The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan Read Free Book Online Page A

fool. She’ll marry that old man to make her father happy, instead of waiting for her soldier.”
    “She probably will, but I’m surprised you don’t approve. Isn’t she being properly filial, doing that?”
    “Of course. But if her father were a proper father he would care more about her happiness than making a good business alliance.”
    “I guess he would. Do you want tea?”
    “Yes,” my mother said, and added, “Thank you, Ling Wan-ju.”
    * * *
    I hit Canal Street, heading for Bright Hopes to see if Mr. Chen was ready to talk to me, but before I got close, my cell phone rang. When I answered, that bellowing tenor blasted my ear:
    “ ‘Pretty lady with the flower,
Won’t you give a lonely sailor
’Alf an hour?’
    “Sondheim,
Pacific Overtures.
Chinsky! Come up here right away.”
    “Now? But I was—”
    “Whatever you’re doing, drop it. Something’s fishy, and I want to talk about it.”
    “What is?”
    “Come up here.”
    “Just tell me—”
    “Chinsky!
Now!
”
    Then a click. I stood for a moment, fuming. Who the hell was Joel Pilarsky to give me an order and then hang up? I almost called him back just to say that.
Yes, well, chill, Lydia. Just go up there
.
    We certainly did have to talk.
    I got in gear and trotted to the N train, reaching the platform in time to see red taillights. Served me right for arguing with myself. Well, so Joel would have to wait. Served
him
right for pushing me around. When the train finally came, the ride was shorter than the wait had been.
    Joel’s office was in midtown, in a 1930s building with complicated corridors and cranky steel windows. Itselevators grumbled and its terrazzo floors sagged. Joel claimed he didn’t move because the place was such a dump the landlord paid the tenants, but I knew the truth. From the day we met, I’d seen Joel’s impatient know-it-allness for what it was: a smoke screen for his secret identity as a hopeless romantic. Like most romantics, he was disappointed in little and big ways dozens of times a day, and like most, he kept trying. These rabbit-warren hallways, these glass-paneled doors with names in gold, creaking onto small rooms with vast Manhattan views—what could be a more romantic place for a private eye?
Joel Pilarsky,
I thought,
you don’t fool me
.
    I got a nod from the lobby guard. My last case with Joel—the runaway wife and the noodle king—had been only a year ago, so maybe he recognized me. More likely he just hoped he did so he wouldn’t have to tear himself from the
Enquirer
’s coverage of a spaceship landing in Pittsburgh.
    The elevator muttered all the way up as though I’d interrupted its lunch break. On Joel’s floor I walked the maze, left-right-right-left. I knocked and pushed his door open. There was an outer office, as though Joel had a secretary, but he didn’t, just a part-time bookkeeper to send out the bills. I walked through to the inner office, saying, “Pilarsky, this place is a mess. If you’re going to make me drop everything and run over here, the least you could do—”
    I stopped. Joel was sitting in his office chair, but though his eyes were open he wasn’t looking at me.
    Or at anything, anymore.
    I tried. I ignored the oceans of blood soaking his shirt and felt his neck for a pulse, though I knew he wouldn’t have one. But it was the by-the-book thing, and Joel would have been disappointed in me if I hadn’t done it. I looked around, taking in the open drawers and file cabinets, but I didn’t touch anything. I used my cell phone to call the police and then I waited in the corridor, so no one else would make the mistake I had, of touching the doorknob, maybe screwing up the killer’s prints. And I left Joel’s eyes open, and his yarmulke on the floor where it had fallen, though I wasn’t sure that was okay, at all.

6
    “Here, drink this.”
    Mary held a takeout cup with a dangling Lipton’s label. I sipped, hoping tea would clear my fog. I felt as though I were