Jack nodded, as though what I’d said had confirmed something. “Yes.” He looked at Anna, waiting.
“Yes,” Anna also said, and she didn’t look at anyone. “That’s why I called you, Jack. I don’t know what good you can do, though. I don’t know how you can help me. He says Daddy has to authenticate them.”
16
It took Jack as long to persuade Anna to sit still and do nothing until she heard from us as it had to convince her to let me and Bill come along in the first place. As soon as she finished her story she decided we couldn’t, in fact, help her. So she wanted to help herself. She wanted to call her father. She wanted her mother to call her father. She wanted to call Pete Tsang. She wanted to call the police. She wanted to race up to Doug Haig’s gallery with a meat cleaver.
“That’s why Dr. Yang fired me,” Jack said. “We thought it was just because he found out you had the paintings.”
“Haig called Daddy. He was afraid I wouldn’t, that I’d be a martyr no matter what he threatened me with. ‘Like your idiotic husband,’ he said. ‘Two self-righteous peas in a two-bit pod.’” She flushed crimson. “So he called Daddy, and Daddy called me. We had a big fight but I couldn’t lie to him. I guess that’s when he fired you.”
“He’s not really going to do it, is he?” I asked.
She didn’t answer that directly. “Haig says he has until tomorrow morning to decide.”
“If he doesn’t,” Bill asked, “is there someone else Haig could go to?” Jack and I looked at him. “Well, I’m assuming that, much as he’d love to destroy Anna’s career because he’s just a mean SOB, he’d rather get the paintings authenticated and make a fortune.”
“Maybe there’s someone,” Anna said. “I don’t know.”
Jack said, “There aren’t a lot of experts in that area, people who really know Chau’s work. There’s Clarence Snyder, in Chicago—I studied under him, he was on my committee. But he’d spot them for fakes, or at best, if they’re really good, he’d give them a question mark. No, Dr. Yang’s perfect. He’s the biggest name, plus he’s in a corner.”
“He can’t even be considering it,” I said. “He just can’t. This is exactly what he was afraid of. It’s why he hired you. Someone making a big profit off of Chau’s reputation. And for that someone to be Haig, and for him, Dr. Yang, for him to make it possible by lying—he just can’t.”
“I said that,” Anna said. “Not the part about Chau’s reputation, and him hiring Jack—I didn’t know that. But I told him to call Haig’s bluff. I’m such a nobody. What could it matter?” Mrs. Yang stirred, but Anna frowned and her mother said nothing. “But Daddy was so mad. He didn’t hear a word I said. He just told me to stay here and do nothing until he called me. That was last night. But I couldn’t do nothing. I just couldn’t. I didn’t sleep, not at all. When I called you this morning, Jack, I was thinking … I don’t know why. I don’t know what I thought you could do. I just…” She trailed off. “I just needed someone to help me.”
There was silence. In it, I heard my own voice say, “We will.”
* * *
So there we were, Jack and Bill and I, back in Bill’s car, rolling through Queens, trying to find a place where we could think. “There’s a diner over there.” Jack pointed from the backseat.
“Pro,” Bill said. “Coffee.”
“Mrs. Yang’s osmanthus tea didn’t do anything for you?” I asked.
“For me, either,” Jack admitted.
“And just when I was beginning to think you really were Chinese,” I said. “Anyway, veto. Walls have ears.”
“Your paranoia knows no bounds?” Jack asked. “We’re in the middle of Queens. Maybe you’re famous in Flushing, but me, I’m pretty well unknown around here.”
“First: I don’t believe you’re unknown anywhere. Second: around here is where yesterday afternoon the security commissar scaled a wall and stole the paintings, right before the Chinese mob slapped a tail on us, tried to kidnap me, and shot at you.”
“You have such a vivid way of making your points.” Jack sat back with a sigh.
“Compromise,” Bill said. “We stop at the diner, pick up coffee, and sit in the park. Unless you think the trees have ears.”
“Tree ears,” Jack said helpfully. “Those black mushrooms. My mother makes soup from them.”
So with two coffees, a tea, and a giant cherry cheese Danish—Bill had apparently not had breakfast—we repaired to Flushing Meadow Park, where in the middle of a fresh spring morning you can sit on a lawn with toddlers chasing dogs, dogs chasing Frisbees, and, if you’re lucky, no one chasing you.
“Okay, bigmouth,” Jack said to me as he peeled back the tab on his coffee lid. “You told her we’d help her. What’s the plan?”
“Me? You’re the one who said, ‘Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.’”
“I was hoping you’d forgotten that.” He turned to Bill. “How come you didn’t make any promises?”
“I never do.”
I said, “That way when he saves the day it’s more of a wow because no one expects it.”
“But you do have a plan?” Jack asked.
“Nope.” Bill took a bite of the Danish, which was the size of his head. “Don’t you?”
“What, a plan? To quote you, nope.”
“Come on, use your imagination,” I said.
Jack pondered. “Well, how about this? You could distract Doug Haig with your mind-blowing legs while Bill breaks into the gallery and resteals the Chaus.”
“You’ve never seen my legs.”
“You said to use my imagination.”
“Besides, where are you in that plan?”
“Monitoring the proceedings from my office. Wearing a bulletproof vest.”
I sighed. “You mean, it’s up to me as usual? Why is everything my job? Okay, but you’ll have to give me a piece of that.”
Bill held out the Danish. I tore off a fistful. Bill offered the hardly diminished hubcap to Jack, but he declined.
“Okay,” I said. “The problem is, Haig has the paintings. I’m just thinking out loud here. But at least I’m thinking.”
Jack said, “Ouch.” Bill shrugged.
“If he didn’t have them he could yell and threaten to expose people and throw as many hissy fits as he wanted and no one would care.”
“Vladimir Oblomov could go to him, to buy zem,” Bill said.
“If Haig thinks he can get them authenticated, he’ll wait,” said Jack. “He’ll stall any buyers until he knows how high he can go.”
“Besides, we don’t have a couple of million dollars to buy zem vit,” I said. “No, I’m thinking we really might have to steal them. Jack’s idea about my legs was ridiculous, but we could try something like it.”
“How about my legs?” Bill offered.
“You mean, instead of seduction we try terror? No, we need a real idea.”
A Frisbee flew long and landed on the pond with a plop. A shaggy black dog chased it to the shoreline, stood and barked, whined, and then, with a loud yip, charged in after it. He beelined across the water, clamped his jaws around the thing, and swam like hell for dry land.
“Or,” I said.
“Or?”
“Or?”
“Or, we let Haig keep the paintings and get exactly what he wants.”
“Which is what?”
“To have them authenticated.”
I laid on them the scheme that had come to me. A lot of brow-furrowing and dog- and Frisbee-watching followed, and a great deal of discussion. Bill worked his way through two cigarettes while we did what he and I always do when we’re making a plan: try to poke holes in it, look for solutions to all the problems we were likely to stumble over.
Jack joined in all that but he loved the idea from the start, as I knew he would.