“What kind of package?”
“A photograph that he lent me.”
Without warning he took it from me and ripped it open.
“Hey,” I said angrily. “That is private business between Mr. Lee and me.”
“Is that so?” He glanced at the photograph, put it on the hall table, then proceeded to open the letter.
“You have no right to do that,” I said indignantly. “It’s personal correspondence. What do you think you’re doing?” I tried to snatch it back from him, but he fended me off.
“Oh, I have every right,” he said, something akin to a smirk crossing his face. His eyes scanned down the letter. “He hired you? What for exactly?”
“If you really must know, he’d lost a piece of jade and he wanted me to find it for him.”
“That’s not what it says here.” He was staring hard at me with cold blue eyes. “You no longer wish to handle this case since the buying and selling of humans goes against your conscience?” he read, raised an eyebrow, and then waved the letter at me.
“This is not what you might think,” I said hastily. “He arranged to have a young bride shipped over from China and—somehow she has gone missing. Naturally Mr. Lee is most worried and hired me to find her. Nothing criminal and therefore nothing of interest to the police.”
“Really?” He was still staring hard at me. “A bride shipped over from China?”
“That’s how the Chinese arrange marriages, apparently.”
“Then who’s the old broad on the sofa if he’s just marrying a young bride?”
“I gather she’s his first wife. They can take more than one in China.”
“But not here in the States. It’s called bigamy.”
I lowered my voice. “Look, Officer, between you and me, I don’t think he actually intended to go through a proper marriage ceremony over here with the new one. She’d be called wife number two, but really just a concubine.”
“And now she’s run away, has she?”
I could feel my cheeks getting hotter. When I am being backed into a corner I start to defend myself. “Look, I just told you—this has nothing to do with the police,” I said. “I don’t know why you are grilling me. It’s a missing persons case, not a crime. And besides, if you’re trying to pin some kind of criminal activity on Mr. Lee, I thought he had an understanding with the police and they left him alone.”
“I don’t know who told you that!” the policeman snapped. “But perhaps it would have been better for him if we hadn’t left him alone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Which way did you come down Mott Street this morning?”
“From Chatham Square. Why?”
“Because had you come from the other direction, you might have noticed a commotion around the corner on Pell Street—you’d have spotted a crowd, including some of my men. It appears that Mr. Lee Sing Tai fell off the roof of his building during the night.” He paused to watch my expression, a rather satisfied one on his own face.
“Fell off the roof? You mean he’s dead?”
I have to confess that the wave of emotion that shot through me was not of horror but of relief. Now I would never have to face him. Now Bo Kei would be free of him.
The satisfied expression turned into a smirk. “There aren’t many people who survive a fall from that height unless they have wings,” he said. “Of course he’s dead. Smashed as flat as a pancake.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said, because it was expected of me. Actually I wasn’t sorry at all.
“So the only question in my mind,” the officer said, still not taking his eyes from my face, “is whether he fell by accident or whether he was pushed.”
Sixteen
I stood there in the dark hallway, trying not to let my face register any emotion. I recognized the policeman now. He was the officer who had accompanied Daniel at the Elizabeth Street station.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“Sometime during the night, I suppose. The old guy is wearing his nightshirt and I gather he’d been sleeping on the roof.”
“That’s right,” I said. “I was told that he liked to sleep on the roof during hot weather.”
“That will certainly make it easier for us,” he said. “He walked in his sleep and tripped over the low parapet.”
“And if he didn’t?” I asked.
He eyed me critically. “Then somebody pushed him, and if I don’t find out conclusively who that person was, then the rumor will go around that it was a member of Hip Sing. In case you don’t know about such things, it’s—”
“The rival tong,” I said. “I do know.”
His eyes narrowed. “You seem to be remarkably well versed in Chinatown politics,” he said. “What exactly are you—one of the Irish wives from around here?”