99 Ways to Die

by Ed Lin

  I was daydreaming a bit about making more money when Nancy nudged me. I looked at her and she pointed to her bare wrist. She’d stopped wearing a watch but I knew she meant the time. Shoot, this Ju-lan was over her five-minute limit!

  She was going full-throttle about how men had taken away opportunities her whole life. Now would be a bad time for me to grab back the mic. I pulled a stunt I saw on a Japanese show. I walked out and stood just within her peripheral vision and bowed deeply to her. She gave me a puzzled look. I pointed to my own bare wrist where a watch would be. Ju-lan covered her mouth, instantly embarrassed.

  “Oh, my gosh, I’m over my time limit! Thank you for listening, everybody.” She waved before crouching down and slinking away.

  I started clapping before I reached the mic.

  “Let’s give Ju-lan a big hand, everybody. It takes a lot of courage to go first.” I waited a few seconds for the applause to fade. “I want to tell you something really important. Unknown Pleasures wasn’t always the best establishment at the Shilin Night Market. It has very humble beginnings as a food stand that my grandfather set up in the heart of the martial-law era. He struggled to provide for his family. Some of you will recall that it was illegal to speak Taiwanese then. He struggled along in Mandarin, a foreign language to him, and worked hard to provide for his family. He always believed that justice would prevail someday. I’m glad that he lived to see Taiwan bloom into a full democracy.”

  Clearly obligatory applause arose. I glanced at Frankie, whom my grandfather actually hired, and he looked over my shoulder while flashing one of his big smiles that seemed to stretch past the boundaries of his face. He knew that while I was being factually correct about my grandfather, I was leaving out details including that the old man had been an extreme misogynist, a racist and had a terrible gambling problem that created enough debt to fuck over the next two generations of his family. He would mouth off about the mainlanders this, the mainlanders that. I don’t know how Frankie took it. Did he stay out of a sense of obligation? Or did Frankie need the money that badly? Which part of his life experience had Frankie tapped into to get himself through, his tenure as a dutiful teenage soldier or his ordeal as a political prisoner?

  “I’m asking you to try some of our skewers, or if you’re hungrier, one of our stews. We haven’t changed my grandfather’s recipes because that would dishonor his memory.” I cleared my throat. “Okay, the commercial’s over. Now, we’re on to our next speaker.”

  The story of my grandfather seemed to have worked. Or maybe people naturally became more hungry as the evening wore on. There was enough business that Dwayne was starting to break a sweat. Mr. Tough Guy whistled at me to give him a hand between introducing people at the mic. Each time, I handed Nancy’s phone back to her so I’d have both hands free to work.

  None of the speakers seemed to have timed themselves or stuck to a prepared statement. I had to cut all of them off when their time was up.

  As I walked off the stage, I handed the phone to Nancy with some finality.

  “That’s the last person up there,” I told her. “After her, I’m going to wrap up and thank the crowd for coming, blah blah.”

  “You did a great job, Jing-nan!”

  “Well, your pals finally did a good job on my food!” I ladled out a spicy stew of pork, cabbage, innards and congealed blood. That last component actually has a consistency of tofu and, like tofu, hasn’t much flavor on its own. The pot was bottoming out so I told the young woman ordering the stew that it would probably be more peppery than usual, due to the higher ratio of peppercorn slurry in the soup, but she said it was all right.

  By then I had developed a keen sense of how long five minutes was and when it felt right, I made my way back to the mic. Nancy tried to hand me her phone.

  “Hey, Nancy, what are you doing? I don’t need your phone again.”

  “One more person just signed up. Please let him speak. I promised that nobody would be turned away.”

  What were five minutes to me if it meant one more person buying food? I glanced down at the name. Erwin Lee. All right, Erwin. Close the show with some style.

  “Hello, my good friends, I was going to tell you that the event had come to an end, but one more person has signed up. We said we wouldn’t turn anyone away, but our next person is definitely the last.” I glanced down at her phone to read the bio of the speaker. “Erwin Lee,” I said into the mic. “Erwin is a sports-medicine doctor and has treated some of the country’s best-known sports figures. Let’s hear it for Erwin!”

  A thirty-something man wearing a red polo approached. Erwin looked familiar. He had a bit of a halting style to his speech, as if he were used to being interrupted.

  “Yes, hello. I am Erwin Lee. I understand that a lot of you are angry at Tong-tong. I understand your anger because I have disagreed with many of his values for most of my life. I am his second son, Er-ming.” A buzz arose in the audience and then applause broke out.

  Whoa! So Er-ming had taken an English name, after all! The quiet and studious brother who went to medical school was now making a public appearance.

  “Maybe you don’t recognize me. I have managed to live a relatively private life. The last time I was in a newspaper was when I was dating the singer Rangsit. I denied it at the time, but I’ll admit now that we were in love.

  “We married in secret a number of years ago. We’re expecting a baby boy soon.” He raised a finger. “But I would be ashamed to introduce this boy to his grandfather. I will not allow Tong-tong to see him until he apologizes to the people of Taiwan for his hurtful words. Because you know what? When you speak words of hate against strangers, you hurt your own family. Thank you.”

  He received the longest and loudest applause of the night. He nodded, embarrassed by the reception but also emboldened by what he had just done—take a public stand against his own father. He was going to be all over the news tomorrow, if not tonight. More than a few people were going to sell their phone-camera footage to cable stations. Erwin Lee was going to be famous.

  I hastily moved to the mic to close out the event. Formalities should always be observed. Not to do so was sloppy.

  “Thank you all so much for coming,” I said heartily. “Have a great night, everybody.” Then I chased after Erwin in order to get him to pose for a few pictures at my stand with the signage clearly in view.

  “Erwin!” I said as I steered him like a loaded wheelbarrow. “Hey, how are you? I met you years ago. I’m a good friend of your sister, Peggy!”

  He sucked in his lips as he evaluated my face and processed the information I had just provided. “Yes,” he said. “Of course I remember you.” He extended a hand and his grip was soft but reassuring. If I were being told that I would never walk again, I’d want the conversation to start with a humanizing touch like that. His hands retreated to the pockets in his jacket in an accustomed manner. “I think the last time I saw you, you were wearing one of those big overcoats and your hair was short and spiky.”

  My hair had never been spiky, but I nodded along.

  “Yes, that was me,” I said cheerily. “It was so great to hear what you had to say.”

  “Are you going to see your family tomorrow?”

  What an odd question. “No, what made you think of that?”

  He let out a laugh that shook his whole body. “Tomorrow’s Double Ninth! We’re going to go on a hike with my mother and my grandmother.” He shrugged. “I don’t like mountains, but it’s a tradition.”

  Man, I had completely lost track of the holiday. “I’m going to be too busy,” I said. “The work just never ends here.” Why should I bother to tell him my family was gone? It would just be a bummer on a good night. “Are you hungry at all, Erwin? Can I fix something for you?”

  “I wish I could, but no thank you. I’ve got to get back home—as I told everyone tonight, my wife’s pregnant!”


  “Let me bag something up for you and get a few pictures.” Dwayne and Frankie already saw what I was up to and moved into position behind us. I fumbled with my phone to position a selfie when Nancy stepped in.

  “Let me take the pictures!” I handed her my phone. After a few snaps, Erwin waved his arms.

  “Hold on, please. You have a photo with four men here. Let’s have a woman join us. Miss?”

  “Yes?” asked Nancy.

  “Please join us. You’re the organizer of the event, after all. Oh, and you, too!” Erwin gestured behind me to Ju-lan, whom I had completely forgotten about.

  Ju-lan stood in the center next to Erwin as Nancy scuttled in next to me and deftly set up a few selfies.

  “I thought you were wonderful,” Erwin said to Ju-lan. “I only came to observe and see how people were feeling. But when you spoke, I felt something inside me and it inspired me to find the courage to eventually get up and speak.”

  Ju-lan looked embarrassed, the socially acceptable response to compliments. “Oh, it was wonderful to hear you talk, Er-ming,” she said. “No one has ever said that I inspired them before.”

  Erwin turned to Nancy. “Can you send me some of those pictures? Use the same email that I signed up with.”

  “Yes, absolutely. You were the last speaker, but certainly not the least.”

  “I had to let everyone know that not everybody in the family was behind Tong-tong.”

  “I’m glad you spoke, too,” interjected Dwayne. “You know, Rangsit is from my tribe.”

  A sheepish look came over Erwin’s face as he tucked his chin. “I am really ashamed to admit that I don’t really know how to speak Amis.”

  Dwayne maneuvered closer and they shook hands. “That’s okay.”

  “She is part Thai, too, and I’ve learned some of that language. I have no excuse, however, for not knowing any Amis. I will try to better myself.”

  Dwayne nodded. “So is Rangsit working on a new album?”

  “Oh, she’s written some songs but she will announce a tour first. She’ll probably sing the new songs at the live dates and then record them after they’ve all been tested in front of an audience. It drives the record company crazy because they want to release the CD before the tour, but nobody tells her what to do. Certainly not me.” He took a step away from us all. “I really have to go.”

  Frankie saluted him. “Thank you for speaking for all of us,” he said.

  Erwin smiled and waved. Was he walking to the train? No fancy car? Even though some excited activists kept pace with him, Erwin didn’t break and run. He seemed open to talking to them.

  “I think I’m going to be going, as well,” said Ju-lan. “Thank you, Nancy, for organizing this. You’re a leader of your generation. And thank you, Mr. Chen, for letting this happen in your space.”

  “Please call me Jing-nan,” I said. “I didn’t do much, certainly not as much as you. It was actually very selfish of me to have it at my business. Um, speaking of business . . .” I pressed a stack of Unknown Pleasures cards into her hands. “Tell your guests to come eat here and they’ll get ten percent off.”

  She flexed the cards in her hands. “Is it true that you’re a close friend of Tong-tong’s family?”

  “I’m close with Peggy,” I said. “Maybe too close. We are old classmates.” A thoughtful look came over Ju-lan’s face. Was she going to chuck my cards into the trash? “I wouldn’t say that I’m friends with Tong-tong himself,” I quickly added.

  “But didn’t you let him speak here? You said that if you supported justice, you had to support Tong-tong.”

  “That was taken completely out of context,” I said. She didn’t look like she bought it.

  Erwin Lee was indeed featured on the news, but he wasn’t the lead story.

  What was getting most attention was a video that had been uploaded by Tong-tong’s kidnappers. It featured Tong-tong in the cage talking to one of his abductors who was off-screen. It seemed that Tong-tong had been crying for some time.

  “I just shit my pants,” he wailed.

  “Why didn’t you take your pants off?”

  “I don’t know!” wailed Tong-tong.

  It was only a five-second clip, but the tiny video destroyed Tong-tong’s nascent strongman image. Support for him evaporated. Everybody was going to remember this Double Ninth. “I just shit my pants” was sure to be a meme to remember.

  The last time I heard from Peggy was when she tried to shut down my stand. Right now she probably had her hands full trying to prevent her father from spontaneously exploding.

  I was a little relieved, honestly. The video clip took heat off of me for staging the rally for him. It was probably even more effective at that than wider coverage of the pro-immigrants rally would have been. Funny as it was, though, the new upload showed that the kidnappers were still at large and not impaired in their ability to use technology. In other words, they weren’t afraid they would be caught.

  The hot news story now was tracking down former Tong-tong supporters and making them recant on camera. Quite a few did. I had two voicemails asking me to do the same, but I ignored them. I didn’t need to resurface in the media again.

  In the afternoon, Tong-tong lashed out with a simple, furious post on his company’s official blog: Find the criminals at any cost!

  What did “any cost” mean? His few remaining supporters took his words to mean that they should stand outside the dormitories of overseas workers and hoot at people going in and out. It wasn’t worse because of the presence of security guards—whose usual duty was monitoring the workers and accepting bribes when they missed curfews.

  The dorms were mostly situated along commercial districts, not far from the construction sites, plants, or health-care facilities where people worked.

  The Tong-tong faithful dished out equal anti-foreigner hate to workers from the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand or Indonesia. “Get out and go back!” the lowlifes chanted at the indifferent people, who didn’t seem shocked by the brazen display of hate.

  Some of the overseas workers figured the best defense was a strong offense. Four Thai factory workers carried metal rods back to the dorms and beat the crap out of some hooligans, one of whom turned out to be an off-duty cop.

  Speaking of the police, they didn’t seem any closer to finding Tong-tong’s kidnappers. The more I thought about it, there was one thing I knew that hadn’t been publicly disclosed, if it were true. Frankie had had a hunch Tong-tong had been held captive near the Miramar Entertainment Park, close to the Ferris wheel.

  “Frankie?” I asked him the next night. “Were you right about the Ferris wheel? Did the police find Tong-tong in a warehouse near Miramar?”

  He arched one eyebrow and looked cautiously side to side. “I won’t hold you in suspense,” Frankie said quietly, “but it was just like I thought.” He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and seemed relieved he got to tell someone. “Now, I don’t know exactly where it was, but it was either north or south of the wheel, based on the shadow, because the wheel’s axis is north-south.”

  “Why didn’t the police publicize where he was found?”

  “Keeping some details nonpublic ensures that interlopers don’t show up and contaminate the crime scene. Did you ever hear about the guy in Kaohsiung who wanted to prove that he could pull off the perfect murder?”

  I rubbed my hands. “No.”

  “He killed someone at random in a park, cleaned up the scene, disposed of the weapon and then waited. The police couldn’t solve it. It made him so angry that he went into a police station to tell them how stupid they were and provided every detail of what he did.”

  “That’s weird.”

  Frankie blinked slowly. He picked up his phone and tapped something into it while speaking to me. “It was a weird crime, and that sort of criminal behavior is of the
mental-illness type. Not the revenge type, which is what Tong-tong’s case is.” Finished with typing, he pocketed the phone and brushed his palms against his pants.

  I had an idea. “Frankie, maybe they’re waiting to see if the kidnappers return to the scene of the crime.”

  “Are you a detective, now, Jing-nan?”

  I shifted my feet. “No.”

  “Have you ever committed a crime?” Did Frankie have something on me?

  “I don’t think so,” I said slowly.

  “Let me tell you something, since you’ve never been on either side of breaking the law—real criminals never come back. Only the amateurs do. These guys were not amateurs.” He raised his eyebrows at me and casually drew out his phone again. “The police didn’t release where Tong-tong was found by special request.”

  “By the government?”

  His eyes narrowed. “By Tong-tong himself.”

  Chapter 12

  “Jing-nan?” Peggy’s voice through the door was muffled somewhat but the surprise was audible.

  “Hi, Peggy, yes, it’s me. Sorry to drop in on you like this, but I happened to be back early from the night market. Nancy and I were sitting in her apartment; we were thinking that you and I needed to patch up our friendship a bit. I thought you might still be at work but Nancy said she saw you go up the elevator.”

  “She did see me,” Peggy replied stiffly.

  “Well, I hope you didn’t eat yet because I’ve got some great food that I just heated up. It’s ready to serve.” I glanced at Nancy. “And Nancy has picked out a really good wine.” I heard a soft click and the door opened. Peggy was dressed in pinstripe pajamas and wingtip slippers. It was 8:30 p.m.

  “Not to put you down or anything, Nancy, but I think my liquor closet has you beat by a little bit.” Peggy hooked a thumb into her gold chain necklace and made the fish-shaped jade pendant dance against her throat. “But I know Jing-nan’s food is great. I’d hire him to be my chef but my money’s no good with him.”