Changes (20 page)

"I wanted him to pay," I said, quietly.

"He got off lucky," she said.  She wouldn’t look at me.

"You’re damn right he did."

When she did look at me, the force of her gaze was unnerving.  "So this is how you make amends?  By finding
this
guy?  Then what, Randall?  You gonna kill him?  You gonna make him suffer?  Make him pay for the actions of a dead man?"

She was right.  I knew she was right.

But that didn’t stop me from being an idiot.

"Please don’t lay the whole ‘don’t stoop to their level’ crap on me, Tracy.  Just because you took a psychology class once, that doesn’t mean you actually fucking know anything.  Don’t pretend to understand this, okay?  Because you can’t, and you don’t want to.  Who have you lost, huh?  Nobody.  You’re just a fucking kid."

She was hurt, I could tell; a part of me was even glad for it.  The tears flowed freely from her eyes, but she smiled.  It wasn’t a pretty smile.

"You’re right, I don’t know anything.  I’m just a kid?  Well I know this – you can’t live with this hate, Randall.  It will kill you.  Because in the end, it doesn’t change the fact that your daughter is dead.  Or that her murderer is dead.  It’s over, don’t you see?  Stop carrying this around with you, goddammit.  Let it go."

"Easy for you to say," I said.

"She’s gone, Randall.  And you know what?  She’s okay.  I don’t know if you believe in an afterlife, or if you don’t believe in anything at all, but either way, Randall, she’s okay.  He can’t hurt her anymore.  And she wouldn’t want you carrying this burden.  Not for her."

For a minute, I thought she was going to leave.  To her credit, she didn’t.  However pathetic and unworthy the old bastard in front of her was, she wasn’t ready to give up on him yet.  Maybe somebody had told her the quitters never win thing…

After awhile, she said, "Could I see her?"

"Grace?" I said.  The question took me off guard.

"Yes," she said.

 "I don’t- "

"You don’t carry any pictures of her in your wallet?" she said.

"No," I said.

"Why not?"

I sighed, picked up her cigarette, took a drag off it, and said, "For the same reason I don’t keep my acupuncture needles in my underwear."

She frowned.

"It would hurt," I said.  "Bad joke."

She patted my hand on the table.

"I’d like to see her someday," she said.

I nodded.  "Me too," I said.

58

That night I stayed in my apartment.  The super had finally replaced the front door.  My shop window was still a big, graffiti-marred piece of plywood, though.  Ah, well… Rome wasn’t built in a day (probably due to slack-jawed dipshits like my super). 

Things with Tracy could’ve been better, but we would survive.  For two independent people always up in each other’s business, I was surprised we’d gotten along as well as we had.

I climbed the stairs with nagging protest from my stitched up leg, and unlocked the door to my apartment.  I pushed it open a half inch and peered inside.  I checked floor level and around the knob, no tripwires.  I gave the door a shove and covered my head with my arms.

Nothing.  No explosions, no surprises.  Just a drab, empty apartment.

I stood up and brushed myself off, wondering if I looked as foolish as I felt, and went inside.  The hiss and clank of the radiator seemed loud in the stillness of the place.  I walked into the kitchen, my footsteps echoing in my ears.  The fridge held a half-empty six pack of Tsing Tao, some pizza that had long ago gone gently into that good night, and a shifty looking bottle of no-name ketchup. 

It occurred to me that, on a long shot, my would-be assassins could have possibly corrupted my water supply, so I cracked open a beer.  I took a sip; it was cold and bitey and better than ninety-five percent of the rest of my life at the moment.  I swallowed half of the bottle in one go, grabbed the cardboard carrier with its two lonely brothers, and took it with me into the living room.

An ironic name – living room – for such a cold, empty place.  I set my beers down and flipped on the stereo.  All across the radio dial, nothing but crap.  I checked the CD player and found it occupied by a disk of Tracy’s.  I turned it on and sat and drank.  When the first bottle was finished, I drank the second.  The third was gone before I even realized it was the third.  I went back to the fridge and double-checked it for more beer.  Then I checked the cabinets for any liquor, but I was dry.

With the music on and the alcohol gone I sat on my worn couch and watched the lights from passing traffic paint the room in shadows and shades of blue and yellow.  After awhile, even that slowed and more or less stopped.  And there I was in darkness, clutching the useless, empty glass bottle and listening to unfamiliar familiar music.

And when it was finished, and the vacuum was too intense, I closed my eyes and let the emptiness carry me away.

59

I woke in a deep blackness; the only way I knew my eyes were open at all was the blinking red light of the answering machine across the way.  I fumbled around for a lamp or a light switch, but I only succeeded in knocking one of the empty Tsing Tao bottles to the floor where it shattered into a billion slivers, all of them hungry for a taste of my foot.

Knowing this, I perched on the edge of the couch and leapt in the direction of the red light.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  It wasn’t.

I flew over the bits of glass, resisting the urge to stick out my tongue as I flew by overhead, and nailed my forehead on the doorway that separated the kitchen from the living room.  I fell backward, marveling at the bright starbursts that flashed before my eyes, and must’ve flailed my arms in an attempt to catch myself.  I pulled the answering machine off the end table and both of us hit the hardwood floor with a thump.  As the machine hit, it jarred something and I heard the tape rewinding.  As the message began to play, I heard, "Hey?  Hello?  Asshole!  Hello?  Say something.  I know you’re there, you pick up the phone.  Hello?" 

It listed the date of the message, three days ago, and then it clicked. 

I groaned and slid up onto my elbows.  It felt great; a few stitches pulled and there was a warm dampness on my tricep.  I sighed.  Being alone really wasn’t my thing anymore, not that I’d ever been very good at it.  The answering machine played its next message.  I listened for a moment without realizing that the language being spoken was Cantonese.

"
Dr. Lee,"
the voice said,
"life is a gift most precious.  You have many patients who rely upon your expertise.  Do not disappoint them.  You have friends who care about you, the Sandoval girl, for instance.  Enjoy your life.  Mind your own affairs and stay out of ours.  This is the only way to ensure a long and fruitful existence."

The machine listed the date – two days ago.

Huh.

The night Jimmy Yi Lau was murdered.

I listened to the message again – it was received at one-fourteen a.m.

The most polite death threat I’d ever heard came in while I was at the hospital getting stitched up.  I started thinking about that evening.  I got up and turned on the lights – it was only nine fifteen in the evening.  I was back in the living room when the phone rang.  I jumped – literally- and got a triangle of green glass in my left heel.

After swearing for awhile, I answered the phone.

It was Tracy.

"Uh… there’s a message here…I think…for you?"

She played it over the phone.  Same voice, same Cantonese, similar message. 

"What’s it mean?" She said.

"It means they know me, they know you, and if I don’t get out of their business, somebody’s getting killed.  Call Knox and tell him about the tape.  Give it to the cops as evidence.  And get over here."

"…You want me to stay with you?"

"I do."

"What about Tito?"

"We’ll get him.  For now, though, just throw some stuff in a bag and get out of there."

"Alright.  Randall...?"

"Yeah?"

"Is this for real?  I mean, are they serious?"

"Yes," I said.  I hung up and pulled the blinds on the windows.

In the bathroom, I put bandages on my heel and my forehead.  If Tracy asked, I’d just have to tell her some Triad thugs accosted me outside.  I swept up the evidence in the living room and tossed the glass in the trash.

At her fastest, Tracy would take at least twenty minutes to get to the apartment.  I grabbed my coat and went downstairs.  A quick trip to the store would keep Tracy from ever knowing about the horror that was my refrigerator.

60

A block down from my apartment, it began to rain.  Cold as it was, the rain soon became sleet.  I hurt in a multitude of places, most recently my foot, and I did not have an umbrella.  So, in the spirit of living dangerously, I ducked into HK Trading.  The old man who’d called me a "Gwailo motherfuck" was not working, apparently.  Instead, a young girl smiled and greeted me.  The old guy’s grand-daughter, maybe?

Whoever she was, she was an improvement, both in customer service and appearance.

I strolled past the video section; cantopop crooned on the stereo.  It took me a minute, but I identified the song as a Cantonese version of ‘End of the Road’ by Boyz II Men.  It was the most bizarre thing I’d heard in awhile, and I wished Tracy was with me.

Remembering that I’d have her as a houseguest, I didn’t go straight to the pre-made noodle aisle.  I picked out some fresh vegetables, a couple bottles of plum wine, a few sauces, and some fresh shrimp.  A few ideas swirled through my mind and struggled to become full-fledged recipes.  The rub was that I wouldn’t know if they’d succeeded until I’d chopped and steamed and marinated and stir-fried.  I wouldn’t know until I, or – heaven forbid – Tracy, tasted the concoction.  How nerve-wracking.

I went back over to the videos, thinking that I might find something subtitled for Tracy, and had crouched down to read the back of a wild-looking kung fu/horror epic when the bell over the front door jingled and a chorus of voices shouted out greetings to the cute clerk girl.  They varied in levels of obscenity and sexual content.

The girl didn’t say much of anything.  I couldn’t see the front of the store, but I could imagine her trying to fade into the back wall like a chameleon. 

From the sound of the guys, it hadn’t worked.

Despite the outcome of my last attempt at heroics in the store, I couldn’t not help the girl out.  When I emerged from the video racks, it took my brain less than a second to recognize the crew of thugs hanging around the cash register.  Same thugs, different day.

The kid who wanted so badly to be Scarface was leaning on the counter, practically humping the thing, twirling a lock of the clerk’s hair between his fingers.  The girl looked down at the floor with such dedication that I almost believed it would open up for her and provide a sanctuary.

The other goons were focused on their boss and the clerk, but Kip Yam glanced away for a moment at me.  He did a double take.  The color drained from his pasty features just like in the cartoons, and he said, "…
Bok Yea."

Yeah.  "Fuck."

61

I was ten feet closer to the group before the rest of the group reacted to their buddy’s curse.  When Scarface saw me, he too spat out some curses as he reached into his dingy jean jacket.  I let him pull the pistol before I moved, but as soon as the black metal cleared the denim I seized his wrist and twisted it, driving his elbow up until it pointed at the ceiling.  The gun discharged once, into the floor, before his hand convulsed and he dropped it.  I turned at the waist and put every ounce of energy I could muster through my fist and into his floating ribs.  He folded from the blow, bounced off the counter, and fell through a wire rack of shrimp flavored chips.  I didn’t expect that he’d get back up any time soon.

Yam hauled ass for the door.  I couldn’t stop him; two of Scarface’s boys tried to outflank me.  As the one to my left threw a jab, I parried it and used the momentum to simultaneously palm strike him in the chest and carry my right hand – curled into a "fish hook," a way of striking with the back of the wrist – into the other guy’s throat before he could take a shot at me.

A third kid jumped in with a jab to my face before his buddies hit the ground.  He had good form, didn’t telegraph, and knew not to throw his shoulder.

But I managed to catch his wrist.  He shifted his weight to his rear foot for a kick; I felt it.

When his foot left the floor, I sank into the posture called
Needle at the Bottom of the Sea
, pulling his wrist down, almost to the floor, disrupting his balance and making it impossible for him to kick.  Predictably, he tried to lean back and regain his balance.  I followed him up with the technique
Fan through Back
– while holding his wrist, I pulled him in close and simultaneously struck him in the face with the knife edge of my hand. 

The girl huddled in the corner with her hands drawn up to her mouth. 

I said, "I’ll be back.  Call the police."

I ran outside and was met with several gunshots.  I managed to duck back inside before I got shot.  I’d have to remember to ask Knox to teach me that hop- around- corners- and- stick- to- walls- while- searching- a- strange- location thing that all the cops do on TV.  Since I didn’t know how to do that, I grabbed the back of Scarface’s jacket – I was pretty amazed that he was trying to get up already - and threw him through the door.  Lucky for him, his buddy was a crappy shot.  I heard two dry clicks and then Yam said, "
Tiu nia ma chow hai."

What a potty-mouth.

The empty gun clattered to the street and Yam’s footfalls echoed off into the night.

I pursued, kicking the dazed Scarface, still struggling to sit up, as I passed.  I rounded the corner and saw that I was only about a hundred feet behind Yam.  He kept looking back at me as he ran, and that slowed him down.   It also kept him from noticing the oncoming car until it was too late to move out of the way.  He hit the left front quarter panel, flew over the hood, and landed on his head on the other side.