“Bill says you’re stand-up.”
“He said I was smart, too. Do you always believe him?”
“Ninety-nine percent of the time.”
“What happens the other one percent?”
“I’m wrong.”
“Well, you’re wrong now. I’m the good guys. We have a deal. I didn’t have my fingers crossed or anything.”
My cheeks burned. Good thing we were on the phone. “Dr. Yang might have sent this guy without telling you. Just because I don’t trust your client doesn’t mean I don’t trust you.”
“Methinks you’re protesting too much, but I’ll take it. I’ll also take the warning at face value, and I appreciate it.”
“It really was why I called.”
After an awkward moment, Jack asked, “What did Bill say?”
“About Samuel Wing? I left him a message. He’s incommunicado, tied up with Shayna Dylan.”
“You think she’s into that?”
“Yuck!”
“Sorry. Listen, what I’m doing up here—and I’m telling you this because now that you think I’m offended you’re afraid to ask because it’ll sound like you’re checking up on me—is I’m trying to track any recent interest in Chau, see who the buyers and sellers have been, the last few years.”
“Oh. Thanks, and thanks.”
“Nothing interesting’s coming up, though. I’m ready to move on. If you’re not planning to spend the rest of the day with gangsters or at the pistol range or something, do you want to go over to Red Sky and see if we can find where the rumors came from that Jen Beril heard? They’re open until six, which believe me is plenty of time to see the current show.”
“You know, that’s a really good idea.”
“You don’t have to sound surprised. Red Sky, forty-five minutes?”
“In the same building as Baxter/Haig, right? Meet you outside.”
I’d been heading back along Canal while we talked, to my office. I had some time, so I clicked the computer on to try a couple of things.
First I checked my archived Samuel Wings. Two were in their twenties, and one was eighty-three, so I scrapped them. The fourth, in a stroke of luck, had won a bowling tournament on Long Island last year. His smiling puss was in a newspaper photo, and I’d never seen it before. So much for that. I moved on to my next bright idea.
New York City has devised all sorts of online and phone-related ways of making itself more user-friendly over the last few years. Some work and some don’t, but as a PI it’s my duty to keep up with them. I’d never used this one before and I was eager to try it.
Three-one-one is the city’s information number. You can ask all sorts of questions and get all sorts of answers. Or you can do it online. Tap a few keys, for example, and you’re at the find-your-stuff page, which exists to hook you up with the bus, train, or taxi you left your stuff in. I went to “taxi,” filled in a form that asked for the medallion number, which I’d memorized from the top of Samuel Wing’s cab, and the time of day, plus a description of the stuff in question and a way to get in touch. It claimed it would automatically text the cabbie or his garage. I could only see this working under two conditions: the cabbie was conscientious and honest; or the searcher was offering a reward. I went the reward route, not describing my stuff but suggesting there’d be something in it for the cabbie if I found what I was looking for. Then I locked up the office and headed west again.
9
In the slanted sunlight I walked past cheap electronics stores, hawkers of bootleg purses and bogus perfumes, and immigrants at sidewalk tables waiting to paint your name in bright brushstrokes and surround it with carp or dragons. Or to fold long leaves of grass into curled pythons; or dollar bills—that you supplied—into butterflies. As I passed them, the painters and folders, I wondered about their lives back in China: whether they were landscape painters, calligraphers, weavers, what their work was like when it wasn’t butterflies and tourists’ names. Whether they kept up that work here, on their own, when their Canal Street day was done.
Another few blocks and the crowds thinned out. I’d considered walking up to Chelsea, but decided I’d hate it if Jack beat me to the gallery. The subway got me there in a flash. I took up a station in front of the gallery building to wait.
Actually, not directly in front, a few yards east. I’d glanced into Baxter/Haig and seen that Nick Greenbank was still guarding the gates. It wasn’t like it would blow my cover if he saw me; there was no reason that, in my role as an art consultant, I shouldn’t accompany yet another client to yet another gallery, even one that happened to be in his building. But I’d had a thought and I was working out its implications: Doug Haig, and little Nick himself, courtesy of Vladimir Oblomov, had my cell phone number.
A few minutes more waiting and thinking, and here came Jack, unfolding from a taxi at the curb. I was about to make a subway-vs-cab wisecrack but, luckily for him, my phone rang. I checked the readout: my client, Jeff Dunbar. I held up a finger to Jack and answered.
“Sorry to take so long returning your call,” he said. “I was in a meeting.” He spoke eagerly. And gave me a bit too much of an explanation for someone so eager. “Do you have something to report?”
“A number of things. Can we meet later?”
“You’ve found the paintings?”
“If I had I wouldn’t keep you in suspense. No, but I want to discuss some other issues.”
“What kind of ‘issues’? ” His voice became wary.
