This Is a Bust (14 page)

“What's going on?”

“One of our new strategies.”

“Want to talk about it?”

“I don't have all the details, yet.”

We left it at that. I drank some iced chrysanthemum tea,
shook my head out, and continued on the footpost.

Outside the pharmacy on Elizabeth, a little girl sat in a
battered ride machine that was a hybrid of copyright and trademark violations. It had the head of Mickey Mouse, the body of a tugboat that narrated a children's television show, and a Daffy Duck tail. The girl was straddling the tugboat and her hands were grabbing Mickey's ears where the paint was worn off. She rocked back and forth making train sounds even though the machine was off.

Her mother was inside the pharmacy looking at bottles of
shampoo. She had on a long black skirt and a gray blouse. Her hair was up in barrettes. She was tired.

“Choo choo choo!” yelled the girl.

“Okay, kid,” I said.
Here was a chance to prove I could do
something nice. I plugged a quarter into the coin slot of the Mickey tugboat.

Nothing happened.

I checked the change slot, but found only a flattened bottle
cap. I shifted my weight back and kicked the coin box.

“Choo choo choo!” yelled the girl.

I grabbed the coin box and rattled it. It sounded like
my quarter was in there somewhere. I went inside the pharmacy, walked past the girl's mother, and stepped up to the counter.

Mr. Chew was showing off his good standing posture in
a crisp, white short-sleeved shirt. A cheap ballpoint pen jutted from behind his ear. Dark brown speckles danced on his cheeks as he talked to another customer, an old Chinese man in a flannel shirt and a Mets cap.

“I hav
e a problem,” I said to Mr. Chew. He turned to me and
frowned.

“What's w
rong?” he asked, leaning on the counter and
looking up at me. He took a sniff. “Need some hangover remedies?”

“I lost a quarter in your ride outside.”

“I guess you didn't see the sign that said ‘Play at your own
risk.' No refunds.”

“I think your machine's broken and that's why you should
give me my quarter back.”

“No
refunds,” said Mr. Chew. Then the girl's mother came up
to us.

“I told him I lost a quarter in the machine, too. He wouldn't
give me anything. This man is cheap.”

“I can't do anything, anyway. I just work here. If I give
money back to people, the owner is going to be upset.”

“Mr.
Chew,” I said, “Don't even pretend you're not the owner.
Maybe if this place wasn't called ‘Chew's Pharmacy,' you'd get away with it.” Mr. Chew scowled.

“He's got you there, old Chew!” said the elderly Mets fan,
laughing. “I told you, you should have named this store after a garden!”

“The problem with you two is that you have no respect,”
Mr. Chew said to the girl's mother and me. He pulled two quarters from his pocket and dropped them on the counter.

“I don't have to respect a liar,” I said. “You should put an
‘Out
of order' sign on your machine.”

“And you should use some mouthwash,” said Mr. Chew. I
was out of Tic Tacs but I wasn't going to buy them from him. Chew on that, Chew.

When we got outside, the mother thanked me and picked
up her little girl.

“I don't like Mr. Chew,” she said. “I only shop there because
everything's so cheap.”

“That's because he sells old stuff.” I said. “That shampoo you
got there, they don't even make it anymore. That company went out of business.”

“But it still works, doesn't it?”

“Sure, if your hair doesn't fall out.”

The little girl got off the mouseboat quietly and stood by her mother. She was a good girl.

“Choo choo choo!” I said to her. She looked at me like I was crazy.

—

I ran into Vandyne outside the Five. We agreed to grab a bite. I was already out of my uniform.

“You look happier when you're not in the bag,” said
Vandyne.

“The world looks happier to me when I'm in plainclothes.”

“That's 'cause they don't know you're a pig,” said Vandyne.

We went down Elizabeth Street and slipped into a below-
street-level joint on Bayard.

“The chewy noodles that are wrinkly,” said Vandyne. “That's
the kind I want.”

I knew that when Vandyne ate by himself,
he'd get fried rice,
but with me, he would venture into noodles, some greens. I'd tell him all the time that today's fried rice was yesterday's leftover white rice, but he was stubborn. He grew up eating fried rice in Philadelphia.

“I know which noodles you want,” I told Vandyne. They
weren't really noodles, they were tofu skins, but I wasn't going to bother to tell him that. “We can get th
at with pork and then get some mustard greens on the side,” I said. I called the waitress over and ordered. She brought Vandyne a fork.

“He didn't ask for any fork,” I said sharply.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said, and took it away with nervous
fingers. It fell to the floor with a clatter. She picked it up and scurried into the kitchen. Vandyne smiled and closed his eyes, rubbed his eyebrows.

“What did you say to her?”

“I told her we needed more Calgon.”

“You're going to get us blacklisted at every restaurant 
in
Chinatown.”

“What do you mean? We already are.”

“We've got to stop eating in Chinese places. Maybe we
should go to Little Italy.”

“Little Italy's doomed. It's all going to be Chinatown soon.
They'll celebrate San Gennaro with lion dances.”

“Let's just go to McDonald's next time,” said Vandyne.

“Naw, let's go to Sambo's.” We both laughed hard.

“Oh, no! Don't even joke about that shit!” said Vandyne,
almost crying. The restaurant chain, based on the racist story of “Little Black Sambo,” was facing nationwide boycotts by prominent blacks. Vandyne's wife was one of the main people on that campaign.

“How's the job treating you?” I asked Vandyne.

“It's all right, all right.” He sipped his Coke. “Kinda dead,
not too much going on. I'm kind of a superstar here. Little Chinese kids touch my legs to see if I'm made out of chocolate. So Chow, who's this girl you been seeing?”

“Aw. . .” I said, feeling my appetite slide down into my shoes.
The midget must have seen me with Barbara and told Vandyne. “It came to nothing.”

“Can't find a Chinese girl good enough for you?” asked
Vandyne. “You're still young, you could. . .”

“I'm not young anymore. I'm 25. The game's over. Anyway,
my mother always said the whole convention of dating and marriage is the government's way of keeping you too distracted by your personal life to see how they're ripping you off.”

“They are ripping you off, all right. Only they're gonna rip
you off if you're distracted or not. So it might as well be a pretty distraction.”

Both dishes came in at the same time. Vandyne took the
serving spoon and scooped a steaming, greasy heap of tofu skins and pork onto my plate.

“Serving the other person first. Very Chinese of you,” I said.

“Naw, I just want to see you eat this stuff, see if you keel
over.” Suddenly, his eyes bugged out. “What the hell are those?” he asked pointing at the plate.

“Just some soybeans.”

“Are those motherfuckers?”

“No, they're not lima beans.”

“While
I was in the Nam and I got ham-and-motherfuckers
rations, I'd eat them all and wouldn't complain. But only because I swore to God that when I got back to the world, I would never eat motherfuckers again. No way!”

“They're not bad.”

“Then how come you're not eating them?”

“Are you timing me? Just give me more than a minute to
eat.”

“If they ain't motherfuckers, they're cousins of
motherfuckers.”
He was in genuine distress.

“Look, the only thing you need to be worried about is
finding a piece of a plate in your food, especially if your serving plate doesn't have any chips in it.”

“How come?”

“Because it means they dropped your original plate back
in the kitchen. Then they scooped everything up and put it on a new plate. Only they missed picking out a fragment or two.”

Vandyne turned purple.

“That's why he gave me that dish for free,” he said in a far-
away voice.

“This food right here seems to be okay, right now.”

We ate for a while.

“So, yeah, I was seeing this girl for a little bit,” I said.

“Who was this girl?”

“It's unbelievable in a way. She was the first girl I ever
kissed.”

“Your mom?”

“Hey, we said no mothers!”

“C'mon, now. I'm kidding. What's her name?”

“Her name was Barbara. Well, it still is Barbara. But she
kinda broke it off with me.”

“What was the reason?”

I shrugged and pulled my lips tight.

Vandyne took a mouthful of food. He chewed and exhaled
at the same time for a minute.

“Didn't see her long?”

“Just a few days. That's all.”

“So you don't seem too hurt.”

“It just seems that, I don't know. It was just so fast.”

Vandyne chuckled.

“Better too fast than too long, partner. Anyway, lots of
Chinese girls in the sea.”

“Who says I want a Chinese girl?” I asked as I served
Vandyne some more pork, keeping the soybeans at bay.
“Maybe I don't care what color she is. Maybe I want a black
girl.”

“Please,” grunted Vandyne. “The real problem is you can't
care about anyone else until you care about yourself.”

“I care about you, man.”

“Yeah, I got enough people caring about me. Don't you
worry about me.” Vandyne twirled his chopsticks around clumsily. “I still remember how hard it was not having anyone to come home to.”

“I can't argue with a married man.”

“I used to be a lone predator like you. Okay, a
lonely
predator. Thought I was too hardcore or whatever to settle down. Then I met that special girl.”

“Great.”

“Hey, what about that girl at the bakery? She likes you a lot.”

“Who?”

“That girl Ronnie, Bonnie, Connie.”

“Lonnie.”

“Yeah, Lonnie. She's real nice and sweet.”

“Her? I'm like five years older than her.”

“Couple of years is nothing.”

“Vandyne, let's talk about something else. Do you know
anything about the old Chinese woman who was poisoned?”

He shook his head and wiped his mouth.

“It's my case, but I'm not holding out on you when I say
there's not much to tell. I went over to Jade Palace with an interpreter. Nobody's talking. Nobody knows anything. People don't even remember Wah, even though she'd been there what, 30 years.”

“How far do you think you can take the case?”

“Not too far. In fact, I think they kinda stuck me with it
because there's no pressure or reason to find a resolution. Probably a natural cause, anyway.”

“Probably doesn't mean for certain. Don't you think you
need a
Chinese guy on the case, too?”

“Well, English says that experience solves crimes not race.”

“Nobody has more experience in Chinatown than me.”

“Yeah, I know that and you know that, but that's not gonna
fly in the detective squad. Anyway, people aren't gonna be more open to you because you're Chinese. In fact, they'll probably be even more closed.”

“There's that ‘probably' again.”

“You don't have any investigative experience.”

“
Well, how the hell am I going to get any if they don't let me
do the job?”

Vandyne suddenly jumped as a wad of noodles slipped
down the front of his shirt, leaving a slime trail. I put my hand up and waved at the waitress.

“We're going to need that fork, after all,” I said.

—

The next day was sunny and in the 50s, warm enough for old men to bring their birds out to the park. Some brought out canaries or parakeets, but the most popular bird had black feathers that looked like oily hair. In the sun, their bodies reflected back green, blue, and purple, like street 
pigeons, only better.

Birds are always kept one to a cage because the pretty ones
are male and there's nothing male birds like more than tearing up other males. Put two males in one cage and you'll end up with one on the floor with its feet sticking up and the other one mortally wounded.

I slowed down as I walked by the bamboo cages set up
in the grass. They were partially covered by burlap sacks to provide shade and keep the breezes away. All the birds faced north in their individual cages and chirped together, though none of them could see each other. The owners sat on benches, their backs to the cages, their hands flapping wildly as they told each other bird stories.