Ariunbat scowled thoughtfully.
“This was around eight A.M.,” Young explained quickly. “I wanted to see the lion dance.”
“We may need to talk to you further,” said Ariunbat, rising from his chair with some difficulty.
The big American accompanied them out the door. When they were outside he leaned forward confidentially, lowering his voice. “While I was in Chinatown yesterday morning, I overheard something that you may find useful. There were two Chinese boys behind me — teenagers — and I caught a bit of their conversation. Mr. Liu’s name came up. Well, as you can imagine, that caught my interest. One of the boys said something about getting ‘a black pearl.’ And then there was something else about a ‘yee chuan’ — an inheritance. And it must’ve been a big one because they were talking a million cash — paper money. So I began to wonder, were they planning a robbery?”
“Why didn’t you go to the police?” asked Ariunbat.
“I guess I couldn’t really believe what I was hearing. Figured it was probably my imagination, or maybe I’d misheard. But I came straight back here to warn him anyhow. He’d left before I got here.”
“What did these boys look like?”
“They looked like — well — Chinese boys.” Young paused to think for a moment. “They were dressed in red. I do remember that.”
“Yes, I saw any number of boys dressed in red yesterday afternoon,” said Dorj. “Part of the celebrations. But why would a couple of teenagers be discussing Mr. Liu’s finances?”
The two policemen had stopped for lunch at the Altai Hotel. Ariunbat removed his goose-down jacket, turned his attention to his plate of boiled mutton, and vigorously began to make up for his bicycling exercise. Dorj had planned on attending a production of Hamlet at the Drama Theater but that, apparently, was not to be. At any rate, hearing about the wished-for marriage between Song Liu and the foreigner, Young, had raised a personal ghost. Where was Mai now, he wondered? Had she and her family weathered the Cultural Revolution? Did she ever wish they had stayed in Mongolia?
“I wonder,” said Ariunbat, “if they might have been Chi’s sons? The embezzler had two sons. They might’ve heard their father talking about Liu’s wealth.”
“So revenge would’ve been a motive, as well as robbery.”
“What other Chinese boys would’ve had that kind of information? It’s obvious.”
“Yes, obvious,” agreed Dorj.
“What do you say, Dorj,” said Ariunbat. “I could pull the sons in for questioning, and maybe he’d recognize them.”
“He might. Of course, it might have just been the usual violent drunks — nothing to do with the conversation Young overheard.”
“And what about the American?” continued Ariunbat. “I checked at his hotel. He did arrive when he said, but as to the next day — the day of the murder — well, you know how our hotels are run.” He wiped grease from his lips.
“Mr. Liu was apparently standing in the way of Young’s marriage to Song.”
“But can you see him killing off his business partner? Besides, the girl said she expected her father to come around to the idea when he felt better.”
“It’s a difficult case,” said Dorj. There was something wrong that he couldn’t quite identify. Was it Song’s odd composure? Or something about those queer fishlike markings in the notebook? Were they in any way related to the murder?
He found himself thinking again about the wedding he’d witnessed. But something else — the girl who’d reminded him momentarily of Mai. Could it have been Song?
Dorj felt suddenly depressed, hemmed in. He almost missed the desert — cold and scoured clean by the winds off the massifs.
The next day, the local telephone service being what it was, Dorj simply walked unannounced into the dark, uninviting store where Song Liu worked. Her job was as seemingly at odds with her late father’s wealth as the family ger. But then the Chinese were reputed to be industrious. Unlike the grocery stores’, the bookstore’s shelves were full, but the books were dusty, and mostly in Russian.
When he saw her kneeling to arrange some maps on a low shelf, he recalled when he and Mai had spent hours browsing bookstores. Not long afterwards, he found himself sitting on a bench with Song, next to the Ferris wheel in Nairamdal Park.
“Yes, I was in Chinatown that afternoon,” admitted Song. She was not so pale. The cold, perhaps, had brought color to her high cheekbones. The bright but ineffectual sun high up in the vast, bright blue sky shone in her dark hair. “I... I stayed at Myron’s hotel the night before.”
“What about your father?” Dorj felt an irrational pang of jealousy.
“Oh, Father would have been furious if he’d known. I told him I was staying with friends. Myron had to go out early, on business, he said.”
“But you stayed in Chinatown for a time?”
“I was watching the celebrations. I knew nothing about the...” Her voice broke and she closed her eyes tightly.
Dorj stared at the Ferris wheel, recalling it in summer, filled with children excited to be carried just a little way up into that blue sky.
“I didn’t tell you the whole truth,” said Song abruptly. “I said Father was ill. He was dying.”
Dorj looked at her questioningly.
“He’d told me,” Song continued. “We’d made all the arrangements. That was just before he sent Myron away. I wouldn’t have put up with it otherwise. I would’ve married Myron on the spot. But I knew Father wasn’t himself. And how could I— Oh, if he’d only given us his blessing before—”
She began to cry and leaned against Dorj’s shoulder. He put his arm around her, uncomfortably.
Dusk was falling when Dorj and Ariunbat reached the Tuul River bridge on what had once been Marx Avenue. Ariunbat stopped and climbed off his bicycle. “The restaurant’s in the next block,” said Ariunbat, who had invited Dorj to discuss the case over dinner. “It’s excellent. I go there often.”
Ariunbat glanced at his watch, illuminated by fitful greenish light from a sputtering streetlamp, and leaned against the balustrade. The river was frozen, except where it eddied around the piers of the bridge. He said, “You can see the lights of the city from here.”
“Have you pulled in those two brothers?” asked Dorj.
“Not yet.”
“I think you should abandon Chi’s family and look a little closer to home.”
Ariunbat was incredulous. “Surely you don’t mean... No, I can’t see a little fragile flower like her being involved in patricide.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Song.”
“The engineer— Young?”
“Yes. I find myself thinking about the conversation he overheard.”
The captain nodded, his double chin trembling. “And...?”
“Red is the color of joy.”
Ariunbat looked at Dorj as if the inspector had gone mad.
“In China, red symbolizes joy,” explained Dorj. “Chi’s sons would hardly be wearing red so soon after their father’s death.”
“Do you mean Young made the conversation up?”
“Not necessarily the conversation itself.”
“But if it wasn’t the sons—”
“Has it occurred to you that Myron Young sounds a lot like ‘mei ren yu’?”
“Well, it does when you say it, yes. So what?”
“The mermaid symbols in the notebook,” said Dorj. “They might have been a sort of code for Myron Young.”
“But why?”
“I’m sure you know that the Dollar Shops were highly profitable when they were actually dollar shops — when they only accepted foreign currency. Most of them were put out of business when our new leaders decided to force them to accept tugriks instead.”