“What are you doing here, Jack?” Dr. Yang lowered his chopsticks to glare at us.
“We know what’s going on,” Jack said without preamble. “We want to help. We have a plan.”
After a moment: “Get out.”
“No.” Not only didn’t Jack leave, he sat. I admired his courage and then realized I needed to do something, too, so I parked on the other chair. Bill wandered over to the window to look down at the world. “We’ve just come from Anna’s,” Jack told Dr. Yang. “We knew about the paintings before we went, the phony Chaus. We found out about them more or less the same way Doug Haig did. Anna tried not to tell us anything but she was too upset to fake it. We know what Haig wants and we can stop him.”
That was a tricky amalgam of three-quarter truths, but we wouldn’t get anywhere if, as it was threatening to, the top of Dr. Yang’s head blew off.
Dr. Yang, stiff-arming his desk, said in a voice he was obviously trying to control, “You don’t know what you’re dealing with. Or who’s involved. I fired you for a reason. Keep out of this, Jack.”
“You fired me to protect Anna. That’s what I’m trying to do. And we do know. Government people from all directions. Chinese gangsters. And Doug Haig. We can deal. We’re just asking you not to do anything right now. Haig wants you to appraise and authenticate the fake Chaus. Just stall him. That’s all.”
After a six-ton silence, Dr. Yang, oddly, picked up on just one of Jack’s points. “Government people?” He stared as though Jack had turned into a Klingon. “What do you mean, government people? They went to you? You didn’t tell me?”
“Not to Jack. To me,” I said. Dr. Yang snapped his head toward me. His expression made me think I might be a Klingon, too. “From two governments. My client, who isn’t a collector. He’s with the State Department. And a fellow from the Chinese Consulate, too.”
Fury, bafflement, fear, and a need to know battled it out on Dr. Yang’s face. Maybe because he was an academic, the need to know won out. “From the Chinese Consulate? Who?”
“He said his name is Samuel Wing, but we think it’s really Xi Xao.”
It seemed to me a light dawned in Dr. Yang’s eyes and was quickly not extinguished, but hidden. “What did he want?”
“You know him,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous. How would I know him? What did he want?”
“He wanted me to stop looking for the Chaus. Who is he?”
“To stop, on behalf of the Chinese government?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me he was a diplomat. He gave me a phony name so I wouldn’t find out. But on the other hand he said he was representing ‘interested parties,’ and he threatened me. Who are his interested parties?”
“He threatened you?”
“If I kept looking. And offered me a lot of money if I’d stop. Why does he care?”
“If he didn’t tell you he was a diplomat, how did you find out?”
“Why do people keep asking how I find things out? I’m a private eye. Like Jack. Like Bill. People hire us to find things out. I looked into Mr. Wing because I don’t respond well to being threatened. Or to being bribed.”
“Like me,” said Jack.
“Or me,” said Bill.
“I can go to the Consulate and ask him what’s going on. Or you can tell us. We want to help. Please let us. Tell us who he is. Tell us why he cares.”
“No.” Dr. Yang looked us over. “You can’t help. You can only create a disaster out of what’s already a bad situation. Clearly worse than I thought, and I can tell you it was already grim. The State Department man. Does he want you to stop looking, too?”
I didn’t anwer, just met his angry eyes. If there’d been a heat differential between our glares there’d have been a thunderstorm in the middle of the room. Surprisingly, Bill stepped in.
“The State Department man doesn’t want us to stop, no. He’s Lydia’s original client. The one who claimed to be a collector. He wanted us to find the paintings. We just came from a meeting with him. We told him we’d found them.”
Dr. Yang went white. “You told him about Anna?”
“No,” I said. “We said we’d found the paintings and ascertained that they were fakes. We told him that’s all he gets right now.”
“Right now? When does he get more?”
“I don’t know. Maybe soon, maybe never. It depends on you.”
After a long stare, Dr. Yang asked, “What was his interest in the paintings?”
“I’m not going to tell you that. But you don’t have to worry about him. You have to worry about Doug Haig and what he wants from you. Just give us an inch or two, Dr. Yang. We really are here to help you. And Anna.”
Dr. Yang, dumplings forgotten, laid his palms carefully on his desk. “All right, I appreciate that you’re trying to help. And that you think you can. But you can’t. As I told you, you can only make things worse. I have to ask you again not to interfere.”
He stared at us, ranged around the far side of his desk, and we all stared back. It’s a good thing stubbornness has no smell or you’d have needed a gas mask to breathe in there.
