by Ed Lin
“I do.”
“Well, I saw a face in the Chinese newspaper that I recognized. It was the man who was arrested for his role in that awful killing. The Chinese official who had his head beat in.”
“You recognized the photo of Mr. Chen?”
“No, the murderer. The driver. Do you know the restaurant that is by the broken phone booth?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I was eating there with my kids late one night. I was in the restroom, brushing my teeth. I noticed that man go into one of the stalls. It was hard to miss—his face has such a tough expression.
“I brush my teeth for a long time. I’m very thorough—you have to be at my age—so I was still there when he came out. I saw that there was something very different about him.” Mr. Su smiled. “He was now wearing a baseball cap and a mole on his face.”
“How about that,” I heard myself say.
“I was a little curious, maybe too curious, but I walked out of the restroom and saw the man get behind the wheel of a livery cab.”
“Didn’t you think that was strange?”
“Sure, I did. I was even thinking about going to the police with it, but an old friend from California was about to come and stay with me. I fully intended to tell somebody about it. You in particular because I had your card, Officer Chow. It’s funny how I ran into you at the pay phone. I had wanted to tell you right there.
“But I also had the thought that there was the slightest chance that reporting it would interfere with my ability to host my visitor properly. We had many events planned out, you know. So I promised myself that I would tell you right after my friend left. And here I am. Coincidentally the man appeared in the newspaper today. So something tells me my timing was just right.”
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me when it happened?”
“It was strange, but I didn’t think it was anything urgent. I didn’t know that he was going to be a murder suspect.”
“When you see someone changing their appearance, don’t you think that person is going to be up to no good?”
“Or going to a costume party. Would you mind sitting back a little bit, Officer Chow? You’re spitting right in my face.”
I curled back into my seat.
“Because of you,” I said, “my girlfriend had to go through hell as the default suspect.”
“It’s all right now, because you’ve got the right man anyway, right?”
I pounded my fist into my typewriter keys and the typebars mashed together in a bouquet of steel.
“By not reporting what you saw, you fucked her and me over, you lousy old man!”
“I never knew I did!”
“Let me tell you what’s going to happen now,” I said. “I’m going to fix my typewriter. Then I’m taking your sworn statement down. Then you’re going to be a witness for the prosecution at the trial.”
“Yes, of course I will.”
I pulled back a few typebars and then I had another idea. Without wiping off my fingers, I dialed Lonnie at work. I handed the handset to Mr. Su.
“This is my girlfriend, Lonnie. You goddamn apologize to her right now!”
He took the handset and cradled it to his ear. I looked over at English and Bad Boy. They weren’t looking directly at me but both were smiling.
I met Lonnie for lunch the next day at the crappy U.N. coffee shop.
“Robert, you didn’t have to make the guy call me,” she said. “He sounded like he was terrified.”
“He was actually racked with remorse. What a mess. You should have seen him.”
“I’m so ashamed that I was fooled that easily. I should have known that my driver was wearing a disguise.”
“You had no idea that someone would pull off something like that. You had the best intentions, too. You wanted to throw some business to a Chinatown company, so that the money would go to Chinese people. Look what you get.”
“Chinese people aren’t all bad.”
“All people are bad, Lonnie. As bad as this roast beef. They should call this ‘roach’ beef.”
She smiled and I watched orange soda creep up a straw into her mouth.
Lonnie didn’t know how close she’d come to getting busted. The murder rap would never have stuck, but just out of spite the detectives would have found something on her. Maybe she had violated some antiquated law still on the book from the Un-American Activities days. They would ruin Lonnie’s journalism career to get back at her for all that wasted time.
Those Manhattan South guys are old, tired, and bitter. I know how they think. I was still pretty new at this but I was so sure that Lincoln was guilty I might have planted something to make certain that he was convicted.
It’s terrifying that he turned out to be innocent.
I tried to smile and finished off my sandwich.
English called me over to his desk. He opened up a box that had a gold shield wrapped in plastic.
“This isn’t the actual one you’re getting,” he said. “But yours is going to look approximately like this. The Brow himself wants to get it to you as fast as possible. We have to figure out when a good time is, though. Like the way it looks?”
“It’s not bad.”
“Want to carry this one now? It’s sort of a sample sale.”
“I’ll wait until after the ceremony.”
I was going to play it cool and head for my desk without any fanfare, but English stopped me and shook my hand. Then I turned and shook hands with Bad Boy, Pete, and Vandyne. Pete slapped me hard on the back and said, “Welcome to third grade, motherfucker!”
Barbara was bugging me every day until I agreed to meet with Wilson Yi one more time. He had wanted to congratulate me with a full banquet on the excellent job I had done, but I managed to knock that down to a lunch at the dining room in his office.
It was only the three of us—Mr. Yi, Barbara, and me—and we did the best job we could with the gigantic meat-only meal of beef, duck, and pork. Our table was lively as they asked me questions about the case, and I tried to be funny with my answers.
But there were other people eating in the room and the overall mood was quiet and somber. The stationed waiters and the clocks on the wall were silently counting the possible seconds to the inevitable time when the United States was going to switch full diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei. I wondered how anybody in the building could focus on doing serious work at this point.
“What are your long-range plans?” Mr. Yi asked me.
“I guess to keep doing what I do as well as I can. That’s all a cop can do. For twenty years, at least.”
“I meant your personal life and when you’re going to start a family.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Have to get married first, right?”
Barbara said, “His girlfriend is very, very pretty. She will make a beautiful mother someday.” She threw me a questioning look.
I smiled. “Mr. Yi,” I asked. “What are your plans for the future?”
“Right now my son is at Stanford University. He wants to study film of all things. I guess I didn’t bring him up right. I indulged him with movies, and with my connections he met many famous actors and actresses.” He shook his head but still looked pleased. “Maybe someday the Chinese will have films that are well regarded internationally. Someday.”
Dropping his voice, he added, “My wife and I like this country very much. We are going to try to become American citizens soon.” Barbara and I both nodded. There was no need for him to explain any more.
I washed up in the men’s room. I think that once upon a time this had been a Fortune 500 company’s headquarters building and that it would go back to being one. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked like I needed more sleep. I got worried that I had some gray hairs, but it was only a shiny spot where the light was hitting my head.
I wished Mr. Yi the best and walked out with Barbara. The elevator was taking forever to come.
“What’s next for you, Mr. Famous De
tective?” she asked me.
“Nothing much, hopefully. I need to take it easy.”
“Having that gold shield must help, right? Now you’ve reached a point where you can rest on your laurels a little bit.”
“Like I told Mr. Yi, a gold shield doesn’t necessarily mean I’m any better. It means I’ve done more time and not much else.”
“The more time you spend investigating, the better you get, though, right?” She put her hand on my shoulder and leaned on me.
“In theory, but there are still things that puzzle me. Like how Artie’s newspaper went up in flames. We actually thought it might be arson, so Vandyne and I staked it out, waiting for some dirtbag to show up and inspect the job he did. Funny thing is, you were the only one who came.”
Barbara withdrew from me and pressed the already-lit down button a few more times.
“C’mon, dammit!” she muttered.
“I said it was funny how you were the only one who showed up after the fire, Barbara.”
“Yeah, I heard you,” she said. “You know that I never liked Artie. I think he’s a lecherous bastard.”
“I know.”
“But you can’t blame me for it. That fire was ruled accidental. A case of bad wiring.”
“That’s what the fire department and the insurance company both said.”
“He was lucky he wasn’t in the building,” she said, shrugging. “Now he’s got all that insurance money.”
“Was he supposed to be in his office, Barbara?”
She laughed. “No one was supposed to be anywhere, okay, Robert? Could you not look at me like that? Listen to the things you say! You try to talk people into setting themselves up!”
The elevator finally came. It was packed. I let Barbara squeeze in by herself. I waved and watched the doors close over her.
Artie Yi gave me a tour of a space on Pell Street that he was thinking of renting out as the new office for his English-language newspaper.
It was a tiny space and had most recently been a two-person travel office. The previous tenants had taken off without paying last month’s rent, but they had left two large desks and file cabinets galore.
“What do you think?”
“Not bad.”
“It’s too bad Lonnie couldn’t make it. I really wanted to show her the space.”
“She is really busy catching up to her story quota.”
“Ah, the life of a newswire reporter.”
Artie and I sat on the two desks, facing each other.
“Artie, were you ever threatened by radical Chinese groups?” I asked.
“You mean like the Red Guard?”
“No, I mean here. Groups that are far-right and far-left wing. The kind that blow .44 bullets through people they don’t like.”
“Sure. I’ve been threatened by everyone. I don’t give a shit. I’ve had my office broken into umpteen times, too. You people wouldn’t do shit for me, either, thank you very much.”
“Nothing of value was ever stolen, if I’m remembering correctly.”
“That’s right. Nothing of material value is in there. The most expensive thing I have is my typewriter and I carry that with me. All my confidential notes with my sources in them are locked in my desk at my regular job.”
“There’s never been an attempt on your life, right?”
“Not that I’m aware of. I mean, I may be doing an Inspector Clouseau sort of thing where I bend down to tie my shoe and a bullet whizzes by my head.” He laughed hard. “But seriously, no. Sanchez, your boss, asked me before if I wanted to maybe think about getting licensed to carry a piece. I said no. There are enough guns in Chinatown already.”
“Are you sure about starting your paper back up?”
“At this point it’s a little up in the air. Landlords don’t like me, but I do have all that insurance money, so I’m a safe bet as a paying tenant. There are always some willing to take a political risk by letting me sign a lease. But my insurance company wants to do a thorough inspection of any new space I rent. That kills my chances for finding a place in most of Chinatown, but I think this office could pass. Concrete everywhere!” He rubbed his hands together. “My paper was pretty damn good, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was a hell of a paper.”
“I hate the thought that people will think I’ve given up, you know?”
“If the midget’s taught me anything, it’s that what you think about yourself is all that matters.”
“Do you think people miss my newspaper? I’m going up against everything. People aren’t going to want to read a newspaper when there’s TV news with hot chicks, CB radios, and who knows what else is coming out. Serious news—print news—can’t compete with entertainment.”
“The New York Times seems to be holding up pretty well.”
“I’m not the Times. For one thing, I’ve got more minorities on staff. How did you feel about Lonnie getting into the news business?”
“I felt good.”
“But she’s got that double handicap. She’s a woman and a minority. No, she’s got a triple handicap. She’s also a foreigner.”
“She’s a U.S. citizen.”
“Yeah, but they see her as a foreigner because of that accent.”
“She doesn’t have much of an accent.”
“To me and you she doesn’t because we’re used to hearing English like that. But to News Editor Joe Blow from Peoria, she talks like she’s singing Cantonese opera.”
“She’s doing really well at Presswire and they expect great things from her.”
“Can I be honest with you, Robert?”
“No.”
“Ha ha. I wish Lonnie were here, so I could have told her this, but listen. Newswires are for hacks, not professionals. It’s not seen as serious journalism. When newspapers have room left over, they squeeze in AP, UPI, or Presswire stories so they don’t have all that white space on the page.”
“If you’re in the paper, you’re not a hack. Lonnie’s interview with Mr. Chen ran all over the place.”
“That is the exception, though. The general public won’t see ninety-nine percent of her work. News from the United Nations? Give me a break, nobody reads that stuff, least of all newspaper editors! They put that in the paper so birds and dogs can shit on it.”
“Let me make sure I’ve got this all down, Artie. My girlfriend, Lonnie, is an illiterate foreigner who does hack work for animals to shit on. Are there any more ways you can put her down?”
“I am not putting her down. I’m only saying that news is a tough business and she’s facing all kinds of hurdles. Tell her not to stay too long at Presswire. While she’s working there, she should freelance for as many newspapers as possible, if her editor will let her. Two years is the max she should stay at a newswire. Then stick it on the résumé and check out.”
“Check out to where?”
“Some regional newspaper. New York’s not where you climb the ladder. It’s where you come to after you’ve learned the ropes in smaller cities. Lonnie will probably have to spend a few years in the Midwest or down South.”
“Whoa! Wait, why can’t she stay here in the city? There must be plenty of jobs at the Times or Daily News or Post.”
“Of course there are plenty of them. But those are all dead ends for someone at Lonnie’s low experience level. If you take one of those positions, you’ll be stuck fact-checking stories and doing research for higher-ranking reporters. Your newspaper will also hire from the outside to fill in higher-paying positions. Being a low-level man or woman at a New York City paper is like being stuck walking a beat for years without a promotion.”
I imagined Peepshow.
“You don’t want that to happen to Lonnie, do you?” asked Artie.
“I don’t, but there must be exceptions to the rule.”
“There are. If Daddy owns the paper, you’re on the fast track to promotion.”
“You sound like you have a lot of personal issues tied into this.”
<
br /> “Maybe. I know someone who’s been at The New York Sun for more than a decade.”
“I’ve seen the Sun but I never pick it up. Is that a good place to work?”
“She started there as a researcher with the understanding that they would put her on a reporting track. That never happened.”
“Is this woman Asian?”
“She’s black, and she maintains the clips library, which means she cuts out stories done by reporters and catalogs it. Isn’t that a shitty job?”
“That sounds better than my job, honestly. I’ll bet people don’t call her a fucking asshole to her face or shoot at her.”
“Robert, it’s a shitty job when you thought you were going to write that big Pulitzer Prize–winning series. She doesn’t even get to work in the newsroom. She’s on a different floor, next to the ad sales department.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad deal.”
“Journalists hate the business side because it’s ideas and idealism that drives them.”
“Artie,” I said. “There’s something I’m wondering.”
“What’s that?”
“How come you never left New York to get serious about journalism?”
“I had thought about it. If I were entirely serious about being a reporter, I would have. But I knew I didn’t have the guts to, number one, really piss off my parents, and, number two, be willing to live in a small town for years as I built up my clips file.”
“You already disappointed your parents enough by not going to medical school. Becoming a reporter would have driven a rail spike into their hearts.”
“I can hear their voices complaining even now, God rest their souls. Yes, the paper had to be a hobby for me, but I was serious about it to the degree that I covered stories that nobody in the mainstream press did. I did have my fans, though. I would show you the letters I got, but, unfortunately, they were lost in the fire.”
“Was the hate mail lost, too?”
“I never kept those. All the negativity was water off my back. But I did frame one letter that said I was guilty of sensationalizing all the bad things that happened in Chinatown to sell papers. That was lost in the fire, too, but do you know who sent it to me?”