Chinese Cooking for Diamond Thieves

by Dave Lowry

  I knew about some of it. It was something that revealed itself slowly in Chinese restaurant kitchens. Most of it meant more to Langston than it did me. Langston’s great-grandfather had been a bigtime silk merchant in Shanghai back in the thirties. His warehouses were looted when the Japanese invaded in 1937; the Wu family barely made it out of the city. They left China, went first to Malaysia, which turned out not to be such a great step because the Imperial Japanese Army was heading in the same direction. The Wu family spent the rest of the war as prisoners of the Japanese. Langston’s grandfather went to Taiwan after the war, and later his father came to the United States to go to college. He never went back to Asia. Langston and his two sisters were both ABCs—American-born Chinese.

  “Yeah, one big happy family,” he said. “Just slightly dysfunctional.”

  “Slightly?”

  We wandered around. Under a stand of pines, there was a demonstration of taiji. It was average. The demonstrators knew the movements. They didn’t have any jing in them, though, none of the crackling energy that elevates taiji from a form of gentle exercise into a fighting art. Taiji was a kind of moving meditation for them, a pleasant exercise. They “pushed hands,” facing off and rolling, deflecting, and pushing in, arms interlocked, like graceful dancers. But they didn’t have the soft, concealed, explosive power of real taiji experts. A troupe of lion dancers paraded by, twisting, turning, crouching under the long silk trail of the “lion,” its gaudy red and gold head snapping its jaws and jerking to and fro to the sound of drums and cymbals from dancers gathered around it.

  “Have we had about all the fun we can stand?” Langston asked after we’d been there and looked around for a while. We’d left the crowd and were sitting side by side at one of the rows of metal picnic tables that had been assembled under a dining tent. I had nearly finished a paper boat of fried rice in front of me. It was okay. It wasn’t as good as what I could have made. It wasn’t even as good as Ms. Masterson’s first efforts.

  “Agreed,” I said. I tossed the last couple of bites of the rice into a trash can at the end of the table. “We just have to find Corinne.”

  “Found,” Corinne answered. She’d come up from behind us and slid onto the bench beside me.

  “I assume I am easy to spot in this crowd,” I said to her.

  “Not really,” she said. “Look around. There are more of your kind around here than there are of mine.”

  “My kind?”

  “Laowai.”

  “I meant that I must be easy to find because of my rugged good looks and suave demeanor.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said. “That’s what I meant by ‘your kind.’ The rugged-good-looks, suave-demeanor kind.”

  “There is no ‘kind’ of that,” I said. “I am unique.”

  “Listen,” Langston said. “Love to hang around here all afternoon eating pork fried rice and listening to your witty repartee, but, instead, how about we head home?” He’d gone out the night before with Bao Yu. I hadn’t gone to bed until after two in the morning, and he still wasn’t home yet. I assumed things were going at least okay between the two of them.

  “Fine,” I said.

  “It isn’t repartee,” Corinne said. “It’s flirt talk.”

  I saw a head and shoulder duck back behind the flap of the Chinese Students Association tent. Maybe twenty yards away from us. It was the movement that caught my eye. It was too quick, too jerky. It didn’t fit the rhythm of the rest of the festival. Nobody moves that way in a big crowd. I stared at the place where it disappeared. The head didn’t reappear.

  “Let’s go,” I said. I’d parked down the hill from the festival. The tents, the music, the crowds, were all between us and the Toyota. The easy thing to do would have been to turn to the left and follow the sidewalk down the slope, then cut back across at the foot of the hill, along the street where I’d parked. Instead, I went straight, with Corinne and Langston beside me, into the festival, aiming for the tent where I’d seen the head and shoulders duck back out of sight.

  I was fairly sure I recognized the head. It was time to find out if I was right.

  The three of us plunged right into the heart of the festival.

  Langston had known me a long time. So maybe he could sense something in the way I was walking. Maybe he just knew something was up. It was hard to tell with Langston. He and Corinne were following me. I could feel him move over to my left side.

  “Shenme shi qing?” he asked, very quietly, staying close to me so Corinne didn’t hear. “What’s up?”

  “Not sure,” I said, “but it will be interesting to find out.”

  Corinne took a couple of quick strides and caught up with me on my right. Without looking, I reached for her hand. She didn’t say anything. She hadn’t known me all that long. Three months or so. Maybe, though, she knew, too, that something was up. She didn’t ask questions. She just kept walking with me, kept beside me.

  I kept the pace slow, leisurely. Like the three of us were just wandering through the festival, enjoying ourselves. We stopped and looked at the booths displaying Chinese crafts, intricate paper cutouts, calligraphy, cheap ceramic tea sets. Trying to look as casual as I could, I stepped away from Langston and Corinne and fished my phone from my pocket and hit Ms. Masterson’s number.

  “Remember where we were at Forest Park yesterday?” I said when she answered. She did.

  “We’re there now. So are the two guys who pulled the gun on me.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’m going to find out.”

  “Just stay where you are,” she said. “I’m just passing the Parkway entrance to the park; I’m on my way. Stay on the phone.”

  I kept the phone in one hand, took Corinne’s hand with the other, and angled the three of us toward the tent where I’d seen the head pop around then jerk back. When we reached the tent, I went past it, looking straight. I didn’t bother to look around for anyone. Whoever it was I’d seen—or thought I’d seen—I didn’t think they’d still be there. I was looking for somebody else. It didn’t take too long to find him. Benjamin Ma was the cook at the Hunan Wok. He was walking toward us with his girlfriend beside him, a busty redhead who was almost half a foot taller. I lifted my chin without breaking stride.

  “Hey, Ben,” I said, “how’s it going?”

  “Not bad,” he said, continuing to walk in the other direction. I turned my head as they both walked by, trying to make the movement as natural as I could.

  “You going to be at the Palace after work tomorrow?” I said to Ben’s back. He pivoted, still walking, and stuck his thumb up. I looked past him. I saw the Curl and Eyebrows. Hanging back, trying to stay in the crowd. But it was them. It was the Curl’s head I’d seen from around the corner of the tent. They were following us. I tried just to glance, to keep my head turned to Ben so it wasn’t obvious I was looking at them. I wasn’t sure it had worked. Eyebrows was wearing a tan hoodie, big and bulky, and a pair of jeans with sneakers. The Curl had on the same jeans and sneakers, with a T-shirt and a red-striped cotton dress shirt over it, unbuttoned. It didn’t look like there was any way the Curl could be concealing a gun. That hoodie, though, I thought, was a perfect way to cover one in Eyebrows’ waistband.

  I slowed my pace enough so Langston could come up beside me.

  “Just keep walking,” I said, loud enough so they could both hear me. “And don’t look back. There are a couple of guys following us.”

  Langston didn’t say anything.

  Corinne said, “Okay.”

  “They’re the same guys who jumped you outside your apartment,” I said to Corinne. “The same guys who stopped their car and pushed a gun in my direction.”

  Langston made a “hmm” sound. And didn’t say anything else. Neither did Corinne. She squeezed my hand. When I glanced over at her, I saw her lips pressed together tightly. She looked straight ahead. I liked that. She didn’t say What’re we going to do? or get panicky. She just kept walking.
I’d expected Langston’s reaction. His “hmm” was to let me know he heard, he understood, and he was thinking about our options. I was thinking about them too.

  I looked around as we walked. I didn’t see any cops. If I had, I realized, it wasn’t going to help. What was I going to do? Ms. Masterson had told us she would give the police the description of the two. But they’d threatened me in one of the suburbs of St. Louis City. City and suburb police departments don’t always communicate. I didn’t have any guarantee that city cops I might find would have any idea of what I was talking about. And by the time I explained it, the two would be gone. They could disappear into the crowd, keep an eye on us, then make their move when we finally did leave. I didn’t like the option. It wasn’t good. It was the best one I could think of, though. And, I admitted to myself, I was tired of this. I didn’t have to push it now. And maybe it wasn’t fair to Corinne and Langston that I would. Even so, I’d had enough. I lifted my phone.

  “Still there?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said.

  “My car’s parked at the bottom of the hill west of the Art Museum, on Valley Drive,” I said. “We’re going there now.”

  “Stay where you are.”

  “Nope,” I said. “It’s too crowded. Somebody’s going to get hurt.”

  “Tucker—” I heard her say. And then my phone was back in my pocket.

  We were at the outer edges of the festival, still walking. I was still holding Corinne’s hand. There were enough people around I didn’t think the two would do anything too extreme. At least for the moment. There weren’t nearly enough people for us to blend into the crowd, though. And, with every step we took, the crowd was thinning. If we stopped moving now, we would be obvious. If we kept walking, we were soon going to be on our way down the hill, heading toward the street where the car was parked, right out in the open. I thought of that gun Eyebrows had stuck in my face. I’d already made a choice, though.

  “Car’s down there,” I said. “We need to get there as fast as we can.”

  “Okay,” Langston said. I looked over at Corinne. She nodded.

  We ran.

  34

  Rule #57: There’s often a “however” in life.

  The Art Museum was built on the highest hill in Forest Park. It looks out east to the long slope of Art Hill, with its statue of Louis IX on a horse, his sword lifted high. In the winter, there could be a couple of hundred sledders on the hill in front of the museum. On the south side of the museum, the shoulder of the hill slopes away from the museum buildings and the big, open space where the festival was still going on. We were at the top of the shoulder. When we started to run, we went down its grassy flank. There were some big trees. Their branches already had leaves, so it was shady under them, with dapples of sunlight in places. The ground was steep enough for us to move fast. I kept my strides short, though. I wanted to sprint but didn’t. I didn’t want to start running full tilt and risk stumbling. The ground was too uneven to go all out. Langston and Corinne were taking the same strategy. Running with quick, short strides, all of us abreast, all of us watching the uneven ground as we went over it.

  I hadn’t heard a lot of gunfire before. I went a couple of times with my father when he had to qualify, for his job, at the state police range over in Concord. It was exciting for a few minutes. The reality was that after the first few dozen rounds were fired, it got kind of boring. It wasn’t boring now. Also, the sound was a lot sharper and louder than it had been at the range with my father, where I’d had on ear protectors. The first shot rang sharp, crisp. The air was clear, low enough in humidity that the crack carried. I involuntarily hunched when I heard the shot. I felt a sharp tug between my shoulder blades where the muscles in my back gave a quick spasm. Like stiffening my back muscles was going to stop a bullet. I tried to shrug my shoulders to loosen things. It’s hard to do when you’re running. I looked right, then left. Langston and Corinne were both still upright, still running. I took those as good signs.

  In about thirty seconds, we were most of the way down the hill, into the woods near the bottom of the slope. The trees got thicker there. The ground cover was dense, overgrown. There wasn’t any way a park mower could have gotten into the tangle here. There wasn’t any grass to mow. Long ropes of grapevines twisted around on the ground, and the only other cover was a heavy mat of dark leaves, damp. I could smell the dirt and wet mulch where we kicked them up as we ran. Corinne was a couple of strides ahead of me. She tripped on a vine, went down to one knee, but before I could reach her, she was back up and getting her stride. It was impossible to get into the kind of flat-out, loping stride that would have given us much distance. On the other hand, all the trees made us harder targets. And if we were slowed down trying to get through it, so were the two coming after us. At least I hoped so. I fought the urge to turn and look back. I didn’t want to risk falling if I did. And if they were behind us, there wasn’t much I could do about it anyway.

  Off to the left was a rock the color of concrete, about the size of the kitchen table in our apartment. It was rounded, with a silhouette that reminded me of a crouching bear. Or maybe a tiger coiled to spring. I was considering it as I ran and listened for the sound of another shot. Multitasking. I didn’t think I was doing a very good job of any of it. Even so, I was distracted by the rock. I wanted to ask Corinne about it. Hey, I wanted to say, that rock over there. Think it looks more like a bear or a tiger? I didn’t.

  And then we were all three past the rock, and I heard a second shot and then a dull, clunking sound like someone had dropped a golf ball on a sidewalk. I heard Langston make a huuhh sound. He was a couple of paces behind me.

  “You okay?” I yelled. I twisted around to see where he was. Hearing that noise from Langston, I felt my face flush. I suddenly wanted to throw up the fried rice I’d been eating only ten minutes ago but what seemed like about six months ago.

  “Branch clipped me,” Langston said. “I’m okay.” He huffed. His face was pink. But he wasn’t struggling. I glanced again at Corinne. She looked the same. She’d tied her hair back earlier in the day. She looked grim, determined. She was staring at some finish line up ahead, I thought. I wondered where it was. The Toyota had been a dependable machine, taking me all the way from New Hampshire out here, including a trip back to Buffalo to pick up Corinne. It was sucking a lot of oil, true. It was still a good car. It wasn’t bulletproof, though. I didn’t have a plan for what would happen after we got to it. I thought about how this seemed to be becoming a habit for me, making impulsive decisions and hoping that once made, something would open up for me. Then I thought that I was perhaps being just a little too introspective for a guy running down a hill through the woods with a couple of low-level Chinese gang thugs shooting at him.

  I felt a quick flash of relief. I could see the road lined with parked cars. Another car was pulling up and stopping, double-parking, blocking off the street. Both doors opened, and I saw Mr. Cataldi jump out and take a squatting position, pointing his gun directly at the three of us. Behind him, on the other side of the car, I could see Ms. Masterson’s head and shoulders over the hood. She had a gun pointed at us as well.

  “Get! Down!” she shouted. We did. All three of us. Corinne was close enough to me I could reach out and push her. I put my hand between her shoulder blades and shoved, and since she was already leaning over, scouting for a place to land, she went down fast. It sounded like all the air in her lungs came out at once. I dived. Corinne’s elbow clipped my cheek as we went down. The carpet of dead, wet leaves was thick, sloppy. I went face first into it. My shoulders were hunched. My right arm hugged Corinne; she had her left arm around my neck. I heard Langston hit the ground, along with a squishy sound as he plowed into dank mulch. I tensed, waiting for the shots. Wasn’t much I could do about it, short of burrowing into the clammy, matted leaves. I gave it some consideration. Instead of the shots I expected, I heard Mr. Cataldi.

  “Stop! That’s all! FBI!” Mr. Cataldi shouted
, then it was Ms. Masterson again. “Put the gun down! Put the gun down now!”

  Corinne was trying to suck air in through her mouth in short staccato bursts. I could feel my pulse in my temples. I realized there was a rock digging into my left knee. Then I heard the wail of sirens, way off in the distance, drawing closer. I lifted my head just high enough to turn and glance at Langston. He stared back, a big smear of dirt covering most of one cheek. There was a dried leaf, ragged and torn, hanging from his hair, right in front of his face. He didn’t pull it off. He just left it there, keeping his face as close to the ground as he could.

  “Wow,” he said.

  Mr. Cataldi and Ms. Masterson were both trotting toward us. As they got closer, Ms. Masterson said, “Are you all okay?” They both had their guns out, both pointed up the hill past us. Ms. Masterson stopped where we were. Mr. Cataldi kept going, up the hill toward the two who’d been chasing us.

  “Okay,” I said. I pulled my knee off the rock and got my leg beneath me and sat up.

  “All of you!” she said again. “Tell me if you are okay?”

  “Okay here,” Langston said. He pushed up with his hands and sat on his knees.

  Corinne rolled over. The front of her jeans and shirt were streaked with mud. “Okay,” she said. She sat up.