by Joe Ide
Isaiah drove home, thinking about the robber. He’d never experienced hate before. It was like an ulcer growing on a tumor, festering and stinking. Late at night or between dreams and sleep, he’d get into it, bathing in the venom, wallowing in thoughts of revenge. In a way, the hate felt good. You were righteous, godlike, the dispenser of justice. Hate dispelled your fears and forged every disappointment, setback, loss, humiliation, and failure that ever happened to you into one massive steel sledgehammer of rage, poised to obliterate, and for one brief, purifying moment, give you relief.
Chapter Seven
I Don’t Know
Tommy Lau drank Ken’s Glenfiddich while he waited in the study. The sooner this whole thing was over the better. Vegas was like standing in the middle of a Chinese New Year’s parade, too much going on. Tommy thought about Janine, his favorite niece until this happened. She reminded him of himself. Independent, spirited, going her own way no matter what her father said, and she was the only Chinese girl Tommy had ever seen who didn’t put her hand over her mouth when she laughed.
When Ken came to San Francisco on business he’d bring Janine along, and Tommy would take her to lunch in Chinatown. There was no place to park down there so they’d take the cable car and walk the three blocks to Grant. Tommy’s favorite restaurant was the China Moon, where everybody knew who and what he was. As soon as he walked in the door there was a chorus of ni haos, nervous smiles, and head-nodding. Three waiters would appear to serve the two of them. Tommy always ordered in Chinese without looking at the menu, Janine saying wait, wait, I might want something else, Tommy saying sorry, no cheeseburger today.
Tommy liked to regale her with stories about the triads, always preceding them with a reminder that he’d quit 14K when he was quite young because he was disgusted by their activities. At one lunch he told her about human trafficking.
“The business really boomed under George W.,” Tommy said, trying to hide his nostalgia. “The triads should have thrown him a party. He gave an executive order. If you said you were persecuted because of China’s one-child-per-couple policy all you had to do was get here and they would let you stay.”
“I guess a lot of people wanted to come,” Janine said. She was thirteen, fidgety, drumming her chopsticks on the table.
“Thousands of them, most of them from Fujian. They called the US the Golden Mountain. The triads saw it as a business opportunity and they all got involved. There was a huge market for counterfeit passports. 14K charged thirty thousand each.”
“Wow, that’s a lot,” Janine said. She looked at a waiter. “Could I get a fork, please?”
“You get what you pay for,” Tommy said. “We—14K—only sold quality. The passports were made in Bangkok by a family of counterfeiters. Four generations. An acquaintance of mine used their passports to get a hundred and fifty-three Chinese on a three-hundred-and-seventy-seat plane going to JFK. Pretty good, huh? And the risk was low. If he got caught smuggling in one hundred and fifty-three people, the maximum sentence was eighteen months, but he didn’t get caught and made four and a half million dollars in one day. If he was caught with four and a half million dollars’ worth of heroin he would have gotten twenty-seven years.”
The waiter brought Janine a fork. “Thank you,” she said, beaming.
“After a while, there were not enough counterfeit passports to go around,” Tommy said, “and many people could not afford them. They had to come by ship. Horrible conditions. I heard some people were locked in a pigsty with the pigs until their boat arrived at Fuzhou.”
“Eeeuw, yuck,” Janine said.
Tommy liked to tell her horror stories. Watch her eyes get big like she was going downhill on a roller coaster. It was good for her. Learn there was more to the world than the Red Rock Country Club and private school. “The ship was usually an old freighter,” he said. “Built who knows when, everything barely running. It’s a miracle they could stay afloat. The people were kept in the hold and they had to stay there for the whole trip. Forty, fifty days. It was dark, filthy, full of diesel fumes. You could suffocate and some people did. Or they starved to death.”
Janine made a face. “I’m losing my appetite, Uncle Tommy.”
“I remember one ship that foundered near San Francisco Bay,” Tommy said. “The authorities found the people ankle-deep in feces, no water, and most of them had a serious illness. Hepatitis B, even cholera. I remember another ship had engine trouble off the coast of North Carolina. All the passengers were infected with a mutant strain of German measles.”
“Uncle Tommy, you’re making me sick.”
“Nowadays, most of the people come in with visas,” Tommy said, like another old tradition had gone by the wayside. “Student visas, work visas. You have to pay off the right people, of course. Some fly to Thailand with a forged passport and pay off an official there to let them in. At the airport in Bangkok you can always tell which officials are on the take—their lines are the longest. Then the people fly to Central America and make the rest of the trip overland. The cartels provide the transportation. Very dangerous. Assaults, rape, extortion. In Mexico, the coyotes take over. People die of thirst and heatstroke coming across the desert. On the US side of the border they have beacons set up for people who get lost. The signs are in three languages. English, Spanish, and Chinese.”
“Three, huh?” Janine said, still drumming her chopsticks.
“Stop that, Janine,” Tommy said.
The waiters brought drunken prawns, steamed pigeon, five-spice short ribs, and a whole fish curved like the wok it was cooked in. Janine reached for a serving spoon.
“No, stop, do this first,” Tommy said. He put the ends of his chopsticks in his teacup and poured hot tea over them. “See? You warm your chopsticks this way. Do the same with your bowl. Pour in some tea, swish it around—yes, like that, and then put the tea back in your teacup. The waiter will bring you another.”
“All I want to do is eat,” Janine said.
“The smugglers’ costs are very high,” Tommy said, like he was talking about Apple. “The bribes, the documents, travel costs. That’s why they charge sixty, seventy, eighty thousand dollars and then another five hundred or so to the coyotes.”
“I thought they were poor. How can they afford it?”
“Families and relatives pool their money, send the male with the most potential for success. Once he’s here he pays them back. Hard to do if you’re a dishwasher or a busboy. They have to live like animals.”
Janine was trying to stab a short rib with a fork but couldn’t pierce the bone.
“Don’t use a fork,” Tommy said. “You see how the rib is cut small? Perfect for chopsticks.” The ribs were about the size of a nine-volt battery. Tommy picked one up and held it close to his mouth while he sucked and chewed off the meat. “The last bit of rice is always the best, has all the juices.” He used the bone like a snow shovel, pushing the rice on his plate into a lump. Then he picked up the plate and used the bone to sweep the rice into his mouth. “You see?” he said. “Chinese way is always best.”
“I bet you couldn’t do that with a cheeseburger,” Janine said.
“For girls wanting to come to America it’s quite a different story,” Tommy said. “Many are duped into believing they’ll get good jobs, but when they get here they are forced to be prostitutes to pay off their debt.”
“God, that’s awful,” Janine said.
“There’s even a new market trafficking girls from Vietnam into China.”
“Why?”
“There is a one-child policy in China, and the enforcement is very strict. Forced abortions, sterilizations. Everyone prefers sons so if they have a daughter, many people get rid of them. Leave them somewhere to die, throw them down wells, turn them upside down in a bucket of water. Millions of them.”
“Oh my God. I’m glad I wasn’t born there.”
“The result is, there aren’t enough marriageable women in China, and they have to come from somewhere.
The other reason is financial. If a man wishes to get married he is expected to put on an expensive wedding and buy a new house for his bride. Marrying a Vietnamese girl is a big money-saver.”
“Do the girls want to be married?”
“Oh no,” Tommy said, chuckling. “They are kidnapped. Some of them are as young as you.”
“Don’t the triad people feel bad about what they’re doing?”
Tommy picked up another short rib and chewed off the meat. “No,” he said. “They do not.”
Tommy was immune to suffering. He’d watched his father eat half a fish while the other half was still alive. He’d been there when Chongqing police inspectors beat a man to death with hammers for illegally selling a watermelon. He’d seen a baby girl stuck in a laundry sack and thrown in the Yangtze River, and he’d been to the Yulin Dog Eating Festival. Ten thousand dogs slaughtered, some of them boiled alive. If that was what you grew up with, cruelty wasn’t cruelty, it was a fact of life. Same as the weather or working for a living. Americans liked to say the Chinese were like that as if brutality was a cultural characteristic instead of a characteristic of the destitute; people who have to fight for every morsel, drop, bite, breath. People did such things everywhere, not just in the third world. It was happening in America, where poverty wasn’t an excuse. Teenagers set fire to homeless people, soldiers raped their subordinates, guards let prisoners out of their cells to kill other prisoners, police shot the mentally ill. It wouldn’t be long before they were eating their Labradoodles and throwing their unwanted children off the Bay Bridge. Yes, Americans should mind their own business, clean their own house.
Tommy poured himself another Glenfiddich and went outside to smoke. Tung was there, seated in a patio chair, not an inch of space left between the arms. Tung was built like a refrigerator made from beef and bone, his eyes were dull and implacable, a perpetual scowl on his face like he’d found a cockroach climbing over his toothbrush. Tommy liked to say Tung could kill you with a finger flick.
“Where is he?” Tommy said.
“Upstairs,” Tung said. “He won’t cause trouble. He’s Ken.”
Ken agonized and paced, wondering if there was any possible way to get out of this. He heard a car arrive in the driveway. Did the Red Poles have Benny? A part of him wished they did. He had to contact Janine, but Tung had taken away his phone and pulled the landline out of the wall. He could climb out the side window and climb down the drainpipe but he was afraid he’d get stuck or hurt or caught. The idea of being tied up and gagged terrified him.
He heard voices and went to the window overlooking the pool. Tommy was upset, yelling at the kid who needed to eat more. His head was bowed, hands clasped in front of him. He was scuffed up, his mouth swollen, dirt on that ridiculous undertaker’s suit.
“How could this happen?” Tommy said. “How could you let him get away? I knew you would fuck it up. I should have sent Tung.”
“Some men came,” the skinny kid said. “Got in way. We had to fight them.”
“What men?”
“Two black guys. Janine was with them.”
“So? There were five of you, weren’t there?”
“Other man came. Big. Like giant.”
“You were attacked by two black men and a giant?”
“Yes, Tommy.”
Tommy looked over at Tung as if to say Do you believe this asshole? “Who were the black men?” Tommy said.
“Don’t know,” Skinny said. “We got license plate number. Zhi say he work on it.”
“All right,” Tommy said, exasperated. “I don’t have a choice so unfortunately you’re 438.”
Triads used number codes for the different ranks that were based on the I Ching. 438 was the Vanguard, like a field general. 489 was Tommy, the Mountain Master. Red Poles were 436. 415 was White Paper Fan for business and financial. 49s were ordinary soldiers. 425 was a traitor. Like Janine.
“The boyfriend is dangerous,” Tommy said. “I want him dead or alive. We’ll find out what we need to know from Janine.”
Zhi came scurrying out of the house. He was a nervous, intense little man who reminded Ken of a gerbil running around in an exercise wheel.
“What is it?” Tommy said. Zhi said something inaudible. “Blackmail?” Tommy said. “Those fools are blackmailing us?”
Ken stepped away from the window. How could they do it? he thought. How could they be so stupid? I’ll kill that fucking Benny. He hoped Janine had enough sense to get out of Vegas. Tommy would send the Dragon Boyz after her, a local gang. There were gangs like them in many of the cities where 14K operated, hired to do the dirty work and keep the Mountain Master safe on his mountain.
Ken couldn’t get over it. Janine and Benny blackmailing 14K? What were they thinking? Didn’t they know the triads’ reach extended to practically every place in the world? He felt like he was going to throw up and went to the bathroom and stood over the bowl. If Janine wasn’t dead before she was sure as hell dead now. He could only hope they wouldn’t torture her and would kill her fast, two bullets in the back of the head. He wished the same for himself.
Another wave of nausea washed through his gut, and he vomited into the toilet. How could this have happened to him? he wondered. How could this possibly be his life? He came from a good home, he was educated, intelligent, and personable when he wanted to be. He thought back to the beginning.
He was a graduate student in business. It was his final semester and the pressure was unrelenting. His parents had always expected him to be the best in everything he did. It was number one or nothing, and Ken was consistently nothing, even if he was second or third. It was why he quit the university tennis team; the two of them sitting in the stands like disappointed gargoyles, muttering to each other every time he hit an unforced error and leaving altogether if he was losing. His fiancée was a med student who was number one in her class and looked like she was studying even when she was riding a bicycle or having sex. Her father had a job waiting for Ken at his hedge fund and had already bought a condo for the couple in Pacific Heights. Everyone said Ken was fortunate, but he didn’t feel that way. He felt manipulated and coerced. To let off steam, he’d go gambling at one of Tommy Lau’s places in Chinatown. A basement, a back room, or a storefront with no signage and the blinds drawn, the entrance in the back. There were mismatched chairs around folding tables, a pall of cigarette smoke under the humming fluorescents. The clientele were mostly old men; liver-spotted, jowly, receding hairlines, senior citizen pants, and cheap sneakers. Lots of noise. Mah jong tiles clacking, cards shuffling, coins clinking at the fan-tan tables, the incessant choppy chatter of spoken Chinese.
Though he’d be loath to admit it, Ken believed, like his parents, grandparents, and ancestors before him, that luck, destiny, and chance controlled your life more than you did. Ken put his faith in auspicious objects and numbers and fêng shui. These things could be manipulated, maybe bending your fate a little, giving luck a better chance to find you.
Ken played pai gow and fan-tan but mah jong was his favorite. A draw-and-discard game like gin rummy, it required skill and calculation as well as an element of luck. While Ken had the former in spades, he had very little of the latter. As his finals approached and the pressure had him at the breaking point, he played obsessively, running up an enormous tab, thousands of dollars. Tommy didn’t seem too concerned about it, extending Ken credit whenever he asked, Ken telling himself he could pay it back when he was working at the hedge fund. And then one day, for no apparent reason, his credit was cut off, and a Chinese man who must have been a tree stump in his previous life asked him to leave.
The next day, the tree stump man showed up at Ken’s door and introduced himself as a friend of Tommy’s. He asked if Ken could pay the vig on his debt and Ken said no. The man punched him in the stomach and while he writhed around on the floor struggling to catch his breath, the man smashed every single object in the apartment including the TV and Ken’s laptop. When Ken asked if he could ke
ep his bicycle so he could get to class, the man stomped it into scrap metal and threw it off the balcony.
“Tommy want to see you,” the man said. “Tomorrow, one-thirty, China Moon.”
When Ken entered the restaurant, Tommy was already seated and working his way through a lobster with black bean sauce. Tung was at a separate table, a napkin tucked into his shirt, his square jaws crunching whole shrimp with their shells on, the carcass of an entire duck in front of him.
“Please, sit down,” Tommy said. “Would you like something to eat?”
“No, thank you,” Ken said. “I’m fine.”
“Nonsense,” Tommy said. “Eat.”
Ken picked at a plate of char siu while Tommy asked him questions about his studies. What classes did he take, what were his grades like, what was he planning to do.
“Do you know accounting?” Tommy said.
“Some,” Ken said. “But I’m not an accountant. Why do you ask?”