by Ed Lin
The Brow pointed the second and third fingers of his left hand at Pete and Bad Boy and said, “I don’t care how senior you are.”
He pointed at me and said, “I don’t care how new you are.”
Finally he pointed at Vandyne and said, “I don’t care how black you are.” He turned to face us all head-on, fists shaking at his sides. “You’re going to obey me or I’ll have you walking a beat on the Manhattan Bridge on a cold and icy night.”
Nobody said anything as The Brow stomped out of the room.
“Hope you enjoyed the floor show, folks,” said English.
Vandyne and I absently shuffled into the kitchen.
“You are getting it good tonight,” I said.
“That little bastard,” muttered Vandyne. “I don’t miss the patrolman days.”
I rinsed out a cold pot of coffee and changed the filter.
“He’s not going to last,” I said. “Dictators never do. He’s done like Castro’s going to be done.”
“Castro’s not done yet.”
“It couldn’t possibly be much longer.”
The coffee machine lurched into action. We took two seats at the table.
“Are we going to keep messing around with Mr. Chen’s case?” asked Vandyne.
“The Brow’s not going to stop us. He couldn’t hate me any more, and anyway if he could have fucked me over, he would have by now. I’ve got Izzy in my corner.”
Pete strolled in. “White guys allowed in the kitchenette?”
“Never,” I said. He sat down with us at the table.
“I don’t think he knows how corny he is with that stomping act. He’s a real live Napoleon,” said Pete.
“That guy used to make my life hell,” I said.
“We could take him down. All of us.”
Vandyne said, “I’d rather see him trip over his own laces.”
English poked his head in. “Who poured out the cold coffee?”
“Me,” I said.
“Goddammit, I was saving it.”
“Then pour it into a mug next time,” said Pete. “Where’d Bad Boy go?”
“Went to Happy’s,” said English. “I think.”
“I’m going, too, then. How about you two?” Vandyne and I both passed.
English walked over to the sink and stared at the drain. “Goddammit,” he said again.
I went to break up an illegal protest that amazingly was not at Jade Palace. It was at the midget’s toy store.
A group of mothers were staging an impromptu siege against the midget’s store. Apparently they were locking arms and blocking the entrance. But none of them were tall enough to cover up the GIMME JIMMY poster in the window.
The midget should have known better. Or maybe he didn’t care. The fact that his store was solidly within the boundaries of pro-KMT Chinatown meant that he was in the middle of Gerald Ford Land. Hell, he was in the middle of Joe McCarthy Land.
Sure, Ford had gone to the People’s Republic. He had shaken hands with Mao just like Nixon had. But Mao was dead, and so was any implicit agreement made with the handshake. Mainly, though, the pro-KMT Chinese remembered Ford’s most recent actions. How he thundered against the International Olympics Committee after they barred Taiwan from competing in the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal.
Well, they weren’t exactly barred from the games. Taiwan had wanted to compete once more as “The Republic of China,” but ended up boycotting the games when they were told they had to compete as “Taiwan.” The People’s Republic was boycotting the Montreal games because it was still pissed off that Taiwan had been allowed to compete in 1972 as “The Republic of China.”
When the next games came in 1980 Ford was going to stand up again for the Republic of China, which the United States recognized officially as the legitimate ruler of all of China. It was a given that Ford was going to maintain those ties. One more disastrous cultural revolution on the mainland might even give the KMT a chance for a sneak attack, backed by U.S. dollars and aid. The Ford Motor Company had built B-24 bombers in World War II. Surely a President Ford would lend some aircraft for the purpose of recovering the mainland.
Carter, on the other hand, was a pinko. KMT supporters had three firm pieces of evidence to prove that. One, he was a farmer. Two, his family had practiced integration in the South and treating everybody as equals is the first step in brainwashing. The final straw was that he gave an interview to Playboy, a decadent magazine that was offensive to all upstanding people.
By the time I got to the toy store, the linked arms of the five ladies had slipped to holding hands. Their chanting remained spirited, though.
“Mao’s dead!”
“Don’t buy toys from bandits!”
“Little red book! Little red man!”
“Hello, there,” I said. “I hate to tell you this, but you have to stop this right now.”
“Oh, yeah?” said a five-five toughie with a smelly perm. She seemed to be the leader. The woman pointed a calloused finger at my right eye and said, “You are a Communist, too!”
“I’m a cop. This is an illegal gathering and it’s gonna stop.”
“I’m not going to stop until this store is out of business!”
“Is this all you understand?” I rattled loudly the handcuffs on my belt.
“You don’t scare me!” said the woman, but the four behind her backed away.
“You’re not going to leave, huh?” I broke open my handcuffs and the woman with the perm moved away so fast she was in danger of straightening her hair all over.
A little boy and two girls came over to me and smiled.
“You want to go in now?” I asked them. “Let’s all go.” They didn’t say anything, but I pushed the door open and let them in first.
The midget was in front of the counter, testing the drawer on a tiny beat-up desk.
“Are you insane, putting up the Carter campaign poster in your window?” I asked him.
“Freedom of speech, baby,” he said without looking up. He put his chin on the top of the desk and reached under with his right arm. “A little tangled up back there,” he muttered to himself.
“Isn’t it a little risky taking a political stance? Particularly an unpopular one on this block?”
The midget stood up and brushed off the dust from his shirt and pants. He glanced at me before heading back to his side of the counter.
“I have to think about my young customers,” he said. “I don’t want them to grow up thinking they can’t say what they really think. I don’t want them to be scared to speak up for what they believe in. That’s what America’s about.”
“But that’s not what Chinatown’s about,” I said.
“But it’s what Chinatown could be about. I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s what Chinatown should be about.” He disappeared and then popped back up with a pair of pliers. He snapped them a few times and grunted.
“No way, man. Conflict is in our blood.”
“Conflicts don’t have to be taken so personally,” said the midget as he made his way back to the desk project. “Civilized people talk out their differences and make a better world for the next generation. They don’t have kids just to carry on the same grudges they had.”
“You can’t stop the way people raise their kids with your toys and free-speech propaganda.”
“Oh, I’m not going to have nearly as big a role as American schools and television. These kids don’t even speak Chinese!” He pointed at the three kids who came in with me.
“Hey,” I said to the boy in English. “You don’t speak Chinese?”
He put on a sad little face and said, “No, sir.”
To the midget I said, “This is ridiculous. I grew up speaking Chinese, so it can’t be that hard.”
He went under the desk and slammed something with the pliers. “You were such a good little boy, Robert. I guarantee you something. Your kids aren’t going to speak Chinese. They won’t even like Chinese food.”
/> “They won’t like it, but they’ll eat it.”
“How I wish you were my dad.” The midget pulled himself out from under the desk. He took a deep breath and grabbed the drawer and pulled it out. “Success! Yes!”
“It’s not that hard to get a drawer open.”
He slammed the drawer shut. I heard some springs snap back. “Give it a shot, pal.”
I walked over and stuck my hand under the drawer. “Aw, I get it. There are a few different switches you can pull. Only five, actually.”
“How many combinations are there?”
“Five. No, wait. Ten?”
“Kids,” the midget called in English. “Something funny!”
I struggled with the drawer. The wood looked as delicate as a graham cracker but there were metal reinforcements in it that held it strong. I kept jerking the drawer hard. The kids came over and laughed at me for not being able to open it.
“Anyone ever tell you that you have a very expressive face, Robert?” asked the midget.
“What’s the combination?” I asked.
“One and four,” he said.
“I was just about to try that one, anyway.” The drawer slid open smoothly. The kids gave me a round of applause.
“You like that?” asked the midget. “It’s an old cash register I found in the storage space. Pretty ingenious, isn’t it? Have to admire those Chinese people.”
“Tell me this, though. What good is this fancy combination lock if someone has a gun to your head?”
“Feel those little leather loops down there?”
“Yeah?”
“That’s where you keep a knife or a pistol.”
For a break, the midget and I went to a cramped dumpling house that had opened in the arcade that connected Elizabeth with the Bowery in the middle of the block.
“It’s a shame about Mr. Chen, isn’t it?” asked the midget. The whole thing.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “I was actually contributing to the investigation when The Brow warned me—all of us, actually—to stay away.”
“Still, it’s a pressing matter, isn’t it?”
“It’s embarrassing for the U.S. that we haven’t apprehended the suspect yet. The only reason why it’s not an ugly international incident is that the People’s Republic has decided not to make it an issue.”
“They don’t want to make it an issue! They want the U.S. to speed up the process of establishing formal diplomatic relations. They start complaining about it, then the resentment against China starts setting in.”
“Anyway, I’m sure the mainland was not the biggest supporter of Mr. Chen.”
“You want to know something? They probably wanted something bad to happen to him as a lesson to the folks at home.”
“I know.”
“What a sad and strange thing to have happened. Remember what happened to Lin Piao? He was the guy who tried to overthrow Mao. The plot hits a snag so he jumps into a plane and tries to flee to the Soviet Union. Then, pow! Lin’s plane crashes into a mountain. Sometimes it seems like the Communists can make bad things happen by just wishing for them.”
“The North Vietnamese got their wish. Now they have all of Vietnam.”
“It’s interesting isn’t it?” asked the midget, his eyes trying to read something in the hot-sauce streaks on his plate. “With the mainland as a permanent member of the United Nations’ Security Council, I don’t think the rest of the world can delay membership for Vietnam for too long.”
“You know what the problem with that is? North Korea is going to take that as a cue that if they overrun South Korea and unite that whole peninsula, then they, too, can be a legitimate state.”
“China would never allow that.”
“It allowed the Vietnam War.”
“That’s completely different. If you haven’t noticed, China and Vietnam aren’t buddies. China and North Korea are as close as lips and teeth, as they say, and China needs Korea to remain divided and in a state of uncertainty to have an edge over the U.S.”
“Well, that doesn’t make any sense. Uncertainty cuts both ways. How is China more secure with it than the U.S.?”
“Who has more people who know the Korean language and culture, the U.S. government or the Chinese government?”
“I see.”
The midget wove his fingers together, pushed his hands away from his body, and cracked his knuckles.
“So, how’s Lonnie holding up?” he asked.
“Hanging in there.”
“She’s a strong woman. She’ll be fine in the end. As long as you do your part.”
“Jesus, I’m trying as hard as I can! You think it’s easy finding a murderer?”
“Looks easy on TV.”
“One problem is that there are so many motivations to kill Mr. Chen. It could be seen as a pro-Communist move or an anti-Communist move.”
“It could also be a pro-feminist move, taking out this older man who is in a position of power.”
“You’re forgetting that he was acting on behalf of Li Na, who is a woman.”
“But Li Na also represents her father, Mao Tse-tung. That’s one reason why she was purged from the Communist party.”
“There was another reason?”
“Her mother was Jiang Qing. You know her, right? Mao’s last wife and also the leader of the Gang of Four? If your mother was branded as a leader of a counterrevolutionary clique, then you probably don’t have much of a political future.”
“That poor kid,” I said.
“Li Na? She’s not a poor kid. She’ll live out her life in a gilded cage. Lonnie is the poor kid!”
Izzy called me at home. “The Brow had his shitfit.”
“Sorry about that, but I was being as careful as possible.”
“It wasn’t you, you know? It was those idiots drinking in the car. The Brow tailed Pizza Man and Bad Boy. Saw you come up to the car later, but he knew you weren’t a member of the party.”
“So my cover wasn’t blown. I can still look into Mr. Chen.”
“That’s what I was thinking. The best thing is that when you meet up with Chinese people, you can say it’s personal, not business.”
Barbara called me at the station and told me that a Mr. Wilson Yi of the New York outpost of the Republic of China’s embassy wanted to talk to me about the murder of Mr. Chen. I was wary of how the KMT diplomat would try to spin me politically, but decided to go anyway because it couldn’t hurt and also because it would make Barbara look good.
She had already helped me with an old classmate in addition to finding Paul an internship and Lonnie her job, so I owed Barbara two or three favors. But she had also dumped me a while ago, so that cut into the favors-owed column.
The R.O.C. embassy was inside a skyscraper close to Rockefeller Center. Ten Taiwan flags stood on floor bases on either side of the passageway to the elevators, representing the 10-10 of the October 10 anniversary date of the founding of the Kuomintang Party.
When I got to the right floor Barbara and another woman were waiting for me outside the embassy entrance.
“Hello, Robert,” said Barbara in Mandarin, “this is Mr. Yi’s secretary, Ms. Kung.”
“Hello,” I said to the short woman. She was about five feet tall and on the heavier side. She had a sweet face behind her horn-rimmed black glasses, though.
“Wow, you look American! You’re so big!”
“Thank you.”
“Mr. Yi is very anxious to see you.” With that, she led us into the offices. She took us around the corner and past a section of furiously loud typists to a giant rosewood desk, presumably Ms. Kung’s. She bent over her desk awkwardly and tried to reach the intercom button. Ms. Kung had to climb up the side a little bit, like a pug climbing onto a bed. I chuckled a little and Barbara punched me in the arm.
Ms. Kung finally reached the button and screeched, “They’re here!”
The wooden double doors in the wall swung open and a man stepped out. He was in his late thirti
es, about five foot five, and his black hair was in permed curls. Like a lot of men who had grown up in Taiwan under the tropical sun, he had dark brown skin. The girls would avoid the sun so they wouldn’t be confused with the lower classes who had to work outdoors.
“Please come in!” Mr. Yi called in perfect English.
I took a seat facing Mr. Yi across his modest table while Barbara sat on the right wing.
“Thank you so much for taking the time to see me,” Mr. Yi told me.
“I’m glad to visit, as long as there is useful information you have for me. If Barbara says it’s important, it’s good enough for me.”
Ms. Kung waddled in with a cheap bamboo tray that held a clay teapot and three cups. She set it down on Mr. Yi’s desk and pushed it to an area equidistant from and just slightly inconvenient for each of us. She left quietly.
Barbara reached for the teapot, but Mr. Yi waved her off.
“Just a little bit longer,” he said, smiling. “You have to give the tea leaves a chance to unfold.”
“I had the feeling this wasn’t going to be restaurant tea,” I said.
“I have my own personal favorite,” said Mr. Yi. “It’s not very expensive, but the taste is so subtle, it’s precious.”
“I’d still take coffee over tea any day,” said Barbara.
“When I was young I drank mostly coffee, too. When I got older, I learned to appreciate the, ah, ambiguity the better teas have.” Turning to me, Mr. Yi said, “Well, I’ve known Barbara for some time now, but you and I don’t know each other.”
“Gee, where should I start?”
“I think you’ve misunderstood! Barbara has told me all about you already. Let me tell you about myself!
“My family has been in Taiwan since the 1700s. They came over from Fujian province. I’m one of the highest-ranking native Taiwanese in the KMT, maybe the highest. For the most part, the KMT is run by Chinese who fled the mainland after losing the civil war in 1949.”
“I thought the KMT’s platform represented something most native Taiwanese don’t go for.”
“That Taiwan is a part of China? I’ll tell you, my father sure didn’t like it at first. He was very conflicted about joining the KMT, even though as the oldest son of a family that owned plastics factories, he would have been forced to join the party or lose his business. If he wanted to, he could have fought the KMT tooth and nail. But he went to a temple to ask for guidance and a monk told him to go through our family’s records.
