by Henry Chang
“What did he look like?” Jack grinned back.
“Who knows? They all look alike to me.” A sneer marred his face.
“He didn’t say anything?”
“Probably couldn’t speak English. He just walked away, waited outside.”
“But it was the wetback who sold it,” the counterman joined in.
Jack took a step back and said, “I need to see the documents.”
The men straightened up, indignant. “What documents?”
“The paperwork,” Jack said evenly. “The pawnee information.”
No one was grinning anymore.
“Wait a minute, man,” the biker said defiantly. “You ain’t even Seattle PD. I don’t have to show you nothing.”
He might know someone on the force, guessed Jack.
“Go ahead, call SPD,” he continued. “See if I care. I got rights. And shit, I got a business to run here. Go ahead, call ’em.”
“Sure, I could do that,” Jack said sharply. “It’d only take a few seconds.” He placed the watch back on the tray. “But after they show up as a courtesy to a cop, I’m going to spend the day going over your inventory. I’m going to tie up your books, interrupt your business, your lunch, your dinner, everything. And keep you open late, so I hope you haven’t made plans for the evening.”
The man’s face clenched into a look of hate. He took a deep breath through his nose, spread his feet like he was getting ready to fight.
“Or,” Jack offered, “you could just show me the name, the address, phone number, whatever. And my Asian ass will be out of here in two minutes.”
The smart-ass rock star wannabe went over to the gun displays and kept quiet.
After a long moment, the biker glared at the watch, mouthing the word fuck! before replacing it into the display counter. “Why can’t you people clean up your own shit,” he bitched, “instead of harassing us true Americans?” He was still spewing hate as he stepped away into a tiny office.
Jack stood in a neutral spot and waited until the biker reappeared with a sheet of entries, information from a Seattle non-driver ID, a copy of a green card. Jack jotted down the information, memorized the likeness of the Mexican seller. He imagined the shadow of short Eddie in the background.
Jack could feel the men staring daggers into his back as he left the USA shop. He remembered Alex and knew he should leave her a message. Sorry, lady. Let’s try for later tonight. Turning up his collar, he headed for 44 South Andover.
Seekers
Mona had gone daily to the Chinese employment agency, a little cutout storefront near King Street that featured a wall of paper tickets on which various types of jobs were offered. She pretended to be a job seeker, and discovered most of the ads were for busboys, dishwashers, kitchen help. A few for laborers, grist for the construction trades. Some tickets for sweatshops.
Many of the seekers were Fukienese by dialect, but she’d understood a little of whatever Mandarin she overheard. Most of the seekers were in transit to other places, Say nga touh, Seattle, being only their first destination.
She’d have a cup of nai cha tea after each visit, at the Fuzhou Garden bakery across the street, still watching the little employment agency storefront.
The third week, Mona noticed her, a Chinese woman about the same height and weight as herself. Mona knew the woman’s eyes would be brown, and the hair color didn’t really matter. Age could be altered by a mask of calculated makeup, and besides, it was often difficult to guess the age of Chinese people.
Mona struck up a conversation with the woman, and over yum cha tea at the Fuzhou Garden, discovered that she had emigrated under a guest worker program visa, and had worked as a nanny for a Chinese couple in the Queen Anne neighborhood, who had a two-year-old child and also required housekeeping duties.
After almost six months, the husband had come on to her, pressing her for sex, and the wife had wound up firing her. She had considered working for Caucasians, the gwailo, but her English wasn’t any good.
Jing Su Tong was five foot two, 118 pounds. Yat yat bot. Yat bok yat sup bot. Sure to prosper, sure to grow. Twenty-eight years old. Perfect. She had straight shoulder-length black hair, with some partial bangs across her forehead.
Mona knew she could copy the look, could forge a realistic resemblance. The height and weight, approximately. Most customs workers appeared to feel that Asians all resembled each other anyway.
Jing Su had been hoping for work as a home-care attendant in Chinatown but hadn’t seen any such jobs posted. Her savings were being depleted and she was becoming desperate; her family in China needed her monthly contributions. She was considering going to San Francisco where she had relatives.
Appearing sympathic, Mona explained that her own tourist visa had expired, and wondered if they couldn’t help each other. She offered Jing Su five thousand dollars in cash in exchange for her Social Security card, non-driver’s identification card, and employment documents. Offering her too much would arouse Jing Su’s suspicions, thought Mona, but if she offered too little, the woman would ask for more anyway. Being firm was best. Five thousand dollars would cover the woman’s efforts to find work, enable her to send some money back home, and tide her over for at least three months. After that, she could report her cards lost or stolen, and some Wah chok wui, some Chinese service center, would help her get them reissued.
By then, Mona had planned to be long gone.
Jing Su accepted Mona’s offer, of course. To her, renting her papers for three months was a godsend. Buy time, find work, family in China. “Mo mon tay,” she declared. “No problem.”
No problem, thought Mona. If only it were true.
But the new identity was a ticket out.
The way of freedom.
Back in her James Street sanctuary Mona blew the steam off the Iron Goddess tea, caressed the jade charm in her palm, ran her fingernails over the bot gwa Taoist trigrams. Bok she’d touched. North. Mountains. Mountain over Water. The Chinese word for blindness came to mind—Beware the woman who sees the gold and not the man. Nothing good will come of it.
Blindness.
Childlike naïveté.
Yet all goes well?
She paused, unsure how to interpret this. Naïveté could lead to danger, but all goes well? She took a deep sip of the Iron Goddess.
Move forward, she resolved.
The way of freedom.
She looked at the large sack of jasmine rice propped up in the corner near the rice cooker. Plenty, she’d told the old couple, don’t stand on ceremony. Just ask if you need some.
She remembered the folktale about villagers hiding a fortune inside the rice barrels. What thief would suspect a fortune hidden in plain sight? But she knew that inside the rice sack, buried near the bottom, was a mahjong case full of gold Panda coins, diamonds, and jewelry. More than a quarter million dollars’ worth.
Soon she’d have a safe deposit box and wouldn’t have to take such risks.
She knew she had to be careful selling the coins and diamonds. Dumping the whole lot at once would draw the wrong type of attention, and lessen the value as well. There was enough cash to tide her over until she could set up the bank accounts. Gradually, she’d sell some of her cache, and offer a pair of diamonds, a few coins, to test the waters. An American gold firm that employed American-born Chinese, jook sings, could be useful. Less chance of a connection to the triads.
Perhaps it would lead to more opportunities; the American-born cared more about the markup than where the gold and jewels came from. Besides, she believed her new identity would shield her. After all, Chinese families sold off jewelry and gold all the time.
Or may tor fut. She whispered the Buddhist chant, rubbing the jade between her palms. Her fingers crossed the hexagrams as she read Heaven Over Lake. An escape route opens. Be mindful of small steps, and there can be safety even on dangerous ground. Tread around the tiger’s tail.
Savoring the Cherry
Gee Sin powered off the bionic han
d, lest its electric murmur intrude, spoiling the mood of the expected debauchery.
A female cho hai, a new Grass Sandal, 432 rank, had selected them from an aspiring pimp, Kowloon Charlie, who’d guaranteed the girls were at least seventeen years old, even if they could easily pass for fourteen. Two siu jeer, “young ladies,” recruited from the impoverished zones and orphanages: the poor, the desperate, forsaken children. Gee Sin knew Grass Sandal would never place Paper Fan in jeopardy, given Hong Kong’s rigid underage prostitution–human trafficking laws. And the continuing police efforts targeting him. It was difficult to guess a young whore’s age anyway, he thought, even if you were Chinese and knew the clues.
Gee Sin also knew Kowloon Charlie had a growing interest in the triad’s prostitution rackets; he was an up-and-coming gai wong, pimp player, whom competing triads wanted to lure away. Or kill outright. Kowloon Charlie had been eager to please, to fulfill Paper Fan’s requests. Charlie had the best whores, and for the time being, nobody had wanted to bring the vice dogs from the Royal Hong Kong Police down into the lucrative operations, especially in Tshim Sha Tsui.
Sin motioned with his quiet arm, directing both girls into his bedroom. “Chue som,” he said in a low voice. Get undressed.
The first one would have been the age of a granddaughter if he’d had one: short, but Bok bok jeng jeng, with light skin and pretty, sweet with long black hair. She offered a crooked half-smile and a look of resignation as she stripped. She had small breasts with thick nubby nipples, but they were nicely shaped, he thought, and made her appear more juvenile. A waifish body, hardly any hips, but her backside was rounded and plump. Gow leng, cute enough.
Naked, she lay down on the bed, placed a thick pillow under her rear. She put one hand into her hair and fanned it across the comforter, extending her pink high heels toward the bed corners. She spread her knees open with her free hand.
The other girl was darker, ethnic Chinese from Southeast Asia, he’d guessed. Malaysia, Indonesia—he couldn’t tell which. Dark, silver-dollar nipples. Also short, barely five foot two, but with curves everywhere on her: a firm, virginal, country-girl body.
She’d been wearing a schoolgirl’s uniform, with a white see-through bra and a split-thong underneath.
He unbuckled his belt. Unzipped his fly.
Naked, she sat on the rear edge of his bed, with the other siu jeer behind her, and raised one leg, leaning back on her hands. Gee Sin stepped up to the bed, took a breath, sucking in the hom sup salty scent of the sex flesh splayed before him.
“Gway day,” he said softly to the dark-skinned one, kneel, just before he let his trousers drop.
She knelt down on the beige carpeting, slowly reaching for him as he leaned over the bed. He was bracing himself on his spread fingers, his attention turning to the one on his bed.
He was mesmerized by the hairless vulva, yum bo, fleshy labia, yum soon, cutaneous folds spreading toward soon hut, the hooded little pearl. Devouring the glistening pudendum with his lustful eyes.
He lowered his head, close enough that he could smell the sweet muskiness emanating from her.
She kept her eyes on him and slowly arched her back.
The one on her knees had tugged down his shorts and taken hold of him in her hands, caressing the swelling look go, tube of flesh. He noticed the faint mound of downy hair just above the hooded lips, the mons, below nymphae nestled there.
He dry-swallowed, marveling at the bo, orifice, beckoning to him, an old man in his twilight, drinking at the fountain of youth. It made him feel like a young man again, when he had two good hands, and touching a woman brought a lusty tingle to his fingertips.
The siu jeer on the carpet cradled his swollen gwun against her cheek, strummed her fingers across the taut balls beneath it.
He’d lost his bearings.
His legs began to tremble as he bent close enough to blow gently on the bo pearl, to gasp a hot breath onto it. He was caught in its spell. The tip of his tongue would make it hard, bring it to attention. Precious, bo. Worshipping at the orifice of precious pudendum. Labia. Yum soon.
Licking his lips in anticipation.
South
South Andover ran between two sets of railroad tracks, trapped inside the industrial spread and the freeway beyond, a beat-down neighborhood.
Number 44 was one of a forsaken inner-city string of row houses that’d fallen into disrepair. Now it was a rooming house for migrant workers, makeshift quarters, beds for rent in squalid conditions. It reminded Jack of the Fukienese crash pads along East Broadway where modern-day worker-coolies were stacked on top of one another in basements and tenement apartments.
Jack knocked on the door until someone answered, opening up cautiously to a shadowy interior of whispers and furtive faces.
“Si, que quiere?” asked a young face creased with wrinkles.
Jack showed his badge, said “Policia de Nueva York. No inmigracion.” Jack assured him, “No problema. I only have some questions for Carlos Lima. And Jorge Villa.”
There was a silence as the door opened wider and another Mexican man stepped forward. “Si,” he said. “Soy Jorge.”
“Jorge,” Jack began, “you sold two watches that were stolen—”
“No, no, senor,” interrupted Jorge. “I no stealin nossing, please.”
“I don’t care about the watches,” Jack insisted.
“No me. Fue el chino bajo,” Jorge said. “Chino malo, el chaparrito.”
Bajo, remembered Jack. Short, short Chinese. Eddie was fronting the watches? “Where?” Jack asked. “Donde?”
“No say. He calling, telefono, only.”
“Where did you meet him?” Jack scanned the dim hushed room. “And where is Carlos Lima?”
Comida Mexicana
Jack brought Jorge along and they followed the freeway back north to Holgate until they came to a fast-food restaurant next to a Metro bus stop. El Amigo offered a counter with stools and four small tables inside an old-time diner. There was an oven and grill setup with a microwave on one side, then a big steam table with pots of beans, sides, and assorted ingredients.
El Amigo served pozole, lengua, and tacos ten ways, with a full menu of burritos, tortillas, enchiladas, fajitas. Flan and sopaipillas for dessert. TAKEOUT ORDERS, DELIVERY FREE.
The place was empty this mid-afternoon, except for the grill cook. The savory aromas that wafted into the cold air pulled them inside.
“Carlos,” Jorge said to the cook. “Policia.”
A look of fear crossed Carlos’s face before Jack assured him, “No problema, bro.”
Jack showed him Eddie’s juvenile offender photograph.
Carlos paused, taking a good look at Jack before he spoke. “Chaparrito,” he said, referring to the photo. “He say hees work for hees oncle, jewree.” Carlos pointed to the Mexican ring on his finger, to the matching chain and medallion around his neck.
Jewelry store. Jack listened, knew it was Eddie running a story.
“He say beesnees no esta bueno, esta cerrado,” Carlos continued. “Hees oncle pays him con los relojes. Entiende? ” He tapped his finger on the knockoff Cartier tank on his wrist. “El chino bajo, he say we help him selling dem, then he geev us twenny dollar for one.”
“You get a twenty-dollar commission?” asked Jack.
“Si. He make up story for los gringos. Me and Jorge, we no stealing nossing.”
Jack took a moment to piece it together in his mind. They had sold the Movados to the pawnshops near the railroad yards and on Spokane because those places were closest to their immigrant rooming house on South Andover. Or had bajo chaparrito—Eddie—planned to steer clear of the upscale tourist destinations? Instead keeping to the low-rent areas, and drawing less attention? A heavyset man wearing a polo shirt came out of a back room, saw Jack, and asked, “Si? Hay un problema?”
“No problema,” Jack answered. “You’re the owner?”
“Si, and these are my best workers. And I know they never steal an
ything.”
“I’m not after them,” Jack insisted. “I’m only asking them about their Chinese amigo, who they said they met here.”
“Chinese?” he paused, puzzled, glancing from Jorge to Carlos. “You mean Koo Lung?”
Koo? thought Jack, recalling Koo Jai, Eddie’s victim in New York. “Who’s Koo Lung?” He showed the juvie photo, and asked, “He look something like this? Very short?”
“Chino chaparrito,” the man said, nodding. “He worked here for one week.”
“Why? What happened?” quizzed Jack.
“He saw the sign for dishwasher job in the window. But I also made him clean out the basement and paint the back room. And he didn’t like to make deliveries.”
Working him like a coolie, thought Jack.
“Too much work, he said. He wanted to be dishwasher only, so he quit.”
“Dishwasher only?”
“We say dishwasher,” the man said with a chuckle, “but really it’s garbage worker. And includes fix-up work, dirty work. Carlos and Jorge are good cooks, best in Puebla. Six days on, one day off. They don’t have time for the dirty work. Or deliveries.”
“This Koo Lung,” Jack asked. “You have any paperwork on him?”
“Only the job application. It’s just a formality.”
“Por favor,” Jack said. “I need to see it.”
The job application form listed the applicant as KOO K.LEUNG. There was an address in Central Seattle with a telephone number. Attached was a copy of a membership card from ASIAN VIPs NYC; Jack guessed it was a hostess club. Eddie had ripped off his victim Koo Jai’s card and used it as ID.
“This the only identification you got?” asked Jack.
“El chinito said he got robbed. Lost everything, except that.”
Jack flashed him a look of disbelief.
“It was only a formality anyway.” The man shrugged. “Something for the labor inspectors.”
Jack called the telephone number and got a recording announcing service had been canceled. He copied the address off the application and called a car service to Central Seattle.