Snakes Can't Run

by Ed Lin

  “Beautiful Hong Kong apparently is trying to put together a lion dance group of kids from all over Chinatown, regardless of political beliefs or past affiliations with gangs,” said Eddie. “Ng wants to have his lion dancing in both the October 1 and the October 10 parades. It’s rubbing a lot of associations the wrong way and they’re not afraid to make it known.”

  “Where did those gunshots come from tonight?” I asked.

  “Beats me,” he said. “It could have been anybody shooting at anybody. Seriously. We do have a shoot-akid-per-week quota to make in Chinatown, don’t we?”

  “Don’t fucking joke about kids getting shot!” I said.

  “What, are we supposed to cry instead? I don’t know about you guys, but the way I see it, most of those kids who get shot are hoods themselves. You only get pressured to solve the shootings where the tourists get wounded. Vandyne, you were looking into that kid who got shot at the Pagoda, right?”

  “Don’t act like it’s over,” Vandyne said.

  “That was one gang kid shooting another, right?”

  “Allegedly.”

  “And the shooting happened in a crowded theater and yet there were no witnesses, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know what I say? Screw it. Let that kid get out of the hospital and go kill the guy who shot him. Save the taxpayers some money.”

  “And let him get away with murder?” I asked.

  “Naw. Someone from the other gang will shoot him and finish the job, this time.”

  “We would have half the town trying to kill the other half in no time,” said Vandyne. “Then the whole country would all start shooting each other.”

  “Let’s get it on!” said Eddie. “I’m ready!”

  We all laughed. I didn’t know about Eddie, but Vandyne and I really were ready for a full-scale war at any second. Neither of us could eat a meal without our guns at our sides, even at home.

  “But anyway, about Brian . . . ,” I started.

  “Yeah, so, Ng has Brian training these kids in lion dancing. It’s associated with martial arts because traditionally a kung fu master can’t charge his students for lessons. The lion dances for hired entertainment were a way to make money.”

  “I thought the lion dances were basically extortion schemes from the associations,” I said.

  “Well, they’re that, too,” Eddie said.

  “Why should Beautiful Hong Kong have lion dancers?” Vandyne asked. “They’re not a kung fu club.”

  “Ng, that wonderful humanitarian, wanted to bring all Chinese people together, and the lion dancing is something that he thought combined the culture with physical activity, which is important. Kids are like dogs. They have excess energy and go fucking crazy if they don’t have a chance to burn it off. But here’s the thing: I’m thinking Brian has different ideas.”

  “Such as what?” I asked.

  “For one thing, he’s old-world. Brian was one of the premiere lion dancers in Hong Kong. Back in his day, they tied knife blades to their shoes so they could cut up the costumes of their rivals. He was teaching for a long time and had his own dancing group for a while, but after a business disagreement with his landlord he’s here.”

  “Let me guess. He doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Ng about letting in just anybody, right?” I asked. “He wants it segregated with just Hong Kong kids, right?”

  “Naw, I think he actually wants everyone willing to come in and do the work that is necessary to get it done.”

  “Then where do you come in?” Vandyne asked.

  “Me?” asked Eddie with a wide smile. “Oh, I’m the guy who’s supposed to get the kids guns so they can be an organized gang under Brian!”

  “Does Ng know anything about this?” I asked.

  “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Brian has a warped sense of reality. He thinks that with Ng tied up with business all day, the kids could be his personal muscle.”

  “Maybe we should take that fucker down,” I said.

  “Aw, just leave him alone!” said Eddie. “He’s a talker, not a walker. He’ll never do anything. Even if I got him a gun, he’d be too chickenshit to point it at anybody. Leave him alone. I got bigger fish to fry.”

  “You’re watching Brian all the time, right?” asked Vandyne.

  “Yeah, I am. Believe me, if he actually has the balls to make a play for anything, it’s going to be for Ng’s sister, Winnie.”

  “You know, we picked up both Brian and Winnie one night,” Vandyne said.

  “Yeah, Brian told me. He said that once he had his gang going, you two were going to show him respect.”

  We all laughed at how stupid an idea that was.

  “What kind of things was his dream gang going to get into?” I asked.

  “Oh, the usual boring kind of stuff, competing with other gangs for work from the associations. Lookouts for the pross houses. Guarding the gambling dens and escorting the winners home—without robbing them.”

  Eddie added that last part because one of Chinatown’s gangs had become known for mugging the people they were supposed to protect. The association who had hired them got a rival gang to take over their turf.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked Eddie.

  “Delay for a while, I guess. Seriously, when those gunshots rang out tonight, Brian was running like it was a fifty-yard dash. When we bust Beautiful Hong Kong, that coward’s going to be swimming across the Hudson to Jersey before we have the door kicked in. I’m actually pretty close to wrapping up the tax-evasion case on Ng.”

  “How’s that going?” asked Vandyne.

  “It’s sloppy, but I think we can get a case together that will stick. I was lousy at economics back in school, but that’s actually working out to my advantage. Ng was getting so fed up with trying to teach me different accounting methods that he introduced me to his finance guy. He showed me the ropes on how to cook the books. I can’t wait to put this guy away and get this thing over with.”

  “What are you going to do when you’re done?” asked Vandyne. “You’re not going to stay out here, are you?”

  “No way, man. The humidity sucks and I don’t want to see what winter’s like. I’m going to the beach and inspect some bikini lines!”

  “How hard is it to transition from a crime empire to a legitimate enterprise?” I asked the midget. “Won’t a part of it always be dirty?”

  We were sitting in the toy store. I was helping to sweep up because Paul was working late at the consulting firm.

  “All businesses to some degree operate in a gray area,” the midget said, not looking up. He was flipping through the day’s receipts and marking off entries in a book. “Part of being a capitalist society is that you have to give freer rein to the businesses because they will create jobs for the people and pay taxes to the government. The more money the companies make, the more jobs they can create and the workers pay more taxes. So you have to cut them some slack. You give them tax breaks on building new headquarters and facilities in your state and you let them come clean about dirty money without penalty.”

  “Then it’s like an amnesty program. If you said, ‘Hey, I was going to launder all this money I made from drug deals, but I want to pay taxes on it instead,’ then the government would be fine with that?”

  “Sure they would! If Al Capone had simply paid taxes on all that bootlegging, he never would have been convicted of any crimes.”

  “So when I was fighting Communism, I was basically protecting a system that favors big business over the little guy.”

  The midget looked down at himself and then at me. “Who says the little guy can’t open his own business?” he asked.

  Paul came in, drinking the last from a can of Coke.

  “Working sucks,” he said.

  “You know what sucks more than working?” I asked. “Not working.”

  “So then you’re not going to retire after twenty years and start drawing your pension because it would suck to not work, right?” Paul
asked me.

  “If I’m not dead after twenty years, it will be a sign from God that I should retire. I never argue with God.”

  “You never go to church with Lonnie!”

  “I have a strong personal relationship with God, but it’s on an informal basis,” I said.

  “Well, speaking of personal relationships,” said Paul with a wink, “I talked a little bit with Barbara today.”

  I smiled. “How is she doing?” I asked.

  “She’s busy—very busy. Anyway, I told her about Lonnie’s article about the history of the Chinese in America and she got very interested in it. She has a friend who works at a newswire service and she thinks maybe Lonnie can get a job there.”

  “That would be great!” I said. I had a vision of Lonnie bagging up coffee and taro buns for sweaty Cantonese jerks during the morning rush. She was getting a college degree—something I hadn’t done yet. Lonnie deserved a better job.

  “Barbara wants to meet Lonnie first before getting in touch with her friend. She was talking about dinner with the two of you.”

  “Is she seeing anybody?” I asked.

  “She’s too busy to date, she says.”

  It was going to be an awkward meal, but I was willing to do it if it meant a potential job for Lonnie in this crappy economy. She had been sending her résumé around trying to get her foot in the doors of some newsrooms, but papers and magazines were laying people off.

  The three Chinese-language newspapers were doing well but only because they were subsidized by the KMT, Communists, and the Hong Kong government.

  Lonnie said it was all just propaganda and that she would rather keep the bakery job than work at any of them because it was honest work.

  In reality, she made her job honest work. When I saw her drop a pastry on the floor one day she amazed me by throwing it away instead of restocking it. If her boss had seen her, it would have been a firing offense.

  15

  BARBARA HAD INSISTED ON TREATING US TO A DINNER AT A swanky midtown Sichuan restaurant. The consulting group had an account there and she could finagle it as a business expense, she had said.

  Lonnie dressed in a formal blouse and skirt. I had put on my best collared shirt, the one I took out of the cleaners’ paper wrap only for my birthday. It made me look as clean-cut as I can get, and I was glad I wore it.

  Barbara was already seated but stood up when she saw us. She was wearing a slinky black dress that had a dangerously low neckline and seemed form-fitting. It was too sexy to wear for a work function or for any other event that didn’t end in a bedroom.

  I had to stop thinking like this immediately.

  I squeezed Lonnie’s hand.

  Barbara waved.

  We sat down and I introduced Barbara to Lonnie.

  “Your brother is so smart. He is an absolute genius,” Barbara gushed. “He’s the fastest in the office on the calculator. Does intelligence run in the family?”

  “He is much brighter than me,” said Lonnie. “He always has been.”

  I noticed how Barbara’s makeup reshaped her face from the last time I had seen her. I don’t think she even had lipstick on when we were with Don in the park. Her cheekbones seemed to stretch her skin out to the point that it exposed light blue veins underneath, contrasting with her chocolate-chip brown eyes.

  “Robert, have you lost weight?” Barbara asked.

  “It’s mostly the way this shirt is cut,” I said. “But I’ve also lost some pounds since I’ve stopped drinking.”

  “Is this a permanent sort of change?” she asked, glancing at Lonnie.

  “Barbara, I’m an alcoholic.”

  “I guess we’re not going to be having cocktails, then. Damn, and I kind of needed one today!”

  “You never really need a drink.”

  “The food is the main thing, anyway,” Lonnie said.

  Barbara had already ordered before we arrived, to save time.

  I was pretty partial to this chicken-and-chili-pepper dish until some sauce slid against the back of my throat and it felt like someone had stuck a lit Zippo in my right nostril. I tried to play it cool and swished water around, but that just made the heat spread over the entire roof of my mouth.

  There wasn’t any rice to shove in my mouth and absorb the hot oil with. The fancy Chinese places served meat only with some vegetables to show how upscale they were. Eating rice was for the lower classes to make themselves feel full.

  I continued to simmer lightly in my private, single-seating hell as I let Lonnie and Barbara have a conversation.

  “How is your Mandarin, Lonnie?”

  “It’s okay. I’m able to understand it pretty well, but when I speak, the tones are a little hard.”

  “You have to be fluent for this job, which is really a paid contract position. There aren’t health benefits or paid vacation time, but you’re not getting that now, are you?”

  “I get some holidays and American holidays off, now that I’ve been there almost two years,” said Lonnie.

  “Let me tell you more about the job. You’re going to be assisting an old friend of mine at the United Nations. Have you heard of Presswire?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “It’s a wire service that competes with Associated Press and UPI. They’re small but feisty. Basically, you’ll be checking the daily schedule of media events and attending some of the events. You have to be careful, though. You might read about, say, a panel on improving health care in Southeast Asia. Sounds interesting, right? But when you show up, you find a bunch of people blowing hot air. You’re going to find out pretty quickly that what sounds good on paper usually doesn’t live up to the description in real life. Oh, could I see a copy of your résumé?”

  “Yes, I have it right here.” Lonnie opened up a binder and pulled her résumé from a plastic flap inside the cover.

  Barbara scanned it quickly. “So you’re going to be done with your associate’s degree at the end of the summer?”

  “Yes. I’ve worked really hard at it.”

  “Do you know what you’re going to do after that? Before Presswire can hire you for a full-time position, you need to have a bachelor’s degree.”

  “I’ve already been accepted as a transfer to NYU. I’m going to start in the spring semester.”

  “NYU! Now that’s a good school!”

  “Of course, it’s not as good as Harvard!”

  “Well, I think it’s just fine. You know, eventually you’ll be replacing my friend at Presswire. He’s going to be burnt out in a few years. He’s the same age as Robert and I—we’re all much older than you! You’re just a baby!”

  “I’m not that much younger.”

  “Your skin is so light and smooth! I wish I could have it!”

  “You have many wonderful features, Barbara. I’m the jealous one!”

  “I thought of something else, Lonnie. Once in a while you’ll have to do radio broadcast spots. How well can you speak English?”

  “I can speak English fine,” Lonnie said in English.

  “I hear a little bit of an accent,” said Barbara. “It might be charming, though.”

  The waiter had been ignoring my distress signals, which were now just short of jumping on the table and tap-dancing.

  “Barbara,” I broke in, “what are the chances of getting a bowl of rice? I have a hot spot that’s just not going away.”

  “Robert, why didn’t you say something?” she asked. Barbara turned her head and the waiter was immediately by her side. “One bowl of rice, please. Lonnie, you want one?”

  “No, thank you,” Lonnie said.

  After I had the fire out I ate a little bit more but found most of my appetite gone. I excused myself to go wash the dried sweat from my face. I went down the red-carpeted stairs. Before I reached the restroom a private banquet room door opened and Ng stepped out. We looked at each other as he eased the door closed behind him, cutting off a wave of laughter.

  “Andy, what are you doin
g here, so far from Chinatown?” I asked.

  “I might ask you the same thing, Robert.”

  “I’m just here eating. Do you own this place?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “This is neutral territory. We’re simply ironing out a bad misunderstanding between groups.”

  “Does this have anything to do with a shooting after your lion dance group met?”

  He laughed. “What shooting? There was nothing! What I’m doing tonight is just bringing together new friends.”

  “I understand you’ve been running an employment agency from Beautiful Hong Kong’s office.”

  “Not seriously. It’s all rather informal. When I know of people looking for work, I try to find them jobs. For each man employed that means one less person to cause trouble.”

  “You’re getting jobs for Fukienese.”

  “What’s wrong with that? All Chinese have to help each other!”

  “Are they illegal, Andy?”

  “They have the right paperwork, Robert, and anyway it’s none of your business. Your problem is that you’re too American for your own good. You’re steeped in that fine tradition of xenophobia.”

  “Does ‘xenophobia’ mean ‘fear of foreigners’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well then, I’m not, Brother Five!”

  “What did you call me?” asked Ng with a frown that had a hint of amusement.

  “Brother Five. That’s what they call you, right? One of the surname characters for ‘Ng’ means ‘five.’”

  “That’s true,” said Ng, nodding. “It’s also true that that is my family name. But nobody ever calls me that.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Hey, Robert, I don’t have anything personal against you. I know you’re just trying to do your job. But your judgment is clouded and the Chinese people aren’t foremost in your mind. I am sure, though, that someday we will both be able to celebrate our brotherhood.”

  “If I find that you’re involved with anything illegal, we’re going to be celebrating ten years in jail for you. While you’re in the process of cleaning up Beautiful Hong Kong, Andy, I really hope it isn’t making you dirty.”

  We walked away from each other, Andy to the pay phone and me to the restroom.