Trigger City

by Sean Chercover

  “No plans,” I said, “but knock off the Mr. Dudgeon. It’s Ray.”

  Amy Zhang promised to call me Ray and gave me the address on South Wentworth and I promised I’d be there within the hour.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  I didn’t know what triggered Amy Zhang’s call for help, but it sure as hell wasn’t a dead car battery. On the drive to Chinatown, I stretched the tension out of my neck and tried to clear my mind.

  My phone rang and I looked at the little screen. The call was coming from Isaac Richmond’s house. I didn’t have anything to say to Richmond yet, so I let the voice mail get it.

  The sun had slipped below the horizon and the sky was on fire as I turned south onto Wentworth and passed through the Chinatown Gate. To my right stood the majestic On Leong Merchant Association Building, its pagoda roofline silhouetted by the sunset, its elaborate terra-cotta masonry still beautiful but quietly petitioning for repair.

  Grandma’s apartment was two blocks down on the same side of the street, above a beauty salon. A quick visual scan of the area revealed nothing and no one unusual.

  Just a typical evening in Chinatown.

  The street was a mass of movement as people ducked in and out of gift shops and restaurants and medicinal herb shops. A group of young Chinese tough guys stood around a tricked-out Subaru, smoking cigarettes and combing their hair and trying to look like James Dean. Something traditional and melodic spilled from a second-floor window but couldn’t compete with the Chinese punk music that blared from within the Subaru. Old people, hunched and shuffling, ignored the James Deans as best they could. Scattered among the locals were some white and a few black faces—couples on dates, tourists clutching maps and cameras and exotic culture.

  The exterior door was unlocked. I entered and climbed a narrow stairwell to the second floor, found apartment 2A and knocked “shave and a haircut” on the hollow door.

  Amy Zhang opened the door and let me into a modest living room that could’ve been in Beijing, except only the rich in Beijing could afford an apartment that size. She wore a simple white dress and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. I was struck again by her beauty, but the circles of exhaustion under her eyes were even darker now.

  A skinny girl around ten years of age sat cross-legged on the floor watching a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon on television. I’ve never seen a kid who could watch SpongeBob without laughing, but the girl just sat there staring. Didn’t even crack a smile. Amy spoke in Chinese to the girl, who stood and came over to us.

  “Theresa, this is Mr. Dudgeon,” said Amy Zhang. Theresa didn’t look up at me. She looked at my right hand and stuck hers forward.

  “How do you do, Mr. Dudgeon.”

  I shook her limp hand and said, “Hello, Theresa,” and she returned to the television. I felt a presence behind me.

  Grandma stood hovering in the kitchen doorway, partially obscured by a small fish tank on a pedestal. She wore a shapeless dress that looked like it was made from white sackcloth, and a furious scowl.

  I said, “Pleased to meet you, ma’am.” Grandma grunted at me, then spoke to Amy in rapid-fire Cantonese. She sounded angry.

  “Excuse us for a minute.” Amy led Grandma into the kitchen. I couldn’t understand them, of course, but Grandma raised her voice and used the phrase gweilo repeatedly, so I knew they were arguing about me. Gweilo is a derogatory term for Caucasian. It means “ghost man” or something similar.

  I sat on a chair near Theresa. If she was listening to the argument from the other room, she didn’t show it. If she was listening to SpongeBob, she didn’t show that, either. I’m not very good with kids and I didn’t know what to say.

  I said, “In my day it was Rocky and Bullwinkle.”

  “They’re still on,” said Theresa without looking away from the screen. “They’re good, but SpongeBob is better.”

  I said, “You like staying with your grandma?”

  “It’s okay. Mom says I can’t come home yet. Our house is for sale. My dad is dead.” She said it like she was telling me that her shoelace was untied. Just a statement of fact.

  “Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” I said.

  Theresa reached forward and turned up the volume. “This part is funny,” she said.

  On the screen, SpongeBob was prancing around with a butterfly net, catching purple jellyfish and exulting. Theresa still didn’t react, even though this part was funny. She’d cut off our conversation and I wanted to respect that. I turned in my chair and looked out the front window onto the street below and the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

  Directly across the street was a Bubble Tea shop. At street level, the reflection of the western sky had prevented me from seeing through the window, but the sky was dark now and from this angle I could see everything.

  At the counter behind the window, a man in a long black leather coat stood not drinking his tea and not reading his newspaper. He was a gweilo, he was big, and he was a tough guy. Looked like a boxer.

  Or a soldier.

  He stood at the counter and kept his eyes on the door where I’d entered the building. He periodically flipped a page of his newspaper or raised the plastic tumbler and put the straw in his mouth, but he never more than glanced away from the door.

  Here was Amy Zhang’s dead battery.

  He should’ve worn a baseball cap. Then I wouldn’t have been able to tell where he was looking, from this high angle. I watched him until the argument between Amy and Grandma sputtered out and Amy came back into the living room, purse in hand. She put her arms around Theresa and kissed her cheek and they said their good-byes in Chinese. From the tone and body language, I imagined Amy was saying something like Be a good girl for Grandma…I’ll see you tomorrow…I love you.

  But she could’ve been saying anything.

  As we descended the staircase to the exterior door, I said, “You know, I’ve got jumper cables in my car, we can try to get yours started and—”

  “Please,” Amy’s hand touched my forearm and she stopped on the stairs. She rallied with, “I really don’t feel like driving tonight, let’s just take your car.”

  “Sure,” I said. We resumed our descent. She probably knew that I knew she was lying, but now was not the time for that conversation.

  Amy slowed until I was a couple of steps ahead and fell in behind me. I got the car keys in my left hand and shook the tension out of my right and took a slow breath and visualized sweeping my jacket back and drawing my gun. Then visualized the ten brisk steps from the door to my car, unlocking the door with my left hand, putting Amy in the passenger side…

  I pushed the door open and focused on the car and started walking. I forced myself not to look directly at our man but instructed my peripheral vision to pick him up.

  It did.

  He’d abandoned his newspaper and bubble tea and stepped out of the shop and onto the opposite sidewalk as I opened the passenger door.

  “Don’t look at him,” I said, “just get in.” Amy got in and I closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side.

  The man across the street was now getting into a silver Chevy Malibu.

  I cranked the ignition over and pulled away from the curb, heading south on Wentworth. The man in the Malibu didn’t pull a U-turn, but drove north. That meant losing us wasn’t as important to him as not being made. Which was good news, but didn’t mean he wouldn’t loop around the block and try to pick us up again. I continued south and turned a sharp right on Twenty-sixth Street.

  “Don’t look at who?” said Amy from the passenger seat.

  “Please,” I said, “let’s not pretend you called me about a dead battery.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t see anyone.”

  “You’re a lousy liar, Amy.”

  “And I don’t appreciate being called a liar.”

  “Then take ‘lousy’ as a compliment,” I said. “Best I can do.”

  Amy folded her arms across her chest.
I focused on my driving. We passed under the train tracks and I took Canal Street north and kept an eye on the rearview mirror, but no silver Malibu appeared. I took note of each car in the rearview, and a couple blocks later I got in the left lane and slowed and engaged my left turn signal. A red Toyota got behind us and also signaled a left turn.

  At the intersection I clicked off my turn signal and went straight through.

  The Toyota turned left. After a few more blocks, I did the same thing in the right lane and a similarly innocent blue Land Rover turned right.

  Still no silver Malibu. We continued north to the Canal Street Bridge and over the Chicago River.

  I swung a left on Eighteenth Street and we passed under the Dan Ryan and into the University Village neighborhood where Amy lived. I circled one block, then another.

  There was no one following us. I took us a few blocks north, then west again.

  Could I have been letting paranoia get the best of me? I didn’t think so. I went the long way to approach Amy’s town house from the west. If we went straight there, we’d be approaching from the east, so if someone set up surveillance, he’d do so on a cross street to the west.

  And there it was. The silver Chevy Malibu, parked just back of the corner a block west of Amy’s town house. Our man sat in the car, looking east. I dictated his license plate number into my little recorder as we passed.

  Amy never even glanced at the car.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  There’s a television in the living room. I’ll get dinner started.” Amy hung up her coat and drifted into the kitchen. Just like that. Like there wasn’t a man sitting in a car at the end of the block. But I watched her through the kitchen doorway and she checked to make sure the back door was locked before washing her hands and starting on dinner.

  I sat on the couch and took the phone from my pocket and listened to my voice mail. Isaac Richmond wanted me to come in and give him a progress report. Good for him. I deleted the message and put the phone away.

  I turned on the television, kept the volume low, tuned it to CNN. It was the same old same old. Political prostitutes on the left and right talking past each other, spinning the facts and shilling their talking points to America. When Wolf Blitzer reminded me, for the sixth time, that he was part of the best political team on television, I reached my limit. Blitzer had been a reporter once upon a time. Now he worked for the marketing department.

  I switched to WGN and found the Cubs playing a meaningless game against the Brewers. Neither team was going to the playoffs, but these are the games where you get to scout the September call-ups. The Cubs had some talented kids in the pipeline and next year looked promising.

  Next year. The official mantra of Cubs fans everywhere.

  Amy came into the room with a bottle of red wine and two glasses. She stopped short and froze, staring at the television with a lost expression on her face.

  I turned it off. “What’s wrong?” She didn’t answer, just turned from the dead television screen and faced me with the same lost look, eyes focused about ten feet behind me. “Amy, what is it?”

  She found her way back to reality. “I’m sorry. For a second I…” She put the glasses on the small dining table and poured the wine. “Steven loved baseball,” she said without looking up. “Anyway. Dinner’s ready, please sit.”

  I sat in the chair with its back to the wall and scoped the room. I stood and moved Amy’s chair and placemat to the right, took the centerpiece off the table and put it on the floor. If Malibu Man tried to breach the front door, I’d have a direct shot at him without Amy or a bowl of plastic fruit getting in the way. If he came in the back, I’d have to get up anyway.

  I sipped some wine and Amy returned with a brighter expression on her face and a plate in each hand. She paused for half a second, taking in the changes I’d made to the table, but didn’t say anything.

  “So,” I said, “what do we call this dish?”

  “Spaghetti Bolognese. And garlic bread.” She put the plate in front of me, and it was. She took her seat and picked up a fork. “You were expecting chicken chow mein and egg rolls?”

  “Well…yeah, I suppose I was.” I felt like an idiot. “So I guess this means no fortune cookie for dessert, huh?”

  The tension broke and Amy smiled.

  “Spumoni,” she said.

  The pasta was perfectly al dente and the sauce was homemade using fresh tomatoes and oregano. A little diced pancetta rounded out the ground beef. It was excellent and I told her so.

  We drank wine and ate, and she told me about her love for Italian cooking: its methods, ingredients, and textures.

  I refilled our wineglasses. “You speak the language of an aficionado,” I said.

  “It’s true. All my life, cooking was what you did so that you could eat well. When I switched to Italian, it became a joy, and I guess a hobby.”

  “What triggered the switch?”

  Amy sipped some wine. “Turning thirty, actually. My mother is an excellent Chinese cook. I could never equal her skill in the kitchen.” And earn her approval went unspoken. “So I found cooking frustrating. Eventually I accepted that it was not an area of my life where I would excel, and it became just another household duty. But five years ago we moved to this neighborhood and Little Italy is right next door. I fell in love with the food and the way they talk about food, and it was all new to me.”

  “And you turned thirty.”

  “I did. Four years ago. And I decided to challenge myself and see if I could excel at Italian cooking.”

  “I’d say you won that challenge.”

  “Thank you.” She sipped her wine again and her face grew serious. “I’m not turning my back on my culture.”

  “I didn’t suggest that you were.”

  “I still cook Chinese a couple of times a week to keep in practice and take a break from Italian.”

  “America’s a melting pot,” I said.

  “Exactly. Why not take the positive that you find from every culture, including the one you grew up with, and create your own personal culture?”

  “No reason not to,” I said.

  “I mean, isn’t that true freedom?” Amy finished the wine in her glass. That made two. “I don’t drink much,” she said. “I mean, I don’t drink often. I have a low tolerance.” She twirled a little spaghetti on her fork and ate it, then returned to her subject. “But most people think you’re betraying your culture if you do that. That you’re a traitor somehow.”

  I drank some wine, said, “Tribalism is both the most unenlightened and most pervasive of human instincts.”

  Amy nodded, “Yes. Who said that?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, you’re right,” she said. “It’s always Us and Them.” She caught herself and let out an embarrassed smile. “How did we get onto this heavy topic?”

  “You turned thirty,” I said and smiled back at her.

  “Sorry. I guess I got carried away.” She sat straight and smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her dress. “But I do love to cook Italian. My latest project is wild mushroom risotto.”

  “I’d love to try it sometime.”

  The smile ran away from her face. “This is not a date,” she said. “We’re not on a date.” She stood and collected the plates, avoided eye contact.

  “I never thought this was a date, Amy.” She still didn’t look at me. “Amy?”

  “I think you should go now,” she said to the empty plates.

  “Okay.” I pushed my chair back and walked to the front door, slipped into my shoes. “But what do we do about the man in the car at the end of the block? You know, the one you insist on pretending isn’t there.”

  Amy flew into the kitchen and I heard dishes and cutlery clatter into the sink, followed by a couple of sharp sobs. I stood and waited and a minute later she returned.

  “I’m sorry. Please stay. I-I just want to be clear…I’m not looking for a lover. What I need right now is a friend.”

&n
bsp; What she needed right now was a bodyguard. I nodded. “But you’ve got to stop pretending you’re not in trouble.” I fished my car keys from the pocket of my coat. “I’ll just be a minute. Lock the door behind me. We’ll talk when I get back.”

  Malibu Man was still sitting at the end of the block. If he thought there was any chance that I’d made him on our approach, he’d have moved to another spot, so I took his location as a positive. I walked down the steps to my car, opened the trunk, and reached in for my overnight bag.

  The contents had shifted when I’d taken corners at speed and the stuff I kept at the back of the trunk was all over the place. The first aid kit, yellow jumper cables, and heavy police flashlight were familiar enough, but the black electrical cord gave me a start. It had been riding around in my trunk for months and I’d forgotten it was there.

  It was just a four-foot length of heavy cord, folded in half, ends bound together with duct tape to make a handle. But unlike fire or public speaking, it was the worst weapon I could imagine.

  I’d once been tied to a chair and flogged with a similar cord. Flogged close to death. I’d had a hard time getting over the experience. I figured familiarity would help rob the implement of its power, so I’d made one of my own and kept it on the passenger seat for a while. When the sight of it finally stopped triggering flashbacks, I’d tossed it in the trunk, behind the first aid kit.

  I picked the cord up now, felt its heft. It didn’t inspire the same paralyzing sense of dread that it once had. What I felt now was maybe worse. A desire to use it on someone.

  I tossed the cord into the trunk. A few deep breaths brought my heart rate back down. I grabbed my overnight bag and headed back up the walkway to Amy Zhang’s front door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Amy retreated to the kitchen to make a pot of tea and I sat in the living room considering the relative merits of calling the police.