S. J. Rozan - Ghost Hero: A Lydia Chin Bill Smith Novel

THIS BOOK IS FOR DAVID THOMPSON AND BILL REINKA

MISS YA, FELLAS!

CONTENTS

A big mgoi, xie xie, and thank you to

Steve Axelrod, my agent

Keith Kahla, my editor

Dr. Qian Zhijian

Xin Song

Reed Farrel Coleman, Nancy Ennis, Ed Lin, Jonathan Santlofer, Lisa Scottoline, Keith Snyder, Joseph Wallace

Steven Blier, Hillary Brown, Belmont Freeman, Max Rudin, James Russell, Amy Schatz

Betsy Harding, Royal Huber, Tom Savage

The Museum of Chinese in America

And a wish for good fortune to

Liu Xiaobo and Ai Weiwei

In a relentlessly chic and tranquil tea shop on the Lower East Side, I sat sipping gunpowder green and trying to figure out what my new client was up to. That the client, Jeff Dunbar, sat across the table laying out the case he was hiring me for, helped not at all.

Its about art, hed begun, stirring sugar into his straight-ahead American coffee after the pleased-to-meet-yous were over.

Art? Id tried to sound intrigued, as opposed to baffled, by this revelation. Dunbar had called the day before, saying he needed an investigator and had seen my Web site. Id expected, when we met on this chilly, bright spring morning, to hear a problem that was personalcheating fiance, two-timing wifeor professionalindustrial espionage, embezzling employees. Straying spouses and shady secretaries are my daily bread and the Web site says so. It doesnt mention art, a specialty outside any of my areas of expertise. If this case was about art, I had to wonder, why call me?

Dunbar sent a dollop of milk to join the sugar. Im a collector. Contemporary Chinese art. Do you know much about that?

Oh. This had to do with my contemporary Chineseness? Not much, no.

He nodded and settled back. Its a cutting-edge collecting area. Not really inside the PRC, even among the new rich, but in the West. Chinese painters, especially, but also sculptors, photographers, installation artiststheyre all hot. His voice was pleasant, measured, as though lecturing at a symposium on the globalized cultural marketplace. He looked the part, too: thirtyish, short dark hair, polished shoes, the only business suit in sight. That his art and his prospective detective were both Chinese couldnt be coincidence, but the detectives ignorance seemed okay with him. My antennae went up. Theres a class of Westerners who like rice: Theyre attracted to Asians, or, really, to their own exotic fantasies. If Jeff Dunbar had chosen Chinese art, and me, for that reason, he was about to get a fast good-bye. And stuck with the check.

But he didnt look it, and he wasnt acting it. Those guys invariably wear something Asian, at least a tie with a double-happiness pattern. They order tea. And, during Zen-like pauses, they gaze soulfully into my slanty eyes. Jeff Dunbar came across as a guy in a boring suit conducting a business meeting.

I decided to see where this was going. Tell me about this art. I dont think Ive seen much of it. I ransacked my brain, came up with little besides misty mountains and pine trees from five or six dynasties back. Is it like classical art? Ink on paper, that kind of thing?

Interesting you should ask that. Mostly, no. A lot of artists now work in Western mediaoils, acrylics. But the paintings Im concerned with happen to be inks. He set his cup down. Theres a painter named Chau Chun. Referred to as Chau Gwai Ying ShungGhost Hero Chau. Have you heard of him?

Im sorry, no. I added, Your pronunciation is very good. Do you speak Chinese?

Thanks. Yes, I minored in it in college. It occurred to me that people who spoke the language would be increasingly in demand.

And you majored in?

Art, of course.

Of course, except for the half-second pause before he said it. I didnt mean to interrupt. You were telling me about Ghost Hero Chau.

Yes. Well, Chau was a young professor at the Beijing Art Institute in the 1980s. His work from that period is very valuable.

How valuable is very?

A piece will sell for around half a million. A little more, a little less, depending.

Yes, I thought, that would be very.

A lot of artists his age were doing experimental work in those days, Dunbar went on, but Chau always worked in traditional media with traditional techniques. He made brush-and-ink scrolls: mountains, plum blossoms, lotus ponds. Classical-looking, and also traditional in another sense: They were political, but in arcane ways. Hidden symbols and metaphors, that sort of thing.

Thats traditional? I didnt know that.

Nature painting with coded commentary goes back to the Yuan Dynasty. About eight hundred years, he added, in case I didnt know my dynasties. The commentarys aimed at educated people of the painters political persuasion, but the coding gives the painter deniability. But dont worry, Ms. Chin. I didnt expect you to have any expertise in this field. Thats not why I called.

I have to admit thats a relief. So tell me, what can I do for you?

Recently, some new paintings of Ghost Hero Chaus seem to have surfaced. Again, inks, and again, political, criticizing the government, the Party, the economic free-for-all going on in China and the social disasters its causing.

Im surprised thats allowed. Criticizing the government can get you in trouble over there.

Very much so, if youre an activist lawyer, say. Or a writer. Artists, less often.

What makes them special?

Oh, it could be liberalization. Those hundred flowers finally blooming. Or, he smiled, maybe its that the artists are cash cows. The West loves political work. Collectors pay a fortune and the government takes a cut.

It does?

Well, so does ours, from our artists. We call it taxes. They call it something else but the results the same. Also, theres national pride. Sky-high prices make China a player in the art world.

But if the paintings are critical?

Ah, but with visual works, you can always say seeing something as antigovernment misses the point. That it was meant as ironic, tongue-in-cheek.

Deniability, like in the Yuan Dynasty.

Exactly.

And thats what the artists say? To keep the government off their backs?

Its what the government says, to explain why someones allowed to say in paint what a writer gets years of hard labor for saying in words. Of course, writers manifestos arent going for half a million U.S. dollars. The artists who get in trouble are the ones who dont keep their mouths shut. The ones who let their work do the talking are pretty safe.

I see. So people like this Ghost Hero Chau are insulated by money. I guess Im not surprised.

But Dunbar shook his head. Chaus a special case. For one thing, if what I hear is true, the new paintings are here, in New York.

If what you hear is true? You mean you havent seen them? I was getting a glimmer of what this was about.

Thats right. I havent, and no one seems to know where they are. Im hoping you can find them.

Because Im Chinese?

That sounds like racial profiling, doesnt it? He smiled again. I suppose it is. It occurred to me, if I wasnt having any luck tracking the paintings through art channels, there might be another way. I did an online search for a Chinese investigator.

I might have taken offense, but after all, thats why my Chinese clients come to me, too. Tell me something, Mr. Dunbar. If no ones seen these paintings, what makes you think they exist?

Rumors. The collecting communitys always full of rumors. Backhanded, of course, because everyones trying to beat everyone to the prize.

Can you give me an example?

Oh, someone sidles up to you at an opening and asks if youve heard this nonsense about the new Chaus, the Ghost Heros ghost paintings that dont exist. Theyre hoping youll say, Yes, they do, I saw them. If you do, theyll ask where, as if you must be crazy, and when you tell them, theyll laugh and say youve lost your touch, someones passing off fakes and you fell for it. Ghost Hero Chau, for Gods sake. Then its, Oh, look at the time, Ive got to go , and before theyre out the door theyre speed-dialing whoever you said had the Chaus.