I looked around. Artwork hung on the walls, divided by bookcases like battling siblings better off separated. I found a canvas of subtle gray stripes soothing, and a calligraphic scroll seemed downright antiquated until I realized the flowing ink strokes formed, not Chinese characters, but character-shaped English words. That struck me as funny, but maybe I was missing some profound point. The neon-colored oil of a garish peony in a parched desert, on the other hand, would definitely take some getting used to.
“Are you hot on the trail of something?” Anna asked Jack.
I shifted my focus from art to people in time to see Dr. Yang flash a warning look behind Anna’s back. “Not really,” Jack said. “These are friends of mine. They’re interested in new Chinese art so I thought they’d better meet Dr. Yang.”
Anna’s smile widened to include me and Bill. “Hi, I’m Anna Yang. The great man’s daughter.” We shook hands all around. “He is a great man, too,” she said. “He can be opinionated, though. But I guess that’s what people want, his opinions. Just don’t let him bully you.”
Professor Yang frowned. “I don’t bully.”
“Yes, Daddy.” As Anna Yang walked back to her father’s desk, I considered her. Her smile seemed genuine enough, but I got the feeling it wasn’t telling the whole story. Her eyes weren’t joining in. Anna kissed her father’s cheek and said to us, “Sorry I can’t stay to offer dissenting views in case you need them. Jack, I’ll see you sometime soon?”
“You have anything new? I’ll come out and take a look.”
“You mean, if I don’t, you won’t?”
“Go all the way to Flushing to see work that’s ten minutes ago? Oh, okay. Soon.”
Anna smiled and left, closing the door behind her.
At a nodded invitation from Dr. Yang, Jack and I settled into the office’s two visitor chairs, leaving Bill to lean against the windowsill overlooking the park.
“How’s she doing?” Jack asked Dr. Yang.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Dr. Yang replied. I didn’t know what the question referred to, but I could tell that wasn’t an answer.
Jack tried another: “Any word from Mike?”
“Would we expect that?” With those words and a sharp shake of his head Dr. Yang closed out the subject of his daughter. “Jack, go down the hall to the faculty lounge and bring your friend a chair.”
“It’s all right, sir,” Bill said. “I like the view.”
Dr. Yang swiveled to Bill for a moment. “Very well.” He turned back to Jack. “Tell me how I can help you.”
Jack paused before he answered. I hadn’t known him long, but I’d gotten the impression that, with the possible exception of flying bullets, nothing fazed him. This hesitation was something I hadn’t seen before.
He plunged. “You probably guessed it’s about Chau Chun.”
Dr. Yang’s face darkened. “Jack. I asked for discretion. Did—”
“I know,” Jack said. “I’m sorry. But Lydia and Bill are also investigators. I didn’t go to them. They came to me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I brought them here so you could meet them, and they could meet you. In a minute they’ll leave and you and I can talk privately. This morning a man I don’t know, a collector, hired Lydia and Bill to find the new Chaus.”
I’d have given Bill a raised-eyebrow glance, asking if he’d known he and I were going to leave in a minute, but I was busy watching Dr. Yang for his reaction to this news.
He wasn’t delighted, that’s for sure. His brow furrowed and his dark gaze fixed first on Jack, then on me, Bill, me again. He could give Bill’s eye-drill a run for its money. In case he was unsure which of us to address, I helped him out.
“We went to Jack for background. We had no idea he’d been hired to do the same thing.”
“And now you do.” Dr. Yang shot Jack an angry look, then asked me, “What does your client want with the paintings?”
“Just to find them. He wants to beat out the other collectors.”
“How does he know about them?”
“Rumors, he says.”
“He hasn’t seen them?”
“No. How do you know about them, Dr. Yang?”
“The same way. Rumors.” Dismissing the question, as well as, it seemed, my right to ask it, the professor stared at the gray-striped canvas on the wall. Maybe he needed to be soothed. “Who is he?”
“My client? I’m sorry, I can’t tell you anything more than that he’s a collector. New in the field, he says.”
Dr. Yang gave an impatient head shake. “Why does he want the paintings?”
“Because they’re worth a lot.”
“They’re worth nothing. They’re forgeries. He can stop wasting his money.”
Hmm. Paying me was wasting my client’s money? “If you haven’t seen them—”
“Chau Chun is dead!”
“I know that’s what everyone says, but—”
“He is dead!”
“Isn’t it possible—”
“No. It’s not.” The force of his glare almost knocked me off my seat. He pinned me with it another moment, then let out a long breath. “I was there.”
Jack’s eyebrows rose. “You didn’t tell me that.”
“Did you need to know it?” The professor swung the Jupiter-gravity stare to Jack. “That I held my friend’s hand as he died?”
The room crackled. “I’m sorry,” Jack said. “But I think I did need to know. I thought you weren’t involved in the democracy movement.”
“In the movement! No. I was a painter. I cared only for my art. My students. And my friends.” Dr. Yang turned to the sardonic canvas of the barren desert with the bright, impossible bloom. After a long moment, he spoke. “The students—Chau’s, and mine, everyone’s, from the universities of Beijing and from the countryside—had been occupying Tiananmen Square for days. With such hopes, such sense of power and possibility! Chau was with them from the first, teaching his classes on the paving stones, believing with them that things could change.” Yang’s face darkened. “I thought he was a fool.”
None of us spoke, waiting.
“Then the rumors: tanks, troops, the army on the way. People laughed. Send the army against a peaceful protest? That was the old way. This is the New China. But people coming in from the countryside reported it breathlessly. Tanks, massing nearby, undeniable. The crowd became uneasy. Then the loudspeakers, the warnings: Clear the Square! Public order will be maintained! The mood changed again. Anger and defiance. The students were doing what the law allowed. They would stay!” He shook his head. “People went to the Square, people of influence, to beg them to leave. I went, also, to Chau, to our students. What you’ve done is noble and courageous, I said, but you’ve lost. Go home, wait for another chance. They wouldn’t go. This is the chance! I stayed, trying to persuade. Finally, the tanks came.” Another long pause. “The soldiers were weeping. When the order came, some fired into the air, over the students’ heads.”
In the silence, Dr. Yang stared at the painting, but we could all tell he wasn’t seeing it. Finally he spoke again, in changed, cold tones. “There, Jack. Is that what you needed? Tell me, does that help you?”
In a quiet voice, but a firmer one than I could have found, Jack said, “I’m sorry. I appreciate how hard that must have been. But it does help and I wish you’d told me sooner. For one thing, if you were with Chau when he died, it makes it a lot less likely that he’s alive and painting these paintings.”
“Less likely? It was never possible!” Dr. Yang pressed his palms on his desk as though he had to keep it from lifting off. “Is that the hypothesis you’ve been working on since I hired you? That Chau’s not dead and the paintings are real? That’s a problem, Jack.”
“Maybe. There’s another problem, too. Someone shot at me.”
“Someone—what?”
“Shot a bullet through my office window. About two hours ago.”