This Is a Bust

by Ed Lin

  “You know that toothpaste, ‘Darkie’? Got the black-faced minstrel with the white smile on it?”

  “Yeah, I know it.”

  “My point is that. . .” Vandyne trailed off. “Hey, you know, I know there are four major ethnic Chinese groups in Chinatown: Cantonese, Toisanese, Hakka, and Fukienese. I don’t know what they’re saying, but I can tell the difference between the dialects. I can even play an okay game of Chinese chess. I went pretty far to learn about Chinese culture. But when they see me, I mean, I’m the first black person they’ve seen up close and personal. The only thing they know about blacks is, well, the negative media. Black guy did this. Black guy did that. But if I conduct myself in a professional and upstanding manner, as a policeman should, it will give them something positive to see. Just seeing a black man living amongst them changes how people think. You yourself told me you never had a black friend until the Nam.”

  “My company was about 60% black. Everybody treated each other black. The Asians, the Mexicans, the Hawaiians, and the whites. We all hugged each other, threw dice in a box, flew the black flag. We were an all-black company. We just didn’t look it.”

  “So that makes you black, huh?”

  “Look, who are you to be talking like this? You eat Chinese food. You’ve developed a taste for Chinese cigarettes, which are going to kill you, by the way. You’re standing here in Chinatown talking with a Chinese guy. What’s that make you? I think your eyes are getting more slanty every day.”

  “You mean like this?” he asked, pushing up the ends of his eyebrows.

  “No, push them higher.”

  “This far enough?”

  “Yeah. Now you know how I look to black people.”

  “Hey, come on, now!” said Vandyne as he dropped his hands to his sides.

  “I’m tellin’ it like it is.”

  “Not all black people are like that.”

  “And not all Chinese people are racist. Just a minority.”

  “Minority racists? That’s the situation exactly. Minorities who are racists.”

  “Why let the white people have all the fun, huh?”

  “This is an ongoing discussion, Chow,” said Vandyne, transitioning into a thoughtful mode.

  Some older people came into the park and dumped out a bag of mahjong tiles on an empty table. All four of them reached in and stirred the tiles around noisily.

  “I had a nightmare last night,” I told Vandyne.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yeah. I think it was because I didn’t eat dinner. I dreamt that I was lying in my bed. The room looked normal, but I knew that everything was booby-trapped. I had to get down on the floor and start feeling around for tripwires in the rug. I was crawling around, touching every corner on every leg of the dresser. Then I had to check out my shoelaces, because if you pulled on them too hard, your shoe would blow up and you’d have a stump where the ankle was.”

  Vandyne made a scoffing sound and shook his head.

  “Then I got really scared that someone would call and the phone would blow up. So I crawled over on the floor and unplugged the phone line from the jack — real careful of course. I went ahead and unplugged the lamp, my alarm clock, I mean everything that had a cord. I’m thinking, what else could be booby-trapped? Naturally, the doorknob to the bedroom. As I was looking at it, it started to turn.”

  “And then, ‘Boom!’?”

  “No, it was Paul. He came in to use the bathroom and he found me crawling around on the floor.”

  “Paul? Oh, Lonnie’s brother. Yeah, the midget told me he was staying with you. That’s good because now you got someone to check on you on a regular basis. Anyway, you were really on the floor?”

  “Yeah, I was.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t a nightmare. Maybe you were having

  a flashback.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “One is if you’re sleeping. But the other is if you’re getting delusional.”

  “I don’t know which one it was, but it felt good on the floor. It felt safe. Safer than the bed.”

  “Hmm. You know, I never have the slow, paranoid, look-out-for-the-booby-trap dreams. What I experience are the fighting and shooting sequences. I have this recurring thing happening to me.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I have this nightmare that that little boy in that hollow tree comes after me. He’s smiling and laughing, and he’s holding this little knife. He finds me and cuts a slice in my leg. Then he sticks his hands into the wound and crawls into my body. He crawls up my leg and he’s hacking away at my organs. He’s hollowing me out the same way he did the tree. I can feel him inside and hear him laughing.

  “When he crawls into my heart, he puts his arms in my arms and makes me pick up a machine gun. He makes me start shooting. He puts his head in my head and makes me laugh. I’m shooting up my wife, my whole neighborhood. I mean everything. I always wake up screaming from that one.”

  “Have this nightmare often?”

  “About once a month. But I had it two days in a row this week.” Vandyne sighed. “It’s bad.”

  I blew into my hands and rubbed them.

  —

  I ran into Wang by the Manhattan Bridge overpass on East Broadway. He was selling cellophane-wrapped baked goods out of a shopping cart along with several other older women and men.

  “Those are some nice rice cakes in there,” I pointed out.

  “Hello, officer, they’re good today. The red-bean ones are very sweet, maybe too sweet for adults. Try the cakes with black-bean filling. Eight for a dollar.”

  “Hey, what’s wrong with them?”

  He laughed. “The only thing wrong is that nobody’s eating them now.”

  I gave him a dollar. “They’re not fattening, right?” I asked.

  “No, there’s no meat, how could it be fattening?” Wang shook open a crumpled plastic bag and dropped a package of rice cakes into it.

  “Wang, did you know that man I was with the other day? The old man, Yip?”

  “Yeah, I do. I was selling used appliances at this repair store run by a handyman from Hong Kong who would buy things from the Salvation Army and fix them up.”

  “Did Yip buy something from you?”

  “We had things like radios, TVs and some 8-track players. He picked up this coffee grinder and thought it was a food processor. I showed him some of the food processors we had, but he still wanted the coffee grinder because it was cheaper. I told him it was a final sale, because there isn’t much demand for them with Chinese people. Next day, that bastard brought it back! Screamed until I gave him his money back!”

  “It wasn’t working?”

  Wang screwed up his face.

  “It worked fine. He’d gotten all these pieces of eggshell in it, too. It was a mess.”

  “Eggshells?”

  “Old people eat them for their bones.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  “Just in December. Early December.” That was a few weeks before Yip’s wife had died.

  “Thanks, Wang.”

  “No, thank you, officer. Would you like some crispy honey noodles, too? They’re very good.”

  “I can’t. I’m on a diet.”

  “A diet?” Wang howled. “Diet for what?”

  —

  I went to a pay phone and called Yip. He answered on the third ring and I asked if I could drop by. Fifteen minutes later, I was huffing up his stairs. He greeted me in a rumpled shirt and permanent-press slacks. A kettle was gurgling. Spots on the wall by the stove showed where paint had blistered and broken off.

  A somber picture of Wah sat on the windowsill above the sink. A dish with a whole peeled orange sat in front of the picture and was reflected in the frame’s glass.

  I turned to the kitchen table.

  “Those are very nice,” I said, as Yip set two ornate cups on the table. Dragons and phoenixes leered at the drinker from around the handles.

  “Special
gift from Lily,” he said. “She sent them from China.”

  “How did she manage to get in?” Because the U.S. didn’t officially recognize the country, there were no direct flights. Nixon could visit China at will, but for a regular American it was impossible to get a visa to go to China. For an ethnic Chinese who had been corrupted by American capitalist ways, it was even tougher.

  “Lily has the connections in Hong Kong to get her through.”

  “Good for her,” I said. “Yip, I’m actually more in the mood for coffee.”

  “Are you sure? I have some very good black tea.”

  “Coffee would be best for me.”

  “I only have instant, I don’t have ground. Is that okay?”

  “Sure. Oh, I brought some rice cakes, too. Black bean.”

  “Perfect. My favorite,” he said. “Sit down, sit down!”

  I took a seat and lifted one of the teacups. “Heavy,” I said.

  “Best kind of ceramic,” said Yip, “keeps the tea warm even without a lid.” He brought over a jar of Pathmark instant coffee and put it on the table. “You take sugar or milk?”

  “Black is fine.”

  Yip poured the hot water into each of our cups. He dropped into his cup a small handful of dried black leaves curled lengthwise that looked like tiny twigs. I twisted the lid off the glass coffee jar and shook some of it into my cup.

  “How are you enjoying the book of stamps?” Yip asked.

  “Oh, it’s really nice. Thanks so much.” I was using the book for a coaster, the last time I saw it.

  “If you keep studying the stamps, they’ll provide a lot of enjoyment in the long run. I still have stamps my father gave me when I was very young.”

  “I have to study them some more, I guess.” I took a tentative sip from my cup. It was stale. “I didn’t know you only drank instant coffee,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” he said, taking a full swig of his scalding hot tea and biting into a rice cake.

  “Do you remember that man we ran into? The one you don’t respect? He told me he sold you a coffee grinder.”

  “That coffee grinder,” Yip spat. “That thing was broken! He cheated me! That man’s a thief!” What would Yip do if he knew where the rice cakes were from?

  “Yip, you don’t even have a coffee machine,” I said, looking around the opened cabinets above the sink.

  “I was buying it for a present,” said Yip, finishing a rice cake.

  I picked up a rice cake and popped the entire thing in my mouth.

  “Is Wang a friend of yours?” asked Yip.

  I mushed the glutinous snack around with my tongue, which was as close to chewing it as I could come. I couldn’t talk, so I only nodded.

  “I guess that as an officer, you have to associate with some criminal types.”

  I drank some coffee and felt it dissolve away some rice cake, freeing up my jaw.

  “Everyone’s a criminal. Everybody’s guilty of something,” I said. “You’re guilty of trying to be my father.”

  Yip chuckled. “Maybe I am, but that’s not a crime.”

  “Yes it is.”

  “Officer Chow, what are you guilty of?”

  “Seeing things only in black and white.”

  I only stayed about 15 minutes, but before I left, I promised Yip I’d see him for dinner the following week.

  I thought about his strange explanation for the coffee grinder. Chinese people don’t give each other second-hand appliances for gifts. They give that traditional standby Chinese gift of Danish butter cookies in a blue tin, or liquor that the recipients put on the shelf and never touch.

  In my house, the liquor never even made it to the shelf.

  A bottle placed in my hands was as good as empty.

  —

  From now on, I thought as I leaned forward and practically willed myself up the stairs of my building, I should do less drinking in bars. I don’t even like to talk to people when I drink, so why not stay home? Turning the key in my lock was more difficult than remembering my gym locker combination from sixth grade. The door suddenly swung open.

  “Where have you been?” asked Paul.

  “I was in the park. I had to collect some evidence,” I said.

  “I have to tell you something,” he said cautiously.

  I felt a flare of heat down my neck. “Shut up about me,” I grunted. “You’ve got problems, too.”

  “It’s not about your drinking,” said Paul, raising both his hands. “This really big guy in a suit was here looking for you about two hours ago!”

  “Was it that guy from Jade Palace?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He said he wanted to talk to you.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m not sure, but he was pretty worked up. He said he’d be back later.”

  “It’s 2300 right now. Sorry, 11 o’clock for you, son. When was he planning on coming over?”

  Paul shrugged. “Anytime he feels like it. He’s a big man. Anyway, I’m going out now. I wanted to tell you in person because you never read notes when I leave them for you.”

  “I don’t like your handwriting,” I said. “Hey, where are you going now?”

  Paul slipped off for the bathroom. “Just hanging out.”

  “Hanging out? Where, and doing what at this time of night?”

  “I don’t know yet!”

  “When are you going to get a job? You know, that’s one of the conditions of you living here.”

  “I’m going out right now to type up my resumé.”

  I heard the bathroom sink go on. I put a pot of water on the stove. It was going to be an instant-ramen-noodle night.

  “Hey, did you see the mouthwash anywhere?” Paul called to me from down the hallway.

  “Naw, I didn’t.”

  “It was right here in the. . .hey, here’s the bottle in the garbage! What did you do, drink it or something?”

  “Yeah, I might have drunk it,” I said. I looked at the calm surface of the water in the pot and turned the heat higher.

  “That’s disgusting. You know, I got that mainly for you to use.”

  “What are you complaining about? I used it.”

  —

  About half an hour after the kid left, someone knocked at my door. I picked up my hammer and held it over my head as I went to the door.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Officer Chow, hey open up, I wanna talk.”

  “Willie Gee send you?”

  “He didn’t send me nowhere! I’m coming over on my own.

  I want to tell you something about that old woman who was poisoned.”

  I stuck the hammer under a couch cushion and opened

  the door. The Jade Palace brute was wearing a denim jacket, jeans, and a baseball cap. A pair of shades completed his disguise.

  “You’re not fooling anyone,” I said. “I could recognize you from the other side of Shea Stadium.”

  “I ain’t trying to hide. This is how I wanna dress. You gotta minute?”

  “You just want to talk? Why didn’t you call?”

  “I don’t carry change for the public phones.” He smiled. “I only got big bills.”

  After I let him in, I asked, “What did you want to tell me?”

  “With me being at the front of Jade Palace all the time, sometimes I get propositions from people. They think that because I’m big and all, I can handle problems. For the most part I can. I got one rule, though; I don’t physically harm nobody.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You know Willie Gee wanted me to crack some skulls of those protestors? You know that?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Well, anyway, a couple months ago was a woman who came up to me asking if I could handle someone. She shows me a picture of this old woman, and I was like, ‘You need me to take care of her? A boy scout with a sore throat could handle her.’

  “She says, ‘This woman’s
been making trouble upstairs in the restaurant.’

  “‘Look, lady,’ I says, ‘I don’t do that kind of thing. You want me to deliver a warning, that’s what I do.’

  “‘She’s already been warned. We have to take the next step,’ she says.

  “‘That’s not me, lady,’ I says. ‘You’re asking the footwear department about bedding.’

  “Then she tries to play it off as a joke and scampers off. I didn’t think nothing about it until I saw the picture again in the Taiwan paper. Said she was poisoned by a bum food can.”

  “Who was the woman you talked to?” I asked.

  “I don’t know her name, but she works at Jade Palace and I saw you with her and that old man at one of the coffee shops.”

  “You mean Lily?”

  “I guess. You were having coffee in a booth.”

  “Where were you? I couldn’t have missed you in a small place like that.”

  He smiled and adjusted the shades on his face. “Oh, I was way over in the back,” he said.

  “Why are you telling me about this now?”

  “Jesus, I didn’t know the lady was dead until I saw her picture in the paper. Were you were one of the detectives on the case?”

  “No, I’m not. I wasn’t. Anyway, the case is closed. It’s over.”

  “I thought I’d just let you know what I knew. Before I left town.”

  “Why are you trying to help me?”

  “I have a natural instinct for doing what’s right. Call me a sucker. In any case, you won’t see me for a while.”

  “Where are you going?” I asked.

  “Up to Canada. I’m tired of working for that fucking prick.”

  “Good for you. Where in Canada you headed?”

  “Aw, it’s a big country, I’ll find somewhere,” he said. “I’m taking a train tonight.” He shoved his hands in his front pockets. I could hear the seams in his pants scream.

  “You used to be a cop, right?” I asked him.

  “In a time and place far, far away,” he said.

  Chapter 14

  “Still have time to meet with the little people?” I asked Vandyne as he settled into the booth. We were at my favorite Szechuan restaurant.

  “Oh, yeah, always time for you. This is the place that has a section with Chairman Mao’s favorite dishes, right?”

  “You bet. Chicken and potatoes got your name on it.”