One Red Bastard Page 7

  “You all right?”

  “I’m better now. Had a long talk with Rose.”

  “How did it go?”

  “Honestly? It was infinitely depressing.”

  “I am really sorry to hear that.”

  “Just to think that this woman you’ve already promised to spend the rest of your life with is like a stranger again. Actually, worse than a stranger, because a stranger doesn’t expect anything from you. I feel like I have something to prove to her.”

  “You don’t have anything to prove to anybody.”

  “I know. I have half a mind to just let it all go.”

  “But you don’t want to.”

  “I don’t know.” He put more hot sauce on his eggs.

  “Vandyne, you’re going to set your plate on fire there.”

  “Oh, shit,” he muttered. “How am I supposed to eat this now?”

  “Don’t worry about it. You can have half of my pancakes.”

  “You sure?”

  “Of course, man!” I took the saucer from under my coffee cup and dragged two pancakes onto it.

  “Look, you and Lonnie, whatever happens, remember to stay young.”

  “ ‘Young’?”

  “Yeah, man, ‘young’! When you get older, you forget how to forgive.”

  “You’re scaring me.”

  “I’m just trying to share knowledge with you.”

  “I ever do anything to piss you off?”

  “All the time.”

  “You forgive me, though, right?”

  “How could I hold anything against you, Chow?” he said, smiling for the first time in a while. “Just keep the pancakes coming.”

  “Take the rest of my butter, too.”

  In the squad room, I went over to English. “I see that Manhattan South is staking out Lonnie.”

  “So what?”

  “She’s not the murderer.”

  “Prove it.”

  “I can’t.”

  He looked at me and shrugged.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You can have an attitude as long as you don’t stop working. Check in with Pizza Man. I’m sure he’s got something to keep you busy.”

  I grumbled and shuffled over to my desk. When I was walking a foot-post, I was really envious of Vandyne because he had picked up investigative assignments. When he got the gold shield and the official promotion to detective, that old green devil hardened into jade.

  Now that I was trudging through investigative assignments that ranged from hopeless to thankless, I found that maybe a beat cop didn’t have it so bad.

  When I helped put an end to that human-smuggling ring a few months ago, I think I would’ve gotten more official credit for stopping a purse-snatcher. I did get a Meritorious Police Duty bar and a nice letter from Mayor Abe Beame, though. It seemed to be actually signed, too.

  Maybe things got better with that gold shield.

  “Chow,” said Pete. He held out a manila folder to me. “Maybe I have something for you to check out.”

  “Something good I hope.”

  “I save all the good ones just for you, man.” He chuckled, assaulting me with coffee breath. “Three guns found in an apartment mailbox on Henry Street two days ago by the building super. Two were cheap Saturday night specials but one was a nice .32 revolver with a fancy walnut handle. I’m surprised nobody’s come up to claim them.”

  “A thirty-two’s not a big gun,” I said.

  “Yeah, but the great thing about the gun is that the shell casings don’t pop out when you fire from it. I guess that makes it environmentally friendly, in addition to not leaving evidence. You don’t have to clean up after it.”

  “How come City Wide Anti-Crime isn’t handling this?”

  “These guns weren’t recovered at a crime scene. Might not even have been involved in a crime yet. They’re at ballistics now, but they’re not on the priority list. There are pictures of the guns in the folder.”

  “You want me to frame them or something?”

  “C’mon, Chow! Just go to the address on Henry and talk to people and figure out who left the guns.”

  “You’re giving me another dead-end assignment here.”

  “It was a dead-end for me, but I think people will be more amenable to talking to you because you know the language.”

  “I’ll understand what they’re saying when they’re cursing me.”

  English called over, “Just give it your best shot, Chow. Let’s see what happens.”

  I took in a breath and held it.

  This is what you wanted, I thought to myself. Show them you’re not going to let the bullshit get to you.

  “Hot dog,” I said.

  I was about a block away from the precinct when my newfound spirit slipped away, probably off to cheer up some sick kid in a hospital bed.

  I put my hands in my coat pockets and kept walking. It all seemed like a funny joke. Send the Chinese cop on a wild goose chase while you try to pin a murder on his girlfriend.

  When I hit Bowery, the sunlight hit me full in the face, bright white and warm. I shaded my eyes but I couldn’t help smiling.

  Lonnie would be exonerated, eventually. Maybe she was even getting something out of being followed—a sharpened reporting instinct.

  The man who had found the guns had either given his name only as Mr. Wing or the responding officer hadn’t been able to write down the rest of his name. I guessed the latter happened because there was a question mark written after the name. But the apartment number was clearly marked 5F.

  I didn’t have to buzz his apartment because the building’s front door was unlocked and the foyer door was propped open with a splintered wood wedge. Hopefully he was home. Maybe he would talk to me. It’s harder to ignore a knock at the door than a buzz from downstairs.

  I started up the stairs and cursed the fact that apparently nobody ever lives in the ground-floor apartments. The corners of each landing were filthy. I’d like to see them shoot a commercial for one of those tile-and-grout cleaners here. Goddamn sponge would probably dissolve.

  Mr. Wing’s door had several Wacky Packs stickers slapped on it. Some were ripped in half while most were merely torn at the edges. I heard a radio through the door.

  I knocked lightly by the bolt.

  “Uh?” called someone inside.

  “I’m looking for Mr. Wing,” I said.

  Someone came shuffling to the door and asked, “Who are you?”

  “It’s the police,” I said. “My name’s Robert Chow.”

  He sighed in response and then unlocked the door. He swung open the door and pointed at it. “I call you for this,” he started, “and you don’t come. When I find guns, you’re here in five minutes. Why?”

  Mr. Wing was in his mid-sixties and stood at about five feet two. He had withered a bit to about 140 pounds or so. His silver-rimmed glasses were lopsided.

  “Finding guns is a big problem, Mr. Wing. I actually have some more questions about them.”

  “Just a minute. It’s not a problem when my personal property is defaced?”

  “These stickers aren’t that big a problem. They probably aren’t that hard to get off.”

  On cue, he reached behind the door and handed me a paint scraper, its wood handle blackened with years of sweat. “Not that hard to get off, huh? Well, put some muscle into it, pal. I’m not talking to you until that door is clean.”

  I looked into his eyes. He wasn’t fooling. How hard could this be, anyway? This may very well be my good deed for the day. I crouched slightly and scraped away.

  I was right. It actually was sort of easy, but I still broke a sweat. Five minutes was all it took. “At your service,” I said as I handed the scraper back.

  “I think I have some more odd jobs around the apartment for you,” Mr. Wing mumbled. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. With his head still down he asked, “You wanted to ask me something?”

  “About the guns. How did you fi
nd them?”

  He slid on his glasses and scowled at me. “I told my whole story to the cop, already. White people never listen, never give respect to Chinese people! You know that, right?”

  “Whatever you say, Mr. Wing. So what happened?”

  “Well, I was opening my mailbox downstairs. I saw that my neighbor’s box was broken into. The metal door was all bent back, like someone had pried it open.

  “I opened the mailbox because I thought I could be helpful and bend the door back the right way. Then I saw a brown bag in there, all wrinkled up. Of course, I had to take a look. There were three guns in there! I called the cops right away!”

  “You did the right thing, Mr. Wing. Tell me, do you have a lot of teenagers hanging out in this building? Especially ones who don’t live here?”

  He looked at me hard. “Who do you think put all those stickers on my door! Everybody who lives in this building is old. Nobody under fifty, I guarantee!”

  “Then where are all these kids coming from?”

  “Where do you think? Stupid kids! They’re a part of those Fukienese Commie groups that are infiltrating our country.”

  I already knew the answer but I had to ask. “Mr. Wing, would you be willing to come to the precinct and look over some pictures to see if you recognize any of these possible gang members?”

  “No way in hell. I would be seen going to the precinct and then those same kids will come back and harass me. I’ll ask you for help and then you’ll say there’s nothing you can do because they haven’t actually killed me yet.”

  “I think you’re exaggerating quite a bit, Mr. Wing.”

  “No, I’m not! Everybody here has eyes. Word gets around. I don’t have to tell you. At least I shouldn’t have to tell you.”

  “Well, enjoy your new clean door, now. I worked hard on it.”

  “And you enjoy your new sobriety, Mr. Chow.” He closed the door in my face.

  I went through the photo albums of Polaroids that we kept of suspected gang members. “My Beautiful Vacation” had photos shot secretly from Columbus Park. “Happy Memories” covered Bayard Street, East Broadway, and part of Pell. “Those Were the Days” covered Mott. We were supposed to pretend that these were the individual detective’s personal photo albums on our desks.

  If the D.A.’s office had ever gotten wind of these books, our asses would be on the line because they were illegal. Something about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty and how these binders amounted to unofficial “mug” books of innocent kids being treated as convicted criminals.

  Yet, there was no other way we could keep tabs on the young wildlife that some of Chinatown’s youths had become. Sure, a lot of good kids were mixed up in there, too. I made a conscious effort to weed them out. A few months ago, I tore out a picture of Paul because he didn’t belong there.

  Honestly, if the department had been equipped with Polaroid instant cameras back when I was a teen, my picture should have been in the photo albums.

  I flipped through “Live, Laugh, Love” as I sipped from my dirty coffee mug.

  “How’s it going, there?” asked English.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Any word on those guns?”

  “Check in with Pete when he’s in. He was keeping tabs on them. Knows someone at ballistics, so he can get a priority review. Won’t matter, though, if we can’t figure out whose they are.”

  I stopped on a page with two photos that were sloppily shoved under the plastic cover sheet at jaunty angles. “I’ve seen that guy.” I pointed at a guy in his twenties who was shot from the side.

  “Not him!” exclaimed English.

  “You know him?”

  “No, I don’t. I was just messing with you. Where did you see him?”

  “That’s rooster boy. He was a jerk who had a megaphone during the protest in front of Jade Palace.”

  “Photographed on Henry Street, too, huh? He might know the kids that dick around there.”

  It was no wonder that the guy was photographed on Henry Street. The permit for the Commies to assemble was in the name of the Union of the Three Armies, which had a below-sidewalk-level address right next to Mr. Wing’s apartment.

  I leaned over the railing and tried to look in, but the windows were covered with blinds and even though they were crooked there weren’t any gaps. I could tell the lights were on and not much else.

  The last step on the wooden stairs down to the office door was broken in half and rotting. The steel door itself was bland corporate gray. I tried the handle and found it open.

  I went in and immediately a loud and continuous whistle went off. A middle-aged woman came into the room with her hands over her ears.

  She jumped when she saw me and screamed something. I screamed back that I couldn’t hear her. She shook her head and went behind an office desk and ducked down behind it. The alarm suddenly stopped.

  “I thought the alarm had malfunctioned again,” she said, smiling. “We have a doorbell for a reason. You really shouldn’t go barging into places.”

  “You shouldn’t leave your door unlocked,” I said.

  “Well, Officer, my name is Sunny Chu. How can I help you?”

  I chuckled. “My fame precedes me.”

  “I know you’re the guy who stopped that smuggling ring. That was terrible what those people did.”

  “It sure was. Right now, though, I’m looking for the guy who had the bullhorn at your protest at Jade Palace.”

  “Our protest?”

  “Yeah, this is the Union of the Three Armies, right?”

  “Oh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “You must mean Lincoln.”

  “Who?”

  “Lincoln Chin. He’s supposed to be our English coordinator.”

  “What is this place?”

  “This is the BDC After-School Program. We’re a quasi-government agency that provides programming and services for kids through high school.”

  “So you guys basically babysit.”

  “Sometimes, yes, it does come down to that. I also like to think that we keep our kids out of trouble.”

  “This place doesn’t have room to hold that many kids.”

  “This is just our administrative office. We operate facilities in the schools themselves when the day is over and let them do arts and crafts in a cafeteria or dance around in a gym.”

  “What does BDC stand for?”

  She blinked and tilted her head. “It’s the initials of someone who gave a lot of money.”

  “What do you do here, Ms. Chu?”

  “I’m the Chinese coordinator. I schedule the directors—that’s what we call our teachers—and make sure they continue to perform well.”

  “What does Lincoln do?”

  “Well, he’s supposed to be writing grant applications and being the liaison with the city agencies.”

  “What does he actually do, then?”

  “Not too much. I have half a mind to complain to our board of directors but they wouldn’t do anything about it. Besides, I do like him. He has a good heart.”

  On the wall above Sunny’s head hung a picture taken in the 1950s, judging by the clothes. A younger version of her stood in the middle, in front of a crowd, handing a trophy down to a smiling kid with a bow tie.

  “Is Lincoln supposed to be here now?” I asked.

  “He went to lunch a while ago. Sometimes he doesn’t bother to come back. It’s supposed to be the two of us here, but since I end up alone in the office so much my brother installed the security alarm. You know that son of a gun has a master’s degree?”

  “Figures. You spend that much time in college it’ll make you a Communist.”

  “Ha, you know what the Union of the Three Armies is, right?”

  “That was when the Communists regrouped after the Long March.”

  “So you know your history! So nice to see that in a young man. Maybe you should replace Lincoln here. All he does is loaf around. What he does work hard at is trying to get th
e high-school students to come to his socialist meetings and events.”

  “I didn’t see any kids at the protest at Jade Palace.”

  “Even young children are too smart to follow an idealistic daydreamer like Lincoln. But would you believe that some of the girls think he’s cute and dashing?” Sunny dropped her voice. “You know something? He treats his girlfriend like dirt. Who does he think he is? Chairman Mao?”

  “I don’t think so. He told me he knows how to speak Mandarin.” I saw Sunny laugh. The Chairman had spoken his native Hunanese and butchered the national language when he tried to speak it.

  “People from Hunan!” she said knowingly. “You know what they’re like. Hot-tempered and impulsive. Communist or not, he was the wrong guy to lead China.”

  “What kind of Chinese is Lincoln?”

  “From Jersey. So he’s got a chip on his shoulder.”

  “Should I wait here for him?”

  “You could go to OK Noodle over on Division Street. At least that’s where he told me he was going.”

  “I know where that is. Thanks, Sunny.”

  “Are you married, Officer Chow?” she asked.

  “Girlfriend. Do you have kids?”

  “No, I haven’t got anybody,” she said, trying to smile.

  Only two of OK Noodle’s tables in the front were occupied. The back was completely empty. Lincoln wasn’t around.

  There isn’t really a lunch rush in Chinatown in the restaurants that are far from the crowds stuck in jury duty. The good restaurants always had fairly steady traffic throughout the day. The bad ones struggled. OK Noodle, as a merely decent place, was appropriately named.

  It had launched fairly recently. The press-on tiles hadn’t been scuffed too badly yet and the manager didn’t know who I was. Also, the ceiling above the Guan Gong shrine high up on the wall wasn’t stained yet by constantly burning incense sticks.

  Yes, Lincoln was there earlier but he had left about an hour ago. They called him “that foreign Chinese guy” because he couldn’t speak Cantonese, couldn’t really speak Mandarin, and couldn’t eat organ meats. I handed my card to the manager and when he read my name he mentioned that someone had come looking for me there, a certain Mr. Song.

  I played with my collar and bought a Coke on the way out.

  Mr. Song had had it in for me because he thought I was after his college-aged daughter back in the summer. More like the opposite was true, but fathers don’t know their daughters any more than men know women, so there was no use in arguing it.