“Stay with him. Let me know what happens. What about the phone call?”
“What phone call?”
“You took out your phone when you left.”
“You saw me?”
“Hey, I’m not just a pretty face.”
“Um. Well, no phone call, and not just your face, pretty as it is. Dunbar’s. I snapped a few pix. You’re in one, though. Sweet.”
I clicked off, pocketed the phone, and walked through the Village in the last of the light. Bill was right, it seemed to me. Jack was good at his job.
And speaking of Bill, the phone gave out with “My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys” just as I reached Sheridan Square. I grabbed it and flipped it open. “Oh ho ho, is this you?”
“Hey, I’ve been working really hard here.”
“Don’t tell me about what’s been hard.”
“Oh my God, is that a dirty joke from you?”
“I’ve changed. I’ve spent the afternoon drinking in a dive bar on the waterfront.”
“The whole afternoon?”
“No. First I had to give a stranger some perfectly good oolong tea in my office so he could threaten me without mentioning my mother, then I had to go watch a robot crashing into a pole.”
“Are you speaking English?”
“Where are you? Still tied up with Shayna?”
“You think she’s into that?”
“Why does everyone want to know that?”
“Well, it’s an interesting question. No, she had dinner plans.”
“You weren’t charming enough for her to cancel them?”
“I didn’t want to waste the charm if I didn’t need to.”
“Yes, I can see you’d want to conserve scarce resources. Why didn’t you need to?”
“You know, I don’t think drink agrees with you.”
“It was cranberry juice.”
“That changes things? I didn’t need to because I got what we wanted.”
I drew a sharp breath. “The Chaus? You found out where they are?”
“Where they were, when Shayna saw them. That was a one-week show, though, so they may not be there now.”
“Still, that’s huge. Where are you?”
“Upper East Side. Where are you?”
“West Village. You want to meet in Chinatown? I’m starving.”
“Good idea. What about Aramis?”
“He’s in a cab near Lincoln Center. I’ll call him.”
He didn’t even ask me how I knew that.
* * *
I called Jack, who reported that the cab caravan had left the highway at Seventy-second Street and was heading across town.
“This driver’s a rock star,” he said. “Changes lanes, hangs back, all the good stuff. Rajneesh Jha, from Hyderabad. Grew up on American movies. Thinks he died and went to heaven, tailing another cab for a PI.”
“Lucky you, lucky him,” I said. “When you’re done, Bill and I are going for noodles to New Chao Chow on Mott, north of Canal. Bill knows where the Chaus were when Shayna saw them.”
“You think you have enough Chaus there?”
“If you spoke Chinese like a New Yorker you’d be able to tell them apart.” I spelled the restaurant for him.
“If I spoke Chinese like a New Yorker my mother wouldn’t understand me.”
“Does she understand you now?”
“Everything but my profession. She shudders. She wishes I were respectable, like my older sisters.”
“Mine, too! How many sisters?”
“Two. An endocrinologist and a lawyer. You have sisters?”
“No, four older brothers. Also a doctor and a lawyer, and two more besides.”
