“If what you hear is true? You mean you haven’t seen them?” I was getting a glimmer of what this was about.
“That’s right. I haven’t, and no one seems to know where they are. I’m hoping you can find them.”
“Because I’m Chinese?”
“That sounds like racial profiling, doesn’t it?” He smiled again. “I suppose it is. It occurred to me, if I wasn’t having any luck tracking the paintings through art channels, there might be another way. I did an online search for a Chinese investigator.”
I might have taken offense, but after all, that’s why my Chinese clients come to me, too. “Tell me something, Mr. Dunbar. If no one’s seen these paintings, what makes you think they exist?”
“Rumors. The collecting community’s always full of rumors. Backhanded, of course, because everyone’s trying to beat everyone to the prize.”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Oh, someone sidles up to you at an opening and asks if you’ve heard this nonsense about the new Chaus, the Ghost Hero’s ghost paintings that don’t exist. They’re hoping you’ll say, Yes, they do, I saw them. If you do, they’ll ask where, as if you must be crazy, and when you tell them, they’ll laugh and say you’ve lost your touch, someone’s passing off fakes and you fell for it. Ghost Hero Chau, for God’s sake. Then it’s, Oh, look at the time, I’ve got to go, and before they’re out the door they’re speed-dialing whoever you said had the Chaus.”
“And that’s been going on?”
“Variations of it. For about a week now. But I’ve spoken to the galleries and private dealers—I’m sure everyone else has, too—and I’ve gotten nowhere. Only one gallery assistant even admitted to knowing what I was talking about, and then he backpedaled. I think he realized he was in over his head. The Chinese contemporary world’s pretty small and his boss must be as eager as anyone to find these paintings. If I end up with them because this kid put me on the inside track, and his boss finds out, he’s up a creek. Plus, I just started collecting. He might be willing to go out on a limb for one of the big collectors, but he doesn’t know me from a hole in the ground.”
A creek, a limb, and a hole in the ground. Maybe these were nature metaphors with hidden political meaning.
“So what do you think, Ms. Chin? Can you find them?”
“Mr. Dunbar, you’re not even sure these paintings exist. Why not wait until they either surface, or it all turns out to be smoke? I guess what I’m asking is, Why is paying for an investigation worth it?” It’s not that I wanted to talk myself out of work, but something wasn’t adding up here.
Jeff Dunbar regarded me. “Do you collect anything, Ms. Chin? Stamps, coins, Barbie dolls?” He added, “Guns?” Racial profiling, but carefully politically correct about gender.
“No.”
He leaned forward. “For a collector, the hunt’s as much of a thrill as the find. I want these Chaus, if they’re real. But I also want to be the one who finds them, and finds out if they’re real. Especially since I’m the new kid on the block. Does that make sense?”
“I guess so,” I said, though the collector’s passion, to me, is like gravity: I admit it has a pull but I don’t understand it.
“Also,” he said, “there’s a time issue.”
Ah. Time is money. And money does talk.
“Asian Art Week starts Sunday. All over town: The auction houses, the museums and galleries, two big Armory shows, and a show the Chinese government’s sending over called Beijing/NYC. Mostly classical art and antiquities, but a lot of contemporary, too. The big collectors, the critics, the curators all come. From everywhere—Asia and Europe, as well as here. If these Chaus exist, whoever has them might be planning to unveil them then.”
“To make a splash.”
“That’s right.”
“And you want them so you can make the splash.”
“I told you the collecting world’s small? It’s also closed and clannish. Some things I’m interested in I never get a shot at, because when they show up, I’m not the one who gets the call. I want that to change. If I had the new Chaus, trust me, that would change.”
“All right. But there’s something else. I don’t know much about this, but wouldn’t an artist, or a dealer or somebody, whoever has these paintings, either just put them on the market, or not? I mean, one or the other. Rumors, mystery, paintings no one’s seen that may or not be real—is this how the art world works?”
“Normally, no. But as I said, Ghost Hero Chau is a special case. The possibility of new paintings by him would be bound to stir up all kinds of mystery and rumors.”
“And why is that?”
Dunbar sat back. “Are you familiar with the uprising at Tiananmen Square in 1989?”
I thought for a moment. “A democracy movement that never got off the ground, crushed by the Party. That’s about all I know.”
“Correct. They sent the army in against the protestors. Hundreds of people were killed. Including Ghost Hero Chau. Ms. Chin, he’s been dead for twenty years.”
2
Back in my office an hour later, I watched Bill Smith take an evaluative sip of coffee. He used to bring his own, but last week I’d bought a coffee press and a grinder and a pound of beans to store in the tiny freezer in my tiny fridge. Bill and I have had our ups and downs over the years; buying all this coffee-producing stuff was, for me, a big commitment.
“Excellent,” he pronounced.
“What a relief. So…” I leaned back in my creaky chair, cradling my jasmine tea, which was also excellent. “… what are we going to do about the late great Ghost Hero Chau and his new paintings?”
“Well, my first thought, you won’t be surprised to hear, is that they’re fakes.” He sipped his coffee and gave a happy sigh.
“I suggested that to the client. He agreed they could be.”
“If Chau’s dead, and the paintings are new, they sort of have to be,” Bill pointed out. “If they’re real and they’re new, Chau’s unlikely to be dead. Unless he painted them twenty years ago and they’re just turning up now, so they’re not really new. Or he’s dead and he just painted them, so he really is a ghost.”
“Dunbar says no.”
“No real ghost?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“It would be something different.”
“Sorry. No old paintings. Dunbar says the content refers to the problems of modern China. Internal migration, freedom of expression, corruption.”
“The content,” Bill said thoughtfully. “But it’s coded, isn’t it? He’s sure he’s reading it right?”
“Well, he’s not reading it at all, because he hasn’t seen them. Those are the rumors.”
“Rumors. Which the whole collecting world’s heard, but the dealers haven’t.”
“Dunbar thinks the dealers almost certainly have but won’t admit it until one of them’s got the paintings in his hot little hands.”
“Okay, so tell me this: Why is Dunbar coming to an investigator instead of an art expert?”
“And an investigator with no clue about art. There, I just had to say it before you did. But it’s not about whether the paintings are real or fake. It’s about finding them. Which he thinks I can do because I’m Chinese. He thinks I can boldly go where no muscle-bound barbarian has gone before.”
“Undercover in the teahouses and rice paddies of your people. Eavesdropping behind crimson columns. Parting the stalks in a bamboo grove.”
“I actually think that’s what he means.”
“Well, good for him. How much does he say these paintings are worth?”
“Chaus from the eighties sell for three to six hundred thousand. And if these are real and new, meaning Chau’s still alive, they could set off a feeding frenzy.”