99 Ways to Die

by Ed Lin

  “So then you’re canceling his appearance, right?”

  My money muscle tensed. “All publicity is good publicity,” I started. She rolled up her magazine and swatted my head in energy-efficient swats that have surely killed many flying insects. “Seriously, Nancy, I’m a businessman. I can’t say no to the number of people he will bring in.”

  “You’re a businessman? Like how Tong-tong is a businessman? That is, without a moral conscience?” She unrolled the magazine and resumed ignoring me.

  “Look, Nancy, before he goes on, I’m going to speak and set the tone for the entire event. I will make it clear that we do not support prejudice in any form and that Tong-tong is only calling out for justice. How does that sound?”

  Nancy rolled up her magazine again and tapped it against her chin. She looked thoughtful. “That is acceptable to me. This is your business, your livelihood.” She sighed. “But you have to be in control. Tong-tong steamrolled that journalist. I can see where Peggy gets her drive from.”

  The mention of Peggy lit up a dim memory in my head. What was Nancy trying to say to Peggy?

  “That woman,” I said to Nancy. “Liu Ju-lan, Ah-tien’s friend. You said you found her.”

  “Oh. Yes, I think I did. But Peggy didn’t seem too interested in tracking her down. Or helping Ah-tien.”

  “Well, we should go see her. If she has the goods, then Ah-tien really should get a retrial.”

  “That’s a good idea, Jing-nan. Very selfless of you.”

  Only a minute ago she was beating me and now I’ve managed to turn it around. Maybe I should be in public relations. I went to the kitchen, plated two pineapple cakes and grabbed two cans of Mr. Brown from the fridge.

  “Where is Ju-lan?” I asked as I handed breakfast to Nancy.

  “I think she’s running a bed and breakfast in Ximending.”

  We shook our canned coffees before popping them open.

  “Yuck. I could never run one of those. You have to cater to all these annoying tourists in order to get their money.”

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “Don’t you depend on tourists for your business?”

  I bit my lip. “Yeah, but everybody who comes to Unknown Pleasures is a cool tourist.”

  “If only Tong-tong were as smooth as you.” She touched my face. “Actually, you’re not that smooth. You need to shave.”

  Chapter 10

  Nancy and I took the train to the B&B. We decided not to call beforehand just in case Ju-lan didn’t want to talk and pulled a runner. Nancy didn’t really know her, after all.

  A few groups walking through the MRT stations looked like cleanup crews with their brooms and standing dustpans. The fliers taped to the front and back of their shirts made their true identities clear. Tong-tong supporters. They weren’t technically carrying weapons, but those handles could be twisted off and wielded in two seconds. Cops on the platform watched them carefully.

  We walked into the lobby of the building that housed Ju-lan’s business. The middle-aged guard at the front desk was playing an erhu. He put down his bow to try to hand us some Tong-tong fliers but we shook our heads. He grimaced, showing off red-stained teeth from years of chewing betelnut. He might have served in the military for decades.

  “Where are you come from?” he asked in English.

  “We’re on vacation from the United States,” I declared, doing my best Southern-accented American English. He nodded and waved us through.

  I know, it’s not cool for us to pretend to be other people, but I had to save us from what would undoubtedly be a longish lecture in Mandarin about how we needed to help catch Tong-tong’s kidnappers with maybe an anti-foreigner segment thrown in for good measure.

  As we waited forever for the elevator, I noticed the guard shaking his head. All day, every day, all he saw were tourists. The guard picked up his bow and scraped it across the erhu’s two strings. We entered the elevator and I pressed the “close” button repeatedly. I wasn’t sure what section of the military our guard had served in, but it sure wasn’t in the band.

  During the ride up, I suddenly became a little apprehensive about meeting Ju-lan. My mind called up an image of a middle-aged woman pulling out a baseball bat and swinging it at us.

  Our car jerked to a stop and the door lurched open. We stepped to a desk where a woman in her early thirties stood.

  “Excuse me, miss,” I asked. “Do you know where we can find someone named Ju-lan?”

  She responded by standing up and wiggling her glasses. “There’s no one here by that name,” she said. “I’m Ling-yu.” The woman seemed a little stiff. Damn, I thought, wrong place. Then she saw I was with somebody. “Nancy?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  “Ju-lan! So good to see you.” Nancy reached across the desk and the women awkwardly rubbed each other’s arms. Ah-tien’s friend was way younger than I had thought. She wore her hair short and maintained an expression of professional concern for what we’d say about her business online. Ju-lan glanced at me.

  “You’re married now, I see,” said Ju-lan. “Good for you.”

  “We’re not there, yet,” I said as I reached out a hand to her. “My name is Chen Jing-nan.”

  “Hello, Mr. Chen,” she said in a clear voice the tourists probably loved that was too loud for Taiwanese to talk to each other in. She petted the back of my hand. “Well, this is some coincidence seeing you, Nancy.”

  Nancy folded her hands and pressed them against the desk. “I was trying to find you.”

  “You were?” Ju-lan’s voice was tinged with concern.

  “Yes, it’s about Ah-tien.”

  Ju-lan swallowed and cast an inquiring look at me.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I know all about them.”

  Jul-lan exhaled. “Okay. So, what can I do for you, Nancy?”

  “I understand that you have a bunch of emails that Ah-tien sent to you for safekeeping. Just in case he ended up in jail.” Nancy unstuck her hands and placed them flat on the desktop. “Actually, I think you were supposed to release the emails after he was arrested.”

  Ju-lan’s face shrank five percent and she nodded. “I was supposed to, you’re right.” She sank back into her seat and swiveled slightly away from both of us. “I didn’t, though.”

  Now was not the time to push.

  “Yes,” said Nancy.

  Ju-lan still couldn’t face either of us. “Do you know why I didn’t? I could have been swept up in the corruption probe, as well. Ah-tien’s company wasn’t the only one bribing officials. Pretty much the entire industry was. Of course, the ones who paid the biggest bribes were the most successful, like Ah-tien’s company. Then they decided to cut back on the outlay. That was a big mistake. When the investigators closed in, Ah-tien took the blame for his company and the entire industry, as well.”

  “Ju-lan,” I asked, “how were you in danger?”

  “The justice department had subpoenaed us for any emails regarding Ah-tien or his company. I showed the emails to my legal department. The top lawyer pulled me into a conference room. He told me that the government could use it to prove collusion between our companies and also between Ah-tien and me personally. I could have faced the same charges as him.” Ju-lan pulled herself toward us and held up her hands. “I wasn’t ready to go to jail, too. That wouldn’t help Ah-tien at all. That’s what the emails would’ve done. They would’ve ended up condemning both of us.”

  Nancy lowered her head. “That’s really awful, Ju-lan.”

  “I’m sorry you had to face that choice, Ju-lan,” I said. “You don’t have copies of the emails, do you?”

  She ran a finger along the rim of a pot bearing a chrysanthemum. She had a few of them on the counter. The tourists wouldn’t get it, but “Ju-lan” means “chrysanthemum.”

  “No, I don’t,” she said. “I ended up quitting
a few months later. The semiconductor business is no place for a woman. Not that we are unable to do the job. It’s just not a female-friendly industry.” She crossed her arms. “I had to make a clean break, so I changed my name to Ling-yu.” Ju-lan looked at Nancy expectantly. “How did you find me?”

  “I remember you mentioned that your dream was to open a B&B. That was how I tracked you down,” said Nancy sheepishly. “I looked up B&Bs named Chrysanthemum.”

  “It’s a very nice place you have here,” I said, even though we didn’t see anything beyond the lobby.

  “It keeps me alive,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the money or the work itself. “Some foreigners are very nice and that’s why it’s so disappointing when people like Tong-tong say the things they say.”

  I could feel Nancy glaring at me but I couldn’t meet her face. Instead I looked to Ju-lan. “Pardon me, but you wouldn’t know anything about a chip design that Ah-tien had been trying to shop around.”

  She leaned on the counter and turned her eyes to the left. “He did have a chip, a low-power chip.”

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s the one.”

  She shrugged. “He told me he was working on it, but I honestly don’t know much about it. My specialty was in graphics chips.” Her phone rang and she glanced at the blinking light on her phone.

  “It was nice meeting you,” I said. This time she gave my hand a full shake. She and Nancy rubbed arms again.

  Down in the lobby, the guard was giving two unfortunate people the full-on Tong-tong indoctrination. It was hyperventilated and spittle-punctuated, but still better than hearing him play music.

  We were walking back to the MRT station when Nancy checked her phone and told me there was a big rally planned at her university, Taida.

  “For what?” I asked.

  Her eyes flashed. “It’s an anti-Tong-tong, anti-racism rally. They want the school to give back all his donation and scholarship money.”

  “I thought he didn’t make that big donation yet.”

  “He didn’t, but he’s contributed in the past. A lot.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If you don’t like someone, wouldn’t you want to take away their money?”

  Nancy stopped in her tracks to take me to task. I stopped walking, as well, and someone rudely pushed past me. “Most people—not you, Jing-nan—don’t want to be seen as being supported by someone they find disgusting.”

  I was jostled again as two men elbowed their way around me. I was annoyed but I kept my eyes on Nancy because I had to make a point. “Here’s the thing, though,” I said, raising a finger to show that I had exactly one point. “How do you really know what someone is like? How can you judge a person by only one aspect of their personality? If a customer’s having a bad day and, oh, I don’t know, they end up screaming at me or Dwayne, does that mean they’re a bad person?”

  Nancy bent her left arm and pushed the elbow into my chest. “If someone says racist things on live television, he is definitely a bad person. Tong-tong is a bad person, Jing-nan.”

  Someone shoved me so hard I nearly fell over. Luckily, Nancy caught me.

  We heard shouting in the distance. On a level above us, two men were squared off, each holding a broken broom handle. Three MRT police were trying to keep the crowd at bay. One hardy officer, a woman in what looked like a bulletproof vest, was trying to separate the two combatants, but each would scamper around her back to take a toddler-like swing at the other.

  “Avenge Tong-tong!” yelled one of the fighters. A part of the crowd obediently repeated it.

  “Fight racism!” yelled the other. Jeers from the Tong-tong crew drowned out any audible support.

  The woman, like all MRT officers, was unarmed, but also unafraid. The struggle hit a new low when the Tong-tong supporter grabbed her cap and tossed it into the crowd. Her freed ponytail whipped against her furious mouth as the officer swung her head around. The Tong-tong supporter had unwittingly unleashed a beast.

  She kicked him in the stomach and he scuttled across the floor, flailing like a lobster trying to escape from a weighing scale. In a cinematic touch, she raised a fist over her head in victory. Nancy and I were amazed, along with the entire crowd, which had fallen silent.

  The other fighter tried to bolt but the crowd pushed him back. Two of the male cops soon had him by the elbows while the third collected the broom handles. The woman picked up her cap and slid it back on.

  “Get out of here, everybody! Or I’ll arrest you!” she roared. The crowd slunk away.

  Nancy spun her hand to circle the aftermath. “That’s all because of Tong-tong,” she said. “He’s inciting people to attack each other. Do you still want him to speak at your business?”

  “Shit,” I said. “It’s too late to cancel it, but I think I’m going to need some muscle.”

  I called Dwayne. I knew he was friends with a lot of bouncers and security guards. I asked if he could have a few of them show up and play defense for Tong-tong’s appearance. He said it wouldn’t be a problem because their usual work shifts didn’t start until later in the night. I would have to pay them cash and maybe provide some food. I had no problem with that at all. If I had it my way, of course, I would want to hire that ass-kicking female cop from the MRT station.

  It turned out, though, that another female cop showed up at Unknown Pleasures a few hours ahead of Tong-tong’s scheduled appearance. Kung, Peggy’s erstwhile errand-girl, looked well-rested. She even had enough time to cover up the scar on her cheek.

  “Are you here in an official capacity, officer?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I am,” she said. “I heard that you’re hiring some bouncers to watch over the crowd.”

  “My main concern is that everyone is safe.”

  “I bet you’ll probably move a lot of food tonight, Jing-nan.”

  Dwayne joined us, wiping his hands with a towel. “People get hungry when they’re mad,” he said, “and Tong-tong’s base is begging to get worked up.”

  I crossed my arms. “They’re angry about a lot of things,” I said. “I want to make it clear that I do not buy into most of Tong-tong’s rhetoric, especially the anti-immigrant stuff.”

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Kung. “My mother’s from Vietnam.”

  “You should tell him.”

  “I did. He looked over my body and said, ‘I love Vietnamese women!’”

  Dwayne touched her shoulder. “He said that? I would’ve broken his nose if he said shit like that to me!”

  Kung shrugged. “At least he didn’t say he hated Vietnamese women. He’s been very good to the Taipei police. He’s the biggest donor to our union. We honor him at our banquets every year.”

  “Ah,” I said, nodding. “No wonder you guys went all out to try to find him when he was kidnapped.”

  Kung suddenly straightened up. “We might have a situation here.”

  I turned and observed two fairly tall guys in their early thirties approaching. Their mischievous expressions were a little unnerving. Did they come here to bust up my joint before Tong-tong even said a word? Dwayne walked up to them and the men all shared hearty embraces. I was relieved. Dwayne had some scary-looking friends.

  “This is where you work, huh?” said one of them. He had looked lanky from ten feet out but up close his muscles became apparent. The man looked at me and stuck out a hand. “You must be the big boss man, Jing-nan!”

  I took his hand and found his grip reassuring for my purposes. “Good to meet you,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “My name is Attun. I was named for the last holdout soldier of imperial Japan. He was Amis, you know. Didn’t surrender until 1974.”

  I took a step back. “Wow, I had no idea. I hope you’re as tough as him. There could be some real troublemakers tonight.”

 
He cracked his elbows. “I’m ready.”

  Dwayne brought over his other friend. “Jing-nan, this is my friend Show.” Show was a bit aloof and merely nodded at me. I nodded back. It wasn’t just an Amis thing. It was a Taiwan thing. Sometimes people are shy.

  This would never fly in the US. You offend people if you don’t shake hands or hug. Or act like someone’s your best friend right away. If you merely nodded when you were introduced to an American, they’d think you had something against them.

  I hoped Show had nothing against me. Unlike Attun, Show looked like he was muscular from a distance and downright intimidating up close. His aura of strength was somewhat dimmed when Dwayne muttered something and Show revealed a laugh that sounded like a pre-pubescent teen’s homeroom giggle.

  “Doesn’t he?” asked Dwayne out loud, encouraging more yucks from Show. “Doesn’t he, huh?” In all likelihood he was making fun of me.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Dwayne turned sheepish. “I was just telling Show that you looked like the type of guy who was into Joy Division. He’s heard their songs before and he can’t figure out who would like the band, either.”

  Show managed to stifle his laughter. “I’m sorry, Jing-nan, I don’t mean to laugh at you,” he said.

  “It’s fine with me,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re here. Please, let’s all eat up before the rush.” I cracked my knuckles and readied myself to carry a few trays of food. “Say, Frankie . . .” I called, but I stopped because he was already setting food down on a table. He looked at me and gave me one of his signature smiles that nearly curled up to his eyes.

  I didn’t really worry until five minutes to nine. Many people had a loose definition of time, but a guy like Tong-tong would be twenty minutes early for everything. I had a few texts from Peggy around eight-thirty, when she said traffic was bad but that she still expected to get to Unknown Pleasures on time.

  I tossed some grilled meats into a glassine envelope once again and rang up the sale. We were running low on wooden skewers, but we were also probably having the best night ever.