Ava turned off the television. It was time to call Hong Kong.
She punched in Uncle’s number. Her call went directly to voicemail. She checked the time. It was midnight in Hong Kong. She left him a message: “This is Ava. Please call me back.”
She hung up the phone and sat quietly. One more call, she thought.
May Ling Wong answered the phone with a tentative “ Wei?”
“This is Ava. I’m in London.”
The phone went deathly silent.
“Why did you do it?” Ava asked quietly. She could hear May Ling breathing. “Why?” she demanded.
“I am so sorry,” May Ling said softly. “But it was necessary.”
“Necessary? You killed the wrong man. Edwin had nothing to do with the Fauvists. He helped us.”
“He led you to Glen Hughes. We thought it wisest to eliminate the connection.”
“And the women — what about the two women?”
“The women weren’t part of this,” May Ling said carefully. “I was distressed when I heard about them. But you know how these things are; you send someone to do a job and something unexpected always happens. The men involved thought it best that there be no witnesses. It’s sad, but it couldn’t be helped.”
“One of them was just a customer. She had two young children. You’ve made orphans out of them.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry? You should never have gone near Edwin Hughes. I had him neutralized. He was never going to divulge what he knew.”
“We discussed this — ”
“Who is we?” Ava interrupted.
There was a pause, and Ava felt her spirits sink even lower. “Changxing and me,” May said.
Ava wasn’t sure she believed that. “And the two of you decided that Edwin Hughes had to die?”
“It was necessary.”
“How about Glen Hughes? Are your people tracking him? When does he die?”
“Not yet.”
“But he will?”
“Maybe not,” May said slowly.
You bitch, Ava thought. You sneaky bitch. “You made me a promise,” she said, and then regretted the words.
“And I made it in good faith. But my husband found out about our arrangement. He has had no peace — you saw him in Wuhan. This will help ease his pain.”
“You should never have done what you did.”
“I will talk to my husband about the other man. Maybe there’s a way — ”
“No,” Ava said.
“But if we get our money back he may — ”
“No!” Ava yelled.
The line went silent. Then Ava heard a sigh. She’s calculating, Ava thought. She wants to ask me about the money but she doesn’t want to do it directly. She doesn’t want to push me even further off course.
“Have you spoken to Uncle?” May Ling said.
It was the first time Uncle had been mentioned, and it caught Ava off guard. “No, I haven’t.”
“He wasn’t pleased with us. He wasn’t as angry as you are, but he wasn’t pleased.”
“When did he know?”
“Hours ago.”
“How did he find out?”
“Changxing called him.”
And Uncle didn’t phone me, Ava thought.
“He wasn’t pleased,” May insisted.
“I have to go now,” Ava said.
“Wait — ”
Ava shut the phone, threw it on the bed, and then sat by the window, watching the people below strolling, laughing, talking on cellphones, going about their normal business. That’s all she had been doing — going about her normal business. That was the job. Find the bad guy, get the money. And do it all with a minimum of fuss. And always, always, always keeping the client out of the process. She should have known from the start that the Wongs weren’t going to be passive. They were too rich, too powerful, too used to getting their own way. She’d been naive to think that she could work with May Ling alone when she and Changxing were like one person. Ava guessed that he had known about every conversation she had with May from the outset. And then the two of them had somehow co-opted Uncle, persuading him to pass on information that he normally kept between Ava and himself.
What’s done is done, she told herself. No more wallowing. Think about now. Ava looked at her reflection in the window and thought about May that first night in Wuhan, sitting on the bed, crying over her husband’s pain. “Fuck you, Auntie May,” she said to her reflection.
(33)
She phoned Sam Rice first. “Ava, I’m glad you called. I was beginning to worry about you.”
“I’m okay, considering. You did hear the news reports about Edwin and the two women?”
“Of course. How tragic, how unbelievably tragic.”
Ava detected no sign of strain in his voice. “They were shot,” she said.
“I know. I called a friend of a friend who works at New Scotland Yard and he filled me in on the details. It was a robbery, evidently. Several paintings were missing from the walls.”
“Have you spoken to Glen?”
“Yes, twice. The first time when I came back from the gallery, and the second when I finished my chat with the chap at Scotland Yard. He’s devastated, obviously.”
“I was going to call him.”
“I would wait if I were you. He’s trying to reach Edwin’s family right now and plans to be in England tomorrow. Assuming we have the other thing well in hand, he can concentrate on rebuilding that relationship.”
“You intend to go ahead with the sale of the Picasso and the Gauguin?”
“Why, of course.”
“On the same schedule?”
“Why not?”
Ava looked out the window, trying to figure out what to say next. How could they not see the connection between the deaths and the paintings? She had expected alarm, panic, fear. Ignorance is sometimes a good thing, she thought. “Can you move even faster?”
“We had an understanding — ”
“I know. The thing is, this Edwin Hughes affair has upset me more than I can say. I’d like to put this job behind me.”
“Anything is possible, at a cost,” he said slowly. “I have specific buyers in mind for both paintings, but I was going to dangle them in front of a few other people and try to start a bidding war. If I go directly to the most likely purchasers and if I want them to respond quickly, I’ll lose some of that edge. Our final sale price will be lower. How much, I don’t know, but definitely lower.”
“I’m prepared to live with that.”
“But are we?” Rice said.
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“You want to net about seventy million dollars. I’ve calculated that after commissions and expenses, I can return that to you and still have about ten million for Glen and me. If I follow your directions now, we might gross only eighty or ninety million. Let’s say it’s eighty. Now, if you take your seventy, that leaves me with virtually nothing after commissions. As I see it, I’m the one creating the value and I’m the one taking the risk. Without me, there is no sale.”
“As a brokered sale, Harrington’s gets ten percent?”
“Yes, and that’s not negotiable.”
She calculated. “Are you sure you can get eighty million if you flip the paintings as quickly as possible?”
“Yes, I can get eighty.”
“Okay, Harrington’s gets ten percent and I’ll guarantee you and Glen five million each, regardless of the final selling price. I’ll still want the money to go to Liechtenstein until I give instructions for where my portion is to be sent.”
“And your clients will be okay with that?”
Ava thought about May Ling and Changxing high up in their castle in Wuhan, ready to unleash another killer. “My clients are my concern. I’ll handle them,” she said.
“When you say ‘sell them quickly,’ what kind of time frame do you have in mind?”