The China Caper

The first 1000 words of the 1st chapter. Imagine, back then, me, Jake Diamond, a Korean War prisoner jailed in China. Crazy. Anyhow, just so you understand, I’m an upright citizen. Got an antique store in San Francisco. a seller of things Chinese from the China Trade. You know, Chinese Eighteenth, Nineteenth Century imports of furniture, porcelains, and an occasional wall hanging. Nothing great but way beyond the dime-store junk you see just down the block on Grant Avenue. Some say it’s an odd choice for a guy from Coney Island, but I can tell you the stuff is in my blood. At least I gave up some for the privilege. I’m lost in my thoughts about retiring, leaving the business for a sunnier place when the bell just above the front door softly jingles. I get a kick from the sound, like those old emporiums in the South you see in the period movies. Anyhow, I’m almost smiling when I see who comes in. The breed is maybe extinct, something out of those oldies they show at the Roxie Theater out on 16th Street, in the Mission. A taller, thinner, nattier, much older Charley Chan walks in looking like one of those 19th Century edition ambassadors from the Orient. Taking a soft, careful step, while holding a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, like in the old European movies, he strolls the aisles looking over my goods. I walk over and in my best San Franciscoeez say, “Sorry Pop, either you or the cigarette has to go.” I also want to tell him you don’t wear linen in this city but I don’t think he would have cared. He’s also a guy who carried it off, that kind of old world charm. “Of course. You are quite right.” He searched around for an ashtray and as I don’t have any he went back outside and began field stripping the butt by tearing it into small pieces. I hadn’t seen that since the army, and it seemed, what? Endearing? I watch as he walks back and there’s a feeling of recognition sweeping over me. “Hey, Pop’s, we ever meet before?” Without even looking he tosses back, “Never.” I can’t let go cause the feeling is palpable, from somewhere back in time. “You sure?” He ignores my question and starts looking about my place. Showing he knows quality, he unerringly goes to a late seventeenth century table cabinet, my most expensive piece. Then he ambles over to a shallow rose-colored bowl, turns it over like he should and checks its Ch’ien Lung mid-eighteenth century seal. But I could tell the way he surveys my stuff he’s not a buyer. He kind of glides over to me and stands close. The man has these Chinese eyebrows, like short pieces of steel wool. His skin is mottled. I can see liver spots on his wrists, about his cheeks, wherever his clothes ended. But it’s his eyes, they had these light reflections, holes you could gaze into and see the stars and heavens of worlds past. If I ever have a Chinese uncle he’s what I’d want. “I believe you are Mr. Jake Diamond?” Without waiting for me to even shake my head he goes on. “I have something you may be interested in.” With little trace of an accent his American education is clear, but he’s definitely born in China. There’s an awkwardness, or maybe superiority about him, I don’t know. Maybe an unruffled way of a man who carries himself born to more than money, to servants. He gives me his card: Dr. C. Liu, Curator, National Palace Museum, Taipei “Medical or academic?” I ask. Normally I’m not this way, you know, cute. In this case I’m kind of flirting with him to show I’m interested, in a good way, if you know what I mean. He stares at me for a second, then with a damn charm seeming to be a Chinese birthright he smiles and says, “Yes.” Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? I like it about him, the inscrutable part but I should tell him puzzles are not my strong suit, I go to Sharli for such things. I depend on her a bunch. She’s clever and she keeps me young, if you get my drift. “Something I may be interested in? Sure, I’m always in the market.” From his round case comes a Chinese silk scroll. He rolls out its four-foot length on my 19th Century red lacquered desk from Jiangsu province priced at $2,100. I’d let it go for $1,950 but not a penny less. I take a quick glance at the scroll, I take another, a bit longer. Now I gotta sit down. I’m all of a sudden looking at a world that can only exist somewhere in Chinese heaven. It has mountains way off seemingly never touching earth, clouds suggesting there’s a sky somewhere in undefined space and an almost cold silence reserved for the wide-eyed that seek to travel horizons only imagined. Dr. C. Liu begins talking and I listen. This wise man of three thousand years of Chinese civilization is offering me a deal reserved for Caliphs, Emperors and thieves. I’m impressed. No, it’s an insufficient word. Yet when he finishes I stare at him as though he’s demented. If he didn’t appear as though he owned the shop and everything in it I’d give him a sawbuck and show him the door. It’s a staggering offer. He asks if I want to buy the scroll and gives me a price and adds, “No dickering, please.” Hell the amount he asked for, well, a relative pittance, a fraction of the scroll’s true market value. But then, how much is close to priceless. If what he says is on the up and up it’s a golden prize that had to come from Beijing’s Forbidden City. Why me? My bank account is a shy little thing and my record as a player in the world of antiques is, well, even modest is bragging.