The Train to Lo Wu - Jess Row [61]
I don’t see you, I said, more loudly this time. I won’t say anything. You let me go.
There was no answer. I opened my eyes. The flashlight was lying on the floor, throwing a dim half-moon against the front wall. He was crouched down with his back to the door: a small, pale man, hardly bigger than me, wearing an open-neck shirt and black polyester pants, holding his head in his hands. Beside him, on the ground, was a tiny silver pistol, shining like a child’s toy.
You got to help me, Chinaman, he said, his voice muffled by his palms. I got ten minutes to get seventy bucks.
But I have no money.
Yeah, no shit, he said. You got friends? There’s a phone in the back. You got family here? Someone with a car?
All my family in China.
You sure? He dropped his hands and looked at me: a handsome face, I thought, thin and angular, except for a long pink scar descending from the corner of his mouth. You got no cousins in Chinatown? Aren’t you supposed to all be cousins? Chin, Chong, Wong, like that?
My name is Liu.
Shit. He gave a sudden, high-pitched laugh, like a small dog barking. My damn luck, he said. Me and the loneliest gook in New York.
Why you need this seventy buck?
He looked at me incredulously, as if I’d asked him why the sun went down at night. I got debts, man. Serious debts.
You don’t have job? Don’t make money?
Yeah, I got a job. I run the numbers. You know what that means?
I nodded, though I had no idea.
I work for Ronnie Francis, he said, as if it were a name that everyone knew, like Nixon, or Colonel Sanders. Ronnie don’t mess around. Last time I took a little extra off the top, this is what he did. He held up his hand in front of him, the fingers splayed. I squinted in the half-light, and saw that his little finger was a stump, cut off at the knuckle.
This time I’m dead, he said. Ronnie promised me. I only get one warning.
I can not help you, I said in my loudest, most American voice. I am only delivery man. I don’t come home, my roommate calls police.
He stared at me for a moment without speaking. Chinaman, he said, you don’t get it. Time the police get here we’ll both be gone.
I felt a tingling sensation rise from my toes, as if I’d just stepped into a freezing bath. I’m his ransom, I thought. I’m his way out. He’ll never let me go. And then I thought, give him something. He’s desperate—he’ll believe you.
Why stay here? I asked. You hide somewhere else.
He picked up the pistol and stood, wrapping his arms around his chest and shaking from side to side, as if he were freezing cold. Can’t, he said. Ronnie’s got spotters everywhere. I couldn’t even get a bus out of Port Authority.
I call my boss, I said. He find someone take you to New Jersey. Easy. You pay him later.
After I kidnap his delivery boy?
He don’t care about me, I said. Only about money. You tell him you pay one hundred dollars, he take you anywhere.
He didn’t answer, but walked to the window and peeled away a scrap of paper so that he could look out at the street.
Chinese delivery van, I said. No windows. No one see you. You want me to call?
I got a cousin in Newark, he said. His voice had grown raspy, as if something was swollen in his throat. My sister’s in Philly. He looked down at the tiny gun, and out the window again. Would you do that for me?
Give me the light, I said. He tossed it over. I picked my way to the back of the room, stepping over a pile of broken bricks, bat-ting cobwebs and loose wires from my face. The telephone was on the floor in one corner, connected to a raw copper wire. I squatted next to it, and dialed the only number I knew: the office of my department at Columbia. I covered the mouthpiece and spoke loudly in Chinese. Father, I said, using his proper name, I hope you can hear me. I am about to do a terrible thing. You must forgive me. And then I said yes a few times, hao, hao, to make it seem like an agreement, and slammed down the phone.
We walk around the corner, I said. I