her eyes, but for a while after that she sat silent. Then, in a mutter that grew steadily louder, she picked up her earlier theme. The first words I made out were “. . . valued our elders.” I guessed what was coming. “Children today, no respect,” she told no one in particular. “Make their parents leave home, go far away.”
“Ma, I—”
“Your cousin Danny.” She gave me a dirty look, like every bad thing Danny had ever done was my fault. “Sent his mother all the way to China.”
“She wanted to see her home village. Danny paid for the trip. He’s very generous.”
“He should have gone with her, not make her go alone.”
“She’s not alone. She’s on a tour.”
“With strangers.”
“And her sister and two of her best friends!”
“And strangers. Instead of their own children. And your cousin Clifford. A very unfilial son. Made his mother go to New Jersey.”
“Clifford Kwan? Armpit? He sent his mother to New Jersey?”
She frowned at me. “No wonder he is bad. People call him disgusting names.”
“He’s proud of that name.”
“Does that make it not disgusting?”
“What do you mean, he sent his mother to New Jersey?”
“The son caused the mother so much heartache, the mother moved away.”
“Oh. So he didn’t send her away. She moved to the suburbs.”
“He made her go away by breaking her heart.”
“Ma, Clifford’s been rotten from the day he was born. I’m surprised Kwan Shan didn’t kick him out of the house years ago.”
She rolled her eyes. Once again I’d failed to understand something basic. “It would be better if you could choose your relatives. Get ones you want, throw away bad ones. But you can’t. The child you get is the child you have to keep.” Her narrowed eyes told me that, by the way, I should consider myself lucky this was true. As if to emphasize her point, she added, “It was when Kwan Shan left Chinatown that her son became involved with gang boys.”
I wasn’t having any. “I thought you said his bad behavior made her move away.”
“Now she will not come back. She is ashamed to show her face.”
“She’s probably just happy in her nice new apartment. With a garden. Near her grandchildren.”
“What mother could be happy when her youngest son is a White Eagle?”
“Ma—what?”
“I said—”
“I know what you said. Armpit’s a White Eagle? Since when?”
“Auntie Ro, at the pharmacy, told me. Her brother-in-law, who makes tattoos, drew a white eagle on Clifford three days ago. Auntie Ro says that means he is accepted as one of them.”
It sure did. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh, have you been home for me to tell you? I’m sorry, Ling Wan-ju, I must not have noticed.”
When I got to my office, I found Bill shooting the breeze with the Golden Adventure ladies. They all but batted their eyes when he said good-bye. Well, good. Anything to keep them thinking I was a worthwhile subtenant.
“How did you talk your mother into going?” he asked as we went down the hall.
“Believe me, I didn’t. I told her I didn’t want to have to worry about her. She said, ‘Oh, this is for you, not for me?’ and I thought she was mad. Next thing I knew she was looking for her MetroCard.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“I hope that’s for the mess and not my mother?” I could tell it was, though, by the way he’d stopped inside my door and was staring around.
“All these papers were on your desk? That’s amazing.”
“Oh, give me a break. They went through the files, too.”
“I’d sure like to know what they were after.”
“So? Get to work and I’ll start digging.”
Bill headed for the bathroom with his toolbox. He can be a pain, but he has his good points. One is, he has some manual skills I’ve never mastered: hammering nails straight, driving a stick shift. And lifting fingerprints. He can do that, too.
“Rough, dry surfaces.” He examined the sill and bars. “I don’t know how much I can get.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just be thorough. And do as much as you can from outside. And take your time.”
While Bill was playing with powders and brushes, I picked up papers. The scattered folders and any papers whose provenance was obvious I refiled. Then I went through what was left. What I was doing was in the nature of carving away the marble to get to the statue. By clearing up everything I could, I was hoping to discover what wasn’t there.
“Tell me about the Shanghai cop,” Bill called through the