The Misfortune Cookie

7 Filial piety

Respect and veneration for one’s parents and ancestors.

Benny Yee’s wake was so crowded that I thought the odds were good that John and Lucky were right about the killer being here—simply because half of Chinatown seemed to be here.

Well, “killer” if the misfortune cookie had inflicted Benny’s death; “malicious prankster” if his reaction to reading that menacing fortune had led to a fatal but mundane accident in a moment of distracted anxiety.

The latter possibility was making me think about how uncertain life was. Anyone’s candle could be snuffed at any moment. Just by tripping and cracking open your head, for example. As I searched for John and Max in the crowded funeral hall, phrases like carpe diem and “live each day as if it were your last” kept running through my head.

Since Chen’s Funeral Home was in a downtown Manhattan neighborhood, rather than in a sprawling modern suburb, it was too small for such a big send-off. But people here were accustomed to that, so everyone just crowded in without reserve, shoulder to shoulder, cheek by jowl. A lot of people had shown up this evening to pay their respects to Benny Yee. Traditional music was playing on the sound system, but with so many people here, I could hardly hear it, though most of the mingling visitors kept their voices respectfully muted as they chatted. As I squeezed my way through the throng, I felt glad I’d left my coat and belongings in the office with Lucky, since the collective body heat was making this hall rather warm.

The Chinese side of the L-shaped funeral complex was decorated in elegantly somber shades of gold and red. Several large, beautiful tapestries hung on the walls, as did some banners that displayed graceful Chinese calligraphy. I assumed the latter were blessings or prayers for the departed. There was an alcove in which several tables, all draped in white linen, were covered with offerings. Lucky was right about the food; there were plates and baskets of prettily wrapped candies, little Chinese egg tarts (my favorite), mooncakes, dried mushrooms, bright orange clementines, and dark purple plums. Several people had left bottles of liquor for the deceased.

Fortunately, Nelli didn’t seem to have been here. Everything appeared to be tidy and intact, and there was no sign of drool.

I wondered whether the person who’d left a basket of fortune cookies here knew how Benny Yee had died. In any case, these were the small, plain sort of cookies that you could find in any Chinese restaurant, not the elaborate, chocolate-drizzled, gourmet variety that someone had sent to Benny.

Still searching for John and Max, I continued making my way through the gathered mourners. As John had predicted, they were all dressed pretty much the way I’d have dressed if I had known I’d be attending a wake this evening. Most of the men were in suits, most of the women wore skirts or nice slacks, and the dominant colors were black and navy blue. In my brown slacks and dark green sweater, I looked a little casual compared to most of the people here, but not out of place—well, except for the fact that Benny didn’t seem to have known many Caucasians. Max and I were apparently the only white people in attendance. However, we were in contemporary New York City, not imperial Peking, so no one noticed me, let alone did a double take, as I made my way through the crowded hall.

Or so I thought.

Just as I stumbled on the guest of honor, so to speak, lying in his open casket, I heard someone near me say in an oily voice, “Hey, pretty lady, are you here all by yourself?”

I kept my gaze fixed intently on the deceased, fervently hoping that the voice was not addressing me.

Benny Yee had been a man of modest stature, probably in his early sixties, with a receding hairline, snub nose, and thin lips. He wore a gray suit, a gold wedding ring, and an expensive wristwatch. A large framed photo of Benny was displayed near his corpse; I noticed that he hadn’t really looked that much more animated in life.

“You look lonesome,” said the same oily voice, closer now.

The coffin was lined in white silk and elegant white drapes hung behind it, with additional heavy white swags framing the area around the casket and the profusion of funeral wreaths and floral tributes surrounding it. A small altar near the coffin held a statue of the Buddha, chubby and laughing—a portrayal I always found very comforting, compared to Yahweh’s dour attitude throughout the Old Testament or the suffering Jesus nailed to a crucifix in Catholic churches. There were also small incense burners from which aromatic smoke was wafting, as well as special offerings, skillfully fabricated from brightly colored paper, of the things Benny had evidently enjoyed in life and wouldn’t want to be deprived of in death: cars, money, a house, gold ingots, airplanes, more money.

“I think you need some company, cutie.” The guy with the oily voice wasn’t going away, despite being ignored.

There were more baskets of food on the altar, too, filled with fresh fruit, fortune cookies, and Chinese pastries. I was glad I had eaten before paying my respects, or this wake would be torture for me.

Visitors who approached the coffin to pay their respects crossed themselves as they gazed down at Benny, or they pressed their palms together and bowed three times; some people did both things. Many of them also paused at the altar beside his casket. Then they moved on to the group of people seated nearby, in two rows, most of whom were wearing black armbands. They must be Benny’s family. An older woman with well-styled hair and a drab black dress seemed to be the focal point of this group, and her face bore an expression of stoic grief, so I figured she was Benny’s widow.

I wondered if one of those mourners was Benny’s nephew, Ted the filmmaker. I needed to find John and get an introduction.

“How well did you know Benny, doll face?” the oily voice asked.

Doll face? Oh, please.

With a sinking feeling, I looked at the speaker. Sure enough, he was staring right at me.

“I came here with friends,” I said coldly, knowing full well that a little coldness was never enough to get rid of guys like this.

His rather stupid face contorted into a predatory smirk. “So where are these ‘friends?’”

“Mingling.”

“I’ll take care of you while they do that.” He winked at me.

He spoke with a slight Chinese accent, and he appeared to be about my age. His long hair was slicked back and tied in a pony tail, he sported a little mustache and goatee that didn’t suit him, and he was dressed so inappropriately for a funeral that I didn’t want anyone here to think I knew him. He wore blue jeans, boots decorated with silver studs and chains, a garish shirt, and a black leather jacket.

“No need,” I replied. “I’m going to rejoin them now.”

As I turned to go in search of Max and John again, this guy stepped into my path, blocking my way. “I’m Danny Teng.”

“I don’t care who you are,” I said.

He made a little hissing sound and grinned. “I like a girl with spirit.”

I repressed a sigh. Some women met nice men while jogging in the park or attending a friend’s wedding. I, on the other hand, came to a wake and, while standing within ten feet of the corpse, got hit on by a guy who’d look right at home in a police lineup.

Police . . . No, stop. Don’t think about him.

Actually, I was going to have to think about Lopez. I had just promised Lucky I would talk to him.

Oh, great, Esther. Just great.

“What was I thinking? God, I’m an idiot,” I said with weary exasperation. Then to Danny Teng: “Now get out of my way.”

“Fiery temper. Mmmm. Lots of potential. You know what I mean?” He winked again.

I was about to speak sharply to him when someone near us burst into noisy sobs. Distracted, I looked over my shoulder. A pretty young woman in a tight black dress (one that was better suited to a cocktail party than a wake) was weeping uncontrollably as she gazed at Benny in his coffin. Her elaborate hairdo (better suited to opening night at the opera) gleamed under the lights as she shook her head in anguished denial while staring at the departed. Her dangling earrings sparkled, and long, fake eyelashes fluttered as tears streamed down her face.

“I guess Benny will be missed,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” said Danny Teng. “Benny was good to her.”

“Oh.” I realized who the girl must be. “She was his secretary?”

“That’s one word for it,” he said with a snort.

Realizing this guy had known Benny, I reluctantly decided to see what I could learn from him. While the secretary continued sobbing over the corpse, I said to Danny Teng, as cheerfully as if he weren’t intentionally blocking my escape route, “So this is quite a wake, huh? A big turnout.”

“Sure. Benny had some juice.”

“I’ll bet,” I said with a nod. “All those floral wreaths. Some of them are really elaborate, too. All these offerings. So many visitors.”

“It’s important to show face when a guy like Benny dies,” said Danny. “A big funeral, no expense spared, a lot of mourners. It’s a sign of respect. The way it should be when your number comes up—if you were anybody that mattered, I mean.”

“How well did you know Benny?”

Danny shrugged. “I guess I knew him a long time.”

“How did—”

“So why don’t you and me get outta here, babe?”

“For someone who knew him a long time, you don’t seem that broken up about his sudden passing,” I noted.

“I know a lot of dead people,” Danny said, and I believed him.

“How did you know this dead person?”

“You could say we were business associates.” He leaned closer to me, his breath hot on my face. “How about we go somewhere for a drink?”

“Business associates?” My gaze flickered over Danny’s attire. “What sort of business are you . . . Oh. Wait.” John had said that Benny Yee was the sort of tong boss I read about in the news, involved in crime and violence. And Danny looked like the epitome of a Chinatown street thug.

“You’re in a gang,” I guessed.

“Is that a turn-on?” he asked in what he evidently thought was a seductive voice. “A lotta girls like that.”

“You worked for Benny?” I asked. “For the Five Brothers?”

“I work for me,” he snapped. “No one gives Danny Teng orders.”

“But your gang is associated with his tong?” I persisted.

His expression changed. “Oh, shit, you’re not a reporter, are you?”

Since that possibility obviously repelled him, I didn’t deny it. “Who are the Five Brothers?”

“Like you just said, it’s a tong.”

“No, I mean, who are the five brothers the tong is named after?”

“Oh, who cares? They’re long gone. That was, like, a hundred years ago.”

“The tong is that old?” Well, most of them were, I recalled. There had been tong wars in Chinatown since the nineteenth century.

“We could skip the drink,” he said. “Just go straight to my place.”

“Was someone after Benny?” I asked. “Do you think he might have been murdered?”

“Jesus, you are a reporter,” Danny said with disgust, turning away.

“I know he had enemies. Do you think one of them . . . ? Never mind,” I said to his retreating back.

Above the sobs of Benny Yee’s secretary, I suddenly heard a woman shouting in Chinese. I looked in that direction and saw that the widowed Mrs. Yee had shed her expression of stoic grief in favor of an animated look of outrage. She was on her feet, pointing a finger at Benny’s weeping secretary and shouting a torrent of words at her which, based on the appalled expressions of the relatives surrounding her, I was glad I didn’t understand. Several men in the family were trying to appeal to Mrs. Yee to calm down, but she shook them off and continued hollering angrily at the secretary, whose sobs turned into a high-pitched screeching wail that made me wince.

A beautiful middle-aged woman dressed in a black knee-length cheongsam, that elegant, body-hugging style of Chinese dress, joined the men of the family in trying to persuade Mrs. Yee to calm down. She didn’t have any effect, either. When she put her hand on Mrs. Yee’s shoulder, the other woman impatiently shook her off.

Having been rebuffed, the woman in the cheongsam cast a frowning glance at a young man who was still seated in his chair. He was looking the other way and evidently trying to pretend that this noisy family scene wasn’t occurring. She spoke to him sharply in Chinese, but he seemed not to hear her. Her tone grew exasperated as she switched to English. “I’m speaking to you, Ted!”

“Huh?” he said vaguely, looking in her direction now.

“Ted, please do something!”

Ted, I thought with interest. The filmmaker.

He looked pretty unprepossessing. But then, directors often do. (And writers usually look like they should be in a padded cell.) He was younger than I expected—early twenties, probably. Very skinny, he wore his long hair in a messy shag that kept getting in his eyes, his white shirt was half-untucked and wrinkled, his tie was loose, and he was the only male family member who wasn’t wearing a suit.

He shrugged and said something to the woman whom I now took for his mother, but I couldn’t hear him above all the shouting.

Whatever he’d said, it caused his mother to turn away from him with an expression of resigned disappointment that I had a feeling Ted saw often on her face.

Then a pretty woman in her twenties started saying in American-accented English, loudly enough for everyone to hear, “Aunt Grace is right. That woman has some nerve showing up here!”

The beautiful woman in the cheongsam said firmly, “Susan, please.”

But Susan—Ted’s sister, whom I remembered John mentioning earlier—ignored this. She said directly to Benny’s secretary, “Get out of here! Can’t you see you’re upsetting my aunt? Show some respect!”

The secretary’s grief turned to anger, and she started shrieking at Mrs. Yee and Susan.

Apart from Susan, who continued using English, everyone was still speaking Chinese, so I didn’t understand what was being said; but it didn’t take much imagination to guess what Benny’s wife and mistress were shouting at each other over his dead body while his offspring and relatives watched with horrified embarrassment. I looked around and noticed that virtually all the visitors I could see were also focused on this scandalous scene, watching the players with riveted interest—and very glad, I suspected, that they had braved tonight’s rotten weather to pay their respects at what was turning out to be quite a memorable wake.

I returned my attention to the shouting match—which was when I realized what should have occurred to me before: If Benny had been murdered, then Mrs. Yee was an obvious suspect. I had watched enough episodes of Crime and Punishment to know that the spouse often turned out to be the killer.

John had said that Benny Yee had a lot of enemies; but closer to home, he had a wife he was cheating on—and based on the determined way she was advancing on Benny’s mistress right now, she didn’t seem like a woman you could expect to cross with impunity. Mrs. Yee roughly shook off the restraining hands of her anxious young male relatives (her sons, I assumed), stopped at the altar near Benny’s coffin to pick up a bronze incense burner, and then leaped vengefully at Benny’s screeching secretary.

“Hey!” Without conscious thought, just acting on reflex, I jumped into the fray and threw myself bodily against the secretary, slamming her sideways so that Mrs. Yee’s deadly swipe at her skull with that heavy object missed its target.

Inevitably, the girl and I flew straight into the coffin and landed facedown on top of Benny’s corpse. We were both winded for a moment. Then she realized where we were and started screaming and flailing. I had landed on Benny’s embalmed legs, in their well-tailored trousers. The body didn’t feel particularly eerie—mostly, it felt like landing on a very solid mannequin—but falling on top of a dead guy was still pretty disturbing. So I gasped in startled revulsion and vaulted backward—straight into a broad chest and a pair of strong arms.

“Did you intend to fling yourself on the corpse?” John asked.

Dangling from his arms for a moment, I said breathlessly, “No! I was trying to . . . Trying to . . .”

“I know. I saw.”

He set me on my feet, waited to make sure I wouldn’t sway, then let go. Then he went to assist the woman who was flailing and floundering atop the open coffin, still screaming her head off.

Mrs. Yee had apparently struck herself in the leg when she missed her nemesis’ skull. The bronze incense burner lay on the floor while she limped back to her chair, moaning in pain and supported by two sons.

“Esther! Are you all right?” Max asked, appearing at my side. Nelli was with him, panting anxiously.

“I’ve been looking for you,” I said, getting my breath back. “Where were you?”

“Due to the demands of Nelli’s corporeal form, we had to step outside for a few minutes.” I assumed he meant she had needed a little walk. Max looked at the injured woman who was limping toward a chair, then he looked at the hysterically shrieking woman who was still flailing atop the corpse while John tried to disentangle her. “What manner of cataclysm occurred in our absence?”

“Benny’s mistress showed up. His wife attacked her.”

“Ah, and you rescued the young woman? I see.”

“I don’t think she sees,” I said, looking in her direction.

Benny’s mistress, now back on her own two feet, was pointing at me and shouting angrily. John, who was speaking to her in English, with a few Chinese phrases thrown in, was not having any success with trying to calm her down. When she saw me gazing her with a bemused frown, that was evidently the last straw. She took off one of her high-heeled shoes and, holding it overhead like a weapon, lunged for me.

Max stepped into her path and, with a quick gesture and a word in Latin, caused the shoe to fly out of her hand. Due to the woman’s uncoordinated movements and her hysteria, it almost looked natural, despite her startled reaction. I wasn’t sure anyone else saw it happen, anyhow, since Nelli had started barking ferociously the moment the woman’s attack began, and a dog that size is pretty distracting when she behaves that way.

John grabbed the woman, restraining her, while Max soothed Nelli.

A nice-looking, neatly dressed man who appeared to be in his thirties rushed to the coffin and started tidying up Benny’s appearance. He looked over his shoulder and said, “Get her out of here, John!”

I realized that must be John’s older brother.

“Right.” Speaking calmly to her, John retained a firm grip on the woman as he started dragging her away. “Let’s go find a taxi for you.”

As they started making their way through the crowd, the woman now sobbing again, I said to Max, “I’ve never been to a Chinese funeral before, but you have. Are they usually this eventful?”

Rather than answering, he said, “We were able to examine the corpse earlier. Nelli exhibited no peculiar reaction to it.”

Watching John’s brother fuss over Benny’s body, I asked, “How did you get Nelli close enough to the coffin to—”

“John has told his family and the Yees that Nelli is a therapy dog and that I brought her here to comfort those who have trouble expressing their grief. Since we are in America, this explanation was received without the incredulity it would produce in most societies.”

I looked at Nelli. She drooled a little.

“I gather she hasn’t noticed any demonic entities at this festive gathering?”

“No,” said Max. “Have you noticed anyone suspicious in your perusal of the visitors?”

“Well, there’s a gang member here. He knew Benny a long time, so he must have known how superstitious he was. But I think street gangs usually go in for something more direct than murder by cookie.”

“Hmm.”

John’s brother finished repairing the damage to Benny, then went to check on the Yee family.

Realizing I was a little mussed after my tumble across the room, I patted my hair and straightened my clothing. Then I turned to Max to continue our conversation. I was about to suggest Mrs. Yee as a likely murder suspect when a woman said in an American accent, “Oh, my God, that was the best ever! I have to thank you.”

I turned to find Susan Yee greeting me. A pretty woman with a short, chic haircut, she wore black slacks and a simple black silk blouse. She exchanged introductions with us, pointed out that Nelli was an impractical size for a therapy dog in Manhattan, and then said to me, “Jumping in the way you did, you saved my aunt from an aggravated assault charge.”

“By happy coincidence, I also saved the other woman from a crushed skull.”

“Oh, she deserved it. But I wouldn’t want to see my aunt go to prison over trash like that. And watching that disgusting woman go flying into the coffin that way, and then getting dragged out of here by John!” She laughed, then covered her mouth and looked around, apparently remembering she was at a wake. She leaned forward and said in a low but enthusiastic voice, “It was priceless!”

“She seemed to be, um, close to your uncle,” I said.

“Close? That’s one word for it, I suppose,” Susan said with a sneer. “But no one expected Aunt Grace to blow her top like that. We thought she didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know that her husband was, er, personally involved with that young woman?” Max asked.

“Well, Aunt Grace certainly had her suspicions that there was someone. Especially since it’s happened before—Uncle Benny keeping a woman, I mean.” Susan seemed to be as indiscreet as she was harsh. Maybe she noticed the surprise in our expressions, since she said, “Yeah, I know, I know. Don’t speak ill of the dead, and all that. Especially not if you’re Chinese.”

“Ah.” Max nodded. “Reverence for ancestors.”

“And for elders,” she added with a courteous nod to him. “But in all honesty, my uncle was kind of a pr . . .” She hesitated, looking at Max, then said to me, “Uh, not a very nice man.”

“That must have been hard on your aunt,” I said.

“Well, I sure couldn’t be married to a guy like that,” she replied. “But you know the older generation. Benny was a good provider, gave Grace three sons, and didn’t ever come home drunk or violent. So she thought he was a good husband.”

“Despite his infidelities?” I asked. If Susan was willing to gossip about her relatives, then I was certainly willing to encourage her.

“That upset Aunt Grace, of course. She got really furious with him a few times—well, you’ve seen her temper. But she’s also got an old-fashioned ‘men will be men’ attitude, and she never threatened to divorce him for playing around.”

I wondered how to ask tactfully, only a few feet away from Benny’s coffin, whether his wife had ever threatened to kill him for it.

Susan said with a puzzled frown, “Anyhow, I know she suspected lately that Uncle Benny was having another affair, but I was sure she didn’t know who it was. In fact, just this morning, she was saying to my mother that maybe the family should try to help Benny’s secretary find another job. Man, did I have trouble keeping a straight face when I heard her say that.”

“It didn’t occur to her that your uncle’s secretary might be his girlfriend?” I asked.

“It sure didn’t seem like it. But then, Uncle Benny had a lot of practice at this sort of thing, so I guess he covered his tracks well. I can remember Grace telling my mother about how stupid and vulgar Benny said his secretary was, the ignorance and mistakes he put up with, all so he could earn merit by keeping this uneducated immigrant girl from turning to prostitution because she’d never find another decent job. Stuff like that.”

I figured that if Mrs. Yee had really accepted that story from a serial adulterer, then she wasn’t the first woman who chose to believe whatever improbable fiction would help maintain stability in her marriage.

Or, as an alternate explanation, maybe she just wasn’t the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

“So this morning, your aunt wanted to help the young woman?” Max mused. “Yet this evening, she attacked her when she showed up here.”

I said, “I guess all that weeping over the casket gave the game away, and Aunt Grace realized the woman was more than just a grateful employee.”

“Maybe,” Susan said with a shrug. “Or maybe someone blabbed. Half of Chinatown knew what Uncle Benny was up to. He kept Aunt Grace in the dark, but he wasn’t discreet.”

“Telling her about the affair now would so unkind, though,” I said. “She’s a new widow, after all.”

“Even so,” said Susan, “people gossip.”

“How true,” Max said gravely.

“Anyhow, Esther, you flinging that awful woman into the coffin like that—it was the best thing I’ve seen all year,” Susan said with a grin.

“Well, the year’s only a few days old,” I said modestly.

“Your year,” she said. “But ours is nearly over.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “That’s coming up soon, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Two weeks.”

The traditional Chinese calendar is lunar, like the Jewish calendar, and none of the annual milestones coincide with the Gregorian solar calendar that’s used throughout the West. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, usually occurs in September, but occasionally it falls in October. The Chinese New Year is sometimes celebrated in January, sometimes in February.

So as Susan had just noted, in the Chinese calendar, the old year was in its final days now.

The Lunar New Year is always a big event in Chinatown. It kicks off with the firecracker festival, in which impressively costumed lion dancers roam the streets, accompanied by musicians. They go from shop to shop throughout the neighborhood, dancing outside the doorways (and sometimes going inside) to demand “lucky money” in red envelopes for the New Year. They’re also fed big heads of cabbage, which they “chew” up and “spit” out at the gathered crowd, to share the good luck and abundance that the green vegetables represent. If you don’t mind getting cabbage and firecracker confetti in your hair, it’s a fun day out. The famous Dragon Parade, which is usually on television, wends its way through Chinatown a week later.

Given what a bust the recent New Year had been for me, starting off jobless and in jail, maybe I’d aim for the Chinese New Year as my chance to start over, shed bad habits, and get a certain man out of my system.

“So how did you two know Uncle Benny?” Susan asked us. “If you’re two of his dearest friends, then, boy, am I embarrassed. But, no, I guess I’d have seen you around before now, if you were close to him. Did you do business with him or something? I know he did business with a lot of people,” she added, looking around at the dense crowd.

Max and I exchanged a glance, realizing at the same moment that we hadn’t prepared an explanation for our presence at this wake. Susan had just handed us a good reason for being here, but I wondered what sort of business we should say we had done with Benny.

Then inspiration struck me. “I’m an actress. Benny told me he was backing a film and there might be a part in it for me.”

“Seriously?” Susan rolled her eyes. “Oh, no.”

People in New York often react that way to meeting actors, so I ignored it. “He said there’s a female Caucasian character, about my age, in the story. I guess the actress who originally had the role recently broke her leg?” I hoped I was right in thinking that had happened before Benny died, rather than after.

“Believe me, Esther, you don’t want any part of my brother’s piece-of-crap film.”

“All the same,” I said, “I’d like to talk to him and see—”

“Forget it. If you’re serious about having an acting career—”

“I have an acting career,” I said defensively.

“—then working on this film would be a complete waste of your time.”

Some distance behind her, I could see John now. He had returned from evicting Benny’s mistress and was mingling with the Yees. He checked on Mrs. Yee, who grimaced a little as they spoke but didn’t seem to need emergency medical care. Then he zeroed in on Ted, who was still sitting apart from the others and looking like he wished he was somewhere else.

Susan continued, “Anyhow, now that Uncle Benny’s dead, there won’t be a film. Benny was Ted’s only backer. And my cousins didn’t approve of the investment, so my aunt won’t continue throwing good money after bad.”

“Because her kids will tell her not to?”

“That’s right.”

I tried to picture what it would be like to have a mother who did what I told her, but my imagination just wouldn’t stretch that far.

“Esther,” said Max, “I think John is trying to get our attention.”

“You know John Chen?” Susan asked in surprise, looking over her shoulder at him.

“We have a friend in common with him,” I said.

“Is that how you met Uncle Benny?” she asked. “Through John?”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “You’re right, Max. John’s waving at us. Let’s go see what he wants. Please excuse us, Susan.”

“And please accept our heartfelt condolences on your bereavement, Miss Yee,” Max added. “Come, Nelli.”