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Café, Artie? He said we should celebrate, commemorate. And we did. And then, my friend, the old PRC consul had to sneak in the back. His chauffeur had to park the Rolls in the alley. Remember?”
    â€œI remember.”
    I remembered. For a lot of reasons, I remembered. I remembered how the Taes indulged their only son, Ricky, when he wanted to change the name of the restaurant. I remembered the celebrations. Mr Tae owns property all over town, but the restaurant was always the center of their family life. Dawn had had her wedding in the restaurant; we danced there together that night. Ricky got up on the bandstand and sang to her. “I Love You Just the Way You Are”, he crooned. But now the Taes kept to the big house in Riverdale, Ricky lay there on a sofa in a dark room, and Dawn had come home from Hong Kong looking like death.
    Mr Tae played me beautifully. As we walked to the back of the restaurant where I’d lost a million games of backgammon to him, he reminded me of all the good times. I’m a pushover for good times.
    The light I’d seen came from the lamp on the last table in back. At it, a man waited, hands folded around a cup of tea, a cigarette gathering ash on a saucer.
    â€œArtie, it’s been a long time.” Billy Tae rose to shake my hand. He embraced his brother and the two men whispered in Chinese. I was in a foreign country.
    Billy Tae is Martin Tae’s brother, Rick and Dawn’s uncle; everyone calls him Uncle Billy. The family dandy, he wore his Irish tweed jacket over his shoulders and a silk ascot tucked into his shirt. Billy is a rich man with interests in shipping in Hong Kong, but he’s a streetwise guy and he can always get a pair of the best seats for the Knicks.
    I loved those games at the Garden with the Tae uncles: the hot dogs, the beer, the celebrities. “Woody Allen!” they’d whisper, pointing along celebrity row. “You saw?” They would nudge each other. “Whoopi! Spike!” They would slap their knees. “Harrison Ford!”
    A plate of cookies in one hand, a bottle of Johnny Walker Black in the other, Winston appeared and served us and returned to the kitchen.
    â€œWill you help us?” Uncle Billy asked me.
    â€œSure,” I said. “Yeah, of course I will. But with what? What can I help you with?”
    â€œYou’ve seen Dawn. We don’t know what’s wrong with her. You’re a detective.”
    â€œI’m not a policeman any more,” I said. I lit a cigarette. The door rattled. We all looked up, but it was only the wind. Billy poured a little Scotch in a glass and offered it to me. I took it.
    Martin Tae said, “Our family is being destroyed,” and I said again, “I’ll do anything, but you got to help me here, OK?”
    Uncle Billy smiled gently. “This is hard for us,” he said, and for a minute we drank the Scotch and smoked, and I realized I had never thought of the Taes as foreign before. Mrs Tae’s family had been in New York for generations. Martin Tae had been born in San Francisco; he had been an ace pilot in World War II. After I moved into the building, I’d spent a lot of time running up and down the back stairs that connect the lofts to the restaurant. The Taes became family. The building became my safety net, my nation state. It crumbled some when I found Ricky on my floor. The fucking barbarians had been at my gate. But they would never get inside. Never!
    â€œDawn is very ill,” Martin Tae said bleakly. “Peter is unhappy. She doesn’t talk to him. She doesn’t talk to anyone, except her brother who can’t help her. You saw his feet?”
    â€œDo you think it’s drugs?” I knew it was drugs, but I said it carefully; I was poking around a bad wound.
    â€œI don’t know, Artie. I just know we need you.”
    â€œWhat can I do?”
    â€œI can’t believe Dawn is on drugs but, yes, if she is,