A Perfect Cover

by Maureen Tan

  Before they left, each man passed Mr. Yang a red envelope, one traditionally used to give a gift of money. The men’s body language supported my theory that this was a ritual, the contributions voluntary. As they relinquished their envelopes, most of the men looked passive, a few seemed resigned. No one seemed angry. Dues, perhaps. Or a donation. Certainly, nothing about this suggested protection money.

  As the membership of the Little Vietnam Benevolent Society trailed out of the restaurant, Mr. Yang went over to the cash register and put the red envelopes in the drawer.

  The lunchtime crowd began arriving. In between taking orders, I considered the significance of the single bit of information I’d overheard during the meeting. Some important shipment would soon be arriving at the Port of New Orleans and would then, within a day, be moved up north to Chicago.

  Beginning the first day he’d helped me get a job, I saw Vincent Ngo every afternoon after the lunchtime rush was over. He’d sit at the counter, sip hot tea and eat a bowl of pho or the lunch special, then leave thirty minutes later. Though my first day as a waitress and my evening reconnoiter through the neighborhood had left me footsore and weary, I’d taken a few minutes to draw him, easily recreating his smiling, handsome face. As I’d finished shading in around his eyes, it occurred to me that Vincent was younger than he looked. Probably not much older than thirty.

  Vincent enjoyed talking and had quickly discovered that I didn’t mind listening. Though I learned from Mrs. Yang that he’d never been a regular customer, apparently he was now. So I poured him tea, served him lunch and tried to be a good audience. It was an occupation I quickly discovered Mr. Yang disapproved of. While Vincent was in the restaurant, Mr. Yang found any excuse he could—short of being rude to a paying customer—to keep me busy elsewhere. I quickly became a master at arranging my work in ways that enabled me to pay attention to whatever Vincent had to say.

  Occasionally the weekly Vietnamese language newspaper provided Vincent some tidbit worth remarking on. Usually, though, he would point out some news item in the daily Times-Picayune that was delivered to the Red Lotus for its customers to read. As with everyone I’d talked to and every conversation I’d eavesdropped on, Vincent never spoke about the three murder victims who had lived in the small community. If there was gossip or speculation about their fate, I never heard it. And, although a direct question or some broad hinting might elicit some information, Squirt was a stranger who had arrived in Little Vietnam after the murders had taken place. Her curiosity would raise suspicion, and suspicion was exactly what I didn’t want.

  Today, I had very little time to chat with Vincent.

  The members of the Young Vietnamese Businessmen’s Association had come into the restaurant shortly after he had and seated themselves at the big table in the corner. There were eight of them, the oldest about forty, the youngest not yet thirty. With their Western manners, conservative haircuts and expensive clothing, any one of them could have eaten, unremarked, in most of the city’s restaurants. But their numbers and attitude at the Red Lotus suggested that this was exactly the gang that Uncle Tinh had been talking about.

  Thought Vincent looked as though he would fit into the group, he remained at his usual place at the counter when they came in. He made a point of keeping his back to them.

  “They’re punks,” he muttered to me when I’d taken a moment to refill his teacup. “I don’t know why you cater to them.”

  “They’re customers,” I replied, surprised by his resentment. And I thought that it was possible he was jealous.

  Mrs. Yang seemed to feel no obligation to cater to the Young Businessmen. In fact, when they came into the restaurant, she had busied herself with the hazardous task of trimming dead branches from the Crown of Thorns in the window. Once, I caught her glancing in the direction of the men gathered at the large table. Clearly she didn’t like them. Mr. Yang remained behind the counter, near the cash register. When he looked at the men sitting at the round table, his face was stiff and expressionless.

  Which left me running my feet off.

  Besides the members of the Businessmen’s Association, there were a dozen other customers, including Vincent, scattered at tables throughout the dining area. All were Vietnamese from the immediate neighborhood. Fortunately the Young Businessmen selected simple dishes from the regular menu and the elderly cousin hurried to fill their order. Though they spoke English and Vietnamese and didn’t seem to guard their conversation when I came to the table, I had little time to eavesdrop.

  At the end of the meal Mr. Yang sent me into the kitchen while Mrs. Yang continued to work on her plants. As I walked through the doorway, the elderly cousin nodded to someone over my shoulder—I assumed it was Mr. Yang—then told me to keep an eye on some egg rolls that were in the fryer. He walked into the restaurant and began slowly scraping and stacking the dirty dishes that I’d deposited in the bin beside the counter.

  Odd, I thought. That was usually my job.

  I quickly discovered that if I tiptoed, I could still see the big, round table where the Businessmen’s Association was meeting through the serving window. I stood with a set of long bamboo tongs in my hand, my attention torn between the egg rolls and the dining area.

  Mr. Yang approached the table and passed two items to one of the Young Businessmen. The first was a rubber-banded stack of red envelopes—the very ones he’d collected from the Benevolent Society that morning. The other was a thick, brown business-size envelope.

  The Young Businessman passed the rubber-banded bundle to one of his associates who nodded as he tucked it into his breast pocket. Then, ignoring the other customers in the restaurant, he made a great show of opening the brown envelope and carefully counting the stack of money it contained.

  I didn’t know why the red envelopes were handed over but this, obviously, was protection money. A bribe that Mr. Yang paid for the privilege of running a business in Little Vietnam. Friday, apparently, was collection day.

  Mr. Yang was standing passively beside the table, watching the count.

  “Short,” the Young Businessman said, loudly and in Vietnamese.

  Mr. Yang looked startled.

  I couldn’t hear his murmured reply, but the Young Businessman’s snapped retort carried easily into the kitchen.

  “I say what’s enough. This is not. You are one hundred dollars short.”

  There was no reaction from the customers throughout the restaurant. Vincent and the others seemed suddenly to have gone deaf. And blind. Public extortion was, apparently, an unremarkable occurrence in Little Vietnam.

  Mr. Yang’s fists curled as anger touched his face.

  “You are dishonorable men!” he said, and his voice trembled.

  The Young Businessman who’d done the counting didn’t react. But the men on either side of him slipped their hands beneath their suit jackets.

  Besides the men at the table, everyone else in the restaurant—including Mrs. Yang and the elderly cousin—seemed to be holding their breaths, afraid to move. I didn’t blame them.

  I wanted to shout at Mr. Yang, to grab his shoulders and shake him, to tell him not to be stupid. This is not worth your life, not worth devastating your family. Suddenly, I realized how much I’d begun to care about Mr. Yang and his family.

  There was nothing about Mr. Yang’s expression that suggested he was going to back down. And something about the other man’s expression suggested he was looking for an excuse for violence. He was almost smiling.

  How could I distract them, give them something more to think about than money? As my mind raced, looking for a solution, the untended eggrolls began burning in the wok in front of me.

  There wasn’t time to create the carefully controlled fire I’d set at Beauprix’s home. For a heartbeat, I balanced the possible risk to the Red Lotus against the very real threat to Mr. Yang’s life. That made the decision easy.

  I used the bamboo tongs to give the wok a shove, sending hot oil slopping onto the gas burner.
Flames whooshed almost to the ceiling. Inside the wok, the egg rolls fueled the burning oil and smoke poured from the stovetop.

  “Fire!”

  I screamed the word. In Vietnamese or English, it didn’t matter. My tone and the flames behind me reinforced my message as I ran into the dining area.

  Confrontation forgotten, the Yangs and the elderly cousin raced toward the kitchen, snatching up fire extinguishers and a nearby container of salt, intent on saving their business.

  I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the dining area, monitoring the activity in both rooms. There wasn’t much to see in the dining area. All the customers, including the Young Businessmen, had fled the restaurant. The Yangs were apparently expert firefighters and, within a few minutes, had doused the flames.

  Then, because I was supposed to be a teenage girl and needed to react like one, I started crying. My eyes were just irritated enough by the smoke that it was easy.

  “Sorry,” I kept repeating in English. “Sorry.”

  Mrs. Yang put down the empty salt container she held and walked over to stand in front of me. I noticed that she was not much taller than I was.

  “The fire,” she said, keeping her dark eyes fixed on my face. “On purpose?”

  There was no point in telling a lie I didn’t have to.

  “Mr. Yang was in trouble.”

  She nodded, then wrapped her arms around me in an uncharacteristic display of affection. I’d never seen her hug her daughters or her husband in public.

  “Yes, bad trouble,” she said. “But you are good girl.”

  Then she patted me briefly on the cheek and gave me a gentle push in the direction of the kitchen.

  “Everyone clean up. So we can cook.”

  By the time the kitchen was cleaned up, my workday was almost at an end. I waited impatiently for the twins to arrive so that I could go home. I wanted to phone Beauprix and tell him what I’d witnessed. And I wanted to draw each of the men as soon as possible, knowing that it would require all my skills to make them appear as individuals.

  Undoubtedly, I’d discovered the body of the viper. Now I needed to collect evidence, to build a case against them. And to begin searching for the head.

  At exactly 4:00 p.m., one of the twins called. I answered the phone, endured a snotty comment, then passed the phone to Mr. Yang. Amazing, I thought, that such pleasant people could have such miserable children. A few minutes later, Mr. Yang hung up the phone and turned to me to deliver the bad news. The twins, it seemed, would be late. And he needed me to continue working. Please.

  I could understand why he hadn’t insisted the girls come into work when they didn’t want to. Certainly I wouldn’t have wanted to deal with their temperaments after the traumas of the day. And I wondered if he feared, as I did, that one of the Young Businessmen would be back before the restaurant closed. To collect.

  So I stayed.

  Mrs. Yang, apparently anticipating the same problem I had, tucked a hundred dollars in twenties beneath the tray in the cash drawer.

  “If they come back,” she said to her husband, “you pay. Understand?”

  He didn’t argue with her.

  Chapter 14

  Half an hour later, Tommy’s arrival offered a welcome distraction from an onerous task. He came into the store, whistling cheerfully, and swung the door open and closed twice so that the bell jangled uncontrollably. Mr. Yang was stacking teacups and plastic drinking cups at the far end of the counter—usually a job reserved for one of the twins—and paused long enough to scowl at the boy.

  “Hey, Uncle Yang,” he said, obviously aware that he was annoying the man. “You’re looking real busy.”

  I was at the table nearest the kitchen door.

  Tommy looked around the nearly empty restaurant, spotted me and grinned.

  “Hey, Squirt! Where y’at?”

  In front of me were many, many pounds of raw shrimp. No right-minded teenager would appreciate the task of cleaning them all. But that was the job Mr. Yang had assigned to his “very good, responsible” employee. To distinguish me, I supposed, from his less responsible twin daughters.

  “Doing okay, I guess,” I said, sighing dramatically.

  Tommy crossed the restaurant and stood looking at me across the mountain of shrimp. I picked up another one, snapped its head back and peeled off its legs and shell, then deveined it and dropped it onto the large platter at my right elbow. A lot of shrimp was required for crispy rice with shrimp and there was, by far, more raw shrimp on the table than there were cleaned shrimp on the plate.

  Tommy ran a hand through his pink-and-blue-streaked hair and whistled despite the ring that looped around his lower lip.

  “You’ve got a job and a half there,” he said.

  I sighed again.

  “The twins,” I said darkly as I picked up another shrimp, “have to study. So they’ll be just late enough that this job will be done before they come to work.”

  Tommy laughed.

  “I guess that they remembered that tonight’s special is xoi man. Good to eat, but a bitch to fix.”

  “You’ve got that right.”

  Tommy detoured to the kitchen, washed his hands and returned with another large platter. He sat down opposite me and used the edge of his hand to split the pile of shrimp approximately in two.

  “Bet I can finish before you do,” he said, lifting a single shrimp by its feelers and waving it in front of me.

  I’d wanted an opportunity to talk to him alone and this seemed like a good opportunity to arrange one. Talking to Beauprix could wait.

  “Last one done buys dinner,” I said.

  I grabbed a greenish-brown, thumb-size crustacean body from my pile, slipped an index finger between its two rows of brittle, jointed legs and popped the pale meat from the shell. And the race was on.

  Tommy peeled shrimp with the speed and ease of someone who had done it most of his life. Which, given his family, he probably had. But Squirt, too, was a master of the task. It was a skill that Tommy and the Yangs would expect from a girl whose stepfather was a fisherman. In fact, it was a skill learned by a girl whose adopted uncle was a restaurateur.

  The twins sauntered in before we finished. I spared them a glance and received pure Vitriol in return. Tommy was a hunk so, no matter that he was their cousin, they clearly didn’t appreciate an interloper, especially someone like Squirt. Identical frowns twisted identical faces as they tied identical white aprons over identical high-school uniforms. As I concentrated on the next piece of shrimp, I wished them identical zits on their identically tipped-up little noses.

  Then a group of almost two dozen well-dressed women unexpectedly invaded the little restaurant. Mr. Yang and the elderly cousin rushed to arrange several small, square tables into a long, rectangular one. Once seated, several of the women loudly demanded tea and chopsticks even as the twins rushed to provide them. The women’s accents placed them in a number of towns, none of them New Orleans, and their petulant voices promised impossible-to-please customers who would inevitably leave a lousy tip.

  I couldn’t think of a more appropriate punishment for the twins.

  Tommy’s hands continued moving with a precision born of long hours of practice. As another limp, naked piece of shrimp joined the pile on his platter, he lifted his head slightly to assess my progress. His mound of remaining shrimp was slightly larger than the one in front of me. He grimaced, used the back of his right wrist to rub his itchy nose.

  “I think you’ve got me beat,” he said, bending over his work again.

  I made sure that my fingers stumbled as they peeled the next few shrimp.

  A few more minutes passed.

  “Done,” he announced, looking up. Then he grinned. Two shrimp still remained in front of me.

  “Phooey!” I said good naturedly as I congratulated myself on losing.

  Tommy slid the pile of discarded shells into a large stock pot; they would be boiled into a broth that would flavor tomorrow�
�s soup. He took the pot into the kitchen, then returned to pick up one of the mounded platters and showed off by balancing it at shoulder level on the palm and outstretched fingers of one hand.

  I followed with my patter held carefully in both hands, hoping that I wouldn’t suddenly find myself showered with falling shrimp. As Tommy helped the elderly cousin move the shrimp from platter to a large tray, I rinsed a bleach rag in hot water and returned to the dining area to wipe the table.

  One of the women seated at the long table at the very front of the restaurant complained loudly that she could smell bleach. Mannerisms and genetics combined seamlessly as both twins shot me quick glares. I waved and ducked back into the kitchen with my rag in hand.

  The elderly cousin was already coating the shrimp with salt and cornstarch. Soon, they—and strips of pork tenderloin—would be fried one portion at a time, mixed in a pungent sauce laden with black mushrooms and poured over deep-fried crispy rice. Delicious, if you didn’t already feel a very personal connection with every other piece of shrimp.

  Tommy seemed to read my mind.

  “Come on, Squirt,” he said enthusiastically. “You owe me dinner.”

  He grabbed my hand and began pulling me behind him in the direction of the back door. From the corner of my eye, I saw the elderly cousin laugh and Mrs. Yang hide a smile behind her plump hand.

  As Tommy dropped my hand and held the door to the alley open, he named a truck stop that was a few blocks away on Chef Menteur. As we walked into the alley, he started ticking off items on the proposed menu, investing the words with enough drama to make it clear that Shakespeare’s Macbeth would be an easy role for him.

  “Cheeseburger. Your choice of pickles, catsup, mustard, onions. Lettuce and tomato, if you must. French fries—real thin, crispy ones, my darling Squirt. And a shake. Your choice of flavors.”