Ghost Month

by Ed Lin

  Along one stretch the air became thick with stinky tofu, which—and I know from direct experience—smells exactly like a beer-soaked garbage can outside a UCLA frat. The stinky tofu gets its smell from fermenting in various brine formulas and can be prepared a number of different ways. Eating it straight-up is strictly for the hardcore. The most popular way is to deep-fry the squares of tofu, snip them into cubes and then serve them with a topping of pickled carrots and radishes. They can also be skewered and brushed with meat sauces and then grilled. Eating stinky tofu in a hot pot was popular with the early arrivers to the night market. Kuilan would never serve such a dish at Big Shot Hot Pot. She hated stinky tofu with a vengeance. I sort of burned out on the taste as a kid. Contrary to what you might think, even though it smells like garbage, stinky tofu has a mild taste.

  Right in front of me, a man trying stinky tofu for the first time turned to spit it out into a garbage bag. Dude, you have to breathe through your mouth when you eat it! Another guy Johnny could help out.

  AS I RODE THE escalator up, I realized my phone had run out of power. More people were coming in now and my return trip to Unknown Pleasures was crowded with annoying potential customers.

  Dwayne grunted as a greeting. Frankie merely glanced at me. I plugged my phone into the wall and started pitching our skewers to a group of people checking their guidebooks to see if the market was indeed open yet.

  After about two hours, I went to the communal bathroom for a quick break and took my phone. I walked east on Xiaobei Street. It was mildly amusing that the nearest bathroom was on Xiaobei, which literally means “Little North.” The street name sounded a lot like xiaobian, which means “to piss.”

  One phone message and two texts from Cookie Monster. All within minutes of each other. C’mon, Ming-kuo, gimme a break!

  The extended texts read like a sad little kid writing to an absent dad, talking about the things we could do together and the places we could go.

  I had never even seen this guy outside of school. In fact, I remembered seeing him trying to hang out with the security guards after classes were over.

  I shuddered as I pressed play on his voicemail. It was only fifteen seconds long, and I wanted to listen to it just in case he had remembered something about Julia. If not, I wanted to forget about it as soon as possible. I heard bus-interior sounds before he started talking.

  “Jing-nan! Did you get my texts? I forgot to mention that I think I saw you! Were you in a fancy sports car today? With a beautiful girl driving? Was that you, Jing-nan? You always get the hot girls, right?”

  Wo kao! Holy shit! He was stalking me! Stay the hell away from me, Ming-kuo! Or, rather, let me stay the hell away from you!

  A lot of people were out on Xiaobei Street, but I didn’t have a hard time getting through until I reached Everybody’s Everything Electric, a gadgets shack across from the restroom entrance. About a dozen vendors had abandoned their adjacent stands to gather and watch a breaking-news report on the projection TV, which was using the street door to the restroom as a screen. I stepped to the door and people started screaming at me to get out of the way because I was disturbing the picture. I backed up and watched the report with them.

  The bodies of two young men had been found in an OK Mart dumpster in Datong District, just north of Wanhua District, where I lived. Knifed to death.

  Datong has been hammered by the recession more than any other district, and since the landmark Chien-Cheng Circle food market closed in 2006, it hasn’t really had a viable business center. Things were so dire in the district that the yams’ political party, the DPP, was allegedly able to recruit local down-on-their-luck gangsters to register as members for five hundred NT, or twenty dollars, each.

  A gangster’s life is cheap in Datong District.

  Security cameras outside the store had mysteriously been shut off before the bodies were placed there, so the police didn’t have any leads. The two store clerks on duty said they hadn’t noticed anything unusual, but neither had been outside.

  The sensationalist twenty-four-hour news channel we were watching, TV Now!, made sure to close in on the dead men’s faces. It wasn’t a pretty picture, as their ears and noses had been hacked off.

  “Ai!” and “Yo!” mumbled the crowd, but none of us turned away.

  One of the aiyu-jelly guys pointed at the screen with a hand encrusted with dried lime pulp.

  “Those hoodlums were in Black Sea!” he declared aloud. After realizing that it probably wasn’t a good idea to be blabbing, he dropped his voice. “They had their ears cut off because they didn’t listen! They had their noses cut off because they caused the gang to lose face. Why don’t they ever report the relevant facts on the news?”

  Other people watching made noncommittal grunts. My hairs stood on end. Black Sea sure was coming up a lot in my life.

  The next story was about the growing phenomenon of women pole-dancing and stripping at funerals for those who wanted to go out in a memorable fashion.

  I felt bad for the two dead men. They looked like boys, really. It was hard to imagine what they had done to deserve such harsh retribution. If this was indeed the gang taking care of their own, there was no way the police would interfere, because there was nothing to gain. The public figured the kids had gotten what they deserved. The parents had probably been absent or inadequate. They might even see the murders as a sad but inevitable conclusion. The gang definitely wouldn’t want the murders investigated.

  I wondered whether Julia had been mixed up with something or was just an innocent bystander. Either way, I couldn’t let her story end with nobody paying for the crime. Julia deserved better, and so did her parents.

  I thought about that big Taiwanese-American and his pockmark-faced buddy. Who the hell did they think they were? They couldn’t stop me from seeing the parents of my dead fiancée! They didn’t have a legitimate reason to hurt me, much less kill me, like those two gangsters in Datong were rubbed out. I wasn’t a drug dealer or a pimp. I didn’t collect protection money. I didn’t know anything I could blackmail someone with.

  Oh, wait. Ming-kuo had mentioned something to me that wasn’t known by the general public. He had told me approximately where Julia’s binlang stand was in Hsinchu City, near a highway exit.

  I licked my lips. This was dangerous knowledge. Was someone watching me? I looked around at the other people watching the television. I didn’t recognize most of these people.

  THE VENDORS WERE ALL aware that paying a local jiaotou group for “protection” was included in our common charges. Was this group collecting it for themselves or for a larger organization, such as Black Sea?

  About a year ago, several of us met up in a cafe on Jihe Road in the early afternoon to talk about a number of things, not just the protection money, which really wasn’t very much at all. Frankie the Cat got Unknown Pleasures a nice discount since he’d become good friends with actual criminals who’d been serving time on Green Island with him. He also got us top-quality food, and I didn’t ask where it came from.

  I certainly didn’t bring that up at that meeting on Jihe Road. We talked about other things, our lives and the good and bad of working at night every night. Then it became a bit of a moan-fest. Things weren’t bad, but we had issues we never talked about and it was good to get them off our chests.

  We all thought the lousy water fountain by the bathrooms in the common area leaked more water than it spouted.

  We all knew benshengren from the deep south didn’t know how to drive their trucks and always caused fender benders.

  We all agreed we shouldn’t have to pay any protection money to the gangs, since there was a police station in the boundaries of the night market.

  We all laughed at the end and agreed we should meet more often.

  The next day, Frankie warned me never to meet with those people again. I think they all got a similar warning, too, because nobody ever brought it up again.

  AS I CONTINUED TO watch the Datong Dist
rict report on the television, I thought I recognized a woman standing to my left. She might have been at that meeting on Jihe Road, but she didn’t seem to recognize me.

  The story was playing in a loop, and they were at the part where they interviewed the two store clerks again. On the second viewing, they seemed scared, which was understandable, considering the circumstances. But it also seemed like they were lying.

  What was the truth about those poor dead kids? Would anybody ever know?

  Would I ever know the truth about Julia? How about her parents?

  I looked at the ground as the television screen went back to the bodies. There had to be more to Cookie Monster’s story about Julia that I could squeeze out. If I was going to see the Huangs one last time, I wanted to go with everything I could get.

  AFTER TAKING MY DELAYED bathroom break, I returned to Unknown Pleasures. Although I tried to focus my thoughts on Julia, my mind began to wander.

  I began to feel guilty but also excited about the physical-therapy session with Nancy. I have never considered myself a lustful person, but I couldn’t wait to be with her again.

  About halfway through the night, a sudden storm broke out and the entire market was drenched. It was a good thing Frankie had already unfurled our canopy. We were able to shelter more people, and I sweet-talked them into buying skewers with a sob story about how business was going to be bad that night.

  As the rain let up, groups of people began to break away. I restocked the front grill and stared at my phone. I wondered what the politics of calling Nancy were. I knew she would want a call the next day, but if we had sex in the early afternoon, should I call her at night or early in the morning?

  I was a little lost in thought, so I didn’t recognize Ming-kuo right away when he walked up to the stand.

  “I knew it was you!” he said, pointing at my chest. “I recognize the shirt from this afternoon!”

  Cookie Monster had slimmed down but retained all the fat around his neck and head. He still had the stupid crooked smile. He looked like a doll that kids use to learn how to dress themselves, what with his blue snap-button uniform shirt and the displayed zipper of the puckered front of his jeans.

  “Wow, Ming-kuo!” I said. “Is that really you? You look great!”

  I came out from around the grill to shake his hand.

  “Jing-nan, after all these years, it took a tragedy to get us back together!”

  Man, had he been eating stinky tofu? I hoped so. Having a guy like him standing in front of Unknown Pleasures could hurt business.

  I gestured to a table in the back.

  “Say, Ming-kuo, could you take a seat at that table for little bit? I just need to help these customers in back of you.”

  He shook his head and cracked both sets of knuckles in well-practiced rapid succession. “I’m actually on my way to work. I thought I would stop by. The love hotel is near Tianmu, so I interact with quite a few foreigners, just like you!” He pointed tactlessly, full arm extended, at a Latino man taking pictures of the front grill.

  Tianmu was the part of Shilin District where a lot of American expats settled. The international schools, including Taipei American, alma mater of the half-Okinawan, half-Taiwanese matinee idol Takeshi Kaneshiro, were in Tianmu. Those kids always had a lot of money to spend. I liked them.

  Ming-kuo continued. “My hotel’s right over the Shilin Bridge.”

  I broke out in a sweat. That was only about fifteen minutes away. He could swing by the night market any night, any time.

  “Why, we practically work in the same place,” I told him as I tried to smile.

  “Can you believe how close we are?”

  He shuffled his feet a little. We were stuck in that little dance people do when the conversation is over but neither party wants to leave first. Actually, there was something I wanted to know.

  “Ming-kuo, how did you know I was here?”

  “You told me you were in the Shilin Night Market!”

  “I don’t think I did.” I was sure I hadn’t. I knew I’d told him I was working at a restaurant and not at a night market. We weren’t close enough in school for him to know my family ran a stall, and certainly not which one.

  He shrugged, creating a bib of flesh under his chin. “If you didn’t mention it, then someone must have told me. What does it matter? We’re back in touch, old friend!”

  Had someone on Facebook tipped him off? Maybe he’d Googled me and found out about the family business.

  Like my father would have said, doesn’t matter.

  Ming-kuo wiped his face, and I felt the sweat when he shook my hand again.

  “Jing-nan, I’ll go for now, but I want to compliment you again on that girl you were with. Set me up with one of her friends!”

  When he was gone, Dwayne came up to me.

  “Who was that sad sack of shit?”

  Dwayne has a way of sizing people up quickly.

  “An old classmate. I don’t like him, so that’s why I didn’t introduce you guys.”

  “Call him back! I’m going to tell him what you said.”

  “No!”

  Dwayne put me in a headlock. “Are you going to call him back?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  We danced around in a giddy struggle. It was dangerous because the floor was still slippery from the rain and the hot grills were on three sides of us. Someone could get seriously hurt, but the danger just made it funnier. I managed to wedge my greasy ear between my head and Dwayne’s hairy forearm and slipped out of his grip.

  “Too easy this time,” I chided him. Dwayne moved back to his station and covered it like third base, his legs set wide and bent at the knees. His hands were ready to grab a grounder and throw to second to kick off a double play. The guy was always ready to play.

  I WAS AT THE sink later when Frankie came up to me. He took a dirty pan, turned it upside down and threw the cold-water faucet on. The resulting sound was the perfect white noise to cover a private conversation.

  “Jing-nan, there’s some streamlining going on at Black Sea.” His blank face added nothing.

  “It’s strange that you use a business term to describe a gang.”

  “They are a business. A conglomerate. They’re liquidating a troubled subsidiary. One of their leaders is hiding in Cambodia. His son was promoted to the head of a faction. The younger guys, they’re not seasoned enough to be in a leadership role. Too impatient and hotheaded. They stepped up the high-margin high-risk stuff—stolen credit cards, pushing drugs. They’ve burned a lot of Black Sea’s bridges with other businesses and the authorities.”

  “Thanks for looking into this, Frankie.”

  “One more thing. This out-of-control faction is responsible for killing Julia.”

  My body reacted by having a coughing fit. I scooped a handful of water from the faucet and drank it to help myself recover.

  “Are you sure?” I asked him.

  He tasted his front teeth without opening his mouth. “Yes.”

  “Can’t we go to the police with this?”

  “No. Can’t prove anything, even though it’s true. She’s dead, Jing-nan. Nothing can bring her back. Believe me, Black Sea will punish every last person in this faction.”

  “Does this have anything to do with those guys shot in Datong District and the one found in the water?” I expected him to say he didn’t know or something else vague so as not to alarm me.

  “Probably. They would want the bodies to be found in a public way as a warning to anybody else in the organization who was thinking of making their own rules.”

  “Why did they kill her, Frankie?”

  “I don’t know. The only people who know are on the run right now.”

  He touched his front pocket and felt his cigarette box. I hoped he would take questions before his smoke break.

  “Do you know anything about a big Taiwanese-American guy going around?” I asked.

  “There are always some ABCs or ABTs going around.”<
br />
  “Frankie, can I ask you a question? Are you a member of Black Sea?”

  He chuckled and put a cigarette in his mouth. “I was in prison, Jing-nan, during martial law. You know that. It was a tough time. The Generalissimo said it was better to kill ninety-nine innocent people than to let one guilty man go. He applied that thought to jailing people, too.” He faced me and looked right through my eyes. “On Green Island I met a lot of people who did bad things. I also met many people who were like me—completely innocent. If we had had fair trials, or even crooked trials, we wouldn’t have been in there. When innocent people see they’re treated the same as criminals, do you think that once they’re released they’ll be on the side of the law?”

  “Well, you are. Aren’t you?”

  He blinked and the look in his eyes told me he was back in the present. “I understand both sides of the law. Sometimes one is right. Sometimes the other is.”

  Dwayne looked over at us, but decided to leave us alone. Even though the water was still making a racket, I moved in closer to Frankie.

  “Frankie, the Huangs wanted me to look into Julia’s murder. They said the cops aren’t doing anything. One of our old classmates saw her at the betel-nut stand in Hsinchu City fairly recently. I was thinking of going there to find out what really happened.”

  Frankie smiled gently and touched my shoulder. “Be reasonable, Jing-nan,” he said. “You’re not going to find out any more than I did, you’re only going to put yourself in danger.”

  “I’m already in danger. Those guys yesterday warned me to stop looking into Julia’s murder.”

  Frankie took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked down into the sink. “You’re lucky you even got a warning, Jing-nan. Stop everything you’re doing. Right now.” He stared at my wavering reflection in the pan as the water played over it.

  “I know you’re right. I just have to do one more thing. I have to see the Huangs and tell them what I know.”

  “Be careful.”

  “I definitely will be.”

  Frankie grunted and turned off the faucet. He plunged his hands into the water up to his wrists to clear the drain.