A Bitter Feast

by S. J. Rozan

  Ten

  I took the three flights of stairs to our apartment two steps at a time; it’s good for the thigh muscles that way. At the top, I unlocked the two of the five locks we were using this week—my mother’s formula for this keeps changing, but the principle behind it is that the bad guys trying to pick our locks will lock themselves out as they’re letting themselves in—and slipped off my shoes in the tiny entry hall. I was pulling on my embroidered slippers when my mother hove into view.

  “Look who has found the time to come here,” she said in fake amazement. She picked up the plastic bag holding the groceries. “It’s lucky we have no guests coming over for dinner. A guest might have starved to death before you brought the food.”

  I kissed her cheek and looked at my watch. “Hi, Ma. It’s not late. Also, I’m sure you have enough food here to feed an army if one should happen to drop by. How are you?”

  “At least I don’t have to be worried about feeding you if you should happen to drop by. Last night, dinner with Lee Bi-Da, today, tea with Yang Hao-Bing.” She marched the groceries into the kitchen.

  “Yang Hao-Bing thought I was a very well brought up young lady,” I said, following her and the food.

  “He did?” She sniffed, but I could see she’d felt the compliment. Emptying the grocery bag, she said, “Perhaps, as wise as he is, he can see the great effort even when the results are poor.”

  I suddenly realized how I could make a gold mine out of this.

  “What he wanted, Ma,” I said while I dumped the tofu into the brine-filled container we keep for it in the fridge, “was to tell me he’s been following my career. He wanted to express his satisfaction at how well I’m doing. He’s very pleased at the fact that my work keeps me in Chinatown.”

  Her eyes widened involuntarily; otherwise, she kept her attention on the bok choy as she peeled off its outer leaves. “If Yang Hao-Bing has been following your activities, Ling Wan-ju, you have drawn too much attention to yourself.”

  “He said Chinatown’s future was in young people like me. Also like Lee Bi-Da.” I thought I’d haul Peter in under H. B. Yang’s umbrella while I could. “Young people who stay here, who put our talents into helping the community. The way we would if this were our village in China.”

  “If this were our village in China your future would be with the husband from the next village I would have found for you by now. Did you bring the wood ears?”

  I took the package of mushrooms out of the plastic bag and unwrapped them.

  “Ling Wan-ju!” exclaimed my mother, peering at them. “They are so even in size, so perfectly colored. You must have paid far too much money for these. Broken ones are a better bargain, taste the same.”

  So my mother and I had dinner, adding steamed rice and sliced carrots and an assortment of spices and sauces to the food I’d brought. As opposed to her handling of my brothers and me, my mother has a very light hand with seasonings; as opposed to her personality, my mother’s food is subtle and delicate. Except for special occasions like the Smiling Faces, my father, who had cooked for a living, had not cooked at home. And as much as I had always liked going to a restaurant he was working in and getting special treatment and the kind of fancy foods no one got to eat at home, I had, even when I was young, suspected my mother of being the better cook.

  Dinner conversation consisted of praise of my brothers, gossip about neighbors and far-flung relatives, and me trying to reiterate the point that H. B. Yang thought private investigation was a perfectly admirable profession for a respectable Chinese daughter. My mother pointed out that H. B. Yang did not have a daughter who’d gone into it. He did have a niece, whom he had brought over from China many years ago. She was not a P.I., either. She had married and given him three grandnephews, all handsome young men now, one working in the restaurant and the other two in other H. B. Yang business enterprises. In fact, my mother mentioned casually, as though it had just occurred to her, the two younger ones worked so hard that they hadn’t yet had time to consider taking wives.

  I steered away from that, as I did from any in-depth discussion of what the rest of my conversation with H. B. Yang had been about. We finished our tea and did the dishes. I took the long bath I’d been craving, filling the bathroom with the steam from herbs for relaxation, for promoting healthy skin, and for healing bruises. I inspected my knee, which by now hurt only a little bit, and decided it would be fine by morning. After my bath I wrapped myself in my terry cloth robe and did a little home paperwork.

  Since I’m the one who lives here, keeping an eye on my mother until she’s ready to admit that climbing all those stairs and carrying home whichever groceries are too important for me to buy is getting to be too much for her—at which point my brothers and I have a plan that she’ll move in with Ted and Ling-An, although she hasn’t come around to anything more than disdain for this idea yet—I’m relieved of most of the responsibility for the bills and Medicare statements and any other paperwork it takes to keep my mother going. My brothers do all that. But since I am here, I have to at least inspect the mail and set aside whatever seems important for the attention of whichever brother is in charge of that particular aspect of my mother’s life. That’s what I did now, going through the pile on the table, throwing out ads in Chinese for AT&T calling cards and ads in English reminding Current Occupant that Nobody Beats the Wiz. When I was done I settled in with my mother to watch the news.

  One of the cable channels in New York carries the ten o’clock news in Cantonese, and my mother watches every night. She’s equally enthralled with what happened in Hong Kong and Taiwan as with the day’s events in Chinatown and Flushing. The reporters on this channel can be less than objective and are at their most biased when reporting on events in China itself, which, until it reunites with Taiwan under the leadership of the current Taiwanese government, will continue to be considered by large segments of the overseas Chinese community to be a hostile foreign power. Reunification on these terms will happen at roughly the same time hell freezes over, so I try to get my news about China from the English-language papers; but I watch the Cantonese news with my mother to keep up with local events that could and sometimes do result in business for me.

  Usually the top story on this channel is about some outrage perpetrated on the citizens of Hong Kong by their still-new Chinese rulers, or another installment in the long-running and gleefully reported story of the small but steady flow of student dissidents and political prisoners escaping their jail cells in China and vanishing only to reappear months later right here in the good old USA; or a solemnly portentous report on the rise of Chinese gangsters now that to be rich is glorious. The local stuff tends to come later, so I was surprised to see, as I started to organize myself on the sofa, that tonight they were opening with the local hard news correspondent, Moy Pang, in front of a scene swirling with red and white cop car lights and swarming with cops and with other reporters. I listened with interest to the start of her report. Then my blood froze.

  “ … an explosion, caused, police say, by a bomb. The Chinese Restaurant Workers’ Union, which had been holding a demonstration tonight in front of Dragon Garden restaurant, a few blocks away, is a relatively new player on the Chinatown scene. But someone evidently has taken enough notice of them to want to send what was apparently intended to be a warning. The call that came in to the Fifth Precinct, however, was not in time for police to evacuate the union’s office on the basement floor of this Mott Street building. The bomb exploded, perhaps prematurely, almost immediately after the call was made. One man is dead, one injured; the injured man is the union’s attorney”—she consulted her notes—“Lee Bi-Da. The identity of the dead man is not yet known. Lee Bi-Da has been taken to Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights, where he is reported in serious condition. I’m here with Warren Tan, a union official. Mr. Tan, what can you tell us about the circumstances of this bombing?”

  The camera pulled back to reveal Warren Tan, his bristling hai
r and rimless glasses emphasizing his ashen look. Moy Pang held the microphone toward him; he looked at her blankly for just a second, then rallied himself and spoke.

  “I don’t have any more facts than you do,” he said. His voice seemed to catch in his throat, then it got stronger. “The police investigation will have to give us those. But this criminal act proves that the antiunion forces are willing to go to any lengths to destroy us.” He turned to look straight into the camera. “That won’t happen. The CRWU will continue to grow. We won’t be intimidated by pressure, threats, or violence. We welcome alliances with other labor groups, but if they’re frightened off by this sort of thing, we’ll fight alone. We say—”

  I didn’t wait to hear what they said. I didn’t wait to hear what my mother said. I ran to my room, threw some clothes on, and headed for Long Island College Hospital in Brooklyn Heights. Just before I left, I tucked my .38 into its holster in the waistband of my pants.

  Long Island College Hospital seems like an odd thing to put in Brooklyn Heights, and I don’t know why they did that. Brooklyn Heights might seem like an odd place to take someone hurt in a Chinatown explosion, but that actually makes sense. Brooklyn Heights is in a different borough, but it’s right over the bridge from Chinatown, and depending on the traffic it can be an easier trip for an ambulance than trying to scream its way uptown or across town to a hospital in Manhattan.

  Still. Still. The trip seemed to take forever, the eight minutes I spent in that cab some of the longest of my life. When we finally got there, the modern, redbrick building loomed huge and uninviting, as hospitals always do. I got directions from the reception desk to Emergency, which was around the corner, but that was as far as I got. They wouldn’t let me in to see Peter and they wouldn’t tell me anything more than I’d learned on TV about the condition he was in.

  I was pacing, probably driving everybody in the waiting room crazy, when a squad car screeched up to the ambulance-only entrance. Before it had stopped rocking its doors flew open. Mary burst out from one and Peter’s Uncle Lee Liang from the other.

  Mary spotted me as soon as she’d yanked open the waiting room doors. We gave each other a quick hug, and she asked me, “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “In surgery?”

  “They won’t tell me anything. I’m not family.”

  “We are,” she said grimly. She grabbed Lee Liang’s arm and pulled him over to the desk. “I’m Peter Lee’s fiancée and this is his uncle,” she snapped in her best I’m-a-cop-and-this-is-an-order voice. “We want to see him.”

  I didn’t think that was going to work, but they were ushered right through the inner doors, leaving me to pace some more. I was trying to keep myself from kicking furniture and pounding the wall about ten minutes later when the inner doors swung again and Mary and Lee Liang emerged.

  I rushed over and grabbed Mary’s arms. Lee Liang headed for the pay phone at the end of the room; I heard him speaking rapid Cantonese to Peter’s mother.

  “A concussion,” Mary said, “maybe a skull fracture. A broken arm, broken ribs. Abrasions, contusions. Some internal injuries, but they’re not serious.”

  “Then why did they say ‘serious’?”

  “They always do with a head injury. They’re still running tests, but he was sort of awake. I mean, I think he knew it was me.”

  She had, I saw, a smear of blood on her shirt and another across her cheek.

  “That’s good,” I said. “That he was awake.”

  She shrugged. “It’s better than if he wasn’t.”

  The three of us sat down in an unoccupied row of waiting room chairs and started waiting. Lee Liang sprang up immediately and fed coins to a machine that produced three foul cups of instant tea for us. We drank that and did some more waiting. Mary got up and made a phone call. She came back and sat.

  “I called the station,” she said. “To find out what happened. The detective who caught the case, his name is Manny Patino. He says they don’t know much yet. Someone set a bomb at the union office and it went off. They called in a warning but not in time. They haven’t identified the dead man yet. Just the two of them were there, it looks like. Everyone else was at the Dragon Garden demonstration.”

  “Warren Tan told me about that. I thought that’s where Peter was going to be.”

  “So did I.” She shook her head. “How did you find out about the bomb?” she asked me.

  “I was watching the news with my mother. Oh, my God! My mother! I’d better call her.”

  I went and did that and came back. “She was on the phone to your mother when I called. It’s a good thing we have Call Waiting.”

  Mary smiled tiredly. “I tried that, but I couldn’t get my mom to understand how it worked. How’d you do it?”

  “Well, it was a problem, until I explained it would let her talk to two of my brothers at the same time. She caught on right away, then.”

  “How’s my mom doing?”

  “According to mine, she’d be doing much better if Peter’s mom’s only son took his responsibility to his mother seriously and stayed away from dangerous clients like the union. Then the mothers of women friends of his would also not have to worry in the middle of the night.”

  Mary considered. “On the Mom Scale, that’s pretty good.”

  “Your mom and mine both offered to go over and stay with Peter’s mom, but Peter’s mom said no thanks. Lee Liang’s wife is there, I guess.”

  I turned to Peter’s uncle, who nodded.

  We waited some more.

  Finally a nurse came out, crooked a finger at Mary and Lee Liang, and took them back through the inner doors. I sat in my plastic molded chair and tried not to break its edges off with my grip.

  I was wondering how much longer I could listen to the fluorescent light buzz over my head before I jumped up on my chair and smashed it to bits when Mary came back out. “No fracture,” she said, dropping into the chair next to the one I’d just leaped out of. “No brain hematoma, or whatever that’s called. They gave him something and he’s asleep.”

  “Where’s Uncle Liang?”

  “Staying with him. They would only let one of us stay, and he’s the one who’s family.”

  I put my arm around Mary’s shoulder and squeezed. “He’ll be okay, then.”

  “I guess. God, Lydia! Peter’s so … he’s so …” She shrugged helplessly. “This is so …”

  “I know,” I said.

  We sat silently for another little while, and then Mary said quietly, “H. B. Yang.”

  “What?”

  “The bomb. I’ll bet he’s behind the goddamn bomb.”

  In all our tomboy years together, I’ve almost never heard Mary swear; she’s legendary around the Fifth Precinct for her clean mouth. I looked at her; as I did, she got up and started to pace, but the waiting room was too small for Mary. When she reached the ambulance bay doors she shoved them open and stood, hands on hips, breathing deep gulps of the clear night air.

  I followed her out, put a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “Why not?” She was clearly making an effort to control herself.

  “He just hired me today to look for the waiters,” I said.

  “So?”

  “Well, it doesn’t seem—”

  “Sure it does. You’re looking for guys he doesn’t want to lose his investment in and he’s blowing up the place so the union can’t hook any more of his guys. What’s the problem?”

  “It doesn’t make sense. It’s too attention-getting. And Peter said—” I was stopped by her look.

  “Peter said what?”

  I thought back to the breezy, bright morning on the street corner. “Peter said it wasn’t done the old way anymore. That it was all done in court these days.”

  “Peter was wrong. He’s wrong all the time.” Her voice sounded bitter, an unnatural sound for Mary. She looked up at a sky full of stars it was clear enough to see even from Brooklyn. “
Peter thinks if you work hard enough and add up enough of what he calls ‘little victories,’ good will eventually win over evil. That’s what Peter thinks.”

  “You think he’s wrong?”

  “Of course he’s wrong! You’re as bad as he is! You two live in dreamland, saving the world all the time. Well, that’s just great for you. Cops don’t live there. Cops live—” She stopped, seeming to suddenly hear herself. She turned from the sky to me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to be yelling at you. But Peter wouldn’t be in this—he wouldn’t be in here, if he just wasn’t so … so …”

  “And if he weren’t, you wouldn’t love him so much, would you?”

  “That’s not the point!”

  “It’s completely the point. You told them you were his fiancee.” I couldn’t help a little grin.

  “I had to say something, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t have to say that. Is it true?”

  “Of course not. Don’t you think you’d be the first to know?”

  “I think I am. Are you going to stay here?” I said, to head off the rest of that conversation.

  She frowned, but said, “Yes, I guess. Lee Liang said he’d come out later so I could go in for a while.”

  “I’ll stay with you until then.”

  “You don’t have to. But, Lydia?”

  “Yes?”

  I heard her take a breath. “I don’t want you working for H. B. Yang.”

  “Mary—”

  “Don’t. I don’t know why I even thought about letting you do this. He hires illegals and has union organizers arrested and blows up buildings. He’s a dangerous man and you’d better keep away from him.”

  I took a deep breath myself. “You’re upset, and you’re taking it out on H. B. Yang and me.” She opened her mouth to object, but I didn’t listen. “First, I really don’t think he did this. Second, if he did, it might be a good idea not to let him know we think so and to stay close to him if we can.”