“Why? So he’ll think you guys are smart?”

“No. So he’ll think you are.”

By the time we hung up, she was on her way to being mollified, though she wasn’t about to admit it.

“So are you good like this all the time, or what?” I asked Bill as we headed down a sweltering and silent Elizabeth Street.

“Modesty forbids the truth.”

“I’m annoyed at myself, though. I should have thought of this.”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t. If you thought of everything, what would you need me for?”

I was a little surprised when I came up with a couple of answers to that. But not when I kept them to myself.

Then I did go home. Which turned out to be odd in its own way.

My mother keeps three of the five locks on our door locked at any given time, changing the formula weekly, on the theory that the bad guys will lock the unlocked ones as they pick them. Pulling my key gently out of the last one, which rattles, I stepped in, slipped off my shoes, and tiptoed into the living room. I was halfway across before I remembered there was no need: My mother wasn’t here. “Oh,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything smarter. I flipped the light on. Everything looked the same as when we’d left. And why shouldn’t it? I got ready for bed, trying to think if I’d ever spent the night alone in this apartment. When I was a kid and Ted and Elliot were in high school, my parents would visit cousins, leaving us alone for a night or two, but there were five of us. In college I had my own apartment in Queens for two years, and I’ve stayed in hotels, and house-sat and pet-sat for friends lots of times, so I’ve spent the night alone in a lot of places. None of that ever seemed weird.

But this did.

I woke later than usual, after a night of uneasy dreams: shifting images of dark places, a sense of trying to cover a long distance in time I knew was too short. A hovering, sneering, disembodied moon face. In the kitchen I found no boiled water: Well, who’d have put the kettle on? I did that, then whipped it off to dump out the extra water I’d run to make the quart for my mother’s thermos. I waved to old Chow Lun leaning on his pillow and, after investigating the fridge, sliced some scallions for congee.

Drinking tea, I ignored the echoing emptiness of the apartment and tried to decide what to make of the day. I didn’t get far before the red kitchen phone rang.

“Hey, Lyd, it’s Ted.”

My heart pounded. “Everything okay with Ma?”

“Sure. She just wanted me to check up on you.”

“On me? What could have happened to me since last night?”

“Whatever you thought was going to happen to her. But this isn’t real, right? That something dangerous is going on? It’s a trick to get Ma to come back out here, isn’t it?”

Two of my brothers don’t like my job because they worry about me; one enjoys the idea of a PI sister, and besides, he says I should do whatever I want; and one thinks I never do anything right at all and wants me to leave this profession before I embarrass the family. Ted, the eldest, is in the first group. I deflected his question with another.

“Is she driving you nuts?”

“No, she settled right back in downstairs. Went out first thing this morning to check on her melon vines.”

“Oh.” I felt a pang I couldn’t explain. “Is that why she didn’t call me herself?”

“The kids are helping her stake them. But she wanted me to tell you she talked to Clifford Kwan’s mother this morning. Isn’t that Armpit?”

“Yes, remember him?” Ted’s eight years older than I am, so our memories of childhood are sometimes different. He, for example, remembers our mother with dark hair. By the time I came along, her older children had already turned her whole head gray. Or so she tells it.

But this time Ted and I were singing the same tune. “Sure I do. Nasty little brat. I guess he never straightened out?”

“Not even close. Why do you say that, though? Did Ma say something about him?”

“Only that I should tell you he’s breaking his mother’s heart worse than ever, or something like that. He was supposed to go out to Leonia for a big family picnic this afternoon, but he called and said he couldn’t make it. His brothers and sisters are all going, so his mom’s upset.”

“Me, I think she should count her blessings.”

“Yeah, but you know mothers. She really wanted him to go because his nephews will be there and she thought playing with them might awaken some family feeling in him.”

“Not likely. There’s no one on what passes for Armpit’s mind but himself.”

“That may not be entirely accurate.” Ted’s a professor of organic chemistry, so he can be a little pedantic. “His excuse broke his mother’s heart even more. He said something important was going on in Chinatown today that he had to be there for. He wouldn’t tell her what, but he said his new brothers needed him.”

“His new brothers? He used those words?”

“According to Ma, that means the White Eagles. Don’t you think she’s exaggerating, though? Clifford? In a real gang?”

I just said, “Maybe.”

“His mom asked, what did he mean his new brothers needed him, what about his old brothers? But Clifford said they’d never liked him anyway.”

I was sure they hadn’t and were better men for it. I thanked Ted, hung up, and speed-dialed Mary.

“No” was how she answered.

“It’s today,” I said before she could hang up.

“What is?”

“Whatever the White Eagles are up to. Armpit canceled out on a picnic at his mom’s.”

“Canceled out on a picnic? And that makes you think-”

“He said something big was happening. In Chinatown, today. That his new brothers needed him for.”

“That could be a wet T-shirt party.”

“You know I’m right.”

“I know you’d better stay away from the White Eagles. I’ll check it out, but if it turns out to be anything, I don’t want you there.” Then she said it again in Cantonese.

“Hey, that was good.”

“You want to hear it in Spanish?”

“I think I get it. But Mary, what about Mr. Chen and Wong Pan?”

“What about them?”

“Mary! You said you’d keep an eye on Mr. Chen! Because Wong Pan might-”

“Okay, okay, I was just giving you a hard time. We’re surveilling his shop. If he leaves we’ll follow him. You keep away from him, too.”

“Oh, you’re acting like such a cop! And ‘surveill’ isn’t a word, you know.”

“And you’re acting like an English teacher! Thinking of changing professions?”

“No, teaching’s way too dangerous for me.”

Mary emphasized the danger I’d be in if I were anywhere near the White Eagles today-“and I don’t mean from the White Eagles”-and we said good-bye, in a manner I thought was fairly civilized for threatener and threatenee. I briefly debated whether it was too early to call Bill, decided to call anyway, and had just punched his number on the kitchen phone when my cell phone rang.

“Smith,” came the rumble in my kitchen phone ear.

“I’ll call you back.” I hung up that one up and flipped open the other.

“Good morning, Ms. Chin. David Rosenberg here. I hope I’m not calling too early?”

“Mr. Rosenberg! Good to hear from you. No, it’s not too early at all. How can I help you?”

“I’ve just had a call from one of my reporters in Zurich. He’s been doing the background on Alice Fairchild that you asked for. Nothing he’s found so far is particularly surprising, but I thought you’d like to hear it.”

“Yes, I certainly would.”

“Born Shanghai 1938. Father James Fairchild, mother Frances Fairchild, both Methodist missionaries. One sister, Joan Fairchild Conrad, born 1939. I met her years ago.”

“Yes, I remember you mentioned that.” I tucked the phone onto my shoulder and plopped congee into a bowl. “You said they were Mutt and Jeff. Different from each other.” Lydia Chin, queen of the cultural reference.