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for the pleasure of seeing him; but it’s also for the idea of
your
smile when you read about Paul; and practice for the smile I’ll be wearing when I greet you and Uncle Horst in Shanghai!
    Take care, Mama.
    Your Rosalie
    “Lydia? Are you okay? Wake up.”
    “What? Oh, Mary, I’m sorry!” I jumped from my stool and hugged my best and oldest friend.
    “What are you reading?” Mary unslung her shoulder bag and pulled out a stool, her long braid swinging as she sat. When she was in uniform she’d complained about having to wear her hair stuffed under her cap. Since that was pretty much the only thing she didn’t like about being a cop, now that she’d made detective and was in plainclothes, life was good.
    “It’s from my case. It’s kind of sad.” I gave her a brief rundown: Alice Fairchild, the Jewish refugees in Shanghai—which she’d never heard of either, just proving we went to school together—the excavation site, and the jewelry; and Rosalie Gilder, writing to her mother. “She was just a kid. Trying to be a grown-up and look out for her little brother, excited and scared and missing her mom. She keeps saying, ‘I can’t wait to see you again.’ But she never did.”
    “God. That’s awful.”
    “It was a long time ago. But it makes me feel like, how
dare
this Wong Pan guy steal her mother’s jewelry? Like he stole it from
her
.”
    “What happened to her and her brother?”
    “Alice Fairchild says it’s not clear. I guess a lot of people can’t be traced from after the war. But I’m starting to feel . . . protective. As though I knew her.”
    A young Chinatown-cool waiter—blond-streaked hair, tight black pants—appeared. We ordered tea eggs, chicken skewers, and lemongrass soup.
    “Enough of the sad past.” I folded Rosalie’s letter and stuffed it into my bag. “Tell me about
your
case.”
    “Nothing much to tell. Guy was found shot in a hotel room. Wallet was gone. Registered as Wu Ming.”
    “ ‘Anonymous’? Oh, great, a joker. Okay, show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
    We traded pictures.
    Our quarries looked alike, if by that you mean they were both middle-aged Chinese men. Hers was thinner and wore short hair; mine was pudgy and had short hair, too, but grayer.
    “Yours is better-looking,” Mary said.
    “Well, he’s alive.”
    “I guess that’s an advantage in a man. Is he wanted for something? Here, I mean?”
    “Not that I know of. In China, for running off with the cultural patrimony.”
    “If he’s not wanted here, I can’t show his picture around for you, though. Sorry.”
    “That’s okay. I’m not really looking for him anyway, justthe jewelry.” Our soup arrived, and we put our work away. Mary gave me the past month in her life, filled me in on gossip my mother hadn’t gotten to, and asked about my family.
    “My brothers are all thriving, in their own unique and bizarre ways,” I told her. “And I’ve been back less than twenty-four hours and my mother’s already driving me up the wall.”
    Mary nodded her sympathy. “She told my mom yesterday that you’d taken a case with a guy who irritates you so you wouldn’t be thinking about Bill.”
    “Oh, for Pete’s sake! Why does she
do
that? You’d think she’d be happy.”
    “She’s your mother. You’re not happy, she’s not happy, even if what makes you happy makes her unhappy. Why don’t you call him?”
    “He doesn’t want me to.”
    “So?”
    “Listen, I’d love to sit and chat about my twisted professional and personal life, but I have jewelry to track down. And aren’t you on duty?”
    “Oh, nice sidestep. Well, whenever you want to talk about it, I’m here.”
    We gathered up our things and went out to show Chinatown photographs of men we didn’t know.
    The day got old and so did my search. Yang Nuan-yi, as it turned out, had learned her husband’s Shanghainese dialect, but the only person she’d spoken it to lately was her husband. Old Wong at Harmony Jewelers