“Too bad,” I said. “Do you have her phone number?”
“Yes. But I want to talk to Pete before we call her.”
Bill, examining the door, said, “Maybe not too bad.”
Jack looked at Bill. “What?”
“No one’s here on this end of the building,” Bill pointed out. “Except that guy Pete, who you’re going to see. Francie’s all the way down there with the water running and someone on the other side has music on. Why don’t you two go talk to Pete?”
Jack frowned. “I don’t know.”
“No. And what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Go.”
So we went, past the studio that was still, briefly, Jon-Jon Jie’s—with a curling fragment of brown and white cowhide tacked to the door—and knocked at the open door of the studio beyond it.
Inside, a thin young Asian man in a blue work shirt sat drawing loose, fast pencil lines on a sheet of paper. He glanced up sharply. His intense, silent stare made me think maybe we should get lost. We might be interrupting an artist in the middle of an inspiration. But he relaxed, though he didn’t smile. “Jack. Hey, what’s up?”
“Hey, Pete. This is Lydia Chin. Lydia, Pete Tsang.”
“Hi,” I said. Pete Tsang, sharp dark eyes on me, nodded.
“We were looking for Anna,” Jack told him, “but Francie See said she came and went. She also said she seemed upset. I just wanted to make sure she’s okay.”
Pete put his pencil down. “I didn’t see her, just heard her. Sometimes when she gets in I take a break, we have coffee or something before she sets up. I was half-waiting, but she just locked up again and left.”
“So you don’t know what was wrong?”
“Could be nothing’s wrong. Maybe she just came in to get something.”
“When we saw her before she was headed here, said she had a lot to do. But maybe you’re right. I’ll call her.” Jack turned to me. “Pete’s a painter.” I might have guessed that from the two large canvases, one in burning yellows, one in jagged reds, on opposite sides of the studio. Jack asked Pete, “What are you working on? Anything new?”
“Nothing right now. Planning something out, but I’m not ready to start.” Pete didn’t elaborate, and his glance flicked back to the sketch on his desk. He seemed taut, Pete Tsang did, like an arrow waiting for the bowstring to snap.
It occurred to me, if this case didn’t end soon I’d be talking in nature metaphors, myself.
That wasn’t my immediate problem, though. That was that it was clear Pete Tsang would rather we left. Which would leave Pete Tsang alone with his studio door open, two down from Anna Yang’s, and who knew what was going on there? Jack, obviously thinking along the same lines, had strolled over to examine the yellow canvas. I looked around. There was nothing remotely intelligent I could say about Pete Tsang’s paintings. That was my lack of art vocabulary, not the paintings. I liked the huge range of colors I could now see within what had seemed at first like two or three shades of a single color; and I liked the suggestion of small, shadowy human forms I thought I saw. The canvases struck me as radiating the same tightly coiled vigilance the painter did. Maybe; but that wasn’t a promising conversational path. Then I spied a flyer tacked to the walclass="underline" a photo of a handsome young Asian man with wire-frame glasses, smiling on a sunny day. Below the picture, heavy black type read FREE LIU MAI-KE! At the bottom was a Web site address.
“Mike Liu,” I said. “Are you involved in that?”
Pete looked me over as though maybe he’d missed something the first time. “You know about him?”
“He’s that poet. He’s married to Jack’s friend Anna, who we came to see. ‘The world calls this China’s century, but if China’s people are denied the right to think and to express their thoughts, if they cannot count on basic human rights and human dignity, China’s century will be worthless dust.’ He got seven years.”
Jack’s eyes were on me. Pete Tsang asked, “Are you an artist?”
“No. But I’m Chinese.”
“You followed Mike’s case?”
“The sentence was outrageous. It would have been a joke if it hadn’t been a tragedy.”
Pete looked at me another few moments, then reached to a long counter holding neat cans of brushes and pencils. He picked up a couple of sheets of paper, which turned out to be the same flyer as on the wall. “Have you been to our Web site?”
“No.”
“Check it out. There’s a rally next week. It’ll be big. Important. You’ll want to be there. Jack, you will, too.”
Jack didn’t say anything, but he walked over and took a flyer.
“You think it’ll help?” I asked. “The Chinese government doesn’t respond to much. Rallies and letter-writing, with other dissidents it sometimes looks like they don’t even notice.”
Pete’s hard gaze held me. “I don’t know. But I know doing nothing won’t work.” After another moment: “And this time, I’m pretty sure they’ll notice.”
He stood up and walked to the door, where he just waited. So we actually had to leave. By then I wasn’t too worried. Bill’s fast, especially when he’s breaking the law.
Jack and I walked back down the hall the way we’d come. We both threw quick looks at Anna Yang’s door, saw nothing but her name. We waved to Francie See as we passed her studio. She didn’t respond, just kept feathering pale blue onto the emerging painting on her easel.
Jack said, “I didn’t know you could do that. Quote Mike Liu.”
“I read the open letter.”
“I read it, too. But I can’t quote it.”
“I can do it in Chinese, too. You want to hear?”
Jack sighed. “No, I believe you.”
“But actually,” I admitted, “I read it twice.”
We turned the corner and found Bill lounging on an entryway sofa, leafing through a book on the history of Chinese fireworks. A FREE LIU MAI-KE flyer, I now noticed, was pinned to the bulletin board.
“Hey,” Bill said, getting up. “How’s Pete Tsang?”
“Curt,” said Jack.
“Handsome,” said I.
“Really?” said Jack.
“I’m just reporting.” I handed Bill the flyer as we headed for the door. “He wants us to come to a rally next week. He says it’ll be big.”
“For Anna Yang’s husband?” Bill looked at Jack.
“Lydia can quote his whole manifesto by heart. In two languages.”
“I’m translating it into Italian, too, right now in my head. No, seriously, that passage is the only part I can quote. It just grabbed me.” I repeated the passage for Bill. “And now that we’re outside”—which we were, on the sidewalk under the Flushing stars—“tell!” I wheeled on Bill. “Are they there? In Anna’s studio?”
“The Chaus?”
“No, Jimmy Hoffa and Judge Crater! Of course the Chaus!”
“No.”
I stopped. “No? Wait. No?”
“Not on the walls, and as far as I can see, not in the file drawers. That wall you’d have seen from about where Shayna took the photo? It’s empty.”
“Maybe they’re what Anna came to get.”
Jack said to Bill, “What about you? Will there be any way for Anna to know you were there?”
“If I didn’t know you were asking that question out of concern for your friend Anna’s nerves,” Bill said, lighting a cigarette, “I’d take offense.”
“Bill does a very clean B and E,” I reassured Jack. “It’s a point of pride with him. And you’re sure that’s where they were, the Chaus? Those papercuttings were for sure Anna’s?”
The question had been for Jack, but Bill nodded. “I saw the ones in the photo. They’re still there. It’s just the Chaus that’re gone.”
“Well, damn,” I said. I’d have said more, but my phone rang. An unfamiliar number, so I answered in both languages. The voice that replied, speaking in English, was not unfamiliar, but I was glad it was on the phone and not up close and personal.