This Is a Bust (28 page)

“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 did
n'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?”

“Yea
h, 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?”
B
ecause 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 h
er,” 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 chu
ckled. “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 d
on'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 s
ee 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 co
ming 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.”