Love ya a hunk, squeeze those kids for me will you?-
A.
At the office that morning, Fong read the fax a third time, still unable to believe the words on the page. The Taiwanese government had okayed his request for assistance! And in less than a day to boot. On top of which they offered open access to their files and help in any way they could. It didn’t make sense. Unless. . . A thought began to tickle its way toward the surface of his consciousness.
He had Shrug and Knock arrange airplane tickets for Li Xiao and confirm visas. But even as he spoke his mind was elsewhere. Tickling, tickling, the thought was coming to the air like a bubble from a still lake bottom. Unless. . . someone very powerful wanted the killer caught and ordered the Taiwanese to cooperate. Then it came to him clear. The messenger had delivered his message and was now expendable.
And from that moment, Fong stopped trying to find the killer. Now he wanted to find the man who hired the killer. Who owned him. Who put the knife in his hand just as surely as the ivory pipe had been put into his own hands in the opium den. He recalled the heft of the pipe and the last vestiges of the tickling stopped. He knew in his heart that ivory was somehow the link that closed the chain between those killed and those who ordered the killings.
He was waiting in the lobby of the International Equatorial Hotel later that morning when Amanda came down.
As he requested, Amanda had dressed up. Zhong Fong had not. Amanda lifted her arms with a so-what-do-you-think? gesture.
“Very nice, just right.”
“Thanks. You on the other hand look like a cop.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Worse.”
They started with the hotel gift shops working their way from the arcade at the Equatorial to the Jing An Hotel to the Hilton. In each shop they found helpful but totally uninformed sales people. Selling they could do. Telling you the history of the ivory pieces that were on display or even the source and type of the material was beyond their limited knowledge. One of the older saleswomen asked if they were concerned about importing a piece back to America.
“Why? Should we be concerned?”
“No, not really, it’s small. The embargo is really on large pieces.”
“How old is this piece?”
“Old enough you can be sure that it was made before the ban on elephant products came into effect.”
Leaving the store, Amanda remarked, “She was lying.”
But Fong wasn’t so sure. “There’s a lot more places to check out.”
They walked east to Hua Shan and followed the road past the popular bakery near the hospital. As they stood in the middle of the street trying to cross, the traffic momentarily stopped to allow two young orderlies wheeling a patient on a stretcher. One of the orderlies held an IV bottle aloft. “Traffic accident,” said Fong.
“I would never have guessed,” snarled Amanda as the cars whizzed pass them on both sides.
“You think the traffic is dangerous here?”
“I do think that, Inspector Zhong, yes I do.”
“It’s statistically safer than all American cities. You North Americans have this myth about Asian drivers.”
“Fine, but you have to admit that drivers here don’t seem to stop for anything. Except children. I’ve seen them stop for children.”
The small man at her side all of a sudden became beautiful as a delicate sadness crossed his features. The sadness and the beauty disappeared in a moment. Then, with a wan smile, Fong replied, “We have a great fondness for children here in Shanghai. A great fondness.”
On Hua Shan Road they finally got lucky. In an antiques store that displayed a turn of the century elephant tusk whose two-and-a-half-foot surface was entirely covered with Buddhist religious etchings, they found an elderly man who, with a bit of prodding, gave them their first real lead. “Yes, the ivory is very hard to come by now,” he said. More questions and more subtle evasions. For a moment the older man thought these two were dealers themselves. He distracted them with his collection of thin-necked perfume bottles whose designs had been painted on the inside of the glass. The woman was momentarily fascinated by the bottles but then brought the subject back to ivory. The salesman showed them an ivory ball about four inches across, with lace patterns carved into its surface. Inside the ball were thirty-four other balls of ivory, each and every one carved as delicately as the outside sphere. Finally the man, who by now the salesman had determined was a policeman, asked, “Who did the carving?”
“Fen Shen Lo and Tong Tsu.” Then he supplied their addresses.
The policeman said thank you and turned to go but the old man reached out and stopped him. “Don’t hurt these men. They are both very old now. And they are artists, see?” From beneath the counter he brought out a newish tusk, which unlike the scrimshaw etching style of the one in the window was carved into a three-dimensional rural scene of such intricacy that, totally unassisted by colour, the figures appeared lifelike. “This is the last piece I received from Fen Shen Lo. Is it not exquisite?” It was a question that required no answer.
Tong Tsu’s home was closer so they went there first. The old carver’s daughter, now herself an old woman, answered the iron door leading to the inner courtyard. She too knew a cop when she saw one. “You’re looking for my father.” It was a statement, not a question.
Fong acknowledged that they were, that they would like to talk to him.
“You people call it talk now. What happened to hound, harass, and terrify?”
“We would just like to meet with your father and talk about his art,” put in Amanda.
“Well, you’re too late for that. After they raided his workshop six months ago and took away the piece that he’d been working on for over four years, he packed up and left without even saying goodbye. Someone from his village got a message to me that he had managed to get there but he was sick. They say he’s dying and I can’t manage to get enough money to go see him. They say his hands shake so badly he can’t drink his tea without it scalding his lap. This for a man whose hands could do this.” With that she pulled on an ordinary string around her neck. Off the string hung a three-dimensional ivory cameo of a young man in a top hat and tails beside his young wife with a baby in a frilly dress seated on her lap. All in extraordinary detail. All no more than an inch high and three-quarters of an inch across.
She did not have to say that the woman was her mother, the man her father, and the baby herself. The cameo father had the woman’s eyes and nose, the mother the mouth, and the baby the shape of face.
The cameo was a frozen moment in time caught by the artist through the living material called ivory.
As they left the courtyard Amanda turned to Fong. “Would she accept money from me?”
“No, but a train ticket to her father’s village would probably meet her approval.”
They were luckier with Fen Shen Lo. He was a modest man who lived in a new apartment on the outskirts of the city. His advanced age and artistic reputation had allowed him a little more space than others. He answered the door with a smile and a greeting. He had been expecting them; the owner of the Hua Shan store had called him.
Amanda immediately sensed a gentleness in this man.
They had tea with him in his small sitting room. He apologized for not having sweets to offer them. Amanda liked the tea, the way the leaves sank to the bottom of the cups like seaweed by the shore. For the first time she understood the notion of reading tea leaves. There they were, as accurate a reckoning of the future as any other. Finally Mr. Fen turned to Amanda and said, “So you think us very cruel, do you, in the West?” Amanda went to protest but he raised a strong but gnarled hand. “Cruelty is such a complicated subject. Does the beauty you make from cruelty make the cruelty acceptable? Is it cruel to force the body into the contortions of your ballet dancing, or our Peking opera? I don’t know. I just know that there are things a carver can do in ivory that cannot be done in any other material. Let me show you.”