“Friedman and Sons, you’ve reached Stanley Friedman.” The voice had an Eastern European accent.
“Mr. Friedman, my name is Lydia Chin. I worked with Joel Pilarsky. I understand you called him?”
“Yes, I did. You’re his partner? My condolences to you.”
“Thank you.” I let the inaccuracy slide. “Mr. Friedman, do you have information you wanted to give Joel?”
“I’m not sure I do, I’m not sure I don’t. Yesterday when he came here, he spoke to my son, I was out. I only just now saw the pictures he left.”
“Do you know something about the pieces in them?”
“Something. Ms.-Chin? A question: Maybe it’s possible for you to come here? The telephone is a fine instrument, but some things are better face-to-face.”
“I completely agree. Where’s here?”
“ Thirty West Forty-seventh Street. Third floor. Friedman and Sons.”
“I’ll be right up.”
I hung up and looked at Bill. He was already on his feet.
For the second time that day I took the N uptown. Weaving along the crowded Diamond District sidewalk, Bill and I parted for three bearded, black-coated Hasidim and eddied around a Latino couple holding hands at an engagement-ring display. At Number 30 a minimal lobby led to a no-frills elevator. On the third floor, a camera peered from the ceiling and a buzzer clung to the wall by a door labeled FRIEDMAN AND SONS. I buzzed and it buzzed back.
In a windowless but brightly lit room we were greeted by a man with warm blue eyes and white hair under a black yarmulke. “Ms. Chin, I’m Stanley Friedman. Thank you for coming.”
I introduced Bill-as my associate, not my partner; he looked at me sideways and I thought, So sue me-and we all shook hands. Stanley Friedman gestured us to chairs around a book-piled coffee table. Luscious color photos of rings, bracelets, and necklaces decked the walls.
“These are your work?” I asked. “They’re beautiful.”
He smiled. “My father, of blessed memory, was a real jeweler, an artist. So are my sons. In between is Stanley Friedman, a peasant. I choose the stones and run the business.” He lifted an envelope from the table and slid out photographs I recognized. “Now, Ms. Chin, I ask you a question: These are the pieces you and your partner, may he rest in peace, were looking for?”
“Yes. Have you seen them?”
“No.”
“No? But-”
“Again, I ask you a question: These were all?”
“All?”
“Nothing else?”
“Not as far as I know. Should there have been something else?”
“Should, I can’t say. I’ll admit to you, when I saw these pictures, I got excited. I thought probably it was just Friedman being romantic, and it wouldn’t be true, but if it was, how wonderful to be part of it! But then I find the man who brought the pictures is murdered, and I think this: The chances of it being true are greater, and wonderful it’s not.”
“Mr. Friedman, I’m sorry, but I don’t follow you.”
He turned one of the photos over. On the back a bulleted list covered the facts of the case: Rosalie Gilder’s name, and Elke’s, Horst’s, and Paul’s; the date of Rosalie and Paul’s arrival in Shanghai; Wong Pan’s name, the date the box was dug up, and the date the contents disappeared.
“My son is a precise man,” Stanley Friedman said. “This is the information your partner gave him. It’s correct? These pieces were Rosalie Gilder’s?”
He spoke Rosalie’s name with an odd familiarity.
“Yes, it’s correct.”
He leaned forward. “Ms. Chin, your partner. He had found these pieces?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Possibly, you may need to think again.” From the coffee table Friedman picked up a thick book. “Legendary Gemstones of the World. Scott and Huber, 1992. A reference in my field. May I read an entry?” He slipped on half-glasses and opened to a bookmark. “ ‘The Shanghai Moon. A disc of white jade streaked with green, set in gold, surrounded by diamonds. The surface of the jade worked in a pattern of clouds and magpies, China, Tang Dynasty (618-907); the diamonds of nineteenth-century origin, reportedly bar-and princess-cut.’ Ms. Chin, Mr. Smith, do you know this gem?”
“No,” I answered.
But Bill said, “Yes.”
“You do?” I was surprised, though Stanley Friedman didn’t seem to be.
“When I was in the navy, in Asia,” Bill said. “It’s a brooch, right? And it’s lost. It was the Pacific seaman’s equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. If you were particularly clueless, some guy would always offer to sell you the Shanghai Moon.”
“A brooch,” Mr. Friedman agreed. “And lost. Listen to Scott and Huber. ‘One of the more recent pieces in this volume, the Shanghai Moon is also the most mysterious. Its story is unverified, but there is general agreement on the basic facts: In Shanghai in 1941, a young couple brought a jade disc and a diamond necklace to a jeweler whose identity has been lost. The couple were a Jewish refugee from Salzburg, Rosalie Gilder-’ ”
“Rosalie?”
Mr. Friedman stopped, peering over the glasses.
“I’m sorry!” I said. “Go on. That gem is Rosalie’s? Who was the man?”
The jeweler went back to the page. “ ‘Rosalie Gilder, and a Shanghainese named Chen Kai-rong. Secretly-’ ”
“Kai-rong! Oh! Oh, good! No, I’m sorry, go on.”
He lowered the book. “Ms. Chin? You don’t know the Shanghai Moon, but you know these people?”
“I’ve read some letters. Her letters. From when she met him. That’s all. Please go on.”
“Letters?”
“At the Jewish Museum. In the Holocaust archives.”
“Ah.” He nodded slowly and resumed. “ ‘Secretly betrothed, the pair asked the jeweler to combine the jade, an heirloom of the Chen family, with the stones from the necklace, which had been Rosalie Gilder’s mother’s. The resulting brooch was known as the Shanghai Moon. Worn by the young woman at their wedding the following year, the Shanghai Moon was seen only rarely after that. It was variously reported sold, stolen, or destroyed; the most fanciful rumor had it in the possession of a German officer’s widow in a Japanese internment camp. None of these stories was ever proved true. It remains most likely that Rosalie Gilder Chen, or in any event the Chen family, retained possession of the brooch throughout the war.’
“ ‘Jewish refugees leaving Shanghai after the war took with them rumors of the Shanghai Moon’s splendor, as did repatriated European and Japanese nationals. How many of these people had actually seen the brooch is unknown, but its legend grew.’ ”
Here Stanley Friedman looked over his glasses, then went back to reading. “ ‘For four years following the Second World War, civil war raged in China. Occasional accounts of sightings of the Shanghai Moon reached the West, none verifiable. In 1949, as the Bamboo Curtain fell across the early days of the People’s Republic, the brooch was said to be in Kobe, Japan; in Bangkok; and in Singapore. Over the years stories have put the Shanghai Moon in such places as Taipei, Hong Kong, and San Francisco, and collectors have followed; but to date every search has been fruitless.’ ”
Finished, Friedman took off his glasses and passed the book to us. The glossy white page opposite the entry was conspicuously empty except for these words:
THE SHANGHAI MOON
VALUE: UNKNOWN
(NO ILLUSTRATION)
I looked up at Stanley Friedman. “This is what should have been with Rosalie’s jewelry? The Shanghai Moon?”
“Should, who can say? But this story, I heard it when I was young. Even then, I was a practical man. I paid no attention. It was a legend, you see, this gem.” He folded his glasses and slipped them into his pocket. “So for sixty years, no one sees these pieces that were Rosalie Gilder’s. Everyone starts to think like Stanley Friedman: They’re a myth, the Shanghai Moon’s a myth, it’s all a romantic story from bad times. But now? Suddenly, here they are, these pieces, and suddenly, your partner’s killed. These, they don’t look to me like something worth killing over. Especially, they’re not worth killing someone who hasn’t found them.”