Ghost Month (22 page)

“Jing-nan, there’s some streamlining going on at Black Sea.” His blank face added nothing.

“It’s strange that you use a business term to describe a gang.”

“They are a business. A conglomerate. They’re liquidating a
troubled subsidiary. One of their leaders is hiding in Cambodia. His son was promoted to the head of a faction. The younger guys, they’re not seasoned enough to be in a leadership role. Too impatient and hotheaded. They stepped up the high-margin high-risk stuff—stolen credit cards, pushing drugs. They’ve burned a lot of Black Sea’s bridges with other businesses and the authorities.”

“Thanks for looking into this, Frankie.”

“One more thing. This out-of-control faction is responsible for killing Julia.”

My body reacted by having a coughing fit. I scooped a handful of water from the faucet and drank it to help myself recover.

“Are you sure?” I asked him.

He tasted his front teeth without opening his mouth. “Yes.”

“Can’t we go to the police with this?”

“No. Can’t prove anything, even though it’s true. She’s dead, Jing-nan. Nothing can bring her back. Believe me, Black Sea will punish every last person in this faction.”

“Does this have anything to do with those guys shot in Datong District and the one found in the water?” I expected him to say he didn’t know or something else vague so as not to alarm me.

“Probably. They would want the bodies to be found in a public way as a warning to anybody else in the organization who was thinking of making their own rules.”

“Why did they kill her, Frankie?”

“I don’t know. The only people who know are on the run right now.”

He touched his front pocket and felt his cigarette box. I hoped he would take questions before his smoke break.

“Do you know anything about a big Taiwanese-American guy going around?” I asked.

“There are always some ABCs or ABTs going around.”

“Frankie, can I ask you a question? Are you a member of Black Sea?”

He chuckled and put a cigarette in his mouth. “I was in prison, Jing-nan, during martial law. You know that. It was a tough time. The Generalissimo said it was better to kill ninety-nine innocent
people than to let one guilty man go. He applied that thought to jailing people, too.” He faced me and looked right through my eyes. “On Green Island I met a lot of people who did bad things. I also met many people who were like me—completely innocent. If we had had fair trials, or even crooked trials, we wouldn’t have been in there. When innocent people see they’re treated the same as criminals, do you think that once they’re released they’ll be on the side of the law?”

“Well, you are. Aren’t you?”

He blinked and the look in his eyes told me he was back in the present. “I
understand
both sides of the law. Sometimes one is right. Sometimes the other is.”

Dwayne looked over at us, but decided to leave us alone. Even though the water was still making a racket, I moved in closer to Frankie.

“Frankie, the Huangs wanted me to look into Julia’s murder. They said the cops aren’t doing anything. One of our old classmates saw her at the betel-nut stand in Hsinchu City fairly recently. I was thinking of going there to find out what really happened.”

Frankie smiled gently and touched my shoulder. “Be reasonable, Jing-nan,” he said. “You’re not going to find out any more than I did, you’re only going to put yourself in danger.”

“I’m already in danger. Those guys yesterday warned me to stop looking into Julia’s murder.”

Frankie took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked down into the sink. “You’re lucky you even got a warning, Jing-nan. Stop everything you’re doing. Right now.” He stared at my wavering reflection in the pan as the water played over it.

“I know you’re right. I just have to do one more thing. I have to see the Huangs and tell them what I know.”

“Be careful.”

“I definitely will be.”

Frankie grunted and turned off the faucet. He plunged his hands into the water up to his wrists to clear the drain.

“Frankie? Is it true that when you were on Green Island, your cell used to fill up with seawater?”

His left eyebrow rose slightly. “Who told you that?” he asked softly.

“My father.”

“Hmm,” Frankie said noncommittally and put the cigarette in the left corner of his tight mouth. He was done talking.

CHAPTER NINE

I texted Nancy when I got into bed.

STILL THINKING ABOUT YOU, MY LITTLE SEX PARTNER
. We had agreed to call each other that. It sounded practical and yet playful. “When do you sleep?”

My phone vibrated seconds later.

Her message read,
I CAN
’
T SLEEP WITHOUT HEARING FROM YOU. HOW IS YOUR BRUISE? SIGNED, YOUR SEX PARTNER
.

I looked down. The color was becoming more consistent and was turning dark blue. That meant it was healing, right? I touched the splotch in the center and it didn’t hurt as much as it used to.

I took a flash picture of the bruise and sent it to Nancy with the caption,
PLEASE KISS IT
. I put the phone down and looked out the window. Clouds were passing under the moon, sending grey wisps crawling up and down building walls.

My phone rang.

“Hi, sexy,” I said as I answered.

“Ummm, Jing-nan?”

“Ming-kuo. You sure are calling awfully late, again.”

“Do you always answer your phone like that?”

“I was joking. I knew it was you.” I groaned as I saw that Nancy was trying to call me.

“Jing-nan, who was that girl you were with? Is that your wife?”

“No, she’s a friend. She’s actually trying to call me now so I have to …”

Cookie Monster wasn’t getting it. He continued chatting as if we had all the time in the world.

“I was thinking I could take you to lunch tomorrow?”

“You’re going to tell me all you can about Julia, right?”

“Didn’t I already? Well, we have so many other things to talk about, anyway. It’s been so many years, Jing-nan. We should sit down and meet properly.”

“I might have plans already.” My phone buzzed with Nancy’s call.

“If that doesn’t work for you, then I can come to your stand and hang out for a few hours at a table until you’re free.”

Nothing could be worse than that.

“You know what, Ming-kuo? Let’s do lunch tomorrow. I’ll clear my schedule.”

“Great!”

I got him to agree to meet me at a Korean place with wait staff who don’t let you linger.

Nancy hadn’t left me a message. I called her back and got her voicemail. I texted her,
IS IT TOO LATE FOR YOU TO COME OVER AND COMFORT ME?

ADDRESS PLEASE
, she texted back.
I
’
M A LITTLE TIRED. I
’
LL TAKE A CAB
. I sent her the information. I hoped she wasn’t too tired.

My ear canals began to itch, so I used a small bamboo spoon to scrape the wax out. I brushed my teeth again, making sure to brush my tongue thoroughly.

Most importantly, I set up my PC to play my personal mix of songs culled from Joy Division’s best live bootlegs. I wanted Nancy’s first impression of my house to be a good one. She hadn’t said much about her place, but I was sure it was nicer than mine.

It was almost two thirty in the morning. As a last-minute thought, I put out a pack of dried mangoes, a pack of roasted cashews, one Kirin and one Asahi.

She texted me to say the cab was nearby.

I stepped outside wearing a pair of flip-flops, shorts and a T-shirt that featured the drummer-boy cover of Joy Division’s
An Ideal for
Living
EP. She had to know that one. I swung open the gate and stood on the sidewalk.

Even though Ghost Month spooked most people into staying indoors at night, younger people seemed more blasé about it. I saw a car of joyriding kids go by blasting AKB48, a best-selling Japanese girl group that, despite the name, had almost one hundred members. Girl groups like AKB48 and the Taiwanese equivalent, TPE48, were destroying minds with their synthesized, sunny songs that all had choruses with “baby” in them. Everything’s happy! Everything’s fun! Nobody’s sad! Nobody gets murdered!

I watched the car with contempt as it turned the corner and left. Those kids would be safe during Ghost Month. The undead would flee from that music.

A cab swung up to me from the other side of the street, and I reached for my wallet. I knew I couldn’t beat Nancy to taking care of the fare, but I had to make a good effort. Her window was down and she smiled at me.

“I have it,” I said, showing her a few bills.

“I’ve already paid, Jing-nan.” She popped open the door.

“Hey,” said the cabbie. “Don’t you guys want to go out? I know the best clubs!”

I ducked my head down and looked at him. He seemed to be about thirty years old. Maybe he knew the best clubs from a decade ago. Anyway, Nancy and I weren’t into club music. That little snippet of AKB48 was already more than I needed tonight.

“We’re tired,” said Nancy, stepping out and straightening up. She was wearing a Magazine shirt that featured the cover art of the reunion album.

“Next time!” the cabbie said. He pushed his card onto me before pulling away.

“Any problems getting here?” I asked as I guided her to my toaster house.

“No, it was very easy. Longshan Temple is a good landmark, and you’re only three blocks away.”

“Did you see the homeless people in Bangka Park?”

“That’s the place right across from the temple, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve seen the park on the news before. I feel so bad for them.”

The most recent controversy was that the city was hosing down the benches and concrete platforms late at night and early in the morning, ostensibly to clean the park. The workers evacuated the park before spraying, but the homeless men couldn’t return to sleep there while it was wet.

“My father used to point to them and tell me I was going to be one of them if I didn’t study hard enough.”

As we stepped into my house, Nancy sighed. “We have it so good, don’t we? Shouldn’t we be helping the homeless?”

Shit. This was the wrong thing to be talking about, and it wasn’t going to lead to anything good tonight.

Luckily, the music changed the subject.

“Wow,” Nancy said. “This is the first song on the second side of
Closer
!” She stepped into a pair of slippers I had set out.

“ ‘Second side’? You have this album on vinyl?”

“Yes. I’m not a big audiophile or anything, I wanted it mostly to have the cover art full-sized.”

“You want some snacks or beer?”

She sniffed. “Did you cook something?”

“No, I didn’t. What do you smell?”

“Smells a little like something fried.”

“You’re probably smelling my clothes in the hamper. I stink after coming home from work.” I touched the back of my neck and winced. I’d been alone so long I didn’t realize that my place stank.

She stepped into the minuscule kitchen. “I think it’s something else.”

I didn’t want to admit that at home I rarely cooked anything other than instant ramen, so I said I would clean up better before she came over again.

I was glad Nancy wasn’t the shy type. She burped while drinking her beer and it made her laugh. When she first stepped into the bathroom, she squealed that the toilet was a squatter and not a sit-down.

I didn’t want to, but we went through my yearbook. Man, why had I left it out? We stopped on the spread of me singing while reaching out to Julia with Nancy right behind her.

“I liked you, but I was scared of you,” she said. “You always wore that big trench coat. It was menacing. People said you robbed graves.”

I laughed as I tore a dried mango slice. “I was just trying to dress the part. I didn’t mean to scare anybody.”

“The younger girls loved it. We all called you Ian.”

“Oh, really?” I said, unable to suppress a smile. “I didn’t know I had made such an impression.”

“I think the fact that you were with Julia was a big part of it. You, as a man, become more attractive to women because you are already partnered with a woman.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s a matter of social selection. A woman has selected you as a mate, and that means there’s something worthy about you, you’re better than the pool of single guys. So other women would rather try to mate with you than waste time with potential losers.”

“Nancy, does this somehow tie in with your bioengineering studies?”

“It’s more like psychology, but I like psychology. When you study human behavior, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish individual choice from what we’re hardwired to do. Maybe we really can’t exercise much choice in our lives.”

“You did choose to come here, didn’t you?”

She dropped her slippers, pulled her feet up on the couch and placed the back of her head in my lap.

I played with her funny little right ear a bit. Who was this woman on the couch with me? She seemed to be on her own, although she had alluded to her estranged family “down south.”

Had she come back into my life because Julia was gone for good? Had I somehow willed myself to find her? Maybe this was supposed to happen.