The Misfortune Cookie

17 Crisis, critical moment

“It was a small box of gourmet fortune cookies. A gift from Lily Yee,” I told Max, relieved that he was taking my news much better than I had expected. “Mary Fox thought Ted’s mother was trying to make her feel welcome, since she was the only person in the cast or crew who wasn’t Chinese.”

“Ah, I think I see,” Max said gravely, his expression sad but resigned. By the time I had arrived at the bookstore to share my information, a couple of hours after Ted’s call had awoken me, Max had already come to some sobering conclusions of his own. He continued, “Because Mary wasn’t Chinese, she was the only one whom Lily could count on not to recognize the Chinese symbols in the fortunes that lay within those cookies?”

“That’s what I think,” I confirmed. “Even someone like John, who wasn’t any good at his Chinese lessons, can read at least a hundred characters. Out of the entire cast and crew, Mary was the only person who Lily could be positive would never recognize any of the Chinese symbols for bad luck, injury, illness, and harm that must have been written on those fortunes.”

And, indeed, she did not. The actress, who enjoyed an occasional treat, kept breaking open those fortune cookies, with no idea that they were the cause of her various problems. And I didn’t tell her the truth when pumping her for information by phone this morning, under the chatty guise of wanting to wish her well and get her insights into Alicia. Fortunately, she had eaten the last of the cookies only minutes before breaking her leg, so no more mystical misfortune would be inflicted on the poor woman. Mary was safe now.

“When I think of what Lily put Mary through, Max . . .” I shook my head in appalled revulsion.

Chinese New Year celebrations were underway in Chinatown. With various streets closed off for the festivities and traffic so heavy on the thoroughfares, Max and I had abandoned our taxi from the West Village before we reached Canal Street. It would be faster to walk the rest of the way. So we were proceeding to Yee & Sons Trading Company on foot, bundled up against the weather. It was sunny out, a good day for a colorful celebration, but cold.

“Mary’s a trooper, though. A real pro,” I said with admiration. “She kept coming to work despite the rash, the anaphylactic shock, being run over by a food cart. It must have driven Lily crazy that her curses were working, yet the actress didn’t quit and production kept rolling forward.”

As we reached Canal Street and waited for the light to change so we could cross, I continued, “I think that must be why Lily started in on Benny next. If she was going to take the risk of cursing someone else with bad luck, someone who actually might recognize some of the symbols she used, then it needed to be worth the risk. If she got rid of Ted’s backer, then the project would collapse. So it must have seemed worth chancing.”

Benny was raised in the US and probably no scholar, but he was very superstitious. Maybe Lily had played on that. If you convince a man who believes in bad luck that he’s cursed with it, perhaps it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Had Benny’s business losses and misfortune in the final weeks of his life been Lily’s doing? I suspected they must be, since Benny’s losses ensured that Grace Yee couldn’t continue supporting the film after her husband’s death and had to sell the loft where Ted’s production was based.

I also thought I knew who had told Grace Yee about her late husband’s affair with his secretary. Lily probably hadn’t expected the hysterical scene at the wake. I thought she must have intended to distract Grace from the subject of the death curse . . . which Grace had found suspect enough to take home with her before she gave it to John.

“I think Lily wanted Ted to get more serious about working in the store and someday taking it over,” I said as Max and I crossed Canal Street, along with dozens of other pedestrians. “He dropped out of art school. He needed her to rescue him when his band went bust. Enough was enough, from her perspective. And now he was devoting all his time and energy to filmmaking. Whether or not his mother realized how lame his script was, she must have known how disorganized the production was and how bad Ted was at running things.”

I recalled Susan’s noisy hostility to Ted in a public restaurant after Officer Novak shut down our illegal filming in Doyers Street. It was probably far from being Ted’s first absurdly careless screw-up on this production, and it obviously drove his family crazy.

“Even so . . .” I shook my head. “Escalating to murder just to try to halt Ted’s film? It’s crazy.”

“Also evil,” Max said.

“Does Lily seem that unbalanced to you?”

“I don’t know her well, Esther. And I must confess that my judgment has been clouded by her resemblance to a woman I admired very much,” he said with mingled sorrow and self-recrimination.

“Li Xiuying.”

Max seemed surprised that I remembered the name. “Yes. And Li Xiuying would be . . .” He smiled a little wryly. “. . . critical of my foolishness, rather than flattered or sentimental, if she knew that my memories of her had interfered with my efficacy when lives were at stake.”

I recalled that John’s father also seemed to have a soft spot for Lily; and I remembered how warmly she had greeted Uncle Six at Benny’s wake despite obviously not having been pleased to see him arrive. “Lily Yee isn’t just a woman who physically resembles someone you admired, Max. She’s also one who uses her beauty and her charm with experienced skill.”

Even Mary Fox, with whom I had spoken this morning, thought Ted’s mother was “the sweetest lady,” though I now knew Lily Yee had inflicted just about everything but plague and boils on her.

I could hear Chinese music coming from the park, blaring through loudspeakers. In the narrow streets and lanes around us, I heard the rhythmic pounding of drums and cymbals—the traditional accompaniment to the lion dancers, who were roaming the neighborhood now. As we left Canal and turned down a side street, we came upon one such company. An immense orange lion was bobbing, bounding, and leaping around gracefully outside of a tofu shop, demanding his due. People were gathered around watching, while the musicians who traveled with the lion played the hypnotic percussion music for his performance. The two men who wore the costume—one as the head, one as the body—worked so well together, it was easy to forget that the prancing, beautiful creature was a two-man puppet rather than an enchanted four-legged beast. Its massive, dragon-like head was decorated with gold, red, and white fringe, and it was batting its long eyelashes flirtatiously at the various spectators and passersby on this street—including me and Max; but we were too preoccupied to appreciate the performance. As we approached, a smiling shopkeeper came outside and offered the lion a red envelope of lucky money and half a head of cabbage.

“Lily is also a more daring woman than I would have guessed,” I said to Max after we were far enough away from the musicians that we could hear each other’s voices again.

Like the rest of Chinatown, this street was very crowded today. I took Max’s arm so we wouldn’t get separated as we made our way through the dense throng of people.

Lowering my voice so we wouldn’t be overheard, I continued, “She’s tried to murder a cop, and she’s killed two tong bosses. It’s not really what you expect of a softspoken widow who runs a retail shop.”

“No, it’s not,” he agreed. “Lily may not be acting alone. In any case, it’s the shop that should have alerted me sooner. The disorientation that everyone experiences in the store. It was a cue that mystical energy was at work there, but due to . . . to my compromised judgment, I didn’t recognize it.”

After calling Mary this morning and getting confirmation of my new theory that this whole murderous mess was about sabotaging Ted Yee’s film, I had put on heavy layers of sensible winter clothing and raced over to Max’s to try to convince him that Lily Yee was our villain. I had expected to encounter considerable resistance, given the interest he had shown in her. Instead, I was surprised to find that he had formed a similar theory since last night, albeit via a different path of investigation.

He had realized last night that the misfortune cookies were the product of a subtle and devious personality whose motives we had entirely overlooked in our pursuit of more obvious ones elsewhere. Combined with his uneasiness about Lily’s confusing emporium, he had stayed up late researching his suspicions and experimenting with a potential solution.

“I believe the store is mystically warded,” Max said as we turned another corner, getting closer to Yee & Sons. “In its natural state, it is indeed a large establishment, but probably rational and orderly in its layout. The effects of mystically manipulating feng shui elements are what make it such a puzzling place in which everyone gets confused and lost. Except for members of the Yee family, who are presumably protected from the effect with a countermeasure. Probably something quite simple, such as a charm or blessing bestowed at periodic intervals, perhaps under the guise of a family ritual that Ted, who seems to be innocent in all this, considers benign.”

“Well, your theory would explain why an airhead like Ted can always find his way around that place while habitually competent people like John and Lopez can’t even find the second floor,” I said. “But why would Lily turn her own store into such a maze, Max?”

“To conceal what’s going on there,” he said grimly. “The creation of fatal curses. The disorientation is a side effect of this concealment, not a goal in itself. In fact, I postulate that it is an unwelcome side effect, since it is noticeable and inconvenient—but a side effect which its creator is apparently not experienced or skilled enough to mitigate or eliminate.”

“The effect is recent. I know that much,” I said. “She hasn’t been doing this forever. John said the store didn’t used to be like that—so confusing, so hard to navigate. Which means that cursing people with death probably isn’t a lifelong habit. It’s something she turned to recently—after Ted, instead of settling down to run the store now, decided to make movies.”

And rather than let her grown son live his own life—or just kick him out of her house if she disapproved of his pursuits—Lily had inflicted illness and accidents on a lead actress in his film, imposed financial problems on Benny before murdering him, killed Ted’s next backer, too, and tried to murder Lopez for helping expedite Ted’s filming permits.

If we found any misfortune cookies at Yee & Sons today, I’d be very tempted to shove them down Lily’s throat.

“Here we are.” As we reached the front door of Yee’s Trading Company, I looked at Max with concern. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

Max smiled sadly and gave my arm a reassuring squeeze. “She is not Li Xiuying. She never was. I merely . . . danced with a ghost for an evening or two.”

“Oh, Max . . . Li Xiuying must have been quite a woman.”

“She was remarkable,” he said wistfully. Then he cleared his throat. “But she has been gone a long time, and there are people here and now who need our protection—as she would certainly remind me. So, come,” he said firmly. “We must put an end to this dreadful business.”

“Yes.”

When we entered the shop, though, rather than immediately launch into a confrontation with Lily, who was standing near the cash register, we just stared in bemused surprise.

Apparently the Yee family had turned a corner of some sort since I had spoken with Ted this morning.

Lily stood there with her long black hair tumbled down her back, rather than in a tidy bun. Her beautiful face, free of makeup today, was ravaged with emotion and streaked with tears. And Ted, always so easy-going and cheerful, was now shouting at her in anger.

When he saw us, he cried, “Esther! You would not believe what my family has been doing!”

“Inflicting terrible curses on anyone who tries to help you make this movie?” I guessed.

Lily shrieked in horror, covered her face with her hands, and sank to her knees, sobbing copiously. Which wasn’t really the reaction I had been expecting.

Ted’s jaw hung open as he stared as me. “You know?”

“We figured it out a little while ago.” Since Ted wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, I asked, “How did you find out?”

Over his mother’s wailing sobs, which he ignored, Ted said, “After I talked with you, I was ready to tell Mom my decision. That I’m going to quit making the film.” With an exasperated look at his sobbing mother, he said, “She thought that meant I’d work full-time in the store now and eventually take it over. But I explained that will never happen. Never!” He looked at Lily and shouted, “Get that through your head, once and for all!”

“After all I have done!” she shrieked.

Ted said to us, “I’m thinking of going into graphic novels. I’ve always loved comic books, and it would be a great format for ABC. In fact, I think I could get a whole series out of Brian’s search for identity! See, I’d change the story so that—”

“And your mother reacted badly?” I asked loudly.

“My mother reacted like a lunatic,” Ted said with a long-suffering look, starting to calm down a little now that he was talking to someone who was not his mother. “Oh, my God, Esther, the things Mom did to Mary. Unbelievable! I think we should give Mary this whole damn store by way of apology.”

Max asked, “Where are the misfortune cookies made?”

“Huh?”

“The curses,” Max clarified. “Where is the work done?”

“Oh. I don’t know. We didn’t get that far.” He looked at his mother. “Mom?”

Lily wiped her runny nose with her sleeve. Breathing hard, still on her knees, she thought it over for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. The workshop should be destroyed. She will kill again.”

“She?” I said.

“Susan.” Max looked at Lily. “It was Susan who augmented the attacks, wasn’t it?”

“I urged patience,” Lily sobbed. “There was no need to kill. The white girl was out of the movie. Benny was losing money everywhere and couldn’t keep funding the film. We only needed to wait . . . But Susan is too American.”

“I beg your pardon?” I said, offended.

“For her, everything must be now, now, now.”

“Oh, that’s not because she’s American, you manipulative, curse-inflicting witch,” I snapped. “It’s because she’s a homicidal maniac!” Then I blinked in surprise and looked at Max. “It’s Susan, then?”

“It’s both of them,” Ted said in disgust. “Mom, I am so leaving home. For good, this time.”

Max said, “Lily had the gift and taught it to her daughter—who has, I believe, a very great talent?”

Lily nodded and then let out another keening wail, rocking back and forth on her knees.

“You suspected this?” I said to Max.

“Not until you told me about poor Mary Fox on the way here,” he said. “That’s when I realized the approach to sabotaging Ted’s film had changed a great deal, though the methodology had remained the same. I suspected a devious, amoral mother may have started the plot, and then been superseded by a very talented and murderous daughter.”

“Susan killed Benny and Uncle Six?” Then I realized something else. “Susan tried to kill Lopez!”

“She wanted to kill John, too,” said Ted in outrage. “Because he came up with a plan to help me get investors.”

“She was beside herself about that,” Lily said, wiping her eyes. “The loss of face, the shame—Ted publicly begging strangers for money for his ‘piece of crap’ movie. It was even worse, Susan said, than taking money from gangsters like Benny and Uncle Six.”

“So she planned to kill John?” I said in horror.

“Where is the cookie?” Max said urgently. “She must have made one for John.”

“I destroyed it this morning,” Lily said. “John is a good boy. I told her she couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t allow it.” Lily’s face crumpled again. “We fought terribly. She has gone insane. I cannot control her.”

“Did she make another cookie after that?”

“No, there was no time.”

“Oh, thank God,” I said.

“But she will try again. She will never stop. I see that now. The workshop,” Lily said to Max, taking deep gulps of air. “It must be destroyed. The whole thing. And the wards must be eliminated.”

“Susan established the wards, didn’t she?” said Max.

“Yes.”

“Of course,” he said. “A talented sorceress of Chinese heritage, studying architecture in the mundane world. What would be more natural than for her to experiment with the most esoteric aspects of feng shui in order to conceal the powerful fatal magics being created in this building?”

So Susan had lied about not being interested in feng shui. I realized now that Max had suspected something of the sort—though he had been distracted by the ghost of Li Xiuying in the face of Lily Yee.

I turned to help Max as he started struggling out of the old daypack he had donned over his heavy coat. Once the pack was removed, he reached inside it and pulled out . . .

“A hammer?” I said. “What are you going to do with a hammer?” It seemed a rather mundane thing for Max, of all people, to carry around.

“Susan is very powerful,” he said. “Very talented. But not original or creative. And she’s inexperienced. I believe that destroying the wards which have made this building such a peculiar place to visit will be almost childishly simple.”

He walked over to the mirror that faced the door. Although he had commented on it during our first visit here, I’d barely noticed it. It was just an ordinary red-framed mirror hanging on the wall. It faced the door and, like that structure, was tilted at a slight angle.

Max said a few words in Chinese—I had no idea whether he was speaking Mandarin or Cantonese—then smashed the mirror with his hammer.

The whole building seemed to inhale, quiver, and then scream. As the floor beneath my feet heaved and gave way, I fell down. Ted shouted and flew across the room, as if thrown by a giant unseen hand. Mystical wind whipped through the store, blowing Lily’s long hair wildly around her head. Max, who somehow stayed upright, continued smashing the mirror with his hammer. Then he began pulverizing the broken pieces that lay on the heaving floor. From my prone position, I saw Ted fly back in the other direction, screaming in panic, his eyes wide with shocked fear.

When I heard a horrible screeching behind me, I rolled over, expecting to see the building collapsing on top of me or something. Instead, I saw the slightly tilted doorway straighten itself out, realigning until it was perfectly perpendicular to the floor, undulating and shuddering with the effort. As soon as it finished this transformation and went still . . . All the heaving, shrieking, screeching, and blowing stopped.

I lay there on the solid, unmoving floor, breathing heavily. Ted promptly fell on top of me, as if dropped by the unseen hand that had been flinging him around the room. He apologized to me, sounding winded, then rolled away.

“Is everyone all right?” Max asked, breathing hard. “I realized only after the event commenced that I should have warned you there would be some dramatic effects.”

“Oh, y’think?” I said.

“Whoa!” said Ted. “That was like a religious experience!”

Still breathing hard in reaction, I sat up and looked around. The store looked different now. Not unrecognizable—the style of the building and basic décor were the same. But everything was lined up in a visibly more rational pattern now. I could see the back of the store, a flight of stairs, neatly-aligned shelves, straight walls . . . Although I had no interest in venturing upstairs here ever again, I had a feeling that if I did so, the layout would be perfectly self-explanatory now, rather than a mystifying maze from which it seemed impossible to escape.

Max looked at Lily. “The workshop?”

“Downstairs,” she said. “I will show you.”

“What about John?” said Ted. “Someone’s got to help him!”

I looked at Lily. “I thought you said you destroyed the cookie that Susan created to kill John?”

“I did, but Susan is . . . demented,” Lily said in a tragic tone. “Determined to kill him. To stop him from helping Ted.”

“And?” I prodded, worried about John.

Ted said, “She got a gun from Danny Teng. She’s planning to shoot John.”

Lily added, “She’s out looking for him right now.”

I glared at Lily. “You realize, don’t you, that you’ve raised a ruthless, obsessive killer?”

“And a bitch,” Ted grumbled.

“She is too American,” Lily said again, which made me want to slap her.

“We must divide forces!” Max declared. “Lily and I shall destroy the workshop and eliminate all remaining mystical influences from this edifice.”

I nodded. “Ted and I will stop Susan from shooting John.”

“Whoa. We will?”

“I will stop Susan from shooting John,” I amended.

“Well, I could try to help . . .”

I asked, “What does John’s lion look like, and where is it?”

The Yees didn’t know. But, of course, I knew someone who could tell me. When I called John’s “Uncle Lucky,” he instructed me to head for Doyers Street.

“John’s probably there right now. Look for a big red lion,” said Lucky. “You can’t miss it. Huge ears with gold tassels. And John’s red sneakers. Nelli and I will meet you there!”