Bill can do a good eye-drill, especially in Russian gangster mode. Nick Greenbank blanched, making his already-pale skin a nice contrast to his black silk shirt.
“You’re talking about classical Chinese art.” He swallowed and tried to recover, drawing on reservoirs of disdain to soothe his rasping voice. “From the dynasty periods. We don’t handle that. I suggest—”
“I suggest you pay attention, boychik. Dere’s a fellow I’m very, very interested in.”
From a position a discreet step behind Bill, I frantically but subtly signaled to little Nick.
“He vass dead,” Bill mused. “Now he’s not dead. Chau Chun, but you know dat, dah? Dey call him da Ghost Hero.”
“I don’t know—”
“Dah, you do!” Bill smacked his hand on the counter. The impact wasn’t hard enough to make the art students or the booted lady turn around—the round gent had vanished—but Nick yanked his head back as though he’d been bitch-slapped.
“Now, come on, boychik. Someone hass a bunch of paintings, supposed to be by diss Ghost Hero Chau. You”— Bill’s jabbing finger stopped just short of Nick’s nose—“know who dat iss. You tell me, I buy, you get fet commission, just like her. You play stupid games, I get annoyed. My friends, dey get annoyed, too.” He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and stuck it in his mouth. Then he lit a match. He didn’t bring the flame to the cigarette, though, but instead lifted his arm and swept a slow semi-circle. “Ven dey get annoyed, dey can be very annoying, my friends.” Unhurriedly, he drifted the match in until it was very near Nick’s nose. Nick seemed paralyzed; nothing moved but his eyes, which crossed, watching the flame. After a moment, Bill grinned and shook the match out. “I forget, diss iss America, can’t smoke any damn place.” He opened his fingers and dropped the match on Nick’s desk. “So,” he said, unhurriedly restoring the cigarette to the pack. “Be a good boychik. Who hass dese paintings?”
“I—” Nick shook his head, glancing frantically to the back of the gallery. The art students and the booted woman showed no signs of having noticed. Nick whispered, “I could get fired!”
“Hah!” Bill bellowed, poking me in the shoulder. I staggered. “Fired! Good sense of humor, dah?” Bill’s arm repeated the semicircle. “Fired! He gets fired, gallery gets fired! Ha! Dat’s pretty funny!”
“No! All right, listen, I don’t know who’s got them—”
Bill sighed and shook his head.
“No, really. But I know who knows.”
“Oh?” Bill smiled. “Now vee get someplace.” He leaned on the counter again and placidly waited.
“This girl,” said Nick. “She’s at some gallery uptown, I don’t remember. Wait, Gruber, I think that’s it. Anyway I have her number.” He was thumbing a BlackBerry as he spoke. “I met her at an afterparty, some opening. She was trying to impress me.” He said that as though that was the usual reaction to meeting Nick Greenbank at an afterparty. “She tried to show me work from some studio visit. Bunch of Chinese-American artists, a group open studio. Like I’d care.”
“You vouldn’t? Vy not?”
“Hybridized,” Nick scoffed. “Mongrel work, no real grounding in place. We don’t handle Chinese-American shit, just real Chinese.”
Bill had better wrap this up fast, I found myself thinking, or I might have to shove my Chinese-American fist down Nick Greenbank’s throat.
“Here, Shayna Dylan, that’s her.” Nick turned the phone so Bill could see the screen. Bill entered Shayna Dylan’s number into his own phone. Nick, meanwhile, had managed to reinflate his punctured superiority. “She’s an airhead. Yadda-yadda about this shit, and then she drops that my boss saw her photos, too, and got all excited, wanted to know where the open studio was. So then I said, okay, whatever, and looked at what she was trying to show me. Of course I knew right away what he was hot for. Not the crap she was photographing. There were three Chaus, hanging on the wall behind.”
“You could tell dey were dat? From a tiny picture on a leetle phone?”
“Chinese contemporary is what I do. It’s the hottest area around.” When Bill still looked skeptical, Nick added defensively, “Chau Gwai Ying Shung had a very distinctive style. Unmistakable,
“And boychik knows?”
Nick made a comically insincere attempt at a modest shrug.
Bill winked. “Did you tell da pretty girl? Vat she hed pictures of?”
“Of course not. She’s too dumb to know, why should I tell?”
“But your boss, he’s seen dem? Meester Bexter, or Meester Haig?”
“There’s no Baxter,” Nick said smugly. “Doug Haig bought him out years ago.”
Bill nodded. “And Haig has seen dese paintings?”
“On that girl’s phone, absolutely. But you mean, did he go out there, wherever the open studio was? How would I know? I certainly wouldn’t have gone. There’s no question these pictures are fakes.” With a curled lip, as though the artist had made a career blunder, he said, “Chau’s dead.”
“Dey could be real, chust old,” Bill suggested. “From da old days.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” Condescending to connect the dots for the muscle-brained mobster, Nick explained, “If you happen to have a pile of vintage Chaus, and you’re some bridge-and-tunnel freak who wants to make it in the art world, you
