15
Jack didn’t get far. I caught up with him on the corner of Mulberry. He was peering after a black SUV as it disappeared east along Canal.
“I got the plate this time,” he said.
“Don’t worry about it. Linus ran it already.”
“Seriously? From what he had?” Jack stuffed his pen and paper back in his pocket. “I guess he really is all that.”
“And a bag of chips. He’s my cousin, what did you expect?”
“So who is this guy?”
“Who he is is interesting. Who he thinks his competition is is even better.” I gave him the rundown: Tiger Holdings, Vassily Imports, the warning left with me to pass on to Vladimir Oblomov. “Obviously Tiger Holdings isn’t a Chinatown outfit, or they’d know who I am.”
“She says modestly. No, I know what you mean. But you’re telling me that atrocious accent of Bill’s has the Chinese mob on the run from the Russian mob?”
“Well, technically, the Chinese mob is telling the Russian mob to be on the run from them.”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck. “There really ought to be some way we can make something off of this.”
“If you think of it, let me know. I’m calling Bill. Did you hear from Anna Yang?”
“Maybe. Someone called while we were in Maria’s, but I let it go to voice mail so I wouldn’t get distracted. In case I needed to leap to the rescue or something.” He pulled out his cell phone.
“And don’t think I didn’t appreciate it. Did you notice Woo had someone there, too?”
“Messy guy in front of the pastry case?”
“That’s the one. I was concerned he might be between you and your only ammunition if it came to a battle again.”
“I never threw a cream puff in my life.”
“That’s a baseball joke.”
We focused on our phones. I called Bill while Jack listened to his message. “Hey,” Bill said. “Done already? How’d it go?”
“Let me speak to Vladimir. He’s the big star.”
“Vat?”
“Casey’s a Chinese gangster and he never heard of Jeff Dunbar. It’s Vladimir and Vassily Imports he wants off his back. Wait. Hold on.”
I stopped because I was looking at Jack. In the background I’d heard, “Hey, Anna, thanks for getting back to me,” and then watched Jack’s face darken as he listened in silence. Now he was offering an impressively reassuring, “Of course I will. Anna, calm down. Whatever it is, we’ll take care of it. Give us half an hour, we’ll be there.”
“Unless you have other plans, meet us at the car,” I told Bill. “I think we have business.”
* * *
It took Bill, following Jack’s directions, just over twenty minutes to get us from his parking lot to Anna’s apartment in Flushing. It had taken Jack the entire walk from the bakery to the lot to persuade Anna to let me and Bill come along. In the end he had to both throw around the word “partners”—which he was beginning to use with not just abandon but also a certain élan—and to promise he’d toss us out if, after she told us what it was all about, he thought we should go.
“Doesn’t want to know us, huh? Did you ask her about the Chaus?” I’d said when he finally hung up. We stood on the sidewalk waiting for Bill.
“She was too upset for me to ask her anything. And she knows you already. She says it’s bad enough now, and having you involved will only make it worse.”
“Us, anyone? Or us, us?”
“I got the feeling you, you. But remember, she doesn’t know what you already know.”
“When you put it that way, I don’t either. Did she say what was wrong?”
“No. She just said it was bad trouble and there’s no one else she could call.”
“I hate it when people say that. Does it mean their first thought was to send up the Bat Signal and hope you’d come? Or does it mean, if there were anyone else they could have called, they would have called them?”
“Hmmm. Breakfast with a hard case makes you paranoid, does it?”
“I have breakfast at home every day. You only say that because you’ve never met my mother.”
“No,” he grinned, “but I’d like to.”
Luckily, at that moment Bill came loping down the block, saving me from having to answer Jack and, I hoped, from Jack noticing the sudden heat in my face.
* * *
Anna Yang’s apartment was the downstairs of a two-family house in a blue-collar Flushing neighborhood, not far from the East Village communal studio. By the time we got there I’d filled Bill in on Woo, Tiger Holdings, and Vassily Imports.
“And you scoffed at my accent,” he said.
“I still do.”
“Me, too,” said Jack.
“Jack thinks we should find some way to make something off this,” I told Bill.
“Scamming the Chinese mob?” Bill asked. “Well, if you think of a way, I’m in.”
“Seriously?”
“Of course not. You think I’m crazy?”
“I don’t know, you guys,” said Jack. “I think we’re missing a bet here.”
“Give me a break,” I said. “You’re the one who was complaining all day yesterday about how serene your life was until you met us.”
“Met you. I already knew him.”
“Well, if you think this stream’s that much rougher than your peaceful pond was, you are totally not ready for the Chinese mob white water.”
For a moment, silence in the car. Then both Jack and Bill cracked up.
“Hey,” I said huffily. “I’m trying. This nature metaphor stuff, it’s not so easy.”
* * *
Bill found a parking spot on Anna’s block, a well-kept street of narrow houses and tiny yards. We rang the bell and, as she had at her father’s office, Anna Yang opened the door to us. This time she didn’t light up at the sight of Jack, though. She didn’t react at all. She just stayed standing in the doorway. Her eyes were dry, but puffy lids and a red-tipped nose made it clear she’d been crying. Guys sometimes miss that, or pretend they have, but, after a soft, “Hi, Anna,” Jack reached out and hugged her. I think I’d have found that comforting, myself, but Anna started to cry again.
“Come on,” Jack said, moving into the apartment with his arm around her. “Let’s go sit down.” Bill and I followed them through a small entryway into a spare, bright living room: pale wood floor, ivory sofa and chairs, a scroll painting of wild geese in flight on one wall and a hazy, peaceful watercolor of a wooded lakeshore on another. That one had a familiar feel and I wondered if it was Francie See’s, from before she tightened her focus. The coffee table was crowded with photos of Mike Liu: with Anna, with friends, alone. In most, he was smiling.
Anna wiped her eyes, smoothed her skirt under her, and sat on the sofa. Jack sat protectively close beside her. That left me with a choice of armchairs, so I organized myself in one. Bill, as usual, didn’t sit, but wandered a distance away, as though he wanted to examine the paintings.
“Okay,” Jack said to Anna. “Tell us. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
I was a little alarmed to hear him say that so categorically. This was a woman whose husband was in prison in China. It was possible her problems were beyond the three of us.
Or, the four of us. From the hall an older Chinese woman appeared, thin and, while not quite as tall as Anna, not a tiny Cantonese like me. Jack stood immediately, so I did the same. “Mrs. Yang,” he said.
“Hello, Jack.” Her voice was deep, steady, and heavily Mandarin-accented. She wore her salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a bun. Standing stick-straight, she carried a tray with a white pot and five no-handle teacups, so she couldn’t bow, but she inclined her head to Jack. He, apparently without thinking, bowed to her. This was a well-trained Midwesterner.
“This is Lydia Chin, and Bill Smith,” Jack said. “Yang Yu-feng. Anna’s mother.”
Yang Yu-feng deposited her tray on the coffee table. She shook our hands and now she bowed. She gestured us to sit again, which she also did, back straight, and she poured the tea. Jack picked up a cup, holding it one hand bottom, one hand side as good manners demanded. Whatever he said, I’d bet he’d have passed the lidded-cup test on his first go. “You’re looking well, Mrs. Yang. Anna didn’t say you’d be here. It’s an unexpected pleasure.”