by Daniel Nieh
But some of Zhao’s ideas were truly terrible. When Zhao came up with Ice, he knew I would fight it, so he asked Ouyang to take charge so he wouldn’t be directly involved. For your safety, it’s better if you do not know the details of the scheme for now. It’s enough to say that it involves smuggling a dangerous product that I knew right away I could never be involved with. Ouyang began to put a lot of pressure on me. “Brother Zhao says that this project is important to Mr. Dong,” Ouyang told me. “If we do not help him, Happy Year will be in trouble. And don’t think the trouble won’t reach you just because you’re in America.”
As usual, Ai tried to smooth things over. In Beijing, he argued on my behalf, but he also told me that Ouyang and Zhao resented me and didn’t think of me as their brother anymore. Nonetheless, I refused to help, and I doubted that they would harm me after all we had been through together.
If I am wrong about that—if our shared history no longer protects me from their destructive ways—then I will accept my fate. Better to go now than to continue living at the whim of such men. They are unrecognizable to me now, and often I regret ever associating with them. But then, perhaps I would have died long ago without their brotherhood. I certainly would not have made it this far. It shames me to admit that there would be no Happy Year restaurants without Zhao and Ouyang. So perhaps they are right about me; perhaps I am the one who has betrayed them. People and circumstances change. I still follow the words of my father: “Suí jī yìng biàn, suí yù ér ān.”
If you are reading this letter, then the worst has come to pass. Do not mourn me as a victim, as I have left the world in accordance with my principles. But I also made a backup plan. Zhao and Ouyang may take my life, but if you follow my instructions, then you and Sun can put an end to their depravity.
The plan is not complicated, but you will have to be careful. Sun will be a wanted man in Beijing. Zhao and Ouyang will be on the lookout for him, so everybody else will want to keep their distance. You will have to go to Ai and ask for his assistance. He will feel compelled to say yes because you are my son. Next, you will have to find evidence linking Zhao and Ouyang to Ice. I have found a point of vulnerability in their circle: a Russian dealmaker named Feder Fekhlachev.
Feder is greedy, fearful, and not too loyal. He will not give the information to Sun, but I believe he will sell it to you—he is a bit in awe of Americans. You will have to buy information from him and take it to the Western media. Dong can protect Zhao and Ouyang from the Chinese authorities. But if you expose their dirty laundry to the world, then Dong himself will become an embarrassment to the Party leadership, and they will force him to shut down Happy Year’s operations.
When I was your age, I had to fight people all the time. If I were still young, then perhaps I would fight my brothers the old-fashioned way. But I am more mature now, and I know that violence engenders more violence. Instead, I want you to shine a light into the darkness I tried to leave behind in Beijing.
This letter must come as a shock to you, Victor, and I understand you may feel angry with me, but I do not apologize for my choices, because I did what I had to do in order to survive. The life you live has not come free. Now you must help repay that debt.
Also, you must take care of Lianying. You will be the head of the family now. Your sister is sensitive, and you must find the right way to tell her what is happening. Do not tell her before you go to China, because she will try to stop you.
Xiaozhou, I do apologize for deceiving you for so long. The lie has been my life. I never thought I had a choice. You must do as I say so that I can become an honest man, finally, perhaps, after I am already a dead one.
I put down the last page and look up at Jules, who is sitting there with her arms folded, glowering at the table. I can’t think of anything to say, either. For a minute I close my eyes, listen to the restaurant sounds. I imagine my new grandfather making bricks in some dusty labor camp in Qinghai, and Dad with a Danny Zuko ducktail, drinking Bud Light and staring at clown fish in a divey Hong Kong pool hall. I envision Mom patiently pitching the gospel to bemused Beijing grannies in her neat and precise Mandarin. She helps Dad with his English; the two of them huddle together over a map of California. Both dead now.
I picture my future as I thought they intended it: a secure white-collar job; a condo shared with some less-intimidating version of Holly Michaels; pets, children, Brita filter, minivan, timeshare. PowerPoints about corporate synergies or whatever. But then I see Sun’s foot crashing into Ponytail’s chest in the Happy Year kitchen, and, in the dim streetlight leaking in through the saloon doors, I see myself, crouched, alert, and I hear my racing pulse.
“Stop it,” Jules says, finally.
I open my eyes. “Stop what?”
“You’re thinking about going.”
Blinking, I shake my head. “I’m not.”
“I want to know what happened, too, I really do. This letter is heartbreaking, and now there so many questions that I want answered. But going to China with Sun and going after these guys, these killers—it’s too risky. The side of Dad that’s asking you to do this, it’s not his good side, okay? I know how much you adored him, but you need to see past that for a minute and recognize how this letter shows that he was completely two-faced and deceitful.”
“But Jules, I—”
She doesn’t let me finish. She gestures with her hands, her face reddening with some combination of anger and incipient tears. “No, Victor, before you object, please listen to me for a second, okay? Did you never wonder why Mom was estranged from her parents? Why you, you bury yourself in basketball to avoid facing the contradictions in your life—just like he always buried himself in his work? He was faking it, Victor, trying to make us look like a normal family, while he was scooting back and forth to Beijing doing God knows what. He doesn’t even say! Even in this letter, he’s trying to come clean, he’s telling us about the immigrants and pregnant ladies he helped, but he doesn’t say what this Ice shit is all about.”
At some point, she has to breathe, which means I manage to get a word in. “Did we read the same letter just now, Jules? It’s not like he was sitting around looking at grad school brochures, and then he decided he’d prefer a life of crime.”
I’m furious at her for explaining my life to me, sufficiently enraged to drop in the grad school line just to make it sting.
“Maybe Dad didn’t have all the same options that we had, okay? He did some dirty work because he had to, but he gave it up as soon as he could. He married a missionary and moved to the suburbs! If he worked his ass off and lied about his past so that we could have normal lives, don’t you think we should be grateful?”
She sets her jaw and glares at me for a moment. “I am grateful, but Victor, for once in your life, will you try to see some nuance? You’re your own person, not some extension of Dad, and you don’t have to buy all this patriarchal ‘head-of-the-family’ bullshit, all these melodramatic lines about shame and loyalty and debt. If you would spend just two minutes thinking about it rationally, you’d see that he’s asking too much. You’d realize that going to China to fight Dad’s enemies is a terrible, terrible idea.”
Jules: always so great at seeing both sides of the coin. Always so great at coming up with reasons to avoid commitments, reasons to criticize, reasons to separate herself from the pack. I want to say, you don’t understand this letter because it’s about caring a lot about something. I want to say, you didn’t pick up that he was ashamed of us, too, he’s asking so much because he made all these sacrifices for a couple of big babies who don’t think about anything but ourselves, our basketball season, our dreams, our love lives. We don’t care about the past or the future, the vast imbalances in the world that we benefit from. The painful compromises people make just to get a decent job making dinner for people like us. We’re blind to that, we’re desensitized, we live in a bubble, and he knew it.
He’s only asking me to be human, to give a shit, to stand up for what�
��s right. I want to say, you’ll notice he didn’t bother asking you.
“You’re always telling me to think for myself, to be my own person. But in the next breath, you’re telling me what to do,” I say instead. “You know, I’m so glad you’ve got everything figured out. You’ve got Dad figured out, you’ve got me figured out. Maybe sometime soon you’ll have your own life figured out as well.”
“Look, Victor, this isn’t about me, this is about you.” Jules drops her voice low and glares at me across the table. “Dad was good at making you feel special. He manipulated you just like he manipulated Sun. You don’t think it’s a bit messed up that he pulled Sun off the streets to use him as a mule? That he trained him to become his gang enforcer? That he raised another little one-man fan club for himself in China?”
“That’s a typical way for you to see things,” I bark back at her. “You don’t think even for a minute what Sun’s life would be like without Dad, because you take for granted all the love and support you’ve received. Dad gave Sun a home and taught him to read and write. He taught him to speak English. He gave him a future, even if it’s not a perfect future. But you, you want everybody to be perfect just like you are, which is why you’ve never been happy, and you never will be.”
“I wish you didn’t speak English, you superior little shit,” Jules hisses.
Then she glares daggers at my phone, which is vibrating again. I flip it over to look at the screen. Lang.
I take a deep breath before picking up.
“Hello?”
“Victor. Where are you?”
“I’m at IHOP.”
“Arrow or Foothill?”
“Um. Arrow.”
“Don’t move. I’ll be there in ten.”
“Wait—” But the line’s already dead.
I put the phone down, put my elbows on the table, put my face in my hands.
After a minute, Jules says, “Wow, that conversation got nasty really fast. Look, I’m sorry, Victor. I don’t want to fight. It’s just that you’re all the family I’ve got left, and I don’t want you to leave me here by myself. I’m genuinely afraid of what would happen if you went to China, and I’d say I have good reasons to be.”
I don’t say anything back to her. I just stay there with my hands over my face, waiting for an asteroid to strike the earth.
“So Lang is coming here, now?” she says.
I grunt.
“Why?”
“He didn’t say.”
“So what do you say, Victor? Do we tell him about the ketamine, and hand off this law-enforcement business to the professionals?”
I take my hands off my face, blink a few times, give my head a shake. “Jules, that would involve confessing to a break-in that we committed, like, six hours ago.”
Jules widens her eyes, then rubs them with the heels of her hands. “I’m honestly so fucking exhausted that I forgot that part.”
I don’t say anything.
“He might even be planning to ask you about that.”
“Uh-huh.”
We look at the pages strewn around the table, the Chinese-English dictionary, the mountain of snotty napkins.
“Okay. I’ll leave and take this stuff with me,” she says. “Are you all right to talk with him right now?”
“He’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes.”
“Fine. But Victor, maybe test the waters a bit, because we might need his help. I’m going to get some sleep, and I suggest you do the same. Let’s think things over and talk later. Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Promise me you’ll call me later.”
“Okay,” I say. “I promise.”
Jules packs the letter and the dictionary into her handbag. She gets up to go. She gives my shoulder a squeeze.
I make the requisite eye contact and nod my head.
Jules lingers for a moment with her hand on my shoulder and then walks away with her head down, her mask of nonchalance left behind on the blue pleather bench of the IHOP booth, her small shoulders sagging beneath the weight of too many sensitivities and indecisions, too much vulnerability and love. Those burdens and also a large calfskin handbag stuffed with the last testament of our father’s life.
I’m already feeling terrible for talking to her the way I did. I don’t want to fight, either. I have no idea what I want; I wonder if I ever have. All I know is what Dad wants, what Jules wants, what Andre wants, what Coach Fucking Vaughn wants. But now I need everyone else to shut the fuck up and let me think for myself for once.
17
Like a lot of cops, Lang saunters. He takes his time, says, “Hi, folks,” to people, strolling around like the patrolmen who break up off-campus parties. Except there’s no tan shirt tucked into brown pants. He’s still rocking the khakis-and-Hawaiian-shirt look.
I’m watching him make his entrance and head toward my booth, which is now clean. After Jules left, the waitress ran my card and cleared away the crumpled napkins. She also topped up my mug of tepid coffee, but I can’t drink any more of it. I don’t do caffeine during the season, so I’m already jittery from the two cups I had earlier.
That, no sleep, and a few other factors.
“Hey.” He slides in across from me and briefly scans the folded cardboard triangle printed with the breakfast specials. “You eat?”
I shake my head.
“You gonna?”
“No.”
“How’d you get here?”
“My sister drove.”
“Where’d she go?”
“She had some stuff to do.”
“Ah.” He digests this, glancing around at the tail end of the breakfast rush. The state of his eyes, hair, and clothes tells me he’s been up since before dawn and didn’t shower this morning. He strokes his upper lip with his index finger. “So she left you here?”
“She had to go and you called.”
“Oh. That’s a shame.” He grunts. “Well. Let’s get down to business and then I can give you a ride.”
He pulls out a Korean-made smartphone the size of a small Bible. It’s the biggest fucking phone I’ve ever seen in my life. He squints down at the touch screen and stabs at it with his index finger.
“Just got this thing. Can you believe it’s SDSO standard issue now?” he scoffs. “Ah, here we go. You know these people?”
He passes the giant phone to me. The picture was taken through the windshield of Jules’s car. It doesn’t take long for me to weigh my options. So I tell him.
“Your sister, huh? I thought so,” Lang says. “Can you tell me what they’re doing in this photo?”
“Jules and I looked through my dad’s office for those legal pads. We didn’t find them, but we did find this address. She wanted to go check it out.”
“Where’d you find it?”
“Just written on some paper.”
“Can you show me the paper?”
“I can ask if she still has it.” The lies come out nice and easy despite the caffeine jitters. When did I decide to tell them?
Lang is scribbling in his little notebook. “What did she say about the house?”
“She said it was full of pregnant Chinese ladies.”
“Any idea why?”
I consider playing dumb, but it occurs to me that revealing some of what I know will make it easier to conceal the rest. It is true that I was a university professor, but I don’t really speak Japanese.
“Citizenship hustle,” I say. “The Chinese babies born here are U.S. citizens.”
He raises his eyebrows, purses his lips. “Nice theory. In fact there are five or six operations like this in the San Gabriel Valley. But that’s an issue for the folks over at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not the police. So what’s your dad got to do with this house?”
I shrug. “I wish I knew.”
Lang gives me a look, then takes the phone back from me and starts punching around on it again.
Rou Qiangjun pops into my mind, his snake tattoos, his affected
simplicity, his menacing calm. He probably knows by now that someone broke into the safe at Happy Year. Would he spook and leave town?
“How’s it going with the forensics team from Orange County?” I ask Lang. “Do they have the killer’s DNA?”
“Crime lab’s still backed up,” Lang says without looking up from the phone. “They fed us a line about funding cuts. These things take time. Okay, what about this guy?”
He turns the phone to show me a mug shot of Ponytail, looking the worse for wear.
“He works at Happy Year.”
“Worked. Illegally, I might add,” Lang says. “Someone broke into the restaurant last night and took a couple of things. They also put a beating on this man, who may be charged with illegal possession of a firearm. If he’s convicted, his B-1 visa will be revoked, and he’ll be deported. Any guesses as to who sponsored his visa?”
“My dad?”
“Actually, his attorney, Perry Peng, who I believe you had a chat with last week.”
I sit forward to say something, but Lang raises a finger before I can protest. “I know, I know, of course you had to speak with him about estate stuff. But look, I’m gonna need you and your sister to locate that piece of paper, and if you find anything else that might be helpful to the investigation—” He holds another one of his business cards in my face. “Okay? Are we on the same page?”
“Yeah, I—” Test the waters a bit. Would Lang be able to help us? If we confessed, would he “try to see some nuance”? I’m trying to think of some way to prod him, but all I’m coming up with is an overwhelming desire to lie down.