This Is a Bust (29 page)

“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 sa
ys, ‘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 do
n'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.

“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.”

“That's good. They don't have iced coffee here, do they?”

I shook my head.

The waiter came over and I ordered for us. I said to
Vandyne,
“So I understand you talked to Wang.”

Vandyne nodded and bit his lip. “Talked to him. He's
working at a hardware store now called ‘Good Lock.'”

“He told you about the coffee grinder, right?”

“He did
, but buying and returning a coffee grinder isn't 
a
crime.”

“Something's funny with it. I just don't know what.”

“The key to solving a murder, if it is a murder, is to find the
motive. That's the most direct path between the killer and the victim.”

“I guess I'm not privy to the kind of training you get,” I said.

Vandyne shifted in his seat. “Hey, come on, now. We're both
on the same side. We solve crimes.”

The chicken-and-potatoes dish swooped in and landed on
our table. The scent of hot chili jabbed at the soft roofs of our mouths.

“You have to exercise better judgment,” Vandyne said, licking some sauce that had spilled onto his thumb.

“What are you getting at?”

“Well, look at Wang for instance. Maybe you know him well
and all, but you also have to realize that any information he has is limited in its usefulness. He's a guy who drifts from job to job, probably doesn't pay taxes, and probably isn't a legal immigrant.”

“Even if he isn't legal, that doesn't mean he can't testify.”

“That
's true, but from what I understood from the translator,
Wang doesn't have any records of the sale. He can't prove he sold Yip anything. It's going to be his word against Yip's.”

“Yip could be getting away with murder.”

“What is with you, anyway? You were tight with him
before and now that he's been cleared, you want to hang the guy.

I think you might be displacing issues with your father 
onto Yip.”

A vegetable dish came in and clinked plates with the
chicken
and potatoes. Two bowls of rice landed on the table with dull thumps.

“I'm not displacing anything. I think there's something
funny about Yip, but apparently the NYPD doesn't care enough about this old woman Wah to make a more thorough investigation.”

“Hold on, Chow. You're saying that I didn't care or that I
didn't do a good job on it.”

“Well, I understand you're doing a pretty good job of taking
photos of youth who are suspected of being Chinese.”

“You don't have a monopoly on race grievances, Chow. At
least Chinese kids don't get physically harassed by the cops, like our kids do.” He took a bite and chewed while I didn't say anything. “Okay. It's all bad. But I still think you're wrong on Yip.”

“What if I get him to come in and make an admission of
guilt? How about that? Would that reopen the case?”

“If you can get that done, we'll throw the book at him
and 
it would make English consider you for investigative assignments.”

“You think?”

“That's what this is really about isn't it? It's about the
detective track?”

“It's about getting the job done,” I said.

“That sounds like a damned lie. Now, you asked me here to
eat, and if you don't eat already, you really are a liar.”

I tilted the entree dishes and scraped food onto my empty
plate with my chopsticks.

“What are you working on now?” I asked.

“I thought I'd
be shadowing gang bosses with this new Asian gang unit, but for now they just have me taking more Polaroids of kids in the playgrounds. English said some bigger things were going to happen real soon, but it hasn't come yet. The biggest challenge I have now is keeping those kids in focus when they move.”

“You want
more challenge? Try living with a troubled but gifted teenage boy
.”

“I'm
glad you're showing some responsibility by taking Paul
in. Interesting way to get in good with his sister. How's it going with Lonnie, by the way?”

“Smoothly.”

“Well,
all right. Paul isn't getting too much in your hair, now,
is he?”

“I told him he had to get a job to stay in my apartment.”

“Taking care of you and your place must be a job in itself.
The midget told me Paul even cleaned your bathroom. He bought the cleansers and everything.”

“My apartment isn't a dump.”

“Your
bathroom had to be in pretty bad shape if a teen- 
age
boy felt the urge to clean it up. Must have been gunk 
all over.”

I
set my chopsticks aside. “Please, Vandyne,” I said,

“I'm
eating.”

“I'm sorry. Say, I need a favor from you, Chow.”

“What is it?”

“I need to get a collector's stamp at the post office.”

“What's the problem?”

“I
didn't have time to go to the post office today and I'm 
not
going to tomorrow, either. This is for a nephew on Rose's side. He's a little stamp collector.”

“You
want me to go for you tomorrow? It's a swing day 
for
me.”

“Aw, man, you're a life saver. Okay. It's the 13-cent Telephone
Centennial Commemorative Stamp. It has something about Alexander Graham Bell on it. It should come on a souvenir page stamped for the first day of issue. Unless it's sold out.”

“You owe me one, now.”

“I s
ure do. Man, thanks. Hey, I'm eating everything. Don't
like the food or something?”

“Naw, I've just been cutting back.” We left it at that.

—

Chinatown has two post offices. One was in the district controlled by businessmen loyal to the KMT in Taiwan. The other was on East Broadway, in the part of town controlled by businessmen loyal to the communists.

The KMT had been established in Chinatown ever since
Sun Yat Sen himself had set up an office on Mott to solicit money to topple China's Manchu rulers. KMT money went into a huge community center that ran Chinese school classes on Saturdays, set up lion dances, and generated anti-communist propaganda.

The center also provided translation services for letters,
since all mail was required by law to be addressed in English in addition to the Chinese. The younger people could handle the English, but not the older people. Early in the mornings, elderly Chinese clutching onion-skin envelopes would be lined up at the center.

The post office in KMT Chinatown on Doyers usually
became crowded as old people ambled in with their newly addressed mail. Sometimes you'd see a bent-over man leaning on someone younger for support. It was heartwarming.

The communist community center was younger than the
KMT one, but it was so bogged down with immigration cases that there were no letter-translating services.
The problem was that the KMT center refused to address mail ultimately destined for China although they would make an exception for Hong Kong, which was under British control.

The
post office in communist Chinatown on East Broadway
was about twice as big as the one in KMT Chinatown, and luckily it had two large desks in the back. For a few hours 
a day, a man would sit there, writing out addresses in English. That man was Moy's dad, and he'd been at it for about 20 years.

—

When I got to the East Broadway post office, people were lined up to see Moy's dad, who was sitting at a side table on a seat that folded out from a metal walking cane and formed a stool.
He was addressing envelopes, filling out international mail forms, and sometimes even writing letters. People 
paid him five cents, no matter what services they needed. When they were done, they waited in another line for the clerk windows.

I sto
od in line for a clerk and waved to Moy's dad, but he was
stooped over and intently writing.

“Old Moy,” someone was asking him, “Have I gotten a letter
from my mother?”

“I already checked my post-office box,” Moy's dad said
without even looking up. “Nothing for you.”

“It's just that she's very old. I'm a little worried. It's been
some time, now.”

“There was nothing for you! Now please, there are other
people here to see me.” Moy's dad waved the man away. He caught sight of me and nodded his head once. Then he toyed with his glasses and put his head back down.

I looked down at the piece of scrap paper in my hand.
“Souvenir page of the 13-cent Telephone Centennial Commemorative Stamp.” I had written it down because

I didn't want to get some other commemorative stamp 
by mistake.

When I got to a window, I looked at the stamp that was
mounted on a presentation page. The main design was a line drawing that looked like bad abstract art.

“You're the first to ask for one of these in a while, mack,”
said
the clerk.

“No wonder,” I said. “They're so ugly.”

Then I went to Martha's to see Lonnie. It was amazing how
the dynamic had changed ever since Lonnie had stood up to Dori that day. Lonnie was behind the counter mixing up hot batches of Horlicks and Ovaltine — British drink mixes that a lot of Hong Kongers had grown up drinking and now were hooked on. The batches were going to be chilled overnight and served cold.

Dori was dejectedly pushing a mop around. Moy was
in a seat by the garbage can, reading a newspaper
.