The Shanghai Moon by S. J. Rozan Page A

a room long unused. I opened the window and put the kettle on. After I splashed cold water all over my face, I stared into the mirror, but the eyes looking back were hard to take.
    A random robbery?
I dropped into my chair. Would that be better, or worse? Worse, I decided. The good news would be, it wasn’t something I should have seen coming. The bad news was, I still should have gotten up there right away. And if it didn’t have to do with our case, then I wouldn’t be able to have a hand in catching the son of a bitch.
    When my desk phone rang, I almost jumped out of my chair.
    “Lydia Chin. Chin Ling Wan-ju,” I told it in English and Chinese.
    “It’s Bill.”
    Months,
I marveled.
For months I’ve been checking the readout to see who was calling; this is the first time I didn’t
.
    “I’m sorry about Joel,” he said.
    “How do you—”
    “Mary called me.”
    “Mary did?” My best and oldest friend? Sandbagged me like that?
    “Can I buy you a cup of tea?”
    “I . . . I don’t think—”
    “Please.”
    Just that, just “please.” Anything else—any long explanation, any attempt at apology, especially any excuses—and I’d have hung up. But there was just that one “please,” and silence.
    “Come to my office,” I said. “I have tea here.”
    Some things surprise you, but some don’t. Bill showed up carrying a large black coffee. The offer of tea had been an olive branch, but that didn’t mean whatever peace terms he was proposing would include him drinking any.
    “Long time,” I said, shutting the door behind him.
    He sat in the chair across the desk. Were there really more lines on his face than last time I saw him?
    “I’m sorry,” he said.
    “About Joel? Or about the long time?”
    “Both.”
    “Who the hell asked you?”
    A pause. “If I shouldn’t have come—”
    “Oh, shut up.”
    He did.
    I sipped my tea. Jasmine, what my mother used to give us when we didn’t feel well. “It’s just, I don’t think it’s okay that you get to make that decision unilaterally.”
    “What decision?”
    “About who isn’t good for who and who could do better without who and who should stay away from who and who gets back in touch with who. And don’t tell me some of those ‘whos’ should be ‘whoms.’ ”
    “They should, though.”
    “I know!”
    He drank his coffee. “Listen: I fucked up big. I needed time to think about that. If I—”
    “When did I ever not give you time? Did I ever crowd you? Why couldn’t you have called and said, ‘I need time. I’m going to the cabin, I’m locking myself in my apartment, I’m shooting myself into space?’ Just to call and acknowledge I still existed. Why couldn’t you do that? Before you went off to meditate on what a fuckup you are?”
    “Because I’m a fuckup.” He raised his gaze; I met it silently. Without a word, long and steadily, we held each other’s eyes.
    Then, because I know that face so well, I saw him fighting a smile.
Dammit,
I wanted to yell,
this isn’t funny
! And it wasn’t. But what was, was how hard he was working to stifle it.
Bet you can’t,
I thought, and felt my own mouth twitching.
    And suddenly there we both were, cracking up. Howling,gasping for breath, astonishing a month’s worth of dust and gloom. I laughed so hard tea slopped out of the mug I held. Until in an instant I felt a change, a spin-around: Now I wasn’t laughing, I was sobbing.
    Bill jumped from his chair, came around the desk, and held me, an awkward manuever since I was sitting down. The clumsiness of it struck me as hilarious, and I was laughing again, and then crying, and both, until I didn’t know anymore what kind of shudders were convulsing me.
    Finally, the storm let up. I pushed Bill away, stood, and made for the bathroom. I went through the cold water routine again, this time spending longer for less result. When I came out, Bill was back in his chair, halfway through a cigarette.
    “Who said you could smoke in