One Red Bastard Page 8

  In fact, there hadn’t been any use in me even seeing Mr. Song. I had been sort of dodging him and the front door of his umbrella group, Together Chinese Kinship, for the past few months. Mr. Song, as chair of the organization, lobbied on behalf of and mediated among Together Chinese’s dozen members, which were all associations aligned with the People’s Republic.

  Mr. Song had landed in hot water for being suspected of aiding the smuggling ring that I had stopped. I had never said anything about him. But someone had shown the INS my notes and they pulled a full-on daylight raid on Together Chinese. The only illicit material they uncovered was pirated volumes of Lin Piao’s works that were now banned by the People’s Republic.

  The INS had issued a press release that exonerated Together Chinese, but the Chinese papers didn’t bother running it to counter their dramatic photographs of white and black agents carrying out boxes from the group’s office. There were shots of Mr. Song being restrained by two agents, his face wild and rabid like Old Yeller near the end of the movie.

  I chucked the empty Coke can and headed for Together Chinese’s office on East Broadway with leaden feet. I wondered why he would want to talk to me, after he thought I had tried to stick it to his group and his daughter. It must be something serious that required a lot of help.

  Maybe it had something to do with Mr. Chen’s murder. Something that would prove Lonnie innocent.

  I took my hands out of my pockets and picked up the pace. Despite everything, Mr. Song and I did have a common denominator in that we were both alcoholics and that he had been in recovery far longer than me. Would our mutual condition be enough to turn him back into a friendly acquaintance, if not a friend?

  Together Chinese’s office building was made of brown crumbling brick that would probably get soggy in milk. A blackened scar two floors up marked where some KMT supporters allegedly tried to burn the flag of the People’s Republic.

  Two thin guys shivered on either side of Together Chinese’s front door. One was in a tan sports jacket while the other one, a real youngster, wore an unzipped black padded coat and had spiky hair.

  “You looking for something?” the tan-jacketed man asked me in Mandarin.

  Spiky Hair cut him off. “That’s the cop, asshole!”

  “I’m sorry! So sorry!” said the first man. “Mr. Song’s been looking for you! Please come in!”

  “No offense taken,” I said as they opened the doors for me. I stood in the middle of Together Chinese’s modest foyer. Before the doors were closed behind me, I heard thumping footsteps on the stairs. I took a deep breath and decided to let him do as much of the talking as possible.

  I watched a man step down the last flight. He wore eggshell-blue twill slacks and a white, buttoned shirt with a jacket that matched his slacks. His hair was parted like Richie Cunningham’s.

  “Robert,” he said, pronouncing my name like he was giving me detention. We always spoke in English because my Mandarin wasn’t great and he didn’t know Cantonese.

  “Mr. Song,” I said. “I understand that you’re looking for me.”

  “Yes, you’ve heard right. The truth is . . .” he paused to cross the floor and shake my outstretched hand. “The truth is that I need your help.”

  “I’m glad to offer it. Assuming that I am able to.”

  He motioned that we enter a side room. We had sat in that room when we first met. We went in and took adjacent seats at a round table.

  He rubbed his mouth vigorously with both hands before talking. “Robert, I have to say that I’ve unfairly blamed you for a number of woes.”

  “I’ve already forgotten what’s happened.”

  “I haven’t, of course. I know what happened was completely not your fault.” Mr. Song was doing that old Chinese trick of a too-humble apology to get me to meet him nearly halfway in the blame game.

  I was supposed to say, “I was also wrong,” or something like that. Instead, I said, “That’s all right.”

  He narrowed his eyes and smiled at my snub. A young man with a tea tray came into the room. As Mr. Song and I looked at each other in silence, the man set two green ceramic cups and filled them with jasmine tea.

  “Mr. Chow,” said Mr. Song, “this is our intern, Daniel. He goes to Hunter College in Midtown.”

  I turned to get a good look at Daniel. Seemed like your average kid with limp black hair and instinctive shyness. “Hello, Mr. Chow,” he said.

  “Call me Robert, Daniel. I feel old when people call me Mr. Chow.” He nodded. “What are you majoring in, Daniel?”

  He opened his eyes wide. “I haven’t declared one yet. I’m only a freshman.”

  “Daniel, don’t worry about it,” said Mr. Song.

  “I didn’t go to college, myself,” I offered.

  “You don’t have to go to college to become a policeman?” asked Daniel. “How is that possible?”

  “Mr. Chow is gifted in many other ways,” Mr. Song said curtly. He tilted his head to the door.

  Daniel placed the pot on the table, nodded to both of us, and left.

  Mr. Song sipped his tea and swallowed hard. “He’s a very curious boy,” he said. “Daniel didn’t mean to question your intelligence.”

  “I didn’t take it that way. He asked about college, not about my brain.”

  “Sure. Anyway, I do have a rather urgent matter that you could help me with.”

  “Those two guards at the door sort of tipped me off that it was urgent. They’re armed, right?”

  “They are contractors trained and licensed to carry firearms, just as I am.” Mr. Song had received death threats for his Communist affiliation. “They’re just a precaution for now, in the wake of this latest news.” He brought his teacup to cover his lips. “You know those KMT bastards are already claiming that Communist agents killed Mr. Chen?”

  “That seems like the logical thing to think. Someone trying to flee the country probably isn’t a friend of the regime.”

  “It’s a setup!” growled Mr. Song. “In fact, we had nothing to do with the protest of Li Na at Jade Palace. Together Chinese is the only organization in Chinatown that has official ties with Beijing. That group that supposedly represented the People’s Republic was a sham, a front, and did nothing but embarrass our political cause.”

  “What is the position by the People’s Republic on Li Na?”

  “We have no position and no comment, whatsoever.”

  “How do you feel about the death of Mr. Chen?”

  “It’s tragic but not to be unexpected in a dangerous town like New York. He probably shouldn’t have been out unescorted so late at night.”

  “How do you know he was out late at night?”

  “Why, he was being interviewed by your girlfriend until late that evening. I assumed he went out after it was over. That is, if I remember the interview I read correctly.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “That interview really got around. It was a coup for Lonnie. You’re very proud of her, I’m sure. The timing of it was unfortunate, though. I’m sure she hadn’t planned to capture his last interview.”

  “The whole thing is a mixed blessing for Lonnie,” I said. “But, wait, are you familiar with the Union of the Three Armies?”

  He sat back and crossed his arms. “You want to test my knowledge of Chinese history?”

  “Let me clarify. It’s sort of a made-up group based here. They were the ones protesting at Jade Palace.”

  “For a group to name themselves that is an insult to the sacrifices made by the men and women of the People’s Liberation Army. I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t some puppet group of the KMT to make us look bad. Does anybody seriously think we would give any publicity to Li Na and her counterrevolutionary clique?”

  “People only know what they see. And they saw Commies protesting Li Na.”

  “Robert, you’ve got to sort this out. Consider it a personal favor to me. Beijing has been a little distant from me after the whole goddamned I
NS debacle but now that the leadership seems solidified after Mao, they’ve asked me to quiet down this whole mess.”

  “ ‘Quiet down?’”

  “You know what I mean, give it a lower news profile. What would really help is if you could discover that it was a common mugging gone wrong. At least you could help defuse the political implications of the case.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?”

  “Tell me more about this fake Communist group. I can pass on the details to contacts at the newspaper backed by the People’s Republic. They’ll take it from there.”

  “I’m looking for the guy in charge of it, myself.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  Mr. Song smiled. “You’ve already told me the name of the group. Wasn’t that a little unscrupulous of you?”

  “Not at all. It’s a matter of public record. Look it up if you want more information. One of the best things about a democracy is that our government is accessible and accountable to the people.”

  “Don’t forget, Robert, that this little democracy of yours killed Mr. Chen. But let’s not argue about the merits of one system against another.”

  “Good, because I didn’t go to college.”

  “I also realize there’s little you can do but pursue this case to your fullest powers.”

  “Actually, Manhattan South is handling the case.”

  Mr. Song covered one hand with the other. “So this case really is a big deal?”

  “It could be.” In actuality, Manhattan South handled thousands of murders that were off the press radar.

  “But you could still contribute any findings you make, right?”

  “They sure wouldn’t turn away help.”

  “Am I right in assuming that your girlfriend is a natural suspect?”

  “No, you’re wrong.”

  “It’s just that based on television shows, they always go after the people who last saw the victim.” He smiled. “Aw, don’t listen to me, I watch too much TV.”

  I sipped at my tea for the first time. It had a light, elusive taste, which meant that it was probably pretty good.

  “Drink up that tea,” said Mr. Song. “It’s not expensive, but it is difficult to get.”

  “I can’t have that much. I’ve just had a Coke.”

  “What a shame. Well, that’s more for me. Are you drinking, um, anything else?”

  “No. I’ve been sober the whole time.”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I was actually worried about you.”

  “You could have dropped me a line.”

  “You could have, too.”

  “You were mad at me.”

  “Yes, I was. But, still, I was worried.”

  “How is Stephanie doing up at Yale?”

  Mr. Song gave a hard half smile. “Oh, she’s doing well. And her male roommate is doing well, too.”

  I knew better than to ask any more about his daughter.

  Associations and groups loyal to the KMT and the Communists were in general under the respective umbrella groups of the Greater China Association and Together Chinese Kinship. Each umbrella group lobbied local city politicians for their own political causes as well as mediated disputes among members.

  Together Chinese Kinship was far smaller than the Greater China Association, but it was riding a wave of momentum. The People’s Republic had displaced Taiwan from the United Nations. High-profile visits of the mainland by Nixon and Ford had melted down the American public’s perception of evil “Red China” into a genuine curiosity. Once they found the mainland on the map and traced their finger around its grilled-pork-chop shape, Americans could see for themselves how insignificant the “Free China” of Taiwan was. It wasn’t even a French fry next to that pork chop.

  Every October 1, the national day of the Communists, Together Chinese Kinship held a parade in its section of Chinatown. The celebration was undeniably growing in size and area with each year.

  On October 10, the national day of the KMT, the Greater China Association held its parade. In recent years the umbrella group had boosted the number of flags that were waved. It even regularly flew in from Taiwan thousands of cheap plastic flags of the Republic of China to hand out to the sightseers snapping pictures. These Americans would examine the flags with quizzical looks on their faces. “What flag is this?” they would ask each other. “Doesn’t the flag of China have five stars on it?”

  Despite the apparently fervent rivalry between Together Chinese Kinship and the Greater China Association, there were unofficial fringe groups on both sides of the divide that saw the two umbrella groups as secret collaborators. In this scenario, representatives of the two umbrella groups met in secret to carve up Chinatown according to their own business interests while setting fixed prices for wages, restaurants, and even the Bruce Lee memorabilia for sale on both sides of Bowery.

  Rumors of these secret meetings were completely unsubstantiated by evidence, but both sides did, after all, maintain that there is one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. It was in the interests of both umbrellas groups to have open communication lines should the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China someday reunite, even if such an idea was as likely as bitter rivals East and West Germany getting back together.

  Of course, there was a small fringe group that was vehemently opposed to Taiwan “reuniting” with the mainland because Taiwan was its own country. After all, before the Qing Dynasty collapsed on the mainland, it had officially ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895. Taiwan had been a colony of Japan until the end of World War II. When the KMT lost to the Communists in the Chinese civil war, the remnants of those armies retreated to Taiwan and took out their frustrations on the local Taiwanese by imposing martial law and brutally suppressing any dissent. Supposedly. The pro-KMT newspaper reported nothing but a continuing economic miracle on the island.

  Lincoln’s group, the Union of the Three Armies, didn’t qualify as a fringe group. Protesting in public was a stupid idea. Even dumber was having a name and identifiable principals in the group. The underground extreme right and left wings were small, efficient, and operated internationally. They made the triads of old look like a lemonade-stand racket.

  When night fell in Chinatown, stupid gang kids did their best to bullet-graze each other’s foreheads while trained and disciplined operators walked in the shadows. They apparently broke into offices and stole Rolodexes, and paid homeless people to bring them bags of garbage from businesses and associations. The fringe groups didn’t operate gambling dens or pross houses or deal in drugs; their trade was in selling information, blackmail, and, apparently, assassination. When you read about killings or disappearances of right- or left-wing agitators in Taiwan, Singapore, or Chinese communities throughout East Asia, you can bet their hands were in it. Funny how these stories never made the American newspapers.

  Even though their reach included North America, they hadn’t noticeably killed anyone here until a few months ago. Out in Vancouver’s Chinatown they had shot a guy twice in the back of his head. He was an ex-cop from Hong Kong who had freelanced as a security guard for Jade Palace. I had met him and he actually turned out to be a decent guy. They had never found his killers and the story faded away, as according to plan.

  These fringe groups, and not the Greater China Association, were what worried Mr. Song.

  I called Lonnie from a pay phone at Canal and Eldridge.

  “Robert, I can’t talk too long now!” she said. “I have to finish another story I’m doing and I’m doing all these interviews on the side.”

  “What interviews?”

  “You know, other news sources from all over the world want to talk to me. My interview has been published by so many newspapers!”

  “I’m worried, Lonnie. Manhattan South has been staking out your apartment.”

  “Don’t worry. Our lawyers say that if the police had any evidence at all against me, they would have arrested me alread
y. I’m sure I’m going to be cleared.”

  “Well, I’m sure they know better than me. I’ll let you go now.”

  She said bye and after we hung up I punched in the number of a guy I knew at Manhattan South.

  Inspector Izzy Rosenbaum met me at his office door. He clapped me on the back and said, “Chow.”

  Izzy was an average-sized man, but there was a gentle menace to his demeanor and his dull brown eyes alone could pin you to the wall. He kept his gray hair in a crew cut so that it looked like a light fungus growing on his muscled and veiny forehead. Izzy hated wasting time and never said more than was necessary.

  “Hi, Lefty,” I said to Izzy. He had gotten the nickname from punching out a jerk years ago when he was back in the academy. That jerk was now the commander of my precinct.

  “Let’s talk.”

  “How can I stop your guys from shadowing Lonnie?”

  “You can’t.”

  “Her boyfriend is a cop. Doesn’t that give her a pass?”

  “Can’t trust cops.”

  “You don’t have a single shred of evidence against her. All you have is that she met him for an interview and then she left.”

  “We heard more.”

  “How much more?”

  “They left together.”

  “You mean Lonnie and Mr. Chen?”

  Izzy nodded. “Uh-huh.”

  “They left the hotel together?”

  “Yup.”

  “I’m sure she was just going home.”

  “How about him?”

  “He was probably going to get a magazine.”

  “No.”

  “Look, you can’t honestly believe Lonnie killed him.”

  “I don’t believe anything at this point.”

  “Who told you they left together, anyway? Some drunk on the street?”

  “Lobby cameras.”

  “Did you ask Lonnie why they walked out the door together?”

  Lefty stretched out his jaw and rubbed his chin. “We already did, at the original interview. I guess you didn’t know about it.”