“Jing-nan?” Peggy’s voice through the door was muffled somewhat but the surprise was audible.
“Hi, Peggy, yes, it’s me. Sorry to drop in on you like this, but I happened to be back early from the night market. Nancy and I were sitting in her apartment; we were thinking that you and I needed to patch up our friendship a bit. I thought you might still be at work but Nancy said she saw you go up the elevator.”
“She did see me,” Peggy replied stiffly.
“Well, I hope you didn’t eat yet because I’ve got some great food that I just heated up. It’s ready to serve.” I glanced at Nancy. “And Nancy has picked out a really good wine.” I heard a soft click and the door opened. Peggy was dressed in pinstripe pajamas and wingtip slippers. It was 8:30 p.m.
“Not to put you down or anything, Nancy, but I think my liquor closet has you beat by a little bit.” Peggy hooked a thumb into her gold chain necklace and made the fish-shaped jade pendant dance against her throat. “But I know Jing-nan’s food is great. I’d hire him to be my chef but my money’s no good with him.”
She stepped back and swung the door wide open. We stepped out of our slippers and stood in our socks.
Peggy let go of the door. It swung shut and two magnetic bolts rang dull and metallic. “Jing-nan,” she said, “we’re old friends, so there’s no bad feelings between us when you fail to see reason.”
“I feel exactly the same way about you,” I said.
She reached and touched Nancy’s wrists. “Nancy, I wanted to hold the elevator but you were much too far away and I didn’t want to hold up all the people waiting with me.”
Nancy gave a big smile. “It’s all right, Peggy. I caught one that was less crowded.”
Peggy smiled back and stomped down the hall to the kitchen. Under her breath, Nancy said to me, “Her elevator car was empty.”
We followed Peggy down the hall. Neither of us had been inside her apartment before. The track lighting on the ceiling slashed to the left and right to highlight art. The walls had built-in niches to display things such as a pristine example of a glazed Tang Dynasty camel sculpture. It was thousands of years old but it glistened like a hot donut. In another was an ancient ceremonial jade axe blade. The iron seam running diagonally to the sharpened edge had oxidized over the millennia to dark brown, and looked like dried blood. As a kid, I remembered seeing one at the National Palace Museum on a field trip. That one was much smaller.
Passing by nearly priceless treasures unnerved us. Nancy and I couldn’t even talk. As we neared the end, Peggy had to double back to check on us.
“Christ, are you guys sleepwalking or something? We’re hungry!” She turned to the kitchen and yelled, “Hey, Jing-nan and his girlfriend brought food!”
We stepped into the kitchen and found Huang and Kung sitting at an oak table that could seat a dozen. They were hunched over plastic bowls that contained prepared entrees from 7-Eleven.
Peggy pointed at the bottle in Nancy’s right hand. “Lemme see that.” Nancy tried to hand over the wine but Peggy scanned the label without even touching the bottle and shook her head. “Not in my house,” was her assessment.
I was glad the mock label looked real enough to disgust Peggy.
Nancy set down the fake bottle on the smaller marble counter.
“Stop eating that right now,” I ordered the cops.
Kung slapped her disposable chopsticks flat against the table and said, “Thank Mazu.”
Huang, who hadn’t even started eating, pushed away his container of what was probably upscale dog food. “Can you believe that one of the richest people in the world doesn’t even have anything to eat in the refrigerator?”
Peggy leaned against one of the kitchen’s three marble counters. “I told you both right off the bat that my ungrateful chef quit two months ago. I fed her way more than she ever fed me, that’s for sure!” She pointed her right elbow at me. “And you thought I was joking about hiring you as a chef.”
I set my two bags on the table. “Maybe you’d like my cooking, Peggy, but I assure you that my lack of manners would really irk you.” I helped serve Peggy’s two guests, who were too hungry to talk or listen.
She suppressed a burp before speaking. “Confucius said that it was better to be without clothes than manners.”
“Confucius didn’t think women should be educated,” said Nancy. “I’m sure he wouldn’t like me being in graduate school.” Dryly, she added, “Actually, many of the male professors don’t like me being in graduate school.”
Peggy jerked open her refrigerator and smirked at Nancy over her shoulder. “I’m sure Jing-nan doesn’t like you being in grad school. He’s probably the sort of guy who wants his woman working by his side at the night market.” Peggy leaned in and came up with two wine bottles tucked in her arms like rescued twin babies. She allowed the fridge door to shut on its own. Her hands cut away the bottle foil in such an accustomed way that Peggy didn’t even watch what she was doing. She kept her eyes on me. “Jing-nan didn’t finish college himself, so he probably has a dim view of highly educated people.” She winced as she worked out the cork. “Isn’t that right, Jing-nan?”
I put up a restrained smile in defense. You need to watch out when someone gives you one of those in Taiwan. A small smile means, “You’re pushing things far enough to make me think of killing you in front of all these witnesses. Stop now.” In general, any smile unaccompanied with genuine laughter is like a snake’s rattle going off.
I would have finished my degree at UCLA if I could have stayed in America. If my father hadn’t gotten cancer. If my mother hadn’t died in a car accident on the way to pick me up at the airport. If my family hadn’t owed a shitload of money to our landlord/crime boss.
It had been a very iffy time. Well, tonight certainly was an iffy time. A few of those ifs have already broken my and Nancy’s way, though.
If Peggy had allowed Nancy’s “wine” to be served, we would have had to tell her it was a joke and that the bottle was empty. It was leftover from a prank at Dwayne’s birthday, when a fake snake sprang out and bounced off his chest. Nancy would have had to palm her old phone, which was now inside the bottle recording everything that was being said.
If the two cops hadn’t been there, there likely wouldn’t have been anything worth recording. Peggy probably didn’t know exactly where her dad had been found but if she really did, I couldn’t trust what she said.
If Peggy were serving wine from her own supply, she’d probably err on the side of pouring out too much. I already knew she had gotten Huang and Kung blotto at least once, so I knew they didn’t have much of a tolerance. Well, not as much as our host.
I hoped to be able to swing around the conversation to where, exactly, Tong-tong had been found, but only at an appropriate time when the cops were in shape to yield information. Being fed good food would put them at ease and good booze would drape a nice warm shawl over their chests.
If I were capable of remembering to do so with a few drinks in me, all the insults from my good friend Peggy would be worth it.
“We are good friends, aren’t we, Peggy?” I asked. “I mean, anyone listening to you speak like that to me would think you had something against me.”
She had been pouring wine into glasses big enough to eat soup out of but her hand lifted the neck of the bottle abruptly. Drops of wine shimmered in the air briefly like a necklace of fake garnets.
“Who’s listening to us?” she asked.
I breathed in and pumped a few fake laughs from my mouth. “I’m listening to you now, and so is Nancy, and the fine members of our police department.”
Peggy grunted and resumed pouring.
“We’re off-duty from official business,” Kung said. She was joylessly eating prime selections from the finest grill of the night markets. How could anybody be so glum while eating my food? It wasn’t what I usually served, but still.
I had altered the recipe a little bit when I was cooking. Wary that food might slow the flow of alcohol to the bloodstream, I gave the skewers a few coats of brandy, to Dwayne’s chagrin. Frankie had warned me to clean the grill thoroughly after, lest it ruin the flavor profile of all our food.
“You’re off duty?” said Nancy. “I’m sure that calls for drinks. You’ve had a really rough week, I’m sure!” She picked up two full glasses and set them down, taking a seat next to Kung.
“Hey, Nancy, don’t forget about you and Jing-nan!” called Peggy. She looked at me suspiciously. Or maybe I was feeling too self-conscious.
“Oh, we’d never pass on a chance to drink with one of my oldest friends,” I said as I picked up two more glasses. I took a seat next to Huang, across from Nancy.
“We are old friends, aren’t we? Shit, I remember you in second grade, Jing-nan. No, first grade! Someone put a bug down the back of your shirt and you reached in to grab it and smashed it in his face!” She picked up her glass and sat next to me.
Why was she talking about bugs? My eyes went to our fake wine bottle. Did she know I had tucked a digital recording device in it? Man, I was getting really paranoid.
“You like it, huh?” asked Peggy.
I hid my hands under my legs. “Like what?”
“My dad’s painting!” She went over and swiped the portrait off the wall with such glee she nearly knocked over the bugged wine bottle. She held it a foot from my face and the image danced in her unsteady hands. “Check it out!”
I hadn’t noticed it before because I have only contempt for mass-produced goods and had thought it was a store-bought reproduction of an original in some Paris museum. The painting was that good. It featured a somber man and woman observing some event behind the viewer. They were old, in their forties, and seemed somewhat well-off but unaccustomed to whatever strife they were witnessing. They were pictured only from the waist up but the positioning of their arms suggested that they were holding baggage.
“Ya like it, don’t you?” asked Peggy as she nodded slightly.
“It’s very realistic,” said Nancy.
“Do you really think so?” Peggy squealed.
“It’s almost like a photo,” I said. “The expressions that the people have look real.”
She smiled and lifted the painting in triumph and carried it over to the table. We all scrambled to lift our glasses out of the way. “Painting is my dad’s real passion,” Peggy said. She set down the artwork and sloshed back into her seat, briefly grabbing my thigh for balance. “He went to art school in France for a few years before my grandfather forced him to come back and work for the family.” Peggy dragged a chicken gizzard skewer onto a plate and licked her fingers.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Your grandfather cut off Tong-tong’s allowance and your dad came running home?”
“Hah. You don’t know my father.” She filled half her mouth with food and continued talking out the other half, quite articulately, as she chewed. It was a feat of multitasking she must have learned by watching her father eat. “Tong-tong was holding out fine without the allowance. He had fallen in love with a French girl and he wasn’t going to come back. My grandfather had lots of friends in the military. They sent in rangers and abducted Tong-tong. Drugged him, flew him out.” She closed her mouth for the final chews before swallowing. Her eyes opened wide to make sure I knew how serious Tong-tong’s situation had been.
As a follow-up to the story of her father’s return trip, I’d be curious as to her family’s role during the martial-law years, when the military was called upon to handle many extra-judicial tasks. But now was not the time to explore that area.
I noticed that the cops had emptied their glasses and were nearly done eating. I sought to bring Huang and Kung into the conversation, one that I was going to steer firmly but gently.
“Your father seems to get abducted a lot,” I said. “Only that time it wasn’t really a crime because it was a family thing. This latest thing, I can’t believe it hasn’t been fully cracked yet.” I held out one hand each to Kung and Huang. In my pitchman body language, reaching out was always rewarded with some reaction from the target, usually positive. Kung sighed.
“We’re doing everything we can to find the kidnappers.” She shot a glance at Huang. “Well, everything we’re permitted to do.”
Huang’s face had taken on that of a stonefish—frowning, ugly and venomous.
“What do you mean by ‘permitted’?” asked Nancy.
The stonefish rolled its eyes to Nancy and then to Kung.
“Yeah, what do you mean, Kung?” said Peggy. She was either needling or truly oblivious. It was a fifty-fifty proposition.
“Your father . . .” Kung started.
Huang pounded the table.
“Whoa!” I said in genuine surprise. “What’s the problem?”
He licked his lips and made a kissing sound. “I don’t want to talk about it!” Huang said. But clearly he did. How could I get him going?
I pulled my chair closer to the table and lay my hands flat on the surface. “I’ve told you before that I’ve had a lot of interactions with the police,” I said, feeling my feet dance under the table. “I feel that as individuals they’ve all tried to do a good job, but they have all these restrictions placed on them. When they manage to accomplish something, they get zero credit from the public.”
Huang narrowed his eyes. I was worried he would slip back into fish mode. Instead, he took a deep breath.
“That’s the story, pretty much. You know what the worst thing is? It’s when the supposed victim of a crime stops you from solving it.”
I waited two seconds to see if he needed nudging or not. “Has that happened a lot?”
“Five years ago—this was before you were up here in Taipei, Kung—I was investigating a knifepoint bank robbery. I won’t mention the name of the bank, but if you look it up, it should be pretty obvious. Anyway, I caught the goddamned robber. There had been a torrential rain shower right before and he left a wet footprint that was incredibly complete on the sidewalk. It was under the bank’s awning, so the shadow kept it from drying in the sun.
“I caught the goddamned guy. The footprint matched another next to a moped tire tread in a dirt lot at the end of the block. The tread ran down a sandy alleyway and to the moped itself. The guy lived with his mother two blocks away from the bank in an illegal house. You know the kind, built with PVC piping and metal sheets.
“So it turned out that the bank had illegally evicted him and his mother from their home. They demolished the building and sold the land in less than a week. The bank figured it would be bad publicity if it came out, so they actually paid the robber some more and said they wouldn’t press charges if he didn’t say anything to the press.” He tipped his glass slightly and rolled the bottom’s round edge against the table. “You’ll never believe who bought that property.”
“Who?” asked Peggy. “I’m almost jealous.”
“Well, don’t be, because it was your dad. Through a subsidiary company.” Huang righted the cup. “Don’t worry, Tong-tong’s completely in the clear about that. He could deny he knew how the bank had made the land available. It would stand up in court.”
I stood up and poured Huang another glass. The first bottle was long gone and the second bottle wouldn’t last long. He didn’t try to stop me so I went a little more than halfway.
“When you think about it,” said Peggy, “my father was also a victim in that transaction. He was getting bad karma.”
Huang took a long pull on his glass in silence, then exhaled loudly, clearing his blowhole.
“Talk about karma,” said Kung.
I filled her glass and she tried to wave me off a quarter of the way through but I brought her glass up to where Huang’s had been. “What about karma?” I asked her.
“You know what’s really preventing us from apprehending the kidnappers? Tong-tong himself.”
The skin on Peggy’s face nearly audibly tightened. “How dare you accuse my father like that, you fucking bitch!” Kung made two fists and put them on the table. After all the grief she had taken from Peggy, she had finally snapped. Kung wasn’t going to hold back now no matter what look Huang gave her. I could see booster rockets firing in her eyes.
“Tong-tong won’t let us investigate the warehouse where he was found or any of the properties around it. He’s a fucking idiot for barring us and our boss is a fucking idiot for standing down.”
Peggy picked up her glass and defiantly swirled the wine. “That’s our land, our property,” she declared. “Our security people know those blocks better than anybody. They’ve got it covered, believe me.”
“You own Miramar Entertainment Park, Peggy?” I asked.
Peggy’s eyes narrowed as she considered the real-estate portfolio. “Not the park and the mall itself, just a bunch of the commercial property around it. Some of the residential. It’s a good thing we own only parts because the value of the properties has tanked. Some of our tenants went bust and the buildings are empty, like the warehouse my dad was held captive in.”
“Your dad told the cops to stay out?”
“My dad’s lawyer, to be specific, told them. You can see why. They would only fuck up the place and hurt the value. Don’t forget, there are active construction sites there. It was a very unselfish and principled stand. My dad was thinking about the workers, who need the jobs and money.”
I squirmed in my seat. “Peggy, do you know which building your dad was rescued from?”
She shook her head. “Naw, but he said it wasn’t familiar to him.”
Huang couldn’t contain a scoff. “It should’ve been familiar. He owned the damned thing.”
This was my opportunity. “Which was it?” I asked gently.
Huang curled his right hand into a fist and brought the knuckles up to his chin. “And why do you wanna know? Are you some sort of demented thrill seeker? Do you want to go there and jerk off?”
Nancy came to my rescue. “Jing-nan has an interest in crime and how the law works because he was almost a victim in an attempted shooting.”
“I knew that,” Huang said defensively. “Here’s something else I know, sweetheart. His uncle is a major underworld figure.”
“He’s never been convicted of a crime,” I interjected. Which is different from being innocent, I know.
Kung pushed aside her now-empty glass and pointed at me. “I’m sure he’s a legitimate businessman, right, Jing-nan? Maybe you’re involved in criminal activity yourself, huh? Maybe if we had a stakeout of Unknown Pleasures, we’d dig up some shit about you.”
Surprisingly, Peggy now stuck up for me. “You see this, Jing-nan? This is why you can’t trust the cops, not completely. They suspect everybody of doing something.”
Huang and Kung settled back in their chairs.
“All I did was bring them food and now they accuse me of being a criminal,” I said with as much humiliation as possible. I lowered my head slightly while still keeping their faces in view.
Kung threw her head back. “I was only kidding,” she said.
I surveyed the table. Only one skewer was left. In Taiwan, everybody hated to eat the last of anything because taking it would indicate how selfish one was—a big no-no in pretty much every Asian culture. Someone had to force someone else to take it and after an excuses-as-filibuster struggle, somebody finally would.
Maybe I could use the cultural convention to my advantage.
“Huang,” I said, “you should take that last skewer. I know it takes a lot of energy to hold in all those secrets that you have.”
“I don’t hold in secrets,” he said, quickly stifling a belch.
“You have many, many secrets, things you won’t tell anybody because you’re very important. You’re the highest-ranking person here.” Kung shivered slightly as I slid the container over to Huang. “Please take it.”
Huang’s fingers lay in wait like a sea-floor predator, and he licked his lips. “Okay. I get it. You want to know where the building is.” He glanced at Peggy. “You don’t even know, right?”
She straightened up and blinked. “Not specifically, no.”
He nodded and grabbed the skewer. Huang had literally taken the bait. He twirled it in his fingers as he spoke. “It was a factory for textiles. Tong-tong is going to knock it down to build another shopping mall.”
“Where’s the building?”
Huang cracked his fingers. “Now, I wasn’t there myself. I only had a picture from a friend who was on the scene.” He leaned to the side to take his phone out of a pants pocket and fiddled with it a little bit. “There it is.” He held out the display to us. “It’s on a street corner.”
The building was made of hastily poured concrete. It seemed to be slightly lopsided. There weren’t many windows and they were all near the roof.
“Where is this relative to the Ferris wheel?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe to the back of the photographer.”
Peggy reached in and grabbed the phone. “You shouldn’t have this image. It’s a private property.”
“Hey!” said Huang but he watched her delete the image. “I wasn’t going to post it online,” he said as she handed it back.
“I can’t have you leaking it to the press for money.”
“How much do they pay?”
“A lot.”
Huang looked in wonderment at his phone.
“Do you have a copy on your computer?” Peggy asked him.
“No,” he said, his voice hollow.
“Did you see the building in person?” I asked him.
“I picked up my friend there because even though we had just rescued Tong-tong, the guy ordered everybody out.”
“Do you remember the street corners?” asked Nancy.
Huang crossed his arms and his face showed he was remembering a time of light pain. “If I think about it . . .”
Peggy slapped her thighs and stood up. “Hey, anybody feel like seeing a movie? I feel like we should watch something.”
I could tell the next move was for the living room with the projection television bolted to the ceiling. “Maybe we can talk a little bit more here,” I said. “Huang’s in the middle of something.”
“We can talk during the movie!” she grunted. Peggy turned on the living room light and flicked another switch that plunged the rest of us into darkness. “Let’s go!”
Six two-seater couches were laid out like rib bones. Peggy thumbed through the menus on the universal remote.
“When I left my husband, I only regretted leaving all those DVDs, but now everything streams, so I get the last laugh.” She called up a black-and-white film. “I love the old Italian films. They’re so fast. Taiwanese films are too slow and nobody ever says what they really want to.”
“Personally,” I interjected, “I don’t like movies where people talk too much.” But I really liked when people who were being recorded talked too much. Speaking of which, it would be really great to get that bottle into the living room and press Huang some more.
Kung looked like she was a lightweight drinker. I guess Huang was, as well. He had seemed fairly sober while seated at the table, but now he was crawling on the sofas on his elbows and knees. Kung had to give him a hand so that he wouldn’t drop on the floor. He nodded to thank her.
Did he have anything else that was useful? How trustworthy was his memory at this point?
I glanced at Peggy. She was kneading the universal remote with both hands in frustration.
“Can someone help me here?” she asked God. I looked at Nancy with anticipation.
“I’m pretty good at this,” said Nancy. Peggy handed over the remote but hovered. I sidled up to Huang who was now in a sitting position but looked dazed.
“Would you mind unlocking your phone?” I asked. I wanted to see if maybe I could find the text or email that had the image of the building.
He must’ve been more gone than I had thought because he shrugged, punched something into his phone and eagerly handed it to me.
I almost handed it right back when I saw the screen because at first I thought he had entered his code incorrectly. Then I read the notification again: Are you sure you want to delete this image?
I pressed NO and grabbed at my own phone. The first thing I did was take a picture of the picture. Then I opened the information window on Huang’s phone. Luck was with me—it had the GPS coordinates for the photo. I took a picture of that, as well. I clicked my phone off just in time to hear Peggy make a declaration.
“Well, I could have figured that out, Nancy!” The remote was back in Peggy’s hands.
“You mean after I showed you how to do it?” asked Nancy as she coiled up on the couch.
Peggy put on her cultivated hurt look, almost on par with any B-grade actress playing a character with no last name. “How dare you!” That was her opening. “How dare you insult me after I opened the door of my home for you!” She winged the remote into a couch cushion and stomped to the kitchen.
No, I thought. Please, whatever you do, don’t grab our wine bottle. She reentered the room brandishing exactly that.
“And this is what you brought? This is what you had to offer? This joke-ass wine?” Peggy was brandishing the bottle as if she were about to launch a ship. The plastic looked like a dark glass, but it sure didn’t feel real. Peggy couldn’t be so wasted that she didn’t notice. She slammed the bottle twice against the wall, under a framed film poster signed by Ang Lee.
Splinters of plastic broke off and flitted through the air. Nancy’s old phone, which had been concealed inside, came hurtling at Kung’s face. She lazily reached out and caught it.
I stood up and put my hands on my hips. “I’ve been looking everywhere for that phone!” I declared, not even convincing myself. “I can’t believe I left it there!”
“My old classmate,” said Peggy, tonelessly. “My old friend was spying on me.”
“I wasn’t spying on you, Peggy. I was spying on the cops. I’m trying to help you and your father find his kidnappers.”
“The Lees don’t need your help!” She waved an arm to encompass the entire room. “We don’t need help from any of you!”
Kung raised a hand. “I swear, after the way you’ve been treating me, I wasn’t going to help you one bit.”
“I think I’ve reached that point, as well,” said Huang.
“Good!” declared Peggy.
Huang wasn’t quite through. “And, I’d like to repeat, your father is preventing the police from doing their jobs.”
“All the evidence has already been removed from our property and delivered to you. It doesn’t make any sense to have people trample through the building over and over when there’s nothing left to see.”
“Peggy,” I said, “how do you know the warehouse’s been searched thoroughly?”
“My father told me it was! Considering that he was a prisoner there himself, I think he would know best.”
“I think we should let Kung and Huang check it out on their own.”
“No,” said Kung.
“Absolutely not,” said Huang. “We’ve already been warned by our superiors to stay the hell away from there.”
Peggy beamed with triumph. “There you have it, Jing-nan. It’s over.”
“Why don’t we go there?” asked Nancy. We all turned to her. She pointed at Peggy. “Me, you and Jing-nan. We’ll just have a look around. But if we find something that may be interesting, you have to agree to allow the cops in to evaluate it.”
Peggy assumed a defensive stance by sitting down and crossing her legs and arms. “What if we don’t find anything? How are you going to compensate me for my lost time and wasted effort?”
“Jing-nan won’t circulate the picture of the warehouse that he’s taken from Huang’s phone.”
Peggy swung her accusing eyes at me. I shoved my phone in my front pants pocket to keep it safe. “Don’t you hate it when you have to click twice to delete something?”