Death Doesn't Forget Read online

  ALSO BY ED LIN

  The Taipei Night Market Novels

  Ghost Month

  Incensed

  99 Ways to Die

  The Robert Chow Novels

  This Is a Bust

  Snakes Can’t Run

  One Red Bastard

  Other Novels

  Waylaid

  David Tung Can’t Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets into

  an Ivy League College

  Copyright © 2022 by Ed Lin

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Soho Press, Inc.

  227 W 17th Street

  New York, NY 10011

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Lin, Ed, author.

  Title: Death doesn’t forget / Ed Lin.

  Other titles: Death does not forget

  Description: New York, NY : Soho Crime, [2022] | Series: The Taipei night market novels ; 4 | Identifiers: LCCN 2021060874

  ISBN 978-1-64129-327-3

  eISBN 978-1-64129-328-0

  Subjects: GSAFD: Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3562.I4677 D43 2022 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060874

  Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For the Sunflowers and the Umbrellas

  The wide and multifaceted world itself exists as an historical truth. But does that mean that the marginal world is any less true?

  —Pa’labang, from “The Mother of History”

  in Indigenous Writers of Taiwan

  CHAPTER 1

  On the morning of the last full day of his life, Boxer pulled the corners of the 7-Eleven sales receipt flat onto the desk with his thumbs and index fingers. He was afraid the slip of paper would lift up its edges and fly away. Reluctantly, Boxer lifted his right hand and gingerly picked up his phone.

  The display read 8:03 A.M., a few hours before he usually woke up. He pressed the home button and tapped the Ministry of Finance app, the one that automatically reads QR codes. He muted the phone, focused the camera on the receipt, and tried to hold his hands still.

  Maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe Boxer was in for yet another rude awakening.

  The phone buzzed and a pop-up message indicated that the receipt was indeed a winner in the latest drawing—200,000 New Taiwan dollars in cash! That was as much as he made in half a year.

  He thought about his old friends, guys he had known since they shoplifted candy together. Boxer and his friends had learned a lesson early on: leave the tourists alone. One time, when Boxer was eight years old, he asked a white couple by Longshan Temple for change. He wasn’t even trying to pickpocket them, but a policeman had dragged him into an alley, and beat and kicked him until he passed out.

  He touched his right eyebrow at the memory of the thrashing. As a grown man, he understood now what had set off the policeman. What would happen if the visitors went to the local precinct and complained about the beggar boys? The cop would have been demoted or fired because it had happened on his beat. Moreover, if Taiwan’s reputation wasn’t good, no one would visit and spend like they were handing out play money. Whenever they paid for things, tourists always chuckled to themselves.

  The trick to avoiding harassment was to rip off other Taiwanese. Boxer did so for a long time. He and his friends stole scooters and bicycles for years. The gang only broke up as its members moved on to bigger things.

  Tiger, who had deep pockmarks like black dots on a big cat’s face, started hanging out in clubs and selling drugs for a syndicate. He had died in jail.

  Ah Quan had moved into computer fraud early, with fake magnetic strips to withdraw money from ATMs. One day he disappeared. Boxer had heard that Ah Quan changed his name, moved south, and became a legitimate programmer.

  Jessy was a rich kid who just wanted to steal. He was sloppy and his dad got him out of trouble so many times. Finally, enough was enough and his father shipped him off to Canada.

  I’m the only one of my generation striving in the streets of Taipei, thought Boxer, but my day has finally come. Now that he was sitting pretty, he could call up his co-workers at the bar and show them how much they had underestimated him.

  “Boxer is really a generous guy!” he could hear them say. He would ply them with food, drink, and maybe more, depending on how appreciative they were.

  He just had to get the money first.

  Most receipts could be redeemed at convenience store chains like 7-Eleven and FamilyMart. But his prize was far above the NT$1,000 limit. He had to go to a bank to collect. If he wanted to get to the closest Chang Hwa Bank branch when it opened at nine, he had to leave soon.

  The thought of leaving the apartment gave him a panic attack. Boxer clamped his entire left hand flat over the receipt in case it started yelling.

  He had to make sure not to wake up Siu-lien!

  Boxer cautiously turned his head, expecting to find her still asleep beneath the threadbare sheets. Instead, Siu-lien was sitting up in bed, her arms hugging her folded knees.

  “I heard your phone buzz,” she said, her words and eyes tired and angry. “The sound of that receipt checker woke me up.”

  Boxer cleared his throat.

  “Good morning, honey,” he said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  You mean you didn’t want to wake me because you wanted to get the money for yourself,” she threw back at him. “That’s my winning receipt you have over there, right?”

  “Our receipt,” Boxer said too loudly and too quickly. “You paid for the cigarettes, but if I didn’t ask you to buy them for me, we wouldn’t have won.”

  EVERY PAPER RECEIPT IN Taiwan is a lottery ticket for cash prizes from the government. It’s the Ministry of Finance’s way of ensuring that people ask for receipts for their purchases. When the QR codes are scanned for lottery winnings, they create electronic trails of taxable income that can be checked against businesses that try to cheat. The tax money that came in far outweighed the monthly prizes, which topped out at NT$10 million—about 340,000 American dollars. If you hit that, you could move to America.

  Boxer and Siu-lien hadn’t been good about keeping receipts. The agency only held drawings every two months, and the government counted on people like them to discard potential big winners or put them through the wash. The latest drawing had been held a few weeks ago, but Boxer and Siu-lien only managed to retrieve receipts from their pockets and wastebaskets last night to check them. The first seven were all duds. The very last one caused Boxer’s phone to exclaim “You’ve won!” in a chipper cybergirl voice.

  They were amused at first. “Free bag of chips,” Boxer said. Then they read what the app said.

  “WE’RE LUCKY THAT I smoke,” Boxer declared, smiling as if to offer his yellow and purple teeth for proof of his habit. “And you’ve been trying to get me to quit for years.”

  “We’re lucky that I managed to hold on to that receipt!” Siu-lien said.

  Boxer picked at the mole on the side of his chin. “We said we’d split the money evenly.”

  Finally, Siu-lien wavered. “We did,” she said.

  He stood up triumphantly with as much dignity as a lanky, shirtless functioning alcoholic could muster. “I’m going to the bank now to get our money.”

  Siu-lien slid across the mattress and put her feet on the floor. “Hold on, Boxer. I’m coming, t
oo!”

  Boxer shoved the receipt to the bottom of his left pants pocket and wagged a finger at her with his right hand. “You don’t trust me, huh?” He snatched a work shirt from the back of the chair and punched his arms through the short sleeves. “You never think I’m good enough for you, Siu-lien. Is that it? Are you trying to make me leave you?”

  She sat on the side of the bed and put one foot on top of the other. “Of course I trust you, Boxer. I just think we should both be there in person. Don’t you think it’s something we should do together?”

  His shirt was now on, and he was finishing the fifth and last intact button. “Don’t get sentimental on me,” said Boxer. “It’s just money.”

  He scratched his right ear and tried to stand straight. Siulien reminded him of a judge who had considered his fate back when he was a juvenile. She had known, just as Siulien surely did now, that Boxer was likely to deviate from The Good, but if called out on his bad intentions, he would deny them, and later do something even worse to make up for being humiliated.

  “Okay,” said Siu-lien. “I’ll see you at work, then, Boxer.” She knew well enough not to expect him to come straight home with the money without meeting up with his friends and treating them. That lot wouldn’t crawl out of bed before noon to search for a legitimate job, but they would throw something on and wash their faces for free treats. The best outcome was for him to show up at the bar with her half of the money intact.

  Siu-lien and Boxer both worked at a dive called BaBa Bar near Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station. He was a combination bartender-bouncer for the rougher and younger crowd at the basement level. She poured drinks on the ground floor for the older men who still called her young lady.

  Boxer shoved his right foot into a sandal and regarded Siu-lien in the sticky orange sunlight. She was still pretty, especially when you first saw her, like a colorful beach stone still wet from the tide. After you got it home and it was dry, you’d see that it was whitening in places and had a number of surface imperfections. You’d still keep the rock, though.

  Siu-lien examined Boxer as he crouched to gingerly put on his left sandal. The strap was coming apart and the puckering leather was rubbing the skin between his toes raw. Boxer looked much older than 45, and Siu-lien noted that as he straightened up, popping sounds came from his bones. He sighed when finally erect.

  “I’ll see you tonight,” he said. “I’ll definitely leave your share of the money untouched,” he added, gathering his hands together in a promise to her and a prayer that he could keep his word.

  Siu-lien gave a grim smile and smoothed the sheet around her.

  HOURS LATER, AT WORK, Siu-lien was wiping down the counter more often than she normally would have. She shouldn’t have trusted Boxer. Every payday meant a night or two out with his friends, men only, or so he said. But the lottery win was bigger than a payday. It was practically a heist, one where Siu-lien, the victim, had little recourse. She hadn’t filled out the back of the receipt. Boxer could have written in his name only. Siu-lien had paid for the cigarettes in cash, with her tips. If she had only used a card, it would have proven that the purchase was hers. Well, they weren’t going to go to court over it. The judge could probably dig up enough on both of them to justify the state confiscating the funds. Boxer’s record spoke for itself, and Siu-lien always regretted paying a fine for an “offense against sexual morality” instead of fighting the drummed-up charge. Back then, it had seemed the easier way, so that she wouldn’t have to miss work, but the charge remained on her record. Siu-lien had thought it would be expunged, but now she didn’t know if it was the cop or her public defender who had told her that. She tried hard to remember, and mercifully that prevented her from being so furious at Boxer and herself that she wasn’t able to work at all.

  She half listened to the old men and half smiled. They didn’t notice anything amiss.

  “Miss, another round, please.”

  “Miss! Could you please read this email for me? I can’t make the screen bright enough for me to see.”

  “You’re so beautiful, young lady, why don’t I see your boyfriend tonight?” asked one man who winked flirtatiously with the eyelid that wasn’t drooping.

  “He’s not feeling well,” Siu-lien said with a half laugh. Boxer was probably rip-roaringly drunk. His absence tonight also meant that Boxer had lost yet another job for sure. Nobody got a third chance at BaBa Bar, although the name implied that it was a lucky place. The bar’s street address was 88. “Ba,” the word for eight in Mandarin, sounds like “wealthy,” and three of them in a row (including the sound in “bar”) means “getting wealthy.” A name like that kept superstitious Taiwanese coming in to drink.

  Siu-lien wasn’t getting wealthy. At nine o’clock, a retired army guy bought shots for everyone who admitted they were 65 or older. He made Siu-lien drink with them. She threw it back and grimaced. Boxer had to be tapping into her share of the money by now.

  THEY WERE ONE PERSON short, so everyone had to stay late to clean. Siu-lien couldn’t stand the sight of Old Chen bending down to move kegs, so she moved them herself trying to use her legs and not her back. It was hard to do even in her modest heels.

  She took a cab home, and the streetlights flashed through her fluttering eyelids like passing thoughts. Siu-lien was hoping to find him in bed, passed out. She could forgive him then, no matter what else he’d done during the day.

  The bed was empty, apart from the cold moonlight that pooled on his pillow. Siu-lien sat with one leg up on the sofa, driving the hard part of the armrest into her ribs, and checking her phone.

  No returned texts, emails, or voice mail. Not even a butt dial.

  She closed her eyes. Maybe someone had robbed him. Fat chance. He’d be the last man a thief would eye. He should have been the last man Siu-lien chose to eye.

  God, why was she with Boxer? Had she settled for him only because he offered periods of relative stability, and made her feel loved sometimes? Or maybe just because they worked in the same bar?

  If he came in right now with my money, she thought, I could forgive him. She crossed her legs and rubbed her feet.

  SIU-LIEN AWOKE WITH A start about every hour. One time it was because someone dropped a set of keys on the hallway floor. Later she thought she had felt his touch on her cheek, but it was her own hand, probably brushing away a mosquito in her sleep. There were already two bites on her arms. She had asked Boxer to fix the window screen, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. It wasn’t a priority for him. He never got bit. He never bled.

  Now Siu-lien was wide awake with anger, feeling both hot and cold.

  Dim light in the shape of an elongated bug crawled to a corner of the ceiling. It could have been daybreak or streetlights. Siu-lien didn’t want to know what time it was. A fresh level of disappointment in Boxer manifested as a cramp in her left side.

  Siu-lien couldn’t even cry. Not for the months of her life she’d wasted on Boxer that were more precious than the money, really. She’d have to get her share of the money, somehow. Even if she had to force Boxer to sell his blood plasma every two weeks. Was his blood even healthy enough to sell? Maybe that’s why the mosquitoes avoided him.

  Blood money. Hell, she was already bleeding money from paying for everything. Her share of the prize would’ve provided a cushion from rent increases. As a single person, she didn’t qualify for subsidized housing, which required a family minimum of two people.

  “Family,” she said out loud.

  She rolled onto her right side, a position she could never fall asleep in, and evaluated the possible paths to retrieve her money. Some weren’t so legal. None were good. There were certain levels of humiliation associated with the start of each of them. The least unappealing choice also had the lowest probability of success: going to the police.

  That damned Zhongzheng precinct was not even four blocks away from the bank that Boxer must have gone to! Siu-lien had gone to the cops at least five times over the last two ye
ars, and the first three times were to plead for Boxer’s release after he picked fights with students at National Taiwan Normal University. The older cops didn’t respect her because while she still had some looks, she was in her 50s, didn’t have a husband, and worked in a bar. The younger ones were nicer or at least didn’t openly scowl. The nerve. She was much smarter than any cop she had ever met.

  She could have gone to a good college, but more than anything she wanted to be a singer. It seemed like a possible career path in the early ’80s. The soldiers’ sweetheart, Teresa Teng, was always on the radio. There were clubs everywhere. Siu-lien, as “Sue Teng,” booked herself some late-night gigs singing in venues for veterans, the red-envelope clubs. There were no auditions, but the only pay was tips. At the end of the sets, teary older men nursing empty glasses would hand her red envelopes filled with cash.

  Women who weren’t good couldn’t last a week, but Siulien was still in high school, and she was making more than her father. He hated what she was doing, most of all because she was serving mainlanders, but he grudgingly accepted a small wad of cash every month. Siu-lien thought she had a good hiding spot for her main stash until she noticed he was skimming from it. She moved out of the house as her father yelled and her mother turned her back.

  The early ’90s were still a prosperous time, and Siu-lien could barely fit all the red envelopes into her purse at night. A record producer had given her his business card, but when she called him, he wanted to have a meeting in a hotel room. He sensed her hesitation. “This is how it’s always done,” he said with a soothing laugh.

  She hadn’t fallen for that, but she did make the mistake of letting a boyfriend move in with her and do what he wanted. Soon enough she was pregnant. She could deal with the morning sickness and changes to her senses of taste and smell. When she began to show, however, she lost her singing gig, and couldn’t find another job, not even answering phones.

  The boyfriend had borrowed money from his friends and family. He had planned on marrying Siu-lien. He worked as a porter at Taipei Main Station, but talked about getting a good union job as a train conductor. They’d have a great family. When Siu-lien had given birth to a girl at the hospital, he’d put his name down as the father.