The Shanghai Moon Read online

  “Yes, of course,” I sighed. “Trying to make it part of this case may just be me. An odd kind of wishful thinking.”

  The door knocker clinked. Bill checked the peephole and let in a waiter rolling a room service cart. By the time Alice signed for it and sat down, I was ready to be all business again. I wasn’t at all sure she was right about failure being better than helplessness, but obviously best by far was to put up with neither.

  “Alice, you said you spoke to Joel this morning. Did you call him, or did he call you?”

  “He called me.” She handed me a cup of tea, milk, no sugar, and just the right amount of milk, too. She poured coffee for Bill, who took it back to his windowsill. “He knew I’d be in meetings today. He just wanted to touch base before I was unavailable.”

  “Did he say anything was wrong?”

  “No, nothing. He said you were both proceeding along the lines you’d started yesterday, and he’d check back later.”

  “Did he mention anyone he was planning to talk to?”

  “No. I’m sorry. That’s not very useful, is it?”

  “Anything that fills in the gaps is useful,” I said, more to make her feel better than because it was true. “Before Mulgrew gets here I want to ask you something else, though. Have you ever heard of a piece of jewelry called the Shanghai Moon?”

  “No, I don’t think so. What is it?”

  “Apparently, Rosalie Gilder was married in Shanghai. To a Chinese man she’d met on the ship. Why are you smiling?”

  “Chen Kai-rong? Was it he?” To my nod, she said, “Oh, how sweet! She talks about him in her letters. They’re in the museum’s archives. You can call them up on the Web site.”

  “I’ve actually read the first few,” I said. “Jet lag. I couldn’t sleep last night.”

  “When I read them I couldn’t tell if it was obvious to either Elke or Rosalie that Kai-rong was courting her, but it was to me. You’re telling me they married? That’s marvelous! How do you know?”

  “One of the jewelers Joel left photos with recognized Rosalie’s name and knew the story.” I told her what we’d learned in Stanley Friedman’s showroom.

  “The diamond necklace,” Alice said, when I was done. “That’s what happened to it!”

  “What diamond necklace?”

  “As nearly as my clients know, Rosalie and Paul took seven pieces of jewelry to Shanghai. Five are in this find. One was a ruby ring, which Rosalie sold—you’ll see if you read the rest of the letters. She also mentions a diamond necklace. I’ve been wondering where that was. Wondering even if Wong Pan palmed it before the contents of the box were known, though I don’t see how he could have. The Shanghai authorities would never have allowed him to open it alone. But this would answer that question.”

  “That question, yes,” Bill said from across the room. “Not the question of the Shanghai Moon.”

  Alice shifted to look at him. “You think that might have been in the box? But it’s the same problem. How could he have stolen it without anyone knowing it was there?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t,” I said. “Maybe someone just thinks it was.”

  “And that person killed Joel? But why?”

  “They thought he knew something he wasn’t telling? Things were stolen from his office. That’s why Mulgrew’s thinking robbery. But what if that was just opportunistic? What if the real point was to search the place?”

  “I suppose that’s possible. But to find what?”

  “Whatever they thought Joel knew?”

  Alice nodded thoughtfully. Bill sipped coffee thoughtfully. I wished I had a thought or two, but I had only questions. “Alice, didn’t you grow up in Shanghai? Mr. Friedman says this brooch, the Shanghai Moon, is famous. You’ve never heard of it?”

  “I was born there, yes, but I was four when we were sent to the internment camp. When we were released three years later, we took the first ship home we could get.” She stirred her tea. “These aren’t memories I return to very often. As you might imagine, the camp was a bad place. Heat and mud in summer. Clammy cold in winter. Nothing was clean and there was never enough food. Everyone was sick, worse and worse as the war ground on. A lot of people died. The land was so swampy they wrapped bricks in the binding cloths—there were no coffins—so the bodies wouldn’t rise back to the surface. But sometimes it didn’t work. You’d see a hand, a leg . . .

  “I was a child. That was my entire world. Our entire world. If outside the camp there was someone called Rosalie Gilder, and she married someone called Chen Kai-rong, and they had a brooch created to celebrate, we wouldn’t have known. Then, once we came to America, everyone tried to put Shanghai far behind.”

  I said, “That sounds terrible. I’m sorry.”

  “It was. But we lived, and came here, and prospered. Many didn’t. Still, you can see why Shanghai may mean something quite different to me from what it meant to Rosalie Gilder.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  From the window, Bill said, “What about your clients? They never told you about the Shanghai Moon?”

  “No,” Alice said, frowning over that. I frowned, too; the question seemed a little insensitive right at the moment. Although I had an insensitive question of my own I’d been looking for a time to ask.

  “Alice, Joel was wondering something. About you. It made me wonder, too. I don’t mean to offend you—”

  “No, please. If you think it will help discover what happened to Joel.”

  I didn’t see how it could, but it seemed like something I should find out, because Joel had wanted to know. “It’s this: Why do you do the work you do? Holocaust asset recovery?”

  She smiled. “You mean as a gentile? Don’t worry, I’ve been asked that before. The camp . . . It was the war that sent us there. We lost so much, as so many people did. As I grew, I learned that what we’d been through, horrible as it was, wasn’t the half of it. I hated that war. But a war that’s over is an elusive enemy. My sister urged me to put it behind me, and I tried, but I couldn’t. I felt—as we were saying earlier—angry and helpless. When the asset recovery movement started to grow, I saw it as a chance to right some of those wrongs.”

  “Joel said most people who do the work you do see it as a religious calling.”

  “Did he? I suppose, in a way, I do. And not all my clients are Jewish, you know. Most are. But Catholics, Hungarians, Poles, homosexuals, Gypsies—that war had many victims.”

  “Wouldn’t your argument really have been with the Japanese?” Bill asked. “That’s who put you in the camp.”

  “There’s no reparations movement against Japan, except on behalf of ‘comfort women.’ But Germany and Japan were allies. Prying stolen treasures out of German hands is about the best I can do. For me, it’s enough.”

  When there’s not much you can do, something still beats nothing. Well, I could second that.

  The desk phone rang. Alice spoke and then, slipping the receiver back, told us, “Detective Mulgrew’s on his way up.”

  “Maybe I’ll make myself scarce.” Bill rose from his perch.

  “You’d deprive yourself of the pleasure of meeting Mulgrew?” I asked. “And the pleasure of more of the Waldorf’s coffee?”

  “Good as the coffee is, from what I hear the one doesn’t begin to make up for the other. And the NYPD doesn’t like crowds.”

  That was true. Also, certain elements in the NYPD don’t like Bill. Mulgrew seemed to be the type who’d check around and find some way to get on my case later about the company I keep.

  Under Mulgrew’s hand even the door knocker sounded scornful. If Mulgrew was enchanted to see me, he hid it well, but he didn’t boot me out. He even tossed the occasional question at me, though the ones he asked Alice sounded less sharp in tone, less accusatory in content. Maybe that was because she poured him coffee as soon as he sat down, and put two chocolate cookies on the saucer.

  Not that he had many questions. The pro forma nature of this interview couldn’t have been more o
bvious. What did you hire the deceased to do, did he give you any indication he was worried about anything, what did you talk about this morning, can you think of anyone who’d want to hurt him?

  “Well, only Wong Pan. If Joel had found him.”

  “The Shanghai guy? What about it, had Pilarsky found him?”

  “He didn’t say he had,” Alice admitted, “but maybe after I spoke to him—”

  “He didn’t get any calls or e-mails. He made three calls: his college roommate, you, and you.” Mulgrew turned to me. “Did he say anything about finding this guy?”

  “I’d have told you before if he had, Detective.”

  “I’m sure.” Back to Alice: “Any idea where I can find this Wong Pan?”

  “If I had,” Alice said with a small smile, “I wouldn’t have hired Joel and Lydia. You do have his photo?” She started for her briefcase, but Mulgrew waved her back to her chair.

  “Yeah, she gave it to me,” he said. I sincerely hate being referred to as “she” when I’m sitting right there. “But unless he also pulled the other three jobs in that neighborhood, my money’s not on him.”

  “You will look for him, though?”

  “Sure.” Mulgrew reached for a lemon bar, devouring it, as he had the other cookies, in a single bite. This was not a detail man. “Thanks for your time.” He stood. “Call me if you think of anything else.” He started toward the door.

  “The Shanghai Moon,” I said.

  “What?”

  “A legendary lost gem. It belonged to the same woman the rest of this jewelry belonged to.”

  He stared at me. “A legendary lost gem.”

  “It’s famous.”

  “Oh, a famous legendary lost gem. And it was part of this find?”

  “No.” I was already regretting opening my mouth. But he irked me, his dismissiveness, his put-upon air. “Or, maybe. We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know. So why are you bringing it up?”

  “Someone may have thought it was.”

  “And the connection between that thought and Pilarsky’s murder would be?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did Pilarsky have it? Or know where it was?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A pause. “All right, I’ll check it out.”

  Hah. I could just bet what that meant. Mulgrew barking across the squad room: Hey, any of you ever heard of some jewel called the Shanghai Moon? What about this mutt Wong Pan, from China, where they stole all our jobs?

  Alice walked to the door and opened it for him. “Thank you for being willing to come to the hotel, Detective.”

  “My pleasure, ma’am. Not often I get to see how the other half lives.”

  When we were alone again, I said, “Well, you won his heart.”

  “He’s not so bad.”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Just overworked, I think. Most policemen are overworked. Not that you seem exactly fresh as a daisy, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “I’m exhausted.”

  “You’ve had a terrible day. Why don’t you go home? Take a long hot bath. Something relaxing, maybe lavender. It’ll do you a world of good.”

  “You know, that sounds great.” I stood. “We can talk in the morning.”

  “Yes, but I think not professionally.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Until they catch whoever killed Joel, or until we can be sure his death had nothing to do with Rosalie Gilder’s jewelry, I can’t think of letting you go on.”

  My jaw dropped. “You can’t think of stopping me! Joel would hate that, giving up!”

  “I’m not talking about giving up, but until we know it’s safe, we have to let the police take over. I’ll call my clients. I’m sure they’ll agree.”

  “But that’s just wrong! Mulgrew’s not really looking for Wong Pan, and he didn’t care at all about the Shanghai Moon!”

  “He may be right.”

  “He’s not right.”

  “All the more reason to back off, then, and let his investigation lead him to that conclusion. Really, Lydia, I can’t allow to you endanger yourself. Recovering this jewelry isn’t worth that. I’m sorry, but it’s my decision.”

  “But to just give up—”

  “Oh, Lydia, please don’t make me say it.”

  “Say what?”

  Her sympathetic look didn’t alter her unambiguous words. “You’re fired.”

  10

  I called Bill the the second I disembarked from the Waldorf. “We’re fired!”

  “What you mean ‘we,’ Chinese woman?”

  “Be serious! This is bad!” I told him about the interview with Mulgrew, and its aftermath.

  He asked, “What are you going to do?”

  “Are you kidding? If you think there’s any possible way I’m going to forget it and let Mulgrew just go through the motions, you’re every bit as—”

  “I didn’t say, ‘Are you going to forget it?’ ” he broke in. “I said, ‘What are you going to do?’ ”

  “Oh. Well, when you put it that way.” I rubbed my eyes. “I apologize. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.”

  “That’s what I’m here for. Though I’d be curious to know what I’m every bit as.”

  “I’ll never tell. But I’m curious to know something, too. Why did you do that thing you do, sitting off to the side so you can observe someone?”

  “I do that?”

  “You know, when I play innocent with you, it’s silly. When you do it with me, it’s absurd. Yes, you do that. When you don’t trust someone. Do you have a problem with Alice?”

  For a moment he was silent. “There’s something peculiar about her. Joel said so, too.”

  “ ‘Off’ is the word he used, and that was because she does this work and she’s not Jewish.”

  “And she explained that. But there’s still something.”

  “Any idea what?”

  “No.”

  “Have you eaten yet?” my mother called from the living room as I slipped off my shoes in the vestibule. It’s a standard Chinese greeting, the hospitable inquiry of a famine-prone land. It’s no more looking for a real answer than “How are you?” is in English. But the thought of food right now was enough to curdle my stomach.

  “I’m not hungry. Ma, I need to tell you something.” I sat on the couch next to her.

  “Ling Wan-ju? What’s wrong?” She shut her Hong Kong fashion magazine, which she studies for ideas for outfits for my sisters-in-law and me.

  “It’s Joel, Ma.”

  “The one who sings.”

  “Ma, he’s dead.”

  Her lips compressed into a thin line. She patted my hand. Then, hands back in her own lap, she asked, “What happened to him?”

  “Someone shot him.”

  “Who did that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it because of your case?”

  Nothing like the head-on approach.

  “I don’t know that either. The police don’t think so.” She nodded and minutely relaxed. I could have left it at that, but I didn’t want to lie to her. “I do, though.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes. The client does, too. She wants me to stop.”

  A few moments of silence. “Are you in danger, Ling Wan-ju?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But it wouldn’t matter, would it?”

  “Ma—”

  “No, it would not. And what the client wants will not matter either. You will do what you think is the right thing for your friend, even if you must do it all alone.”

  I wasn’t going to be alone, but this would have been a particularly bad time to bring up Bill.

  “No, you will continue. You will not consider the consequences until they happen.”

  “I have no choice, Ma.”

  She looked across the room to the cabinet holding my father’s collection of mud figurines: fishermen, farmers, a young woman weaving. People
living the lives their parents had lived, and their parents’ parents, unchanging, peaceful, and unsurprising. She stood. “You have a choice, Ling Wan-ju: whether to eat dinner or not. I have jyu sam tong.”

  Pig’s heart soup, for reviving the fainthearted. As I followed my mother into the kitchen, I wondered, how had she known?

  My mother and I watched a Cantonese soap opera while we ate, a costume drama full of drums and cymbals, Tang dynasty outfits, and complicated hairdos. Trying to follow the story absorbed my attention, as had the running around I’d done all day. It wasn’t until I was alone in my room that the image of Joel open-eyed in his chair flooded back into my brain.

  I stood in the middle of the floor, feeling my breath knocked out the same way it had been by the actual sight. I closed my eyes, didn’t try to muscle the picture away, but let it rush in like a tide until, like a tide, it could ebb again.

  It did. But tired as I was, there was no way, after that, I was going to be able to sleep.

  So I turned my computer on and Googled “Shanghai Moon.”

  I didn’t learn much more than I had from Mr. Friedman’s book. No Web site had photos, or even a good description. All agreed the Shanghai Moon’s whereabouts were unknown; few agreed on its last known location. In a chat room I found a breathless account of a brooch seen at an audience with some Bhutanese royals; could this be the Shanghai Moon? Two curt responses: no, and no way. The jade described was apple green. The setting included sapphires. The poster, someone scoffed, must be a newbie even to ask. On another site someone calling himself MoonHunter reported on a private jewelry auction at a swank hotel in Kuala Lumpur, which he’d been invited to by a collector friend. He dwelled a little long, I thought, on the VIP status of the attendees, the lapis fountain, the free Moët, and the stunning waitresses, but that was probably because he had to admit that in the end he’d caught no sniff of the Shanghai Moon. Now that he was in the private auction world, though, he just knew he was on the right track. I didn’t know much about private jewelry auctions, but it rather uncharitably occurred to me that anyone so impressed with celebrities, fountains, and waitresses—and who had to be invited into their presence by someone else—was, just possibly, a gasbag.