Reflecting the Sky Page 7

  I took the little velvet box from my bag and opened it to show him Harry’s jade.

  He regarded it gravely. “May I?” he said, reaching for the box. He lifted the Buddha by its chain, letting it dangle from his hand. It sparkled in the bright lights. He put the loupe back into his eye and for the next minute or so, he didn’t speak.

  Finally he looked up, removed the loupe, and placed the Buddha back in its box.

  “It is quite beautiful,” he said. “The carver’s hand was precise, but also playful. Do you wish to sell it?”

  “Perhaps one day, uncle.” It seemed rude to ask for a professional appraisal of the thing without offering him the hope of someday getting his hands on it. “Now I wish only to understand its true value.”

  “No,” he corrected me mildly. “What you are asking is its price.”

  I felt myself blush. “Yes, uncle. What you say is true.”

  He smiled and looked again at the jade. “If you were interested in selling it, I would be prepared to offer one hundred twenty thousand dollars.”

  My heart jumped and I almost knocked my teacup over. Then I reminded myself: Hong Kong dollars. That was fifteen thousand, American. Which meant he probably thought he could sell it for twenty.

  More than I had been told, but not enough to really notice.

  “Uncle,” I asked, “is there anything … unusual … about this jade?”

  “In what way?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Its color? Its age? Anything?”

  “It appears to be approximately three hundred years old,” he said, “from the late Ming or early Qing. The stone is good, a bright apple green much valued today, although this piece is streaked with paler veins. The jadecarver, as I have said, was precise, but he did not attempt any unusual or difficult details—for example, do you see here how the folds of the Buddha’s robe are suggested, but not elaborated?” He shook his head. “No, it is fine piece, but there are others like it. In what way did you think it might be unusual?”

  “Uncle, I don’t know,” I repeated. “Only that I have been offered for this piece a far greater price than you have told me it is worth.” That wasn’t the exact truth, but close enough. “Although I don’t want to sell it, I wondered why the offer was so high.”

  He shook his head. “That I cannot tell you.”

  I looked again at the Buddha on its white silk bed. I thanked the old man and the young woman and took my leave of them and their tiny, sparkling store.

  The next shop I was heading for was larger, more straightforward, and empty of other customers when I found it. I did my business, charging it on the American Express card, taking on faith my ability to explain the need for this to Grandfather Gao when it came time for him, the client, to cover the expenses of this job. I headed back to the hotel, shopping bag in hand.

  In my room the little red message light on the phone was blinking, and the message was from Bill. It said, “I’m in the bar.”

  My first thought was: Oh, surprise. My second was: Thank God. What, Lydia? I demanded, as I felt a flush of relief spread through me. Bill’s a grown-up. He’s been in this business for twenty years. Whatever he was up to, he can handle himself. This is a civilized city, it has cabs and subways and cops. Yes, I argued with myself, locking up my room and heading down the hall, but he’s a foreigner here. The way things work in other places isn’t necessarily the way they work here. He may not remember that, or know it when he sees it. I took the elevator to the shopping mall mezzanine and then floated down on the escalator to the lobby bar.

  In the cool, high-ceilinged splendor of the bar it took me about three seconds to spot Bill. He sat at a table near the piano, his back to the low wall, with a view that took in the main lobby, the hotel entrance and the escalator. He raised his beer glass in greeting. I stopped by the desk to redirect any phone calls, then trotted across the marble floor.

  “Such class, coming from you,” I said as I deposited myself on the armchair across from Bill’s at the low carved table. “You usually don’t bother with a glass.”

  “If you took me to places like this more often, I might class up my act,” he answered. “In fact, it might be your responsibility to do that. For the good of my immortal soul, or something.”

  “If the good of your immortal soul depends on the use of a beer glass, I’m afraid you’re beyond my help.” I was trying for a blasé air of moral superiority, but by accident our eyes met. I saw something in his that mirrored the relief I’d felt hearing his voice on my phone message, and he saw something in mine and grinned that grin again.

  “I’m starving,” I said, snatching up the menu card from the table and studying it intently.

  “Before you bury yourself in food, tell me: Have you spoken to the Weis? Is there any news about the kid?”

  I looked up at the tone in his voice. It struck me that he’d been trying for something, too, maybe simple cool professionalism, but where there’s a kid involved, Bill can’t really manage that. “Yes, in fact,” I said, gently. “No real news, but we have to go up there soon.”

  “Why?”

  I detailed my conversation with Steven Wei.

  “The jade.” Bill sipped some beer, watching tourists, travelers, businessmen coming and going in the high-ceilinged lobby. “I don’t know about that.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “A lot of things. Why anyone who knew we were bringing the jade today wouldn’t just mug us on the way over. Or on the other hand, wait until the Weis had the jade for sure. How did they know we weren’t just bringing papers to sign? The jade could even still be in New York, waiting for us to say it was okay to ship it over.”

  “Unless someone in the family was involved, who really knew what was going on.”

  “Or someone close to the family.”

  “The amah?”

  “She knew,” Bill said. “And it might be natural for her to think of using the kid.”

  She’s been taking care of him since he was a baby, I thought: It doesn’t seem natural to me.

  A uniformed waiter approached our table and stood waiting, in case I wanted anything to go with Bill’s beer. “Lemonade, please,” I said. “And a chicken salad sandwich. And two steamed pork buns.”

  “Three,” said Bill. The waiter bowed slightly and left. “In case you’re really starving,” Bill said. “To make sure there’s something left for me.”

  “You think I don’t think about you,” I said, “but I do. For example, I have something in this bag for you. But you can’t have it until you tell me where you’ve been.”

  “Am I sure I want it?” he asked dubiously, eyeing the shopping bag by my foot.

  “I’m sure you don’t. But you’ll be glad to have it. Now come on, talk. We have to be at the Weis’ before three.”

  He shrugged and sipped his beer. “Just doing my job. There was a guy who seemed to care when Steven Wei came and went, so after Wei took off in a cab I followed him.”

  “Young guy? White tee shirt, black pants?”

  “You saw him, too?”

  “I followed Steven Wei back out to the plaza. I saw the guy cursing after the cab, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “What happened in the fortune-tellers’ place?”

  I got a strange fortune, I suddenly thought, about swiftly running water; but that wasn’t what he wanted to know. “An old woman prayer-seller gave Wei a paper prayer. He read it and then hightailed it back to the plaza. I followed in time to see him grab a cab, see your young guy, and then see you going into the subway. How did you know how the subway works, by the way?”

  “I didn’t. I figured I’d lose him, but I thought maybe I’d at least get to see which way he went. As it happened he needed a ticket, so I stood on line at the next machine and bought one to the same place he did.”

  “Where?”

  “How do I know? Wait, I wrote it down.” He searched the papers in his pocket for a scrap that he unfolded and read me. “Choi Hun
g.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “That way.” He pointed vaguely north.

  “Never mind, I’ll look on the map later. Then what?”

  “Then I followed the guy and put my ticket in the machine the same way he did. He taught me a lot, actually.”

  “You followed him all the way home?”

  “Not home. He was going back to work.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because that’s where he went. When we got off the subway he made a call from his cell phone, but he didn’t stop walking while he talked. I wasn’t nearly close enough to see the number, but he didn’t seem happy. Then I followed him up a long, hot hill and down the other side, like the king of goddamn France. Then there we were at Thundering Mountain Film Studios. He’s a stuntman.”

  “No kidding?” I pictured the kid’s muscular arms and chest under his white tee shirt. “How do you know?”

  “I waited until he’d gone in and asked the guard. I wasn’t sure you’d want me to approach the kid myself, and I wasn’t sure the guard would let me in anyway. So I told the guard the kid had been making eyes at my girlfriend, and I was pissed off, and who the hell was he?”

  “What made you think the guard spoke English?”

  “What did I have to lose if he didn’t? And he did, some. Enough to practically laugh in my face. He said the kid’s name is Iron Fist Chang, and not for nothing. He said ol’ Iron Fist may not be the brightest bulb on the tree, but he’s one of Thundering Mountain’s lead stuntmen, a big-league kung fu expert. But, the guy said, I shouldn’t worry about my girlfriend, because Chang’s got a cute little Filipina girlfriend of his own. Plus of course he could have as many girls as he wanted, being a Thundering Mountain stuntman and all.” He sipped his beer. “He sort of implied that any girl who’d fall for the likes of me was bound to be beneath the notice of a guy like Iron Fist anyway. I considered popping him one for insulting my girlfriend.”

  “You don’t have a girlfriend.”

  “Lucky for him.”

  The waiter arrived and from his tray set down a bamboo steamer, a plate with a quartered sandwich, and a tall frosted glass of lemonade.

  “All right,” I said. “That’s good. A name is much more than I thought we’d get. I just wish we knew a cop to give it to.”

  Bill nodded as he reached for some potato chips from my sandwich plate. “I don’t like this,” he said, more somberly. “We’re working blind. Following Wei this morning was irresistible, but maybe we should back off.”

  “On principle I hate to back off, but you might be right.”

  “On principle you hate it when I’m right. But we don’t even have a client.”

  “Disregarding the first part of that statement, let me correct you on the second part.” I told him about my conversation with Grandfather Gao.

  He sipped thoughtfully at his beer. “So that was authorization to proceed?”

  “From him, yes, that’s about as direct an order as we can expect to get. Though it isn’t quite clear to me what we’re supposed to proceed to do.”

  “Protect his interests.”

  “Name one.”

  “You’re the one who’s known him all your life.”

  “So it’s my job to figure this out?”

  “It seems only fair. You’re the Chinese person in this situation.”

  “I’m the Chinese person in most situations. But I’ll think about it.” I drank some lemonade, wondering what genius had first thought up this tart, sweet, perfect drink.

  Bill reached for a steamed pork bun. “I have to admit I feel a little stupid,” he said. “There we are watching Steven Wei, and there he is calling you.”

  “How about that? Don’t you just hate to miss those important calls?” I bit into a pork bun myself, tasted the sweet, spicy meat at the center of the warm bread. “Well,” I said, “you won’t have to worry about that any more.” I lifted a box out of the shopping bag that was still sitting patiently at my feet. “This is for you.”

  He took the box, opened it, and held up the cell phone from it. “Hot damn.”

  “You don’t have to pretend to be happy about it. I know you hate those things. But you really need one here.”

  “No, I love it. Now I can be like everyone else. I was beginning to feel different. Like I stuck out somehow.”

  “Oh, yes, well, this will be sure to cure that. The number’s on it.” He took the phone out of the plastic it was wrapped in. “Flip it open, press the red button, and dial 5786-2224.” With a glance at me he did as I told him. He finished dialing and put the phone to his ear as my pocket began to chirp.

  I whipped out the phone I’d gotten for myself. “Hello?” “I guess it works,” Bill said, both across the table and in my ear.

  No one else in the bar so much as looked at us.

  four

  Our new subway expertise notwithstanding, we took the ferry to the Hong Kong side, to grab a cab up to the Weis’. The ferry ride was still breezy and beautiful, the sun still gleaming off the sharp edges of skyscrapers, though a thick gray fog now wrapped Victoria Peak at the top of the island, dulling the harbor water.

  “The richest people in Hong Kong live up there,” I told Bill, pointing at the hillside as it disappeared upward into the mist. “That’s how you know you’ve arrived, when you can buy a house up there. And the guidebook says it’s like that half the time, damp and yucky and no view at all.”

  The cab ride from the ferry dock was longer than the morning’s ride because traffic was thicker, but we still got to the Weis by twenty to three. I had been in favor of taking a few minutes to question the desk man on the subject of just who had told him to let us up earlier, but Bill was against it.

  “He may be in on it,” he said, “and if we start spooking them with questions they may back off from making this trade. If we need to we can think about a way to approach him later. Right now we don’t want to miss the phone call.”

  “When you’re right, you’re right,” I grumbled. “And let the record show I said that.”

  But he wasn’t all that right. When we got up to the Weis’, it seemed we’d missed the phone call. Not the one we’d been expecting, but another one.

  Li-Ling Wei, gray-faced and silent, let us in. The living room been straightened up, and a quick glance down the hall suggested that the other rooms had been, too. Well, it’s what I would have done, something to keep busy, something to do. Someone had made tea, but according to the three half-full teacups, no one had really drunk it. Out the living-room window, here on the hillside on the twenty-sixth floor, the mist that shrouded the Peak was beginning to descend, torn shreds of clouds floating by, not quite transparent, not quite opaque.

  Steven Wei was pacing, but he stopped to squeeze Li-Ling’s hand as she returned from the front door. He led her solicitously back to an armchair which she looked at with fearful eyes, as if, in this world that had so radically changed, it might come to life and attack her. Natalie Zhu, across the room, sat composed and still, looking as though she hadn’t moved since we’d left. Her face was an impassive mask carved from ice, but behind their delicate glasses her eyes took in every move Bill or I made.

  “There’s been a phone call,” Steven Wei said, after we’d all spent a few seconds too long looking at each other, saying nothing. “With a demand.”

  “You told me that,” I said. “The jade. We brought it. Though—”

  “Not the jade. Half an hour ago. A different voice. Saying that Harry was all right but they wanted twenty million dollars for his return. They are giving me until tomorrow afternoon to raise the money.”

  “Twenty million dollars?” I stifled a gasp and did the quick arithmetic; that was two and a half million, American. “Do you have that kind of money?”

  “No,” Steven Wei said simply.

  “What about the jade?”

  “They said they didn’t know what I was talking about.”

  I looked at Bill as th
e meaning of this sank in.

  “Did you—?” Bill began.

  “Ask for proof? They hung up too fast. I was too startled. No.” The way Steven Wei’s eyes dropped when he said this, and the look Natalie Zhu gave him, implied they’d been through this unpleasantness already.

  “When the other call comes,” Natalie Zhu said, a woman used to solving the problem at hand and not wasting time over earlier mistakes, “then we will ask.”

  “And if they refuse?” Steven looked up rapidly. “My son—”

  “Steven. Why would they refuse? The people holding Harry will expect to have to give proof. The others will be unable. We will make no payment until we are sure.”

  We, I thought? He’s not your son. I stole a look at Li-Ling Wei. She perched on the edge of the chair, her eyes wide and a little wild, staring at the floor. Her arms hugged herself over her round stomach. She seemed on the edge of tears. I wanted to go over there, put my arm around her, tell her it would be all right, but I wasn’t sure that would be welcome.

  And much as I hoped it would be all right, I wasn’t sure about that, either.

  I suddenly wasn’t sure about anything: what to do, what to say, whether to give them the jade, whether Bill and I should be here at all. It was a dizzying, unmoored feeling, not helped by the view from the Weis’ living-room window, which reminded me that I was high up in the air, in a pencil-slim building on the side of a mountain, floating over a harbor thousands of miles from home.

  Bill moved into the room. His hand brushed mine lightly, casually, an accidental touch as he passed by. Some accident. The roughness of his fingers, the scent of his sweat, even the temperature of his skin were all completely familiar, exactly what I knew they’d be. They brought me back to solid ground.

  I flushed. He carefully didn’t look at me, which was a good thing. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the fact that he could tell, without words, what I was feeling and, still without words, do something about it. Even if what he did about it made me feel better.