Eliot Pattison - Beautiful Ghosts

Corbett glanced at the file then pushed it toward Shan, with something like mischief in his eyes. The label said Adrian Croft.

“It’s been three days since I told you it was Croft’s office on the phone giving instructions to kill Elizabeth McDowell. I don’t need to look at the file,” he said to Bailey. “Just talk to me.”

Bailey eased the file away from Shan, opened it, began holding up papers. “He’s listed on two of Ming’s expeditions, both in Inner Mongolia,” he explained, holding up a fax document, then lifting another memo below. “Croft Antiquities was paid as a consultant, big bucks, on several museum projects funded by Dolan, and on the construction of Dolan’s private exhibition space. McDowell was working for the company as a consultant. Did all the appraisals on his collections. The office where that call was made is half a mile from here. The firm is an expert on Asian art, and how to sell it.”

“Do you have a list of all those who were on Ming’s expeditions?” Shan asked.

“Sure,” Bailey replied. “They market them to rich tourists.”

Shan quickly scanned the papers Bailey handed him. “Dolan’s name appears on none of these.” He looked at Corbett.

“But we know he was on those trips,” Corbett told his assistant. “We saw the photos.” He glanced back at Shan’s grin and grimaced. “Son of a bitch.” His assistants hung their heads as if embarrassed. “Social security,” Corbett said. “Customs Bureau. Immigration Service. Internal Revenue. Go.”

Corbett watched as the two men hurried out of the room, then slowly rose, gathered the file, and gestured for Shan to follow. As they left he paused to lean over the desk of the silver-haired receptionist. “If he asks, we’ve gone to meet the Chinese consul. And the mayor. Key to the city and all that.”

They drove under a grey sky to the far side of the water Shan had seen from Corbett’s house. Lake Union, Corbett called it. As they drove slowly along the western shore, Shan asked Corbett to pause a moment for him to watch a plane with pontoons underneath ascend from the water.

“Where do they go?” Shan asked.

“Islands. Away,” Corbett said, and watched with Shan as the plane disappeared into the low clouds.

They passed a large brick building perhaps eight stories high that had the appearance of an old warehouse but which housed offices. Corbett pointed to a corner window on the top floor, overlooking the water. “Croft Antiquities,” he said, then pulled into a parking lot and found a space facing the building.

After a quarter hour they walked across the road and followed a car into the garage beneath the building. The parking slots were painted with the names of people or businesses. Croft Antiquities had three spaces, two with the company name, one labeled Adrian Croft.

“Security cameras,” Corbett observed, pointing to long black boxes mounted near the top of several concrete pillars. “Some quality time for the boys,” he added, then, seeing the inquiry in Shan’s eyes, explained. “We’ll get the surveillance tapes. See who’s been parking in this ghost’s personal space. Then there’s always the office manager to interview if we can find her.”

“You know her?”

“Picture in the file. She’s part Chinese.”

They sat in a small café on the ground floor, drinking tea. Shan tried to watch the front door but found himself staring at the seaplanes that kept disappearing into the clouds. To away. He would like to be in some place away, where people did not lie or steal or kill, or pretend to be ghosts. Gendun had wanted him to go away, to his retreat cave. But a few hours on the Dalai Lama’s birthday had changed everything.

Corbett, too, seemed to be struggling not to watch the planes.

“You said your aunt gave you a house, on an island.”

“A little cottage. Its walls are almost entirely covered in flowering vines. You can look out over the ocean and see whales sometimes.”

“She was the one who taught you to paint?”

Corbett grew very quiet. “That’s a long way from here. This is America. This is what I do in America. Not what I am now,” he said, and Shan realized he really wasn’t speaking of his aunt, but of Bumpari village. “Liya and I spoke, before I left the village. She said something very wise. She said she thought being an investigator was the opposite of being an artist.”

“Maybe she was saying that some mysteries require an artist, not an investigator. That an artist has different ways to get to the truth.”

“Up there in the mountains with you I learned that the facts are only part of the truth, not the most important part.” Corbett looked into his cup. “I never really thanked her. Liya. You’ll have to do it for me.”

“Maybe you’ll see her again.”

“Me? Not a chance. If you didn’t notice this morning I am heading for the junkpile. After this I’ll be assigned to helping old ladies find their teeth.” He suddenly turned his head down, into his cup. “It’s her. Croft’s manager.”

Shan studied the slight, stylish Asian woman a moment then rose before Corbett could stop him. He waited by the counter that held napkins and sugars until she was seated at a table, then quickly stepped to her side and dropped into the chair across from her.

“My name is Shan,” he said in a low voice as he fumbled with the top button of his shirt. “You work for that antique place upstairs.” He pulled out the gau that never left his neck and held it for her to see.

“Do you have any notion what that is?” the woman asked. Her eyes showed impatience, but also amusement.

“It’s very old. It’s very valuable. I know where more are.”

She stared at the prayer box with interest and extended a finger toward it, but stopped short of touching it.

“We aren’t buying any,” she declared impatiently. “You should go. This is not the way we do business. I could call the security guard.”

“Take me to your showroom. Let me see what you’re buying. I can find many such things. Tibetan. Chinese.”

She took a bite of her salad, chewed, and aimed the fork at him. “We are a private house. No showroom. We procure what is requested. No requests for fourteenth-century prayer boxes,” she said, nodding toward his gau. “That was three or four years ago.” She jabbed the fork toward the door. Shan sighed, rose, and stepped out of the café.

Corbett joined Shan ten minutes later by his car, studying the top-floor windows as Shan explained what she had said, then spoke to Bailey on a cell phone, explaining the urgent task they had with the building security tapes.

They drove again, in a slow, steady rain, Corbett in a brooding silence, until he parked in a huge parking lot, containing more automobiles than Shan had ever seen in one place, and guided Shan toward a cavernous, sprawling building so large Shan could not see the other end through the greyness.

He paused in silent wonder as they walked through the double set of elegant glass doors. Trees and flowers grew beside a pool with a waterfall. The floors were marble. An ironwork stairway gracefully curved around the waterfall, toward a ceiling of arched glass.

“There’s a place we can get coffee, a quiet place to talk.”

Shan still stood, studying the strange building and the dozens of people who were wandering in and out of the open doorways off the huge main hall. There were shops, he realized, dozens of shops, two floors of shops. When he looked toward Corbett the American was already ten feet in front of him. Shan followed slowly, puzzling over everything in his path. Adolescents walked by, engaged in casual conversation, seemingly relaxed despite the brass rings and balls that for some reason pierced their faces. He looked away, his face flushing, as he saw several women standing in a window clothed only in underwear. He saw more, nearly identical women in another window adorned in sweaters and realized they were remarkably lifelike mannequins. One of the sweaters was marked at a few cents less than three hundred dollars, more than most Tibetans made in a year.