“Fakes, yess, yess, thenk you, boychik. Now, you get back to verk, so Meester Haig, he don’t fire you, dah? Hah, fire you! Det’s pretty funny.” Bill socked me in the arm again, turned, and left. I hurried after him. Too bad Bill had told Nick to stay put. He looked bad enough to go home sick.
5
Bill and I stayed silent until we’d rounded the corner onto Ninth Avenue and put another block between us and Baxter/Haig. Then I exploded. “That sleazy, twisted, pervy horn-dog! Ugh ugh ugh. Creeparama! Can I burn his gallery down myself?”
“After we’re through.”
“That poor woman! Unbelievable! All the way from China and she had to put up with that! And your rings are hideous. Where did you get them?”
“Chinatown, where else?”
“And the accent? Did you get that in Chinatown, too?”
“Come on, girlchik. Dat’s vun of my besst.”
“Vun uff your most ridiculous, enyvayz. I can’t believe either of them bought it.”
“Haig was hearing the clink of coin. That drowns out a lot. And little Nicky saved his boss’s business. He’s a hero.”
“Thanks a bunch, by the way, for giving both those jerks my phone number.”
“That was payback for ‘Oblomov.’ Russian Lit. 101?”
“First time it’s ever come in handy.”
We’d almost made it to the subway when Bill’s phone rang. “Well, it can’t be either of those, um, jerks.” He checked the screen and told me, “Jack.” He answered, listened, stopped walking, and said, “Jesus Christ! Are you okay?”
I stopped, too. “What happened?”
He waved me silent, listened another few moments, then said, “Okay, we’re on the way,” and clicked off.
“On the way where?” I demanded. “What happened?”
“Someone took a shot at Jack.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later we were back on Madison. For a few moments we hung back, getting the lay of the land: warning cones, crime scene tape, glass-covered sidewalk. A crowd milled, snapping cell phone pictures of the glittering shards of Jack’s front window. As we watched, the door to the stairs opened and a pair of unmistakable NYPD detectives emerged, sticking notebooks away. Without discussing it, but by mutual consent, Bill and I waited until their car pulled out. That seemed to cue the crowd, too. The sidewalk began to clear and we made our way to the door. A few seconds after we buzzed, Jack appeared above us, sticking his head out the ragged opening where his window used to be. “Oh, look! It’s Job and Calamity Jane! Go away.”
“No,” Bill said.
“Oh. Well, all right.” Jack disappeared and a moment later we were buzzed in.
“Wow,” I said, walking into his office. As opposed to the mess on the sidewalk, this was the same serene and tidy place I’d seen two hours ago, except for the sharp glass daggers sparkling in the otherwise empty window frame, and the long thin groove in the plaster ceiling. “Is repelling debris one of your superpowers?”
“I swept up because you were coming. Wanted to make a good impression.”
“You did that already today.”
“Good, because I don’t think it would work out now. Look, you guys, does this kind of thing happen to you much?”
“Never,” Bill answered.
I shook my head, too.
“Liars.” Jack waved an arm. “The chairs are safe, if you want to sit down.”
Bill settled onto a chair. “Chilly in here.” Jack, his leather jacket on and halfway zipped, glared at him.
I hesitated, but it was the more Chinese move to risk my tender behind to an overlooked glass splinter than to imply I didn’t trust Jack’s housekeeping. “So what happened?” I asked as I sat.
Jack didn’t sit. He spoke while striding the room. “I was at the desk going through auction catalogs online—tracing Chau’s sales history, thanks for asking—when POW! the window exploded. I ducked and covered”—he threw his long arms over his head, to demonstrate—“and waited until it stopped raining glass. When nothing else happened I peeked up to check on the Hasui.” He tapped the Japanese print on the wall as he passed it. “You’re lucky it’s okay. If anything had happened to it I’d have been really pissed.”
“At us?” I protested. “We had nothing to do with it.”
“No? I run a genteel uptown art investigation business for three years with nothing worse than papercuts, then Bill Smith introduces me to his kick-ass Chinese partner and people start shooting at me. Coincidence? I don’t think so.” He stopped and stared at Bill. “What are you dressed as?”
“Beeg-time Russian gengster.”
“Are you serious? You look like you got run over by the bling truck.”
“What do the police think?”
“About your outfit?”
“About someone shooting at you. Try to stay on point here.”
“Hah! They think it was random. Someone showing off, maybe trying out his new gun, just happened to hit my window.”
“A gangbanger? On Madison Avenue?” I was incredulous.
“Not a gangbanger. A private-school wannabe. Some punk brings Daddy’s gun to St. Snooty’s, shows his goods to a hot cheerleader, has an accident.”
“You’re on the verge of talking dirty,” Bill warned.
“The cops took the slug,” Jack thumbed over his shoulder at the furrow in the ceiling, “which was a twenty-five, by the way. But unless a matching one turns up in a stiff someplace, I don’t expect to hear from them again.” He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck with a scratched hand. “Look, you guys, I don’t even know how to shoot a gun.”
“Point, cock, pull,” Bill said.
“Oh, thanks.”
“Did anyone see anything?” I asked. “Gunshots aren’t an everyday thing up here.”
“If they did the cops didn’t find them. No one heard the shot. Lots of people heard the glass break.” He pointed accusingly at the empty window frame.
“A twenty-five’s pretty quiet,” Bill said. “Relatively speaking.”
“I think it’s a dumb theory,” I said. “About the private-school kid.”
“I happen to agree with you, but the police don’t. Or at least, they’re refusing to budge until I come clean.”
“Come clean about what?”
“The real reason, of course! Which must be related to my shady profession. They jumped all over me. Like getting shot at was my idea.”
“They wanted to know about your enemies, that sort of thing?”
“Me? Enemies?”
“Oh, right, of course. So what did you tell them?”
“What you’re trying subtly to ask is, did I tell them about the case, about Ghost Hero Chau?”
I nodded, admitting it.
“I would’ve, if I’d had an idea how to say it and not sound like a wackjob. ‘This ghost is painting pictures and two clients want to find them, one who wants them to be real and one who doesn’t. I think one of them, or someone else, or the ghost himself, is responsible for this outrage, Inspector Lestrade.’”
“Works for me,” Bill said.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think it would work for the Nineteenth Precinct.”
“That’s why you didn’t tell?” I asked.
Jack stopped crisscrossing the room. He stood for a few moments, looking at me. “No.” He threw himself into a chair, legs splayed out, arms dangling. “I didn’t tell because it’s not just my case. Not that I owe you guys anything, but I thought I ought to wait until we talked.”
“We appreciate that,” I said.
“Besides, I’m a private eye. Don’t we have some kind of code? One for all, all for one, none for the cops? Something like that?”
“Something like that,” Bill said.
“Okay. I waited, we’re talking. So what the hell’s going on?”
“I can’t imagine,” I said. “This case is barely started. Are you sure there’s nothing else you’re working on that could’ve—”