Quick swallow of soup. “You must have missed it. I don’t have a client.”
“What?”
“I got canned.”
“I thought you specifically didn’t get canned.”
“Until Dr. Yang thought about it. He called about five-thirty and told me I specifically was canned.”
“Why?”
“He changed his mind.”
“About?”
“Me. No, I don’t believe it and no, I don’t know what’s going on.” Jack scooped up the last of his eight-treasure tofu.
“So why are you here?”
“Instead of back in my office, washing my hands of all this? You think, just for the chance of finding something to do that might turn out to be both safe and profitable—not to mention actually doable—I’d miss noodles this good?”
“You didn’t know how good they were when you came down here,” I pointed out.
“Hey, do I have to remind you which of us got shot at?” Jack crumpled his napkin into his empty bowl. “I have a stake in this and getting pink-slipped just fanned my flame.”
“I knew I liked you.” I signaled Tau for the check.
Jack grinned. “Almost worth getting shot at, to hear that.”
“Really?”
“No. Well, maybe once.”
Our grumpy waiter dropped a greasy scrap of paper onto the table. Bill picked it up and stood. He took out his phone and handed it to Jack. “Shayna’s photo of the Chaus is on there somewhere.”
“Say what? You’ve been sitting here with photos this whole time and you didn’t tell me?”
“Only one. And it’s not very good. Anyway, there you go. Lydia found it.”
“Is that a dare? How fast?”
“Took her close to two minutes.”
“Piece of cake.”
Bill grinned and headed for the counter to pay up. I grabbed the phone from Jack. “For Pete’s sake, save the chest-thumping for something important.”
“It’s all important,” Jack said. “That’s how guys roll.”
“Don’t I know it. Okay, here. In fact, this show was what we were going to ask you about.” I found Shayna’s photo and turned the phone to face Jack. “It was Chinese-American artists, in Queens. The Chaus are on the right there—what’s the matter?”
Jack’s smile had faded. Silent, he stared at the image on the screen. “These are the Chaus?”
“Don’t they look like Chaus?”
“They sure do.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “And I think they answer another question, too.”
“What question?” said Bill, coming back from the counter.
“Why I was fired. These papercuttings in the studio with the Chaus?” He looked up. “They’re Anna Yang’s.”
* * *
Night had fallen while we ate, and so had the roll-down gates on Chinatown’s shops. The tourists had either gone happily back uptown with their fake Pradas and Rolexes, or were working their way through dinner at Red Egg or the Peking Duck House. The locals were home supervising homework. On the way to Bill’s car we were able to walk side by side by side.
I said to Jack, “So I guess you became superfluous because your client found the Chaus himself. In his daughter’s studio.”
“Looks that way.”
“If those are the ones the fuss is about. They might just be copies of early ones she keeps around for inspiration.”
“No. I know Chau’s work. Maybe not every piece, but enough that if these were a set of repros there’d be something I’d recognize. And remember, they got Doug Haig’s Calvins all in a knot, too, and he knows Chau better than I do. At the very least, and even if they are copies, they’re copies of unknown works.”
“But possibly old ones? That would make sense, for her to have unknown old ones. If her dad brought them from China with him.”
“And she what, stole them out of the attic without telling him?” Bill asked. “To stick on her studio wall in a shared warehouse?”
“Well, when you put it that way … Though maybe she doesn’t know? Maybe she just took some old paintings that she’d always liked one day when she was visiting her mom? Dad wasn’t there, she didn’t think to tell him? Weren’t you just saying this generation might not know about Chau?”
“Anna would,” Jack said. “Bernard Yang’s daughter? Trust me, she’d know.”
“All right, then maybe she knows, but she took them anyway. For inspiration.”
“I have to agree with Bill,” Jack said. “Without telling Dr. Yang? They’re worth a fortune, old or new, if they’re real. You don’t just walk off with that and pin it to your studio wall.”
“Maybe she told him and he said it was cool.”
“Why?”
“Because he feels bad about her husband being in jail in China?”
“Are you serious? And then why the hell hire me?”
“Because these have nothing to do with the ones we’re looking for?”
“Then why the hell fire me?”
“Because your boundless joy in asking unanswerable questions drove him crazy?” Bill suggested. “You two, there’s no point in this. We’ll go see the paintings, Anna will tell us why she has them, and at least we’ll know whether they’re real and whether they’re old.”
“How will we know that?” Jack asked.
“You’re the expert,” Bill said, as we reached the lot where his car was waiting. “You’re going to tell us.”
* * *
Papercutting’s an ancient Chinese art. Flowers, phoenixes, entire lacelike villages emerge under the cutter’s blade. The artist’s skill and patience determine how complex the piece will be. It’s painstaking and slow and one mistake ruins everything. I knew that because kids learn papercutting at Saturday Chinese school, ending up with stars and snowflakes to bring home for the fridge. Unless in their rushed impatience they’ve made that one mistake. I was too young to remember what my two oldest brothers brought home, but stodgy Tim, now a corporate lawyer, excelled in papercutting, smugly crafting trees filled with chirping birds. Andrew, who’s a photographer and was always a little off the wall, made fizzy, wild science-fictiony visions. My torn-and-Scotch-taped snowflakes rarely made it to the fridge.
Jack knew papercutting, too, though he’d never gone to Chinese school. “I did a graduate lab in paper conservation,” he said. “They’re a bitch to work with.”
“Did you ever tear one?”
“Of course not.”
“Silly me for asking.” We were in Bill’s car on our way to Flushing, me riding shotgun, Jack in back. I asked him, “Do many people still do it?”
“There are still classically trained masters in China. That’s who Anna went to study with. And there are papercutters on the streets in China, just like on Canal Street. Tourists love it everywhere. But mostly it’s seen as a craft and artists don’t bother with it, or if they do, it’s just to show off. Anna’s different. She took it up in the first place as a political statement because it’s a non-Western form. And what she does has political content, too.”
“You mean, Mao’s silhouette, things like that?”
“More subtle, and not particularly Chinese. She mostly cuts from advertising posters or magazines. She’ll work against the content of the original image. Last year she did a series of those tiny slippers women used to wear when they had bound feet. They were beautiful. She cut them from glossy ads for spike-heeled shoes.”
“Oh. Now I see why her work didn’t appeal to Shayna.”
Bill said, “Meow.”
“Come on, did you see her shoes?”
“I wasn’t looking at her shoes.”
“Why does that not comfort me?”
“You want to be even less comfortable?” he asked. “We have a tail.”
Jack whipped his head around to peer out the back window. I looked into the rearview mirror, staring at the headlights behind us. “Watch,” Bill said. He steered the car into the passing lane, overtook a cab, and slipped back in.