I called my mother on the way home to ask if we needed anything. She seemed a little thrown; maybe it was the “we.” She recovered fast, though, and assigned me choy sum, peanuts, and soft tofu.
Making tofu’s a cottage industry in Chinatown. Everyone has a favorite back room, basement, or fourth-floor walk-up where someone’s granny stirs vats and scoops the silky stuff into a container you bring along. The place I like is a Baxter Street hole-in-the-wall. If the route there took me right by Bright Hopes, was that my fault? I told myself I wouldn’t go in unless I saw Mr. Chen out on the shop floor.
I didn’t. In fact, the shop was already closed. I turned up Baxter, but I was hit by a nagging sense I’d seen and ignored a familiar face. I don’t like to be rude unless I mean to be, so I looked over my shoulder, scanning the choreography of the street. No, I was wrong.
No, I was right. Not someone I knew. But a familiar round face, with what must be a seriously guilty conscience: As soon as our eyes met, he was off.
“Wong Pan!” I surged past three teenage girls whose linked elbows dammed the sidewalk. “Wait!”
For a fat man, he could move. He cut through traffic and I charged after, jay-running across Canal. “Wong Pan!” Had he found Mr. Chen? Had they spoken, made a deal? Knowing Wong Pan was likely a killer, would Mr. Chen do that?
For his mother’s jewelry? Damn right he would.
“Stop!” I yelled, but of course Wong Pan didn’t stop. No one stopped him for me, either; by the time my shouts registered, people had already sidestepped out of his way. I was gaining on him, though. He slipped down Walker and turned on Lafayette. Just before the courthouse I went into overdrive, did a broad jump, and got hold of his shirt. I spun him around and threw us both off balance. He grabbed me, we did a jig, neither of us fell, and then one of us felt a gun in her ribs.
I stopped moving. “You won’t shoot me here.”
“I shoot you where I have to.” He put an arm around me. His gun lurked under my jacket. “Smile like you glad see me.”
“I am glad to see you. I’ve been looking for you. You killed my friend.” I showed my teeth in imitation of Mulgrew.
“I kill you, too. Stay away. Don’t wanting more trouble.”
“No, you have enough already. This would be the time to turn yourself in.”
He laughed like ice cracking. I was never so lonely for my gun in my life. “Sorry, your friend.” He shoved his moon face close to my ear. “All I want is get my money, go away. You leave me alone, no one else get hurt, too. You don’t, remember this: For me, nothing to lose.”
A sudden hard push and I was face-to-face with a brick wall. By the time I spun around, Wong Pan was gone.
I don’t know if it was true about the karma points for eating dinner with my mother, but I hoped so, because I needed them. Mary, hearing what had happened, hit the roof.
“You let him get away?”
“He pulled a gun and mashed me into a wall!”
“So? You were okay with chasing him down the street without calling us, why not try for the collar, too?”
“I didn’t have time to call you!” Stop, Lydia. Breathe. “You’re right. I’m sorry. But Mary, anyway, now we know for sure he’s here. And that he killed Joel.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better, a known killer on the loose?”
“And we know he knows about Mr. Chen.”
“No, we don’t.”
“What else was he doing down here?”
“What you thought originally he’d be doing. Trying to sell his jewelry.”
“Rosalie’s jewelry.”
“What?”
“Nothing. But what if he does know about Mr. Chen? Or finds out? They could have a secret deal.”
“You’re asking me to put a surveillance on Chen?”
“I wouldn’t ask you for the time of day.”
“You wouldn’t get it, either. But it’s not a bad idea. Even if it was yours. You think you can stay out of trouble until morning?”
She hung up without my answer. I think she was afraid of what I’d say.
On the way to actually pick up the tofu, I called Bill and filled him in. Unlike Mary, he was neither surprised nor annoyed that I’d chased an armed suspect down the street.
“It’s unlike you to lose him, though.”
“It’s the jet lag. Do you think I should warn Mr. Chen? Tell him not to do business with him and call if he turns up?”
“Of course.”
“Do you think it’ll do any good?”
“No.”
It especially wouldn’t do any good if Mr. Chen didn’t pick up his voice mail, because that was as close to him as I got.
Dinner, though delayed, was delicious. I didn’t tell my mother about Wong Pan. We talked about some cousins in the Philippines she’d just heard from, and others in Sidney who never write. I mentioned seeing Clifford Kwan, at which my mother heaved a major sigh about the grief Clifford caused his mother by being willful and selfish. Sensing landmines, I steered the conversation elsewhere: the progress of the melons in Ted’s backyard. After dinner she cleared the table while I did the dishes, with minimal instruction from her on which was the dish sponge as opposed to the counter sponge, and how hot the water had to be.
The sky’s vibrant blue had softened to lilac and I’d just dropped the sheaf of diary Xeroxes on my desk when the Bonanza song rang out. “I’m going to have to give you a new ringtone,” I told Bill. “That one’s getting on my nerves.”
“If I apologize, will you meet me uptown?”
“I won’t accept that apology because you had nothing to do with the ringtone. Does that mean I can stay home?”
Apparently it didn’t. “Half an hour. At Columbia. To see a friend of a friend.”
Once, you had to pass a gate to get onto the Columbia campus, a placid academic island amid Manhattan’s surf and riptides. Now university buildings line Broadway and the side streets, too. But the gate still stands, opening ornamentally, if unnecessarily, to the old quad. I met Bill there.
“It took a lot of blind faith to get me out again tonight,” I informed him.
“I appreciate that. Dr. Edwards called me right before I called you. He’s a busy guy, but he has time tonight after his evening class. You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Something about your face meeting a brick wall.”
“I’m fine. Just a little furious. This Dr. Edwards is who?”
“Remember I said I was calling a friend? One of the handball regulars is a Columbia prof.”
“This is him?”
“A friend of his. The go-to guy on modern Chinese history.”
A lamplit brick walk, a security guard, and an elevator later, Bill and I poked our heads into a book-lined office. Book-paved, and pretty much book-furnished, too, except for the computer on the desk and the Manchu ancestor painting on the wall. Though if the rangy sixtyish man whose cowboy boots rested on the desk was Bill’s friend’s friend, they weren’t his ancestors. Unless black Africans had come farther along the Silk Road than I knew. Admittedly, they weren’t my ancestors either: The eyes and hair were the same, but the pale skins and formal silks marked these people as aristocrats, from a time when my ocher-faced forebears would have been lucky to find burlap to tuck around themselves while they worked the fields.
At the rap of Bill’s knuckles the man lifted his eyes from a lapfull of papers. “Hey! You Smith? This your partner?” He swung his boots off the desk and shook hands with us both. “William Edwards.” He bustled around, shifting books to the floor. “Go on, sit. They’ll behave.”
“The books?” Bill asked.
“They like chairs better, but they’re adaptable. So you’re a friend of Larry’s?”
“Handball.”
“Is he as cutthroat there as here?”
“He kills me.”
“And then stands over your corpse and cackles, right? So. Larry the molecular biologist tells me you’re interested in a minor CCP official from the early years of the People’s Republic. Like he knows what that means. He doesn’t know what any sentence means that doesn’t include the words ‘electron microscope.’ ”
“He says you’re the expert.”
“Wonder what that’s gonna cost me? But hey, a call for book-larnin’! Let’s get it done before Google digitizes everything and I’m obsolete.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “A minor CCP official?”
Professor Edwards tapped the pile of books at his elbow. Some had English titles, some Chinese. From what I could see they were summaries of reports on this, minutes of meetings of that, and proceedings of plenary sessions about the other. “When Larry speaks, I jump. Reason I didn’t call until tonight, I was busy looking your boy up.”
“Our boy?”
“Chen Kai-rong.”
“He’s in there?” I was surprised.
“References to him. Sketchy, but better than a poke in the eye. You guys are really detectives? How come you’re interested in stuff I can’t even get my students to care about, and if they don’t care they don’t pass?”
Bill looked to me to take the lead, so I said, “We have a case. Everything about it seems to point to what went on back then, but we don’t know much about then. I didn’t even know Chen Kai-rong was a Communist Party member, much less an official.”
Dr. Edwards nodded. “Intelligence Services. Though even with that, his background would’ve made him a shooting gallery duck during the Cultural Revolution. Reading between the lines, he was in for some serious reeducation in the countryside, and he’d have been wiped from the historical record. But he was lucky, he died.”
I wasn’t sure that meant Chen Kai-rong was lucky, but if it meant there was information on him, maybe we were.
“When did he die?”
Professor Edwards consulted a sheet of scribbled notes. Like the books, some were in English, some in Chinese. I guessed it had to do with the text he was taking them from. “In 1966. Just as the Red Guards picked up steam. According to the Party press release, ‘he struggled heroically against a short, powerful illness.’ That wording would’ve meant heart disease or cancer.”
“Any reason to think otherwise?” Bill asked.
“Hah! You mean foul play?”
“I’m not sure what I mean. Just wondering.”
“I don’t think so. They had other press releases for that. Worded one way, they did it; another way, someone else did. I’d say this fellow died of natural causes.”
“What in his background would have brought the Red Guards down on him?” I asked. “His European wife?”
“That wouldn’t have helped, though it looks like she was long dead by then. You know about her? Rosalie Gilder? I didn’t find much on her, besides letters cross-referenced at the Jewish Museum.”
“We have those.”
“Cool. I did dig up an internal CCP report that says they had a son, who by the way Chen sent to the U.S. not long before he died. Chen died, I mean, not the son. That was a good call-the Red Guards wouldn’t have found a Eurasian endearing. And furthermore, Chen was raising, and also sent here, a nephew, his sister’s son, whose father was a Nationalist general who further furthermore had been a collaborationist general-and was once accused of being a Commie spy, which the Red Guards would have liked but it was a big fat lie-before he, the general, switched horses in mid-war.”
“Wait,” said Bill. “I’m lost.”
“Larry always complains about that, too. It’s the dazzling footwork.”
“I followed the son and the nephew,” I said, “but the General? General Zhang was accused of being a Communist?”
“In ’forty-three. He was fingered to the Japanese as a Red spy. He escaped and ran like hell to Chongqing to prostrate himself and his money at the feet of Chiang Kai-shek. Listen, you know all these people? What do you need me for? Did Larry send you here to flatter me for some nefarious reason? He wants my chair, tell him he’s gonna have to learn Chinese.”
“I’ll mention it,” Bill said. “We do know something about these people-General Zhang, Chen Kai-rong, and Rosalie Gilder. A little about Kai-rong’s sister, Mei-lin, too. We’re trying to fill in the blanks.”
“What’s blank?”
“For one thing, we know Kai-rong left Shanghai in 1943,” I said. “ ‘Fled’ was how it was put. But not why.”
“Hah! I can help you with that. And the answer to your first question-the stain on his revolutionary rep-is in the answer to this one, too! There, was that melodramatic enough?” He yanked out a volume and with a warning finger dared the rest of the pile to crash to the floor. It didn’t.
“Okay.” He flipped pages. “In my hand, a compendium of intelligence reports from the U.S. Navy base at Qingdao. Where the beer comes from. German breweries nationalized by Mao. Irrelevant to your boy, but the best thing about Qingdao. During World War II, the U.S., as I’m sure you know”-with a stern look that said he was sure we didn’t know-“was in China, training and supporting Chiang Kai-shek’s troops against the Japanese. After the war Chiang went back to the brawl that really interested him: arm-wrestling Mao. Chiang showed us love, so we stayed, in the business of holding Chiang’s coat, until even the blind-meaning the U.S. military-could see Chiang was headed for the hard fall. Then we cleared out, end of ’forty-eight. With me so far?”
I felt like turning down the speed on the fan, but there wasn’t any fan. “Yes.”
“The U.S. Navy not being allowed to blow stuff up, they needed a hobby. They whiled away their time seeing which trusted comrades were double-agent material. Your boy was one they looked at.”
“Chen Kai-rong was a double agent?”
“No. They thought about flipping him, but they changed their minds.” He tilted his chair back, clomped his boots onto the desk, and cleared his throat theatrically. “ ‘August 30, 1948. File report on Chen Kai-rong, Lieutenant, People’s Liberation Army (formerly Red Army). Born: 1917. Home: Shanghai. Father, Chen Da, merchant. Mother died 1929. Sister, Chen Mei-lin, born 1922, married 1939 to Zhang Yi, General, Nationalist Army, formerly General, Army under Wang Jingwei.’ You know who that was?”
“The puppet government leader,” Bill said.
Oh, you’re so smart, I thought. I bet you just read that yesterday.
“I just read that yesterday.”
“In my book?”
“Yes.”
“Ding ding ding ding ding! So you get it, this General Zhang was a collaborator. ‘Chen joined CCP secretly, 1935. Sent by father to Oxford, 1936. Returned to Shanghai 1938. Married Rosalie Gilder, Austrian Jewish refugee, 1942. One son, Lao-li. Also raising sister’s son, Zhang Li.
“ ‘Chen holds Lieutenant’s rank but work for CCP has been in intelligence. In guise of war profiteer, made numerous trips to Japanese-occupied territory 1938-1943, as courier between Red Army and Shanghai CCP station. Very successful in concealing CCP involvement during that time. However, February 23, 1943, arrested, presumably on a tip (unconfirmed) and taken to Number 76.’ ” Dr. Edwards looked up. “Number 76. You know what that was?”
“No,” I said, though the phrase sounded familiar.
“Seventy-six Jessfield Road. Prison nominally run by the Shanghai Municipal Police. But like everyone else with power, the police were in bed with the Japanese. The Japanese liked to keep the puppet government focused on the Communists because it kept them from focusing on the Japanese, who were, you know, occupying the country? So they encouraged the police to pick up Commies and beat the daylights out of ’em.” He went back to his reading. “ ‘… taken to Number 76. Chen thought to have list of CCP agents in Shanghai. Preliminary interrogation’-that would’ve involved rubber hoses-’produced no results. Interrogation interrupted by call from Japanese military headquarters, requesting on behalf of German military attaché Major Gunther Ulrich that questioning of Chen be suspended. Chen sent back to his cell.’ Hmm. Wonder why?”
“Why they agreed?” Bill asked.
“No. Why the Germans wanted them to stop.”
“Major Ulrich was a friend of General Zhang’s,” I said, thinking back to Mei-lin’s diary. “General Zhang was married to Mei-lin by this time. Maybe he asked his friend to do his brother-in-law a favor.”
“If he did,” the professor said drily, “it gets filed under No Good Deed Goes Unpunished. Listen: ‘Later that evening Chen’s sister, Mei-lin, arrived at Number 76.’ ”
“Paul!” I turned to Bill. “That’s who told us about Number 76.”
“Who’s Paul?” Dr. Edwards demanded.
“Paul Gilder. Rosalie’s brother.”
“The brother’s still alive?”
“He’s got Alzheimer’s, or something like it. He thinks I’m Mei-lin. We can’t really question him, but he started talking about those days, rambling. We didn’t understand most of what he said, but he mentioned Mei-lin going to Number 76 and being brave. I wonder how much of this is in Mei-lin’s diary?”
“Her diary?”
“It’s in Chinese. I’ve just started translating it. He-Paul-had it all these years. No one’s read it. But it stops-”
“No one’s read it? An undiscovered primary source? Calloo callay! Can I see it?”
“I-I suppose so.”
“She supposes so! Oh heavenly joy! What else you got?”
“Nothing.” I wasn’t ready to admit to Rosalie’s unread letters; I was queasy about us reading them ourselves. “Except some old men who were there.”
“Military men?”
“No. The sons.”
“Whose sons?”
“Everyone’s. Kai-rong’s, Mei-lin’s-”
“The son and nephew Kai-rong sent here?”
“Yes. And General Zhang’s older son.”
“By his first wife?”
“You know about him?”
“I know about everybody. These men are still around? You’ll introduce me?”
“Well, okay, yes. Though I don’t know-”
“Whether they’ll talk to me? That’s my problem. Cracked some tough nuts in my time, I have. Okay, on that basis, and even though Larry sent you, I’ll go on.” He picked the book up again. “Now pay attention. Because we’re getting to the ‘brave’ part, I bet. ‘The sister stated to the captain in charge at Number 76 that her brother was not a Communist spy, but her husband was.’ ”
“My God,” I said. “Was that true?”
“Have patience. Quoting again: ‘She offered to turn over husband’s list of CCP agents if her brother was released. Police officials considered locking her up, taking list by force. Decided against that, fearing her father had influence with Japanese. Chen Kai-rong freed. Sister handed over list, handwritten, not in Chen Kai-rong’s hand. Three men on it previously suspected by SMP, so authenticity seemed probable. SMP went forward with plan to round up agents, then General Zhang. When agents’ homes and businesses raided that night, however, all had fled. Chen Kai-rong, Mei-lin, General Zhang also gone. Chen’s Austrian wife briefly arrested, released soon after. Appeared to have no inkling husband was CCP. Credible: Jewish refugee, no knowledge of Chinese politics, likely married him for his money.
“ ‘Chen reportedly made his way north to Red Army. General Zhang turned up in Chongqing with older son. Reported to have put his personal fortune at Chiang’s disposal as token of earnest repentance at having served puppet government and evidence of sincere resurgence of patriotism.’ ” The professor looked up. “Some of these navy guys had dry senses of humor.” Back to the book: “ ‘Zhang in Nationalist military, commanding army brigade, since. No further word on Mei-lin.
“ ‘Assessment of potential usefulness of Chen Kai-rong to U.S. interests: low. Later intelligence suggests Mei-lin’s statement false. Probably had two intended results: to free brother and discredit husband. Domestic relations reported not good. List likely to have been Chen’s, as suspected, copied over in her hand. Further reports indicate agents on list tipped off, probably her doing. Interrogation of Zhang servants indicated general, Mei-lin, and older son fled hours ahead of SMP raid. Driver said Mei-lin tried to break away, forced onto train. Not with general and son in Chongqing. Zhang presumed to have killed her.’ ”
I couldn’t help it: “Oh, no!”
Dr. Edwards peered over the book. “She screwed him. Ruined him. He was a high-ranking collaborationist and she fingered him for a Commie spy. It cost him his whole fortune to buy his way into Chiang’s army, where he actually had to fight battles and stuff. You bet he killed her.”
He went back to the book while I thought about Mei-lin. Be careful what you wish for.
“ ‘Chen reported to have returned secretly months later, in and out of Shanghai since. To this date, has managed to elude Nationalist capture. Presumed to be continuing CCP intelligence work.
“ ‘Recommended action: none. Continue surveillance. No contact unless situation changes.’ ”
Dr. Edwards plopped the report down. “The end. So. Does that tell you what you want to know?”
“Yes. And no,” I said. “Chen Kai-rong really was a Communist all along?”
“Looks that way. But remember, in those days they were the good guys. The peasants were starving, and Mao’s people were their only hope. And you want towering heroism, you can’t do better than some of these early Communists. That’s how revolutions are. Before politicians get hold of them.” Dr. Edwards looked wistful.
“While we’re bemoaning the perversion of the insurrectionist spirit,” Bill said, “tell us this: Are there details in there about his wedding?”
“His wedding? His wedding? I’m giving you blood and thunder and you want shoes and rice?”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“Don’t. You’re looking for sweet domesticity, I got your sweet domesticity right here. U.S. National Archives. Unbelievable what’s maintained at taxpayers’ expense. Who reads German?”
“I do,” said Bill, while I shook my head.
Dr. Edwards, looking not at all surprised, handed Bill a sheet of paper. “From Die Gelbe Post. One of the ghetto newspapers. Anyone want a Coke?”
He strode off to the vending machines. I craned my neck to see what Bill held: a photocopy of a blurred newspaper page. Rosalie Gilder’s name headlined one column. I hoped for a photo, but no. “What does it say?”
“It’s from May 1942. Just an announcement. Rosalie Gilder married Chen Kai-rong-it calls him ‘a Chinese gentleman’-in a civil ceremony before a judge. As Chinese law requires for foreigners’ weddings, the ceremony was held in a public place, in this case the Café Falbaum on Tongshan Road. At a reception afterward, guests were served wine, schnapps, tea, espresso, red bean cakes, and linzer torte.”
“Does it-”
“Yes it does. The bride wore a simple white dress and the groom a silk scholar’s robe. The bride, at her throat, wore a brooch of jade and diamonds.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“What’s all?” Dr. Edwards dumped an armful of Coke cans and bags of peanuts on the desk. He handed out mugs, poured his Coke, and dropped in a handful of peanuts. The Coke fizzed and foamed. I stared.
“Only way to do it, where I come from.”
“Me, too.” Bill did the same.
“I never in my life saw this before,” I said. “It’s disgusting.”
“I thought I heard Dixie in your voice,” Dr. Edwards told Bill. “Where y’all from?”
“Louisville.”
“Bah! You ask me, that’s the west. Macon.”
They raised their foaming concoctions and toasted each other.
“Now that we’re kissin’ cousins,” Dr. Edwards said, “suppose you elaborate a little more, why you care about this fellow?”
Bill and I took turns explaining and sipping Coke. I ate my peanuts the normal way.
“Well, by gosh and by golly.” Dr. Edwards pitched his empty can into the trash. “The Shanghai Moon! You can’t be in my business and not have heard of that. Pretty much everybody thinks it’s a myth. Or that maybe it was real once, but it’s gone gone gone. However, it’s my experience that, with the exception of Larry the molecular biologist, pretty much everybody’s wrong.”
“You do have your uses,” I told Bill as we emerged from the lamplit Columbia campus into the real world.
“I do. Another would be to drive you home. Unless you want to stop for coffee or something?”
“No, I’m exhausted. I just want to get somewhere quiet and absorb all this. You think it’s true?”
“They may have some details off, but the outline’s probably right. Some of it may be in the diary.”
“It would explain why Mei-lin gave the book, and her son, to Rosalie. And why she never came back. But why didn’t C. D. Zhang tell me any of this?”
“If your father had murdered your stepmother sixty years ago, would you tell a stranger? And in fact he might not know. He was a kid himself.”
“That navy report is public. Anyone can read it.”
“It’s not on the front page of the Times. He’d have to have gone looking for it, and why would he?”
“Well, he’s read Rosalie’s letters, so he’s interested in his own past. And he didn’t even tell me they all left together. I think I’d like to talk to him again.”
“You can do that second thing tomorrow. First thing, I’ll pick you up for Joel’s funeral. Eight thirty.”
“You think we need to be there right at ten? Jewish time is like Chinese time, I thought.”
Joel always said our matching fondness for starting events late was one piece of evidence-he had others, like the emphasis on literacy, on family, on food-that the Chinese are among the lost tribes of Israel.
“I don’t know,” Bill said. “I’m not sure that really goes for funerals.”