This Is a Bust

by Ed Lin

  “Umm. You’re not married.” Some of the women giggled. I recognized them as the second-shift workers at a garment shop on East Broadway. They all looked as if they had kids to cook for at home. “You have a girlfriend.”

  “No, no girlfriend.”

  “You don’t have a girlfriend.” He opened his mouth and then closed it. He nodded and then asked, “You have a boyfriend?” The women laughed and the midget kicked his heels in the air.

  “No, I don’t have a boyfriend.” Wang waved his hands.

  “Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.” He looked at the stick and read the characters, blocking out parts with his thumb and forefinger. “You’re going to have a son this year,” he said.

  “How can he have a son without a wife?” asked one of the garment workers.

  Wang ignored her. “Your life will be changed.”

  “Just tell me if I’m going to be rich or not!” I joked. Chinese people pray for riches more than world peace.

  “I can tell you that now!” said the midget. “As long as you work for the city, you won’t be rich!”

  “You’re going to have a son,” the fortune-teller repeated. “You don’t have to worry about money, just worry about your son.” I took my hands back and squeezed my knees.

  “Okay, Wang. Thank you.” He nodded. After a moment of hesitation, I pulled out two bucks and gave it to him. “If I don’t pay you, the prediction doesn’t come true, right?” I asked. Wang laughed and folded the bills up. The women shuffled home to make dinner. I stood up. The midget zipped up his knapsack but made no other motion to leave.

  “There’s still some daylight left,” Wang said. “Maybe there are some fortunes left to tell.”

  “I’m still waiting for a good game of Chinese chess,” said the midget. “I’m going to teach you how to play, officer. It’s a shame you don’t know how to play something Chinese.”

  “We’re in America, not China,” I told the midget.

  —

  The Chinatown Girl Scouts had their ceremonies in the Ocean Empress Palace on Bowery, down a ways from Jade Palace. One of the girl’s fathers had a hand in running the place.

  It was one of the nicer large Chinese restaurants, and the menus had English translations for everything. They must have paid decently and reliably because there was almost no staff turnover. When I walked in past the tied-back bead curtains at the entrance, I saw older waiters who had been old when I was young.

  A short man with crooked teeth came up to me and grabbed my right shoulder.

  “You! I remember you when you were this tall,” he said, slapping his thigh and laughing. He was completely bald on the top of his head, and the white hair he had left looked like a toilet brush from my point of view.

  “Hello, uncle,” I said. “How are you doing?”

  “I remember when we had a going-away party here for all of you who were going off to the war. We were so proud

  of all of you. Say, where did they all go? I never see any of you anymore.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, the communists couldn’t have killed all of you, right? You can’t all be dead.”

  “I’m really a ghost.”

  “Don’t try to fool an old man, now. I’ve seen you in the newspapers. You’re the Chinese police captain.”

  “I’m not a captain.”

  “You must be important, I see your picture all the time!”

  “I’m only a low-level cop.”

  He screwed up his face.

  “Agh, you think I’m just a lousy little waiter. You don’t think I’m worth your time.” I watched him walk back to the kitchen with a slight limp. The sounds of mothers fussing over their little girls got to me and I headed to the other end of the dining room.

  Freestanding wall sections on wheels separated the Girl Scout event from the regular diners. As I went around the far side of the wall, I came face to face with someone I hadn’t seen since high school.

  The moment I saw her, I felt the sudden jab of a sharp childhood memory.

  “Barbara,” I said.

  “Robert! How are you? I was thinking you might be here.”

  “How come?”

  “I’ve been seeing you in the papers! You really get around!”

  I did a nervous fake-laugh and looked at a freckle on her neck. She shifted and I looked up and into her bright eyes. Was this really the fastest runner in the class? Was this really the first girl I had ever kissed?

  “I’m here and then I’m there,” I said, fake-laughing some more. God, how stupid did that sound? “So, you help out around here?”

  “I’m here for my youngest sister. You know I have three sisters, right? My parents never did get that boy they were trying to have.”

  “She’s going to win one of the prizes tonight?”

  “She dropped out of the awards ceremony. This is the last thing she volunteered to help organize. I have to help out because she couldn’t make it.”

  “I don’t like it when people just throw in the towel, you know? Kids today aren’t as diligent as we were.”

  “She got into Barnard early,” Barbara said. “She’s already auditing classes.”

  “Only Barnard, huh? She wasn’t the smartest cookie in the jar,” I joked.

  Barbara wasn’t smiling.

  “Robert?”

  “Yes?”

  “You were in the war, weren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” I felt the air getting thin. Barbara grabbed my wrist.

  “Hey,” she said. “I’ve got to round up the girls for their presentations, but maybe we can chat later on tonight. After.”

  “Sure, sure.”

  I made my way over to the front table and sat down with the Girl Scout’s head girl and a committee that was lobbying for the creation of a Chinatown YMCA.

  Something really bothered me about Barbara. She was one of the beautiful people. Always had been. One of those people who never got a pimple, never got called a “chink,” never had a bad day or night ever.

  She had gone to Harvard. Free ride. Everybody knew about it. People were in awe of Barbara and her three younger sisters. They walked through Chinatown like four princesses. Even in their plastic sunglasses and flip-flops, they were the best-looking things south of Canal. When those girls left for college — and of course, they would all go to college — they were leaving Chinatown and never ever coming back.

  I didn’t need to hear about how rich Barbara was. How rich and white her stupid husband was. And you knew he had to be white. How she was expecting twin boys and how they were going to win the Heisman Trophy and the Nobel Prize.

  Barbara and I weren’t even people to each other anymore; we were only visions of what could have been in each other’s respective worlds.

  When the event was over, I got out as soon as I could, even though I knew Barbara was still tied up backstage. I wasn’t sure what I was scared of.

  A waiter on the way out handed me a brown paper bag. He just missed giving me a clap on my back as I blew past him.

  A few blocks later, I found that the bag held a red envelope and a bottle of Cutty Sark. It was 2215. Drinking time.

  Chapter 5

  Forty-eight hours to Chinese New Year. Time was slowing down. No one in Chinatown is ever in a rush, which pisses off native New Yorkers when they come down here. Chinese people like to walk slowly, and ideally, side by side. They always run into people they know coming from the opposite direction. Then they all stop, creating a logjam.

  The holiday just made it worse. Canal Street was more crowded than the subway. With foot traffic at a near standstill, I had enough time to read the front of every red holiday card stacked on folding tables that crowded the sidewalks even more. “Prosperity” was the most common single character for wishes in the year of the dragon.

  I saw a break open up. I jumped through it and turned off onto Elizabeth Street.

  Two unchaperoned kids, a boy and a girl who looked too young to talk, w
ere lighting up fireworks on a manhole lid.

  I grabbed them by the backs of their jackets and made them sit on the curb. They started crying when I took away their fireworks and lighter.

  “You’re going to blow your fingers off!” I yelled at them. They cried as if no one had ever yelled at them before.

  It was likely. Probably spoiled by a grandmother while the mother and father put their souls to the grindstones at work.

  I took two Tic Tacs from my pocket and stuck them in their mouths. It’s amazing how quickly children can lurch from miserable to happy. Candy to keep them happy in Chinatown. Cigarettes in Nam.

  I felt ready to go to Martha’s and see Lonnie. It turned out that I got doughy Dori instead.

  “How are you doing, Dori?” I asked.

  “I’d tell you to eat less because you’re getting fat, Officer Chow, but that would be bad for business. Hot-dog pastries in the morning.” She was shaking her head.

  “Hey, you bake them this early, why can’t I eat them? My uniform’s feeling pretty loose on me, anyway.”

  “That’s because you’re not as fat as the average policeman. But don’t worry, you’ll get there soon. Hey, take your change. I don’t take tips.”

  I muttered something under my breath that made her smile.

  —

  Vandyne had left a message on my desk. We weren’t official partners anymore, but it was as if we were forever bonded, having been each other’s first. I’ve heard plenty of stories about cops who are closer to their old partners than their new ones.

  The message said that Willie Gee had called for me again. The tabloids had been hammering at him for a while, but the New York Times had just reported that the State Attorney had filed charges against Jade Palace, citing the restaurant’s apparent short-changing of its workers. If Willie Gee didn’t like it, he should call up the state or the newspaper, or better yet — pay his workers, already. I crumpled up the message and tossed it. Three points.

  I wondered if Willie Gee had known Wah personally, or if she had been just another worker bee for his hive. Her asking for a raise surely would have drawn some attention. I didn’t want to think about it too much, though, because I couldn’t do anything to help.

  English was being a prick and obviously wasn’t going to let me get a fingernail in on the case. And I didn’t want to charge in, because my old partner was on the case. So I

  decided to do something that was within my power.

  I swung out onto Bowery intent on finding five or six parkers or movers. There isn’t any quota, but there is a “suggested minimum” of 30 parking tickets or moving violations per month. Even Stevie Wonder could find 30 cars parked wrong in a month. Even a marginalized cop like me could do it.

  Some people get passive-aggressive about it. I’ve seen cops duck into storefronts when they see someone parking in front of a hydrant. They fill out the whole ticket and wait for the guy to leave before planting the ticket under the windshield wiper. I always wondered why the hell people like that wanted to be cops in the first place if they were so scared of confrontation.

  I hadn’t gone five feet before I found my first parker: a beaten white van that read on the side, “Jin Fook Flushing Queens,” spelled out with pieces of duct tape. The van was parked halfway in a bus stop zone.

  The next one was a little tougher. A middle-aged woman came running out of a market with a baby in her arms and gave me some grief as I was slipping a ticket under the windshield of a black Duster.

  “Hey, what’s that for? What did I do?” she cried.

  “See that?” I asked, pointing to the ‘No Standing Anytime’ sign.

  “But I left my emergency lights on!” She shook the baby a little. It had a rice candy stuck to the back of its right hand.

  “That doesn’t matter. You can’t leave your car in this zone.”

  “How am I supposed to know what ‘standing’ is supposed

  to mean?”

  “You took a driving test, didn’t you?” After no response, I asked again, “Didn’t you?”

  “The sign’s not even in Chinese, how am I supposed to read it?”

  “Please,” I said, tipping my hat and walking away.

  I gave more tickets to a Plymouth Fury, a Bug, and a Gremlin at expired meters. I walked by Jade Palace and saw that the protest had gained more steam. I didn’t look too long. I gave a nod to the two cops by the barricades. They were busy but they nodded back.

  I felt a hand pull my arm rudely, and I instinctively shot my elbow back. It was Willie Gee.

  “You don’t return my calls,” he said through gritted teeth as he rubbed his stomach where I had jabbed him.

  “Because I don’t work for you,” I said.

  “I want to know why the police department sends two lo fan officers to protect the protesters. They don’t even send the Chinese officer. How are they supposed to know what to do?”

  “Everyone who comes out of the academy knows what to do. Including how to handle a protest. A legal protest. Something that’s protected under free speech in this country.”

  “It’s not free speech — it’s free lies,” hissed Willie.

  “Say Willie, did you know this woman named Wah?”

  “Sure, she died. I knew her. I even gave her a raise. I already told that darkie.”

  “You watch it, Willie.”

  “What? What? She was old, she died! What did I do wrong?”

  I turned to go.

  “Wait,” he said, reaching for me and then withdrawing his hand suddenly. “Come up and talk to me in my office.”

  “You got problems, you talk to these officers right here,” I said. A tractor trailer on Canal trumpeted like an elephant out for revenge and I didn’t hear what Willie shouted after me.

  —

  I found myself daydreaming at the Kiwanis Club dinner. The photos were already taken. Now it was time to stuff

  my face and listen to the speeches and awards throughout the night.

  “We have to fight for the human and spiritual welfare of our children,” said the president, holding up an open palm. “Not only here, but also in our homeland, which is now in the grip of the poison that’s infecting much of Asia and Africa. Earlier tonight you saw our own brave hero Robert Chow on the stage here. You may not know that he personally fought for freedom in Vietnam. Please, let’s now recognize him.”

  A round of applause around the room brought me back slightly. I started clapping, too. Then he droned on and I slipped back into the mud.

  Is this what I became a cop for? Back when I was working in the toy store I thought I was lucky to have a job. I didn’t hate it and I sure didn’t have a better idea about what to do with myself. One day, I’d been in the subway, stuck between stations. Everyone had looked pissed off or sleepy except for three black transit cops standing around a pole. They were joking around and laughing.

  Right away, it brought back my experience in Nam. It seemed they had the kind of close love under the gun that I hadn’t realized I missed until that moment. Sure they were having a good time, but if there was trouble, you could tell they were ready to swing into action. I wanted to stand up, walk over, and put my arms around them. That’s how close I felt to them.

  —

  In August of 1973, I had been back to the world for nearly two years – as long as my active service. My father and I were sitting on the roof, drinking. For some reason, whenever I look back at this scene, the sun is up and there’s a glare in my eyes, although I know for sure that it was after midnight. I almost never saw my father by daylight.

  “When are you going to think about going to college?” my father asked me. “You’re not going to stay at the toy store forever, right?”

  “I haven’t thought about it yet.”

  “Maybe you should find one that’s far away from here. California, or maybe Texas. If I had the chance, I’d travel more, see more of this country. You just send me postcards from wherever you are. You can go anyw
here with the GI bill, right? Don’t let it go to waste.”

  “Dad, I have to tell you something. I think I’m going to skip college.” I was on my fifth beer and feeling loose. I felt ready to say what I had to say. He wiped his mouth with his fingers, then rocked back and forth in anticipation.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “I’m thinking about becoming a cop. I have a good shot at getting into the police academy, and my military record will give me seniority once I’m out.”

  “What!” he spat. He shot out his legs, kicking roof gravel loose. “A policeman! You’re a fucking stupid idiot! This isn’t China! You’re supposed to make money in this country!”

  “You’re right, this isn’t China. It’s America. Being a cop is a good job.”

  “I worked this terrible job for years for your benefit, and you piss on me by deciding to become a policeman! You should be studying to be a lawyer or a doctor! A cop! Completely useless! You might as well become a garbage man or a teacher! At least nobody’s going to shoot you!”

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  “I understand! You’re stupid! I just never realized how stupid you were! You understand English, you were born in this country, and still you want to throw your life away! What did I save my money for? I could have just flushed it down the toilet!”

  “Or maybe you could have gambled some more, or gone to more whorehouses,” I said. “Mom knows all about it, anyway!” While I was away, before I’d gotten back to the world, he had slipped back into his bachelor-days habits.

  There was a twitch in the side of his scowl.

  “I don’t have to listen to you! You’re never going to live as hard a life as me! Now stop this stupid idea and apply to some good schools!”

  “I already got into the academy, Dad.”

  —

  I was at the toy store when I got a call from my mother later that week. My father had fallen off the roof. They found out later his blood-alcohol level had been three times the level of being legally drunk.

  It was a closed-casket ceremony. His face had hit a non-functioning fire hydrant on the sidewalk. They drove him around in a hearse that had a bundle of lit joss sticks clamped in the passenger-side window.