As a child, I thought Uncle Wen knew everything. He used to tell a wide-eyed Kai and me stories on the tiny patio behind his flat, the one shrouded in so many hanging and potted plants that it seemed like a jungle. Of course, as we got older, those stories became associated with childhood for no other reason than that was when we had heard them. They became kid’s stuff. We wanted to be mature and sophisticated, so we stopped listening to an old man’s fairy tales.
Stupid.
Looking back, story times in his shop were some of the happiest moments of my life. The last one he told us came right before we got our tattoos. We’d just turned seventeen and we’d planned the trip in secret. He made us sit in silence while he brewed a rare tea. Then, when our minds were quiet, he told us the story of Dragon and Phoenix.
In the Eastern tradition, dragons are long and undulating spirits of water. The fenghuang, or phoenix, is the spirit of fire. One day, Dragon stumbled upon Phoenix as she came to perch over the river, and he courted her and they fell in love. Each filled an absence in the other that they did not know was there, and they became so enraptured that they abandoned their responsibilities and sought only to be in each other’s company. But without Dragon, the waters did not run and the rain did not fall. And without Phoenix, hearths were extinguished and the heavens did not turn. The rivers dried and the earth was covered in frost and the people became hungry. They begged the lovers to resume their duties.
Fearing they would be separated, the pair fled to the Western Paradise where no mortal could follow. The people called out to Pan-ku, the first man, born of the cosmic egg, and pleaded for help. Pan-ku was the protector of tradition, which is very important in China. He saw the suffering that had befallen the world and was angry. He turned his high gaze over the earth and soon found where Dragon and Phoenix were hiding. He reached the gates of the Western Paradise in a single step and hid behind the great bamboo grove at its border. On one hand, he drew the character for yin, and on the other the character for yang. And he waited.
The next morning, Dragon woke early and, enthralled by his sleeping beloved, left to find her a gift every bit as brilliant and brazen as she. When Phoenix awoke and found her beloved had gone, she went in search of a gift every bit as fluid and lustrous as he. With the lovers parted, Pan-ku opened his hands. Seeing the character for yin and thinking it was Phoenix, Dragon rushed to show her the blazing gift he had found burning at the top of the cliff, and he was seized. Seeing the character for yang and thinking it was her beloved, Phoenix rushed to show him the shimmering orb she had found floating in the still pond, and she too was seized.
Holding the pair in his hands, Pan-ku rose to his full height. With a voice that boomed from the clouds, he decreed that if fire and water should be brought together again, they would each extinguish the other. Then he released the heartbroken lovers to their heavenly duties. Pan-ku took Dragon’s gift and put it over the day and called it the sun. He took Phoenix’s gift and put it over the night and called it the moon. Then he pressed his hands together and made the shape of the yin-yang as a sign to all creation that the universe is in harmony only when opposites are balanced, when we are neither stingy nor wasteful, neither foolish nor foolhardy, and when we are respectful of tradition—and of each other.
It was strange, but that was what I was thinking about as I was falling to my death.
Only I didn’t die. I landed hard in a bin of debris, including quite a bit of old seat-cushion foam from inside the theater. It was not a pleasant experience, and I walked away with a few cuts, several new bruises, and a mildly sprained neck. But I survived. The funny thing was, I remember glancing down when Fish’s goon leaned me over the edge. It’s instinctive. You look to see where you’ll land. I remember flattened cardboard and concrete, not a giant bin of theater rubbish conjured out of nowhere. But it’s not like I was going to go back up and ask Fish for a do-over. Besides, my luck ran out almost immediately. I had some trouble climbing out of the bin, and when my feet finally touched the street, a couple of uniforms were waiting to nab me, like I was a fleeing junkie. I’m sure I looked like it. As they put the cuffs on, I swore to them that there was a man at the end of the alley and asked why they didn’t arrest him. He was standing behind the plume of smoke that erupted from an open door—a bald man with his hands in a fantastic coat. But they didn’t see anything, and when I blinked, he was gone.
I was at the station before I realized I didn’t have my purse, which meant no phone and no wallet. No phone meant no one to come bail me out. I didn’t know anyone’s number by hear! No wallet meant no money. And no ID, which was a blessing since the police wouldn’t immediately know I was in the country illegally. Eventually a van came for us, and I slept on the floor. The chick next to me told everyone very loudly that I smelled like vomit. I slept again on the floor of a bench-lined hall. At some point, I was shown to a bathroom and allowed to pee and clean myself up. I could see sunlight through the narrow opaque window near the ceiling. I thought I was going back to the big room, but instead, I was taken separately to a squad car and driven to a different station where there was even more waiting. I was slumped sideways in a chair, legs pressed to my chest, sleeping soundly, when a lady officer woke me and told me I might want to wipe the drool from the side of my face. She handed me a tissue. Then she handed me the box. She asked me to sign something, and after another short wait, I was taken down a hall to a room marked Interview B. She knocked and a detective opened the door, a black guy in a tousled suit, sans coat, who introduced himself as Detective Rigdon. There was another detective, a white guy with broad shoulders and slightly more hair, standing near the mirror. He said his name was Hammond. He had a kind of rounded block head that I thought it might be nice to sculpt.
There was a single empty chair on the far side of a faux wood table.
“Am I under arrest?” I asked, taking it.
“For?” Detective Rigdon asked.
I thought that must be a trick, where any answer I gave would be an indirect admission of guilt.
“Does that mean I can go?”
Detective Rigdon sat down opposite me, in front of the two-way mirror, and placed a notepad and two pens on the table next to a manila file folder. He had a third pen in his hand. He was prepared. Detective Hammond with the broad shoulders and the block head moved to lean against the closed door, as if blocking my escape.
“We’d like you to answer a few questions,” Rigdon said.
I shrugged. “Just make it quick, huh guys? I’m playing golf with the mayor this afternoon.”
“Looking like a bent dipstick?” Hammond asked from the back. His eyes moved over my ear and the red cuts and blue bruises that dotted my arms.
I crossed them. “What can I say? Bruises turn him on.”
“Mayor’s a woman,” Hammond said.
“Her, too.”
“Luke Rottheim was found dead yesterday,” Rigdon interjected. “Along with his bodyguard, a man named William Randall.”
Cue long silence.
I looked to the detectives. They were so serious.
Detective Rigdon looked back at me, expressionless. “How did you know Mr. Rottheim?”
I shrugged again. “I met him once. A few days ago. Shit . . . Um. Wow. How did it happen?”
Rigdon thought for a second like he was deciding whether or not I was allowed to know. “He appears to have fallen from the upper floors of a construction site in Brooklyn Heights. The old Watchtower building. You know it?”
“Fallen? As in jumped or pushed?”
Detective Rigdon pulled some photos from his file. “It’s a six-hundred-million-dollar development. Gonna be condos or something.”
I saw Luke’s body impaled on a row of ridged rebar poking from a recently poured concrete slab. It was stuck two feet off the ground. One of the bars had pierced his ear and twisted his head into an odd shape. Another got him right in the groin. They were all wet and sticky, and there was a pool of dark red blood on the concrete below. His wheelchair rested on its side nearby, as if it had followed him over the edge like a faithful dog.
I covered my mouth as Rigdon slapped another photo on top of the first.
“He appears to have been taken from his home by force.”
A headless body was slumped against the wall near the waterfall on the fourth floor of the Rottheim mansion. It was William Bouncerman. I recognized the turtleneck. There was a splatter of blood on the wall over him, smeared down, as if he’d been cleanly decapitated while standing. In his hand was the brass vajra, shattered.
I looked to the detectives. I think that was when I realized the predicament I was in.
“Who’d you guys piss off?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Rigdon replied.
“To get the shit detail. A dead billionaire’s gotta have a whole team of people, right? A task force or whatever. You can’t tell me you all treat this the same as some dead junkie. But here you guys are talking to me. You gotta be in trouble or something.”
Rigdon scooped up the photos and put them away. “We’re going entry by entry through the day planner on Mr. Rottheim’s phone, which indicated he had a meeting with you recently.”
I’m sure my name stood out, sitting there next to his business contacts and wealthy associates.
“Care to tell us what your meeting was about?”
“He was looking for a girl. An ex. Sort of.”
“Would that be Lily Ann Sobriecki?”
I nodded.
“After his meeting with you,” Hammond said again from the door, “he had his accountant begin liquidating some large investments, and there’s evidence he planned to leave the country.”
“Okay?”
“We hoped you could tell us why.”
“Why would I know? I just met him.”
“How would you describe your relationship with Mr. Rottheim?”
“Relationship? Dude, I keep saying, I met him one time.”
“So he didn’t stop by your apartment the other day?”
I paused. I could see where they were getting confused since normal people would probably count that as two times.
“Okay. That doesn’t count.”
Detective Rigdon fiddled with the pen in his hand. “Where were you between the hours of eleven and two a.m. last night?”
“I’m pretty sure you guys already know the answer to that.”
“You weren’t picked up at the underground club until well after two. Can anyone confirm you were there the entire time?”
I looked between them. They both looked back. Emotionless. They waited for me to answer. The longer I didn’t, the more tense it became.
I pressed my hands together under the table. “Irfan.”
“What’s Irfan’s last name?”
“I don’t think she has one,” I said.
Now the two men were definitely all ears.
“So where is this Irfan?” Rigdon asked.
I shook my head.
“You’re dating a girl and you don’t know her real name?”
“We’re not dating.”
It was like trying to explain modern art to my dad.
“Irfan have a phone?” Rigdon asked.
“I don’t know the number.”
I don’t think they believed me.
“I’m serious!”
“What about Ms. Sobriecki?” Hammond jumped in.
“What about her?”
“Her phone seems to have been disconnected. Any idea where we might find her?”
“No.”
“How did Ms. Sobriecki and Mr. Rottheim meet?”
“He said at the club.”
“What club?” Rigdon asked.
“You guys don’t know about the club?”
They were silent.
“Maleficium. On the Upper East Side. It’s like a sex club or something. Rottheim said he was on the board. Lily used to work there. Well, technically it’s not work.”
Rigdon scratched notes. “Did you ever get the sense your friend wanted to hurt Mr. Rottheim?”
“My friend?”
“Ms. Sobriecki.”
“I’ve never met her in my life.”
“You weren’t friends?”
“No.”
“Then why were your fingerprints all over her apartment?”
“I was—” I looked between them. I thought about the novelty hair spray with the drugs inside. “I was looking for clues.”
“Clues?”
I decided it was time to go on the offensive. “What are you guys suggesting?”
“We’re not suggesting anything, Ms. Song. We’re just trying to understand everyone’s role in this man’s life.”
“What did you think of Mr. Rottheim?” Hammond asked.
“I didn’t. I told you.”
“So you two were never romantically involved?”
“Involved? No. God.” I made a face. “No way.”
“Why ‘no way?’ He was a sophisticated guy. Rich. Traveled all over the world buying art and all that. I’d be impressed.”
“Then you should’ve dated him.”
Rigdon wrote a few more things down. Or maybe he was catching up.
“What about your eye?” Hammond asked.
“What about it?”
“It’s quite a bruise. How’d it happen?”
Admitting that I punched myself suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.
“I passed out at the club,” I said. “Hit my head.”
Rigdon wrote more. It seemed to take longer than it should if he was just transcribing what I said. He scratched on the paper in silence.
“We found a large stock of pregnancy tests in Ms. Sobriecki’s apartment,” he said. “What can you tell us about that?”
“Come on. I know you guys are only cops, but I bet you can do the math.”
They didn’t react.
“Do you know what Ms. Sobriecki was planning to do with the child?”
“You mean was she going to keep it? I dunno. You’d have to ask her.”
“We will,” Hammond said confidently.
“What about you, Ms. Song?” Ridgon asked.
“What about me?”
“How are you paying the bills these days?”
“I work at the halal market. Under my flat.”
“Mr. Suleiman mentioned that was just in lieu of rent. What are you doing for money? Groceries, cell phone, all that.”
“Good question,” I said, eyes down at the table.
He scratched more notes.
“You’re not a companion at the club?”
They totally knew about the club already.
“Me?” I made a face. “No.”
Rigdon checked his notes. “We have several witnesses who claimed to have seen you there. In your underwear. You told one—a Randy Gates—that you were a new employee.”
“Yes, but—That was—” My mouth hung open. “That was a big misunderstanding.”
On and on it went like that. They asked me the same question more than once, but in a different way, like they were trying to trip me up. Then Rigdon said, completely casually, “We’d like to get access to your phone records if that’s okay.” Like it was no big deal. Like he was a checkout girl asking if I wanted to apply for a store card and get a 15% discount. Like it was just something he had to do and didn’t care whether I said yes or no. He didn’t mention I had the right to say no.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Whatever helps you catch this guy.”
Hammond stood straight finally. “Just one more thing, Ms. Song. You have any plans to visit family?”
I raised my eyebrows. “In Hong Kong? Ha. No. As we’ve established, I can’t even afford my cell phone bill.”
“All the same, we’ve asked ICE to withhold travel authorization.”
Great. Now they knew where to find me.
Hammond reached over and handed me his card while his partner finished writing on a piece of paper folded over at the top so I couldn’t see.
I took it. “I don’t suppose you guys wanna tell me what’s going on.”
He shrugged. “A man is dead. We’re trying to understand why.”
And with that he opened the door and I shuffled out. Two minutes later, I was standing in shock on the sidewalk.
“Shit!” I screamed. Only not in English. “Shit shit shit! Ce-Ze-Lei, you fucking idiot.” I stomped my foot.
I was a patsy! I was the fall guy! I was someone’s scapegoat!
People coming out of the building looked at me frozen on the sidewalk. They stepped wide as they passed. I looked up and noticed Detectives Hammond and Rigdon in the second-floor window. Watching. They totally didn’t care I saw them. They didn’t flinch. They never flinched.
I don’t think they believed anything I said.