Chinatown Angel

by A. E. Roman

  “Aren’t they beautiful?” Tiffany said.

  She walked over and pushed a tiny metal gate in the cage. The colorful birds poured out into the room. They flew and feathered their way too close to my face, flashes of green and yellow and blue. I guarded my eyes as they went screeching by like colored lights and perched on dark spots throughout the room or flew away crying into rooms not visible. And when the storm of feathers and high-pitched screams finally died down and something near silence ruled the room once more, all I could say was, “Jesus!”

  “Birds are the closest thing we have to angels.” Tiffany Rivera, with her birds in a room of white clouds and angels, stood and looked at me innocently.

  “What’s up with your sister Olga?”

  “You remind me of her.”

  “I love being compared to someone’s sister. Makes me feel manly.”

  “No,” she laughed. “Olga is very sad inside, like you.”

  “What do you know about me?”

  “I see your eyes.”

  “Don’t believe every eye you read. Is that why Olga slapped the crap out of you just now? To express her sadness?”

  Tiffany ignored me and took off her coat and sat at a wooden table stocked with an electric rice cooker, little crystal angels, and a gun. Over the table, there were three framed Hollywood movie posters, one from the late thirties, featuring a Chinese-American actress called Anna May Wong in King of Chinatown, and Charlie’s Angels with Lucy Liu, and Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders.

  “You like movies?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she said and looked up at the posters. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “I do,” I said. “I don’t know about everybody. Where’d you get those?”

  “My sister’s boyfriend Albert gave me those,” she said and picked up a little crystal angel.

  “All three?”

  “Yes,” she said. She didn’t look at me. She ran her fingers along the smooth surface of the crystal angel.

  “Those framed movie posters aren’t cheap,” I said. “Not on a Bronx waiter’s salary.”

  She looked at me, slightly annoyed.

  “He gave the posters to you before or after you ran away?”

  She paused. She placed the crystal angel down on the rice cooker. “Before.”

  “He must really like you. You like Albert?”

  “Yes,” she said and crossed her arms. “He’s smart and talented and hardworking and dedicated and he’s good to Olga.”

  “Were you close?”

  “To my sister?”

  “Albert.”

  She began removing her short pink socks. “I’m close to all of my friends and some family,” she said. “It’s through relationships that we grow. I put myself close to people so that I can learn.”

  “What happened with Olga?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s depressing.”

  “I’ll let you cry on my shoulder.”

  She rubbed her pretty feet as if warming them from the cold. “I get goose bumps when I meet a new friend,” she said. “Are we friends?”

  “Depends,” I said. “What’s the job description?”

  “Friends are conversation. Conversation is energy. Friends also protect each other’s solitude.”

  “So I become your friend. I keep my mouth shut about where you are?”

  She shot me a dazzling smile.

  “What about Olga,” I said. “She knows where you are.”

  “She won’t tell Marcos or my parents,” said Tiffany and stretched out her long arms. “She doesn’t want me back. I didn’t get much sleep last night. I was playing violin at this café in Williamsburg so late, I stayed with a girlfriend. I never made it home.”

  “Girlfriend. Huh?”

  “You have lesbians on the brain.”

  “I wish,” I said. “Tell me about Hannibal Rivera. Tell me about your aunt Josephine.”

  “Tell me about Hannibal Rivera,” Tiffany repeated. “Tell me about your aunt Josephine. What is it with you?”

  “I’m a detective on a case, Tiffany. I’m not just hanging out.”

  She got all huffy again, jumped up and went to the refrigerator. She grabbed some leftover dumplings, two bottles of Tsingtao beer, and slammed the items down on the table with two sets of chopsticks.

  Her silly Mickey Mouse watch glistened as she worked her chopsticks and ate the dumplings. I picked up a little crystal angel.

  “Traditionally,” said Tiffany, “an angel is like a middleman between God and us. But an angel is really just a voice inside. A light. They’re guides. That’s why you shouldn’t hate anyone. You never know who your angel might be.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Laugh if you want,” she said. “But angels are incredibly powerful and always come through when you ask them for help. Sometimes not in the way you expect, but in the end you realize it was for your own good.”

  Her face was glowing. And I got it. What they saw in her. Tiffany Rivera was captivating. It wasn’t just the fact that she was a looker. On top of that was the fact that she talked to you as if she had known you for years and she trusted you and she touched you when she spoke like it was the most natural thing to do and it felt natural. And she asked you questions and she listened as if the answers were the most important thing in the world. She made you feel with her eyes alone that she was in your corner and you should be in hers. She smiled more than she frowned and she laughed more than she pouted. She was happy. She looked happy. Like she had a secret for happiness and she was more than willing to share if you hung around long enough.

  “And this?”

  I held up the gun. It was a .22 with a mother-of-pearl handle. Just like the gun in Irving’s “Chinatown Angel” story.

  “It’s not loaded,” she said. “I have a license. Marcos gave that to me for my birthday. I’m finally going to get rid of it. Do you want it?”

  “No,” I said, grabbed a dumpling and plopped it in my mouth. “What’s up with your parents?”

  “They want me to be pretty,” she said, “playing pretty music until I find a pretty rich husband and make pretty grandchildren. They don’t think I’m humble enough. I disgrace the family. Well, I’m not the only one. I write them postcards saying I’m safe. They seem satisfied with that so far. But if they knew where I was, they would have to drag me back just for show. They’re not really big on being parents.”

  “You big on being a daughter?”

  “No. Everyone’s always pretending to be happy in my family. I grew up with these aggressive and obnoxious kids, private schools, cocktail parties, expensive dresses. They kept trying to get us to fit in, me and my sister Olga. We didn’t fit. My parents always reminded us that we were lucky. How bad things were in Cuba and China. We were lucky and we should be happy. But we weren’t. I’m not a little girl anymore, Chico. I’m not totally innocent, only babies are totally innocent. But I’m a good person. I’ve never tried to hurt anyone on purpose. Maybe I stumbled into things. But that’s it. Never intentional. Just clumsy. You see that, don’t you?”

  She grabbed my hand. “Come with me.”

  “Where to?”

  She jumped up and repeated, “Come!”

  I followed, or was dragged, by Tiffany to the mouth of a hall that led toward what looked like a sunny bedroom at the end of it.

  Here we go again, Santana.

  She looked at me with a sweet smile.

  “It’s not what you think,” she said.

  It’s not?

  She touched my face with a tender palm and said, “I want to play my violin for you. The sunlight is beautiful in there.”

  Violin in the bedroom? That’s a first.

  “Will you tell me about your sister Olga and Pilar and your uncle Benjamin Rivera?”

  “I will tell you everything I know,” she said. “And we’ll be friends. Let me get out my violin. You wait for me in there.”

  I stepped past Tiffany and went toward the
bright room.

  I saw him in the room as soon as I hit the door. I faced the tall, skinny young man with an Afro wearing a black coat over black jeans and a black shirt. He was on the pink bed a few feet away from Tiffany’s bedroom door.

  Irving Goldberg Jones stank of liquor and melancholy.

  “Renata told me everything,” he said.

  Game over. Busted. But why? Why was Renata screwing over Atlas and ratting me out like this? Maybe Atlas calling her “Pilar” got to her. Was she, like Pilar, in love with him? I should have had no doubt about that question when she looked me in the eye with spite that night at the poetry club, slammed back her beer, curtsied, and danced away from our table.

  Irving started rattling his stones and shook his head, staring at me. “I thought you were okay.”

  “What do you think now?”

  “I think you’re a liar. And liars can’t be trusted.”

  “What’re you gonna do about it?”

  Irving stood up and came toward me. “If I wasn’t a pacifist, I’d punch you right in the nose.”

  “If you weren’t a pacifist,” I said, “I’d punch you back.”

  Irving spit at my feet.

  “Classy,” I said. “Where’d you get that Chinatown Angel story, Irving?”

  He bit his lip and shook his head.

  “We could do sign language?” I said. “Charades?”

  “I thought you were a good guy,” Irving said. “You were just after Tiffany all along. You were with Pilar the night she died. Tiffany didn’t kill Benjamin. If that’s what you think.”

  I didn’t believe that Tiffany killed her uncle Benjamin. From what I knew about her and her birds and her angel talk so far, I didn’t believe she was capable of killing anybody.

  “Who killed Benjamin?”

  “I did,” Irving said.

  His eyes were intense and pleading, pleading for me to believe him. For a moment I almost did. But something was missing.

  “Why did you kill Pilar?”

  “What are you talking about?” Irving said. “Pilar killed herself.”

  He reached into his coat and pulled out some crumpled pages.

  “Renata told me about you looking for Tiffany. When I found my story missing, I called around. You were searching Pilar’s apartment. George Theodorus told you about my drunken talk. About Tiffany and a murder. I knew you had my story. I knew you’d show up here.”

  He threw some pages at my feet. I saw a cover page: The Trilogy of Terror: Benjamin.

  “I killed Benjamin,” he said.

  Tiffany, breathing hard as if she had been running, holding her violin, jumped into the room and screamed: “Irving, what’re you doing!”

  “I did it,” Irving said. “I killed Benjamin.”

  “What?”

  “I did it for you, Tiffany,” said Irving. “I know what Benjamin did to you.”

  “What’re you talking about, Irving? What did Benjamin do to me?”

  “I called the police,” Irving said. “I told them everything. I confessed. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

  Then there was weeping. Then my wheels turning and police sirens in the distance coming closer and Tiffany whispering over and over again as the horrible truth of what Irving was confessing hit her and Irving went down slowly to his knees: “Aw, Irving. Aw, Irving. Aw . . .”

  I was standing out on Mott Street with the rest of the gawkers, mostly Chinese, some European tourists clicking away when the police arrived, sirens blaring after getting a call from Irving Goldberg Jones that there was a killer with a gun in an apartment over the Wing Wok who wanted to confess about a murder. Detectives asking questions, investigating, coming up with obvious conclusions, asked me what had happened. I shrugged, gave up my identification and my statement, everything I knew about Tiffany and Irving. I didn’t give them Irving’s stories. I would. Later. Tiffany was nowhere in sight. The last time I saw her she said that she was going into the Wing Wok Restaurant to make a phone call. I went inside to look for her. Born to run . . .

  EIGHTEEN

  Trilogy of Terror: Benjamin

  By Irving Goldberg Jones

  Benjamin came into the restaurant and found her on the floor in piles of white sugar.

  “What are you doing?”

  She looked up at him. His handsome face hovered over a white shirt. With a joyous expression on her face, she stood up, “I’m making sugar castles,” she said. “I’m a princess!”

  He stepped closer. The first slap knocked the girl into the counter. The second slap knocked her off her feet.

  “Up!” he said.

  The girl stood up, face wet with tears.

  He said, “Come with me!”

  He dragged the girl into the kitchen. He turned on the light.

  It had never happened in the kitchen.

  He is angry.

  “Over!” he said.

  The girl bent over a wooden chair as he grabbed a metal spatula off a shelf. He roughly undid the girl’s belt and pulled down her pants. The girl thought about her favorite books.

  The first blow from the metal spatula came hard and stinging. The next brought tears to the girl’s eyes. The third, she wanted to scream. At the seventh blow, heart racing, the girl felt something between her legs, which felt much worse than the physical pain.

  “Disgusting,” he said, grabbing between the girls legs, groping. “Disgusting girl!”

  Then came another blow and another and another.

  He, sweating, exhausted, moaned, “Up!”

  The girl pulled up her pants.

  “What you did was bad,” he said not looking at the girl.

  “What you did was bad. Do you understand?”

  The girl nodded, gasping for air, trying to hold back her tears.

  “Say, ‘I understand.’”

  “I understand.”

  “I am saving you from being a bad girl.”

  The girl nodded.

  “Say ‘yes’!”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you think you were doing out there?”

  “I was playing,” the girl said.

  “Who said you could do that?”

  “I don’t know.” The girl finally broke down, sobbing, gasping and gulping for air. “I just did. I was just playing.”

  “That’s not a good way to play,” he said. “I have to clean that mess up. I have a bad back. I work hard all week. Who takes you to the circus and the movies and the beach? Your mother and father don’t do that. I do. They’re too busy to trouble with you. They don’t care. Who loves you the most?”

  “You do.”

  “And how do you repay me?”

  “I make you suffer.”

  “You make me suffer! Yes. And that’s not right. Why do you do this to me? Don’t you love me?”

  The girl lowered her head, kept her eyes on her pink gym shoes. “I love you.”

  “And if you tell anyone about this, what will happen?”

  “You won’t love me anymore,” the girl said.

  “I won’t love you anymore. No more circus. No more movies. No more beach. Understand?”

  A voice came from outside the kitchen. “Butterfly!”

  The girl looked up at Benjamin.

  “Kiss,” he said.

  The girl stood up on her toes, he bent down, and she kissed him quickly on the lips. He straightened up and looked away from the girl. “Go!”

  “Butterfly! Where are you?”

  She ran out of the kitchen, past the stainless steel kitchen door, and saw her mother wearing pearls and a dark suit with a white silk blouse, weighted down with shopping bags from Bloomingdale’s.

  “Hey!”

  She bowed her head and her mother said, “What’s wrong?”

  She did not look up at her mother and said, “Nothing.”

  “You’re crying.”

  She said, “I’m okay.”

  “What were you doing back there?”

  “Not
hing.”

  “It’s late,” her mother said. “How was the circus?”

  She shrugged and said, “I don’t know.”

  Her mother touched her face. “What are you crying about?”

  “Love.”

  “What about love?”

  “Love is bad.”

  “Who told you that?”

  She shrugged. Her mother bent down to meet her eyes. She was elegant in black. She had long dark hair, a lovely face, and large dark eyes.

  Her mother’s family had traveled from Beijing to Britain to Cuba and finally to the States, in the years between 1930 and 1945. Her mother was determined not to become a workhorse in her father’s restaurant supply company or what’s-her-name in accounting. She worked her way up from Chinatown and finally settled into the bank, married the boss, and established new connections for him in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Her mother was no housewife—she was a career woman who took two slivers of her vacation time at the bank to recover from giving birth to her two girls. Her mother called her a butterfly. Her mother was not a butterfly. She was a dragon in a world of butterflies. He would never do that thing he did to her mother.

  Her mother said, “Whoever told you that is wrong. Love is good. Love is always good. If it’s not good, it’s not love. One day, when you grow up, you will meet some nice boy, and you will see.”

  The girl looked out into the dark streets. “Will you love me no matter what I do?”

  “No matter what you do,” her mother said. “I will forgive you. You’re my daughter. You’re my butterfly.”

  “Am I your favorite one,” she said.

  Her mother let out a small laugh.

  “You are a smart girl,” her mother said, stooped in the open doorway lit by moonlight. “But there’s things that you don’t understand yet. Things that will become clearer as you get older. Just know this, your mother loves you no matter what.”

  “Can we go to the park tomorrow? Just you and me?”

  “I have to work.”

  “You always work.”

  Her mother frowned.

  “Come here.”

  Her mother opened her arms wide and took her in and hugged her, “Everything is fine.”

  As she walked quickly out of the restaurant with her mother, past the empty booths, she watched the checker board tiles of the restaurant drift past her pink feet.