“Y
ou sure you don’t want to rent 3B?” Ray said to me, grinning. “You here a lot, Mr. Chan.” He’d interrupted a conversation he was having with Mrs. Zheng. I smiled in the direction of Mrs. Zheng, despite my irritation with Ray’s needling references to the fictional detective Charlie Chan.
The little boy, hanging on to his grandmother’s hand, twisted around to look at me. Eyes widened. He said something in Chinese. He kept his eyes fixed on me, obviously waiting for a reply.
“Hello,” I said, knowing I had failed in some way.
The child’s eyes went blank. Then he turned away.
Mrs. Zheng and Ray wound up their conversation. As the woman and her grandchild went past me to the door, the boy looked away sharply.
“Glad you are up and about,” I said to Ray, who was smiling.
“Up early,” he said. “Early bird catches the worm.”
“Doesn’t pay the worm to get up early then, does it?” I asked.
He looked at me like I was a fool. “You have solved the mystery?”
“No, but listen, uh…I found these keys and wondered who they might belong to.”
“Where’d you find them?” Ray asked suspiciously. Ray was no fool. It was a fact I kept losing when he lapsed into his goofiness.
“On the stairway the other day. I just remembered.”
“Let’s see,” he said with a knowing smile. “No one report a key missing.” He handed back the smaller of the two keys. “I don’t know about this one. Maybe small box. Maybe bicycle lock. I don’t know.”
“Not your mailboxes?”
“No, mailbox key even smaller. I don’t know,” he said.
I followed him into his apartment. He stopped just inside at a wooden board with eight hooks and keys.
“Mmmn,” he said, examining the larger key. He began comparing its teeth with those of the keys on hooks. I was guessing it was a key to Ted’s parents’ apartment. Or, knowing that Ted had run some errands for Mrs. Ho and was painting apartments, it might be the key for 3B. But why had Ted hidden it?
“3A,” Ray said. “Look.”
“3A?”
He handed me the two keys. The teeth matched perfectly.
This was not what I wanted to hear. I had pretty much ruled out the Wens as irrelevant.
“You want key back?” He held it out to me as if he were the snake and this was the apple.
I took it and went upstairs to the empty apartment. I dismissed Ray’s offer to accompany me. I compared the molding and floor with the photograph of naked Ted Zheng. There was a washed-out streak of white on the hardwood floor that told me exactly where the picture had been taken.
Next, I compared the yellow paint smudge on the back of the photo with the smudge on the canvas drop cloth. Another match. Ted or someone else had had fresh paint on his or her hands when they handled the photograph. And, if I wasn’t
mistaken, the color was the special one Ted had used in Norman and Steven’s place.
I decided to wait. If Norman Chinn followed his routine, he would be home around lunchtime to freshen up and would leave again around two.
There would be a bit of a problem with this though. The yellow paint only indicated that Ted had handled the photograph at the same time he was using the yellow paint. The same paint as in the apartment occupied by Norman and Steven. It did not necessarily mean that either of the apartment occupants had anything to do with it. It did not mean that, but the implication was pretty clear nonetheless.
The problem was that even asking the question could be unnecessarily destructive. It could suggest or fuel a suspicion that might prove to be untrue. This could further tax what appeared to be an already fractious relationship.
And which of them should I approach first?
Either of them could have done this. It was clear that Steven found Asians attractive (at least one Asian anyway) or he wouldn’t have settled in with Norman. It was clear that Norman liked younger men but was attracted to Asians as well.
I decided, rightly or wrongly, that Norman was the one I’d approach first, because he was the more mature. Steven, during our brief interaction, had seemed less patient and more likely to fly off the handle. With his apparent fondness for half-nude boys, Norman would have no grounds for righteous indignation.
I thought about all of this in the empty apartment. I was trying to imagine what set of circumstances would lead Norman or Steven to murder. Jealousy, of course. Blackmail. An unwelcome advance that led to a struggle that got out of hand.
The lobby beckoned. I didn’t exactly want the company of Ray. On the other hand, I didn’t want to miss Norman Chinn.
“Ted was a bit of a flirt?” I suggested to Ray as we stood in the small entry.
“Flirt?” Then he laughed and shook his head, no doubt at the images that appeared in his mind. “He take his shirt off, you know, walk around like a lion or something.” Ray walked, moving his shoulders comically. “Not like Chinese to do that. His mother see him. She tell him to put on shirt and stop acting like that. She was ashamed of him. He laugh at her. Say this isn’t China.”
“And his father?” I asked.
“Nice man. Gentleman. I never see him tell his son bad things, you know.” Ray seemed serious. “Mr. Zheng…Cheng Ye very nice man. If he want to say something to Ted, he take him into other room or something. Never in front of other people.”
When Norman Chinn entered, he didn’t look at us.
“Mr. Chinn,” I said. He looked, nodded, went to the stairway. “I’m really sorry to disturb you, but I need a few more words with you, if you don’t mind.”
He stopped and turned toward me. He looked tired—exhausted, really. He looked at Ray, then back at me.
“Sure,” he said. “I’ll fix some coffee or something.”
“Rough morning?” I asked as we went up the stairs. It was probably a rough night.
“When you get old, you forget more easily,” Norman said. “Unfortunately, that means you forget you’re getting old and do foolish things.”
Inside his apartment, I declined a repeat of the offer for coffee, saying I wouldn’t be that long. I knew he had things to do. A nap, probably.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to be a little indiscreet,” I told him.
He looked at me. His face was stone. Gave away nothing. I reached in my pocket and pulled out the photograph of Ted Zheng.
There wasn’t one iota of surprise in his face. He knew the photograph.
“What of it?” he asked. The tone was conversational, not defensive.
“Did you take it?”
He was quiet. I took the picture to the wall, turned it over and let the yellow on the back of the photo touch the wall. Perfect match. I looked at him. He looked at me.
“Sit down, Mr. Strand.”
“Peter.”
“Peter.”
He looked down at his feet, then up at me.
“I fall in love every day of my life. Some days I fall in love many times. I crave beauty. I’m addicted to it. It’s harmless for the most part. Sometimes the objects of my desire are paintings, or flowers, or music, or furniture…whatever.
“For the most part, I am fickle about it,” he continued. “The next day I see another painting or another chair. And I have a new love. The fickleness is a good thing. I am not wealthy enough, smart enough, young enough or good-looking enough to actually possess these objects. But that doesn’t stop me from having these deep but fleeting infatuations.”
Norman took a deep breath and continued. “All that being said, I am most deeply and totally and eternally in love with Steven. Though I hate him sometimes”—he laughed—“I cannot imagine life without him. Believe it or not, I rarely contemplate it. It is too frightening.”
He paused again. It was as if he translated his thoughts in sections.
“Most Asians my age who grew up in the United States as I did received their cultural bearings not only from their families but from the popular culture. The Caucasian culture. The American culture. In those days the standards were completely and totally American. Cigarettes, movies, automobiles, fashion and celebrity.
“There was James Dean. And Marilyn Monroe. Elvis Presley and Cary Grant. There were no Asians. There were no Asian models in
Vogue
or
Esquire
. No Asians in
Playboy
magazine. No Asians in
The Young Physique
and
Demi-Gods
, where beautiful young white men wore nothing but a posing strap.”
He looked at me, this time waiting for me to say something.
“I would think that you might understand what I’m saying,” he said to my silence.
“I am following you,” I said, giving nothing but what I had to give so he would continue.
“You’d think that at my age whatever was set in my psyche would be, in fact, set. That my libido was by now hardwired. Not totally, it appears. Ted triggered something. I felt giddy around him. Like a schoolboy recognizing beauty, sexual attraction, whatever, in my own race for the first time. And it was the first time I thought it was possible to find beauty in someone like me. In a Chinese boy.”
“You hired him to paint your apartment,” I said, not wanting to engage in this kind of conversation.
It was as if I had struck him. He sat back, disappointed. When he spoke again, it was dispassionately.
“As luck would or would not have it, yes. I told Ray I was looking for someone who could paint our apartment and he recommended Ted.”
Again there was a moment of silence.
“I should have resisted, I suppose. For domestic bliss. It was warm, and he was an eager exhibitionist. He worked without his shirt. It didn’t take long for such a foolish old man to do something stupid. Ted played me, but I wanted to be played, make no mistake about that.”
“There is more,” I said.
“Well…we didn’t do anything. I mean, he and I didn’t…ever. But there was conversation and teasing, and he agreed, for a small fee, to pose for me.”
“You photographed in 3B? The empty apartment?”
“Yes.”
“But there is yellow paint on the photograph.”
“He wanted one photo, and I promised. I didn’t get them back until after he was done with this room. But then I needed him to come back here. After Steven and
I got all the furniture in position and the paintings rehung, there were some places that needed to be touched up. That’s when I gave him the photograph you have.”
I waited.
He waited.
“So which of you killed him?” I asked.
“No, Mr. Strand. Neither of us. Your leap in logic is Olympian. It is not in my soul to destroy beauty.”
“Blackmail.”
“Me? We live in San Francisco, Mr. Strand, not Little Rock. No one cares about my sex life here.”
“The police might suggest that you made unwanted advances and he reacted. There was a fight and—”
“Never.”
“Steven.”
“No.”
“He knew about the photographs?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe he and Ted argued.”
“Steven was in Florida when Ted died.”
“Why was he in Florida?”
“Looking for work.” Norman looked at me and knew a question would come. He decided to answer it. “Despite my protestations, Steven didn’t like my sudden appreciation of Asian beauty.”
“I’m sorry. How does it stand?”
“Feebly here, it seems. With me, I mean. I’m not sure what’s going through Steven’s head. We aren’t talking to each other about anything more serious than laundry detergent.”
Norman Chinn looked drawn. If he was so concerned about the relationship, though, why was he out on the prowl last night? I didn’t ask. As I started toward the door, he got up and came toward me.
“Could I have the photograph?” When I turned, he smiled. “Unless you like to look at naked Asian men.”
“I can do that every time I shower. For now, that seems to be more than enough. I’ll get this back to you when things are settled.”
“You truly think someone in this building could have done it?”
“Yes.”
“And are we high up on your list of suspects?”
“A little early for a rating.”
As I exited, I ran into Steven on the stairway.
“Visiting Norman again?” he asked, eyebrow raised in an arched stereotype, voice carrying the dramatic innuendo.
“Just trying to figure out who did what to whom,” I said.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do.”
“I understand you were out of town at the time of Ted’s death.”
“I can supply you with a list of witnesses. Fortunately, I hate being alone. Apparently so does Norman.”
“Very fortunate for you—I mean, to have witnesses.”
“Blessed are the socially desperate,” he said.
“Norman wasn’t out of town, though, was he?”
“Norman just couldn’t have, really. I’d like to hang him from the ceiling with tit clamps for his little obsessions. An old queer’s dying search for perfect beauty, but that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?”
I went for a walk, eventually, to the charming streets near Jackson Square and then back to Mr. Zheng’s Chinatown store. He seemed happy to see me.
“I’m sorry to keep barging in on you and bringing up painful subjects.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. “No, no, you are a light in the darkness. I am glad to talk to you.”
“I have a few questions,” I said.
“Let’s go grab a beer and talk.”
He said something in Chinese to the young girl in the store. She smiled and waved.
“It is a double tragedy,” Mr. Zheng said. “It is a tragedy for his mother and me. It is out of order. A break in the cycle. Children are not supposed to die before their parents. And then you think of it with the child in mind. Parents are supposed to be around to teach them about the world. It is the way. Yet it isn’t.”
I had nothing to say.
“But every human experiences tragedy, isn’t that right, Peter?”
I nodded.
“We must get through it,” he said, his hand on my shoulder. We walked to the same restaurant as before. We didn’t bother with the separate little room, instead taking seats at the empty bar. The bartender and Mr. Zheng talked in Chinese. We were brought Budweisers.
“Ted owed you quite a bit of money,” I said after we’d downed two good sips of beer each.
He shook his head.