We got on the elevator, but we weren’t alone there, so it wasn’t until we were outside in the damp twilight that Mr. Zhang said angrily, “The million dollars went nowhere. There was no million dollars.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said flatly. “How were you going to buy the Shanghai Moon?”
“We were not going to buy the Shanghai Moon. Wong Pan didn’t have it.”
“That’s clear now, but you couldn’t have been so sure before.”
Mr. Zhang gave no answer.
“You were taking a big risk,” Bill said. “Losing what you’ve been after for so long.”
“There was no risk. My brother would have known whatever Wong Pan presented him with for what it was-a fraud.”
“Your brother hadn’t seen the gem since he was a boy.”
“He’s a man of fine eye. He wouldn’t need to be able to recognize the Shanghai Moon to know that Wong Pan was attempting to pass off, at best, some other gem, and more likely a worthless piece of glass.”
I said, “But what if he wasn’t?”
“He was.”
“Then why go through the charade?” Bill asked. “Why send your brother to the meeting at all, if you were so sure?”
“I was sure. My cousin wasn’t.”
“Why not just tell him your reasons?”
“Oh,” he said, almost too softly to hear. “I have.”
“No,” I snapped. “No, I don’t buy it. You’ve been hunting this gem for forty years, racing around the world. An offer as promising as this comes along and you’re absolutely sure it’s not worth following up? Then you go through a whole dangerous farce just to humor your cousin? I don’t believe it.”
“However, it’s the truth.”
Wham. I’d had it. Why was I arguing with this old man? So much love, so much loss wrapped around this jewel across sixty years, and these guys were screwing with each other over money? “Okay. You know what? It’s not my problem. Joel’s killer’s been found, Rosalie’s jewelry’s been found. We’re done. Good-bye, Mr. Zhang. Maybe you’ll be lucky and the police will forget about the missing million dollars. But don’t count on it.”
I’d stepped from the curb and raised my arm for a cab when I heard, “No, Ms. Chin, please.”
The taxi sped away again as I turned. “What?”
Mr. Zhang drew a breath. “I have no right to ask for your help, but I must. This investigation cannot continue. This is a private matter, involving only my brother, my cousin, and myself. We must be allowed to settle it.”
“A private matter? Two people dead, fake passports, stolen jewelry, missing money, gangsters shooting up the streets? Oh, no, this investigation is going to continue. The next thing they’ll do is subpoena your bank records, yours and Mr. Chen’s. They’ll find out whose money it was and who was cheating whom.” Would you look at that? The world’s falling apart and Lydia Chin finally gets her grammar right.
“You can’t let them do that.”
“I can’t stop them.”
“My cousin is a sick man! Knowing that money wasn’t there could prove dangerous! Thinking I was cheating him-!”
“But you were.”
“Not in the way you think.” Mr. Zhang’s accustomed calm had vaporized. His voice was hot and his eyes pleaded.
“But you were.” I heard the sorrow in my own words. Right up until this moment I’d been waiting for another explanation, one that would make all this make sense and these old men still turn out to be the close and caring family they appeared.
Bill spoke, probably because he knew I couldn’t. “Mr. Zhang? Even if we knew the truth, I’m not sure there’s anything we could do. But without it…”
Mr. Zhang shook his head desperately. He stepped from the curb and flagged down a cab. I expected him to get in and speed away, but he held the door, all anger and impatience. We got in with him and in silence drove back to Chinatown.
42
The silence continued as we climbed the stairs to Fast River Imports, as Mr. Zhang unlocked the door and shut down the alarm, and as he switched on lights and took us through to his office. The terra-cotta soldiers on the windowsill seemed suspicious and alert.
A weary hand wave told us to sit. We did, on the glazed ceramic stools, and watched Mr. Zhang unhook a scroll from a nail on the wall. Behind it was a safe door. He twirled the combination, removed papers and cash, and then, with a screwdriver, pried a false bottom from the safe. This was something I’d never seen before. Even Bill raised an eyebrow. Still, neither of us said anything. Nor was a word spoken when Mr. Zhang lifted a velvet box from the hidden compartment and held it out to me.
Until I heard my own disbelieving voice. “You have it?”
And the reply, a command with edges of fear: “Ms. Chin, Mr. Smith. You must never let this knowledge leave this room.”
“You have it? And your cousin doesn’t know?” My voice seemed to be going on without the rest of me, which was unable even to reach out and take the box.
Bill did that. He opened it, peered in, looked up at Mr. Zhang, and turned the box toward me.
On a pillow of blue velvet sat a minute brooch. Eight tiny diamonds circled a diminutive jade disc. No other stones, no grand setting, no filigree or fretwork or chasing. The whole thing wasn’t an inch wide.
“Behold,” Mr. Zhang said. “The Shanghai Moon.”
“This? No. It can’t be. This isn’t-”
“Worth a million dollars. It’s not worth ten thousand. The jade, because of its antiquity, has some value, but as you can see it’s cracked. The diamonds are small, and two are flawed. The only worth of this piece is based on its story, but most collectors, seeing it, would react as you have.”
I took the miniature thing from the box and rested it in my hand. The jade, split along its length, felt cool to the touch, as jade always does; and tiny and flawed though they were, the diamonds sparkled.
Mr. Zhang looked as though he wanted to reach out and grab it back from me, but he didn’t. “The jade Kairong gave Rosalie was not the most valuable stone his family possessed. It was the oldest. Though cracked and small, it was created for a Chen ancestor’s wedding and had been in the Chen family for fifty generations. To Kairong it rep resented enduring family love. The necklace Rosalie chose to dismantle for its diamonds was not the most valuable piece she brought to Shanghai, either. It was the one that meant the most to her.”
I looked up. “How do you know that?”
“Yaakov Corens told me.”
I held the brooch to the light as he went on, “By the time my cousin and I came to America, Lao-li’s obsession with the Shanghai Moon was total. Its legend had grown in the decades since it vanished, both in his mind and in the world of collectors. When I found we were in the same city with its maker, I could not risk Lao-li discovering its truth.”
“Why not? Did you have it by then?”
As though the words were cumbersome, Mr. Zhang spoke slowly. “I have always had it.”
“Then what are you talking about, ‘the decades since it vanished’? It never vanished. You had it!” I thrust out my hand, the brooch sparkling in it. “How could you do that to Mr. Chen? How could you let his obsession ever get started? Why didn’t you tell him? What was the point?”
The silence returned, and lasted so long I was starting to think Mr. Zhang had no answer. And really, what answer could there be? Greed? A family bitterness, a rivalry? Something to lord over his cousin, a way to control him?
Softly, Mr. Zhang spoke. “The seed of the legend of the Shanghai Moon was planted in desperate, dark times. It was watered with tragedy and tended in heartbreak. Public and private. Private and public.
“The truth you hold you in your hand, that small, flawed thing, was meaningless in the face of people’s need-Chinese people and exiled Jews and others besides-to believe something glorious could exist outside the despair and horrors of wartime Shanghai. No, more: could exist amid that despair and horror. From the moment it was made its legend began. That Rosalie would not show it only helped the legend flourish. In whispers, in rumors.