“Making tea,” he said. “She need tea.”
“Why aren't you with her?”
He avoided my gaze. “Want to cry, her.”
“And I thought you were dangerous,” I said.
Mrs. Summerson was defying popular wisdom by watching the kettle, but when she turned at the sound of my step she was alert and watchful and dry-eyed.
“I need to go downstairs,” I said.
Her eyes went to the gun in my hand, and I tucked it into my belt. “I can't open that door,” she said.
“Bananas. We both know what's been happening here.”
“Do you really think so?” She almost smiled at me. “Be that as it may, I don't have the key. It's lost.”
“You're a really terrible liar.”
She turned back to the kettle, which had started to hiss steam. “I know,” she said, using both hands to lift it to the sink. “I've never been any good at it. But I fooled you before.” She sounded proud, like a little girl who's tricked an adult.
“Where's the key?”
For what seemed like a long time, she busied herself with pouring the water into a ceramic teapot and spooning tea from a canister into a little metal infuser. Then she dropped the infuser in, capped the pot carefully, and said, “What's been happening here, then?” She had her back to me. “If you're so smart.”
“I don't know all the details, but you-you and Lo, I mean-have been smuggling your old students out of China.”
Her spine straightened, but all she did was put the teapot and three cups onto a heavily carved wooden tray. Her hands weren't shaking now. “Aren't you the clever boy,” she said. “That must be why they sent you to hunt for Lo.”
“They didn't send me. I'll tell you about it in a minute. Where's the key to the basement?”
“I told you, he's in China.” She still hadn't turned to face me.
“And I believe you. He's long gone. I just want to see the setup.”
“It's quite nice, really. The key is around my neck. Turn your back, please.”
“You know I can't do that, Mrs. Summerson.”
She rested a hand against the pot, testing its temperature. “What a pity you're such a reptile. Eleanor will be so disappointed to know.”
“Call her. She knows what I'm doing.”
“Don't be silly. Eleanor wouldn't have anything to do with one of them.”
“I'm not. One of them, I mean.”
“Then why are you with that boy?” She turned slowly to face me, and when I saw her in profile I was struck by how loosely the heavy clothes fit her. There was no fat left, nothing but bone and muscle and will.
“They made him kill his brother and then they killed his cousin. His girl cousin. They cut her throat. He's on our side now.”
The big eyes probed me. “How terrible,” she said conversationally. She'd seen worse. “But it's not as simple as sides. There are lives at stake.”
“I know,” I said. “Horace's is one of them. Look, I can explain it all in a minute. Just give me the key, please, and then we can get down to business.”
“Oh, my. I suppose if I don't give it to you, you'll just take it anyway.”
“No,” I said, suddenly feeling the lack of sleep. “I won't.”
She nodded slowly and lifted a hand to pat at her hair. “Then I’ll give it to you.” She reached around behind her neck and her long fingers located something. She pulled a long, thin gold chain out of her dress and handed it to me. Dangling from its end was a double-serrated brass key. “The light's on the left at the top of the stairs.”
“Thanks.” I was already moving.
I heard the lid of the teapot being lifted. “Lemon?”
“That would be lovely.” The key fit easily into the lock and turned with no resistance at all. The light switch was right where she'd said it would be.
The stairs descended steeply and doglegged to the right. When the room came into view, I stopped and looked at it for a long time. Then I laughed.
It was perfect. Wall-to-wall carpet on both floor and ceiling to absorb sound, a plump couch, and a double bed. Bookshelves sagged beneath a spy's library, crammed with magazines about American life and books and pamphlets in Chinese. A television set and a VCR, equipped with earphones. A treadmill and some dumbbells to keep the muscles functioning. The bathroom had both a step-in shower and an old claw-footed tub. It was, in all, a lot nicer than my house. Anyone could have lived there indefinitely, deprived only of the sight of sun and sky. And Uncle Lo, I was willing to bet, had been down there with his feet up, watching kung-fu movies on the VCR while Eleanor and I were cunningly cross-examining Mrs. Summerson.
Some papers on the bed caught my eye: Photocopies of old but official-looking documents in Chinese. One of them featured the picture of a young Chinese man who strongly resembled Horace Chan. I scooped them up and went back up the stairs, still laughing.
“Of course he was there,” Mrs. Summerson said several minutes later. “He was right down there, waiting for his papers.” She was balancing a saucer on her knee and blowing in a genteel fashion at a cup of steaming tea.
“Papers to get him to China?”
She shook her head. “No, but good enough to get him to Canada. The really good papers come from Canada. And then, it's easier to get to China from Canada.”
“And these,” I said, indicating the photocopies, “belonged to Eleanor's father. He took them from her mother's house.” Peter Lau's phrase came back to me. “He was ghost-processing himself, wasn't he? He terrorized Eleanor's family so he could be someone who was dead.”
Her eyes widened behind the cloudy lenses, and she hesitated. Tran leaned forward and put a soothing palm on her arm. She smiled gratefully at him. “He needed them desperately,” she said. “To get back in, I mean. He would never have taken the children otherwise. He knew he had no time left. There were only so many places he could go, and they had all his papers-I mean everything. It's always safest to have papers with a real Chinese person's name on them. He and Eleanor's father are about the same age, and there's no record of Mr. Chan's death.”
My surprise must have showed.
“Lo,” she said with some pride, “is a very smart man. He was an official in those days, but he knew everything had gone wrong with China and he had an eye on the future even then. When men of his age passed away in his district, he burned their death papers. Then he bought the birth and school papers from the family. He created unimpeachable biographies for the dead men and sent the papers off to Beijing with his own photograph. He was probably paying someone to process them. By the time things opened up again, he had any number of valid passports hidden away. Unfortunately, he didn't have them with him when things went wrong this time.”
I had a lot of questions, but I settled on one close to home. “Why didn't he buy Mr. Chan's papers?”
“He got too involved with-” She hesitated and blew on her tea again. “With the family,” she said at last.
“Oh, good lord,” I said, feeling myself blush.
“Eleanor doesn't know,” Mrs. Summerson said quickly. “I really think Mrs. Chan was the love of Lo's life. Not that anything is simple with Lo.”
Chalk up another one for Mrs. Chan. Tran was standing in front of the picture of the Chinese children, staring at it as though he were about to step into it. He'd withdrawn from the conversation, except to thank Mrs. Summerson for the tea.
“Why didn't he just ask them for the papers?” I said. “They would have given them to him. Why take the twins and make everybody crazy like that?” Nothing was simple with Lo, she'd said, but I wasn't so sure. For the Chans, and maybe for Mrs. Summerson, Lo was a snapshot taken thirty years before. In the thirty years they'd been gazing at the snapshot, a different picture had been developing over decades, hidden from their view. How does anyone know who an old friend will become over time?
“He
