Free Ghost Hero by S. J. Rozan Page B

hauled us down to Astor Place. We picked our way along the student-clogged sidewalks over to Washington Square Park, where we manuevered past a steel band, a fire-eater, a mournful guitarist, and about a million dogs and their walkers to reach the nineteenth-century department store turned temple-of-learning where Dr. Yang was holed up.
    Jack took us up to the fourth floor and along a hallway lined with posters of Japanese anime characters and Hong Kong movie stills. Bulletin boards held tacked-up announcements for summer study programs in Taipei, Seoul, and Ulaanbaatar. I stopped at a theater bill featuring an angry Asian woman waving a big dripping knife, for a show called Alice in Slasherland.
    “I can’t help noticing there are no misty mountains.”
    “This isn’t the art department.” Jack knocked on a door. “It’s A/P/A Studies. Asian/Pacific/American,” he expanded, ostensibly for Bill’s benefit, though I’d have had to stop and think about it, myself. “Culture in context.”
    The door opened, revealing a large park-facing office with bookshelves and big windows. Behind the desk sat a tallish Asian man with brush-cut gray hair. In front of us, her hand on the doorknob, was a young, also tall, Asian woman. Her high-cheekboned face lit. “Jack! Daddy didn’t tell me you were coming.”
    “Hi, Anna. He didn’t tell me you’d be here, either.” Jack and Anna exchanged a quick kiss.
    “Hello, Jack,” said the man behind the desk, in a deep and Mandarin-inflected voice. He didn’t smile, just gave me and Bill a narrow-eyed glance; apparently we were another thing nobody had been told about.
    I looked around. Artwork hung on the walls, divided by bookcases like battling siblings better off separated. I found a canvas of subtle gray stripes soothing, and a calligraphic scroll seemed downright antiquated until I realized the flowing ink strokes formed, not Chinese characters, but character-shaped English words. That struck me as funny, but maybe I was missing some profound point. The neon-colored oil of a garish peony in a parched desert, on the other hand, would definitely take some getting used to.
    “Are you hot on the trail of something?” Anna asked Jack.
    I shifted my focus from art to people in time to see Dr. Yang flash a warning look behind Anna’s back. “Not really,” Jack said. “These are friends of mine. They’re interested in new Chinese art so I thought they’d better meet Dr. Yang.”
    Anna’s smile widened to include me and Bill. “Hi, I’m Anna Yang. The great man’s daughter.” We shook hands all around. “He is a great man, too,” she said. “He can be opinionated, though. But I guess that’s what people want, his opinions. Just don’t let him bully you.”
    Professor Yang frowned. “I don’t bully.”
    “Yes, Daddy.” As Anna Yang walked back to her father’s desk, I considered her. Her smile seemed genuine enough, but I got the feeling it wasn’t telling the whole story. Her eyes weren’t joining in. Anna kissed her father’s cheek and said to us, “Sorry I can’t stay to offer dissenting views in case you need them. Jack, I’ll see you sometime soon?”
    “You have anything new? I’ll come out and take a look.”
    “You mean, if I don’t, you won’t?”
    “Go all the way to Flushing to see work that’s ten minutes ago? Oh, okay. Soon.”
    Anna smiled and left, closing the door behind her.
    At a nodded invitation from Dr. Yang, Jack and I settled into the office’s two visitor chairs, leaving Bill to lean against the windowsill overlooking the park.
    “How’s she doing?” Jack asked Dr. Yang.
    “It’s a difficult situation,” Dr. Yang replied. I didn’t know what the question referred to, but I could tell that wasn’t an answer.
    Jack tried another: “Any word from Mike?”
    “Would we expect that?” With those words and a sharp shake of his head Dr. Yang closed out the subject of his daughter. “Jack, go down the hall to the faculty