Snakes Can't Run

by Ed Lin

  “I kind of already assumed you were.”

  “What do you mean, you assumed?”

  “C’mon. Chinese guy your age? How the hell did your dad get over here before the Chinese Exclusion Acts were repealed?”

  “He could’ve been the son of a railroad worker.”

  “There were almost no Chinese women then. They weren’t allowed to immigrate. Plus all the anti-Chinese riots basically scared almost all the Chinese back to China, as bad as life was under the Manchus. Chinese didn’t really build lasting communities here until all the associations and tongs took control and offered a measure of protection, along with various illegal activities.”

  “How the hell do you know all this history?”

  “It’s my business to know. This is the community I’m supposed to protect and serve, right?”

  “Yeah, but how did you find out about all that?”

  “I picked up a bunch of pamphlets from one of the Communist-backed art-group meetings here in Chinatown. You just have to read between the lines of all the propaganda to get to the truth.”

  “A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing,” I said. “Now just picking up those Communist pamphlets shows you have a connection with radical groups like the FALN.”

  “Don’t start that shit with me. I don’t even know Spanish.”

  “But you look like you do and people judge you by your looks. Believe me, I know.”

  I plugged my phone back into the jack by my desk and it began to ring immediately.

  “You should have left it unplugged,” said English.

  I picked up the phone. “Detective,” I said.

  “This Chow?”

  “Yeah. This Eddie? Are you calling from a pay phone?”

  “Yeah. I’m by the Kelly Restaurant on Pell. Do you know it?”

  “Sure I do. What about it?”

  “Can you get down here? There’s too much for me to explain.”

  Pell was only a few blocks from the Five. I was there in less than five minutes.

  The Kelly Restaurant was a smallish joint. It didn’t have particularly outstanding food. The barbecued meats were all right, but they didn’t do the little extras, like handing you a calendar with the New Year or handing you a clean napkin.

  Eddie was pacing the floor. It was ahead of the dinner rush and the chef was sitting at a table in the back, smoking with a waiter. The owner, Mr. Wong, was standing in front of the cash register, his arms folded in front of him.

  I came in and both Eddie and Mr. Wong ran over to me, yelling.

  “Hey, come on!” I said. “I can’t understand either of you!”

  “Make him file a complaint, Chow!” yelled Eddie.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing happened!” yelled Mr. Wong. “Officer Chow, who is this guy? What’s wrong with him?”

  I made Eddie sit down at a table in the corner with me and speak English.

  “For Christ’s sake, man, you gotta keep a lower profile,” I said. “Make a fuss like this and someone’s gonna make you!”

  “Let me tell you what happened first! This group of eight kids came in here and ate like animals. When the check came, one guy just signed it with a gang name and they all left without paying. Mr. Wong was whining and complaining about it to the chef and waiter that they were coming more and more frequently to eat here. I told him to file a complaint with the police and he refused. So I called you to convince him to.”

  “Eddie, you’re getting off-course by pursuing this. You have to let this go for now.”

  “What the fuck? ‘Let this go’? If Mr. Wong does nothing, this is a slap in the face to the brave people who do file complaints against the gangs!”

  “Right now, we don’t have the manpower or the time to pursue an entrenched kind of criminal behavior. I’m focused on finding those snakeheads. You’re after a guy for tax evasion. Stay on target.”

  “Like these criminals only focus in one area, Chow. You know they have a fucking hand in everything!”

  “Let’s just take on one hand at a time! Otherwise we’re arm wrestling with an octopus!”

  “When you take on one arm at a time the other ones are doing all kinds of shit behind your back! Bullshit like this only goes on because people are willing to take it! If all these store owners banded together and stopped paying protection money and stopped giving away meals, the octopus would die!”

  “Eddie, I don’t know enough about octopuses to keep going in this direction, but again, to get back to my original thing, you have to let Mr. Wong handle it his way. He can go to his association and make a complaint. Then someone from his association lodges that complaint with the association that has loose ties with the gang. Then they reach some sort of compromise. Chinese people just don’t come out and make a direct and public statement. Even if it would help people. You know this, Eddie.”

  “That’s great, Chow. Just have them all police themselves. That was exactly how your old man got fucked over in America. He’d be real proud of you now.”

  “Don’t talk about my dad, Eddie. You don’t know how the hell he felt about anything.”

  “Sorry about that, dude. I was just trying to get you personally invested.”

  “What did you call me?”

  “Dude?”

  “Are you making another dig at me?”

  “Naw! It’s just like saying ‘man.’”

  We got up.

  “Mr. Wong,” I said, tipping my cap.

  “You take that man away, Officer Chow! He’s nothing but a troublemaker!”

  When Eddie and I hit the street we went off in opposite directions, and quickly.

  I hadn’t heard of Cunningham Park before, but when I found out the minority officers’ picnic was going to be held there, I knew I had to go. I had to make up for my shameful appearance at last year’s picnic when I pulled a lot of the usual gags, including dancing on the table and the daring breakfast-in-reverse crawl. Worst of all was that I didn’t remember any of it.

  Lonnie and I took the F train out to Union Turnpike and then caught a bus to the park. I was amused that Lonnie carried subway and bus tokens on a twine loop strung through the “Y” cutouts in the centers of the tokens.

  “That’s very Chinese, carrying strings of coins.”

  “It keeps them separated from change in my purse.”

  “You know what? We should have hoarded them. I knew they weren’t going to change the token!”

  When the New York City Transit Authority was getting ready to raise the fare to fifty cents in 1975 from thirty-five cents, they lied and said a new token was being minted and warned the public not to bother stocking up on the soon-to-be-worthless tokens. The NYCTA even made a few fake redesigned tokens that were shown on the news.

  But it was all bullshit and soon we were paying fifteen cents more for the same old tokens. It was the kind of scam that made people in Chinatown praise their ancestors for having the wisdom to create a community where everything one needed was within walking distance.

  “This park is far!” said Lonnie. “It must be really nice!”

  “I just hope it’s worth the trip. There better be a serious barbecue.” We were sitting near the back and I noticed people were looking over their shoulders at us. You never know how the Cantonese language will go over outside of Chinatown. At least we weren’t speaking Fukienese.

  The picnic went fine. Lonnie and I settled into a table with Vandyne and his wife, Rose. A young Indian guy named Gupta joined us. He hadn’t been around at last year’s picnic, because he was willing to sit at the same table with me.

  “I’m a double disgrace to my family,” Gupta said. “I eat meat and I’m a cop.” He was making short work of a triple-decker cheeseburger that was dripping bubbly red grease onto his plate.

  “Being a cop is an honorable and honest profession,” said Vandyne. “It’s got decent pay, benefits, and you can’t beat the pension that lets you retire after twenty years.”

>   “It sure as hell beats humping it through a jungle,” I said.

  “You guys were in Nam!” Gupta exclaimed. “What was it like?”

  “It was good and bad,” said Vandyne.

  “It was all bad in the end,” I said.

  “Can I ask you guys something? What did it feel like to kill?”

  Rose turned away from Gupta, but Lonnie put on a fake at-work smile.

  “Let me say this,” said Vandyne. “When you kill someone, you don’t feel anything immediately. Right there it was a kill-or-be-killed situation. But that act is with you the rest of your life. You think, ‘That guy I killed can never enjoy a picnic like this. He can’t sit here with a beautiful woman. He can’t stuff a cheeseburger into his mouth.’ Now I can appreciate all of those things on one level because I’m alive, but on another level I am thoroughly disgusted with everything.”

  Vandyne got up, turned his back, and walked stiffly to the horrific park restroom.

  Gupta stood up awkwardly.

  “Why do people always ask the same fucking question!” I yelled at him. “Next time you’re on the footpost, why don’t you pop someone and find out what it feels like to kill!”

  Gupta excused himself to Rose and Lonnie and scampered away. I suddenly realized that I had been standing with my finger pointed at Gupta’s forehead. I sat down and tried to open a fun pack–sized 3 Musketeers bar. I was having a hard time because my fingers were greasy.

  “Robert,” said Rose. “I wanted to tell you something.”

  “Sure, Rose. What is it?”

  “Well, do you know that we’re in couples therapy?”

  “I do.”

  “Damn it, he really does talk to you more than to me.”

  “He’s my old partner. We would take a bullet for each other.”

  “John doesn’t talk to me as much as he used to. Even in therapy it’s like pulling teeth. Have you noticed it at all?”

  “Honestly, he seems the same.” I thought about that phone call I got from Vandyne when he was shut up in the pantry. Maybe that was a little weird.

  “For July Fourth we went to see one of his old friends in Philadelphia.”

  “I knew about that, too.”

  “Of course. Well, anyway, some kids had set off some fireworks a little early and it caught John off-guard.”

  “What happened?”

  “He ran into the bathroom and jumped into the tub and stayed down.”

  “That’s probably the best place to be in the house when you’re under fire.”

  “I’m trying to be serious, Robert! You’re making a joke out of everything!”

  “I’m serious, too, Rose! That was just a part of his training that kicked in. If he wasn’t in that tub, in his mind, he would have had an arm or a leg blown off.”

  “But he’s not in Nam anymore!”

  “He is, Rose. We both still have one foot there.”

  “But you didn’t have—” She caught herself. “You’ve managed to stop drinking, though.”

  “Rose, you know that I killed a little boy in Nam, right?”

  “John told me that a few years ago.”

  “I’ve seen that little boy again.”

  “Not for a while now, though,” added Lonnie.

  “Yeah, but he could show up again,” I said.

  “How do you manage to keep going on, Robert?” asked Rose.

  “I stay focused on reaching my near-term goals. Right now I’m trying to find snakeheads—people who smuggle over illegal Chinese and hold them under abusive conditions until they work off their debts.

  “These snakeheads are the same type of people who made my father’s life so miserable. They made him the lousy father that he was.”

  Lonnie and Rose nodded in agreement. Could they really say any differently? I wondered if Vandyne was going to be okay.

  I finally got the puny 3 Musketeers out of the wrapper and pushed it into my mouth. I didn’t even really like 3 Musketeers, but after all the effort I put into it I wasn’t going to let anybody else have it.

  12

  THE NEXT DAY, LATE IN THE AFTERNOON, FOUND LONNIE AND ME standing off Bowery, two blocks away from meeting my mother for an early dinner.

  “How do I look, Lonnie?” I asked.

  She came over and pulled my collar one way. “You look fine,” she said. Lonnie was looking me over, her face marked with concern, eyebrows coming dangerously close to the bridge of her nose.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just that, this shirt’s a little old.”

  “Old?”

  “It’s not even red anymore.”

  “You can tell it’s red. She’s seen it before and anyway, it’s not like I have time to go back and change. Anyway, I think you’re too dressed up. This is not a formal thing.”

  Lonnie had on a white blouse with a knee-length black skirt.

  “I’m so embarrassed,” she said. “I don’t have panty hose.”

  “My mother isn’t going to be checking out your legs.”

  “Women always inspect each other. I’m just glad I had some makeup with me at your place.”

  My mother had decided to make a mad dash through Chinatown for groceries on the weekend and called my apartment from a pay phone, asking to meet up for a meal.

  I was naked when I had answered the phone and I felt weird talking to my mother.

  “Tell your friend to come out, too!” my mother had said.

  “I’ll see if she’ll come,” I had replied, looking at Lonnie, who was in bed, pulling the pillow over her head.

  My mother was always at least ten minutes early to any appointment. I think she liked to catch the other party slightly off-guard and before they had a chance to settle in. Sun Tzu would have been proud.

  She’d be strategically seated at the table, sipping tea when you came in. Because there was one bad chair, you’d have to sit on either side of her. She’d quietly judge you awkwardly pulling out a chair for your girlfriend and then stumbling over to your own chair.

  “Mom,” I said, “you remember Lonnie, right?”

  “It’s a pleasure, Mrs. Chow,” Lonnie said.

  “Lonnie, you’re so young and beautiful!”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is Robert nice to you?”

  “Of course he is!”

  “Does he get you presents?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “It’s okay that he’s a policeman, right? He’s not going to get you a new house and a new car, you know.”

  “Mom,” I said. “Lonnie is a smart woman. She doesn’t judge a man by how much money he makes.”

  “My son was never really that good in school,” continued my mother. “Part of that is my fault. I wasn’t around enough to force him to study harder. If I had, then maybe he’d have a better job and get you better things to wear.”

  Lonnie’s left hand shot to the bracelet on her right wrist. “Robert didn’t give me this,” she said. “It’s something I’ve had for a long time. It’s a present from an old friend who moved away.”

  “Oh,” said my mother.

  I knew exactly what she was thinking: Was that old friend a boy or a girl? And of course it mattered. If it was a boy, it may mean that he could come back someday and steal Lonnie away from me. If it was a girl, then maybe the bracelet meant that they had done drugs together.

  “I need to wash my hands,” Lonnie said.

  When she was far away enough, my mother tapped my hand and said, “Was the bracelet from a boy or girl?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know? You didn’t even ask her? You’re a policeman. You should be asking questions!”

  “Shouldn’t we get menus and order?”

  “I’ve already ordered for us. So are you two going to get married?”

  “It’s too early to talk about this! Don’t bring it up!”

  “You don’t know yet? You don’t think she’s the one? You have to make
a decision someday, and the sooner the better!”

  “It is way too early to talk about marriage. Let’s just enjoy our meal together.”

  “Your father and me, our relatives basically agreed we would marry unless we strongly objected. We hadn’t even met at that point. We just had pictures.”

  “We don’t do it that way in America, Mom.”

  “Don’t do what?” asked Lonnie, who was now back.

  “We don’t drink hot soup to stay cool,” I said.

  “Lonnie, you’re going to really like the food here,” said my mother. “It’s not common like a lot of Chinatown places. They have a good chef here and they don’t use illegal immigrants.”

  “How do you know they don’t?” I asked.

  “I can tell. They’re all professional here.”

  “This is a nice restaurant,” Lonnie said.

  “It isn’t cash-only, too,” my mother added. “See, they take Master Charge, BankAmericard, and American Express. This restaurant is well certified! Those financial companies wouldn’t let just anybody represent them!”

  The food was all right. I don’t think I can appreciate fancy dishes the way my mother can. Simplicity may sometimes be a sin in Chinese culture, but chopped barbecued pork and vegetables and garlic never did a man wrong.

  I made sure to keep all the teacups filled. I think Lonnie was a little nervous, because she was drinking a lot. She had to excuse herself again, throwing me back to the lions.

  “How come she didn’t wear panty hose?” my mother asked.

  “I’m not sure. Let’s check with her when she comes back to the table.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Robert, okay? It’s one thing if you can’t help it, but I know you’re doing it on purpose.”

  “Mom, are you really against going to restaurants that employ illegals?”

  “Of course! You think I want to continue to patronize low-class places like that?”

  “But those places gave Dad his first break.”

  “Robert, they exploited your father until he went off to the war and got citizenship. Boy, they changed their tune after that!”

  “People who are illegal now, they have almost no way of getting citizenship.”

  “They shouldn’t have come over, then.”

  “They’re here now and they’re suffering.”