Frankie sidled up to me as the night was winding down, choosing a moment when Dwayne was in the can.
“I might know somebody who might know someone else who knows something.” Frankie looked defeated. I looked down at his hands. He was trying to pick a hangnail.
“If it’s any imposition,” I said, “please don’t bother looking into it. After all, let’s see what my friend in jail says.”
He grabbed my arm loosely. “I’m doing this because I need to know. I don’t want to have this feeling that I could have helped even a little bit. Things are more serious now.” He tightened his grip and when our eyes met he nodded.
That scared me. Frankie is an unflappable sort of guy but now, with the release of the video, he thought that things were dire enough to tap his criminal network for a route to save Tong-tong’s life.
At the end of the night, Dwayne went home to soak in a tub, I went home with a bag of leftovers for Nancy, and Frankie went shrimping to connect with his old acquaintances.
Shrimping places are open twenty-four hours a day. Most of the time, families with small children and even some tourists try to catch shrimp in stocked pools using baited fishing poles. You pay by the hour and you get to salt-roast your catch in nearby ovens.
After midnight, the clientele changes a bit and becomes a bit less family-friendly. Sure, there are harmless drunk kids hanging out after a night of partying but you’ll also notice a contingent of older guys in shades, looking a little comical sitting on plastic stools and holding those playfully colorful fishing rods. They are the old-school gangsters, the ones who remember how the grudges began and how easy it all used to be. There’s no retirement from the criminal life, however, and they stand by waiting for a call that might never come, and ready to provide alibis as necessary.
Why, Mr. Officer, they might say. Lee was with me that night. We were shrimping until five in the morning—here’s the receipt!
I hoped Frankie could hook something more substantial than shrimp and war stories.
I called Peggy as I made my way through the closing night market. I dodged people using their backs rather than their legs to lift and carry boxes—some empty, some full—to their cars. We were right up against midnight but I knew my classmate would be up.
“Jing-nan,” she said.
“Peggy, I know it’s late, but I wanted you to know that Frankie is looking into matters. Have the cops found anything yet?”
“They found their fingers up their asses,” she spat.
“I’m sure the cops are doing their best.”
“They’re both asleep now. Drunk.”
“You got them drunk?”
“I didn’t force ’em to drink. Anyway, I’ve been going through their stuff. Emails and notebooks. Looks like everyone out in the field is just playing wait-and-see instead of being proactive. Even after that video.”
Cops probably don’t take too kindly to people rifling through their belongings. Nobody does.
“You’d better leave their stuff alone.”
“There should be agents out there busting in doors, but instead they’re watching the video again and again!”
I envisioned a buzzed Peggy wandering around her apartment, carelessly kicking around the contents from the cops’ bags and wallets. With her guardians passed out, she was a danger to herself and the investigation.
“Listen, Peggy, keep the blinds down and stay away from the windows.”
“Okay, Mr. Paranoid.”
She hired two cops to be her security detail and had the nerve to call me paranoid.
“Don’t insult me when I’m doing all I can to help. I’m going to Taipei Prison tomorrow morning for you. That’s already beyond what I think is reasonable.”
“Feel free to use force on him, Jing-nan. If he wants to shake hands, bend his middle finger backwards until he tells you where the chip design is.”
“That’s not my style.”
“Then just show up and put your head down and mope. You’re pretty good at that. After a minute or two, he’ll be so frustrated he’ll do anything you say.”
My grip on my phone tightened. I had to remind myself that her dad was in danger and that her judgment was currently impaired. She wasn’t aware that the words she was using were hurtful, but was she ever?
“It’s time to say good night, Peggy.”
At the entrance to my building, I had to shake my entire body to get rid of the bad vibes as I fished out my keys. I went up to my apartment and proudly held up the bag of leftovers to Nancy as if I were returning from a successful hunt. She nodded and looked at me tentatively. She must have seen the video. Most of Taiwan probably had.
I had brought her favorite skewers, the chicken butts, but maybe her appetite had been ruined already.
Nancy tilted her head and crossed her arms. “Did you see that video clip, Jing-nan?”
I put down the bag and let her hold me to comfort herself. “I did. It’s terrible. What an awful thing.”
She patted my back and withdrew. “Do you think they’re going to kill Tong-tong?”
“I don’t think so. They’re just trying to scare Peggy into giving them that chip design.”
She opened the bag and unwrapped the skewers. So her appetite wasn’t ruined. “They scared half the country!”
“The cops will save Tong-tong in the end. I’m sure.”
“How can you be sure?”
I stepped back and put my hands on my waist. This was an opportunity for me to tell her. “For one thing, I’m going to be helping them.”
She picked up a chicken-butt skewer, took a big bite and talked through chews. “How are you going to be helping the police?”
“I’m going to see a man tomorrow who has the chip design that the kidnappers want.”
“Why do you have to go? Who is this guy, anyway?”
“I’ll tell you once you’ve swallowed that bite.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“Please, just swallow.”
“All right, I just did.”
“It’s your former sugar daddy, Ah-tien. I’m going to visit him in jail.”
Red patches appeared at the tops of her cheeks and began to spread all over. “Are you kidding me, Jing-nan?”
I put my hands together in a pleading gesture and lowered my head to show her how serious I was. “I wish I were joking around. Believe me, Nancy, he’s the last guy in the world I want to see. You know that.”
She continued eating the skewer automatically as her eyes rolled upward to review a memory. “I feel so bad for him.”
I said what popped into my head. “That guy can go straight to hell!”
The red patches grew larger and made the leap to her ears. “He was never anything but good to me, Jing-nan. Do you understand that?”
I had to bite my tongue. The last time we “discussed” Ah-tien, I ended up sleeping on the couch. I took a deep breath and felt the inhaled air move down to my spleen, where mental fixations are stored, according to an herbal-medicine infomercial that plays continuously on every channel.
I could use a dose of that now, if it worked. I wished I had no apprehensions about meeting Ah-tien. I wished he meant nothing to me. Well, maybe he should mean nothing to me. After all, I had still been in love with someone else when Nancy was briefly entangled with him. It’s not like he had stolen her away from me. It’s not like she had chosen him over me. He was just someone out of her past.
And yet, just thinking about him made me want to punch him out. That just wouldn’t do well for a jail visit.
I regarded Nancy. She was annoyed with me but I could see that she was also sad that I couldn’t get past this. Why couldn’t I? Even if I claim to be stubborn and idealistic, which I am, I couldn’t let that be a line in the sand between my girlfriend and me. There probably shouldn’t even be sand between us.
“It is not the first choice of either of us for me to visit him,” I said with caution. “But Ah-tien may be the only hope to save Tong-tong.”
Nancy nodded. “I’m glad you said that,” she said. “I think he will help you.”
“Really?”
“Sure. I mean, Ah-tien has nothing to lose, at this point. Maybe they’ll reduce his sentence for helping the investigation.”
“How long is he in for?”
Nancy bit into the skewer and twisted her head slightly to tear away a chunk of meat. She chewed a few times before pushing her food into one cheek so she could talk. “You should do some homework before you go meet him. Ah-tien will be much more amenable if you show him you know his story.”
She brought me to the couch and swung up the lid on her laptop. The screen lit up and she typed in a video-sharing service. We reached a thumbnail picture of a guy behind bars and Nancy hit play.
“This is from last month,” she said.
A middle-aged prisoner dressed in a white T-shirt with long sleeves rolled up to the elbows and faded blue shorts sat alone at a table. His crew cut looked like a white mold that covered most of his scalp. He had been eating well but his eyes looked like hell behind his glasses. Ah-tien’s face glistened as if brushed with egg yolk. His nose twitched rabbit-like as he awaited the decision of an off-camera judicial board.
Despite his timid looks, Ah-tien had been designated a class-three prisoner, one class below what a convicted murderer would be. He was attempting to have that lowered to class two, which would give him more personal freedoms, a chance to move to a less-restrictive facility and an earlier shot at parole.
I took in another deep breath for my spleen. I had never tried to picture Ah-tien. I preferred to think of him as a faceless, Gollum-like creature confined to a cell. He was Nancy’s sugar daddy for about a year. He had bought her a sports car and a swanky apartment that turned out to be in the same building as Peggy’s. Then his corrupt dealings caught up with him. He was convicted of paying an official to circumvent the normal bidding process in order to get his company’s laptops into New Taipei City’s school district. The official later decided he was getting lowballed so he turned in Ah-tien.
Let that be a lesson to the business community: Always bribe more than what the government is offering to whistleblowers.
There wasn’t much movement in the video, apart from seeing Ah-tien wipe his forehead or his mouth. I couldn’t help but feel bad for him. I have often thought about physically hurting him in many different ways, but now I couldn’t even make a fist as I watched him sitting in his chair, drooping like a neglected plant whose owners were on vacation.
Someone offscreen announced that due to the seriousness of Ah-tien’s conviction, he would remain a class-three prisoner. He actually straightened up slightly and nodded. It was his expected result. His lawyer drank some water and swished it in his mouth.
The system had really made an example of Ah-tien, the poor bastard. If I were in high school, I’d be terrified to end up like him. Jailed, old, resigned and fated to dress like shit to the end. He was serving a forty-year sentence, which effectively looked like a life term.
As the camera focused on his face, I reached out and hit the spacebar, pausing the video. He looked resigned to whatever fate had in store. Maybe that included handing over the chip design to me.
“I feel terrible for him,” I said. “That’s a really long sentence for a nonviolent crime.”
“Murderers have gotten less because they can claim insanity,” said Nancy. “But you know what? Business crime destroys the lives of multiple people. Remember Bernie Madoff in America? He destroyed entire institutions, including charities.”
“I think it will do some good if he serves out his sentence. Seeing what Ah-tien looks like will scare people straight.”
She adjusted the angle of the display. “He’s lost a lot of weight.”
He used to be ugly and fat, I thought but didn’t dare say. I licked my lips.
“Nancy,” I said. “Please try a jujube skewer. I saved it for you. It was today’s vegan special, our first.”
She took a few bites. “It’s good, but maybe it could be spicier,” she said, putting me on the defensive.
I took a small bite to see if it was an outlier of tonight’s batch. “It’s got the right amount of seasoning,” I said. “It tastes different when it’s hot.” I sat down and raked my tongue over my top teeth. “You’re right, though. The spices could be better. Not hotter but it should be more coarse. Something granular to make the mouthfeel a little rougher and more pleasurable.”
“Um,” she said. “It’s really good as it is. I’ve never tasted anything like it. The skin is a great touch. What kind of skin is it?”
“It’s the actual jujube skin.”
Nancy looked puzzled. “What’s wrong with the color?” she asked. Why was everyone in Taiwan obsessed with skin color—even that of fruit?
My bedroom has an excellent view of a patch of dirt where stray dogs used to gather and fight. I had always assumed that something was supposed to be built in the neighborhood park but that the money had run out.
At around six in the morning a cataclysmic sound came from the park, waking both of us up. It sounded like a giant child’s toy chest had been dumped.
That was actually close to what happened. I rolled out of bed to my feet and stared out my window. A truck had just unloaded brightly colored pieces of a ready-to-assemble playground. I had no idea such kits existed.
I stood naked in the shadows as I watched three men in hardhats, T-shirts and flip-flops pull out giant plastic tubes from the pile. The workers had wiry appearances, with darkly tanned and lanky arms and legs. Judging by how ill-equipped they were, these men were immigrant contract laborers, probably from Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines. The men seemed a little stiff, probably because this was their second or third job in the last twenty-four hours for the same boss. I watched them sort out the pieces with their bare hands and it reminded me how privileged I was to be a citizen of the Republic of China on Taiwan. I was wealthier than my Southeast Asian neighbors but the tradeoff was that my country didn’t officially exist in the global community. We had money but not fame, and wouldn’t we have chosen that if we could?
These migrant workers chose to come here because it offered more money than jobs back home but with a lot more negatives. Taiwanese construction contractors and fishing boats exploited them, especially if they were undocumented or otherwise not officially allowed to work. Every few years, advocate groups for the workers agitated for better pay, equipment and training. Then the business community would push back, saying market wages were already fair, because if they weren’t, then why do these people keep coming in? Why, these people loved coming to Taiwan to work. They even paid job brokers outrageous fees to find the most menial jobs on the island.
If Taiwanese employers were expected to spend more on salaries, stifling regulations and unnecessary safety equipment, then there’d be fewer jobs, and that certainly wasn’t in the interest of those people. In so many coded ways, however, lurked the idea that only this lower strata of society was open to working-class foreigners, and part of it was because something was wrong with their skin color.
You’d hear about the protests for the migrant workers, then promises that bills would be passed, and then nothing. I don’t know if any legislation was ever ultimately passed because the same things seem to happen again and again. The latest outrage on behalf of labor activists was when a group of Indonesian men accused a Taiwanese fishing captain of holding them as virtual prisoners while at sea by working them for long hours and withholding food. One man had even died and was buried at sea, a move that was apparently legal.
I don’t visit nursing homes, farms or factories. Construction sites are blocked from public view and fishing vessels are out to sea. I haven’t actually seen migrants at work until now. I could tell they were exhausted but they pressed on.
Nancy’s pale arms and legs writhed on the bed and she held a pillow to one ear while pressing the other against the wall.
“Ugh, so loud!” she moaned. “How am I supposed to sleep through this?”
I took a seat on the bed. “They’re finally building a playground there. You know, so our kids will have some place to play.”
Nancy slammed the pillow against my head. Then she reached down and swung one of her house slippers at my face. She wasn’t fully awake but I was barely able to duck the assault.
“Hey, now! I’m only joking.”
“Don’t talk about children in the morning. That’s not a casual subject for me!”
“All right. I’ll wait until lunch.” The other slipper glanced off my chest. “Oh, wait, you’re still mad at me for making fun of Ah-tien for so long.”
Nancy sprung herself off the mattress to come face-to-face with me. “Thanks for reminding me!”
I put my hand on my heart. “I told you, I’m letting go of my negative feelings about him.” Yet I couldn’t help but add, “He took advantage of you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and heaved the bony ends of her elbows at me. “I’m going to say this again, Jing-nan. We got what we needed from each other. Without him, I would have been screwed.” I thought of a wise remark right then but I exercised enough self-control to merely nod. “I never loved him, he never loved me and what we had is over and has been for a long time now, all right?”
I shifted on the mattress, making us both wobble slightly. “Did you ever visit him in jail?” I asked.
“No. Why would I?”
“Have you written to him?”
“No way.” Nancy scratched her right ear. “He said that if he was ever arrested I should cut off all contact with him, otherwise I would get dragged into the news stories.”
“I’m glad you weren’t all over the news. You could have been made infamous.”
She shrugged. “I was scared at first, when he was taken away from his office in handcuffs, but nothing happened to me. No reporters or lawyers ever called.”
I grabbed her hip and pulled her to my side. “I’m glad you didn’t have to live in the spotlight.”
A new horrible sound came from the park. A cement truck was noisily lurching to the playground. Was the driver new at this or was the vehicle on its last legs? I turned to Nancy and swept the hair behind her ears.
“I have to get going,” I said. “Visiting hours start at seven-thirty.” I picked up yesterday’s boxers from the floor and shimmied into yesterday’s pants.
“You’re not going to shower or put on clean clothes?” Nancy asked.
I couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t need to clean up to go to jail. I need to look as rough and dirty as possible!”
It may have been a mistake not to. The visitor’s office was clean enough to withstand a health inspection. The walls gleamed like well-brushed and flossed teeth. Even the black floor tiles shone like the surface of an unplayed vinyl record.
I walked with some trepidation up to the counter. I tried to smooth out my hair, which was now permed in the shape of the inside of my safety helmet. Luckily I only had about three people in line in front of me.
As I bided my time, I scrolled through the news on my phone. There were stories about the video accompanied with enlarged screenshots of Tong-tong and his fellow captive, who was identified only as an executive at the Lee family’s holding company. The gun was indeed a military issue. Dwayne had been right about that.
In order to really help Tong-tong, I decided to review a little more about Ah-tien, and there was plenty to read. His case had inspired many hand-wringing editorials in Taiwan’s leading and lesser media outlets that I had been completely unaware of. The only people who really keep up on business news are the ones who expected to read glowing things about themselves and their companies.
“How far has Taiwan’s democracy backslid to allow such brazen corruption?” howled one editorial. “We are teaching our children that cheating is acceptable!” declared another. A third cried out, “Taiwan’s global reputation will suffer!” I seriously doubted that it had. Most people in the world think we’re “Thailand,” anyway.
Seeing older pictures of Ah-tien made me realize how badly he had aged in the last two years. Or maybe he no longer had access to hair dye and skin lotion. Ah-tien had pled innocent and stuck to it, but a placard can only hold up for so long in a country with a nearly 100 percent conviction rate.
It didn’t help that his lawyer, in what everybody agreed was a terrible misstep, never allowed his client to testify before the court. Ah-tien’s only comments were in the form of quickly stifled courtroom outbursts that the jury was told to disregard. When he was found guilty, Ah-tien became so disruptive he was dragged out of the courtroom on his stomach. He banged his handcuffs on the floor so hard that his wife later had to pay for the tiles to be replaced.
I had advanced in the line and now only one person stood between me and my favorite prisoner. Ms. Chen, the woman behind the desk, was about forty and had no soul inside. She was sipping tea from a glass bottle to fill the void.
“You can’t bring that in,” Ms. Chen told the woman in front of me, pointing to a box in her hands. The woman was here to visit her son.
“Why not? You allow cakes.” I could feel her heart speed up.
Ms. Chen tapped her pen against her desktop with joy. “You could be concealing something in it. You’ll have to celebrate his birthday with a hug, not a cake.”
“Can’t you x-ray it to check that there’s nothing in it?”
“No. In fact, I’ll say that your son has been gaining weight, so cake isn’t good for him at this point. I’m sorry you’ve brought it all this way.”
The woman stepped aside and heaved the box into a garbage can. “There,” she huffed. “Are you happy now, you hussy?”
“No, I’m not,” said Ms. Chen, “but you should be because you can visit your son now.” A door buzzed and the woman hurled herself through it.
I stepped up confidently to Ms. Chen. “Hello, officer,” I said. I placed my national identity card on the desk. She glanced at it before turning her checked-out gaze to my face. “We’re both Chens, so you should be nice to me in case we’re related.”
“There are too many Chens in this world,” she snapped. “Now, who are you here to visit?”
“I’m here for Wu Ah-tien. He’s a class-three inmate.”
I thought I saw a distant shooting star in her infinitely black eyes. She picked up her phone and although there wasn’t a glass shield between us, I couldn’t pick out a word in the stream of her tense whispers.
Ms. Chen put down the phone and stood up, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles on her dress. “Please excuse me. Someone else will help you soon.”
The lock buzzed. She shoved the door open with far more force than was necessary and left the room. I became conscious that no one was behind me in line and I was alone in the room. I guess I had come at the end of rush hour for visiting.
The door through which Ms. Chen had exited now opened haltingly as a man awkwardly pushed his way through it. His arms were overburdened.
I crossed a white line on the floor on my way to help him out.
“Get back and stay at that desk,” he said firmly, before adding a menacing, “Please.”
I walked back my steps and watched him extricate himself fully from the door. He was an average-sized man, about fifty or so. His off-center nose and lumpy forehead indicated that he had been a boxer or street fighter who enjoyed repeat bouts. The man dumped five three-ring binders on the desk. “Sorry,” he said in an accusing tone as he took a seat. “I didn’t want to take a chance that you were going to rush the door. That would be a very bad thing.”
I put my hands in my pockets. “I am not a guy who does bad things. Who would rush to break into jail, anyway?” I asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “Some people want to come in and attack the inmates. Some want to sneak in drugs.” He paused to look me in the eyes and search my thoughts for certain keywords. “I’ve seen it all.”
I nodded and pointed at the desk. “That’s very interesting to hear. Well, that is my national identity card right there. You’ll see that everything’s in order.”
He leaned over and narrowed his eyes. “Why do you want to visit Ah-tien, Mr. Chen Jing-nan? You’re not related to him, are you?”
“That’s true, I’m not.”
“I don’t remember you coming to visit before. Why are you coming here now? Do you even personally know Ah-tien?”
I hadn’t expected being questioned. I thought my visit was simply going to be some procedural rubber stamp sort of thing. “I know people who know him,” I offered like an idiot. His nostrils flared. I had said the wrong thing. Well, saying anything to him except “Thank you and goodbye, sir,” would be wrong in his eyes.
He flicked up my ID card with his fingernails and palmed it in his right hand. His left hand pointed an accusing finger at me.
“I know what you’re up to. You’re writing a book about him, aren’t you?”
I almost laughed in his face. Me? Write a book? I didn’t even read books! “No, you’ve got me all wrong. I swear.”
He tore open one of the notebooks and began copying the information on my card. “Ah-tien hasn’t had a visitor in a few months. He used to be on every website. People he didn’t know were signing up to visit him. But Ah-tien’s not so hot anymore. Now his wife shows up on his birthday but not for New Year’s or Double Ninth.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Are you visiting him for Double Ninth?”
I kept still and quiet, refusing to give him a reaction apart from a simple, “No.”
The man twisted his lips. “You’re not allowed to bring in any writing instruments, Mr. Chen. You’re not allowed to give him anything or receive anything. You will be monitored on camera the entire time. This camera does not record audio. However, we do have a few staff members who can read lips.” He tossed my national identity card at my neck and I snatched it out of midair before the market closed. “Oh, and no physical contact is allowed, no matter how tempted you may be to give him a big sweetheart hug.”
I’m guessing this guy wasn’t supportive of marriage equality.
“Sir,” I said, “I didn’t get your name.”
“It’s Wang. You know, as in royalty.” Although the surname literally meant “king,” it was a common one. There might be a metaphor in there.
I tapped my ID back into a wallet slot.
“Are you ready?” Wang asked me.
“I’m ready.”
He buzzed me through the door. When I made my way inside, a lanky string bean in uniform guided me down the hall to a windowless meeting room. Inside were a desk and two chairs, all made of polished aluminum. He directed me to sit in one of them and left. A camera squatted in the far corner near the ceiling. The air was a little cold so I rubbed my hands and knees. Then I thought about Ah-tien and I felt warmer.
Was I jealous of the shared history of him and Nancy? I really shouldn’t be. Was I mad at him for being married and having a mistress? Yeah, I was mad about that. I guess I was angry in general at the whole convention of rich old men doing whatever they wanted.
I stood up and began to pace the room. Man, I could just punch that guy in the face. I wondered how many I could get in before the guards grabbed me. Then I’d be in a fix. It would feel so great to hit him but the price to pay would be steep. I’d probably be convicted of assault and with the camera right there, I couldn’t say he started it. I’d end up losing my business and maybe Nancy, too.
Not to mention Tong-tong. Shit, I need to get a hold of myself. I swung my fist a few times to get the aggression out of my system. I stretched my arms to the ceiling and wiggled my fingers.
A few minutes later, the infamous Ah-tien was led in by a solid-looking man who undoubtedly had aboriginal blood.
“Please sit down,” the officer said softly to me. “You have ten minutes for this meeting. If you want to come out earlier, knock on the door.”
I sat down and said, “Thank you.”
When the door was shut and locked, I focused on Ah-tien. He wasn’t a big man. He wasn’t even an average-sized man. He’d once been a high-ranking corporate executive, but his time in jail had sapped calcium from his bones. His posture was now indistinguishable from any other hapless office worker with a heart full of ashes of dreams that had been incinerated like so much joss paper.
He caressed the knobs of his right wrist. “Young man,” he said, “why did you want to see me? You’re Chen Jing-nan, right? We don’t know each other, do we?” His voice was searching and not devoid of hope. It seemed a little too high to be a man’s.
I made sure both of my feet were flat on the floor and braced myself by grabbing the edge of the desk with both hands. “Well, sir, thank you for seeing me, a complete stranger.” I managed to keep my voice even. “I’m not sure what sort of access you have to media in here, but have you heard about Tong-tong?”
His mouth twitched. “I saw on the lounge TV that he’d been kidnapped. They want a chip design for his ransom.”
I stretched my right leg until that foot was slightly behind me. “I was told that you have that design, sir.”
Ah-tien tilted his head. “I don’t have it with me in here, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe you can tell me where it is. Maybe you’ve stored it in the cloud somewhere?”
He leaned back and I heard some of his joints crack. “You can’t trust the cloud with something like that,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing’s really safe there. All it takes is one disgruntled employee to penetrate the security layer. So many companies outsource now to save money. Some of them use contractors they don’t fully vet. That was how Edward Snowden got his foot in.”
“I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know exactly what Snowden did,” I said.
Ah-tien sucked in his cheeks. “You don’t know anything about computers, do you? Are you a member of the Lee family?”
“I’m a family friend. I’m here to see if you could help Tong-tong.”
A change came over Ah-tien’s face and he seemed to gain confidence. “So the family sent you, huh? They didn’t want to send their lawyers because that would raise too many red flags in the system. I’ll bet the cops told you to come see me, right?”
I didn’t like the defiant tone to his voice. I preferred the beaten-down old man. He was becoming aware of the power he wielded over me.
“If you want to put it that way, Ah-tien, you can. I’m just trying to save a man’s life.”
He slapped an open palm against his own thigh. “Nobody saved me! Nobody even bothered to scratch their ass to even help!” He folded his hands on the table into an angry pile of dried knuckles. “Why am I in jail?”
I had to stifle a laugh. “Ah-tien, you were convicted of bribery of a government official. That’s why.”
He let out a deep sigh. “I was the pencil,” he said. “The fall guy! I had nothing to do with government contracts! I was an engineer before they moved me up to management. Look at me! Do you think they’d send a guy like me around to schmooze with officials and sell our laptops? I don’t know how to socialize and show people a good time.”
I leaned back and tried to imagine what the pre-prison man looked like. Being completely objective, I’d have to say that Ah-tien was not an attractive guy. He oozed the charisma-less functionality of a light switch. Yes, he had a purpose. No, he wasn’t memorable. There’s a reason we forget if we shut off the lights or not. It’s a pedestrian task we perform with a simple device. Ah-tien’s eyes pulsed with resentment. His lights were switched on now. I cleared my throat and tried to find a way forward.
“Before your present situation, I understand in the past that you approached Tong-tong for an investment to make a new chip. I assume that the design in question is the one that you had presented.”
His fingers snuck under the table. “That wasn’t for my company. It was for the new startup I was planning. The current industry just wants to make marginal improvements every year. It’s the safest way to grow profits reliably. My new chip was going to fuck everything up in a major disruption.”
Ah-tien crossed his arms and cocked his head thoughtfully. This was the man who made chips. “I designed a central-processing unit that required so little power, if it were used in a typical phone with today’s battery and the brightness at fifty percent, it would only have to charge once a week.” Ah-tien held up a single finger to illustrate his point. “If it were scaled up in a laptop, it would only have to charge once a month.” The finger now wagged. “That’s with heavy usage, as well.”
He shoved his hands into his armpits and fell silent. The faintest smile rippled his lips. That chip sounded great. If it really worked. I took in a breath and coughed to clear my throat.
“Sir, can you tell me where the design is? I need it quickly to save Tong-tong’s life. You know we’re facing a deadline.”
His face twisted into a cruel circle of blood-red lips and teeth, like a lamprey’s mouth. “Yeah, I’ll gladly give it to you,” the lamprey chortled. “I need something from you first, though.”
Did he already know about Nancy and me? Did he want something sick like her used panties or naked pictures? That would help him cope with being in jail, right?
“What do you want?” I asked.
“I want a new trial!” The answer relieved and confused me.
“How can I do that, Ah-tien? I’m not a lawyer.”
His nostrils wheezed as he took in a sharp breath of air. “You don’t know anything about technology or law. What do you do?”
“I work at a stand in a night market.”
He didn’t bother to cover up his disgust. “You work in a night market?” He threw his hands up and spoke slowly in case I was too stupid to follow otherwise. “I thought I was talking to an educated person here!”
“I am educated.” That sure sounded stupid.
He smiled and spoke with the firm condescension of an elementary-school teacher to a student repeating a grade. “Listen, boy. You tell that super-rich Lee family to prove that my lawyer sold me out. They could get a mistrial declared. I have a friend, Liu Ju-lan, who worked at a rival chip company. Do you know the characters? ‘Liu’ as in ‘Liu’—even you would have to know that one—and ‘Ju-lan,’ like ‘chrysanthemum.’ She has copies of all the emails that prove that I wasn’t the guy who met with the government officials. I sent them to her when I thought I was being set up to take the rap. Ju-lan was supposed to send them out to the press but she didn’t. I don’t know what the hell happened.
“You got all that, Chen Jing-nan?” He stood up and knocked on the door. “I hope you don’t leave cooking-grease stains on the chair! We’re the ones who have to clean up everything, you know.”
Now, I would never deny that my ass is greasy at the end of a night. But it does take a while to build up. Sure, I was wearing the same jeans from yesterday, but they still smelled of cheap laundry detergent that hadn’t washed out completely.
I could hear a corrections officer approaching from down the hall. I couldn’t let this conversation end this way. I decided to say what I was going to say in order to put Ah-tien in his place, even though it might not help Tong-tong.
“I know about you and Nancy,” I said as I stood up slowly and casually rolled my neck and both my shoulders. “You know, Ah-tien. Your mistress.”
I’m unfamiliar with the specifics of what a heart-attack victim does when stricken, but Ah-tien’s physical reaction hewed close to what I imagined. He slumped against the door, eyes bugging out, instant sweat streaking his whitened face.
“She doesn’t know anything about any of this,” he gasped. “Leave her alone!”
I kept a stoic face. “Where’s the chip design?” I asked.
A key rattled in the lock. He swallowed hard. “Get me a new trial. That’s all I care about.”
The door swung open and a corrections officer stood aside, allowing Ah-tien the dignity of walking to his cell without being cuffed or manhandled.
“Mr. Chen, please head back the way you came,” said the man as he headed off with Ah-tien.
I turned the other way and wondered what sort of legal representation Peggy’s family had. Their lawyers had to be awesome because the Lees were able to throw their money around effectively. No one in Peggy’s family would ever come close to getting snagged by the legal system the way Ah-tien had been. Maybe they could get him a new trial easily, but could they do it quickly enough?
Suddenly a door swung into the hallway, nearly slamming into my face. Wang with the lumpy forehead blocked my path.
“You have a good talk, Mr. Chen?” he asked. “About power-efficient chip designs, by any chance?” He checked me as I tried to walk around him.
“We might have. What do you care?”
“If you found anything out, don’t hold out on me.” He leaned in to my face. “Is it true? Did the cops really send you?” So he had been listening in on me. Well, fuck this guy.
“How did you end up in this shithole, Wang?” I challenged. “Couldn’t pass the tests to become a cop, huh?”
Red blotches surfaced all over his face and began to seep into each other. He banged on the door he had come out of.
Two men, younger and less-verbal versions of Wang, appeared.
“Go ahead and search him,” Wang spat.
I was accustomed to wrestling with one big guy at a time, but not two. They easily rolled me up and carried me into what turned out to be an empty interrogation room. Before the hydraulic-pump door had swung completely shut, my gut had already been shoved into a table edge as each man used one hand to search my back pockets and my armpits. In no time at all they had removed my shoes and socks.
With a practiced move, they flipped me around and groped around in my front pants pockets, making sure to finger behind my scrotum sack.
Wang entered and the men released me. I stumbled.
“He’s not carrying anything,” said one of the men.
“Nothing exceptional in the wallet, either,” said the other, who tossed me my wallet. I missed and had to retrieve it from the floor. I came back up and adjusted my belt.
“I feel dirty,” I said. “Thanks for that illegal search, Wang. The Generalissimo would have fully approved.”
He turned his eyes to the ceiling. “I was perfectly within my rights, Chen Jing-nan. After all, I was watching you on camera and I thought I saw you take something from him.” He looked at me and shrugged. “Whoops. Honest mistake. It will definitely hold up in court if you’d like to sue me.”
“Cavity search?” the first officer hungrily suggested. “We might find a memory card.”
Wang twisted his mouth. “Now, that is going way too far. I would never allow an unwarranted violation like that in my institution.”
I crossed my arms. “I’m leaving,” I said.
“Just a second,” said Wang. “If you hear anything or manage to find that chip design, how about you give me a call, hmm?” He stepped away from the door, giving me just enough room to get by.
I brushed past him and stomped out. I don’t remember the moped ride back home. The thick, angry fog in my head didn’t dissipate until a realization came over me.
Peggy! I had to tell Peggy to get Ah-tien a new trial as soon as she could. Definitely before the deadline was up. Were the kidnappers really going to kill one of the men on a live stream? A death stream?
I pulled over to the side of the road and called my old classmate. I told her and whichever cop was listening in about the visit and the appropriate adult version of the aftermath.
“No way can I get him a new trial before the deadline,” Peggy huffed. “Mazu couldn’t even do that. It would take days to even put the paperwork together.” If Taiwan’s top Taoist goddess couldn’t, no one could. “I’ll track down Liu Ju-lan but in the meantime, watch your ass, Jing-nan.”
“What do you mean, Peggy?” It came out a little meaner than I had planned. I still hadn’t had breakfast. She cracked up a little bit.
“Isn’t it obvious? The guards, the corrections officers, they’re after the chip design, too. I’ll bet it’s worth a lot of money on the black market. I mean, even the cops, the unscrupulous ones, would probably want to get their hands on it. They wouldn’t hand it to the kidnappers to rescue my father. They’d rather straight up sell it to the highest bidder. Right, Huang? Kung?” The moonlighting police officers were on the line and both assented with wordless sounds.
“If the prison guards want it so badly, why don’t they go in and beat up Ah-tien until he gives it up?”
“You idiot, they can’t touch him after all the prison reforms. But his visitors, who can bring things in and out, they’re up for grabs.” She cleared her throat. “Or gropes.”
“Listen, Peggy. Call your family lawyer and start the process.”
“Yeah, I’ll get the balls rolling,” she said. “Just like how the guards got your balls rolling.”
Kung couldn’t stifle a laugh. “I’m sorry, Jing-nan. That was funny.”
“No problem, officer. And Peggy, when you hear any good news, go to Taipei Prison and tell Ah-tien himself what’s going on.”
“I’m a little too famous right now, Jing-nan. You don’t want to feed a media circus, do you? I’ll need you to go again on my behalf.”
“There’s no way in hell I’m going back there, Peggy. Send a lawyer. They like getting probed.”