This Is a Bust (27 page)

“No, not today,” I yelled back.

In a little bit, a bowl of rice came out with plates of
translucent strips of flesh and sautéed sprouts.

He sat down at the table with me.

“You're
not closing soon, are you?” I asked. He waved 
his
hands.

“No
just taking a break. When the late shift is over at the
garment factories, more people are going to come in. How're the sprouts?”

“Pretty good, very fresh.”

“Not too much sand is there? It's tough to wash out.”

“It's good. Real good. Very clean.”

“How come you never come in with the black man
anymore?”

“We used to be partners, but we got split up. Actually, he
just got promoted.”

“I like him. He's always very respectful of Chinese culture.
Very quiet. Much better than the foreign Chinese. I see him in the park playing chess with the midget, too.”

“He's getting better, too. Someday, he might be the first
person to beat the midget.”

Chi laughed and then folded the bottom of his apron over.

“So officer,” he said. “Tell me what you're working on now.
What kind of cases are you investigating?”

“N
othing. No cases. I'm not a detective,” I said. I pushed my
elbows onto the table and leaned on them. “I'm just the face the police send around the neighborhood for public relations.”

“Ha!
I heard you were looking into the old woman who died.
I heard it was food poisoning.”

“It wasn't my case, and it's closed, anyway.”

“What do you mean, not your case? Aren't you a
policeman?”

“It's not my area.”

“Chinese people aren't your area? Then why are you here?”

I
didn't know if he meant in his restaurant, in Chinatown, or
on the planet. I just kept eating.

Thursday night I came in and found Paul sitting on the couch, his face in his hands.

“Come on, it can't be that bad, champ,”
I said. I was holding
a paper bag with a Hungry Man dinner in it, and I was the hungry man — too hungry to risk coming home with nothing if Paul wasn't there to cook for me. I wanted to pop it into the oven right away, but I felt that I had to cheer up Paul first.

“Paul,
I would've brought some ice cream if I knew you were
having it tough. Girl let you down?”

Paul raised his head. He was squeezing his nose shut with
his two hands. There was dried blood on his neck. One eye was swollen. He wiped his upper lip, checking for blood. There was a dark band on his forehead that looked like it had been made by a crowbar.

“Who the fuck did this?” I said.

“Coup
le of guys,” he said. It didn't sound like any teeth 
were
missing.

“Tell me who they were!”

“You don't know them.”

“Why'd they do this?”

“Because of you.”

“Because of me?”

“Some of my old friends jumped me because they thought
I'd given them up to you. Cops were taking Polaroids of them while they were playing handball in the park. They said Vandyne was one of the cops.”

“I've got nothing to do with that. That's the detective
bureau. They're trying to keep track of juvenile delinquents.” Problem was, all the bad apples looked like all the other kids. You couldn't tell by the way they dressed or how they acted.

“They didn't do anything wrong,” he said.

“Look what they did to you! Nice friends there, Paul.”

“This
isn't too bad. Anyway, I think they'll leave me 
alone
now.”

“How do you know they won't come after you again?”

“They have other things to do.”

“Lemme show you something,” I said. I ripped a small piece
of cardboard from an empty box of corn flakes I'd been meaning to throw out. I folded it into a tiny wad. “Put this between your teeth and your top lip and press down on it. It blocks the blood vessels to the nose.”

“I'm not putting that thing in my mouth. They teach us in
school to squeeze our nose shut.”

“This works in combat conditions,” I said. He took the
cardboard and stuck it under his lip. “You get bloody noses in school a lot?”

“You gave me the last one,” Paul said glumly.

“I'm sorry. That was before we were friends.”

He shifted the other hand onto his nose. “We're friends?”

“Sure we are.”

“Then let me tell you something. I hate being smart.”

“What?”

“I hate being smart! I fucking hate it!”

“You're l
ucky, Paul! You know how many people are 
born
stupid?”

“I wish I were stupid. And strong. Smart doesn't mean
anything here.”

“Paul, y
ou can go to college and really make something 
of
yourself.”

“How am I going to pay the tuition? I'm going to end up at
some stupid community college like Lonnie!”

“Don't call it stupid! A lot of really great people went
through community college!”

“You didn't even go to college, right?”

“I was too stupid to go to college. I ended up getting
drafted.”

“How did you get stuck in Chinatown?”

“I'm not stuck in Chinatown!”

“If you had a choice, you wouldn't be here, would you?
If
you weren't a cop and you had money and a good job, you'd be living uptown. You'd only come in for dim sum on the weekends.”

“Aw, bullshit, man!”

“Did you choose Chinatown, or were you assigned here?”

“I was assigned. You can't choose where you want to go.”

“Out of all the precincts in the city, why were you assigned
to the one with one of the lowest rates of crime? Because you're Chinese. The police are using you as a token yellow face.”

The
kid had taken potshots at me before, but now, saying 
it
straight out without trying to give me grief, he had put 
it to me hard. It took me a little while to think of something to say.

“If I wasn't here, where would you be, Paul? Out on the
street, that's where. Maybe even dead.”

Paul took his hand away from his nose.

“I wish I were dead,” he said. Paul tried breathing through
his nose a little to see if the blood flow had stopped.

“You're talking stupid, you know that? You get straight A's
in school and you wish were dead. You're young and smart. You know how many people would love to switch places with you?”

“So I should be happy I'm alive?”

“You're damn right.”

“What's so good about living in Chinatown?”

“It's
not the greatest place in the world, all right? But 
you're
here for the short term, so make the best of it for now. Take a lesson from your elders. Old people are happy here because they don't have to go more than a few blocks for food, groceries, laundry, or the park.”

“What if you're not old?”

“Well, then you got the library, you can do more reading.
There's going to be another mural painting this summer. You can do that. You know that Bruce Lee mural by the N and R stop?”

“Yeah?”

“They did that a few years ago, isn't that cool?”

Paul sat back
a little bit and crossed his arms. “You yourself ended up in a gang because there was nothing
to do here,” he said.

“It was di
fferent back then, Paul. Kids weren't popping 
each
other.”

“Nothing really matters if I can't get out, anyway,” he
muttered to the floor.

“You hungry, Paul?”

“Sorry, I couldn't cook anything. I couldn't get my nose to
stop bleeding.”

“That's all right, I wasn't counting on it. I already ate. I
brought this Hungry Man dinner for you.”

For
the first time, his face brightened. “Really? I've never had
a TV dinner before.”

“It's the
best one, the fried-chicken one. Lemme stick it in the oven for you.”

“Wait for my nose to dry.”

“I'm gonna do it now. It takes like 45 minutes to bake.” I
set the oven, ripped the entire foil top off the dinner, and put it in. “I'm going to take a shower now, you need the bathroom?”

“No, I'm okay.”

I
went into the bedroom, opened my sock drawer, and found
two bottles of Bud near the back. I drank the warm beer as fast as I could and then I hid the empty bottles back in with my socks.

—

The next day, I saw Vandyne hanging out in the park, away from where the midget played games.

“Let me ask you something, Vandyne.”

“Go ahead. I ain't stopping you.”

“Paul tells me you were one of the guys taking pictures of
kids on the handball court.”

Vandyne rocked on his feet and took a deep breath.

“You
know I don't like it, but there doesn't seem to be 
an
alternative.”

“Where does the bureau file those pictures?”

“We keep them in mug books for suspected Chinese gang
youth. Only we're not allowed to call them ‘mug books.'”

“I think I'd call them a civil-rights violation.”

“It's necessary because of the system. When a lady in
Chinatown gets her purse stolen, she doesn't know how to describe the suspect sufficiently.”

“What do you mean?”

“She says it's a short Chinese youth with black hair and
black eyes. They all look like that. We can't look for someone based on that. The police artists can't do anything with that, and besides, they only know how to draw blacks and Hispanics.”

“So basical
ly, it's okay to consider all the Chinese kids 
as
suspects?”

“It's not okay, but it has to do.”

“How would you feel if I was up in Harlem taking pictures
of black kids?”

“That's been going on, partner. We're talking years.”

I looked out across the park. Nothing was happening.

“Look, Chow. You think I don't know what the average
Chinese person thinks about me and my people?”

“You kn
ow what the average black thinks about Chinese
people?”

“Well, get this. I had a toothache — this was while you
and I were partners. I didn't tell you about this, because I didn't want you to think I was accusing you indirectly. But anyway, I went into this Chinese pharmacy, thinking I could get some relief. I'm looking through the oral-care section, and what did I find? A tube of toothpaste called ‘Darkie.'”

That was the one thing in Chinatown that I had hoped
Vandyne would never find.

“You know that toothpaste, ‘Darkie'? Got the black-faced
minstrel with the white smile on it?”

“Yeah, I know it.”

“My point is that. . .” Vandyne trailed off. “Hey, you know,
I know there are four major ethnic Chinese groups in Chinatown: Cantonese, Toisanese, Hakka, and Fukienese. I don't know what they're saying, but I can tell the difference between the dialects. I can even play an okay game of Chinese chess. I went pretty far to learn about Chinese culture. But when they see me, I mean, I'm the first black person they've seen up close and personal. The only thing they know about blacks is, well, the negative media. Black guy did this. Black guy did that. But if I conduct myself in a professional and upstanding manner, as a policeman should, it will give them something positive to see. Just seeing a black man living amongst them changes how people think. You yourself told me you never had a black friend until the Nam.”

“My
company was about 60% black. Everybody treated each
other black. The Asians, the Mexicans, the Hawaiians, and the whites. We all hugged each other, threw dice in a box, flew the black flag. We were an all-black company. We just didn't look it.”

“So that makes you black, huh?”

“Look, who are you to be talking like this? You eat Chinese
food. You've developed a taste for Chinese cigarettes, which are going to kill you, by the way. You're standing here in Chinatown talking with a Chinese guy. What's that make you? I think your eyes are getting more slanty every day.”

“You mean like
this?” he asked, pushing up the ends of 
his
eyebrows.

“No, push them higher.”

“This far enough?”

“Yeah. Now you know how I look to black people.”

“Hey, come on, now!” said Vandyne as he dropped his hands
to his sides.

“I'm tellin' it like it is.”

“Not all black people are like that.”

“And not all Chinese people are racist. Just a minority.”

“Minority racists? That's the situation exactly. Minorities
who are racists.”