One Red Bastard Read online

  Chinese people hate change because there are gaps of uncertainty that come with it. Not knowing an outcome was terrible.

  For all Li Na knew, a faction who wanted to wipe out Mao’s legacy could rise up and accuse her of being a rightist, a leftist, or, worst of all, an adventurist. She could end up locked in jail for years on no charges, and when she proclaimed her innocence, the guards would laugh and ask, “Then why are you here?”

  Chinese people aren’t good at comforting each other. Our idioms and morality tales were all about dire warnings and blaming the victims. You can sum up all of them as, “It’s your own fault! You should have known better!”

  If you had lost all your money or your right arm, it was because of something you had done, possibly years ago. If your marriage didn’t work out, then you should have been with someone else back at the start.

  I nodded to English and then looked around for John Vandyne, my old partner when we were both rookies and now my best friend among the detectives. Vandyne had an actual gold shield while I was still trying to win one. I was on what was known as the detective track—working on investigative assignments while still officially a rank-and-file cop.

  I found him in the kitchenette making another bland pot of coffee. I was spoiled by the sweet and syrupy condensed milk that Chinatown bakeries liked to mix into their coffees, basically rendering the drink as a hot, liquid 3 Musketeers bar.

  Vandyne was a dark-skinned black man of medium build who used to be slightly taller than me. He had been slumping down to my height in the last several weeks, starting when his wife moved out on him.

  “Chow,” he said, as we clapped each other on the back.

  “Vandyne,” I said. “Your hands are wet, man.” I pulled at my shirt to move the wet spot on my back off of my shoulder blade.

  “Sorry about that. We don’t have any damn towels in here.” He wiped his hands off on his slacks.

  “That Willie Gee asshole . . .” I started.

  Vandyne chuckled and shook his head. He knew all about the contentious history between me and the Chinese guy who looked like an evil Roy Orbison.

  “C’mon, partner, he’s giving us overtime. You can’t hate Willie for that.”

  “It just bothers me that he’s probably getting way more out of this thing with Mao’s daughter than us. Think of all the publicity Jade Palace will have once word leaks out. He’s exploiting a Communist for the sake of capitalism!”

  “Aren’t you blowing this out of proportion? People might not even find out about the meeting.”

  “You know how thin the walls are in Chinatown, don’t you? Secrets in the Chinese community get passed around like a jar of hot sauce at dinner, and there’s no way word won’t get out about this. Willie will make sure of it.”

  Vandyne sighed and turned to pour a cup of coffee, his first for the night.

  “Well,” said Vandyne, “if he does, he’ll realize later when there’s hell to pay that he should have kept his mouth shut.”

  “How long have you been studying Chinese idioms, Vandyne?”

  It didn’t take too long for the story to get out. The next day it ran on the front pages of the papers backed by money from the KMT, the Communists, and Hong Kong. The news had broken so close to printing deadlines, the editorial boards of the papers had no time to weigh in.

  Just to make sure that even the tourists knew about it, the American-born Chinese guy who published Inside Chinatown, a paper in English, also had it out that day.

  All the papers sold out immediately.

  KMT supporters put signs in their store windows, reiterating the three No’s of their political party regarding the Communists on the mainland: “No compromise, no negotiation, no contact!”

  The signage among Communists quoted one of Mao’s many dramatic sayings that were wide open to interpretation: “It’s always right to rebel against reactionaries!”

  I live away from the commotion and, in fact, outside of Chinatown itself. My apartment is in a Spanish-dominated neighborhood to the east of the Communist section of Chinatown. It’s on the fourth floor of a slouching walkup just past the southeast corner of Seward Park.

  Cops don’t live in the boundaries of the precincts we serve in, to prevent potential conflicts of interest.

  It’s a fairly big apartment for a one-bedroom. It gets hot in the summer and even hotter in the winter so by around later this month, I’ll prop open one of the windows in the living room where Paul sleeps on a convertible couch.

  Even though we were far enough from Chinatown, I could still hear some ruckus being stirred up. I did the smart thing and put in earplugs.

  Paul woke me up that night because I hadn’t heard the phone.

  The offices of the American-born Chinese guy were on fire. Luckily, the building was empty and everything was under control. Even though the guy was a native speaker of English, the detectives down there wanted me on the scene, too, in case the extreme mental anguish would drive him to seek solace in a Chinese face.

  For kicks, I could just tell the guy that he should have known that Chinese people don’t want outsiders to be kept abreast of community politics, and that the fire was his own fault.

  The editor and publisher of Inside Chinatown was a guy named Artie Yee. I had seen him around before. He was an obese man in his fifties who stood at about five nine and weighed maybe 260 pounds. Artie’s black hair was thinning and he combed it tight, making his head look like a spool of thread running low. He had some day job and did the newspaper on his own time, publishing once or twice a month.

  Somehow, a fire truck had managed to wedge itself into the intersection of Henry and Catherine streets. The fire was now completely out and some kids who clearly lacked a minimum of parental supervision had come out to stomp around in the water on the sidewalk. Why not? It was only two in the morning.

  “It wasn’t a bad fire,” said English. “It’s the water damage you have to worry about.” He put his hands in his pockets. “I’d really like a smoke now, but it wouldn’t look good, considering.”

  “That’s right,” I said. “Is that the guy over there?” I pointed over to two big legs wrapped in tight denim hanging out of the open back door of a squad car.

  “Yeah. We’ve already talked to him, but you should go over and do your thing. He says he knows you.”

  I walked over to Artie and when he saw me coming he rocked his body back and forth. He managed to get to his feet but he almost knocked me down with the forward momentum.

  “Hey, Officer Chow!” he said, shaking my hand.

  “You’re pretty happy for a guy whose business just burned down!”

  He smiled hard, pushing his face into a big, lumpy pork chop with two raisin eyes. It was a little chilly out, but he glistened all over with beady sweat. I unzipped my field coat because I was feeling hot from fast-walking all the way over from home.

  “I’m insured,” he said, “and I moved out my jazz records last month, so I’m all right. How are you, though?”

  “I’m doing all right, too.”

  “Your girlfriend, Lonnie, is beautiful, by the way. I’m so envious. But I think the last time we talked you were going through a little bit of a rough patch.”

  “I don’t remember, Artie.”

  “I interviewed you about two years ago, for our community profile section.”

  “It sounds possible.”

  “I took you out for some beers and we talked until you fell asleep on the table.”

  “That was a bad time for me, Artie. I’m in recovery now. Anyway, let’s talk about who could have done this to you.”

  “Oh, I . . . I get it! Well, about the fire, I told the other cops, I’m not sure who in particular would have done this to me. A lot of people don’t like what I do. The right-wingers say I’m a socialist and the left-wingers say I’m a fascist. I’m a middle-of-the-road guy, just trying to be objective.”

  “When you’re in the middle of the road, you can get hit by traff
ic going either way.”

  “That’s a good point. I should be on the shoulder.”

  “Artie, this paper isn’t your livelihood, is it?”

  “It makes money, but I work full-time at night managing an offset-printing plant in Long Island City. I get a break on printing my newspaper there.”

  “You work at a place that prints the Chinese papers?”

  “Not only that. We do a lot of corporate literature. I write a lot of it, too. Shareholder communications sort of stuff. Lot of money in that.”

  “Okay,” I said. I had no interest in asking more about his job. It sounded boring as hell. We watched the firemen gather up their hose and shake hands with the kids.

  “Boy, this is really something,” said Artie, wiping his face with his hands.

  I wondered why a newspaper guy didn’t have anything more interesting to say.

  “This isn’t the end of the paper, is it?”

  “Well, when I get the insurance money, I’ll be back at it. They can’t keep this fatso down. I actually have a very intriguing interview set up for the next issue,” he said. “But the time factor on it is pretty immediate. It’d be a shame to cancel it. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless your lovely little lady Lonnie wants to do the interview.”

  “But your newspaper’s torched.”

  “Not for me! She can do it for her newswire.”

  “How did you know she worked at a newswire?”

  “Everybody in the media business knows everybody else. Of course, we all know where the chicks are.”

  “Artie,” I said as I smiled, “are you trying to get a rise out of me?”

  “Robert, you should be proud. You’re with this girl that all these other guys have the hots for. And not just the few Asian guys, you know.”

  “If anyone gets any ideas . . .”

  “They have ideas, but they’ll never try anything. Journalists cover things, they don’t make things happen. Look at the women they end up with!”

  “Who are you with?”

  “I’m still working on it,” he said, rubbing his stomach. “I need to get back down to my college weight, and then I’ll see what comes my way. Problem is, I work at night and women don’t like lunch dates because they think you’re trying to be cheap.” He looked up at his dripping, burned-out office and folded his hands over his crotch.

  “Anyway, Artie, who is this interview with?”

  “Oh, well, get this, it’s with the representative for Mao’s daughter. He’s not related to Li Na, but he has had a long association with her. His name is Chen Xiaochuan. He is willing to speak after the meeting at Jade Palace.”

  “Long association? Chen is Li Na’s boyfriend?”

  “Oh, no! I think she’s married,” he said, winking at me. “She’s very ugly! Terribly so! Like Mao in a skirt.”

  “Wow.”

  “I’ll bet that Chen likes beautiful girls. He’ll definitely want to talk to Lonnie.”

  “How do you know him?”

  He shuffled his feet.

  “I can’t disclose my sources,” said Artie.

  “It’s Willie Gee, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not telling you anything.”

  “It is, isn’t it? Jade Palace advertises in your paper.”

  “Look, do you not want Lonnie to do this? I can find a lot of other people who would want to break an exclusive interview!”

  “Okay, fine. I don’t care who your connection is. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to do this.”

  He nodded, turned his head, and spat into a puddle.

  “Robert, do you think they’re going to find out who did this? I know what the answer probably is, but I was just wondering, for my sake.”

  “You already know that nobody testifies in Chinatown, right? They’ll more likely talk to reporters than they’ll talk to cops.”

  Artie nodded. He pulled out a stick of gum and slapped my arm.

  “No, thanks,” I said.

  “I’m going to call Lonnie at work,” he said.

  “You need her number?”

  “I have it already. See you, Robert.”

  I watched him leave and then walked back to English, zipping up my field coat.

  “What did he tell you?” he asked me.

  “Not too much.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “That we’re working on it.”

  Imitating Richard Dawson on Family Feud, English said, “That’s our number one answer!”

  I met up with Vandyne in the lobby of a Catherine Street apartment building. We had both come in through a rear entrance so that nobody on the street would see us enter the building. We each grabbed a plastic bucket from the refuse left under the stairs and walked up to a landing between the fourth and fifth floors.

  The window to the street had been painted over. I turned my bucket upside down and took a seat as Vandyne worked the window open.

  “What . . . kind of . . . idiot . . . would paint . . . over . . . a window?” he grunted as he pounded away at the frame.

  “Careful, partner, don’t smash the glass there.”

  He gave a final shove and asked, “Is that good enough?”

  “One more. Another one. Okay, that’s it.”

  Vandyne rubbed his hands together and sat on his bucket next to me. We had a great view of the sun setting behind the burned-out building that housed Artie Yee’s newspaper office. It looked like a giant gray skull, the headquarters for a bad guy in a comic book.

  Vandyne took a hard look at the building. “Dammit, Chow, you made me do all that extra shoving for nothing! Look at all this viewing space I made.”

  “Come on, you have a lot of stress to work out. If you ever want fifteen seconds of my time, they’re yours.”

  “Hey, I’m going to take more than fifteen seconds. In fact, I want you to check out these Eddie Gale records I’ve been getting into.”

  “Who’s Eddie Gale?”

  “He’s a horn player. A jazz guy who’s trying to open the boundaries of the form.”

  I began to feel apprehensive. Jazz wasn’t my kind of thing. I thought the two of us had that common disinterest.

  “Jazz? I thought you hated jazz, Vandyne.”

  “I don’t like the traditional jazz, but this guy Gale has really done something to the whole feel of the music. When you don’t have a woman in the house, you have some extra time and a lot of extra money, so I stopped by a jazz records store and asked what was good. I wanted to hear something new.”

  “When you say that, you’re telling the guy, ‘Sell me something you’re trying hard to get rid of.’”

  “You’re wrong and I’m going to prove it to you. I’m going to borrow your ears one of these nights and play you those albums.”

  “Sure, man,” I said, hoping it was going to be one of those guy promises that never happen and are never referred to again by either party.

  He shifted around, and the sound was amplified by the mouth of the bucket slapping against the floor.

  “I think you can make more noise if you pound it like a drum,” I said.

  “I can’t get comfortable on this thing! It’s all sharp and pointy. You have a nice one.”

  “This is a piece of crap! I’ll prove it. You want to trade?”

  “Okay.”

  We switched places. Vandyne’s bucket hurt in all the wrong places, but I gave a big smile.

  “Nothing wrong with this one here,” I said.

  “Give it a minute,” said Vandyne. He brought a pair of binoculars to his face and played with the adjustment. I took a newspaper from inside my jacket and shoved it between the bucket and me.

  “Any criminal who comes back the night after,” Vandyne said in a distracted voice, “is one stupid jackass.”

  “We’re not dealing with Mensa members here. Setting a building on fire isn’t exactly a plan that comes from a sophisticated mind. You don’t even get anything out of it.” />
  “What could you steal from a little newspaper?”

  “Well, I’d back up a moving van there and take all the desks, chairs, shelves, and maybe even the sink and toilet. You can resell all that stuff pretty easily. You can make more money than you’d think from used furniture and they don’t exactly have identifying marks.”

  Vandyne put down his binoculars.

  “Hmmm,” he said. “I gotta keep an eye on you, partner. If my wallet disappears one day, I’m coming after you.”

  Outside, the neighborhood was now bathed in the yellow light of the setting sun. It would be dark in about an hour.

  We didn’t know what to expect, but if there was one thing you could count on, it was criminals fucking up sooner or later. I think it’s a part of human nature to expect to be caught and punished for a misdeed. Even if criminals managed to pull off a clean job, they would loop back and linger in the general area. On the next job, they might intentionally get sloppy to see if they could get the sirens to come.

  I saw someone peel off from the crowd, step over the yellow warning tape, and walk close to the charred walls of the building.

  “Vandyne, can I see those binoculars?” I asked dimly, not taking my eyes off the figure.

  He handed them over without a word. I looked through them at the figure.

  “It’s a woman,” I said.

  “You know her?”

  “Yeah.”

  The woman was standing in a pool of wet ashes, her hands at her sides. She was about five seven but that was with heels on. Her thick black hair cascaded over her ears and shoulders, and she did something to it to make it shiny. A light brown coat stopped above a skirt that stopped midway down two taut thighs in stockings with a dull glow.

  I smirked because I was sure that she had spent some time thinking about how she wanted to look from the rear. To men.

  But this was no time for amusement. I came in close to her forehead and growled under my breath, “Barbara, what the hell are you doing here!”

  When she turned around I saw my head and torso in her two black, sparkling eyes. Her face was long and not too narrow and came down to a chin that fairy princesses had. Her red lips, usually curved like a little blossom, were pulled taut into a wide smile.