What he was actually seeing was Mandy Levine when he first interrupted her in the funeral workshop. She’d been holding an urn which she had then placed on the workbench. Where he later had placed Mr. Tooley’s remains.
No wonder Mandy had taken his sabotage of her hopes of great profit so well! Not trusting the slippery Tallas to give her the promised split, she’d already stashed herself a nice little nest egg in the nearest handy receptacle. But she’d picked up the wrong urn.
Joe hoped that she’d discover her mistake before she tried to trade old Mr. Tooley on to some hardnosed dealer.
Whatever, he thought it best to postpone his professional singing debut just a little while longer.
He settled down to watch that remarkable old lady, Miss Tooley, scatter about a hundred grand’s worth of pure smack into Trap 3. The wind carried most of it away, but not all.
They stood with their heads bowed for a moment.
Old Miss Tooley said, “I’d have liked him to have some sort of lasting monument, but this is what he wanted. And I’m sure his friends will not forget him.”
“No indeed,” said Joe. “In fact, I was thinking I might come here tonight and back the 3 dog through the card, just as a kind of tribute.”
“Now that’s a lovely thought,” said old Miss Tooley. “You’re a darling boy, Joseph. Put a fiver on for me, for I’m sure the Lord will be after smiling down on such a kind and loving gesture.”
And Joe, looking down at the scattering of white over the ground inside Trap 3, said, “I think He’s smiling already, Miss Tooley.”
The Lady Fish Mystery
by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer
© 1996 by Mary Reed and Eric Mayer
This second installment in the adventures of Mongolian police detective Dorj finds the inspector back from his posting in the Gobi desert for a short holiday in his home city, Ulaan Baatar. But its the time of the Chinese New Year celebrations, and in Ulaan Baatar’s Chinatown, Dorj’s detecting shills are called into play. The authors, a team of Rochester writers, beautifully evoke the color of the occasion.
In Ulaan Baatar’s Chinatown, a crisp staccato of firecrackers welcomed the Year of the Dog. To Inspector Dorj, making his way slowly down the crowded street, it seemed that every one of the thousand Chinese who remained in the Mongolian capital had turned out for the celebration.
Swept from Ulaan Baatar to the Gobi Desert by the twin cold winds of social revolution and reassignment, Inspector Dorj felt something of that hunger for home which all exiles know. But now that he had returned for a long-awaited visit he felt like a stranger. Was it the Chinese faces, or was Dorj becoming accustomed to the sparsely inhabited desert outside his new posting at Dalanzadgad?
The city felt as cold as the desert. Around him, smoke from firecrackers mingled with the crowd’s frozen, misty breath. Red banners decorated with gold ideograms snapped in the same bitter wind that plastered his thin trousers to the backs of his legs.
Dorj stopped and stood with his back against the concrete-block wall of a bicycle shop. Across the wide avenue from him loomed one of the capital’s ponderous Soviet-built apartment blocks. Could it be the one he had come looking for?
Over the entrance someone had constructed a makeshift red canopy, decorated with red bats. Was it part of the celebration? Dorj reached back into his memories. The red bats, he recalled, symbolized happiness and joy. A wedding was planned, that was it. White was not associated with Chinese weddings. It was a funeral color.
A young Chinese girl passed through his line of vision and for a moment he mistook her for someone else. He was a rookie policeman again. And his eyes were suddenly wet. It was the cold wind, he told himself. He removed his eyeglasses and ran a gloved hand across his eyes. When he looked back at the apartment block he returned to the present. The bride had arrived in a red bridal chair, borne on poles by four young men. Another young man was aiming a bow at the chair.
Ceremoniously, he shot three arrows under the chair. What was it Mai had said, years ago? It was against any evil entering with the bride, something like that.
More firecrackers exploded. Larger ones this time. Dorj had watched long enough. He moved away from the bicycle shop and continued down the avenue. If anything, the crowd seemed even noisier than it had before. Someone shouted something in Chinese. There seemed to be some disturbance near the Dollar Shop at the corner.
Even on vacation, Dorj was prepared for police work. The inspector forced his way through the crowd with practiced skill.
A knot had formed halfway down the alley beside the shop. Dorj pushed aside one of the celebrants who stood slumped, his red banner dragging on the ground.
The crowds had not trampled all the snow out of the alleyway yet and around the crumpled body lying there, the snow was stained with blood which was very red, and very real — not symbolic of anything.
“Tea?” inquired Captain Ariunbat. He grasped the teapot with pudgy fingers encircled by several heavy-looking rings. He was heavy himself, and soft-looking. Perhaps that was why he had chosen to suffix his name with “bat,” which in Mongolian means “solid.” Dorj settled into a metal folding chair in front of the cluttered metal desk in his host’s sparsely furnished office and accepted a cup of salty, milky tea. He had not really expected to be visiting police headquarters during his vacation. It too brought back memories.
“I apologize for interrupting your vacation,” said Ariunbat. “But since you were on the scene shortly after the murder—”
“It’s all right,” said Dorj, not meaning it.
“You were in Chinatown for the celebration?”
“Actually I was taking a walk.” More like a pilgrimage, Dorj thought to himself. “I once knew someone who lived in the area.”
Dorj didn’t remember the captain. He wondered from which aimag he’d been transferred. He had the grayish blue eyes and vaguely Western look of a native Kazakh.
“The dead man,” resumed Ariunbat, “was a Mr. Deng Liu. One of the leading lights of the Chinese community here in the capital.”
“An entrepreneur,” said Dorj. “I understood he owned several Dollar Shops — quite lucrative until the new government required them to accept tugriks rather than dollars. Didn’t he also have interests in mining ventures?”
Ariunbat regarded Dorj with some surprise. “You seem well informed. But, of course, you once worked here.”
“I was fortunate enough to dine with Liu and his family a couple of times. Oddly enough, the last time was also as the year turned. I remember we had Nien Fan, one of those traditional dishes for the occasion. It was rice with dried fruit, and a persimmon perched on top.”
“Persimmon?”
“Well, as we know, he is, was, well off. I must admit I didn’t care for the taste much.” Dorj sipped his salty tea.
“No. The Chinese have strange tastes.” Ariunbat leafed slowly through the papers on his desk, as if it were an effort. “At any rate, Mr. Liu died around three o’clock this afternoon at the Russian Polyclinic. He was shot — as you know — around two P.M. — ” The Captain paused. “In what used to be Gorky Street. Though they’ve gone and renamed it, I understand. Did you notice a sign?”
“No,” said Dorj. “All the signs seem to have vanished. Any idea who the murderer might be?”
Ariunbat gave a tired shrug. “Probably one of his countrymen, although there’s a lot of bad blood between the Chinese and our people.”
“They seem to have caught on to this free enterprise idea more quickly than we did,” noted Dorj.