Neighborhood Blood

“Yo, Jacky boy.” Billy Bow’s voice came chuckling out of Jack’s cell phone.

“I need your help—” began Jack.

“Like Batman needs Robin. What else is new? Shoot.” Billy snickered at his own cleverness.

“How many Ngs are there in Seattle?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Serious, man,” said Jack, grinning.

“You sure you don’t want Lees or Wongs? I heard they’re on sale this week.”

“C’mon. Serious.”

“Well, there’s gotta be hundreds, right? Maybe thousands.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot.” Jack sighed.

“Look, I can check with one of the old-timers later, lo oom. He belongs to the Eng Association.”

“Let me know, Blood,” Jack said.

“Bet. Anyway, did you hear the joke about Chinese math?”

“Later, Billy,” Jack said abruptly. “Tell me when I see you.”

Inside the Tofu King, Billy was ready with his jokes.

“Check out this Chinese math,” he began.

“Aw, c’mon,” Jack protested.

“Nah, listen.”

Jack rolled his eyes, shook his head, and resigned himself.

“If three Chinamen jump ship with six ounces of China White, and then chase the dragon three times each before delivering the remaining heroin to the tong, how far will they get if they flee by rickshaw, going six miles an hour, before the pursuing hatchetmen catch them and chop them into eighteen pieces for dipping into the product?”

“Where do you get this stuff from?” Jack chuckled. “The rickshaw drivers work for the tong, right?”

“Damn right.” Billy laughed. “They didn’t have a Chinaman’s chance to begin with.”

“So what do you have for me?” reproved Jack.

Billy paused for effect. “Two hundred eighty-eight Ngs in Seattle. That’s including Engs, with the ‘E.’”

Jack knew the surname was written and spoken only one way in Chinese. “The old man said that? Two hundred eighty-eight?”

“He said the Seattle Eng Association has about two hundred members.” Billy grinned at Jack’s confusion. “The Seattle local directories, man,” teased Billy. “You can look that shit up on the Internet, you know.”

“Didn’t know you were a computer nerd,” Jack retorted.

“Just surfin’, dude. Plus, there’s no telling how many Engs floating around illegally, know what I’m saying? Add another coupla hundred.”

Jack grimaced at the daunting challenge, a thin lead based on a desperate kid’s bid to stay out of Rikers, and nothing had come back on the Wanteds, not from Seattle or anywhere else.

Seattle PD would have been looking for a wanted likeness based on an old juvie photo. In view of that department’s inefficient and racist past, what were the chances they’d look hard for someone who hadn’t been charged with any crime?

“Watcha expect?” Billy said. “All Chinamen look alike, right? You think white cops are gonna put a big effort behind this?”

Jack frowned at the cynical truth in Billy’s words.

“Shit,” Billy continued, “you’d do better going out there yourself. Pull up a squat in the middle of Chinatown and watch it roll by.”

“Yeah, right,” Jack replied sardonically. “Not a Chinaman’s chance, huh?” He backed out toward the front door, waved, said, “Thanks for the math.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Billy grinning. “And don’t let the door slap your ass on the way out.”

Easy Pass

The bilingual Chinatown directory from Seattle’s Chinatown Community Center proved to be very useful. Mona quickly located Ping Wong Beautician Supplies and purchased a medium-length gray wig. The booklet offered listings for local discount stores and thrift shops where she bought a drab sweater, black slacks, and a cheap down jacket, all made in China. She found plastic magnifier eyeglasses, looped on a beaded chain, at a Chinese pharmacy. She wore no makeup, and the clothing and accessories helped her appear more matronly: an aging spinster.

Mona easily blended into the rear of the group of wah kue, overseas senior citizens, as they boarded the bus to Vancouver. Avoiding the mentholated scent of mon gum yao, tiger balm, she made her way to the back.

She enjoyed the view from the window seat as the Seniors Weekend Junket rolled north out of Seattle’s Chinatown through the cold city morning.

The charter bus gained speed once it reached the highway. She noticed the number ninety-nine on many signs, nine being a yang number, an auspicious place in the fung shui. In the system of I Ching trigrams, nine was the element of gold. She thought about her cache of jewelry, the gold Panda coins she’d hidden.

The city blurred past outside the window as she caressed a jade charm nestled in her right palm, closing her eyes to find a quiet space.

She was stroking the contours of the arrangements of raised lines and sharp etchings like a rosary, feeling above and below the surface of the jade talisman.

The white jade octagon, a bot kwa I Ching talisman, was the size of a fat nickel. It was not Shan or Ming dynasty; it was quality jade but not rare. The charm had been a gift from her mother, her only memento, and had touched three generations of the women of her family. It was her mother’s soul.

On its flat sides, in bas-relief, were symbols of the Eight Trigrams. Yin and Yang together representing the eight elements of the universe: heaven, earth, wind, fire, water, thunder, mountain, lake. The center of the charm was carved into two embryonic snakes chasing one another’s tails, forming the forever changing symbol of the Yin Yang, harmony of the cosmic breath.

Mona had learned to read the symbols, Braille-like, in a single passing of her finger, feeling the lines of the hexagrams. She pondered the prophecies in her mind. Dragging her thumbnail across the etched series of lines, she sought guidance and direction, a prophecy from the I Ching, the Book of Changes.

The combination of lines and broken lines kept coming back to the hexagrams Thunder over Wind and Heaven over Wind: the sky roars, the wind howls. All regret is gone. Go forward over the Great Mountain.

She measured her breathing.

Wind over Heaven read the hexagrams: a new career, opportunity—but also, conflict, misfortune. Opening her eyes she saw a darkening sky with heavy clouds promising rain. She felt anxiety in the air, an impending storm.

In the face of violence, one must withdraw.

The vistas changed as they left behind the skyline of highrises, rolling toward the grim mountains in the far distance. She saw rugged bedrock ridges, steep-walled valleys, pristine wilderness, a lake, and a section of river. They came through rolling uplands, the far-off jagged peaks towering above them. Occasionally, she caught a glimpse of the ocean, beyond a stretch of bays that were dotted with green-brown islands.

The natural vistas reminded her of her journey across America, on a one-way train from New York to Saam Fansi, San Francisco. It did not seem that long ago. Now she was hundreds of miles farther north, evidenced by the colder weather and the unrelenting rain. From her next destination, Vancouver, once she moved there, she could head south to Chinese communities in Peru, or east to Toronto or Montreal, or even farther east to Europe, England or France perhaps.

The world of the wah kue, overseas Chinese, seemed boundless.

An hour into the tour, she smelled the aroma of po nai, tea, cha siew baos, roast pork buns, and assorted dim sum that the other old women produced from their nylon shoulder bags and plastic thermoses.

But they were finished with breakfast by the time the tour bus crossed into the checkpoint.

An immigration agent came aboard and checked the driver’s papers. He looked over the group of elderly Chinese women, and silently took a head count, matching the total against the manifest. He glanced at his watch, looked around cursorilly, and stepped off the bus.