“When Rosalie fell, the fog of madness cleared instantly. What had I done? Both children reached for her, wailing. I called out, ordered my companions to leave with me. As they had for weeks, they obeyed. The old houseboy chased after us. One of my friends stopped him with one shot.”

C. D. Zhang’s labored breathing and his pallor made me think he wouldn’t go on, but after a few moments he turned his gaze to me. “We took nothing with us. Do you understand? Nothing. If Rosalie wore the Shanghai Moon, my companion didn’t find it.”

It took me time to regain my voice. The Shanghai Moon seemed almost beside the point. Still, I asked, “How do you know? What’s to say he didn’t keep it from you?”

“Because he died! They died, both of them, fighting to force their way onto a ship on which they could not buy passage! The Shanghai Moon would have saved them. But they-we-didn’t have it.

“So I and my father sailed for Taipei, and my fellows died. We came to America, and I started a new life. But there’s no putting the past behind you, no matter what you’re told. The sight of my companions’ hands reaching out to me from the gangway has haunted me always. And another sight, so similar: those two young boys, reaching for Rosalie.”

Another cough; then, with clearly slipping strength, he resumed. “Twenty years later, when I received that letter from Shanghai, I felt I’d been given a new chance. I could help my brother and my cousin, I could save them, and we could be a family. But of course that hasn’t happened. It would have been much more than I deserved. My brother especially has always felt a discomfort in my presence. He’s a sweet-natured man and regrets this sentiment he doesn’t understand. As though his unease were the result of some flaw in himself.”

C. D. Zhang’s eyes slowly closed. “I didn’t take their money,” he murmured. “I’d taken far too much from them already.”

Bill and I had left the hospital and were back in Chinatown, but even these familiar streets didn’t give me any sense of being on solid ground.

“You think it’s true?” I asked. “What he said?”

“Could you tell a story like that if it weren’t true?”

“He killed Rosalie? But…”

“But you like him.”

“And he was family!”

“Families are complicated things.” He lit a cigarette and didn’t look at me.

I trudged on glumly. I didn’t like this new knowledge; it was weighty and disheartening and didn’t seem to offer any compensation, like for example help in figuring out where the million dollars was. Or the Shanghai Moon.

“We have a plan?” Bill asked.

“Are you kidding?” I turned down Mulberry for no good reason. At Bayard we stopped for a funeral to go by. In my mood, I wasn’t surprised; I might have conjured it. Red and yellow flowers frothed on the grille of the hearse, surrounding a photo of the deceased. A youngish man; I could see his wife and children in the next car, stunned and still. I wondered who was at home preparing the funeral meal, and whether it would be as chaotic as Joel’s shiva.

And suddenly I was struck by a bolt of lightning.

I grabbed Bill’s arm.

“What?”

“Wait.” I ran it through in my mind once more, to make sure I was right. I was. “Joel’s fishy thing. It was in the call with David Rosenberg. Oh, damn! Why didn’t I see it sooner?”

“I don’t see it now. Care to explain?”

“Alice asked him for a PI!”

“And?”

“In Zurich! At a cocktail party. Before she left for Shanghai. Before she met Wong Pan, before he skipped out. Before this all started!”

Bill didn’t answer. I could see in his eyes he was doing what I’d done, playing the conversation with Rosenberg over in his mind.

Three more funeral cars rolled by, holding more solemn children. Nieces, nephews? Cousins? The kind I had, so many and so distant that even my mother couldn’t run down the lines of connection? But it didn’t matter; family was family. Better if you could choose relatives, my mother had said. But you can’t.

“But you can!” I burst out as the second bolt hit. I saw not the black cars in front of me but other funerals, plain pine boxes, garden graves, winding sheets. Swampy water and bricks weighting bodies down.

“You can what?”

“You just said it. Families are complicated things.” I whipped out my phone and dialed Rosenberg’s number.

“Hello, Ms. Chin. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks.” If you didn’t count the guns, the sidewalk scuffle, the police station, C. D. Zhang’s depressing revelations, and the jolts from the lightning. “But I have to ask you something. When you talked to Joel, you told him Alice had asked about a PI in New York. Did you tell him when she asked?”

“Not precisely. I think I said a few weeks back.”

“Thank you! Talk to you later.”

“Wait. Are you in a rush, or shall I tell you what I’ve learned about the forged documents? My reporter’s spoken to his street source. I was waiting until my information was complete, but I can give you what I have now if you’d like.”

“Oh. Oh, yes, please.”

“Alice Fairchild probably did have them made, in Zurich. There were a Chinese passport and a U.S. visa in the name of Wu Ming.”

“Thank you. And”-a wild guess, but it was so clear to me now-“a Swiss passport, too?”

“Yes. How did you know that? For herself, though why-”

I interrupted. “In what name?”

“Helga Ulrich.”

“Thanks! Good-bye.” I speed-dialed Mary. “Unbelievable!” I said to Bill while I waited.

“What is?”

“How stupid I am.”

Mary answered her phone with “If you’re in trouble, I don’t want to hear about it.”

“Trust me, I wouldn’t tell you. Listen, this is important. Alice Fairchild has a Swiss passport in another name. She’s probably registered at a hotel using it.”

“What name?”

“Helga Ulrich.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

“Swiss. No, seriously, it’s a long story.”

“Do I want to hear it now?”

“No, you want to go looking for Alice.”

“You’re right, but first tell me how you know this.”

I was tempted to remind her PIs have an ecological niche in the crime-fighting world, too, but I just gave her the facts.

“Oh,” she said grudgingly. “Not bad.”

“You’re welcome. ‘Bye.” I clicked off before she could ask what I was up to next, even though I didn’t know what I was up to next. But fresh adrenaline was sizzling in my veins. Turning to Bill, I said, “Alice has-”

“I was eavesdropping. Helga Ulrich?”

“How about that?”

We stood on the sidewalk and discussed how about that. We were on our way to a hell of a theory, I thought, when we were interrupted by my phone ringing again. It wasn’t the Wonder Woman song but, hoping it was Mary calling from some landline to tell me my tip had panned out and they’d found Alice, I answered anyway.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s your cousin, cuz. I got some shit for you. You want it?”

Crabby because it wasn’t Mary, I said, “If that’s all you have.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Go ahead, I’m listening.”

Warily, he said, “That shit you asked about before, I don’t know nothing, like I said.”

“Armpit-”

“Just listen! That fat dude, got picked up today when dai lo got grabbed-anything you can do about that, by the way? Cuz?”

“No.”

“I just thought, since you’re tight with the cops-”

“You thought wrong. Keeping them off you is about all I can do, and it’s getting harder every minute. Armpit, I’m busy here. You have something for me or not?”

“Jesus, take a chill pill. That fat guy, like I say. Warren says he saw him. With dai lo, twice. You know, at meetings I couldn’t make.”

Or wouldn’t have been invited to if you were the last White Eagle standing. “You’re telling me Wong Pan and Fishface Deng knew each other. It’s nice to have that corroborated, Armpit, but we’d kind of figured it out by now.”