As I looked back at him I saw the heavy drapes at the back of the room twitch as if suddenly dropped. Someone had been watching me.
Five
Frederick Lee insisted on escorting me back to the Bowery, then took his leave.
“I wish you success,” he said. “Until tomorrow then. Please come to my office and I will escort you as I did today. I do not want you walking through Chinatown alone.”
Since it had seemed a particularly deserted place I wondered why he felt the need to protect me. Surely not the reputed white slave trade? Or was it rather that I was an outsider, did not know how to behave, and might offend with my Western ways? We parted and I stepped into the shade of the elevated railway, trying to collect my thoughts. Why had I agreed to do this? On the surface the assignment seemed simple enough, but something wasn’t quite right. Lee Sing Tai had sought me out in order to have a female detective retrieve a piece of jade jewelry. Granted it was attractive enough, but how much could such a piece of jade be worth? Enough to pay me a generous fee for its recovery? Then I concluded it must have some kind of sentimental value—some link to his past life in China. If not, then he could certainly afford to pay a jeweler to re-create it here or even have another one shipped from his homeland. That would make more sense than sending a detective running all over the city hunting for it.
Oh, well, mine was not to reason why. No doubt all would become clear when I found the piece and delivered it safely to him. I mapped out a plan in my head. There were pawnshops aplenty along the Bowery, as is usual in a place where drinking, gambling, and prostitution abound. If someone had stolen the item for money, then he’d want to get rid of it as quickly as possible, so I should start here.
I paused again at the entrance to the first pawnshop. Why steal that particular piece of jade from a household that was full of treasures? I hadn’t asked if other items were missing. Perhaps he had set me on the trail of this one because it was so easily identifiable. I stepped from the heat of the sidewalk into the cooler darkness of the pawnshop. The shop had a musty smell as if a lot of old and forgotten things were stuffed away here. The man behind the counter was an elderly Jew with a long white beard. He listened carefully, but shook his head.
“We don’t see Chinese in here. They’ve nothing to pawn,” he said. “You know why? They only came to this country with the clothes on their backs. They left their wives and families at home and they still plan to make their money and go back where they came from. So no jewels, because there are no ladies.”
In the next pawnshop I was not treated as politely. “Don’t deal with no chinky Chinese stuff,” he said. “Who’d want it? And I don’t trust those Chinamen further than I can throw them. Slit your throat the moment you turn your back, that’s what they do.”
I got variations on these speeches from other pawnshops close to Chinatown. As I moved farther away, along Canal Street in one direction into the Lower East Side and then in the other toward Broadway, I faced a cold indifference. No, they’d never seen anything like the piece I was talking about. A Chinaman never set foot in their shops, and if he did, they’d show him the door quickly enough.
I began to see how daunting this task might be. If a robber had taken the jade piece because he needed cash, then he hadn’t used a nearby pawnshop. And if he had delivered it to a fence, then I had no way of proceeding. I knew no fences. I had come into contact with the two large gangs that ruled Lower Manhattan between them, and I had no wish to deal with either again. I knew I had been lucky to come away with my life on one occasion and I had managed to seek Monk Eastman’s help when I was truly desperate. But I also knew him to be fickle, sadistic, and ruthless. I couldn’t count on any assistance a second time.
The obvious thing would be to ask Daniel. He would know every fence in the area. But he was the one person I couldn’t go to. Most frustrating. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that I’d have to appear before Mr. Lee Sing Tai the next morning and admit my failure. And come away with no fee for my labors. But I wasn’t about to give up yet. There were plenty of jewelers, especially along Hester and Essex and those crowded streets of the Lower East Side where the Jews had settled from Eastern Europe, bringing their craft as goldsmiths with them.
I began to work my way along Hester, up Essex, then Delancey, and Rivington. Most of the shops dealt in secondhand jewelry or bought gold to melt down, but nobody seemed interested in jade.
“It’s not worth that much,” one of the jewelers said. “It’s only semiprecious.”
“I wouldn’t find a customer for it,” another said. “My customers only want gold.”
As the afternoon wore on I was hot, tired, and growing more despondent by the minute. My overriding impression was of an extreme distrust of the Chinese. I was warned several times about getting involved with them. One man actually said, “You haven’t gone and married one of them, have you?”
I wondered what had made him say that, until an old Russian, more astute and interested than the others had been, listened carefully to my description. “Dragon and phoenix intertwined?” he said. “That sounds like a bride-piece to me. Dragon for virility and power, and phoenix for fertility and health. I saw that kind of thing when I was in Shanghai, waiting for a ship.”
When I looked puzzled by this he added, “We fled from Vladivostok, you know. Our home was destroyed in the war with Japan, and Russia is no place to be right now.”
I had had enough for one day. The soles of my feet were throbbing from those burning sidewalks. The thin muslin of my dress was sticking to my back with sweat. I decided to call it a day and make an early start in the morning, although I was already telling myself that I was not likely to be any more successful than I had been today.
Workers were leaving sweatshops, indicating how late it had become. Those girls worked a twelve-hour day at least. I watched them walking three or four abreast, arm in arm, chatting and laughing with the relief of being in the fresh air and free after the long day of toil. The pushcarts had come out too in abundance and I had to thread my way between stalls selling roasted chickpeas, live chickens, pickles, buttons, and lace—in fact anything that could be sold to earn a few coins. Usually I savored this lively scene, but at this moment all I wanted to do was escape from it to the peace of Patchin Place, where a bath and a cool drink would await me.
I was on my way back to the Bowery and the El station when I heard the most improbable sound: someone was yelling my name. I turned around, unsure that I was actually the one being called, and saw two figures running toward me, fighting their way through the crowd. It was my long-lost Irish children, Bridie and Shamey, followed by their father.
“Molly. Look, Pa, it’s Molly!” Bridie was shrieking, not caring whom she pushed aside to reach me.
Shamey made it first with his big, almost man-sized strides. He went to hug me, then thought better of it, wiping his hands down his shirtfront instead, but smiling at me delightedly. “We thought you’d gone away,” he said.
“I thought you must have gone away,” I replied, putting my arms around both of them. “I sent you an invitation to my wedding but I got no reply.”
“We came back to the city,” Shamey said. “We’re living with Auntie Nuala for a while.”
“Goodness gracious. What on earth made you do that?” I demanded, as that lady’s abode did not hold pleasant memories for me.
Seamus had caught up to us, his round Irish face streaming with sweat. “Molly, it’s grand to see you again. We went to your old house, but there was nobody there except for a painter and he said a young couple was to be moving in. So we thought you’d gone away.”