“No, that’s not it,” I said quickly. “We do think the Shanghai Moon might be here in New York, but we don’t want it, not really. Someone we know, another detective, was killed, and the Shanghai Moon may be involved. So we need to know as much about it as we can.”
“Killed?” She paled. “Someone was killed?”
“A friend of ours. Finding who killed him is the reason we’re asking these questions. So you see, it is important.”
She didn’t answer me right away. “And the Shanghai Moon? Why do you think that?”
I told her as much as I thought she needed to know: the find, the fugitive bureaucrat, the letters. She frowned, not at me but into her counter of sparkling gems, as though discussing the situation with them. Finally she looked up and nodded. “I suppose, by now… Yes, all right. Zayde Corens made the Shanghai Moon. But he never spoke about it.”
“He didn’t? He didn’t tell you the story?”
“Oh, the story he told. Rosalie Gilder and… Chen Kai-rong. Did I say that correctly?”
“Better than I said ‘Yaakov Corens,’ I think.”
Smiling, she said, “Zayde Corens was a dreamer, a romantic. He told the story many times. He had only daughters, and his daughters had daughters. And I have daughters.” She threw a proud glance at the young woman across the shop. “Zayde loved the story of Rosalie and Chen Kai-rong and told it over and over. The jade, the necklace, how they asked him to combine them. How in a time of trouble and loss, hunger and fear, these two young people wanted a lasting symbol of love and of family. Some were offended by this match, Zayde said. But in the face of the horrors and uncertainties around them, to be asked to create an emblem of hope was to him a great and humbling honor. My grandfather was more proud of that piece than of anything else he ever made.”
“Then why do you say he never spoke about it?”
“He told the story, but only in the family, and he said it was our family’s secret. And he would never speak about the Shanghai Moon itself.”
“You mean about what it was worth?”
“Even what it looked like. He’d only say, like the moon, round and glowing for children to dream about. Sometimes people, collectors mostly, who knew he’d been a jeweler in Shanghai, would ask him about it, though you’re the first in a long time. He’d say he could tell them nothing about the Shanghai Moon, except that if it existed he didn’t know where it might be.”
“Did they think he did?”
“They were always hoping.”
“They came because they knew he’d made it?”
“No. Just because they knew he’d been in Shanghai. Written records from that time aren’t so good. If anyone said they’d heard he made it, he denied it. What could they do?”
“Didn’t anyone know, anyone who was there?”
“Not so many knew even in the ghetto days who made the Shanghai Moon. Most were too poor, too hungry, too desperate for news of family they’d left behind, to spare attention for such a thing. The story of Rosalie Gilder and Chen Kai-rong was a fairy tale. Or a scandal, depending on who was telling and who was hearing. And to someone looking for the Shanghai Moon years later, what good was the man who made it? Zayde was paid for it and parted with it in 1942.”
I gazed at a tray of unset rubies and sapphires as I mulled this over. Bill spoke up. “Why wouldn’t he talk about it? Did he ever tell you?”
“Oh, yes.” Her smile grew soft. “When I was a child that was my favorite part. He was asked not to.”
“By whom?”
“A Chinese gentleman.”
I looked up. “Who was this gentleman?”
“Zayde wouldn’t say. It was part of the secret. The story went that a mysterious Chinese gentleman came to the shop one afternoon.”
“In Australia or in New York?”
“No, here, into this very shop. He and Zayde had tea and talked for a long time. After that day Zayde never spoke about the Shanghai Moon outside the family again. The gentleman, he said, had asked him not to. More than that, the reason for it, Zayde wouldn’t say.”
“Did the man threaten him? Did he seem frightened?”
“Oh, not at all. Sad, perhaps. Yes, a little sad. When he told us at dinner about the gentleman, his eyes sparkled as usual-he was a romantic, as I said, and a showman, too; he knew the effect of a story like this-but he had that cheery air adults sometimes wear when they’re hiding distressing things from children.”
“And you didn’t see the Chinese gentleman?”
“No, I was just a child, six years old.”
“Around when was that?” Bill asked.
“You’re asking me to tell my age?” Her eyes widened in mock horror. Then she smiled. “It was 1967. Early spring. I remember, because I liked the story so much I wanted to dress like a mysterious Chinese gentleman for Purim. But Zayde said if I did, the gentleman wouldn’t be mysterious anymore, and he was part of our family secret. So I dressed like a pirate, to throw everyone off the scent.” She paused, then added, “I admit the story got more elaborate as my sisters and I got older. So maybe the gentleman wasn’t so mysterious, or maybe he and Zayde didn’t talk for so very long. But without doubt it was after that visit that Zayde started to deny to everyone but us that he’d made the Shanghai Moon at all.”
25
“So this mysterious Chinese gentleman,” I said to Bill as we headed back to the subway. “One of ours?”
“Ours being Mr. Chen, Mr. Zhang, or the other Mr. Zhang?”
“Right.”
“Why would they?”
“Why would anyone? Why would you want the jeweler who made the Shanghai Moon not to talk about it?”
“And why wait twenty years to ask?”
“Maybe it took him twenty years to figure out who the maker was.”
“If he was one of ours, wouldn’t he know?”
“Not necessarily. Two of them were children when it was made, and one wasn’t born yet.”
Bill lit a cigarette, took a puff, then stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Oh, for God’s sake. Even if they did know. Two of them weren’t here.”
I looked at him, and then, with new respect, at his cigarette. “Of course. Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang came in ’sixty-six. Then it would have taken them time to find him.”
“But what about C. D. Zhang? When did he get here? If he sponsored them, he was a citizen already, so he must have been here a while.”
“But he was a kid, too, when it was made, and of them all, he’d have been the furthest out of the loop. So he might have needed Chen and Zhang to get here before he found out, assuming it was him who cared. ‘He,’ right? Aren’t you going to tell me to say ‘he’?”
“I wasn’t, no.”
“Good thing, too. So it still could have been any of them.”
“Or someone else.”
“You think?”
“No.”
I flipped my cell phone open. It was time we stopped getting the runaround from these Chinese gentlemen.
Which was an opinion apparently not shared by Mr. Chen or Mr. Zhang. Both Irene Ng at Bright Hopes Jewelry and Fay at Fast River Imports were sorry to inform me their bosses were not available. “I really have to speak to him” and “I know he’s ducking me” didn’t make either man magically reappear.
“Why won’t they talk to me?” My complaint to Bill was rhetorical, but his answer made sense.
“You’re representing someone whose clients wanted that jewelry enough to lie about their identity. Chen and Zhang are sure to have their own networks in the jewelry world, and I’ll bet they’re trying to track down Wong Pan themselves.”
“Well, there’s still one Chinese gentleman left. And we wanted to talk to him anyway.” I poked in another number and spoke to another secretary.
Miraculously, I heard, “Hold, please,” and then C. D. Zhang’s energetic voice: “Ms. Chin! Good afternoon!”
“Good afternoon to you, Mr. Zhang. I was wondering if you had a few minutes?”