“No.” Mr. Zhang’s voice was gentle with regret. “No more.”

Maybe I should go for the gun, I thought, even in this crowded room, before Alice totally loses control.

Suddenly her face brightened. “Jewelry! Oh, yes! I’ll take what you have here and sell it, and Mr. Chen, I’m sure you’re insured! Everyone will be fine! Oh, I wish I’d thought of this sooner!” Smiling happily, she stood and gestured for Mr. Chen and Mr. Zhang to get up. Mr. Zhang rose and helped his cousin, whose pale face was sweating.

Okay, I thought. We’ll go to the front, and someone will see this crazy lady with a gun and call the cops. Or I’ll distract her and Bill can jump her. Or Mary will finally turn up.

I followed Bill, who followed the cousins, with Alice behind us. Irene Ng’s confusion when Bill and I charged in was nothing to her shock as our little parade came out.

“It’s all right, Irene,” Mr. Zhang said soothingly. Mr. Chen didn’t speak.

“Lock the door,” Alice told Irene. The young assistant seemed rooted to the spot, but Alice moved the gun an inch or so, and Irene hurried to the front.

Mr. Zhang spoke again, calmly. “Irene, please open that case”-he pointed to a display of diamonds, sapphires, and emeralds in gold settings-“and put everything into a bag.” Irene’s wide eyes found Mr. Chen, who managed a nod. With shaking hands she unlocked the case, took a velvet sack from a drawer, and slipped necklace after bracelet after ring into it. I glanced at Alice, hoping her hands weren’t shaking, too. All right, I thought, bystanders, it’s time to show some Chinatown spirit. Get involved! Call a cop! I mean, here was a daylight robbery on Canal Street. Someone had to care.

Someone did, too. Just not someone I was expecting.

Irene had the case emptied when shattering glass tinkled and the burglar alarm started to shriek. Shards rained, a brick hit the floor, and seconds later so did my cousin, Armpit.

Bill, less dumbfounded than I-or just more able to function in surreal situations-yanked Alice’s hand ceilingward. A bullet screamed and brought down a spray of plaster.

And that was it. Bill had the gun. Alice’s face crumpled into disbelief, then defeat. She leaned heavily on the emptied case.

As the alarm howled, everyone but Alice stared at my cousin. Blood oozed onto his skeevy tee from a cut down the center of his new tattoo. His face was scratched, too, from his dive through the broken window. Bill asked Irene to turn off the alarm, and by the time the screeching stopped I’d located my voice.

“Armpit? What are you doing?”

He looked up at me as though I’d just won the Year’s Dumbest Question prize. “She was holding up the store.”

“You didn’t have to come crashing through a window. You could have called the police.”

“The police? Are you tripping, cuz? Old Man Chen pays good money for his orange trees.”

I just stared, and stared some more. Could I really be related to the only gangster in Chinatown dumb enough to think a protection racket was about protection?

Apparently I was.

“Dai lo and all are in jail,” Armpit explained. “Someone has to take care of the customers.”

Armpit’s astounding brainlessness and attendant bravery merited hours of discussion, which they would certainly get. For one thing, I couldn’t wait to tell my mother.

But I’d have to wait. Mr. Chen, pale and sweating, collapsed in a heap on the glass-strewn floor.

“You wouldn’t consider”-Mary stirred honey into her tea-“moving to, say, New Smyrna Beach, Florida?”

“Why would I?”

“Because I understand they have no crime there.”

Bill and I were sitting with Mary and Inspector Wei over debriefing caffeine in a diner near St. Vincent’s. Mr. Chen’s heart attack, serious but survivable, had put him on the same floor in the same hospital as his cousin C. D. Zhang.

“If I did, you’d have to explain to my mother why you made me go all the way there.”

Mary had a solution to that: “Take her with you.”

That was a laughable idea, but I wasn’t ready to laugh in Mary’s company yet. I was cautiously optimistic, however, that her attitude toward me might have improved, based on her afternoon. The Helga Ulrich tip had given her Alice’s hotel room at the Peninsula and Rosalie’s jewelry in the hotel safe. And though Fishface Deng and his attorney were still swearing the White Eagles had been up to absolutely nothing, Alice, completely deflated, had already told her story on NYPD videotape. Plus one more thing: that she’d hired Fishface to shoot at us-and miss-in Sara Roosevelt Park. As a diversion, in case I’d brought cops along to hamper her escape. Since in fact I had, I could only admire her foresight.

“You know, Lydia,” Mary said, “for someone who was supposed to be your client, you’ve messed up her plans right and left.”

“I thought her being my client didn’t matter to you.”

Mary gave me a searching look, and then a sigh. “I know how hard this was for you guys, turning a client over. I appreciate it.”

From Mary, at that moment, that was huge. “You do know we wouldn’t do this for just any cop?”

Inspector Wei grinned slyly. “You mean, if officer needs informations is Detective Mulgrew, you don’t give?”

“If officer needs a Kleenex is Detective Mulgrew, I don’t give.”

“Well, as long as we’re talking about things no one likes,” Mary said, “I might as well tell you this: The DA wants to charge C. D. Zhang as a co-conspirator.”

“What?” My tea took on a bitter taste. “You can’t.”

“Not us, the DA. He stole the money.”

“Um. I don’t think he stole the money.”

“He had to. Who else?”

Keeping things from Mary made my tea taste even worse, but I just said, “Well, what if he did? If Mr. Zhang won’t press charges-”

“If it’s part of the conspiracy, it doesn’t matter. They won’t charge him with theft, just racketeering. The DA doesn’t really want him. They want to squeeze him into rolling on the White Eagles.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

“Then I guess he’ll go to prison.”

“Mary! He’s an old man!” Which she’d pointed out to me just a few hours ago.

“That’s why he’ll cooperate. I’m sure he’d rather have his relatives know he stole their money than end up in Green Haven.”

“What if he didn’t?”

“Cooperate?”

“Steal it.”

She shrugged. “Then maybe he can help figure out who did.”

That was it for the diner meeting, besides Mary’s suggestion that I leave town, which was looking better and better. Bill and I declined her offer of a ride and stood on the corner watching her and the inspector drive away.

“I would seriously hate it if C. D. Zhang went to prison for not stealing his brother’s money,” I said.

Bill didn’t answer, just lit a cigarette. I waited, in case it helped him think. “If he didn’t steal that money-”

“Then who did? I know,” I said crossly. “But-”

“No, wait. If he didn’t, it might be because it wasn’t there.”

I eyed him. “The briefcase was full of newspaper from the beginning? Why?”

“There are only two possibilities I can think of.”

We discussed them. Neither was pleasant, and it didn’t take long. We didn’t discuss what to do next. But as if we had, we stepped off the curb and headed for the hospital in perfect sync.

We found Mr. Zhang sitting in Mr. Chen’s room, drinking vending-machine tea. He smiled when he saw us. “It’s kind of you to come,” he whispered. “I’m afraid my cousin is asleep. Can I offer you tea?”

“Thank you, we just had some,” I said. “Mr. Zhang, we need to talk to you.”

Mr. Zhang glanced at his cousin, hooked to a bank of blinking, peeping, and line-drawing machines. He stood and led us down the hall to a sitting area. We settled on bright vinyl chairs, which didn’t match my mood at all.

“How’s Mr. Chen?” I asked, before we started on the real business.