“Worth nothing, says Dr. Yang.”
“No, I mean the ones from twenty years ago. The real ones. What I’m saying is, this is your field. By the time we got to you we already knew enough about Ghost Hero Chau that we wouldn’t have believed you if you’d said you never heard of him. So we’d have wondered why you were lying.”
“Cool. Would you have tapped my phone or something?”
“We’d have gotten Linus to,” I said.
“Well, don’t bother. I have some pretty fancy blocking equipment up there.”
“On your cell phone, too?”
“He can tap a cell phone?”
“He can do anything as long as it plugs into something.”
“Well, now, that sounds useful.” Jack stuck his hands in his pockets and started down the hall. Bill and I flanked him. “Anyway, in all humility I mentioned that to Dr. Yang. That you guys came to me for the same reason he did. He wasn’t impressed. He doesn’t care what you think of me and he thinks I should’ve stonewalled you until I found the Chaus.” Jack shrugged. “Maybe he’s right.”
“It’s not about what we think of you,” I said. “It’s about what we’d have thought of him, meeting him under even less auspicious circumstances than we did, after you led us right to him when we tailed you to find out what you were hiding.”
“Tailed me? The hell you say, little lady. Maybe your hacker cousin’s all that, but a penny-ante surveillance? I’d have slipped you like a greased pig.”
“Who’re you calling a greased pig?”
“He’s the greased pig,” Bill said, peacemaking. “You’re the farmer trying to hold on to the pig.”
“That’s a charming image. Is it a midwest suburban thing?”
“Anyway,” Bill told Jack, “I’ve tried shaking her. She’s hard to lose. And look at it this way: If you’d done that, we wouldn’t owe you a martini.”
“On the other hand,” I said, “if he’d done that, he might still have a client.”
Jack looked at me, surprised. “I still have a client.”
“You do? Up one side and down the other, but he didn’t fire you?”
“Through the steam coming out of his ears he reluctantly conceded I’m still the man for the job. Partly because if he cans me and hires someone else, that’s yet another person who knows he’s looking for these paintings.”
“Why is that such a problem?” Bill asked.
“Beyond the idea that his possible real, as opposed to stated, motivation doesn’t put him in the best light? I don’t know.”
“I’m having second thoughts about my second thoughts about his motivation,” I said. “After that story.”
“I know.” Jack nodded.
“Tell me this,” Bill said. “How much of his anger was with you, and how much was with us for even knowing about the paintings?”
“He’s pretty pissed at you,” Jack admitted. “Especially for not telling him who your client is.”
“Did you tell him?” I asked.
“I thought about it, because we don’t even think Jeff Dunbar is your client’s real name, do we?”
“No, but—”
“Oh, chill. I didn’t. I would’ve, but he threw me out before he got to the bamboo under the fingernails. Anyway, we had a bigger fight to have. He wanted me to ditch you guys from now on.”
“He did? Even though the cat’s out of the bag?”
“Yup.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, I don’t carry a gun and I’m not used to getting shot at.”
“And he said?”
“He went through the whole thing we did, how the gunshot probably had nothing to do with this case. I stopped him halfway and said that wasn’t the real point.”
“It’s not? What is?”
“Come on. If we’re all looking for the same thing, and we know it, how ridiculous is it to be sneaking around trying to outsmart each other?”
“Sneaking around is kind of what we do,” I pointed out. “How did he respond?”
“He was still against it. So I had to use my other big, as it were, gun. I said, maybe it was a mistake not to play dumb when you came to me, and if it was I’m sorry, but that ship’s sailed. Now aren’t I better off if I know what you guys are up to? Your client most likely wants to make off with these paintings, find someone to authenticate them, and sell them fast. If he can, they’ll be on the market with a provenance. Very soon they’ll be almost impossible to debunk. If Dr. Yang’s out to protect the memory of his friend, that would not be the outcome he was looking for.”
“Well, but here’s a question. How could someone authenticate them? If Dr. Yang saw Chau die. How can this still be an issue?”
“They’ll say he’s mistaken. He’s exaggerating. That it was chaos in Tiananmen when the tanks rolled in, he doesn’t know what he saw. They’ll say he was with Chau until the shooting started, then he ran away, now he’s out-and-out lying. How can he prove none of that is true?”
I thought about the clenched muscles in Dr. Yang’s jaw. “When he talked about holding his friend’s hand? I don’t think he was lying.”
“Maybe not. But it’s not proof.”
“But Chau’s buried in his hometown, didn’t you say? What about DNA from the body?”
“You’re going to ask the PRC government to exhume an enemy of the people so you can prove he’s still alive?”
“Besides,” Bill said, “DNA’s only useful if there’s something to compare it against. Unless someone’s got Chau’s toothbrush, that wouldn’t help.”
I thought about it. “Well, so what did Dr. Yang say?”
“He wasn’t happy. He didn’t like being backed into a corner and he was furious at the idea he might not be believed. But he couldn’t argue. He told me to go ahead.”
“With us?”
“With you.” Jack looked from me to Bill. “Though if your client disappears with these paintings before Dr. Yang gets a shot at them, you guys, trust me: I am so dead.”
“So the reason you gave him for going ahead with us, it’s actually true?” I asked. “Not the synergy of shared effort? The serendipitous sparks when bits of data collide? You’re just keeping an eye on us?”
“Damn correct. Also, Athos here still owes me a martini.”
7
We headed north where Bill, to no one’s surprise, knew a quiet bar.
“Let me ask you something,” I said to Jack. “After the Tiananmen story I’m inclined to think Dr. Yang’s motives are legit. But I’m hung up on his reaction when Anna asked what you were doing. If he’s being noble, why doesn’t he want her knowing about it?”
“I’m not sure. But things between them aren’t the greatest right now and she has her own problems.”
“That’s what it sounded like. Can you tell?”
“It’s not a secret. She went to Beijing last year to study. Dr. Yang was against it but she can be bullheaded when it comes to her work. There were old-school masters she wanted to get to before they’re gone.”
“Given his experience, I’m not surprised he felt that way. But things have changed over there.”
“Maybe not so much. She met a poet. Liu Mai-ke. Part of a loose network of activist artists. He—”
“Wait.” I stopped walking. “That’s the Mike? Mike Liu?”
“You know about him?”
“Who’s Chinese and doesn’t?”
“I’m not Chinese,” Bill said. “Fill me in.”
“A dissident,” I said. “He wrote an open letter to the government about artists’ rights. Last fall. They closed down his Web site, but too late, and the letter went viral. Mike Liu Mai-ke. But he’s in prison.”
Jack said, “And it’s sort of her fault.”
“Hers?” I began to see why Anna might have her own problems. “I thought it was the letter. Wasn’t that what the trial was about?”
“The letter went up a few weeks before he met Anna. They shut down his Web site, followed him, tapped his phone, things like that, but they didn’t arrest him until after they were married.”