Ghost Hero

ten thousand in cash and when I turned him down he sweetened the offer. When I threw him out he suggested I reconsider or else, but there was no or else.”

“That was when he didn’t mention your mother? Now I get it.”

“Yes.” I pointed at my phone. “That was his cab driver. I left him a message before. He dropped Wing, or whoever he is, on Twelfth and Forty-second and saw him go into the building on the northeast corner.”

“Oh,” said Bill. “Damn.”

“What?” Jack demanded.

I asked, “You’ve never been to the mother ship, have you?”

“Hong Kong,” Jack said. “Not the mainland. Why?”

“You don’t need a visa for Hong Kong. I haven’t been to the mainland, either. But I’ve had relatives go back and forth over the years. Sometimes they need someone to pick up visas, papers, something, at the Chinese Consulate here.”

“At the— Is that it? Where Wing went?”

“Forty-second and Twelfth. Northeast corner. There’s nothing else there.”

Silence covered our table in the clinking and slurping around us. “You called it,” Jack said. “You said, from the mainland, but here a long time.”

“You knew about this guy?” Bill asked Jack.

“You’d have known, too, if the bar you were in hadn’t been quite so hushed,” I retorted. “Listen, you guys. The Chinese government?”

“Or, one diplomat, freelancing,” Bill said.

“To what end?”

“The same end as our other interested parties? He sees a chance to hit it big?”

“Well, but hold it,” Jack said. “Maybe we’re jumping to the wrong conclusion. Why can’t it be just one guy, a civilian, doing two errands in one afternoon? Trying to buy you off: bad. And picking up papers from the Consulate: innocent. Unrelated.”

I shook my head. “Nice try, but too late in the day. They close to the public at three. I’ve been on lines there often enough. If he got in the building this late, he works there. But come on. The Chinese government?”

Bill shook his head. “If he’s really a diplomat he’s got to be freelancing. If the Chinese government wanted you to knock something off they’d go to our government. The State Department or the CIA.”

“Maybe they tried, but the State Department doesn’t want to do the PRC’s dirty work.”

“I have to think they’d rather do that than let the PRC do its own, going up in the face of an American citizen.”

“Or maybe this is about something the PRC doesn’t want to share with the State Department,” Jack said.

“Like what?” I asked.

“Chau was a political pain when he was alive. Maybe he’d be a pain again if he were alive again.”

“But then, wouldn’t Wing be trying to buy my information, not scare me off? Wouldn’t he want to find out where the paintings are and whether he has a problem?”

Bill said, “Not if he knows already.”

“Oh.” I stopped a spoonful of salty broth on its way to my mouth. “Oh.” I was considering the ramifications of that when my phone rang again. In some restaurants this much cell phone usage might fetch dirty looks, or even get us ejected. But this was a Chinatown noodle dive. Half the customers, the waiter, and Tau at the front, were working their own hustles on their own cell phones. “Linus,” I answered it. “You have something?”

“I’m still working. But I found some stuff you want right away.”

“I do? Tell me.”

“I don’t know what you’re into, but you might want to, like, tiptoe. First, that phone number. I hit a wall. But not a regular wall. My phone company dude said, ‘Dude, you can’t have that and you don’t want it.’”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, see, most of what my phone company dudes do for me, it’s technically, you know, illegal?”

“Technically?”

“Yeah, but, see, there’s like a line. Stuff they’ll do, and the other stuff. Like, this number, giving me anything about it, it’s not just illegal. It’s, like, deeply illegal. You dig?”

His earnestness as he tried to explain the nuances was almost funny. “Okay, I get it, and back off it. I don’t want you doing anything deeply illegal because of me. But what does it mean?”

“It means it’s, like, a government phone.”

“It’s like a government phone? Or it is a government phone?”

“No, not it is, necessarily. But it’s, like, a phone the Feds care about. Guys like me can’t trace it and neither, by the way, can the NYPD, unless the Feds say they can. Not the owner or the call history. By ‘can’t,’” he added quickly, “I mean my phone company dude won’t help. But I know some other dudes. Serious guys.” Reestablishing his bona fides. “You want me to find someone, or what?”

“Don’t sound so eager. I don’t think we need to. Just tell me, is this the kind of protection a foreign diplomat’s