Snakes Can't Run

by Ed Lin

  A Triumph Spitfire suddenly swung in front of us and stopped at the main entrance to Winnie’s building.

  “That’s Andy’s car!” she said.

  “Let’s sit tight, everyone,” I said. “You, too, Winnie.”

  “I will sit still,” she said.

  Two men got out. Andy and the man who Willie Gee told me was King Lam. Andy came around from the passenger’s side and they did a two-arm embrace.

  “Do you know that man, Winnie?” I asked.

  “No, who is that?”

  “A guy your brother seems to hang out with.”

  “Andy never tells me anything.”

  Lam jumped back into the car and eased toward Broadway.

  “We’ve got to get on that one,” said Vandyne.

  “Jump out of the car, Winnie. We have to chase that guy. And don’t tell Andy what we talked about tonight.”

  She jumped out.

  “Don’t worry, he never wants to hear anything from me. I’m a girl.” She shut the door and we pulled away.

  9

  THE SPITFIRE WAS MOVING AS SLOWLY AS A CEMENT TRUCK.

  “You think he knows we’re following him?” asked Vandyne.

  “That paranoid son of a bitch,” I said. “We have a damn good cover.”

  “Con Ed—the only New York institution hated more than the NYPD. They provide shitty service and yet they’re going for another electricity rate hike.”

  “I like how they didn’t bother to clean off the graffiti before loaning us the van.” Under the Con Ed logo on the back doors someone had spray-painted CAN SUCK IT.

  “Why bother cleaning it off if they’re just going to write something worse?” said Vandyne.

  “Dammit! He’s pulling over! What should we do?”

  “We have to keep going. I’ll do a lap around the block.”

  “That’s good thinking, Vandyne!”

  When we came full circle back to where we started, King Lam was leaning against the Spitfire, waving at us with both arms. Vandyne drove us up to him and I rolled down my window to talk.

  “You two looking for the King Tut exhibit? It won’t be here for two more years.” He spoke English that had been weathered by some California sun.

  I showed him my shield. “Now lemme see yours.”

  “I don’t carry one on me, for obvious reasons. It’s probably worse to have in my pocket than a gun.”

  “Are you bullshitting me?” I asked him.

  He smiled and crossed his arms.

  “Chow, he used the code words. He’s for real,” Vandyne admonished.

  “Tell you what,” the man said. “Let me get this car to the Manhattan South guys so they can comb through it. Then let’s go get some drinks.”

  “Hey! He doesn’t drink!” Vandyne shouted.

  “I have a problem,” I said.

  “Let’s go to a diner, then.”

  We followed the car to Manhattan South headquarters on East Twenty-first and picked up Eddie Ding, aka King Lam, when he got out. It was about one in the morning when we rolled into a diner on Third Avenue and Twenty-fourth Street. We all got cheeseburger specials.

  “Why the fuck are you two guys trying to shadow people with a Con Ed van?” he said with several mashed fries in his mouth. “Can you even think of a bigger, more visible object?”

  “A fire truck with the sirens on,” I said.

  “Like we said, Eddie,” said Vandyne, “we didn’t intend to be following anybody.”

  Eddie was brought in from the San Francisco PD by Manhattan South to lock down a tax-evasion investigation on Ng and Beautiful Hong Kong. They needed someone who was familiar with triad culture. Eddie had a master’s degree in Chinese history and literature. His degree project was on Chinese criminology from the fall of the Ming dynasty to the present.

  “How did you avoid the draft?” asked Vandyne.

  “It never came for me because, you know, I had the academic deferment. I’m sorry I missed my chance to kill babies with you guys.”

  “You want a black eye for dessert, asshole?” I asked.

  “Make that two,” said Vandyne.

  “You guys, come on! I’m just letting off steam. For crying out loud, that Andy Ng is putting me through a goddamned cultural decathlon. We played a drinking game about the 108 heroes of Water Margin. That was completely nerdy! I’m supposed to represent a Chinese triad based in Malaysia interested in buying certain criminal operations of Beautiful Hong Kong. I didn’t know I had to be the guy’s playmate, too.”

  “How are you going to nail him on taxes?” asked Vandyne.

  “Soon I plan on entering the due-diligence phase in which Ng shows me the books on his operation. Well, when I have enough evidence collected on the cash flows of his little holding company, we take him down.”

  “Just like what they did to Al Capone,” said Vandyne.

  “Has he ever mentioned a single word about smuggling people over?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t said much about anything apart from Water Margin or Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It’s like talking to a kid who has every single Superman comic and won’t shut up about it.”

  I turned to Vandyne. “Those are the historical novels that Chinese gangsters worship,” I said. “Like how the Mafia looks to the Godfather movies.”

  Eddie put his burger down. “Oh, but the worst is that sometimes he asks me about my personal life. At random times, the same questions. He’s trying to see if he can trip me up. Do you know how hard it is to suppress the details of your real life and stick to what you’ve memorized for your fake life?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.” But my father did.

  “I can feel he’s still suspicious, but, shit, he lent me his car tonight because he said it was too expensive for me to keep renting mine.”

  “He’s probably going to check how clean it is when you return it,” said Vandyne. “If you do vacuum it out, he’ll be really suspicious.”

  “I’ve got that covered,” Eddie said. “See, I’ll just say that ‘as part of my thanks for loaning me the car, I went and had it cleaned for you and filled the gas tank, too!’”

  “Smooth,” I said.

  “Can I ask you guys something?” Vandyne and I looked at Eddie expectantly. “How do you guys deal with living in this shithole? I mean, it was a close call a couple years ago, but New York might be heading back to bankruptcy. Then you’ll all be fucked!”

  Vandyne’s jaw was locked shut.

  I managed to work my mouth loose. “This city has a lot of heart,” I said. “We’ve been through tough times before, but we’ll get through it.”

  “You know what would really wreck this town,” Eddie went on. “A blackout. You would have nonstop wholesale looting, murder, and rape. The entire city would be plunged into prehistoric times. With guns.”

  “You almost sound kind of gleeful, Eddie,” I said.

  “How about you stop trying to be a funny motherfucker?” Vandyne told him.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry about that crack earlier about Nam,” said Eddie. “I’ve heard about how a lot of guys were spat on at the airport when they got back here. That happen to you two?”

  “Not me!” said Vandyne. “If any hippie spat on me, I would’ve scalped him.”

  “Not me, either,” I said.

  Eddie went on. “Two of the guys in my precinct, back home, they were in uniform and they had already been warned to wear street clothes, but they refused to. When these girls asked them if they had served in Nam, they started yelling at them, ‘You white racist imperialists invaded our country and killed our women and children!!!’ The hippies were crying and apologizing like crazy!”

  “These guys in your precinct are Asian?” I asked.

  “Yeah, one Chinese American, one Japanese American. But, you know, those girls had no idea.”

  “You have two other Asian guys in your precinct?” I asked.

  “Oh, more than that. We don’t have a whole lot of brothers
in general. I think we’re at two percent overall. Chow, you know, I heard you’re the only one in Chinatown. Is that true?”

  “It’s true,” said Vandyne.

  “How much sense does that make?” said Eddie.

  “Don’t even get me started on this shit,” I said.

  “Well, you know, I heard all about it, already.” Eddie wiped his mouth. “In fact, I met the guy who got you moved from bullshit photo-op assignments to the detective track.”

  A white woman in her late forties was on her way out of the diner when she caught sight of my and Vandyne’s Con Ed uniforms. She simply assumed that all three of us were employees.

  She walked over and yelled, “Break time again, fellas?”

  Eddie turned to her coolly and said, “No, lady. We’re still on the clock!”

  Vandyne covered his face with both hands while I chewed on the insides of my cheeks trying to suppress a laugh.

  She banged her fist on our table and stomped out.

  “Eddie,” I said, “you have a way of getting under people’s skin!”

  “I should,” he said. “I went to a really good college.”

  Inspector Izzy Rosenbaum was not a tall man, but he projected strength like a column of stainless steel. His gray hair was in a crew cut from the fifties and his face was so crowded with muscles, it was tough for him to talk. It was just as well, because on the phone he barely strung three words together.

  “You met Eddie,” he said, shaking my hand in two brisk jerks.

  “Yes, sir, he told me you were the one who helped me get out of the photo ops.”

  “Saw you play hockey,” he said. His mouth was open in a way that was maybe a smile. “You’re tough.”

  “I’m okay, sir.”

  “Scored two goals!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “I know the Brow.”

  “You do?”

  “Same academy class.”

  “Oh.”

  “Dirty little mick.”

  “You mean that with affection, right, sir?”

  The captain stuck his jaw out and stretched his lips around it.

  “Of course, back then my name was Israel Rosenbaum. Some guys had a problem with it. Most didn’t. The Brow came up to me and said he felt sorry for me because my parents essentially named me ‘Jewey Jew Jew.’”

  “Oh, that’s terrible.”

  “There was a fight.”

  “A bad one?”

  “Good for me.”

  “What happened?”

  He shrugged. “Stitches came out. They started calling him the Brow. Started calling me Lefty. We’ve never talked since.”

  “Wow.”

  “Heard his ugly voice in a bar few months back, complaining about how this Chow better not get hurt in the hockey game, because if he had to miss some community functions, the Chinks were going to hit the streets.”

  “That fucking asshole!” I said, shocking myself. I tried to suck the words back in. “Sorry, sir!”

  “C’mon! Forget it!”

  “Thank you.”

  “I saw the game. Saw you score. Saw you take a stand. Now you’re detective track.”

  “I couldn’t possibly thank you enough.”

  He swatted the thought away. “So you think you’re ready for a test I got for you?”

  “Sure!”

  “It’ll mainly test your memorization and ability to reach conclusions quickly.”

  “That’s right up my alley,” I said.

  “But first, and I apologize for this, you have to meet my mentor here. He’s a deputy chief, but he’s kind of lost it. We keep him here at a desk. This is purely political, because technically I still report to him.”

  “I understand.”

  “He’s not really qualified to do anything anymore and he rambles on, but try to be interested or at least look interested.”

  Izzy brought me down to the quiet end of a long hall and opened the door. An older man in a plainclothes suit sat at a desk that didn’t even have a telephone.

  “How are you, Lefty!” the man said.

  “Good, good,” said Izzy. “This is Robert Chow. Detective track, Five Precinct. Deputy Chief Barrett.”

  “Hello,” I said, shaking Barrett’s hand.

  “I’ll let you two get acquainted,” said Izzy. “Remember to drop by my office when you’re done, Chow.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Izzy left.

  “Well, first things first,” said Barrett. “How do you like the job?”

  “I like it fine,” I said. “It’s been better and more challenging lately.”

  “Where do you see yourself in ten years?”

  “With a gold shield, I guess. I can assume that, right?”

  “Yes, that’s a safe assumption, but what about with a family? A baby boy and a baby girl?” He was smiling in a way that screamed, “I’m going crazy! Wanna come?”

  “I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of talk.”

  “Look here, look here!” He pulled out his wallet and opened it. “This is my boy Michael when he was in first grade. That’s college graduation. That’s him now in front of his office park.” Barrett went ahead and showed me pictures of his two girls, too.

  All my experience in enduring various community functions had honed my skill at retreating within my consciousness to a tiny little safe space in the back of my head. There I could relive hockey highlights going back years; listen to Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, and Neil Young; see Lonnie smiling in her uniform and then out of it. . . .

  “Robert, are you here?”

  “Of course I am. I mean, where else would I be?”

  “Where else, indeed!” Was this Barrett dipping into the contraband?

  “Deputy Chief Barrett, I’m currently on detective track now.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “What would a man of your experience suggest in terms of advancing my career?”

  “Travel!”

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  “Travel! Go see the world! Do you know where I’ve been?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. I thought of something and started looking around for Allen Funt.

  “Guess! Be my guest at guessing!”

  “Hong Kong? France? England?”

  “Yes, no, and yes!” He also rattled off several more countries. “Do you know who I went with?”

  “Your family?”

  “My wife and kids!” Unbelievably, he stood up and reached for his wallet again. Boy, were me and Izzy going to have a few laughs about this. I looked at Barrett’s kindly face and wondered what horrible thing happened to crack him up like this.

  “Do you know where this is? You recognize that?”

  “Is it the Panama Canal?”

  “You’re right!”

  “The sign in the picture kind of gave it away.”

  “So it does! Oh, you have to go there! It’s amazing!”

  I nodded enthusiastically, hoping it would make him put his wallet away. He flipped through a dozen more pictures and blabbed about them. That man had more pictures in his wallet than I did in my photo albums.

  “Well, it’s time for my lunch, Robert. I’ve got to get going.”

  I felt my eyes light up and pure joy lifted me out of my seat.

  “It’s been a pleasure, Deputy Chief Barrett.” We shook hands. I couldn’t get out of that room fast enough.

  I got back into Izzy’s office and shook my head.

  “Sir,” I said, shaking my head, “you didn’t prepare me for that!”

  Izzy was all business, however. “You ready for the test now, Robert?” he asked coolly.

  I nodded.

  He took out a clipboard. “Names of the three children?”

  “Deputy Chief Barrett’s?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t remember,” I said. My lips went rubbery and I could no longer feel them.

  “What colleges did they go to?”

&nb
sp; “I don’t know.”

  Without standing, he reached and unfurled a map on the wall behind his desk.

  “Come over here. Show me what countries he’s been to.” The map looked like any other I’d seen in classrooms, only there were no names on it whatsoever.

  I walked over. I could feel sweat running down the insides of my thighs. I hoped it was sweat.

  “Panama,” I said, pointing.

  “That’s Nicaragua!”

  I sat down again. There was a flashing white light inside my right pupil. Izzy pressed on, opening a binder to photographs of a dozen women in their fifties.

  “Which is the wife?”

  “I don’t know.” God, is college like this?

  He flipped the page.

  “Find three pictures he didn’t have.”

  “I can’t.”

  Izzy flipped the page again.

  “Find the strangers who were in his pictures.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  This was two to three times more excruciating than my session with Barrett although it lasted ten minutes, tops.

  “I did terrible, right?” I asked.

  “Average score is negative, because I deduct for wrong guesses. You got a zero. So you’re above average.”

  “You’re not gonna give me Panama?”

  “I’ll give half credit. Half a point out of a possible fifty.”

  “What did I need to pass?”

  “There is no pass! You either get a fifty or you’re shot dead!”

  My mouth went dry. In some ways, the Brow was better than Izzy, because as much as the Brow pushed you around and verbally abused you, he never made you feel stupid. Well, certainly not to this degree.

  “May I leave now, sir?”

  He finally softened a bit. “Robert, you’re always on the job. Pay attention to everything. Don’t take anything for granted.”

  I met up with Lonnie for a quick dinner.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. “You look sick!”

  “That guy who helped me get on detective track just made me feel like the biggest idiot in the world!”

  “What did he do?”

  “He gave me this test and I failed it.”

  “Did you study for it?”

  “It wasn’t the kind of test you can study for. It was actually one of those life-lesson things.”

  “What did you learn?”

  “That I have to always stay alert.”