We caught the first MRT train just after six in the morning at the nearby Jiantan station and rode south with sleepy business people who had sleep-inducing real jobs. Four stops later Nancy had to transfer to get to Taida.
“Watch yourself,” I said. I gave her a little shoulder wipe as she left. Taiwanese frown upon public displays of affection. That’s why she kissed me back at the apartment. We didn’t even hold hands in public. Why would anybody? Two people walking close together already meant they were in love. No need to spell everything out to the general public and embarrass yourself, your parents and your ancestors. You never knew who was looking and who would gossip about it, after all.
I transferred two stops later to get to the Gongguan Day Market.
The day market is held in the same blocks as the Gongguan Night Market, which in all honesty is a half-decent enterprise, even if it can’t hold a fried drumstick and thigh to the Shilin Night Market. The day market, with all the fresh produce, is where the action’s at.
My strategy at the day market is to walk through every block before buying anything. It’s the best way to find the lowest prices and also the most interesting things on offer. A guy can only carry so much, after all.
A while ago, before I’d taken my vow to be circumspect, I’d regrettably filled my bags with mundane but good produce before coming upon the sexiest small pumpkins I’d ever seen. They would have looked beautiful cooked, bursting with orange and branded with grill marks. On social media, these pumpkins would have racked up their own fan page. The vegans—and there were more of them every damned month—would have loved them. Strangely, the vegan tourists all seemed to be rich. Maybe they were saving a bunch of money from not eating meat or buying leather goods.
I stood at the curb to fortify myself mentally before I entered the day market. I took a deep breath and said to no one and nothing in particular, “Please let me find something great.” It was the closest I ever came to praying with sincerity, since I didn’t believe in any of Taiwan’s legions of goddesses and gods. I used to think less of people who knelt down before these idols and asked for help. Now I know that they are only seeking comfort and there’s nothing wrong with that.
My own “prayer” is really meant to address my subconscious and encourage my creative process. Seriously. I mean, once in a while, the image of my high-school girlfriend flashes through my head, but apart from that, there are no otherworldly presences in my life. She’s dead now, after all, and the dead don’t come back.
I rubbed my hands in anticipation and strolled to the first two stalls. I noticed that buckets of chrysanthemums adorned nearly every corner. What better way to celebrate the Double Ninth than to wear flowers and decorate the home with them?
I heard a rattling and focused on Buddhist beads dancing on a woman’s wrist as she sliced lotus root for samples. The scene gave me an epiphany.
I should offer a vegan option every night.
Unknown Pleasures could be highlighted by travel blogs as a joint that has vegan fare. It could be a whole new revenue stream.
I had to find something inspiring for the stall’s first vegan offering. Something distinctive. Something great. Something that could be liked and shared infinitely online. Nothing’s dumber or more tasteless than random vegetables spiked on a skewer. I needed something to really stand out.
Broccoli? Blah. Cauliflower? Double blah. Could I do something with spinach? Nah. It cooks down to soggy clumps. Useless and ugly.
I picked up a bundle of asparagus and tapped my fingers on the tips. Still fresh. Asparagus doesn’t last long once harvested. I liked the shape of the vegetable. They are the noble columns of the palaces of the plant kingdom.
The vendor, a man in his mid-forties, ambled over to me and pushed back his Yankees baseball cap. “I just cut them this morning. My best crop ever. These asparaguses are good enough to offer to the gods!” Whoa, guy, let’s not overdo it. Don’t make me rethink this purchase before we even begin to bargain.
I saw a boy, no older than ten, sitting on a crate, bundling asparagus and snapping rubber bands around them. He was already in his school uniform and probably did this every day before classes. I was like that kid, only I had had to help in the night market after school, and I hadn’t been able to keep my uniform as clean.
The boy was eating something with relish. It wasn’t candy. Every few seconds, he’d pick up a piece of fruit that looked like a light-brown apple and take a huge bite. What was it? I gingerly put down the asparagus bundle.
“What’s that your son is eating?” I asked. “It looks like something really good and special.”
The vendor smiled but his eyes narrowed. “Everything I have is special, what are you talking about?”
“I rarely see kids eat anything but junk food. While I’m sure you’re forcing him to work with you, he appears to be happily eating something voluntarily. Tell me what it is.” The boy smiled mischievously behind his father’s back.
The vendor ran his tongue over his teeth and sighed through his nostrils. “I have some really good spinach you might want to look at. It’s great in soups and so nutritious.”
“Ah, spinach isn’t going to work for me.” I glanced down at the asparagus bundle again. Now that I had lost interest in them, they resembled a bundle of crooked green crayons.
The boy spoke up.
“Dad, why don’t you sell him the jujubes? They’re better than you think.”
The man turned to his son. “I don’t think this guy cares about that.”
The jujube is a fruit that comes in many shapes and sizes. Some are grown to be dried for tea. Some are eaten fresh.
The sort of jujube that I was most familiar with was the green jujube that resembled a Granny Smith apple only it was sweet and had an olive-like pit. Also, it was way too early in the year for them to be harvested. They usually don’t show up until December.
“What kind of jujubes are these?” I asked.
“They are a new variety they experimented with down in Kaohsiung. They’re ripe, but they’re too sweet for me, even though the kid likes them.” He pulled his cap back down to cover part of his face. “I made a bad trade.”
“Can I try one?” I asked.
The man peered at me to see if I was serious before handing me one from under the counter. “If you want to spit it out, use a garbage can, not the street,” he warned. “There’s no spitting allowed at the market.”
It was the same size and shape as a green jujube but the skin was a purpled chocolate color.
I took a bite. The smooth skin snapped and a syrupy film coated my lips and tongue. It really was way too sweet, but I chewed through the entire fruit. It was still fibrous enough to be grilled. Then the sugary glaze that it yielded would be even better with something to enhance the taste and texture. I had to figure out what I would add, but first I had to have those jujubes.
“How many of these have you got?” I asked.
The vendor was knocked back. He couldn’t believe his fortune and/or my stupidity. “Xiao Ping,” he respectfully addressed his son, since he was the one who had spurred the sale. “Bring those jujubes over here.”
The boy swung to his feet and lugged over two tied-up burlap sacks one by one. Xiao Ping stood them up against a box of untrimmed asparagus.
Seeing the sacks leaning against each other, I thought about Tong-tong and the other guy who had been kidnapped. I wondered if the cops were as attentive to the other man’s family as they were to Peggy. Or was he expendable?
I untied the two sacks and pulled out two from as deep as I could reach. I sniffed them for good measure. The jujubes were comparable with the one I had.
“How many have you eaten?” I asked Xiao Ping.
The boy cautiously glanced at his father and then looked me right in the eye. “Five,” he said.
“Were they all good?” He nodded. “I’ll bet you can eat some more.” He looked worried as I handed him two more. “Don’t worry,” I told his father. “These two are on me.”
I lugged the sacks through the market, thinking that maybe I had overpaid for the jujubes, and I certainly didn’t have to buy all of them. Once again, I had been too impulsive. Maybe I saw the boy and had projected my life broadly upon his. Maybe that had been the plan and I had been played like a sucker.
Now I had enough fruit for a few nights of vegan skewers and then some. If the jujube specials crashed and burned, then there’d be plenty left for Nancy and me to snack on.
I trudged on through the market. I noticed some people reading newspapers with Peggy’s dad on the cover. “Where Is Tong-tong?” the World News plaintively asked. It was paired with a photo of the man laughing.
I pressed on, picking up scallions, parsley, onions, garlic and some secret ingredients. I worried about Tong-tong and felt worse and worse about the jujubes. Maybe I shouldn’t have bought any at all.
Shit. Second-guessing myself again. I should think positive thoughts.
Surely there were nutritional properties of the jujube that I could freely expound upon and exaggerate. People love to eat things with health benefits.
I walked by a woman casually flaying pineapples with a machete as long as her forearm. She ended each motion with a flick that gave each spiny rind flap just enough power to wing into a mesh bag strung open at the end of the table like a net.
My thoughts again turned to Tong-tong. How much danger was he in? Would his kidnappers really execute him as they’d threatened to if it came down to it?
If I could do something to help Peggy’s father, I would. She hasn’t always been the greatest person in the world to me, but she had never really hurt me.
Peggy might even be a real friend. We were certainly close enough to yell and scream at each other.
We were also probably close enough relationship-wise for her to sic one of the cops on me. I was blithely unaware, as I breathed my jujube breath, that I was about to be accosted on my way to the train station from the day market.
Detective Huang came up from behind and grabbed at the bag handles I had in my right hand. I fought him for a few seconds until I recognized him. He looked happier than I had remembered.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as I let go. The cop staggered back as he tried to balance the five bags. The jujube sacks had to be 10 kilograms each.
“Ma de, is this how you keep in shape? You should thank me, Mr. Chen, for helping you carry these. Well, you should thank Peggy. We’re going to give you a ride back to your apartment. C’mon.” He stalked off.
As I followed him, I looked to the curb and saw a black stretch sedan. That was Peggy’s chauffeured company car.
I considered making a run for the MRT, but I needed that produce that Huang had walked off with. Besides, if I could help Peggy, I wanted to.
I followed Huang to Peggy’s car. As we drew closer, the trunk door majestically lifted like a giant clam yielding its pearl to a sea god in dragon form. Huang stowed away all my bags quickly but with care, a skill likely derived from handling live weaponry. “This looks and smells great, Mr. Chen. You have a real talent at picking the best ingredients. I can see why your food is so good and I appreciate the trouble you go through.”
That was the nicest thing a cop had ever said to me. I reached in and loosened one of the burlap sacks.
“Please call me Jing-nan,” I told Huang. “You’ve already helped me carry my stuff, so you’re a friend now. Go ahead and grab a bunch of jujubes. Take as many as you want.”
“Isn’t it a little early in the year for them?” said Huang as he scooped one up and cautiously held it at arms length. “Or maybe it’s too late in the year. What’s up with the color? Why are they brown? Are these diseased or something?”
“It’s a new variety that’s been bred to be especially sweet,” I said. Man, I was fast when I was trying to sell food. “Take a bite.”
“I trust you,” he said. “I’ll eat ’em in the car.”
Like Buddha, the man could hold an infinite number of items in his hands, and he made full use of the crooks of his arms. How had he managed to snag a dozen of them? I heaved the trunk shut for him.
“Thank you,” said Huang.
I caught a jujube as it slipped out of his embrace. “I can hold more for you,” I said.
“I’m good,” he said.
A door next to the curb popped open. Huang gestured for me to enter first. I pulled out the door, all the way, ducked down and stepped in. Peggy and Kung were sitting in the back seat. “Good morning, ladies,” I said as I shimmied like a crab and dropped on the shorter side seat. “This is for you,” I said to Kung. I showed her the jujube before tossing it to her.
“What the hell is this?” she asked as she handed it to Peggy.
“It’s a new kind of jujube,” I said.
Kung frowned. “What’s wrong with the color?” Peggy displayed no curiosity in the fruit at all and handed it back to Kung.
“It’s a new variety,” Huang gurgled with his mouth already full of mashed jujube. He dumped the jujubes into an empty magazine holder and sat next to me with a satisfied grunt.
Kung turned the jujube carefully over in her hands as if she was searching for a port to plug in a USB cable. I turned to Peggy, who crossed her arms and craned her neck at an odd angle to emphasize how disappointed she was with me.
“It would be so easy to kidnap you, Jing-nan,” Peggy sighed. “You live your life on such a predictable schedule!”
I shrugged and lay back as the car eased out. “How did you know I’d be here?” I asked. “You’ve never been out shopping with me.”
“You put up pictures of what you picked up from the day market on the Unknown Pleasures page on Facebook. I know you go to Gongguan because you told me it was your favorite. Based on the timing of the pictures, I figured you leave the market around nine in the morning and head back to your apartment to take pictures and post them.”
Satisfied, Peggy took the jujube from Kung and bit into it. Her expression registered only that Peggy was pleased with herself, and didn’t reflect how the fruit tasted.
I was still blocking Peggy on Facebook from my personal account, but I couldn’t stop her from viewing my business page.
“Listen,” I told her. “I don’t go to that market every day. Anyway, if someone wanted to kidnap me, they could just show up at work or come in the middle of the night to my apartment.”
Kung put her elbows back. “We stopped by your place this morning, but you weren’t there. You wouldn’t open up your stand until nighttime, but Peggy knew where you probably were.”
Huang covered his mouth with a tissue and spat a pit into it. Kung pointed at the pile of jujubes and he tossed over two of them to her in rapid succession.
“Don’t get any juice on my goddamned car,” snapped Peggy, even though some jujube juice was leaking down her wrists.
“We’re professionals, Peggy,” Huang said. Was that some spittle I felt? I edged slightly away from the detective.
“If you guys wanted to find me,” I said, “you could’ve called. We could’ve just talked on the phone.”
“We didn’t want to make you worry,” said Kung. “We figured we’d let you go about your routine and then interrupt you after you shopped.” She rubbed a jujube across her left sleeve to clean it and took a healthy bite before her face took on a mildly grim expression. All three of them looked that way.
What did they want from me? Was I possibly a suspect or something? Maybe I had said something that wasn’t positive about Tong-tong a while ago to Peggy, and she had turned it over and over in her mind, making something out of nothing.
I had mentioned that her father was greedy for raising the rent. In the past I had said mainlanders should all go back to China. When we were in elementary school, she had given me a jade pendant as a token of her affection, but I handed it back almost immediately. I didn’t think it was wrong for me to take it, but I didn’t want it. It was ugly, one of those hybrid fish-turning-into-a-dragon things. She hadn’t said a word and only glared at me, but maybe a part of her still resented me for that.
The car slowed and stopped at a red light. Kung and Huang leaned over to each other for a private conference. An inquisitive look came over Peggy’s face as she mimed holding a cup and tilting it back. I shook my head but raised my empty hands in a gesture that asked, “What am I doing here?” She held up an open palm to me, signaling that I needed to wait.
The light changed and the car went ahead. We seemed to be heading toward my apartment so I played it cool and bided my time. I wasn’t under arrest or wanted for questioning, was I?
The cops had ended their tête-à-tête and Huang was now writing something down in his notebook. An inventory of everything I had in my bags? Questions for an upcoming session with a lie detector? Kung stared hard into my eyes as she chewed.
Despite her earlier warning to her fellow passengers to keep the car clean, Peggy dropped her jujube pit on the floor and recklessly tore off the paper wrap of a package of haw flakes, a snack made from dehydrated and processed hawthorn berries. They are sort of like the Pringles of Asia.
Peggy ripped out one of the thin disks from the package and held it out to me. Purple haw crumbs scattered everywhere.
“No thanks, Peggy,” I said.
She flipped it into her mouth. “Suit yourself.”
I turned to Huang and Kung. “Can one or both of you tell me why you’ve picked me up?” I asked.
Peggy licked her fingers and worked out another haw flake. “Should I play him the message?” she asked.
Kung held up a hand. “There’s no need, we’ll just tell him what it said. Tong-tong managed to leave a short message on Peggy’s phone earlier this morning. We weren’t able to take the actual call because the ringer was off despite several reminders to keep it on.”
Peggy grunted with contempt. “Turning it off before going to sleep is a routine action for everybody. You can’t blame me when you should’ve double-checked.”
Kung, without looking at Peggy, resumed. “Tong-tong said that a certain man had the chip design the kidnappers were looking for.”
Huang picked up a jujube and held it to his crotch before speaking up. “We’ve sent our hacking unit after the man’s email and phone records. They came up with nothing. Well, nothing directly related to the case.” The tentative tones in their voices and their distracted glances at the floor made me uncomfortable.
“If you know the man, why don’t you bring him in for questioning?” I asked. “He’s not dead, is he?”
Kung let out a small laugh. “No, he’s not dead. He’s incarcerated at Taipei Prison at the moment.” People doing hard time for murder and high-profile financial shenanigans were locked up there. It had originally been built by our Japanese rulers during Taiwan’s colonial years in the first half of the 20th century, so you knew it had to be a serious place to serve out a sentence.
“We won’t be able to reach him in a timely manner,” said Huang. “The corrections department gets bureaucratic with the police when white-collar criminals are involved. They want everything by the book. Warrants, court orders and all.”
Kung rolled two jujubes in her left hand in a meditative action that I found impressive. “We were thinking that maybe you, Mr. Chen . . .”
“Again, please, call me Jing-nan,” I said. “We’re already close enough to share car rides and fruit.”
“Okay, Jing-nan, we were thinking that maybe you would want to go visit this man and ask him where the chip design is. It would help us so much.”
“This is a pretty high-profile case,” I said. “The prison wouldn’t want to help out the cops?” I asked.
“Lemme put this way,” said Huang. “A lot of people in the corrections department are people who wanted to be cops but didn’t make it, so they resent us. Yeah, it is a big case, but it also means they would want to assist us even less. They want us to look badly in the public’s eye.” He cleared his throat. “We need a civilian, like you.”
I pressed my shoulders into the back of my seat. So they needed my help. I wasn’t so sure I was ready to be generous.
“You mean you want me to pose as a visitor and get him to tell me where the plans are? Sure, I could do that. I’d do anything to help Peggy. But tell me, why do you want me in particular to go see this guy? Because you trust me so much with this information?”
“We do trust you Jing-nan,” said Huang. “We know you’ll go the extra distance to help Peggy.”
“We wouldn’t want to send just anybody into this jail,” said Kung.
“The guy in jail is Nancy’s former sugar daddy, Ah-tien!” blurted Peggy.
I felt my scalp tingle. Nancy had been a mistress to Ah-tien when she was an undergraduate. She was poor and he was an executive at a tech company. He had rained money on her before going to jail for bribing government officials to buy his company’s laptops for Taipei’s public schools. Nancy had described him as “a nice guy.”
“Fuck that motherfucker!” I yelled. Kung gave me an admonishing smile that a school nurse wears for a kid who was sick because he hadn’t done what she had told him to. “Peggy, your father had some business dealings with that loser?”
Peggy tossed another haw flake into her mouth. “I looked over my father’s notes. Ah-tien really had approached my father, looking for an intellectual-property licensing deal or a joint venture. Things didn’t work out in the end, and my father doesn’t have the actual chip design in his files.”
Kung chimed in. “Ah-tien had a mobile phone that he only used to call Nancy. A line with only one contact means either spying or an affair.”
“Turns out, it was the latter,” said Huang.
“No shit,” I said. “Listen, guys, I’m not going to see that piece of shit unless I can slam a brick on his head.”
We all swayed as the car turned onto an exit ramp. Peggy tapped her foot on the floor. “I already know there’s no way that Nancy would want to go see him, so I’m asking you as an old classmate to go visit Ah-tien in order to help my father.” Peggy touched my shoulder in a rare act of reaching out for compassion. “And you did say you’d do anything to help me and my father, right? I am begging you, Jing-nan. Help. My. Father.”
How else could I respond?
“Gan!” I yelled. “Okay! I’ll go!”
“You don’t have to tell Nancy,” Peggy suggested.
“I’m going to tell her,” I threw back defiantly. I didn’t need her relationship advice.
“Good.”
“Very good,” said Kung.
“Thank you very much, Jing-nan,” said Huang. “We all really appreciate your service to your country because that’s what this is.”
“I don’t know how I’ll do it, but I’ll manage,” I said. “Anything else that you’d want me to do would probably be much easier. Is there anything else I could do instead? Anything?”
Kung’s eyes flashed. “Maybe there is another thing you can do. I mean, not instead, but in addition to the jail visit.” She leaned forward and pointed a blood-painted fingernail at my heart. “We know you have a family member involved in organized crime, Jing-nan.”
“Allegedly involved,” I said. My statement neither confirmed nor denied what I knew about my uncle.
Kung continued. “You have an uncle named Big Eye. He might know something about the kidnapping because he’s actually met Peggy before. Am I understanding this correctly?”
Peggy stuffed haw flakes in her mouth and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.
Goddammit, what had she told them about my gangster uncle?! Well, her father’s life was hanging in the balance, so maybe I should cut her a break. She had to tell them everything and explore every avenue.
I opened my arms to Kung to indicate that I was going to be completely forthcoming, as well. “Yes, I have an uncle named Big Eye who knows some heidaoren people. Of course he isn’t involved in the underworld himself. He’s a legitimate businessman.” Peggy stifled a guffaw. “And, yes, he’s met Peggy before, but he hasn’t had any contact, for personal or business reasons, with her family since.”
Peggy crumpled the haw flakes wrapper in her hands and tossed it to the back of the car. “Okay, Jing-nan,” she said. “You can say whatever you want about Big Eye. And, no, he hasn’t been in contact. I just want to know one thing for sure. Is there any way he can help get my dad back?”
“I’ll have to ask him.” To Kung and Huang, I added, “I myself haven’t seen him in a month and I don’t hear from him on a regular basis. He doesn’t live in Taipei, after all. He lives in Taichung.” That city was a good two-hour drive southwest from Taipei. I know this because I recently enjoyed a few trips down to see him at his insistence.
Peggy slid back a panel in the door, extracted a flask and swirled it thoughtfully in her hand. “How about we make that call now, Jing-nan?” she asked.
I took out my phone and hid it in a fist. “I don’t have much power left right now.”
Huang pressed his leg against mine and I could smell the cloyingly sweet jujube on his breath. “Well, why don’t we go down to the station and use one of the phones there? I’m pretty sure all our lines are working.”
Every cop I’d ever met had sooner or later put the squeeze on me, no matter how friendly a conversation had started out. This was a good thing, though. At least they were predictable and clear in a country and culture where people are never direct about what they expect from you.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll call him, but all of you need to be quiet. It might spook him to know that I’m with some cops and Peggy.” The cops nodded and Peggy put her hands together in a thankful gesture.
I fumbled through my contacts list. I didn’t have many personal friends in it. Most of my contacts were people I knew who ran travel sites and blogs, and probably half of the info was out of date, as turnover and laziness has felled many a former great online page. I needed to do some major purging. My uncle maybe should be included in that purge.
To say the truth, the whole truth and nothing but, my uncle was a lousy human being. I didn’t know that when I was a kid, when he was pushing candy and pastries on me. Earlier this year, however, I found out that he was a rotten parent, a racist, a murderer and a homophobe. What else did I know about the kindred soul who lurked inside? Oh, he has a kidlike fascination with koi, the decorative carp that rich people keep in their ponds.
I touched his name on my screen and put the phone to my ear. Kung tapped my wrist. “Put it on speakerphone,” she warned. I shrugged and complied. The other three leaned in to me.
As we listened to the rings, I remembered that Big Eye had invited Nancy and me to come down to his house for the holiday and I’d responded with some bullshit excuses about why we couldn’t. The weather forecast didn’t look good or it was a friend’s birthday party. Stuff along those lines. It wasn’t nice of me to do that. After all, despite everything, he was the only family I had left, and family ties in Taiwan were more bonding than any legal contract.
I heard a scraping sound when he took my call.
“Ah,” he exhaled languidly with a strain of menace. “Jing-nan! My favorite nephew!” I was his only nephew. “Have you changed your mind, I hope? Are you and Nancy coming down for Double Ninth?”
Big Eye’s voice was loud and the way it probed for weakness reminded me of a principal I once had. The guy would yell and beat you at the same time for perceived infractions. I was one of the good students so he only got me twice. Kids have it so easy now because school beatings were outlawed in 2007.
I crossed my legs and hooked my fingers in my exposed right sock. “Hello, my favorite uncle,” I managed to say smoothly. He was my only uncle. “I am really sorry, but no, we still won’t be able to make it down there. You know we want to see you for dinner and all . . .”
“That is such a shame, Jing-nan,” Big Eye interrupted without an ounce of regret. “How about the big kidnapping? Tong-tong, head of the goddamned Lee family!”
Peggy, Kung and Huang all drew in closer.
“Yes, I find it quite troubling. Nancy and I are both really shocked.”
“Yeah, that’s your friend Peggy’s dad. That poor girl. Don’t know if I mentioned it before but she’s got nice tits. I mean, I think they’re fake, but, still, they look pretty good. Of course, when you’re grabbing them, you want the real ones. They just feel better.”
Kung looked up and rubbed her chin. Huang tightened his mouth, narrowed his eyes and turned to Peggy, who didn’t visibly react.
I cut off my uncle. “Hey, Big Eye! Could I ask you a few things about the kidnapping?”
“How can I help you, kid?”
“Uh, do you know anything about it? Do you know who could be behind it?”
His breath whistled noisily through his teeth. “Who’s behind it? I have no idea. Tong-tong has more enemies than me! Good luck figuring out who. Anyway, it’s stupid to kidnap someone for ransom. So many things can go wrong. It’s so much easier and more lucrative to make fake ATM cards or trick people on the phone into giving their bank and credit-card information, not that I would know. Anyway, our clueless police probably don’t have a chance of finding Tong-tong on their own.” He provided a big yawn that ended with a doglike whine. “I guess everyone has a purpose in life, even the stupid and useless people that end up as cops.”
I heard Kung’s knuckles crack as she tightened two fists.
“My dearest uncle,” I blurted out. “Please, if you know anything helpful, tell me. Tong-tong may not mean anything to you, but he is the father of my classmate.”
“Listen, I don’t know anything.” He was getting annoyed. I shouldn’t press him anymore.
“I’m sorry I had to bother you and I want to say again how sorry Nancy and I are that we can’t get to your house.”
“How many fucking times are you gonna say you’re sorry? I get it. You don’t wanna associate much with me. I know I haven’t been there for you all the times I could’ve been. As a matter of fact, I’ve been pretty shitty to you. I understand why you don’t respect me as your elder. I haven’t earned your respect.”
The nearly genuine sadness in his voice almost got to me. “But I do respect you, Big Eye.”
He couldn’t restrain a second yawn. “You do? Then why are you calling me at nine in the fucking morning?”
“Your favorite nephew can’t call you to say hi?”
He scoffed. “You’re lucky we’re related. Later.” He hung up.
Huang sucked his lips in distress. Kung crossed her arms and legs. Peggy rubbed her hands.
“They’re real, Jing-nan,” she said. “Tell him when you can.”
“Sure, I will.”
Huang straightened up and hooked his fingers into his belt. “He knew we were listening,” he said.
“Oh, do you think?” said Kung.
I glanced at my phone and clamped it against my leg. I cleared my throat. “Hey, guys, I did what you asked of me. How about taking me home now?”
“You’re not off the hook yet, Jing-nan,” said Kung. “You’re going to see that guy in jail. Tomorrow morning.” I thought I was doing them a favor, but now it had become an order. It was like being back in high school where the only path was one of acquiescence.
“I know, I know.”
Huang nudged me. “We’d pick you up and take you there ourselves, but it’s better that you just show up like a civilian, which you are.” He picked up a jujube and furiously rubbed it with his fingertips. “And tell your uncle I said ‘Fuck you.’”
I nodded and pocketed my phone.
“I’m not the only avenue you’re pursuing to find Tong-tong, right? There are other leads coming in and sources that you’re humoring and threatening, I hope?”
Kung twisted her face, making her scar more prominent in the morning light. “Sure there are, Jing-nan. That’s no reason not to put the screws to you, though.”
“Of course,” I said. I remained quiet for the rest of the ride, containing my glee that none of them had seen the text from Big Eye. He wanted me to call him back when I was alone.