accommodated a fridge and a double-ring gas burner. The living room was filled by the television set and one couch. In the bedroom he had to climb over the bed to reach the other side. He was glad he hadn’t invited Angie back. Where would he have put her? In Hong Kong only the rich had space for plump lovers.
His jacket was soaked through. He threw it over the sofa, peeled off the Saran Wrap shirt, trousers that stuck to his thighs. Naked he faced the Mongkok dilemma: stew or freeze? On all but the hottest nights he managed without the window-mounted air conditioner with its chamber music like a canning factory.
As always his exhaustion on the street failed to conjugate smoothly into sleep. As he lay on the bed, naked except for a cigarette, his mind accelerated in tightening circles. He was in a museum full of white busts of Western women, Sandra, Polly and Angie in particular. They spun in front of him demanding a decision, but his only response was dizziness. Then the door buzzer rang. He jumped; a facial muscle twitched.
He pulled on a pair of shorts, padded barefoot to the front door, looked through the dirty spy hole. Distorted by the fish-eye lens, the American woman was a demon from Chinese opera. A huge face leaned forward hungrily, orangutang lips curled under a squashed nose, hands like claws folded over the money belt. He opened the door to the limit of the security chain.
“Chief Inspector Chan?”
Chan nodded.
“Maybe you could let me in. I have some information for you.”
Now that she had spoken a full sentence he could identify the kind of accent American actors assumed when they made a film about the Bronx, a curious drawl that threatened to make a syllable last for minutes.
“Information? At this time?”
“It’s important.”
Chan stared.
“I’m Clare’s mother.”
“Clare?”
She opened the zip on her money belt, took out a crumpled sheet of paper. It was a fax with the Royal Hong Kong Police letterhead on the top. She held it up. On the top right-hand corner the words “All enquiries to Insp. Aston, Mongkok CID,” and in the center a blurred picture of Polly. Chan felt a blip of the hunter’s excitement at the first faint scent of quarry; he repressed it, though. Patience was the only virtue worth cultivating; he was with the ancients on that. He closed the door, released the chain, let her in.
She held out her hand. “Moira Coletti. Pleased to meet you. I apologize for being here so late, but the plane didn’t get in till this afternoon, and when I tried the station, they said you were out for the night. I’m afraid I spun them a yarn to get your private address. I even got to see your desk and that big photograph of you receiving an award for bravery from the governor. Easy to recognize you from that. Didn’t figure on you being so late, though.”
Chan gestured to the sofa, sat down on the coffee table.
She looked at the floor. “You saw me in the supermarket, right?”
“Quarter bottle of scotch, toothbrush, toothpaste. I should have reported you.”
“That was the downside risk.” She took the items out of her pocket as she spoke, placed them on the floor. “I paid for them, of course, right after you left. See, I know cops. I don’t know Chinese, but I know cops, and there aren’t many homicide detectives going to start filling in arrest statements for a minor larceny after two in the morning.” She paused, looked him full in the face. “Sorry about that. I just wanted to know how good you were. American arrogance, I guess. We just don’t want to believe that any nation is anywhere near as good as the old U.S. of A. at anything. Damn near ruined Detroit till they had the sense to admit the Japanese could make better cars than them. Now you get Japanese quality control even at GM.” She paused, sighed. “I’m rambling. That’s always been my problem. Reason I never made it higher than sergeant. You’re good, though, really good. Even got the toothbrush. I was especially careful with that.”
Chan, twitching, lit a cigarette.
“Well, since neither of us is on duty-you mind?” She held up the scotch. “It’s been a long day-and night. Hate to think what time it is in New York.”
“About twelve hours earlier than now. Two, three in the afternoon. Yesterday afternoon. You better open the scotch.”
“Right.” She undid the screw cap. “Wow, yesterday afternoon. That’s how it works? I must seem awfully ignorant to you. Never traveled out of the United States before except once to Acapulco to divorce Clare’s father. But you don’t need to hear about that. Want some scotch?”
Chan declined, went to the fridge to fetch some beer. “You better have this with it. Neat it won’t last.”
“Thanks. What you want is fingerprints, right? Clare’s dead, I guess, or you wouldn’t be going to all this trouble? Didn’t say so on the fax, at least not on the sheet I got out of them on the sixth floor. I bought this book Clare read all the time when she was staying with me-
“You did?” Immediately he regretted his enthusiasm.
Moira’s face fell. “That bad, huh? Man, it sure hurts even to contemplate what might have happened. Don’t tell me yet, though. I need to be real drunk.”
Tears streamed as she poured the whiskey down her throat. Somehow she managed to keep the emotion out of her voice. “Don’t mind me, please. It’s just a reaction. Americans are encouraged to let it all out. All means all too. Over here you do it different if those kung fu movies are to be believed. Never show weakness, huh? Might be right. Never saw tears get anyone anywhere, and I’ve seen a few. Manhattan these days is a jungle, a jungle. Say, what do I call you? Chief? Chief Inspector?”
“Charlie. Everyone else does.”
“Charlie? Like Charlie Chan?”
“British humor. I’m a detective, they couldn’t resist. Look, Mrs. Coletti, we don’t know if we’re talking about the same person at all. You just saw an artists’ impression.”
“Call me Moira. That’s what I’ve been telling myself. But you tell me, what would you think if you saw a fax like that? Ever since Clare disappeared, I’ve been making them give me every Identi-Kit from Asia that comes in. I bet I can check out artists’ impressions as good as anyone.”
Out of her money belt she took an envelope with photographs.
“This is her at sixteen. I brought it for me really.”
Chan saw a thin-faced girl in a purple and green tracksuit, dark blond hair falling over one eye, large trees in the background, trees of a kind he’d never seen except in pictures. He paused over the smile. Perfect American dentistry.
Moira took back the picture, stared at it. “Central Park, 1986.”
“A jogger?”
“Skateboard. Now, here she’s twenty-one. Graduation. NYU. That stands for New York University. B.A. in sociology.”
Chan glanced quickly at the scotch bottle. He didn’t need another drunken woman on his hands; she took the scotch well, though, apart from a single burp half suppressed. Her eyes and hands were steady. He picked up the photograph. The child had turned into a young woman in cap and gown. She was gazing not into the camera but into a future full of promise. Only Americans smiled like that. Only Americans had that kind of future.
“Now here’s the most recent. Two years ago, when I went to see her in San Francisco.”
Something had gone wrong. Only a few years down that sunny road life had failed. She was still smiling, but it was wan, uncertain. Her hair was brutally short; two dabs of silver shone in each ear. This time she was looking straight into the camera, trying to say something to whoever was going to see the picture. Help me?
“I know what you’re probably thinking, Charlie. Any cop would. But it wasn’t drugs. It was just the tail end of an affair with a married man that was chewing her guts out. She snapped out of it pretty soon afterward. It’s just that I haven’t got any pictures more recent than that.”
Chan nodded. No point in asking questions until after positive identification. He placed the most recent photograph next to the fax that Moira laid out on the floor. Photographs could be as deceptive as eyewitnesses. The human eye saw what the mind told it to see. Urban Man spent his life trapped in an internal dialogue from which he emerged only for the purposes of survival. On the fax sheet he covered over the hair that Angie had given her: a
