S Rozan - Trail of Blood

And suddenly I was struck by a bolt of lightning.

I grabbed Bill’s arm.

“What?”

“Wait.” I ran it through in my mind once more, to make sure I was right. I was. “Joel’s fishy thing. It was in the call with David Rosenberg. Oh, damn! Why didn’t I see it sooner?”

“I don’t see it now. Care to explain?”

“Alice asked him for a PI!”

“And?”

“In Zurich! At a cocktail party. Before she left for Shanghai. Before she met Wong Pan, before he skipped out. Before this all started!”

Bill didn’t answer. I could see in his eyes he was doing what I’d done, playing the conversation with Rosenberg over in his mind.

Three more funeral cars rolled by, holding more solemn children. Nieces, nephews? Cousins? The kind I had, so many and so distant that even my mother couldn’t run down the lines of connection? But it didn’t matter; family was family. Better if you could choose relatives, my mother had said. But you can’t.

“But you can!” I burst out as the second bolt hit. I saw not the black cars in front of me but other funerals, plain pine boxes, garden graves, winding sheets. Swampy water and bricks weighting bodies down.

“You can what?”

“You just said it. Families are complicated things.” I whipped out my phone and dialed Rosenberg’s number.

“Hello, Ms. Chin. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks.” If you didn’t count the guns, the sidewalk scuffle, the police station, C. D. Zhang’s depressing revelations, and the jolts from the lightning. “But I have to ask you something. When you talked to Joel, you told him Alice had asked about a PI in New York. Did you tell him when she asked?”

“Not precisely. I think I said a few weeks back.”

“Thank you! Talk to you later.”

“Wait. Are you in a rush, or shall I tell you what I’ve learned about the forged documents? My reporter’s spoken to his street source. I was waiting until my information was complete, but I can give you what I have now if you’d like.”

“Oh. Oh, yes, please.”

“Alice Fairchild probably did have them made, in Zurich. There were a Chinese passport and a U.S. visa in the name of Wu Ming.”

“Thank you. And”-a wild guess, but it was so clear to me now-“a Swiss passport, too?”

“Yes. How did you know that? For herself, though why-”

I interrupted. “In what name?”

“Helga Ulrich.”

“Thanks! Good-bye.” I speed-dialed Mary. “Unbelievable!” I said to Bill while I waited.

“What is?”

“How stupid I am.”

Mary answered her phone with “If you’re in trouble, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t tell you. Listen, this is important. Alice Fairchild has a Swiss passport in another name. She’s probably registered at a hotel using it.”

“What name?”

“Helga Ulrich.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Swiss. No, seriously, it’s a long story.”

“Do I want to hear it now?”

“No, you want to go looking for Alice.”

“You’re right, but first tell me how you know this.”

I was tempted to remind her PIs have an ecological niche in the crime-fighting world, too, but I just gave her the facts.

“Oh,” she said grudgingly. “Not bad.”

“You’re welcome. ‘Bye.” I clicked off before she could ask what I was up to next, even though I didn’t know what I was up to next. But fresh adrenaline was sizzling in my veins. Turning to Bill, I said, “Alice has-”

“I was eavesdropping. Helga Ulrich?”

“How about that?”

We stood on the sidewalk and discussed how about that. We were on our way to a hell of a theory, I thought, when we were interrupted by my phone ringing again. It wasn’t the Wonder Woman song but, hoping it was Mary calling from some landline to tell me my tip had panned out and they’d found Alice, I answered anyway.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s your cousin, cuz. I got some shit for you. You want it?”

Crabby because it wasn’t Mary, I said, “If that’s all you have.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Warily, he said, “That shit you asked about before, I don’t know nothing, like I said.”

“Armpit-”

“Just listen! That fat dude, got picked up today when dai lo got grabbed-anything you can do about that, by the way? Cuz?”

“No.”

“I just thought, since you’re tight with the cops-”

“You thought wrong. Keeping them off you is about all I can do, and it’s getting harder every minute. Armpit, I’m busy here. You have something for me or not?”

“Jesus, take a chill pill. That fat guy, like I say. Warren says he saw him. With dai lo, twice. You know, at meetings I couldn’t make.”

Or wouldn’t have been invited to if you were the last White Eagle standing. “You’re telling me Wong Pan and Fishface Deng knew each other. It’s nice to have that corroborated, Armpit, but we’d kind of figured it out by now.”

“Shit, cuz! Cut me some slack, will you? I’m trying to help you out here. The second time, Warren says the fat dude was with a lady. Baak chit gai.”

Oh. “Who?”

“No idea. But you want to see her, she just went into old man Chen’s store.”

Bill and I charged to Bright Hopes on a dead run, as far as that’s possible in weekday Chinatown. I called Mary, got voice mail, left a message, and stuck my phone in my pocket so I could dodge grandmas, school kids, and melon vendors. Drenched in sweat, we pushed into and through Bright Hopes past a first smiling, then confused Irene Ng, who gave us a token “Wait.”

“It’s okay. We were invited.” I threw open Mr. Chen’s office door.

Three heads turned.

“Lydia!” Alice Fairchild’s voice was filled with dismay. She sat opposite Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang, the same as when I’d met them in here. The differences between that meeting and this were, one, no one had served tea; and two, Alice was rather impolitely pointing a pistol at the two old men.

“Alice, put it down,” I said quietly.

“Lydia, go away!” Hysteria edged Alice’s words. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I’m just asking these gentlemen for money. I need money.”

“For your sister, right?” I spoke gently. “She told me you were taking good care of her.”

“You talked to her? To Joan? Lydia, for God’s sake, leave her out of this!”

“But she’s what it’s about, isn’t she? Only she’s not your sister.”

Alice’s eyes widened. She didn’t answer, but she also didn’t let the gun waver. Her finger was on the trigger, not beside it where a practiced shooter’s would be. I’d have bet it was the first gun she’d ever held. So I went on in a calm, reassuring voice, because nothing’s as scary as a scared amateur. “You’re Major Ulrich’s daughter. Your mother died in Chapei Camp. Alice Fairchild died, too, didn’t she? You’re not really Alice Fairchild.”

For a long moment no one moved.

“Chapei Camp made a lot of orphans, and orphans didn’t do well,” Alice said quietly. “The Fairchilds took me in. They had nothing, the same as everyone else, but when my mother died they took me in and loved me and saved my life.

“Then a few months later Alice died. Joan was very sick. In her fever she called me Alice and cried when I said I wasn’t. So we all started to pretend I was her sister. For her sake. Lydia, I know you have a gun, and Bill, you, too. Please put them on the table here. One at a time, please, Lydia first.”

“But after the war?” I said, to keep her talking. “The Japanese must have known who you really were.”

“Do you think they cared? Father-Reverend Fairchild-told the Americans the Japanese records were wrong. That’s all, just wrong. That’s all there was to it. Thank you,” she said when I put down my rig, as though I’d poured her tea. “Now Bill, please.”