I’d never paid a shiva call before, so I didn’t know what was normal after a Jewish funeral, but the chaos in the house, I thought, would have appealed to Joel. A small boy, shirt untucked, chased an older girl who kept slowing down so she wouldn’t lose him. Women ferried from the kitchen to the dining room with casseroles, salads, breads. Men poured glasses of whiskey or juice. People stood, sat, ate, talked. No one rang the doorbell; you just walked in. Except for the contents of the casseroles, and the black cloths draping the mirrors, it was just like dropping by after a funeral at Wah Wing Sang.
I spoke to Ruth, who sat on a plain wooden stool in her living room. I’m not sure what I said, though “sorry” came into it a lot. I introduced Bill and she thanked him for coming. As I was offering my sympathy to Joel’s son-I told him Joel had talked a lot about him, which made him smile-someone tapped my shoulder.
“Lydia? I’m Leah. I’d have recognized you anywhere.”
I turned to find an angular, gray-haired woman smiling beside me. “Well,” I said, shaking her hand, “I do sort of stand out in this crowd.”
“Not just that. Joel described you perfectly.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“ ‘Small, quick, restless.’ He also once said, ‘Much smarter than she knows,’ but I’m sure by now you know.”
“She doesn’t.” Bill arrived with a beer, and a seltzer for me. “But it won’t help to tell her.”
I was afraid I was going to have to squelch this debate about my IQ, but Leah waved over a stocky bald man from across the room. “This is David Rosenberg. From Zurich, that you wanted to talk to. David, this is Lydia Chin, the investigator Joel was working with. And this is her partner, Bill Smith.”
In less somber circumstances I’d have objected to Bill’s unauthorized promotion back into his old job, but in less somber circumstances he’d have smirked. As it was, we all shook hands, and Leah, after suggesting we might have more privacy on the screened porch, left us. We settled ourselves in creaky wicker chairs and watched some kids making a mess of their good clothes by digging in the dirt. A few overgrown shrubs symbolically marked the boundaries of the Pilarsky backyard. Toward the rear rose a surprising and well-tended vegetable patch featuring an even more surprising scarecrow dressed in an old gray suit of Joel’s.
“That’s a little spooky,” I said.
“His daughter Amy once said it was scary how many years Joel could wear the same suit,” David Rosenberg said. “So Joel wondered if it would scare the birds, too.”
“Does it work?”
Rosenberg gazed at the scarecrow with a sad smile. “I don’t think Joel ever scared anything, in person or in effigy. Leah said you have questions for me?”
“Yes. You were one of the last phone calls Joel made. Not long before he died.” I tried for clinical detachment, but I could hear I hadn’t made it. “Alice Fairchild said she’d gotten Joel’s name from a contact in Zurich. Could that have been you?”
“Yes. She called me a few weeks back to ask if I could recommend an investigator who knew his way around Forty-seventh Street. Because I’m originally from New York.”
“Is that why Joel called you? Something about the case?”
“I wish I could say something that could help you, but we really didn’t talk about much of anything.” Rosenberg looked out at the scarecrow again, maybe thinking if he’d known this was his last conversation with his friend he’d have made sure to cover all kinds of topics. “I’ve already told this to the police. He called to thank me for sending Alice his way. He asked about her. I’ve known her for years, slightly. To say hello at cocktail parties, that sort of thing. She didn’t say why she needed an investigator, and I didn’t think it was right to ask.”
“When Joel called, how did he sound? Was he upset, worried?”
“No. Nothing about the conversation seemed urgent. He sounded in a good mood.”
Bill asked, “Can you remember that conversation in any detail?”
Rosenberg shrugged. “I’m a journalist. Remember is my middle name.” He closed his eyes and, one hand going back and forth as though he were following a Ping-Pong game, he started to mutter.
“… hey, David, how are you…”
“… hey, great to hear your voice…”
“… how’s Ingrid…”
“… how are Ruth, the kids…”
“… when are you coming to New York…” At that David Rosenberg paused but didn’t open his eyes. “… met with this Alice Fairchild day before yesterday, wanted to thank you… interesting case, Shanghai ghetto, stolen jewelry… called in that Chinese girl…”
“… the one with the mother?…”
“… yeah, keeps me young… this Alice Fairchild, you know her well?…”
“… no, just hello, good-bye… she asked about a PI a few weeks back, gave her the best I knew…”
“… gave her the only you knew, bubbaleh…”
“… well, if you know the best, who needs the rest?…”
“… you say that to all the boys… she tells me she was born in Shanghai herself, missionary family…”
“… I know, met her sister a few years ago, like Mutt and Jeff…”
“… asset recovery, strange work for a shiksa…”
“… someone has to do it…”
“… she say anything about the clients?…”
“… no, nothing at all, just she needed a PI…”
David Rosenberg’s hand drifted to a stop, and he opened his eyes. “That’s it. I’m sorry, but that really was it. I had a meeting to prepare for. He promised to think about coming to Zurich with Ruth, maybe in the winter. And we hung up.”
For a few minutes we all sat in silence, watching a sparrow singing from the scarecrow’s shoulder. I hoped it was belting out the bird version of some Broadway song.
“Does that help at all?”
“I can’t see how,” I admitted. “He called me a few hours later and told me something was wrong, but I don’t see anything in your conversation that would make him think that. I’d found out something odd about the clients, and I thought maybe he’d learned it, too, but if you didn’t tell him, I’m not sure how.”
“What was it?”
“About the clients? That they’re not who they told Alice they were.” I explained about Horst Peretz and Horst Chen Lao-li. “That’s true, right?” I suddenly thought to ask. “About Jewish names?”
“Yes, it’s true. But Joel didn’t hear anything about the clients from me.”
“Well, thank you. If you think of anything else, could you call me?”
“Of course. So you really do think Joel’s death is connected to this case? Ruth tells me the police don’t.”
“They might be right. But they’ll have to prove it, before I stop.”
Rosenberg smiled. “That’s exactly what Joel would have said.”
David Rosenberg returned to the crowd in the living room. Bill and I stayed on the porch. The day had grown grayer and heavier, and the kids had come back indoors. No one scolded them for getting their clothes dirty.
“That morning, before he called you,” Bill said, taking out a cigarette, “there were only those two other calls. Rosenberg and Alice. If whatever was ‘fishy’ had come up the night before, wouldn’t he have called you then?”
“Probably, yes.”
“So if there was nothing in that conversation with Rosenberg-”
“Then whatever it was must have been in the call to Alice? Well, but that may not be true. He might have found something on a Web site. His laptop’s gone, so we don’t know where he surfed. Or he might have met someone for a quick cup of coffee. Or just put something together in his head. It doesn’t have to have been on the phone.”
“Granted.”
“But it would be worth knowing what he and Alice talked about in detail anyway, is that what you’re thinking?”
“That, and also, how Joel sounded.”
“Well, in the process of firing me again, she did say she’d call when she got back today. I guess she’s not back yet.”
“Possible. But let me remind you, you also implied you’d give up the case.”
“Ah. And if one of us was fibbing, maybe the other was, too? You think it’s okay to call from here?”
“Yes. You think it’s okay to smoke?”
“No.”
I dialed Alice, got voice mail, and left a message. “I bet she’s ducking me.”
“She’s probably tired of firing you.”
“So she should stop. What does ‘Mutt and Jeff’ mean?”
“Sorry?”
“Mr. Rosenberg used it about Alice and her sister. It’s one of those cultural references I don’t get, right?”
“It used to be a comic strip. Two guys very different from each other. They stopped running it more than twenty years ago, so if you don’t get it it’s probably because you’re young, not because you’re Chinese.”
“You say that as though it makes my ignorance better.”
“Well, youth is a condition that will change.”
“Oh, thanks.”
Leah Pilarsky stepped onto the porch bearing a plate of rugelach. “I thought you might be hungry. Did you talk to David?”
“Yes, thanks. Though I’m not sure how much good it did.” I stood. “Leah, thank you. We’d better go now. If I can do anything, will you promise to call me?”
“And you’ll tell us if we can help in your work? I know Joel would want that.”
I promised I would, thinking that what Joel would really want would be for me to find the bastard who killed him. Silently, I promised I’d do that, too.