Nancy and I took the train to the B&B. We decided not to call beforehand just in case Ju-lan didn’t want to talk and pulled a runner. Nancy didn’t really know her, after all.
A few groups walking through the MRT stations looked like cleanup crews with their brooms and standing dustpans. The fliers taped to the front and back of their shirts made their true identities clear. Tong-tong supporters. They weren’t technically carrying weapons, but those handles could be twisted off and wielded in two seconds. Cops on the platform watched them carefully.
We walked into the lobby of the building that housed Ju-lan’s business. The middle-aged guard at the front desk was playing an erhu. He put down his bow to try to hand us some Tong-tong fliers but we shook our heads. He grimaced, showing off red-stained teeth from years of chewing betelnut. He might have served in the military for decades.
“Where are you come from?” he asked in English.
“We’re on vacation from the United States,” I declared, doing my best Southern-accented American English. He nodded and waved us through.
I know, it’s not cool for us to pretend to be other people, but I had to save us from what would undoubtedly be a longish lecture in Mandarin about how we needed to help catch Tong-tong’s kidnappers with maybe an anti-foreigner segment thrown in for good measure.
As we waited forever for the elevator, I noticed the guard shaking his head. All day, every day, all he saw were tourists. The guard picked up his bow and scraped it across the erhu’s two strings. We entered the elevator and I pressed the “close” button repeatedly. I wasn’t sure what section of the military our guard had served in, but it sure wasn’t in the band.
During the ride up, I suddenly became a little apprehensive about meeting Ju-lan. My mind called up an image of a middle-aged woman pulling out a baseball bat and swinging it at us.
Our car jerked to a stop and the door lurched open. We stepped to a desk where a woman in her early thirties stood.
“Excuse me, miss,” I asked. “Do you know where we can find someone named Ju-lan?”
She responded by standing up and wiggling her glasses. “There’s no one here by that name,” she said. “I’m Ling-yu.” The woman seemed a little stiff. Damn, I thought, wrong place. Then she saw I was with somebody. “Nancy?” she asked. “Is that you?”
“Ju-lan! So good to see you.” Nancy reached across the desk and the women awkwardly rubbed each other’s arms. Ah-tien’s friend was way younger than I had thought. She wore her hair short and maintained an expression of professional concern for what we’d say about her business online. Ju-lan glanced at me.
“You’re married now, I see,” said Ju-lan. “Good for you.”
“We’re not there, yet,” I said as I reached out a hand to her. “My name is Chen Jing-nan.”
“Hello, Mr. Chen,” she said in a clear voice the tourists probably loved that was too loud for Taiwanese to talk to each other in. She petted the back of my hand. “Well, this is some coincidence seeing you, Nancy.”
Nancy folded her hands and pressed them against the desk. “I was trying to find you.”
“You were?” Ju-lan’s voice was tinged with concern.
“Yes, it’s about Ah-tien.”
Ju-lan swallowed and cast an inquiring look at me.
“It’s all right,” I said. “I know all about them.”
Jul-lan exhaled. “Okay. So, what can I do for you, Nancy?”
“I understand that you have a bunch of emails that Ah-tien sent to you for safekeeping. Just in case he ended up in jail.” Nancy unstuck her hands and placed them flat on the desktop. “Actually, I think you were supposed to release the emails after he was arrested.”
Ju-lan’s face shrank five percent and she nodded. “I was supposed to, you’re right.” She sank back into her seat and swiveled slightly away from both of us. “I didn’t, though.”
Now was not the time to push.
“Yes,” said Nancy.
Ju-lan still couldn’t face either of us. “Do you know why I didn’t? I could have been swept up in the corruption probe, as well. Ah-tien’s company wasn’t the only one bribing officials. Pretty much the entire industry was. Of course, the ones who paid the biggest bribes were the most successful, like Ah-tien’s company. Then they decided to cut back on the outlay. That was a big mistake. When the investigators closed in, Ah-tien took the blame for his company and the entire industry, as well.”
“Ju-lan,” I asked, “how were you in danger?”
“The justice department had subpoenaed us for any emails regarding Ah-tien or his company. I showed the emails to my legal department. The top lawyer pulled me into a conference room. He told me that the government could use it to prove collusion between our companies and also between Ah-tien and me personally. I could have faced the same charges as him.” Ju-lan pulled herself toward us and held up her hands. “I wasn’t ready to go to jail, too. That wouldn’t help Ah-tien at all. That’s what the emails would’ve done. They would’ve ended up condemning both of us.”
Nancy lowered her head. “That’s really awful, Ju-lan.”
“I’m sorry you had to face that choice, Ju-lan,” I said. “You don’t have copies of the emails, do you?”
She ran a finger along the rim of a pot bearing a chrysanthemum. She had a few of them on the counter. The tourists wouldn’t get it, but “Ju-lan” means “chrysanthemum.”
“No, I don’t,” she said. “I ended up quitting a few months later. The semiconductor business is no place for a woman. Not that we are unable to do the job. It’s just not a female-friendly industry.” She crossed her arms. “I had to make a clean break, so I changed my name to Ling-yu.” Ju-lan looked at Nancy expectantly. “How did you find me?”
“I remember you mentioned that your dream was to open a B&B. That was how I tracked you down,” said Nancy sheepishly. “I looked up B&Bs named Chrysanthemum.”
“It’s a very nice place you have here,” I said, even though we didn’t see anything beyond the lobby.
“It keeps me alive,” she said. I wasn’t sure if she was referring to the money or the work itself. “Some foreigners are very nice and that’s why it’s so disappointing when people like Tong-tong say the things they say.”
I could feel Nancy glaring at me but I couldn’t meet her face. Instead I looked to Ju-lan. “Pardon me, but you wouldn’t know anything about a chip design that Ah-tien had been trying to shop around.”
She leaned on the counter and turned her eyes to the left. “He did have a chip, a low-power chip.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the one.”
She shrugged. “He told me he was working on it, but I honestly don’t know much about it. My specialty was in graphics chips.” Her phone rang and she glanced at the blinking light on her phone.
“It was nice meeting you,” I said. This time she gave my hand a full shake. She and Nancy rubbed arms again.
Down in the lobby, the guard was giving two unfortunate people the full-on Tong-tong indoctrination. It was hyperventilated and spittle-punctuated, but still better than hearing him play music.
We were walking back to the MRT station when Nancy checked her phone and told me there was a big rally planned at her university, Taida.
“For what?” I asked.
Her eyes flashed. “It’s an anti-Tong-tong, anti-racism rally. They want the school to give back all his donation and scholarship money.”
“I thought he didn’t make that big donation yet.”
“He didn’t, but he’s contributed in the past. A lot.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “If you don’t like someone, wouldn’t you want to take away their money?”
Nancy stopped in her tracks to take me to task. I stopped walking, as well, and someone rudely pushed past me. “Most people—not you, Jing-nan—don’t want to be seen as being supported by someone they find disgusting.”
I was jostled again as two men elbowed their way around me. I was annoyed but I kept my eyes on Nancy because I had to make a point. “Here’s the thing, though,” I said, raising a finger to show that I had exactly one point. “How do you really know what someone is like? How can you judge a person by only one aspect of their personality? If a customer’s having a bad day and, oh, I don’t know, they end up screaming at me or Dwayne, does that mean they’re a bad person?”
Nancy bent her left arm and pushed the elbow into my chest. “If someone says racist things on live television, he is definitely a bad person. Tong-tong is a bad person, Jing-nan.”
Someone shoved me so hard I nearly fell over. Luckily, Nancy caught me.
We heard shouting in the distance. On a level above us, two men were squared off, each holding a broken broom handle. Three MRT police were trying to keep the crowd at bay. One hardy officer, a woman in what looked like a bulletproof vest, was trying to separate the two combatants, but each would scamper around her back to take a toddler-like swing at the other.
“Avenge Tong-tong!” yelled one of the fighters. A part of the crowd obediently repeated it.
“Fight racism!” yelled the other. Jeers from the Tong-tong crew drowned out any audible support.
The woman, like all MRT officers, was unarmed, but also unafraid. The struggle hit a new low when the Tong-tong supporter grabbed her cap and tossed it into the crowd. Her freed ponytail whipped against her furious mouth as the officer swung her head around. The Tong-tong supporter had unwittingly unleashed a beast.
She kicked him in the stomach and he scuttled across the floor, flailing like a lobster trying to escape from a weighing scale. In a cinematic touch, she raised a fist over her head in victory. Nancy and I were amazed, along with the entire crowd, which had fallen silent.
The other fighter tried to bolt but the crowd pushed him back. Two of the male cops soon had him by the elbows while the third collected the broom handles. The woman picked up her cap and slid it back on.
“Get out of here, everybody! Or I’ll arrest you!” she roared. The crowd slunk away.
Nancy spun her hand to circle the aftermath. “That’s all because of Tong-tong,” she said. “He’s inciting people to attack each other. Do you still want him to speak at your business?”
“Shit,” I said. “It’s too late to cancel it, but I think I’m going to need some muscle.”
I called Dwayne. I knew he was friends with a lot of bouncers and security guards. I asked if he could have a few of them show up and play defense for Tong-tong’s appearance. He said it wouldn’t be a problem because their usual work shifts didn’t start until later in the night. I would have to pay them cash and maybe provide some food. I had no problem with that at all. If I had it my way, of course, I would want to hire that ass-kicking female cop from the MRT station.
It turned out, though, that another female cop showed up at Unknown Pleasures a few hours ahead of Tong-tong’s scheduled appearance. Kung, Peggy’s erstwhile errand-girl, looked well-rested. She even had enough time to cover up the scar on her cheek.
“Are you here in an official capacity, officer?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am,” she said. “I heard that you’re hiring some bouncers to watch over the crowd.”
“My main concern is that everyone is safe.”
“I bet you’ll probably move a lot of food tonight, Jing-nan.”
Dwayne joined us, wiping his hands with a towel. “People get hungry when they’re mad,” he said, “and Tong-tong’s base is begging to get worked up.”
I crossed my arms. “They’re angry about a lot of things,” I said. “I want to make it clear that I do not buy into most of Tong-tong’s rhetoric, especially the anti-immigrant stuff.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Kung. “My mother’s from Vietnam.”
“You should tell him.”
“I did. He looked over my body and said, ‘I love Vietnamese women!’”
Dwayne touched her shoulder. “He said that? I would’ve broken his nose if he said shit like that to me!”
Kung shrugged. “At least he didn’t say he hated Vietnamese women. He’s been very good to the Taipei police. He’s the biggest donor to our union. We honor him at our banquets every year.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding. “No wonder you guys went all out to try to find him when he was kidnapped.”
Kung suddenly straightened up. “We might have a situation here.”
I turned and observed two fairly tall guys in their early thirties approaching. Their mischievous expressions were a little unnerving. Did they come here to bust up my joint before Tong-tong even said a word? Dwayne walked up to them and the men all shared hearty embraces. I was relieved. Dwayne had some scary-looking friends.
“This is where you work, huh?” said one of them. He had looked lanky from ten feet out but up close his muscles became apparent. The man looked at me and stuck out a hand. “You must be the big boss man, Jing-nan!”
I took his hand and found his grip reassuring for my purposes. “Good to meet you,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Attun. I was named for the last holdout soldier of imperial Japan. He was Amis, you know. Didn’t surrender until 1974.”
I took a step back. “Wow, I had no idea. I hope you’re as tough as him. There could be some real troublemakers tonight.”
He cracked his elbows. “I’m ready.”
Dwayne brought over his other friend. “Jing-nan, this is my friend Show.” Show was a bit aloof and merely nodded at me. I nodded back. It wasn’t just an Amis thing. It was a Taiwan thing. Sometimes people are shy.
This would never fly in the US. You offend people if you don’t shake hands or hug. Or act like someone’s your best friend right away. If you merely nodded when you were introduced to an American, they’d think you had something against them.
I hoped Show had nothing against me. Unlike Attun, Show looked like he was muscular from a distance and downright intimidating up close. His aura of strength was somewhat dimmed when Dwayne muttered something and Show revealed a laugh that sounded like a pre-pubescent teen’s homeroom giggle.
“Doesn’t he?” asked Dwayne out loud, encouraging more yucks from Show. “Doesn’t he, huh?” In all likelihood he was making fun of me.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Dwayne turned sheepish. “I was just telling Show that you looked like the type of guy who was into Joy Division. He’s heard their songs before and he can’t figure out who would like the band, either.”
Show managed to stifle his laughter. “I’m sorry, Jing-nan, I don’t mean to laugh at you,” he said.
“It’s fine with me,” I said. “I’m just glad you’re here. Please, let’s all eat up before the rush.” I cracked my knuckles and readied myself to carry a few trays of food. “Say, Frankie . . .” I called, but I stopped because he was already setting food down on a table. He looked at me and gave me one of his signature smiles that nearly curled up to his eyes.
I didn’t really worry until five minutes to nine. Many people had a loose definition of time, but a guy like Tong-tong would be twenty minutes early for everything. I had a few texts from Peggy around eight-thirty, when she said traffic was bad but that she still expected to get to Unknown Pleasures on time.
I tossed some grilled meats into a glassine envelope once again and rang up the sale. We were running low on wooden skewers, but we were also probably having the best night ever.
I looked around and ignored the next customers, who were yelling something at me. A survey of the assembled crowd showed that it was eighty percent male. Men ate more, so good for me. I glanced to my left and right. Show and Attun stood on either side of the Unknown Pleasures’ counters. Scowling with arms crossed, they were my brave temple-door guardians. If they had swords they wouldn’t be any more intimidating.
Where are you guys? I texted Peggy.
Here, she wrote back.
I scanned the sea of black hair and baseball caps but failed to see an entourage approaching. Then I saw Tong-tong’s bare hand and suit sleeve cutting through the black-headed crowd like a shark fin. He was probably thirty feet away, but I could hear him even above the whoops of support.
“Excuse me! Pardon me! Thank you for being here!” It was just him with Peggy in tow. When they were close enough, I saw that he wasn’t worse for the wear after pushing through the boisterous crowd. Tong-tong’s suit was not even rumpled and his tie was still straight. Peggy was holding his briefcase. They both had big toothpaste-commercial smiles on.
As the two crossed the goal line and entered our dining area, Show and Attun closed in and blocked the entrance. Maybe I had been overcautious in hiring them. After all, there were already plain-clothed police in the crowd and the people were more concerned with solemnly recording the event on their phones.
Peggy grabbed my hands. “Jing-nan, thank you for doing this,” she said. “People have been saying horrible things about my dad that just aren’t true. I’m glad you’re giving him a forum where he can clear the air.” She pulled at the armpits of her pantsuit with anxiety.
“You’re my friend, so he’s practically my dad, too,” I said as I tried hard to stitch sincerity into my voice.
Tong-tong came up and clasped each of my shoulders with a powerful hand. He gave me a big smile, which I was forced to return. The guy had charisma.
“You’re going to introduce me, kid?”
“Yes, Mr. Lee.”
He released me and patted my right arm. “Call me Tong-tong—everybody does!” He turned and waved to the crowd. “Whenever you’re ready,” he said to me out the side of his mouth.
I flipped on the kitchen boom box and patted my hand against the karaoke microphone plugged into it. A light thumping sound came from the speakers. I cleared my throat and did my best to sublimate myself into my public persona. Johnny wouldn’t be nervous addressing a few hundred people.
“Thank you all so much for coming out to Unknown Pleasures. We welcome everybody here. That is the spirit of Taiwan. Over the centuries, how many immigrants and refugees has our island taken in?”
I heard Dwayne sarcastically grumble, “Too many.” Well, as an indigenous person, he did have a point.
“We must remember the original inhabitants of Taiwan,” I said. “They shared their land, often by force, and we recognize their sacrifice. Everybody who’s here now simply wants to be at home here.
“I’m sure that many of you have heard bad things about Tong-tong in the media.” A chorus of boos rose up. It was my first reaction from the crowd and it was loud enough for me to feel the vibrations in the air. “You’ve heard that he’s a racist, that he’s against immigrants, that he has hate in his heart. None of that is true. He is a victim of crime and is only looking for justice. Anybody who supports justice must support Tong-tong. Thank you.”
I bowed slightly to the crowd and was nearly carried away by the applause. It was addictive and I allowed myself two selfish seconds of it before handing the mic to Tong-tong.
“That was a very nice introduction, Jing-nan. Very nice. Yes, you’re right. Nobody loves immigrants more than me. I’m an immigrant myself. My family was torn apart by the Chinese civil war and some of us managed to escape to this beautiful island. I’ll tell you something, my grandparents grabbed what valuables they had and they shoved them in their, ah, orifices. You know what I mean? So when people say that the Lee family shits gold, it’s not because we are particularly rich, but because that’s where we hid the jewelry.”
The crowd erupted in laughter and applause.
“You’re all good people. It means so much for me to see you all here. Now, it’s true. You heard it. I am the victim here. You’ve all seen me humiliated. I’m passionate about finding these criminals and punishing them. Anybody else here witness their friend killed right in front of them? A part of me died, too, when I saw Associate Vice President Peng Wan-chang shot to death. It was horrible.” He paused and reached out an arm. Peggy immediately placed an opened bottle of water in it. He took a swig and passed it back before continuing.
“Don’t you think, though, that while we search for the particular guys who abducted me, we should also weed out other criminals, a lot of whom are in our country illegally? Shouldn’t we stop them before they commit crimes? Am I wrong?”
Enthusiastic cheers let him know that he wasn’t.
One voice yelled out, “Boo!”
Tong-tong shaded his eyes and searched the faces.
“Hey, who said that?” he said in a voice thickly sweet with venom. “Over there, was that you?”
About ten people deep on the right side, an arm rose up and extended a middle finger. Men pounced on the heckler and dragged him off to the side in a four-person tangle to even louder cheers.
Tong-tong dropped his hands and shook his head. “Man, I would love to punch that guy right in the face.” The crowd laughed. “But we are a peaceful people. I would never do that. I know for a fact that nobody here would ever commit an unwarranted violent act. Then again, we don’t back off when someone raises a fist at us, right?
“So, let’s give the police department of Taipei a big round of applause, they deserve it.” The crowd dutifully clapped. “And let’s do our part by continuing to flush out these, ah, problem neighborhoods. Let’s nail these guys, huh?” He was about to hand the mic over to me but he decided to add, “Hey, buy food here at Unknown Pleasures and support Chen Jing-nan, a really great guy who makes a mean skewer. I don’t want any food left over whatsoever.”
We sold out that night, in more ways than one, Nancy later told me.
“Anybody who supports justice must support Tong-tong.”
My words came back to haunt me. Another night, another incident of men from Southeast Asia being beaten by a crowd of Tong-tong supporters.
There was phone-filled footage of him in the lobby of the Taipei 101 skyscraper shrugging off the episode. “What’s everyone complaining about? They knew how to fight back. They’re no angels.”
News coverage was rather wide—every channel I switched to, in fact. Even the Taiwan Indigenous Television station found the time to condemn Tong-tong’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. The report ended with a clip of me, as they all did, because they needed positive quotes for balance.
“You need to do something soon, Jing-nan,” Nancy told me at lunch at a B-list noodle shop on Xinyi Boulevard that catered to tourists, who were in the dark on current events and wouldn’t recognize me.
We usually went someplace around her campus but she told me it was too dangerous for me to set foot at Taida. Apparently Tong-tong was as toxic as the legacy of Chiang Kai-shek, and I was being identified as a Tong-tong supporter.
After taking our English orders for “beef noodle soup,” our waiter looked at me and did a double-take before he left.
“Shit,” I said. “What should I do, Nancy?”
“You should hold a rally for immigrants. I don’t know, call it ‘Justice for Immigrants’ or something. If you don’t, people are going to boycott Unknown Pleasures.”
“Luckily for me, I’ve always got my tourists. It’s all right if the locals turn their backs on me.”
She straightened up. “What if the tour guides start telling them to skip your stand? What if the English-language travel blogs single you out as a hatemonger?”
I straightened up. Ma de, those travel blogs have been pretty damned good to me. They post almost every picture I ever send, along with my written caption, as long as each shot I send to rival blogs is slightly different. I’ve been interviewed by email more times than I have fingers. I’m always complimented on how great my English is and I return the kind comments on their Chinese-character phrases pasted-in from Google Translate.
They’ve always been on my side, and hundreds of Americans have told me they’ve only found Unknown Pleasures through these blogs. If they stopped covering me, I would miss out on some of the most ardent eaters. I saw American dollars fluttering in the wind.
“Jing-nan!”
“Urgh?” I said.
Nancy glared at me. “You were spacing out!”
“No, I wasn’t. I was thinking. You’re right. Let’s hold that rally for immigrants tomorrow night.”
After lunch, I got on my phone and posted about the rally on Unknown Pleasures’ social media accounts. I declared that I needed to clarify that I and my business were pro-immigrants, and that Tong-tong was not voicing my sentiments. I promised there would be a diversity of speakers and encouraged people of Southeast Asian descent to speak.
I felt good. It was the right thing to do.
But later I arrived at Unknown Pleasures to find a furious Peggy, backed up by the cops Huang and Kung, who both looked sheepish. My old classmate screwed up her face and pointed at my nose.
“Jing-nan! Is this some kind of joke? Are you really hosting an event tomorrow that disparages my father?”
“It’s a pro-justice event,” I said coolly. “So it’s really in support of what your father’s looking for.”
“We were so good to you, Jing-nan! He didn’t charge you anything to show up here and Frankie told me you sold out of food for the first time ever!”
Frankie shrugged. “That is a fact.”
“Dwayne told me his friends had a great time with my dad.”
Now it was Dwayne’s turn to shrug. “Tong-tong stuffed thousand NT bills into their hands and called them indigenous hero warriors. They love him now.”
Exasperated, I said, “I thought you people didn’t care about money!”
Dwayne raised an eyebrow. “We didn’t used to, but we’ve been corrupted by the ways of the Han Chinese.”
Peggy waved a hand in my face. “Listen, Jing-nan. This little anarchist rally of yours is not going to happen. Consider it canceled!”
“Who’s canceling it?”
“Me! Your fucking landlord, that’s who!”
“It doesn’t say in my lease that I can’t hold gatherings. In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t actually have a written lease with you. It’s all on the honor system.”
“That’s funny because you’ve been acting dishonorably. You and Nancy! This was all her idea, right? You wouldn’t have been able to come up with this yourself. Your cute little moral compass put you up to this.”
I felt needles sticking into my neck. “I wanted to do this because I want to give everyone a chance to express themselves. I even did your father the courtesy of letting his event happen first.”
Peggy shook her head and snapped her fingers. “I’ve heard enough! Huang and Kung, shut down this rickety old stand now!”
Huang wiped the side of his nose with his left thumb. “We’ve explained this to you already, Peggy. This is outside our jurisdiction. If you want to close his business, you have to bring it to the court and let a judge decide. If he’s been paying rent, it will be really hard to close his business, even if you don’t have a formal written lease.”
“I’ve been paying,” I said. “I pay good money for rent!”
Peggy tossed her hands to the ground. “Fine! I don’t need your help, I’ll shut this thing down myself!” For some reason, she thought the first step in this process was to give me a shove and stand with her arms crossed. Peggy was smaller, but her center of gravity was lower than mine, and she actually caused me to stumble. Dwayne grabbed my arm to help me recover my balance. I crouched slightly to make my words more menacing.
“Listen, Peggy, if you really do manage to close down Unknown Pleasures, do you have any idea what sort of backlash you’ll face? Students, who have nothing better to do, are going to raise hell against all the Lee family businesses. How would you like them to move their rally to the lobby of Taipei 101?”
Peggy snorted and jammed the toes of her right foot into the ground. I knew from experience that that was a common sign of indecision. If she were a potential customer, I’d offer her both of the things she was considering at a discount. But she didn’t need a value meal. She needed one more push to force her decision.
“If the rally is here,” I said, “there won’t be any media coverage. If they go to Taipei 101, it’s going to be on every cable station.” I touched her shoulder. “You don’t realize it now, but I’m actually helping you by having it here.”
I felt her body quiver. She sighed and nodded. “What you’re saying makes sense. This is like a controlled demolition instead of letting a wrecking ball run loose.”
I tried not to nod too hard. “You see?”
“Okay, Jing-nan. But if anything goes wrong, you’re completely responsible!” She added a final dig. “You and Nancy!”
“She had nothing to do with it!”
Peggy whipped out her phone with an exaggerated flourish. “Nothing, huh? What do you call this?” She pushed the display in my face. It was an email chain, and it started with an original post from Nancy that read, Hey guys, I’ve convinced Jing-nan to hold a rally for justice at Unknown Pleasures.
After my face fell, Peggy withdrew her phone and raised her chin in triumph.
“Where did you get that from?” I asked her.
She got a distant look in her eyes and smiled faintly. “I’ve got paid informants in the student movements who let me know what’s up. It’s insurance that our businesses won’t suffer from any misguided notions that could pick up steam.” Peggy looked me in the eyes. “I might even have Dwayne and Frankie on the payroll to keep tabs on you!” I looked over. Both men shook their heads vigorously. Peggy snapped her fingers to get my attention. “You tell Nancy to watch her step!”
“I never tell her what to do.”
Peggy stalked off. Huang rolled his eyes and slinked after her.
“Sorry,” said Kung. She put her hands in her pockets and followed Huang.