by S. J. Rozan
“Maybe your mother will,” he mused. “This is Cantonese food, right? I’ll just tell her how much I’ve always loved Cantonese cooking, and she’ll invite me home and ply me with plates of this stuff … .”
“Of course she will.” I patted his hand. “I didn’t know jet lag made people delirious.”
“No, it’s a good strategy,” he said. “I don’t know why I never thought of this before. I’ll convert. If I get to be Chinese, she can’t keep hating me, can she?”
“You underestimate her. If you got to be a Buddhist priest she’d stop going to the temple.”
Bill’s successful chopstick wielding did nothing to satisfy the men at our table, who kept watching him, waiting for the inevitable gweilo mistake. Seeming not to notice them, he ate expertly, lifting his bowl the Chinese way, managing the rice, the chopped scallions, the squishy tofu as though he’d been eating like this all his life.
It seemed to me his mood had improved. After such good fried rice, so had mine. I asked him, “When you lived in Asia when you were a kid, did you eat local food, or American food?”
He drank some tea, putting his cup carefully down. “We lived on Army bases. My father was never big on local cuisine, so mostly we ate some version of American food wherever we were. Asia, Europe, wherever. I used to sneak off base and eat local stuff with the local juvenile deliquents. It was always better.”
“The local juvenile delinquents were your buddies?”
“Sure. They were better company than the other Army brats.”
“Wherever you were?”
“Wherever.”
I had a lot of other questions about Bill’s childhood, and here, under the glow of bare lightbulbs in the Hong Kong mist, surrounded by a night world that, as solid and raucous as it was, would be gone by morning, seemed like a good place to ask them.
But they’d have to wait.
“Look,” I said, nudging Bill. “Iron Fist and his friends.”
The group from the warehouse was exiting the restaurant. They stood, cigarettes glowing in the steamy damp, and chatted in the street. Iron Fist turned to look at the market. He spoke to the others, who turned also. After some brief discussion, they headed in our direction, the big one looking at his watch again.
A nighttime shopping expedition.
Damn.
Surrounded by tables, chairs, and diners as we were, Bill and I had no place to go. Any attempt to get up and manuever out of here would surely get us seen right away. Our best hope was to sit right here, heads down, focusing on our chopsticks and fried rice, and hope they wouldn’t notice us and would just keep walking.
Right, Lydia. And your mother will cook for Bill when you get home.
Only Tony had ever seen us before, of course. If his attention had been grabbed by a blinking-eyed remote control robot or a Taiwanese pop singers pinup calendar, he might have passed us right by. But it wasn’t. What stopped him was the sight of a six foot two broad-shouldered American having dinner at a night market fried-rice stall.
And then the double take as he realized this was an American he knew.
Tony put out his arm to stop his pals. He spoke low to them. Iron Fist and the other one stared at us.
The other men at our table, seeing the fists begin to curl on this group of young toughs, shifted uneasily in their seats. One of them made his excuses and slipped away. Two women who had been about to sit at the table next to ours changed their minds and walked on, with one quick look back. The young woman at the wok glanced up sharply, her mouth a thin angry line as she took in the standing trio and their focus: us.
“So,” Tony smiled, addressing Bill but speaking in Cantonese, “now you come to spy on the market.”
“He doesn’t speak Chinese,” I said to Tony.
“No shit.” Tony surprised me with an answer in accented but completely understandable English. I saw Bill’s eyebrows rise. “Big man,” Tony went on, still in English, to Bill, dismissing me. “Hides behind boss, behind girl. Business with you, not finish.” He took a step closer.
“No,” Bill said, not moving. “We’re finished.”
Tony shook his head. “Who sends you?”
“No one sent me,” Bill said. “I was out for a walk.”
“Bullshit”
Bill said nothing.
The other three men at our table abandoned their fried rice and scurried away.
“Spying,” Tony said. “For who?”
“Maybe, for police,” smiled the guy we didn’t know. He was taller than the other two, almost as tall as Bill, and wider across the chest than I thought anyone could be without being actually fat. He spoke English, too.
“Who’s your friend?” Bill asked.
“Shit,” Tony said, slapping himself on the forehead. “Sorry, so rude. This Big John Chou. This, Iron Fist Chang. Myself, Tony Siu. Who the fuck you?”
Not a bad command of English idiom, I thought, for a Hong Kong longshoreman.
“I’m Bill,” Bill said. “This is Lydia. Does Iron Fist speak English, too?”
“No. Never can learn. But Iron Fist don’t need speak English. Speak kung fu.”
Big John laughed at that and translated it for Iron Fist. Iron Fist smiled too, but he didn’t look happy.
“Why would the police spy on Lion Rock?” I asked. All eyes turned to me.
“No reason,” Tony said. “Never stops police. Just to be pain in the asses.”
“We’re not police,” I said, resisting the impulse to point out that asses should be singular. “We’re Americans.”
Tony sneered. “So, American police.”
“Wish we could help you guys,” Bill said. “But we’re just nosy American tourists trying to finish our dinner here.”
“Nosy,” Tony said. “Damn right, nosy. Big damn American nose. You have enough guts stop hide behind girlfriend, get up, we break big nose for you.”
“It’s been done,” Bill said. “But last time it didn’t need three guys.”
Tony reddened. Big John stepped forward, put a hand on Bill’s shoulder. Bill snapped his arm to shake Big John off. He started to stand.
“Wait,” I said.
The woman at the wok was staring angrily. Most of the other diners had fled.
“Come on,” I said to Bill. “What’s the matter with you? It’s not worth it. Sit down.” I turned to the other men. “You, too.”
Slowly, Bill sat. Tony and his friends stayed on their feet.
“If you sit down so this lady can get back to making a living,” I said, “I’ll tell you why we’re here. Otherwise, if you want to keep your jobs, get lost. Wei Ang-Ran won’t be happy if he hears about this.”
I wasn’t sure Wei Ang-Ran’s name would have much of an effect, but it was all I had. For a minute it didn’t seem to be working. Then Tony signaled his pals, and they all sat down. Iron Fist asked Big John what I’d said and got an answer. They watched me, waiting.
“Order something,” I said.
Tony frowned. “What?”
“You’ve driven this lady’s business away. Now order something.”
“Shit,” said Tony, but it must not have seemed worth arguing over. “Beer!” he called in Chinese to the woman at the wok, pointing at his friends and himself.
I decided that was good enough.
I took a breath and looked at the three. “You’re right. We were spying,” I said.
Bill lit a cigarette. So did Tony.
“We were sent by an American company with an interest in buying Lion Rock Enterprises,” I went on. “What seems good on paper isn’t always good close up, so they wanted us to get a look at the place. Apparently it’s not a good time for Wei Ang-Ran; he said you’re very busy and he wouldn’t let us see the warehouse. Of course, he doesn’t know where we’re really from. We told him we’re friends of a friend of his. So we couldn’t insist. That would have made him suspicious.”
The beers arrived, clomped down on the table by the young woman who then
angrily stood her ground, waiting to get paid. Tony stuck some bills in her hand and waved her impatiently away as she started to make change.
Big spender.
“Our employers wouldn’t want us to go home without seeing the actual operations,” I said. “It’s why we came. So I was keeping Wei Ang-Ran occupied while Bill took a look around. Until you screwed things up for us. Thanks a lot, by the way.” I gave Tony a disgusted look.
He took a pull at his beer bottle. “Why American company wants buy Lion Rock?”
“How do I know? American companies are investing all over Asia these days. That’s not our business. We just do the legwork.”
Iron Fist, who’d sat there looking confused for a while, pulled on Big John’s sleeve for a translation. He got a summary of what was going on. Frowning, he drank his beer.
“So let me ask you this,” Bill said, dropping his cigarette to the street and grinding it under his foot. “What about the operation back there is worth working so hard to keep me from seeing?”
Tony grinned. “Not so hard,” he said. “Stop one bignose spying in windows? Not so hard.”
“Okay,” Bill said. “But why bother?”
Tony slugged back some more beer. “Just, don’t like. Don’t like no ones spying. Wei Ang-Ran say you can see, you can see. Say can’t see, no spying.”
“Are you really that busy back there that it would disturb your operation if we looked around?” I asked.
“Wei Ang-Ran say so busy,” Tony said, then stopped to finish his beer, “must be so busy. Got good idea. Want hear?”
“Sure,” I said. “Tell me.”
“You tell American company, Lion Rock no good. Tell American company, go buy something else. Then you, Big-nose too, you don’t come Lion Rock again.” He pushed back from the table and stood. Big John and Iron Fist did the same, Big John with his beer bottle still in hand. “Because I see you again, no good. Big trouble. Business—” he pointed at Bill “—still not finish.”
Bill said nothing, just returned Tony’s stare with a long look of his own.
“We’ll tell them,” I said. “But I don’t know what they’ll do.”
“Tell them,” Tony repeated. “Don’t see you again.”
He turned and walked away. Big John, drinking his beer, followed. Iron Fist stood looking at us a little longer. Then he turned too, and followed his friends into the night.
seven
“I’m sorry,” Bill said.
The mist was turning to a drizzling rain again. We sat alone at the night market table listening to the percussion on the plastic draped overhead. The young woman had gone back to frying rice for new customers, but they were all at other tables. No one would come sit with us.
“Sorry about what?” I asked.
“Now they’ve made us, and now we’ve lost them. My fault. I’m sorry.”
“If you hadn’t gone spying we’d never have known Iron Fist worked for Lion Rock in the first place.”
“If I were any good I’d have been able to find that out without getting caught.” He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. “That was quick thinking, that story you gave them.”
“I was worried about your nose.”
“You don’t think it could stand improvement?”
“I don’t think they were planning to improve it.”
He smoked his cigarette and didn’t answer. The stall’s lightbulbs swayed as the wind picked up, gliding our shadows across the tabletop, though we stayed still.
“Bill?”
He met my eyes.
“You let those guys get to you. You were about to take them on, which would have been crazy. What’s wrong?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t like them.”
“You don’t fight everyone you don’t like. There’s more than that.”
Once again he didn’t answer. Well, maybe he knew he didn’t need to.
“I think,” I said quietly, “that we should call Mark Quan. But I think not from here.”
Bill squashed his cigarette out and stood.
We left the market after a quick consultation with my map. It turned out that following Iron Fist and his pals had done for us what we probably couldn’t have done for ourselves: brought us within four blocks of the bus depot. We dashed through those blocks in a worsening rain. By the time we reached it, the falling drops were big and splashy and the gutters were flowing with fast-moving streams.
And there were no cabs at the bus depot.
Bill, gazing at the deserted cab stand, asked me, “Want to head for the subway?”
I looked into the curtain of rain falling from the edge of the overhang we’d scooted under. “No. We’ll drown before we get there. Let’s take a bus.”
“Which bus?”
A bus pulled in just past the cab stand. I read the big black characters over its windshield and said, “That bus.”
We climbed on behind other soggy people, mostly night market customers, their newly purchased socks and alarm clocks, pajamas and CDs stuffed into plastic bags.
“How do you know we want this bus?” Bill asked while we waited for the lady in front of us to roll up her umbrella.
“The sign says it’s going to Central,” I explained. “That’s where the ferry goes from.”
“You know,” he said, “you’re kind of handy to have around.”
The downstairs of the double-decker bus was air-conditioned. Soaked with rain, I felt like I was walking into a freezer. I led us up the curving stairs to the top deck. As I’d hoped, the air-conditioning didn’t reach up here. We had to choose our seats judiciously, avoiding the ones already rained-on through open windows, but once we got settled, the steamy warmth was kind of cozy and we were almost alone.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you voluntarily give up air-conditioning,” Bill said.
“It’s this semitropical climate,” I answered, “weather of my people.” I took my phone from my bag. “I’m trying to connect with my ancestors.”
“I don’t think,” Bill said, “that you can do that from a cell phone.”
He was probably right; it took me two tries to find Mark Quan, and he wasn’t even related to me. First, as a matter of form, I tried his number at the HKPD. He was gone for the day, they told me, but he’d be in in the morning. Could they take a message, or could someone else help me? Funny, I thought, how that cop tone of voice—guarded, prepared to hear anything, giving nothing away—was the same in the rising, falling, nasal sounds and cadences of Cantonese as it was in hard-edged American English.
I thanked them, hung up, and tried the cell phone number Mark Quan had given me. He answered it with, “Wai!” before the third ring.
“It’s Lydia Chin,” I said. I decided to speak to Mark Quan in English. It was arguably the native language for us both, although I had to admit the same argument could be made for Cantonese. But English gave Bill a chance to get in on what was going on, and it was less likely to be successfully eavesdropped on by the few people up here on the upper deck with us.
“I was going to call you,” he said. “When I got home. I’m having dinner.” Behind his words I could hear the clinking of dishes and the din of many people talking and shouting to each other in an echoing room.
“Is this a bad time?”
“No, no, I’m alone. I’m at my local noodle joint, and it’s noisy, that’s all. And I don’t have much to tell you, anyway. You hear from the family?”
“No. I’d call them but I don’t want to give them a heart attack when the phone rings. We spoke to the uncle about two hours ago, and he said there was no news then.”
“The uncle? Wei Ang-Ran?”
“Right. I’ll tell you about it, but first tell me: Did you come up with anything at all?”
“No. I turned over a few sources, but no one admits to knowing anything about the Wei kidnapping. And if Iron Fist Chang’s involved in anything, we don’t know about it. No one ever heard of him.”
�
��Did they ever hear of Tony Siu or Big John Chou?”
Mark Quan was silent for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know Tony Siu. He’s a comer. Rising triad talent. If Strength and Harmony were a legit business he’d be a management trainee. Did you run into him?”
“I’m afraid we did.”
As the bus turned and twisted through the rain, up hills and down them again, picking up passengers and dropping others off, I watched through the window and told Mark Quan where we’d been and what we’d done.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he said. “When you first spotted Iron Fist Chang? Never mind. I know.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “We should have.”
“Maybe not,” he said.
I glanced at Bill, showing my surprise, but of course he had no idea why. He raised an eyebrow; I turned back to the window, the better to concentrate on the phone. “What do you mean?”
“If I’d put a tail on him and he’d made my man, that might have driven the kidnappers more underground. Maybe those guys didn’t buy your story, but no matter what they said, they didn’t really take you two for HKPD. First of all, who would? And if they had they wouldn’t have gotten up in your faces like that. Now we know more than we did: that Siu might be involved. No, you probably did the right thing.”
Now I knew I was in a foreign country. I said as much to Mark Quan.
He gave a laugh. “I told you, I’m not the most popular guy on the Department. What makes sense to everyone else doesn’t always make sense to me. You have to remember, I’m a stranger here myself.”
“But you’ve been living here for twenty years,” I said.
“You’ve been living in New York all your life,” he retorted. “Does everything there make sense to you?”
That made me grin. My grin made Bill throw me another inquisitive look, and that, unexpectedly, made me blush. I didn’t know what to do, so I looked out the window some more and went on talking to Mark. I gave him more details of our conversation, such as it was, with Iron Fist and his friends.
“I don’t get it,” he said when I was done. “If this is a Strength and Harmony job, there are enough rice-for-brains street punks who’d love me to owe them one that someone should have told me by now. But I’ll go out and stir the soup some more.”
