Snakes Can't Run

by Ed Lin

  “But you have a gun!”

  I finally heard him chuckle a little bit.

  “I should be happy just because I have a gun?”

  “Oh yeah!” I said, looking out the window at nothing. “Be happy you’ve got a gun! There’s a lot of motherfuckers out there!”

  4

  AFTER I GOT OFF THE PHONE WITH VANDYNE, I PUT MY FEET UP ON the desk and did some more thinking about “human tongues.” What the hell were those?

  I picked up the phone and called the midget.

  “Can you get away from the store for half an hour?” I asked.

  “Yeah, why not?” he said. “Coffee, tea, food?”

  “If you want.”

  “All right.”

  The toy store was just two right turns away from the station over on Mulberry Street. I shook my head as I walked in measured steps. So much of my life had revolved around this stupid toy store.

  When I was a kid my best friend, Moy, who was the son of the owner, would let me play with everything and his dad would then take it in the back and reseal the boxes and put them back on the shelf.

  When I came back from Nam, Moy’s dad hired me for a pity job there.

  When I was walking a beat, I was forced to throw Moy’s dad out of the post office on the Communist side of Chinatown where he had helped immigrants meet the requirement that all mail had to be addressed in English. Disgusted with what he perceived as police harassment, the old man put the toy store up for sale and then had a stroke. The midget then stepped in and bought the place.

  I rounded the corner and saw the concrete step leading up to the store. I imagined a seven-year-old Moy sitting there, glaring at me.

  When I came in, the midget hopped off of his stool and pushed his few customers out. “Hey, you have to leave right now! It’s time to take store inventory.”

  “Do you really have to do this right now?” asked a young mother. “I was just about to pick out a present.”

  Without breaking his stride, the midget said, “I’m helping you out here. Just pretend that you’ve just walked around looking for twenty minutes, as you just have, and that you’ve now left the store. Then imagine the one thing you regret not buying and that’s your present.”

  Soon he was standing on the sidewalk with the door shut and locked.

  “Hey!” complained the mother. “Where are you going? I thought you were going to do store inventory!”

  “Yeah, I do it all in my head,” said the midget, pressing imaginary buttons in his left palm as we walked over to Mott.

  “I’m sorry that you had to close up for a while,” I said.

  “It gives me a chance to stretch my legs a little. Anyway, if I can’t tear myself away, then what’s the point of being the boss?”

  “You can fire anybody you want. That has to be a power trip.”

  “I don’t want to deal with higher unemployment taxes. Anyway, only one person has left so far, and that was voluntary.”

  “It’s too bad, what happened to that kid,” I said, shaking my head. “He was working there during the day for, what, only a few weeks?”

  “Oh yeah, poor Chris. Well, who knew he was going to get jumped by gang kids. Chris is only eleven, but I guess that’s the right age to force a kid to join your gang.”

  “He might have left town. I haven’t seen him around.”

  “Well, if you ever see him hanging out on a corner, go ahead and take his picture for your mug books. He was a bright kid but definitely headed downward.” The midget looked at me. “You don’t have the room to take in another kid, do you?”

  “Jesus, I am not Mother Teresa! I can only save one kid at a time!”

  “If kids only played more toys and games,” he lamented, “they’d stay out of trouble.”

  “You ever get tired of running the store?” I asked him. “Don’t you miss the fresh air and sunshine of Columbus Park when you used to play Chinese chess there?”

  The park was south of Bayard and west of Mulberry, two and a half blocks away from the midget’s store. For several years he was a fixture at the chess tables and became so famed for never losing a game, an American filmmaker came in and shot a documentary about him.

  “Sure, of course I do! But you know, I have a fairly regular income now and I provide your roommate with a job. Also, it’s a lot easier to take a leak now than before. Some of these restaurants along the park were getting downright unfriendly. Also, another upside is that I’ve been asked to join a merchants’ association.”

  “Which one?”

  “Golden Peace. The one that Willie Gee is now president of.”

  “Jesus, please don’t join.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not. It’s just another shakedown for an annual membership fee.”

  Before we got to the bend in Mott by Pell Street, we ducked down to a below-street-level teahouse run by a Taiwanese guy. I was psyched for this place because it was vegetarian only and they didn’t put dried shrimp in their turnip cakes like most places do. I’m allergic to seafood.

  An older waiter with bushy gray eyebrows came over and absently slid over an oddly clean ceramic teapot and two bright white teacups.

  “Are these all new?” I asked.

  “Yes, they are,” the waiter said, looking away distractedly. “Enjoy them before they get dirty.” He put his right hand in his pant pocket and jingled his keys.

  “I’ll have a turnip cake,” said the midget.

  “I’ll have one, too,” I said.

  “Wow, two whole turnip cakes,” said the waiter. “I wonder if you two will be able to finish them all.”

  When he was gone I asked the midget, “Did you piss that guy off before?”

  “No way. Did you?”

  “I might have,” I said. “Or maybe he doesn’t like midgets.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t like cops.”

  The waiter came back with our turnip cakes.

  “Hey,” I said. “You know, you can catch more bees with honey than with vinegar.”

  “Why the hell would I want to catch bees?” he asked.

  “Because they’re really good workers,” I said.

  Nothing registered on his face as he walked away.

  “Sometimes,” said the midget, “I feel like I’m in a movie when I’m with you, Robert.”

  “Is it a comedy or a drama?”

  “It’s kind of both. I mean it’s not a good movie by any measure.” The midget cut up the turnip cake with his fork.

  “Well, I’ll take you to a good movie if you help me on this.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Why would someone ask for a ‘human tongue’?”

  “To eat?”

  “No! Well, I don’t think so. This guy gets phone calls from people asking in Mandarin about human tongues.”

  “Well, that’s certainly a strange thing to ask for. And the person asking already has a tongue, I have to assume.”

  “Do you really not know what it means? I can’t tell if you’re joking now.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what it means. Maybe it’s something kinky. Who is the guy getting the calls?”

  “This guy who used to run an export-import business called Beautiful Hongkong. He may be getting misdirected calls intended for Beautiful Hong Kong Limited.”

  “The second company, what do they do?”

  “They also used to do export-import, but their warehouse has been converted into a nonprofit recreation center with a lion dance group. They did it for tax reasons.”

  “Well, you know, about a decade ago those lion dance groups in Hong Kong were pseudogangs.”

  “You think this group here is a gang?”

  “Naw, no way. These lion dance groups here are all tame corporate entertainment. They dance for hire. They don’t attack each other with spearheads sticking out of the lions’ mouths. Anymore.”

  “Is there a dance move called human tongue?”

  “If there is, I sure don’t want to see it.”


  We didn’t stiff the waiter too badly. He had served us quickly enough.

  I got back to the squad room and found Vandyne and English.

  “Jesus,” I said, looking around at the empty desks, “where the hell is everybody?”

  “You tell me,” said English. He glanced up at Vandyne and me. “You guys are still too new to have regular downtime hangouts. It’s important in the summer to find a place with good air-conditioning.”

  “I didn’t get any calls, did I?” I asked Vandyne.

  “Expecting one?”

  “Maybe. Hey, have you guys heard of the phrase ‘human tongue’?”

  Vandyne and English started laughing. It only proved that I had been right to go to the midget first. I crossed my arms and waited for the ribbing to stop. It could take a while.

  “You mean this thing?” asked English, pressing a finger against his tongue.

  “Well, it means something in Mandarin, some kind of slang. It may have something to do with the guy you fingered at the crime scene, English.”

  He shook off the funnies immediately and I explained.

  “We don’t have a case for probable cause to do a search at the lion dance studio,” said English. “You didn’t see anything out of the ordinary there, right?”

  “Just a space that seems to be a fixer-upper.”

  “Maybe we can get someone from the buildings department to issue a bullshit citation and lean on them?” suggested Vandyne.

  “Naw, let’s give them some breathing room,” said English. “See what happens. Maybe you two just sort of not obtrusively follow Ng and Lam around town. They’ll slip up on their own.”

  I waited for Ng to call and then I called Winnie Ng a few times, but nobody answered. Maybe she was out getting her suit cleaned.

  I walked over to the toy store, scratching a mosquito bite on my neck. I wasn’t sure when it happened, but it was itchy as hell now.

  “Is it okay for Paul to stay with you tonight?” I asked the midget.

  “Of course. It’s always okay.”

  “Thanks for telling me, Robert,” said Paul.

  “Hey, I had to clear it first. I couldn’t just invite you over to his place. You have more fun there, anyway.”

  “The company’s better,” said Paul. “Smarter, too.”

  From my perch in the back, I made a man promise to buy a doll for his girl if she got straight As and then I saw two men in their forties walk in with much apprehension. One man had a few days of stubble. The other was neater and clean shaven.

  I locked eyes with the stubbly man and nodded encouragingly.

  “Detective Chow,” he said in Mandarin as bad as mine. “Maybe you can help us.” He was thin and slightly stooped. He had a lot of healed scars on his hands. His nose, mouth, and eyes were all straight single lines.

  Up close the neater man had a big frightened face and his lips were stuck in a permanent pucker.

  “What can I do for you guys?” I asked.

  “I wanted to ask you,” the unshaven man said, turning slightly to make sure no one else was near. “The bodies that were found. Was there a tattoo of the character ‘open’ on one of the men’s necks?”

  That was a detail we hadn’t told the press yet. My heart sank for the man.

  “Yes, there was.”

  The man’s face folded in on itself and he trembled. The neater man nodded in silence.

  “That was our friend’s son. He was from our village in Fuzhou.” These two men were Fukienese and obviously not well educated, though they probably knew how to corner a pig. No wonder they didn’t know Cantonese and were bad at Mandarin.

  “He was smuggled in with us, but once we got here they raised the fee and he refused to pay,” the stubbly man said. “They took him and his friend away from the safe house!”

  I knew what I had to ask them and what their answer would be. I felt a swirl of emotions go through me, and my heart hurt.

  “I need the two of you to make a statement at the precinct.”

  “We can’t!” said the stubbly man. “We’re both here illegally!”

  “How can we punish the bad guys if you don’t help us?”

  “We are too afraid! We’ve already worked too hard to pay off our smuggling debt to be deported!”

  “What was his name?”

  “We don’t want to say!”

  They made a move to leave.

  “Wait,” I said. “Does the phrase ‘human tongue’ mean anything to you?” I stuck out my tongue and pointed to it.

  “‘Human tongue’? No, not ‘tongue.’ ‘Human snake.’ We are the human snakes.” He made a slithering motion with his right arm.

  “‘Human snakes’?” I asked.

  “The people being smuggled are ‘human snakes.’ The smuggler is called the snakehead.”

  No wonder I was confused. “Tongue” and “snake” both sounded exactly the same in Mandarin—even the tone was the same.

  “Who is the snakehead?” I asked.

  “It’s Brother Five. Now I’ve said too much already!” They quickly left.

  “Hey!” I yelled, coming after them.

  The midget stopped me at the door.

  “They were probably followed here,” he said, giving me a hard look. “Let them go or they’ll get in trouble.”

  “You’re right.”

  Some kid shook a toy that made a rattling sound and I jumped.

  Back at the apartment with Lonnie, I told her about snakeheads and human snakes.

  “That’s so sad. Just so tragic,” she said.

  “Is it really better to be dead in America than alive in China?” I asked.

  “They don’t know they’re going to die. You never think the worst can happen to you, right?”

  “Didn’t the Father of the Nation travel here with illegal papers? He had a fake Hawaiian birth certificate.” I was referring of course to Sun Yat-sen, the man who brought down Manchu rule in China but tragically died before he was able to unite the Communist and KMT factions of the new republic.

  “He was a Christian, too, Robert.”

  “Are you trying to get me to go to church on Sunday?”

  “No!” she said. “But I’ll have to go this Sunday. For confession.”

  We undressed quickly. We were good at it because we had only a few hours alone in the apartment at a time.

  “I want you to bite me all over,” she said.

  I obliged.

  “Hey! Not there,” she said, pulling my head back. “Save that for last!”

  We got up in the early afternoon and went to the Chatham Square Branch of the New York Public Library. It was just slightly into Communist territory, two blocks to the east of Bowery, but it was seen as neutral ground because of the number of non-Chinese who worked there and went there.

  Lonnie had wanted to borrow an atlas to study countries around the world for one of her classes. The atlases at Borough of Manhattan Community College were for reference use only and couldn’t be borrowed out.

  The NYPL’s latest atlases were also for reference only, but the librarian referred us to several boxes blocking the biography aisle. They were filled with library discards the library staff hadn’t gotten around to dragging to the curb yet. I had found the first half of a 1970 atlas and Lonnie said it was recent enough. She was digging for the other half.

  I contemplated a map that highlighted every country at war or having a civil war.

  “Lonnie,” I asked, “do you have any complaints about me? Would you change anything if you could?”

  “Just your snoring.”

  “I snore?”

  “Yeah! Don’t you remember all those times when I elbowed you and you turned over and said you were sorry?”

  “No. I don’t remember at all.” I put the half atlas on the floor and sat on it.

  “I told Paul you snore.”

  “Why did you tell Paul?”

  “Don’t worry! He already knows you snore regularly!”
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  Lonnie pulled out an old magazine. “Hey, look at this! An issue of National Geographic from 1920!”

  I looked at the cover, which was all words and no pictures.

  “I wonder if they even had color film back then,” I said.

  I heard some shouting up at the front. A sheepish young Chinese man in clothes too big for him was standing up, holding a clear plastic bag of clothes over his crotch. His hair was a mess.

  “I told you before!” yelled the old librarian, who looked like Mrs. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, only she had the temper of Mr. Wilson. “No sleeping in the library! You put your head down again I’ll have a policeman here so fast it’ll spin the chopsticks around your rice bowl!”

  “I’m a policeman,” I told her with restrained rage. “I can take care of this.”

  “See that you do,” she snapped, and walked back to her desk to play with her crystal figurines.

  “You don’t speak English, do you?” I asked the man.

  “I don’t speak Cantonese,” he said in Mandarin.

  “Let’s go outside,” I said in Mandarin. “You’ve made the Americans too angry today. You can’t sleep here. It’s one of the rules.” We walked out to the sidewalk.

  “I can’t help but fall asleep!” he said. “I don’t mean to. I just want a place to sit during my break. I’m on my feet all day washing dishes.” As if to prove it, he took his smelly dishwasher apron out of the plastic bag and put it on. He crumpled up the bag and shoved it into a back pocket.

  “Where do you live?”

  “I live in a safe house.”

  “You’re illegal!”

  He nodded and crossed his arms. “Want to take me to jail? I’ll go. I’ll go back to China, gladly.”

  “I’m not taking you to jail because I don’t want to deal with the bureaucracy and the paperwork. Anyway, if you don’t pay back your debt you’re not going anywhere. The snakeheads will see to that.”

  “You know how long it’s going to take?” he said. “I have to live in safe houses until it’s paid off. But if I want to get a loan to pay off the smuggling debt, I’ll be paying interest until I’m forty!”

  “Where is your safe house?”

  “It’s hidden.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Here? In New York? Only about a month. But before this I was in Boston for six months. I was in Philadelphia for almost a year before that. They say they keep moving us around so we don’t get caught by authorities, but really I think it’s because they don’t want to give us enough time to come up with escape plans.”