than those inconsequential details is the fact that there are, apparently, many more lychees where these came from.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “It is. And the fate of those lychees was quite a topic of conversation between myself and my South Asian acquaintances. We have, I am pleased to say, come close to a meeting of the minds. Of course,” Joe paused significantly, “we also discussed remuneration, some serious compensation for their trouble, which will apparently include a certain amount of baksheesh to establish a home for blind customs officials.”

  “Really?” I asked. “How much did you promise them?”

  Joe sent me a sideways glance. “I haven’t, yet. That’s why I needed to speak to you.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Well, putting aside my need for your mere nearness — “

  “Say that again.”

  “What? My need for your mere nearness?”

  “A great phrase, Joe. I just wanted to hear it twice. Go on.”

  He gave me an indulgent smile. “In any case: it is you and you alone who can set a price on these beauties. One beauty knowing another. What will your uptown Chinese pay? What shall I say we, therefore, will pay?”

  “We?”

  “We, oh shining vision! You and I! Your dream of riches! We shall reach the golden shore together. Whatever you say they’re worth, I shall put up half. No questions asked. If you tell me these things will make us wealthy, then wealthy they will make us.” He lifted the remaining lychee from my lap, flipped it high in the air, leaned forward and caught it behind his back. Tossing it again he listed like a sailboat in the wind, then looked around wildly for the lychee as though he’d lost it. Just before it beaned him, he reached up, caught it and produced it with a flourish. I burst out laughing.

  “Do I entertain you?” Joe’s eyes shone like the eyes of a puppy thrilled that its new trick had gone over well.

  “You do. But what really makes me laugh is the idea of going into business with you.”

  “But Lydia! This is nearly legit! There’s the small matter of Indian export regulations, to be sure, but that aside, just look how far I’ve compromised my principles. I’m proposing to involve the Delancey name in a venture almost honest, for the sake of this dream, your dream. Oh, the ancestors! Surely you can bend your principles too?”

  “Joe,” I said sweetly, “read my lips. I will not do business with you. Legit or shady, risky or insured by Lloyd’s of London. I’m more am
azed than I can tell you that you found a source for Indian lychees, but I will not invest in any scheme that comes attached to you.”

  Joe looked at the lychee in his hand. He flipped it in the air, not nearly as high as before. “Time,” he said to it. “She needs time to consider.” He caught it, tossed it again. “The idea is new, that’s all. Once she’s sat with it for a day, the rightness of it will become clear to her. The inevitability. The kismet — “

  He stopped short as I leaned over and snatched the lychee in mid-descent. “Thanks, Joe. I have a friend who’ll enjoy this.” I gave him my brightest smile, not quite a thousand watts but as many as I had. “Good luck with Indian customs.” I stood and walked away, leaving Joe looking puzzled and forlorn on a bench in Sara Roosevelt Park.

  I had told Joe I wouldn’t do business with him. This did not mean, however, that nothing he did was of interest to me. In dark glasses and big floppy hat, I was up and out early the next morning, plying my own trade on Delancey Street.

  One thing you could say for Joe: he did not, as did many people in his line of work, yield to the temptation to indulge in layabout ways. Joe’s work was despicable, but he worked hard. I picked him up just after nine a.m. and tailed him for nearly three hours, waiting in doorways and down the block while he went in and out of stores, sat in coffee shops, met people on park benches. Finally, at a hole-in-the-wall called “Curry in a Hurry,” he was joined at a sidewalk table by a turbanned, bearded fellow who drank a lassi while Joe wolfed down something over rice. They spoke. Joe shrugged. The other man asked a question. Joe shook his head. Watching them from across the street, I was reminded that I was hungry. Luckily, their meeting was brief. When the turbanned gentleman left while Joe was still wolfing, I abandoned my pursuit of Joe and followed.

  After a bit of wandering and some miscellaneous shopping, the turbanned gentleman entered a four-story building on the corner of Hester and Delancey. An aluminum facade had been applied to the building’s brick front sometime in the sixties to spiff the place up. Maybe it had worked, but the sixties were a long time ago.

  I gave the gentleman a decent interval, then crossed to the doorway and scanned the names on the buzzers. They were many and varied: Wong Enterprises; La Vida Comida; Yo Mama Lingerie. The one that caught my eye, though, was Ganges, Ltd.

  That was it for awhile. Now I had to wait until Charlie got off work at four. I hoped the staff of Ganges, Ltd. was as assiduous as most immigrants, putting in long hours in the hope of making their fortunes. Right now, having put in some fairly long hours myself, I headed off down Delancey Street in the hope of lunch.

  At twenty past four, with Charlie at my side, I was back on the corner of Hester and Delancey, pressing the button for Ganges, Ltd. After the back-and-forth of who and what, the buzzer buzzed and we were in.

  Ganges, Ltd. occupied a suite on the second floor in the front, from which the swirling currents of life in the delta could be followed. A sari-wrapped woman in the outer office rose from her desk and led us into the private lair of the turbanned gentleman I had had in my sights. The nameplate on his desk made him out to be one Mr. Rajesh Shah.

  “Thank you for seeing us without an appointment, Mr. Shah,” I said. I sat in one of the chairs on the customer’s side of the desk and Charlie took the other. Rajesh Shah had stood to shake our hands when we came in; now he sat again, eyebrows raised expectantly. His white turban and short-sleeved white shirt gleamed against his dark skin. “I’m sure you’re a very busy man and I don’t mean to be impolite, popping in like this,” I went on, “but we have some business to discuss with you. I’m Lydia Chin; perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

  Shah’s bearded face formed into an expression of regret. “It is I who find, to my despair, that I am in a position to be impolite. Your name is not, alas, familiar. A fault of mine, I am quite sure. Please enlighten me.”

  Well, that would be like Joe: giving away as little as possible, even to his business partner. Controlling the information minimizes the chance of error, misstep, or deliberate double-cross. As, for example, what Charlie and I were up to right now.

  On a similar principle, I introduced Charlie by his first name only. Then I launched right into the piece I had come to say. “I believe you’re acquainted with Joe Delancey.”

  Shah smiled. “It is impossible to be doing business in this neighborhood and not make the acquaintance of Mr. Delancey.”

  “It’s also impossible to actually do business with Mr. Delancey and come out ahead.”

  “This may be true,” Shah acknowledged, non-committal.

  “Believe me, it is.” I reorganized myself in the chair. “Mr. Delancey recently offered me a business proposition which was attractive,” I said. “Except that he’s involved in it. I won’t do business with him. But if you yourself are interested in discussing importing Indian lychee nuts, I’m prepared to listen.”

  Rajesh Shah’s eyebrows went up once again. He looked from me to Charlie. “The Indian government is forbidding the export of lychee nuts to the USA. This is until certain import restrictions involving Indian goods have been re-evaluated by your government.”

  “I know the US doesn’t get Indian lychees,” I said. “Like most Chinese people, Indian lychees have only been a legend to me. But Joe gave me a couple yesterday. They were every bit as good as I’d heard.” I glanced at Charlie, who smiled and nodded vigorously. “Joe also gave me to understand you had found a way around the trade restrictions.”

  “You are a very blunt speaker, Miss Chin.”

  “I’m a believer in free speech, Mr. Shah, and also in free trade. It’s ridiculous to me that lychees as good as this should be kept from people who would enjoy them — and would be willing to pay for them — while two governments who claim to be friendly to each other carry on like children.”

  Shah smiled. “I myself have seven children, Miss Chin. I find there is a wisdom in children that is often lacking in governments. What do you propose?”

  “I propose whatever Joe proposed, but without Joe.”

  “This will not please Mr. Delancey.”

  “Pleasing Mr. Delancey is low on my list of things to do. You have to decide for yourself, of course, whether the money we stand to make is worth getting on Joe’s bad side for.”

  “As to that, Mr. Delancey may be ubiquitous in this neighborhood but he is in no way omnipotent.”

  Charlie had been following our English with a frown of intense concentration. Now his eyes flew wide. I smothered my smile so as not to embarrass him, and made a mental note to teach him those words later.

  “Charlie here,” I said to Shah, “has some money he’s saved. Not a lot of money, I have to warn you, just a few thousand. Joe talked about putting up half: I think you’ll have to assume more of the responsibility than that.”

  Shah gave a thoughtful nod, as though this were not outside the realm of possibility.

  I went on, “What we can really bring to the deal is a distribution network. Well,” I reflected, “that’s probably a little fancy. What I mean is, I assume the cost of bringing these lychees in would be high, and so the sale price would have to be high for us to make a profit.”

  Rajesh Shah nodded, so I went on.

  “You couldn’t sell them on the street in Chinatown if they’re expensive. People down here don’t have that kind of money. But in the last few days — since Charlie first proposed this lychee idea, and before I knew about the Indian ones — I’ve done some looking around. There are a number of stores in fancy neighborhoods that are interested. Because I’m Chinese they’ll assume the fruit we bring them is from China. I’m sure you and Joe had already figured out a way to fake the paperwork.”

  Shah had the grace to blush. Then he smiled. “Of course.”

  “Well, then,” I said. “What do you think?”

  “Let me be sure I am understanding you,” Shah said. “What you are proposing is that your associate — “ a nod in Charlie’s direction “ — invest his mo
dest sum and receive a return commensurate with that investment. You yourself would act as, I believe the expression is, ‘front woman?’ “

  “I guess it is.”

  “And you would be receiving, in effect, a salary for this service.”

  “Sounds right.”

  “And Mr. Delancey would have no part in any of this.”

  “That’s not only right, it’s a condition.”

  Rajesh Shah nodded a few times, his gaze on his desk blotter as though he was working something out. “I think,” he said finally, “that this could be a successful proposition. Mr. Charlie,” he asked, “how much of an investment are you prepared to make?”

  Since the talk of money had begun, Charlie had looked increasingly fidgety and anxious. This could have been fatigue from the strain of focussing on all this English; it turned out, though, to be something else.