99 Ways to Die by Ed Lin

Author:Ed Lin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2018-08-23T10:04:42+00:00

Chapter 10

Nancy and I took the train to the B&B. We decided not to call beforehand just in case Ju-lan didn’t want to talk and pulled a runner. Nancy didn’t really know her, after all.

A few groups walking through the MRT stations looked like cleanup crews with their brooms and standing dustpans. The fliers taped to the front and back of their shirts made their true identities clear. Tong-tong supporters. They weren’t technically carrying weapons, but those handles could be twisted off and wielded in two seconds. Cops on the platform watched them carefully.

We walked into the lobby of the building that housed Ju-lan’s business. The middle-aged guard at the front desk was playing an erhu. He put down his bow to try to hand us some Tong-tong fliers but we shook our heads. He grimaced, showing off red-stained teeth from years of chewing betelnut. He might have served in the military for decades.

“Where are you come from?” he asked in English.

“We’re on vacation from the United States,” I declared, doing my best Southern-accented American English. He nodded and waved us through.

I know, it’s not cool for us to pretend to be other people, but I had to save us from what would undoubtedly be a longish lecture in Mandarin about how we needed to help catch Tong-tong’s kidnappers with maybe an anti-foreigner segment thrown in for good measure.

As we waited forever for the elevator, I noticed the guard shaking his head. All day, every day, all he saw were tourists. The guard picked up his bow and scraped it across the erhu’s two strings. We entered the elevator and I pressed the “close” button repeatedly. I wasn’t sure what section of the military our guard had served in, but it sure wasn’t in the band.

During the ride up, I suddenly became a little apprehensive about meeting Ju-lan. My mind called up an image of a middle-aged woman pulling out a baseball bat and swinging it at us.

Our car jerked to a stop and the door lurched open. We stepped to a desk where a woman in her early thirties stood.

“Excuse me, miss,” I asked. “Do you know where we can find someone named Ju-lan?”

She responded by standing up and wiggling her glasses. “There’s no one here by that name,” she said. “I’m Ling-yu.” The woman seemed a little stiff. Damn, I thought, wrong place. Then she saw I was with somebody. “Nancy?” she asked. “Is that you?”

“Ju-lan! So good to see you.” Nancy reached across the desk and the women awkwardly rubbed each other’s arms. Ah-tien’s friend was way younger than I had thought. She wore her hair short and maintained an expression of professional concern for what we’d say about her business online. Ju-lan glanced at me.

“You’re married now, I see,” said Ju-lan. “Good for you.”

“We’re not there, yet,” I said as I reached out a hand to her. “My name is Chen Jing-nan.”

“Hello, Mr. Chen,” she said in a clear voice the tourists probably loved that was too loud for Taiwanese to talk to each other in.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.