This Is a Bust (7 page)

I was feeling kind of carefree after my morning beer and a
Tic Tac chaser, so I decided to drop in and have a little talk with the Brow.

“Mister
Chow,” said the Brow, folding his hands into a pile of
dry twigs. “Always a pleasure.”

“Hello, sir,” I said.

“Something on your mind? Please. Have a seat.”

I looked down at the only other chair in the room. The
varnish
was rubbed out of the seat from people squirming in it. I sat in the center of the light spot.

“I understand,” said the Brow, “that you have another one of
your events to attend tonight.”

“Chinatown Girl Scouts, sir.”

“Do they sell Girl Scout fortune cookies?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“I want to thank you once again, as always, for your help.
The Department congratulates you heartily.”

“Well, I ap
preciate that, sir. But I wanted to talk to you
about something.”

“What is it, mister?”

“Sir, I don't want you to think that this is all I can do. I could
really contribute in a lot of other ways.”

“Mister Chow. You don't think we're limiting you by having
you attend these little gatherings, now, do you?”

“I understand how the Five wants me there for the
photographs in the Chinese papers. . .”

“Not just the Five, Mister Chow. You represent every
policeman
in the city. When the Chinese people pick up the newspaper,
they don't just see someone from our house. They see a member of the Police Department of the City of New York.”

“Sir,” I said slowly, thinking of how to put it. “It's not a hard
thing to do.”

“But Mister Chow,” the Brow said, putting his thumbs on
the edge of the desktop. “You are in fact the only one who can do this.”

“Sir, I want to be on the detective track. I want investigative
assignments. Think of how my language skills. . .”

The Brow was shaking his head.

“Miste
r Chow. We are in a fight right now for the hearts 
and
minds of the people. We're slowly winning them back. And we're winning them back because of you. The trust is once again, ah, rising between us and the community because of you.”

“There are other ways we could help rebuild that trust, sir.”

“This is the best way. Through the press, in their own
language. They need to see how integrated we are with their people.”

I thought about how sick I was of going to see Chinese
people get awards for being smart, rich, or beautiful. A Chinese cop in the background was just another prop in

the play.

“We're not providing enough of a challenge for you, are we
Mister Chow?” the Brow asked, leaning back so he could look down at me.

“I just think I could do more, sir.”

The B
row nodded and chewed on the inside of his left cheek.

“Mister Chow, do you know how lucky you are? Do you
know how many blueshirts would trade places with you

if they could?”

“Why would they want to, sir?”

“You're getting your picture in the papers. You're getting
free food. You're getting attention from your people. And you're getting extra money.” He held up his hand immediately. “I know you're getting money from these things, and it's only fair that you do.”

“But I'd rather spend the extra time on investigative
assignments, sir. If I keep doing these events, I'm never going to get a gold shield.”

“And so what if you don't? Who wouldn't want to walk a
beat, make friends, and get their pictures taken? Think of all the people you meet and the goodwill you spread. The Chinese people love you, the police administration loves 
you — you have the best of both worlds. You'll have the

easiest 20 years of anybody. You'll retire and you'll have a department pension and probably be named to several community boards.”

“I was thinking that I could be more than a 20-and-out
kinda person, sir.”

“My boy, please be practical about this. Think of all the
detectives and lieutenants who grow bitter and end up hating the people they're supposed to protect. And that hate is mutual! The community here admires you! In a few years, you could practically be the mayor of Chinatown!”

“That'
s all fine by me, sir, if you want me to keep attending
community events, but I don't want to keep walking a beat.”

“You realize that with the cutbacks, we're understaffed and
underbudgeted. We don't have the luxury of letting people do what they want, Mister Chow. Everybody has to do what is best. But I'll let Mister Sanchez know that you're ready for any investigative assignments that happen to be available. Not that there are any.”

“I appreciate it, sir.”

“In the meantime, I don't want you slipping in your duties. I
expect at least 30 movers or parkers a month.”

“That won't be a problem.”

“Now conside
r yourself dismissed without prejudice, Mister
Chow.”

I left the house and got onto the footpost. I looked down
at my feet. If I had been born smarter, instead of stupid, I wouldn't be stuck like I was. I could have had a lot more options. America was all about living out your dreams, but I had blown it and it was all my fault. There was nothing I could do now, except 17 more years. Then I could get my stupid pension.

—

I went up Bowery. When I hit Canal, I had to wait before the light changed. There were about 20 people on the corner waiting with me, but that didn't stop them from spitting and jaywalking. I could fine them for crossing against the light, but that law was practically unenforceable in New York. I might as well write up people for being Chinese.

To the right was the Manhattan Bridge, which connected
Manhattan to Brooklyn. The entrance to the bridge was

forever under construction. Canal Street traffic poured 
directly into an assortment of plastic mesh fences, concrete bunkers, and orange plastic barrels. This week, the lower roadway was shut off. Next week, the upper one would be closed.

To the left, Canal sloped down past Broadway into the
Holland Tunnel. Shadows from taller buildings cut the sunlight into diagonal strips. Jewelry stores glittered on the northern side of the street. They looked a little trashy 
because the floors were littered with crumpled strips of newspaper, which functioned as a sound alarm in case someone got the idea to tiptoe behind the counter when

the store was crowded.

A large tractor-trailer going up into the Manhattan Bridge
entrance grunted like it was hungry. It blew out exhaust that passed through us at about eye level as we stood on the corner. No one even blinked. The light changed and a stray car shot through the crosswalk at the last second. I looked at the decals on the rear window and let it go. It was an off-duty cop.

I continued north,
passing grocery stores and giving a few
limp waves to the storeowners. Soon, I was under the awning of one of the four movie theaters in Chinatown,

the Music Palace. The other theaters were the Pagoda on East Broadway by Catherine, the Rosemary on Canal, and the Sun Sing under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.

All of them ran double features for two bucks, and you
couldn't argue at that price. Sometimes it would be Bruce Lee. Sometimes the movies bordered on nudicals. Lonely Chinese guys went there to disappear in the dark. I didn't do it too often.

My favorite theater was the Sun Sing
. Its lobby had a virtual shrine to Linda Lin Dai, an actress who had killed herself at the height of her popularity. She'd always played the woman who was betrayed by the man. A lot of Chinese women could relate to that. Linda took a lethal dose of sleeping pills before her last film debuted. Then she truly became that woman in the movie poster behind the glass case that no one could ever touch.

By contrast, here at the Music Palace was a poster
advertising yet another iron-fist-themed slapfest. I could tell by the bad photography alone that it was one of those movies where you could see the guy receiving the pulled punch clap his hands or slap his thigh to make the sound effect.

I turned away from the theater and almost stepped on a toy
dog on a plastic tube. It yapped at me, then flipped back into the ranks of cheap Hong Kong toys in the street stall.

Holding the pump end of the dog's tube was a dusty old
man sitting in a dirty plastic chair. A portable heater on an extension cord hummed at him. He smiled at me and nodded his head. A wind-up toy dolphin wriggled frantically against the edge of a half-filled tub of water. I leaned over and saw a smaller tub in the shadows filled with baby turtles.

I pointed at the turtles and shook my head.

“You can't sell those,” I said.

“They're
just my own pets,” the old man said, laughing. “I'm
not selling them, officer.” He picked up the small tub and set it down behind his chair.

I turned and left. I bet I wasn't more than five feet away
before he brought out the turtles again.

I g
ot to the corner of Grand and Bowery, one of the smelliest
intersections in the world. Slime runoff from ice-filled racks of seafood dripped into a sewage drain already clogged with soapy restaurant grill grease poured in the night before. Homeless white men piled up on the sidewalk like bleached driftwood between seafood stands. On a hot day, you could pass out from the smell. Luckily, it was still winter.

I was done for the day, but I still had time to kill before
the Girl Scouts thing. I went back to Columbus Park to see the midget. He was sitting on his upside-down bucket as usual, smoking and chatting to an old male fortune-teller. The midget flipped the cigarette around his fingers like he wanted to make sure the smoke got into every knuckle.

When he saw me, the midget screwed up his face and said,
“I'm glad you're here, Officer Chow. I'm looking for one more win for today. That would make it 25!” I smiled and sat down on the bench across from him. I nodded at the fortune-teller. He returned the gesture but remained silent, waiting for the midget to introduce him first. He stroked the part of his face that was trying to be a beard and stayed quiet.

“How about some checkers?” I asked the midget.

He nodded his
head. “Yes, officer. Anything you say, officer.
Are you going to arrest me if I win?” He reached into his knapsack on the ground and pulled out a bag of black and red checker pieces. He knew how to play every board game, Chinese and American. He even played steeplechase with plastic horses. Two crushed plastic bottles of herbal tea bowed at his feet. I subconsciously willed him to throw them away before he left the park.

“You want to be black or red?” I asked the midget.

“Doesn't
matter to me,” he said. “What's your favorite 
losing
color?”

I snickered. The midget liked to dish it out, but he wouldn't
do it in English. Even an old friend like Vandyne would only get, “Good move,” “I'm sorry,” or “Play again?” The fortune-teller smiled some more and shifted in his seat, but the midget ignored him so I did, too.

The midget grabbed fistfuls of checkers and planted them
around
the board. He gave me the reds so I moved first. I tried to make a bridge with two columns of pieces, but he cut it apart like a sword through straw. He toyed with me a little and I ran out of captured pieces to crown him with. It was as if he had a bonus move every turn.

He was having trouble holding all the captured pieces or
maybe he was rubbing them against each other to annoy me. The midget tapped his foot three times and tilted his head up at me. I looked him in the eyes and he tapped his foot again.

“Okay, I give up,” I said.

“Twenty-five!” the midget yelled. Then he chuckled and
swept the pieces back into the bag. He folded up the board and put it into his knapsack.

“This is Wang,”
he said, finally introducing the fortune-teller who
I'd seen around doing odd jobs, but whose name I hadn't known. He didn't need me to introduce myself. I was famous from the Chinese newspapers.

Wang looked about 70 years old, but seemed to be in pretty
good health. His skin had shrunken and was taut against the bones in his face, wrists, and elbows. Wang's peppery hair was thick and clumpy and looked like an art project with cat fur.

“Let me tell your fortune,” he said, taking my hands.

“I don't believe in that kind of thing,” I told him.

“Just let him do it,” said the midget with faked irritation.

“Give this old man something to do.”

He noticed a mahjong game breaking up at the benches 
by the water fountain. “Hey, ladies!” he yelled, “Come and hear the fortune for Officer Chow! Maybe he'll marry one
of you!” They cursed the midget, but they still came over to listen.

“You have a very lucky face,” Wang said to me. “Luckiest I've
seen in a long time.”

“I'll bet you say that to all the boys,” I said.