“So I can be Sir Galahad and you can be Indiana Jones?”
“The Lone Ranger! And Indiana Jones, in case you missed it, is a guy. Why can’t I be Lara Croft?”
“Okay, but she doesn’t have a whip.”
“I’m
“Well, if that’s what’s at stake.” Bill finished his coffee. “So okay, boss. What’s our first move?”
I sat back and gazed at the ceiling. “I wish I knew more about Chau. Or Chinese art. I Googled, but Chau’s story is pretty much what Dunbar said it was, and I didn’t find anything else helpful. The only lead I have is this gallery assistant who backpedaled.”
“Well, let’s go lean on him.”
“Sure, but what if he doesn’t give? I don’t have a clue where to go next.”
“Art, according to Dunbar, is not why he hired you. Chineseness is.”
“Yes, but he’s wrong. Seriously, whatever’s going on, who says anyone involved is Chinese except me and Ghost Hero Chau? It’s art I need.”
Bill looked at me for a few moments with something in his eyes I couldn’t read. Then he shifted his gaze to his coffee cup, and the press, and the grinder. “Well, okay,” he said, and took out his cell phone. The coversation was friendly and brief: he ascertained the callee was in and would remain so, and that was that. He put the phone away and stood. “Come on.”
* * *
We subwayed up to a neighborhood I don’t usually have much business in, the part of the Upper East Side that’s waist-deep in old money. Bill, though, negotiated the sidewalks like he was right at home. That’s because he was. He lives as far downtown as I do—and was born in Kentucky, for Pete’s sake—but a lot of New York’s museums and galleries are up here. Bill is one of those rare New Yorkers who actually spends time in museums and galleries, looking at art.
We weren’t going to a gallery or a museum, though. At a brownstone on Madison near Seventy-fifth Bill pressed a buzzer. A man’s voice popped from the speaker: “Hey! Come on up!” and, buzzed in, we climbed a curving staircase from the days when this was someone’s grand home. On the second floor, in the open doorway of an elegantly spare office—gleaming wood floor, sunlight pouring through wide street-side windows—stood a tall and grinning Asian man.
“Bill Smith!” he said. “Way cool! Come on in.” He shook Bill’s hand, then turned to me. “Hi. I’m Jack Lee.” His words held no trace of any Asian accent, but not a New York one, either.
“Lydia Chin.”
“Bill’s partner, I know.” Jack Lee’s hand was big, his grip solid. “Come on, sit down, you guys.”
Jack Lee was around my age, nearly as tall as Bill, and in weight somewhere between us, which made him a string bean. Loose-limbed and lanky, he wore a beautiful multicolored silk tie and ironed black jeans, but no jacket. His white shirtsleeves were neatly rolled back, revealing muscled forearms. Closing the door, he pointed us to wood chairs set around a low table piled with art books. Most of what was in the waist-high bookcase behind the desk were art books, too, though some had the staid leather bindings and stamped lettering of law manuals.
Bill and I sat, and Jack Lee started to do the same, but stopped halfway. “Uh-oh. F for hospitality! I don’t have coffee or anything for you guys. Drank it up, haven’t replenished. You want something? There’s a good place a block up.” He rattled off words like a drum solo.
“Not me, I’m fine,” I said. The minimalist chair was surprisingly comfortable.
“Me, too,” said Bill. “I just had a really good cup of coffee.”
“Cool. I’m second-generation ABC from Madison, Wisconsin,” Jack Lee said to me as he sprawled onto a chair. ABC, that’s American-born Chinese. I’m first generation, myself. “I may look Chinese, but think of me as an All- American midwestern college-town boy. That way you won’t be too disappointed.”
I had to smile. “I’m already not disappointed.”
“But she wasn’t expecting anything,” Bill put in.
“Baseline zero, try not to make it worse, Jack, I get it. So, what can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “What do you do?”
Jack Lee raised his eyebrows at Bill. “You didn’t tell her?”
“I never tell her anything. Keeps the relationship fresh.”
“‘Fresh’ isn’t the word I’d have used,” I said.
“Got you. Well, the big secret he wants me to spill is, I’m a private eye.”
“Oh.” I blinked. “No kidding?”
“Yeah, how about that? And Bill’s been promising to bring you up here for months now. You know, so we can share mysterious Chinese trade secrets. I was starting to think you didn’t exist. That he’d invented a kick-ass Chinese partner to string me along, keep the top-shelf bourbon flowing.”
“Kick-ass?”
“He was lying?”
“Not about that, no,” I said.
“I was just waiting for the moment of maximum impact,” Bill said. “I thought it would be most efficient for you
