This Is a Bust (6 page)

“When I came here there were no Chinese policemen. The
white ones all had bad tempers and hated the people here.” Yip paused to finish his coffee. “I want you to know that I'm so proud to know that a Chinese can be a policeman. I'm so proud to know you,” he said, patting my cuff.

“Thank you.”

“So you married?”

“No.”

“You're too picky. There are a lot of nice girls.”

“And they all know a policeman doesn't make much
money.”

“Most of the girls don't think like that.”

“Just the Chinese ones,” I said.

Yip l
aughed and I bit my lip. What's so fucking funny, old
man, I thought. His mouth opened wider and I saw black splotches on his molars. After he calmed down a bit, he asked, “How old are you and you're not married?”

“I'm 25.”

“You have to think about your children.”

“I'm not sure I want to have children. I'm not even sure I
want to find someone to love to have children with.”

“Someday you will.” I nodded and didn't say anything
because I didn't want to keep talking along these lines. I became aware of an older Chinese woman standing near our booth. She was clutching a small beaded purse.

I leaned into Yip and said, “I think you got a friend here.”

“She's Wah's shift supervisor. She wanted to talk to you.”

“I told you before, it's not my case. I'm not handling it,” I
said. That cued the woman to approach us directly.

“Hello, Yip,” she said. “How are you doing?”

“Officer Chow, this is Lily.”

“Hello, Lily,” I said. She took a seat and squeezed Yip over to
face me directly.

“I wasn't just Wah's supervisor,” she said. “I consider myself
a friend of hers. We worked together almost 30 years.” She dropped her voice a few octaves before going on. “I have never talked to the police before about anything. I've tried to live my life honestly and never get the police involved. Never wanted any trouble.” She brought her face in close. Lily's hair was in a tight, smelly perm. She tried to cake makeup into the lines around her face, but she didn't use enough. A red scarf was draped across her broad shoulders.

“So
metimes the police have to get involved,” I said. “We
don't like it any more than you do. But we've got good men on the case already.”

“You'r
e the only one I can trust,” she said. “I start trying 
to
speak English and the stupid white cops roll their eyes 
at me.”

“If
you have something to report about Wah, we can get you
an interpreter at the precinct. This is not my case. Someone else is handling it. Did Yip tell you to come here and meet me?” I looked at Yip, but he had his head down and his hands around his tea cup.

“I told Yip I had to meet that Chinese policeman and talk to
him,” Lily said.

“What do you want to tell me?”

“I know who killed Wah.”

“Look, if you know something, you have to go down to the
precinct or at least call it in.”

“I don't want to! I have to tell you! No one else
understands!” It was no use talking to her. I felt waylaid by the old woman. I resented Yip for making me come out. I glared at him, but Yip didn't make a sound.

“Okay,” I said. “What do you know?” She smiled.

“Wah was one of the best workers at Jade Palace. She could
always convince people to get two or three extra dishes. She knew all the customers by name and what they liked. There are two groups of waiters and waitresses at Jade Palace — the young and careless, and the old and bitter. She had the energy of the young people and the old people's connection with regular customers. But Wah was being paid the same as everyone else.”

“And she expected to get paid more.”

“It's
even worse than that. The younger people were geting
angry that the management was taking part of their tips. They started holding meetings to see if they should start a union. The old people already knew that this was the established practice and accepted it, but Wah went to some meetings.
They told her she should be paid at least 20% more, based on her seniority. Then when the younger workers decided to go on strike, Wah went to the upper management. You know, I'm just a low-level manager. I'm only one step above the workers. I told her not to, that they would laugh in her face.”

“And she didn't get her raise.”

“She got the raise!” Suddenly Lily dropped her voice. “And a
month later, she was. . .” Lily pursed her lips and flipped her hands to show her palms. “It must have been a jealous co-worker, one of the younger people.”

“Who?”

“I don't know.”

“You said you knew who killed Wah!”

“No! I didn't say that!”

“You said you thought you knew who killed Wah.”

“I didn't say that!”

“Yes, you. . .oh, never mind. I think it's time for me to leave.”
I was getting too bogged down with useless information. Some dry Japanese beer would help clear the chalkboard.

“What are you going to do now?” Lily asked.

“I have go
match up some stray socks. I'm sorry I can't
help
you.”

“But Wah is dead!”

“If you think one of her co-workers killed her. . .”

“I never said that!”

I lazily scratched at my face and turned to Yip. “What do
you know about this?”

“She told me about the raise, but I didn't know anything

about the meetings. We never talked very much about work. We only wanted to talk about the good things in life.”

“Lily, you're
going to have to go to the precinct and make
a
statement.”

“No, I can't! I don't want any trouble!”

I stood up and dropped a few bills on the table.

“Officer Chow! You cannot pay! I invited you out today!”
Yip exclaimed.

“Yip, I can't allow you to pay for me. Nice meeting you, Lily.”

“Nice meeting you, officer.”

The dim-sum crowds on the sidewalks were getting louder,
but no tourists came into this cafe. I walked to the door and hit the street. I thought about a little coffee shop that had catered to people who came over in the 1920s. They spoke a dry, sharp Shanghainese you almost never hear in Chinatown anymore. That cafe's a pharmacy now.

I got o
ff the sidewalk and onto the street, hugging the
parked cars. It was the easiest way to get through Chinatown, since the sidewalks were crammed with tourists and vendors. I put my hands in my pockets and thought about people who were dead, places that were gone, things that had changed.

—

I was born into a batch of kids that Chinatown just loved. Because of the War Bride Act, Chinese women of a child-
bearing age had finally been allowed to come over in significant numbers. Before then, a lot of Chinatown consisted of groups of old men getting older. And these old men would stand on a corner all day just to get a look at a Chinese woman, maybe glance at her legs, too. This guy I called “uncle” whom I wasn't related to at all told me the best place was Mott and Bayard because there were markets nearby, and you'd see the women doing some shopping.

When the
Chinese women started coming over in numbers,
it prettied up the scenery. It also increased the sound volume — newly born Chinese kids wailed from their makeshift cribs all night every night. For the first time ever, you could smell diapers in the streets.

Nobody complained, because us kids were miracles. The
Chinese community wasn't going to die out. Nearly every merchant had loose candies to hand out to us.

I w
as born in 1950, the year after my mother came over 
and
married my father in a deal that his boss helped fix.

I still don't know exactly what happened. He was a 40-year-old waiter and she was 20. She was expecting the Wizard 
of Oz, but she got the scarecrow, my dad. They named me after Robert Mitchum, this American B-movie chump my mother liked.

I had a great time as a kid. Everybody older was “uncle” or
“aunt.” Nobody ever hit us. There were no grandmothers or grandfathers to guilt us into doing anything. No older brothers to slap us around or older sisters to snitch on us. Birthday parties every day. The only thing we were forced to do was say, “Thank you,” when we got little candies. Everybody knew Cantonese, but we spoke English to leave out our parents.

Things started changing when I was around 10. The older
kids were shoplifting, smoking, and ripping off dusty bottles of gift booze their parents had forgotten.

Two gangs set themselves up in different parts of
Chinatown
. You had to be in one or the other. The group I was in was the Continentals. We used paint scrapers to hack off the metal emblems from Lincoln Continentals. You had to get eight to join. The rival group was the Darts. I joined the Continentals only because those cars looked cooler. Moy was in the Darts, but he was still my friend.

I guess the Continentals and Darts weren't really gangs,
because when they met up in Columbus Park, something like a softball game would break out. It was tame. Fellow group members were as likely to come to blows (for striking out or missing a catch) as people from rival groups.
The only fights we had were against the Italian kids from across Canal Street and the Spanish kids on the east side of Bowery. They'd come into Chinatown and try to steal stuff from stores, or maybe eat in a restaurant and run out on the check.

The Continentals would hang out in Cathy's, this soda joint
on the south end of Mott, right by the fancy Port Arthur restaurant. The Darts hung out at Rocky's, which was down at Chatham Square and Bowery. The two hangouts were about two blocks away from each other, but we stayed away from each other's hangout.

After
Cathy's closed to become a hair salon, the Continentals
and the Darts both shared Rocky's and the rivalry died. The older kids had gone off to college, and new kids were coming over from Hong Kong. The American-born kids were finding themselves in the minority. Me and this other guy started going to the Police Athletic League events for the free McDonald
'
s meals and ice skating.

Then in
1969 the draft came to Chinatown. I didn't care
about getting out of it. I had finished high school and was drifting. But I knew how bad it was in China, and how we should be grateful for the better life we had in the U.S. I knew that serving was the best way to prove how much I loved America. We had to stop Communism.

Some othe
r guys I knew were making up crazy stories to
get out of the draft. They were now Buddhist vegetarians who believed that ending another creature's life was against their religion. One guy took a post teaching English in a Navajo school out west. Fuck them, I thought. If you're not willing to fight for the freedoms of this country, you shouldn't be allowed to live in it. Hell, your parents shouldn't have been allowed to come over.

I was real stupid and innocent back then. That was before
we were in basic training and the instructor pulled me out of line, faced me to the company, and said, “This is what a gook looks like. He's the complete opposite of you, and he's out to kill you. What are you going to do about it?”

—

After I got my shield and piece, I ran into an old buddy of mine from the Continentals, this guy named John Lo who was also in Nam. He told me that some of the vets were getting together at Rocky's on a regular basis and that I should come to the next meeting.

I went to a meeting and John Lo pulled out some pictures.
Vietnamese girls in short skirts. Street kids flashing peace signs. A smiling John Lo in a ricepicker hat, tied up on the ground with a bunch of white GI's pointing bayonets in 
his face.

“John, what the fuck is this?” I asked him.

“What? That's just having fun with the guys. Tell you a
story, I got the hat from a boom-boom girl.”

“They tied you up like a VC and that's funny?”

“What are you getting so worked up about?”

“What kind of fucking idiot are you?”

“You need a shrink, Robert. The war's over.”

“Too
bad for you. You wanted to dress up like a dink 
some
more.”

“It was just a joke!”

“Why don't I go into your house and rape your mother and
shoot your father and say it was a joke because I thought they were VC?” I stopped myself there, because I was getting to be known with my press photos. It didn't look good for me to be talking like that. I kicked my chair back and left.

—

I understand that the group only met a few times more. Guys dropped out one by one.

After two days on the 0000 to 0800, I was on the day tour again. The turnaround was always tough. If the job duties alone weren't bad enough, there was always the interruption to your sleep cycle to sprinkle more sand in your shell.

It was three days before Chinese New Year on January 31
and I figured I should be drinking more to get me loose enough for the holiday.