One Red Bastard

by Ed Lin

  “What the fuck is this?!” cried Teresa.

  “What are you doing here?!” countered an indignant Lincoln. He knew it wasn’t going to work.

  “I work two jobs and you use my money to buy drugs!” She pointed at the other four Chinese men. “Do all of you work for a living? Or are you all gigolos and pimps, too?” She was met mostly with snickers.

  “I have a job!” Lincoln declared.

  “That’s not a job! You play with kids all day! You don’t know what real work is like!”

  “I get paid for it, Teresa, so it must be a job!”

  “Then why are you always asking me for money?”

  “I get in a tight spot sometimes.” He was backing off. You can’t corner a man about his cash-flow problems in front of his friends without making him feel like a naked little boy. “Let’s talk about this at home,” Lincoln concluded.

  “You’re not going home! This policeman is here to arrest you all for drug abuse!”

  “Hi, guys,” I said, stepping out from behind Teresa. “Actually, the charge is drug possession, not abuse.”

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” asked Lincoln, now even more embarrassed. The only thing worse than getting a dress-down in front of your homeboys was getting dressed down in front of a man you don’t know.

  “I’m here to save your neck. Now let’s break it up here. The party’s over.” I went to the stereo and switched it off. It was a nice amplifier. A lot nicer than mine.

  The men stood up and groaned and grumbled. “Don’t push me,” I said. “If you don’t want to leave on your own, I can call in escorts.” I turned to Lincoln. “Whose place is this?”

  “It’s our place. We all split the rent on it. We keep the apartment to house friends who come in from out of town. Also, none of us wanted to keep the bong at our own apartments.” With a sheepish look at me, he added, “We didn’t want to get busted.”

  “You’re lucky that I can’t make a case out of this. I’m sure there are all sorts of privacy rights I’m violating by being here right now and I’m not going to try to fight it. But I’m putting you on notice. You work with kids. If I ever see you with drugs again, I won’t rest until you’re fired.”

  Teresa stepped in. “Get him fired from that stupid job so he can make some real money and be a real man!”

  “You’re not helping things,” I told her.

  “You see,” Lincoln told Teresa, “even he’s on my side!”

  “I’m not on anyone’s side!” I said. I eyed two stragglers in the hallway. “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  When everyone had finally exited the apartment, I set the lock on the door and closed it behind me. I wasn’t thankful for much that night, but I was glad they left the building quietly. Even Teresa and Lincoln walked quickly away, side by side. What was Teresa’s problem?

  I met up again with Vandyne at our usual rendezvous point—the stoop of the Fifth Precinct.

  “We’re not supposed to be sitting on the stoop of the House,” said Vandyne as he walked up to me.

  “I know. It looks bad. Cops loitering past midnight,” I said. I stood up. Vandyne put one foot on the bottom step and looked up at me.

  “You don’t want The Brow to find out about this. He’s ready to pounce on you for anything right now.”

  “He can pounce on this right here,” I said. Vandyne laughed.

  For a long time, before I started investigative assignments, I was sort of The Brow’s little soldier boy. I used to go to all the community functions to represent the precinct and show that the NYPD really cared about restaurant openings, school graduations, and stupid association banquets. When Izzy went over his head to land me a spot in the detectives’ squad room, The Brow took it as a personal offense that my career had advanced. But now he had a replacement for me.

  “How long you think David Ong’s gonna last?” asked Vandyne.

  “You mean Ong Kong Phooey?”

  “Don’t make fun of him.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s making fun of your own people.”

  “He is not one of my people, and besides, it is a good name for him. Crying on the job and then I’m the one who takes shit from The Brow for it.”

  “Maybe he is the right guy for that job with that timid personality.”

  “Next time someone reaches for something under their seat at one of those banquets, David’s going to pull out his gun and start shooting.”

  We shared a good laugh; then we got back to business. I told him about the Lincoln-and-Teresa adventure. Vandyne told me about how Mean Face simply went home—and also why he looked familiar.

  There had been a group affiliated with the Communists that had been protesting the tour buses that came in and dropped off tourists so they could act like ugly Americans in their own country.

  These tourists would do obnoxious things such as sticking cameras into people’s faces and taking flash shots. They also felt they had the right to touch the hair of little girls as if there was a sign hanging from the lampposts that read: MOTT STREET PETTING ZOO.

  The KMT-affiliated tour company that operated the buses was incensed that the protest group would greet arriving buses with signs that read: GO BACK TO EUROPE! Naturally, these tourists were herded to patronize KMT-affiliated restaurants and gift shops, and if they felt unsafe, they wouldn’t spend as much or come back.

  The next time the Communists showed up to protest the buses, a pick-up group of KMT youths stormed in and a street fistfight broke out. In the confusion, one Communist kid was hit by a bus that was trying to back up. That kid was Mean Face.

  “Vandyne, did he get broken or bruised ribs?”

  “I don’t remember, either. But the bus driver wasn’t charged.”

  “Maybe we should call him ‘Baby Bad Ribs.’”

  “That’s funny, but I like ‘Mean Face’ better. It’s more to the point.”

  “Should we eat, man?”

  Vandyne patted his stomach. “I still got it pretty bad. Let’s make it quick. I want to get the paperwork done and hit the sack. I got a big day tomorrow.”

  “What’s going on tomorrow?”

  “Rose finally agreed to meet me for lunch.”

  “Wow, that’s great news,” I said, not inquiring further.

  I met Mr. Song at the ground-floor conference room at Together Chinese Kinship’s office.

  “What do you have to tell me?” he asked.

  “I was just thinking,” I said. “Are there any fringe Communist groups that would want Mr. Chen’s killer dead?”

  “Damn, you just come right out and say what’s on your mind, don’t you?” He shook his head. “I’d be lying if I said a great many Communists weren’t relieved Mr. Chen is dead. There are a few who are very unhappy about it, but I doubt they would take any action.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m as sure as I could be, which is to say about ninety-five percent sure.”

  “Five percent is a pretty big margin of error.”

  “Look, Robert, the Communist Party is asking for your help in clearing their name in the murder. Why would they use their other hand to invalidate that work? If the Communists were implicated in killing the murderer, it would look like they were covering their tracks. We need that man brought in alive!”

  “Are there Communist agents in Chinatown now?”

  Mr. Song gave me a sour look. “And what constitutes a Communist agent, Senator McCarthy? We prefer the term ‘comrade.’ We have many comrades in Chinatown. Our numbers are less than those loyal to the KMT, but in a way we regard them as comrades as well. All Chinese are involved in class struggle, whether they know it or not. Even you, Robert.”

  “Look, I’m asking you about fringe groups because I know the other side has radicalized elements that are looking for someone’s head. They regard Mr. Chen and Li Na as heroes for challenging the mainland.”

  Mr. Song tugged a handkerchief from his pants pocket and blew his nose. He fold
ed the handkerchief and left it on the tabletop. “Let me tell you about heroes, Robert. When privileged individuals in China worry that they will lose their status and seek to set themselves up in America, with a protected position, these people are not heroes. They are bandits. They are no different from the KMT soldiers who looted treasures from the museums of China as they made their cowardly retreat to Taiwan.”

  “You’re forgetting that Li Na is the daughter of Mao.”

  “She is the daughter of evil Jiang Qing, too! She holds none of the Great Helmsman’s cultured qualities. A mere blood relation to a great man has elevated her status for years. But now that Mao has passed away, a reckoning is on the way, and it will not be kind to Li Na.”

  “It wasn’t kind to Mr. Chen, either.”

  “Mr. Chen has benefited from his ties to the Li Na clique. He would have also been reevaluated had he not had the misadventure of coming here.

  “But make no mistake. He was not killed by a Communist. We are not brutes.”

  “Yes, you would have tortured him and sent him to a labor camp.”

  “Reeducation camp.”

  “What could he possibly learn there?”

  Mr. Song smiled and stuffed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “The bitterness of life that we sometimes forget.”

  Robert, are you stupid?” the midget asked for a second time. We were crowded into his toy store’s stockroom. He was halfway up a shelf on a ladder, so we were eye-level with each other.

  “I already said that I wasn’t.”

  “Then why the hell do you continue to visit Mr. Song?”

  “I’m just looking for clues.”

  “You’re not going to find any there! I also know you saw Mr. Yi at the Taiwanese office in Midtown.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I have sources all over. From running this store, I know all Chinese people who have kids. And all Chinese people have kids. But listen, if I could find out where you’ve been, almost anybody could.”

  “I’m careful.”

  “No you’re not! There are some ruthless people out there and they wouldn’t think twice about killing a cop, especially a stupid one!”

  “Stop calling me ‘stupid’!”

  “Then stop acting stupidly! Every time you step into and out of Together Chinese Kinship or the Taiwan office, you’re telling the world, ‘Hey, I support this political stance!’ A Chinese cop on the wrong side would be worth more dead than alive in this propaganda war. Particularly now. You could be killed just to send a message, Robert.

  “Both the Communists and the KMT are desperate. The Commies want that official diplomatic relationship with the U.S. and want Taiwan out right goddamned now. The KMT has threatened to join the Soviet Bloc if America severs ties and recognizes Beijing.”

  “No way in hell would that ever happen,” I said. “Chiang Kai-shek founded the International Anti-Communist League!”

  “You don’t know your history, Robert! The KMT’s early advisers included Russian revolutionaries. Chiang’s own son lived there for many years and even married a Russian woman. Although the KMT did break ties with the Soviets, there is no one else apart from the U.S. who could feasibly offer Taiwan protection should the mainland attack.”

  “I still can’t see that.”

  “Of course you can’t,” grumbled the midget.

  “Will you give me a break? My Lonnie’s neck is on the line here. I would pray to both Mao and Chiang if I thought it would help me with the case. But before it comes to that, if you could offer any thoughts, I would really appreciate it.”

  The midget came off the ladder and slapped his hands clean on his slacks. “This is what I think,” he said. “I think whoever killed Mr. Chen is reckless. This was not a planned killing. You don’t plan to murder somebody by bashing him in the head. Blood gets all over your clothes. If you really wanted to take somebody out, you use a gun from a distance.”

  “Wasn’t that part of the message, though? That Mr. Chen wasn’t even worth the cost of a bullet to kill?”

  “I seriously doubt it. If the intention is to kill, there’s no surer way. You don’t know how hard heads are. You could pound somebody as hard as you could with a baseball bat and he might be able to run away, screaming bloody murder.”

  “What if your victim was restrained?”

  “But Mr. Chen wasn’t, was he?”

  “No.”

  “I figured.”

  “Could his own guards have killed him?”

  “They were contractors with the U.S. government. I seriously doubt they had the motives or initiative do so.”

  “Then who?”

  “This was not a professional hit. It was a personal or political act. Maybe both. So keep an eye out on extremist groups and extremist people.”

  “The only one I’ve met so far is that guy Lincoln from the Union of the Three Armies.”

  “That stupid group? You know they’ve been recruiting kids to spray-paint their name all around Chinatown?”

  “Could they be responsible for murder?”

  “Do kids know how to swing a bat?”

  Strangely, Paul looked distraught when I came home.

  “Where were you?” he asked.

  “I was at Great Adventure. They have this really cool water ride they only open up after midnight, and it’s for cops only.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Naw. I’ll probably go tomorrow night, too.”

  Paul stared at me, frowning.

  “Okay, stop it,” I said. “You’re killing me with that face.”

  “Lonnie wanted to talk with you. She’s having a hard time at work.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “Her editor is rejecting more of her stories. She used to write four or five short wire stories daily. Now she hasn’t had a byline in two days.”

  I called Lonnie and she answered on the first ring.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “Lonnie,” I said.

  “Robert, I think I’m going to lose my job! Instead of firing me directly, they can keep rejecting my stories so my editor can say I haven’t been productive enough. I’m not a part of the union yet, so I don’t have any support.”

  “Those motherfuckers.”

  “Have you found something out yet?”

  “I sort of have a lead, I think. I’m trying as hard as I can. You know, I’m trying to top Manhattan South’s best detectives and it’s tough.”

  “I saw the Chinese U.N. representative in the hallway and he ran away to avoid me.”

  “It’s a political issue, Lonnie. The People’s Republic has a news blackout on Mr. Chen.”

  Lonnie sighed into the receiver. “I should go back to the bakery to work. Maybe the harassment would stop.”

  “No, you can’t do that!”

  “I guess I was never meant to leave Chinatown.”

  “You stay at the U.N., Lonnie!”

  “You don’t know what it feels like, Robert! I’m writing and rewriting stories all day that aren’t published. I feel completely useless!”

  “I promise you, I’m going to help put an end to this. I’m going to sic the detectives on this other guy instead of you.”

  “You already found a suspect?”

  “I have this guy in mind.”

  “Do you think he did it?”

  “I don’t know. But he’s a more likely suspect than you. He was protesting Mr. Chen at Jade Palace and he also said that he got what he deserved.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say. Mr. Chen was not a bad man.”

  “This suspect I have in mind—apart from being a loudmouth, he treats his girlfriend lousy.”

  “Do you think he did it, Robert?”

  “He could have done it.”

  “I don’t want you to switch the suspicion on to someone else who’s innocent. I know how it feels and it’s awful.”

  “I’d rather they focus on anybody else but you. Even me. But it w
on’t be me.”

  “You have to find the killer, Robert. Do you understand?”

  “I will.”

  Paul walked into the bedroom as soon as we were done talking.

  “Paul, were you listening in or did you want advice on what to wear for Halloween?”

  “I don’t do that stuff anymore. Besides, Halloween is on a Sunday. That’s a study night.” He crossed his arms. “I’m worried about Lonnie.”

  “Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “I’m not just saying it. I believe it.”

  Word had gotten to us that the American Civil Liberties Union was preparing a lawsuit over our practice of taking Polaroids of suspected gang kids.

  The detective squad hid the cameras in the highest kitchen-supply cabinets. We stashed the photo albums in our bottom drawers, pretending they were our personal photos. I realized that I didn’t have many genuine pictures at all. I couldn’t even fill up a single album.

  Of course, I would be the most suspicious out of all of us for having these albums in my desk. A Chinese guy taking tour pictures in Chinatown? No way. Maybe the Upper East Side or Central Park.

  With the cameras gone and access to the photo albums now shut down to the rest of the precinct, we had to readjust our operations to keep tabs on suspicious characters. The new methods were going to test our limits. English fished out a thesaurus from Lumpy’s desk and gave it to me before we went out.

  Because Vandyne was helping me out with tailing Lincoln, I backed him up on the latest crap assignment, which was writing down detailed descriptions of youths.

  We sat on adjacent benches at Chatham Square, where Bowery, East Broadway, Worth, Division, and Mott all met up. Neither of us wore gloves so we could write with our bare hands. We each had a cup of hot coffee to pass between our fingers to keep warm.

  The Kimlau Memorial Arch towered above the square. The arch itself didn’t say what had happened to Lt. Benjamin Ralph Kimlau, a Chinese American who had fought in World War II, but I knew that the Japanese had shot him down. I’d be mad at Japanese people but I knew a lot of Americans of Japanese descent had also fought bravely in the war. Paul told me that groups of Japanese Americans were rounded up into internment camps for the duration of the war, but I didn’t believe him entirely because I had never read about them anywhere.