This Is a Bust (36 page)

“So you're getting a dinner thrown for you, Chow. Momma
must be real proud of her boy.”

“Don't call me ‘boy.'”

“You're a really funny guy, Chow. You know, I didn't
understand your sense of humor before, but now I think I get it. Anyway here's a little something I got you. Welcome aboard. I'm giving you an investigative assignment.” He pressed something smooth and plastic into my hands.

“You're giving me a Polaroid camera?”

“You know the drill. You're not that dumb. When you're
making your rounds, take pictures of any suspicious youth you see. Let's see how you do with that.”

“How do you define suspicious?”

“Anyone who looks smarter than you.”

—

I walked down to the street and stretched my arms. The sun felt warm.

There were about a dozen people in the toy store. The
midget was behind the counter, playing a game of Chinese chess with Vandyne. Paul was restocking the shelves with little bottles of enamel paint.

I held up my camera. “Got you something, Paul,” I said.

“What am I going to do with this?” he asked.

“Take pictures of cops,” I said. I turned to Vandyne and
the
midget. “They're throwing a dinner to honor me. I'm getting an award for stopping the parade disturbance.”

Vandyne put one hand on my shoulder. “All right,” he said.

“That filmmaker's coming by here soon,” said Paul. “He
wants this to be the finale to his movie. A guy goes from playing games in a park to buying a toy store. He wants all the midget's friends in it, too.”

“Well, I better get my hair cut,” I said. I left for the barber's
on Doyers.

“Hey!” yelled Law the barber when I came in the door.

“Law, I'm going to give you a break and let you take your
time on this one. I'm going to be in a movie. I want a haircut, shampoo, and a shave,” I said.

“I'm going to make you look like a star,” Law said, laughing.
“I'm going to put your picture on my wall.”

I had time to read some of the Taiwan-biased paper before
he could get to me.

The Wells Fargo armored car robbery in New York was
possibly an inside job; a couple of gunmen had gotten away with $851,000. Jimmy Carter had won the Wisconsin Democratic primary for the presidency. The KMT Chinese were worried about him because it was rumored that if he were elected, he'd establish ties with the People's Republic and cut off Taiwan. He'd been a farmer, and was therefore a communist sympathizer.

“Hey you, right now,” Law said to me, patting an empty
chair.

He
delicately pulled a sheet around my neck and placed a
steaming cloth over my face. It was like being wrapped in

a womb. Then Law sprayed my hair with water and snipped around for a while. I felt wet hair clips brush by my ears.

The bell on the door suddenly went off and someone ran in.

“Robert!” yelled Paul.

“What?” I said, yanking the towel off my face.

“The filmmaker's at the toy store now and he brought in
this guy from Japan. The midget's losing! Everyone's there!” He was out of breath.

I jumped up and pulled the sheet off. Law scowled, jerked
his drawer open, and chucked his scissors into it.

“I'll be back, Law. I'm sorry about this. I'm so sorry,” I said on
my way out.

We pushed our way into the store. People were crowding
the sidewalk, trying to see inside. With a stage light set up in the store, it was brighter than the first day of summer vacation. The filmmaker had shoved his fist into his mouth.

The Japanese player f
olded his hands in front of him as he stared at the board placidly. It was looking bad for the midget, who had a far-off look of wonderment in his eyes.

We
got there just in time. The game was over in only a 
few
more moves.

The midg
et won, of course. It had only looked like he 
was
losing.

—

Willie Gee must have had some really good info on me, because seated with me at the first dining table in Jade Palace's banquet hall were the midget, Lonnie, Vandyne, Rose, Wang, and coach Teeter. And my mother. Paul had to watch the toy store. I'd see him at home later. Another entire table was taken up by community-relations officers that you never actually saw in the neighborhood and their wives. They all needed forks.

It was a nice dinner, one of the fancy Chinese ones where
every dish is a kind of meat, and no rice or vegetables are served. A long stretch of seafood and meats slipped in and spun on the large lazy Susan in the middle of the table. Sliced jellyfish, cuttlefish, stewed snakehead fish, steamed flounder, Peking duck, sliced dried beef, sliced dried pork, lobster, and shrimp were all reduced to bones, shells, and colorful smears.

For the presentation portion of the evening, I was seated
on a platform between the chairman of the Pearl River Businessmen's Association and the head of the Kwangtung Province Business Alliance. A dozen other businessmen were up there with me. I had on my uniform – for the last time, I told myself.

A banner hung over our heads. In English it said,
“Chinatown Supports Police Department.” In Chinese it said, “Congratulations, Happiness, and Longevity.” Photographers from three Chinese-language newspapers snapped pictures. One was supported by the KMT. One was working for a Hong Kong conglomerate. The third was backed by money from the communists.

Businessmen gave speeches in Chinese at the fixed microphone stand at the center of the stage. The Chinese people were surely making progress in America, they said, and Policeman Chow was such a hard worker that the foreigners couldn't help but promote him. It wasn't really a promotion, but I knew better than to interrupt an elder.

One
guy from the Hong Kong business alliance gave a speech encouraging the Chinese people to continue to fight the communists. He ended by giving a dirty look to the communist photographer.

Right before he went up, Vandyne came up to me at the
table and said, “I'm only doing this because my nephew loves that stamp book you got him.”

“I figured he'd like it m
ore than me,” I said. Vandyne toyed with
the tuning pegs on his guitar. He stooped slightly at the mike.

“Hello,” he said awkwardly. He put his hands together and
nodded his head. Then he played and sang “I'm Walking” by Fats Domino. The singing was a little off, but the playing was spot on. He gave off a good vibe and even got the Chinese people to clap in time.

He came off and I gave him a hug. Then I went up to the
mike. I had a three-paragraph speech ready about how my dad was a waiter and how he'd suffered at the hands of a place like Jade Palace. I was also going to talk about how more Chinese had to come forward to report crimes in the community. Paul had helped me with the prepositions.

But the microphone was turned off. I tapped it a few
times, but nothing came out of the speakers. The dinner was winding down and people had already broken away from their assigned places to talk at other tables. I was worried I wouldn't have a chance to have my say.

I stood at the podium and leaned on my elbows. For the
most part, the Chinese people were talking amongst themselves and the cops were doing the same. It brought home how I was just an instrument. I was the dummy who made both sides look good. It didn't matter what I thought or said for myself. In fact, nobody even cared to listen to me.

“Willie!” I yelled when I saw him passing by. “Tell them to
turn on the microphone.”

Willie Gee was dressed in a red suit with gaudy lace trim on
its oversized lapels. He smiled and said, “One second!” He ducked into a bar at the side and came back with a bottle of Heineken and a glass. “You wanted a beer, right?” he said as he popped the cap off and poured it.

The smell of alcohol made my eyes water. I felt like I was
drinking it already. I could have just one beer, couldn't I? Willie put it on the stand and pushed it closer to me.

“It's cold,” he said, smiling.

Lonnie's hand came crashing in and swept the bottle and
glass into Willie's chest.

“I'm sorry, I'm so clumsy!” she said.

“Stupid girl!” growled Willie Gee. He slipped off to the
kitchen
, but not before snapping his fingers at one of the older waiters and pointing at the broken glass on the floor.

“This dinner isn't really your style, is it?” Lonnie asked me.
She had on a red chiffon dress that made her look like she was stepping out of a rose.

“No, not at all.” I came out from around the microphone
stand and stepped down from the platform. I put my

hands around her shoulders while keeping some distance between our bodies. People were slipping on their coats

and leaving.

“Are you going home now?” she asked.

“I'm pretty much done here,” I said. I asked the newspaper
reporters if they wanted to talk to me, but they all declined. They already had the story written, they said. They only came to take pictures.

“You're going to do just fine,” said Vandyne, clapping my
back.

“You look so handsome tonight, Robert,” said Rose.

“Chow,” said Vandyne as he came in closer. “I want you

to know that we still need to brainstorm business ideas

together. This guitar playing isn't going to support the

both of us.”

“You still got 16-odd years, right? Twenty and out?”

“I got a lot of odd years left,” Vandyne said.

Teeter came in. “They didn't even let you talk, huh?”

“No, but I guess I shouldn't have been surprised. It wasn't
exactly a crowd-pleasing speech I had planned.”

“So congratulations on getting some investigative assignments.”

“Teeter, how in the world did you know?”

“I know this guy high up in the department. He was pretty
impressed after watching you in the hockey game.”

“Is he high enough to get me out of doing stupid public-

relations assignments?”

Teeter smiled. “As a matter of fact, it's over for you.”

“Over?”

“This is the last one. He's ordering you to be removed from
the public eye. It doesn't behoove a future detective to have his face all over the place.”

“Who is this guy, Teeter?”

“You'll know later on. He's a really good guy who keeps a
low profile, but he's a powerful name.”

My mother and
the midget came up to me at the same time. She looked him over.

“Hey, you must be the poor little man
who plays games in
the park,” my mother said. Her voice sounded like she didn't think the midget could count to five.

“I'm not poor,” said the midget.

“I told Robert that I couldn't believe that a grown man
would waste so much time just playing games.”

“Mom, the midget is going to be the star of a movie.”

“Is it a children's movie?” she asked.

The midget cleared his throat. “I'm going out for a smoke,”
he said. Wang left with him.

“That's a rather rude exit,” said my mother.

I was about to say something mean when Lonnie cut in.

“You're Robert's mother?” she asked.

“You Robert's girlfriend?” asked my mother, pointing her
right elbow at Lonnie.

“Yes, I am,” said Lonnie, taking her hand.

“When are you two getting married?”

Lonnie laughed like Chinese people do when they're ready
to move onto the next topic or leave. We left.

—

At the bottom of the escalator, Wang and the midget were sitting on a stone bench. The midget had taken his name tag off and was folding it over and over.

“You have a minute, Officer Chow?” asked the midget.

“Sure.”

“I wanted to talk to you in private,” he said.

“Wang, can you escort Lonnie home?”

“Sure. It would be a pleasure.”

“Oh,” said Lonnie. “Robert, I'll see you later, then.” I gave her
a tight hug. Then I sat down with the midget and watched them swing out through the glass front doors.

“Officer Chow, I want to offer you my heartiest
congratulations. Even though this award's bullshit.”

“Thank you, and let me apologize for my mother. I'm sorry
for the way she treated you.”

“Don't feel sorry for me,” he said. “I've got more than
everything I've ever wanted. But what about you? It looks like the police are changing your duties.”

“You know what they want me to do now? Go around and
take pictures of Paul and his friends because they can't even tell the good ones from the bad ones.”

The midget smiled and cracked his neck.

“Speaking of bad ones, how about that Yip?” he said.

“Yeah, he tried to get close to me just to find my blind spot.”

“I think he genuinely liked you.”

“I don't know how to take that.”

We stood there a little w
hile, listening to the slurping sound coming from the rubber
handrails on the escalators.