Ghost Hero

“I see.” She sounded relieved, which surprised me. One of the things she dislikes about my profession is that she thinks it’s dangerous. Almost as high on her dislike list, though, is the people I’m forced by the job to associate with, and on the top of that list is Bill. That he’s big and strong and bodyguardish and could help with the “dangerous” problem has never cut any ice with her. So what was the relief about?

“But this case is not urgent? It allows you time for yourself? Perhaps to see your friends?” She spoke coyly and I had no idea what she was talking about. Keeping a quizzical eye on her, I scooped up another mouthful.

Then I got it. “The Chinatown telegraph.” I put my spoon down. “Someone saw us at New Chao Chow, didn’t they? Me, and Bill, and Jack?” The relief must have been at the idea that I was hanging with Bill out of professional necessity, not personal choice. And the reason for the coyness was now blindingly clear.

Absorbed in measuring rice into the cooker, my mother answered vaguely. “I think your auntie Ying-le might have mentioned it. Yes, I remember now. She saw you when she was shopping on Mott Street yesterday.”

Mao Ying-le, a friend of my mother’s from her sewing days and in no way my aunt, was one of Chinatown’s biggest gossips. But it didn’t matter. If not Ying-le, my mother would have gotten the word from someone else. It should have occurred to me that I couldn’t dine in the neighborhood with a handsome Asian guy and expect my mother not to know about it before the check came.

“Jack Lee,” I said.

“Your auntie said he looked very nice.”

“She did?”

“Not exactly. She said you looked as though you thought he was very nice.”

My face grew hot, which annoyed me. “She stood there and watched us?”

My mother smiled. “Is he very nice?”

Some things you can’t fight. I’d have to talk to myself about the color in my cheeks later. “Yes.”

“And he is Chinese?” Just checking. Because he might be Japanese, or Korean. From a different planet, in her universe, but still light-years ahead of Bill.

“Jack Lee Yat-sen,” I confirmed. “From Wisconsin. He’s second generation, parents born here, too. But, Ma, it was work. Jack’s also on the case. He’s another PI.”

Her face fell. My mother’s been to California twice, to visit relatives, and to New England to view the fall leaves, but she has only a vague idea where Wisconsin is. “Second generation” clearly worried her, too. But Jack’s job was the final blow.

“Chinese, is he?” She sniffed. “Hollow bamboo.” Hollow bamboo: Chinese-looking outside, empty inside.

“Ma, you don’t even know him! He speaks and reads Chinese. And his field is Chinese art.” I didn’t tell her that in most other ways Jack was the guy who put the “A” in “ABC.”

“I thought his field was detecting.”

“In the art world. He finds stolen paintings, things like that.”

“So he’s involved with criminals, then.”

“No more than I am.”

“There, you see?” She plugged in the rice cooker emphatically, with bitter triumph.

I gave up. Whatever we were arguing about, I wasn’t going to win. And why, I suddenly asked myself, did I care whether my mother thought well of Jack Lee, anyway?

I was finishing my tea when the cell phone in my robe pocket chirped out Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs.” That would be Linus.

“Cuz!” he said. “Too early?”

“Not at all. Have a good time last night?”

“Dudess, it was sick! Dum Dum Girls at the Mercury Lounge! They tore it up! We didn’t get back until, like, five a.m.”

“And you’re up working? I’m impressed.”

“No way. We just didn’t crash yet. A little wired, you know? So I thought I’d check out your dude first, to kinda bring me down.”

“So does he? Bring you down?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, the dude himself, I don’t know anything about him. You didn’t get, like, cell phone pix or something?” His voice was hopeful.

“Linus, we were—” I almost said, pointing guns at each other, but I remembered where I was. “It was dark.”

“Oh. Well.” He sounded like he wasn’t sure why that mattered, and to a tech geek I guess it wouldn’t. But he moved on. “Okay, so, I found the car. This dude I know, he has a dude he rolls with—sorry, TMI. A Navigator—last year’s, like you said. Plate number you gave me plus six-eight at the end? It’s registered to Tiger Holdings, LLC. Addresses in Beijing, Hong Kong, Manhattan, and Basking Ridge, New Jersey.”

“Who are they, Tiger Holdings? What do they do?”

“Well, I don’t know who they are, but a couple of their honchos, you can see photos on their Web site.” He gave me the URL. “Maybe your guy’s there.”

“Okay, I’ll check it out. Anything else?”

“Well, sort of. I mean, I could be wrong.”