One Red Bastard

by Ed Lin

  “What kind of black music?” he asked.

  “The dancing kind!”

  “Teresa,” I interjected, “why didn’t you come to us before? Lincoln wasn’t in that night and your rolling pin was missing, right?”

  “It is still missing!”

  “How come you didn’t tell me?”

  “I was not sure! I wanted to make sure!”

  “How were you going to make sure?”

  “I was going to make Lincoln confess!”

  Vandyne cleared his throat. “What if he tried to keep you quiet?”

  “Nobody keeps me quiet!” she said.

  “I mean, dead quiet,” he added.

  “Oh. He could not do that.”

  I then did something I should have done even before seeing Teresa. I checked up with the Department of Motor Vehicles to see what kind of guy Lee was. After a confusing phone call, I hung up and looked at Pete, who was sitting at his desk cleaning out one of his ears with the eraser end of his pencil.

  “Hey, Pizza Man.”

  “Chow.”

  “A funny thing happened when I called the DMV to check up on someone’s driving record.”

  “What happened?”

  “They told me to talk to you.”

  “Oh. Who was it about?”

  “This Chinatown livery-cab driver named Lee. He has a number of outstanding parkers and movers—enough violations to lose his license, apparently.”

  “I gotta keep that guy driving, Chow. He gives me a lot of good info.”

  “What was the last thing he tipped you off about?”

  “Mainly tells me about suspicious people he picks up and where he takes them to. I busted a smuggling operation that was sneaking in dried fungus and animal parts because of him.”

  “I remember that thing.”

  “Of course you do. Probably the first time ever that a dried tiger penis was shown at a press conference. Now, why are you looking into Lee?”

  “Well, he told me something. I wanted to see what his record was like. I only knew about him protesting buses and harassing tourists.”

  “I got news for you. Back then he was one of my guys, too.” Pete narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. “He told you something, huh?”

  “Yeah. You know his pal Lincoln? They’re both in the Union of the Three Armies, that fringe Commie group.”

  “I’ve heard of the group, of course, and I think I know who Lincoln is.”

  “Lee seems to think that Lincoln killed Mr. Chen. He told me some bloody clothes might have been stashed in the group’s apartment.”

  Pete pushed his seat back and stood up. “Let’s go get him now.”

  “We don’t have a warrant.”

  “We don’t need one because he’s going to open the door and show us around.”

  “I guess he’s never given you bad info.”

  He picked up his coat from the back of his chair and punched his arms through the sleeves. “Only one time, and then I showed him not to fuck with Pizza Man.”

  Pete told Lee on the phone to meet us at Bowery and Canal by the Manhattan Bridge on-ramp.

  Lee brought Pete, me, and Vandyne back up to the apartment where I had met Lincoln and his bong buddies. I spoke some Cantonese with him, but because we were in mixed company, I told Lee to switch to half-decent English.

  “Second time you come here, huh?” Lee asked me.

  “Second time’s the charm,” I said.

  “Why were you here before?” Pete asked me.

  “I think I saved Lincoln’s life that night. His girlfriend was ready to kill him. She thought he was stepping out on her. Turns out she never knew about the little boys’ club they have here.”

  Vandyne went in first. “You don’t still have marijuana in this apartment, do you?”

  “Oh, no no no,” insisted Lee. “Never have, never have.”

  I snorted. “Where are the bloody clothes?”

  “I don’t know where he hide. Somewhere inside.”

  We split into three teams. I took the kitchen. There was little but bottles of spices and beer in the refrigerator. Vandyne took the tiny bathroom and the hallway closet. Pete searched the bedroom.

  We met up again in the living room.

  “I got nothing,” said Pizza Man.

  “Same here,” said Vandyne.

  I threw up my hands.

  “That means it has to be in the living room,” said Pizza Man.

  “There’s nowhere to hide anything here,” I said. “There aren’t even any cabinets or drawers around.”

  The room held only a couch, a TV, a coffee table, and four befuddled men.

  “He must hide in apartment,” said Lee.

  “You don’t know where they are, do you?” Pizza Man asked him. Lee shook his head. “If you do, you’re an accessory to murder.”

  Vandyne walked over to the couch and picked up a seat cushion. “This has a foldaway bed in it, right?”

  “Yes,” said Lee. “Maybe he hide there!”

  When we had the couch open, we unfolded the first section and there was nothing. The second section also yielded nothing. Vandyne and I were folding the mattress back in when Pete spoke up.

  “Hey, there’s something down there!”

  We pulled the couch away from the wall, revealing a cardboard box that had been shoved between the back of the couch and the wall.

  Pete grabbed the box and opened it. It was stiff with dried blood. A rolling pin caked with blood fell to the floor with a thump. A watch was wound around it.

  “You got him!” said Lee.

  Pete closed in on him. “How do we know Lincoln hid them there and not you?”

  “I don’t hide! Lincoln hide!”

  “Then we need you to testify in court to this.”

  “No! You say I don’t go to court.”

  “I’m only kidding, buddy! This is real good work you did for us today. Let me ask you one more question. How come you went to Chow and not me with this?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why did you tell Robert Chow and not tell me to my face what was going on, my little sheep?”

  “Huh?”

  Pete punched Lee hard in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. “I told you that you only talk to me, you little fuck! Get it?”

  “Hey, now!” said Vandyne.

  “Hey, nothing! Don’t take it personally, Chow. It’s just that I’ve been cultivating this guy for years; I need for him to keep me in on the loop on things like this.”

  “If it helps at all, I was the one leaning on him for info,” I said. Lee rose to his hands and knees and I wanted to give him more time before he could reasonably defend himself or run away.

  “Bullshit, you pushed him! I’ll let it go this time, Lee, but remember, ‘When Lee see or hear something, he come to Pizza Man.’ Get it?” Lee nodded. “Still, I might need you to testify in court. Then again, maybe I don’t need you.”

  Pete got on his radio and notified Manhattan South of the situation. They were over in about fifteen minutes. I read the watch inscription for forensics. It was only a few hours later that they had a warrant to arrest Lincoln and they picked him up right off the street.

  I heard that that punk acted like he had no idea what was going on.

  The recovery of Mr. Chen’s watch, Lincoln’s bloody clothes, and an unspecified weapon caused a sensation.

  NYPD Commissioner Michael Codd held a press conference to say that a suspect had been apprehended in the murder of the Chinese official. The NYPD press office issued a correction the next day to say that Mr. Chen had come to the United States as a private citizen and was not an official of the People’s Republic, nor was he acting in an official capacity.

  When I read that Lincoln had been arrested but had been allowed to post bail, I got worried. Teresa had a restraining order on him, so he holed up at his co-manager Sunny Chu’s apartment in Brooklyn.

  I couldn’t find out where that was exactly. I showed up at the B
DC After-School Program office and told Sunny that Lincoln would be safer in jail, but she only gave me two stink eyes. I thought she didn’t like him, but maybe she was one of those women who had a thing for murderers.

  She complained to the Fifth Precinct, so I got another earwax-clearing lecture from The Brow about harassing the people we were supposed to be serving. I stared at nothing on the opposite wall and wondered if maybe Lincoln would be smart enough never to leave the house.

  Lincoln must have known he was in trouble, too, because when they found him on the sidewalk, he had two layers of metal from bean-curd buckets wrapped around his chest and back. That would have worked fine against the crappy Saturday night specials that gang kids had, but it did nothing to stop the three .44 magnums that tore through him, probably fired from a rifle.

  His improvised protective vest was probably worse than nothing because it meant more metal shards ripping through his organs. In any case, he wouldn’t have survived, with or without it. His unknown assailants must have wanted to get him badly because they had gone all the way to Brooklyn to do so.

  How the assassins found him, I wasn’t sure. But bad guys get more and better info than police because they pay people to talk.

  It’s not a priority case when something unfortunate happens to a guy who has basically been convicted in the press. Put the cellophane wrap on that one because it’s headed for the cold-case file. The murder of a murderer in Brooklyn? Yeah, they’ll get right on it, ha-ha. The guy wasn’t even good-looking, for crying out loud, and his girlfriend had that restraining order on him.

  “You’re sure he’s the one who did it?” Lonnie asked me. We were sitting in a coffee shop at the United Nations eating warm and damp croissants.

  “Based on what I know,” I said, “Lincoln seems to have been our man.”

  “But you didn’t have any witnesses to the murder!”

  “I’m sure some people would have come forward after seeing his picture in the news. Anyway, I don’t want you to worry one more second about this crap. It’s over and you’re cleared. Just get back to work.”

  “But I wanted to cover his trial for the newswire!”

  “Look at all the important work you have to do here!”

  “Another press conference about another pointless meeting where another useless agreement was or wasn’t reached.”

  “Don’t put down your work,” I said, saying the words firmly so that I believed it as well. “Your job is important and there are people counting on you. What seems stupid to you could mean a lot to someone reading what you write.”

  “I know, I know, I should appreciate what I have.” Lonnie wisely decided not to finish her lousy croissant and chose instead to tear it into pieces as she talked. “I could still be back at the bakery.”

  “That’s my girl,” I said.

  I met the midget for dinner at a Buddhist food restaurant. Essentially the restaurant’s clientele was composed of practicing Buddhists and regular people in mourning. Also, there were a few diners who had gone to a temple for help and were told to avoid eating meat for a week and to make a donation to the temple to make the prayers more effective.

  The restaurant used tofu, wheat gluten, and other shudder-inducing ingredients to fashion meat substitutes. Mock ham fried rice. Mock beef chow fun. Mock duck.

  “Wasn’t Mock Duck one of the old Chinatown gangsters?” I asked the midget. “When I was a kid, there was a ghost story that you could hear his chain mail armor rattling around Doyers Street at midnight.”

  “I’ll bet he was a real hero to you when you were in a gang, Robert.” The midget paused to sip some tea and grimace. “Jesus, even the tea tastes fake.”

  “Why did you want to eat here?”

  “I like a change of pace every now and then.”

  “From good food?”

  “You don’t have to eat here, you know.”

  “But I guess you do.” The midget said nothing. “Seriously, can’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  The midget dismissed me with a wave of his hand, but the waiter thought this meant we were ready and came to our table. He was wearing a plaid vest over a dirty Tshirt.

  “How are you, my friend,” he asked the midget.

  “I’m healthy. Maybe too healthy to have to eat here.”

  “I’m assuming you’ll want the usual.”

  “The usual?” I asked.

  “Gluten spare ribs and bean-curd fish, with brown rice,” said the waiter, smiling.

  “Why is he eating here?” I asked.

  “We have the best food. He’s been coming in once a week. Oh, and what will you have?”

  “I’ll have the same,” I said.

  “You’ll be sorry,” muttered the midget.

  The waiter smiled as his eyebrows shifted into a worried look. “May I suggest something else so that you can try a wider variety of the menu and share dishes?”

  “No, I want the same thing as him,” I said. The waiter nodded and left. “Tell me why you’ve been coming here! You obviously don’t like the food. Is there a cute waitress or something?”

  “I sort of lost a game,” he said to the floor. This was big news. No one had ever beaten him at anything ever. The midget was the master at chess—both American and Chinese, checkers, board games, and, hell, even pinball, I’d bet.

  “You goddamned lost at something!”

  “No. I said, ‘Sort of.’ This kid who is actually a pretty good toy customer was bragging that he could beat me at Connect Four. I said he couldn’t. So then he bet me a free dinner at his parents’ restaurant every week for a month if I won. I said he could have a twenty-dollar gift certificate if he beat me. Really, I only agreed to play a game with him to get the boy away from the display case he was blocking.”

  “You should’ve asked him what restaurant his parents owned.”

  “Well, I was planning on just saying, ‘Forget it,’ you know? So after I won, I said, ‘Forget it.’ The kid was crying his eyes out. He had no idea he was going to lose. But he also said that a bet was a bet and if I didn’t take him up on it, the win didn’t count.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I had to go with the spoils of the win, the kid was right. But now that I think about it, he had the inside angle all along. He knows the food sucks here. He’s always got beef-jerky breath.”

  Our food swung in quickly.

  “Well,” I said. “You don’t have to actually eat it, do you?”

  “I’m not one to try to weasel my way out of life’s tougher lessons. In any case this will probably prepare me for necessary humility the day when I really lose a game.” He picked up a fork and began to flake up the bean curd that was shaped like a fish fillet. We both began to take tentative bites.

  “The guy who was shot in Brooklyn,” said the midget. “Did he kill Mr. Chen?”

  “I think so.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We have the best kind of evidence—circumstantial.”

  “Humph. Seems pretty awkward to kill someone with a rolling pin. Especially out in the street.”

  “It might not have happened in the open.”

  “Then where?”

  “Who knows? We haven’t found the actual scene of the crime yet.”

  “Do you know who killed Lincoln?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yeah. John Wilkes Booth.” For the first time that night I saw the midget’s familiar smirk.

  “You’re so funny.”

  “No, you’re the funny one. You think that because you now got Lonnie off the hook everything is fine. There are still a lot of unanswered questions.”

  “The Chinese government doesn’t care. The Taiwanese government doesn’t, either. Both the Chinatown KMT community leaders and the Communist groups are happy with Lincoln dead. In my mind, this means that the case is closed.”

  “What if Lincoln was innocent?”

  “No way.”

  “He didn’t even get to go t
o trial. You have no idea what would come out.”

  “It’s better that way.”

  “What if it was Lonnie, Robert? What if she had been formally named as the murderer?”

  “She wasn’t because she was innocent and the accusation was going to come out in the wash, anyway.”

  “Not everyone has a cop boyfriend. That makes it easier to pull strings and get some residual benefits. You did an awful lot of investigating that you had no business doing.”

  “I acted out of concern for the wasting of taxpayer money. I didn’t even draw any overtime.”

  “You mean you saved your girlfriend’s neck for no charge? Wow!”

  “Let’s put a leash on it. This meal’s already bad enough.” I looked out at the street and noticed a boy who was about eight years old staring at us through the window.

  “Damn kid even spies on me to make sure I hold up my end of the bet,” muttered the midget.

  “You should take him home. I think he likes you.”

  Later, back at my apartment, it was Paul’s turn to hit me up with questions about the case.

  “Something really bothers me,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Well, I’m sure you thought about it, but how did Mr. Chen even get to Chinatown?”

  “He probably had someone on his security detail call him a cab.”

  “No, he didn’t tell any of them where he was going.”

  “Then he probably took the subway.”

  “He didn’t know any English. How would he know how to buy a token and where to transfer and where to get out?”

  “It doesn’t matter how he got to Chinatown from Midtown. Hell, maybe he took a brisk seventy-block walk. It’s the murder we’re focused on, not his transportation choices.”

  “Beyond that, why did Mr. Chen come to Chinatown so late?”

  “You know what I honestly think? He was probably trying to find some girly action.”

  “He could have just stayed in his hotel room for that.”

  “Mr. Chen probably would have wanted Chinese girly action.”

  Paul crossed his arms. “You know they send women up to Midtown, right?”

  “All right. I don’t know exactly how or why Mr. Chen came down to Chinatown. All I know is Lincoln runs into him on the street at random, something in his head snaps, and Lincoln beats Mr. Chen to death with a rolling pin.”