I said, “Does he have many friends in the Chinese community?”
“He has acquaintances. Carl has never had any friends.”
“Did he spend much time in Chinatown while you were married?”
“Yes. We lived in Menlo Park — I met him while I was an undergraduate at Stanford — but we used to come into the city two or three times a week for dinner.”
“Did he ever indicate to you that he gambled in Chinatown?”
“Yes. He mentioned it.”
“Any place in particular?”
“None that he spoke of.”
“Does the name Lee Chuck mean anything to you?”
She considered it. “I’m afraid not.”
“Hui Sip?”
“A tong,” she said. “Not a very benevolent one. What does Hui Sip have to do with Carl’s application for insurance?”
Back off a little, I thought. You’re making her suspicious. I said, “These are names that came up during the course of my investigation. I’ve been led to believe that Hui Sip controls gambling in Chinatown; naturally, if Mr. Emerson is involved with them we would consider him a less than satisfactory insurance risk.”
“I see.”
“Do you know if he’s ever had any dealings with Hui Sip?”
“No. But it wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Why not?”
“They control gambling, just as you said; they also control prostitution. Carl is a gambler and a fornicator and a Chinaphile. No, it wouldn’t surprise me.”
I frowned. “Do you mean he prefers Chinese women?”
“Exclusively. And obsessively. I doubt if he’s ever been to bed with a Caucasian woman.”
“But he doesn’t consort with prostitutes, does he?”
“Oh yes. Prostitutes, too.”
“I don’t understand. Why would he do that?”
“He can’t get enough of Chinese women,” she said. “I wasn’t enough for him; the women he meets in social situations and has affairs with aren’t enough. Besides, Carl’s sexual preferences are... exotic.”
Her voice was still matter-of-fact; if she felt any embarrassment at making such candid admissions to a stranger, she did not show it any way. I watched her finish her drink and set the glass on a glass-topped table. Things kept stirring around in the back of my mind, like shadows coalescing into recognizable forms. Things Eberhardt had said to me that Sunday afternoon, things I’d been told by others.
I asked her, “Do you know for a fact that he’s been with prostitutes?”
“Yes. A friend of mine saw him with one in a Grant Avenue bar one night.”
“This was while you were married?”
She nodded. “He admitted it when I confronted him.”
“Is that what brought about the divorce?”
“It was the direct cause of my leaving him, yes. I’d suspected for some time before that he was seeing other women.”
“Was he upset when you left him?”
“Very. He didn’t want to let me go; he never likes to part with any of his possessions. He slapped me around, called me names, threatened me.”
“What did you do then?”
“Moved out anyway and came back to the city to live with my sister.”
“Did he make any more trouble for you?”
“He tried,” she said. “I finally had to get a judge to issue a restraining order against him.”
“And he left you alone after that?”
“Yes. Image is important to him; I suppose he was afraid word would get around and harm his business activities.”
I was thinking that Emerson was a damned unpleasant son of a bitch, and I said so, but in more polite terms.
“Oh, he can be charming when he wants to be,” she said. “He takes in a lot of people with his charm; he fooled me completely at first. It’s only when you get to know him that he shows his true colors.”
“Had he hit you before the time you left him?”
“No. I can put up with a lot from a man — Chinese women are taught obedience to men from birth — but not that.”
“Then normally he’s not a violent man?”
“Most of the time he keeps himself under control. But he has a vile temper. There’s a lot of violence in Carl, just under the surface.”
“What sets him off?”
“Not getting his way. He’s an egotist and a borderline sociopath; as far as he’s concerned, the universe revolves around Carl Emerson, and everybody else is there for his own personal amusement.”
“Has he ever hurt anyone else? Physically, I mean.”
“Not that I’m aware of,” she said. “He’s hurt any number of people, but in more subtle ways.”
“Would that number include his business partners?”
“Yes.”
“In what way? Neither of them seems to care much for him.”
“I’m sure they hate him. He’s used them, used their talents; without them, there wouldn’t be any Mid-Pacific Electronics.”
“But I thought he designed the component Mid-Pacific manufactures.”
“No. The original design was Orin Tedescu’s. Carl made certain refinements, patented the component in his name; that was his only contribution other than arranging for the financing so they could get started.”
“Why did Tedescu go along with that?”
“Carl talked him into it. Orin has no business sense; Carl convinced him their chances of success were greater with his name on the patent, because of his contacts and cachet in the industry.”
“What about Bexley?”
“The same thing, more or less. Phil does have a business sense — he’s a marketing genius — but he’s also insecure. A follower, not a leader. By the time he and Orin realized what Carl had done to them, it was too late; the partnership agreement they’d signed giving Carl controlling interest was ironclad. Carl saw to that.”
“So Tedescu and Bexley do most of the work,” I said, “and Emerson reaps most of the profits.”
“Essentially, yes. About all he does, I’m sure, is give orders, entertain customers, and act as a general supervisor.”
“No wonder they’re so bitter.”
“No wonder we all are,” she said.
“Do you hate him, Ms. Emerson?”
“With a passion. That’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Then why did you keep his name?”
The delicate shrug again. “When I divorced him I had a line of credit as Jeanne Emerson; it would have presented too many problems to start over again as Jeanne Ng. And it’s easier for a Chinese woman to get by professionally if she has a Caucasian name. There’s still a lot of prejudice in this world, you know.”
“Yes,” I said, “I know.”
“His name is one of the few useful things I got out of the marriage. I agreed to a very small settlement to avoid any more trouble with him; he would have taken me to court if I hadn’t, and I wasn’t in any frame of mind for that. I just wanted out.”
I thought I understood now why she lived here as she did, with no Oriental trappings of any kind. She had known too much unhappiness with Emerson, lived too long in the midst of an obsession; it was a kind of backlash effect that had led her to adopt a wholly Westernized life-style. There was no self-delusion in it, no rejection of her heritage; it was evident that she was still proud to be Chinese. The trappings themselves were all that she had rejected — her way of burying the past, moving ahead with a new life.
I let a few seconds of silence go by. Then I said, “Well, I think that’s about all the information I need. You’ve been very helpful, Ms. Emerson.”
“My pleasure, believe me.”
When I got to my feet I felt a small cut of pain in my shoulder; it made me wince. I adjusted the sling a little, and the pain went away.
She said from her chair, “Is your arm bothering you?”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Gunshot wounds must be very painful,” she said.