academics, everyone the government’s trying to impress, they all know who he was and what he stood for. How he died. New Chaus with Mike’s poems on them, even if we admitted they weren’t real—‘homages,’ Pete said we’d call them, not ‘fakes,’ ‘homages’—new ones with the poems of a jailed dissident, shown just when the government’s turning the spotlight on their own artists, it would be a huge embarrassment. It would be a big loss of face in the international community.”
“Weren’t you worried?” I couldn’t help asking. “That they’d take it out on Mike somehow?”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically. “To bring attention to Mike, that was the whole point. Since there’s a spotlight, to turn it on
“But they found out,” I said. “And that’s the problem, why you called Jack? Samuel Wing came to you?”
Mrs. Yang looked up. Anna blinked. “Samuel Wing? Who’s that?”
“Maybe he was calling himself something else, because Samuel Wing’s a phony name anyhow. The guy from the Chinese Consulate. The skinny guy. He came to me, too.”
Anna looked completely blank. “What? From the Chinese Consulate? No. What guy?”
It seemed I was having a hard time selling Samuel Wing this morning. “A guy calling himself Samuel Wing said he’d heard I was looking for the Chaus and the people he represented wanted me to stop. He offered me money if I did and trouble if I didn’t. That’s not what this is about? The Chinese government threatening you?”
Anna shook her head. “The government? No. They don’t know yet.”
“I’m afraid they do. Mrs. Yang? Does Samuel Wing mean anything to you?”
“I do not know this man,” Mrs. Yang replied, though I’d asked because she seemed a micron paler than before. “He said he was from the Consulate?”
“No. But he was. Though as of yesterday,” I said to Anna, “he didn’t know where the paintings were. He didn’t know you had them.”
“I don’t have them,” she said wearily. “That’s what’s wrong. That’s not who came to me.”
“Who did?” Jack asked.
“Doug Haig.”
Jack and I looked at each other. “That revolting sleazebag creep?” I said. “What did he want?”
Bill gave up the standing at a distance thing and came over and sat down in the other armchair.
“When he first came he just wanted to see the paintings. I guess someone told him they were there.”
“He’s seen the photo.” Bill spoke for the first time and Anna turned to him. “The woman who took it was showing him the sculpture.”
“Tony Ling’s? The foil?”
“She thought he’d like it. She still thinks that’s what he was excited about.”
“Poor Tony. Haig almost knocked that piece over, bulldozing past it.” She pushed some loose strands of hair back from her forehead. “Haig had probably never been to Queens before in his life. He came in a limo. Someone saw it pull up and word raced through the building before he got to the front door. Everyone ignored him, to not be uncool, but everyone was praying he’d come to their studio. They stuck their heads out after he passed, to see where he was going. We could tell from the way he was galloping along like a hippo in a hurry that he wasn’t there out of curiosity, to check out the show. He was on a mission. It never crossed anyone’s mind, especially mine, that he was coming to see me. I just kept cutting. I looked up when he got to my door, just to watch him pass. I almost sliced my finger when he actually came in.”
“You were papercutting?” I asked. “Not painting Chaus?”
“I’d done four Chaus by then. I had them up in the studio. They were … comforting. But at an open studio show, when people are wandering in and out all day, they like to see you making your work. The work they’ll write up if they’re critics, or the collectors will buy. People like to see it being born. And anyway, the Chaus were just for me.”
“Not for Pete Tsang’s bombshell show?”
“He hadn’t suggested it yet. That came later. Partly because of Haig.”
“I’m not following. Haig knows what Pete’s planning?”
“No, that’s not what I mean. When Haig got to my studio he barely glanced at my papercuttings but he spent a long time with the Chaus. It made me uncomfortable. They were for me, they were about Mike. He was wearing a loupe around his neck on a gold chain, how ridiculous is that? He leaned close and examined them, every inch. Then he turned to me, all oil and smiles, and said those were nice paintings, where did I get them? I almost laughed. It seemed like he actually wasn’t sure if they were real. I got the sense he was hoping they were and I didn’t know what they were worth, so he could steal them cheap.”
“Did you tell him you’d made them?”
“No. He was so taken with them that it felt like bragging to say they were mine. They were none of his business, anyway. I wished I’d thought to take them down. I told him a friend had done them.”
“Did he ask who?”
“And he got really mad when I wouldn’t tell. Bottled-up mad, like he’d have screamed at me except losing it was beneath him. He told me I wasn’t doing my friend a favor, and who did I think I was to stand between an artist and interest from Baxter/Haig? I promised I’d tell my friend. He left steaming, but what could he do? After he’d crashed out through the halls, Pete came to my studio to find out what was going on. ‘You could hear us?’ I asked him. ‘We could feel it,’ he said. ‘Like an electrical storm. Your studio was shooting off sparks.’ So I told him. He thought it was pretty hilarious that the paintings had convinced Haig. Then he got thoughtful, and he came back the
