The ancient stairs talked to me as I climbed to the red door on the second level. An etched shrub in the opaque glass in the door resembled my conception of a Ming tree. It flickered with shadows that indicated a waiting line inside.
I opened the door into a railroad-style room, long from the street back, but narrow enough so that only two tables and an aisle between them could fit crosswise.
To my left, just before the two tables by the window that faced onto Tyler Street, the cashier’s counter wrapped around a silk-suited Asian man in his thirties with a more professional haircut than you generally see in Chinatown. He had an easy smile, and spoke comfortably in barely accented English with the non-Asian business suits who were eating at a table near the counter. It was light patter that bounced from the Celtics to the construction of the “Big Dig” on the southeast artery. It was so innocuous that I couldn’t understand the discomfort he was setting off in my mind. I promised myself an honest-to-goodness lunch the next day as an antidote to paranoia.
All of the eighteen tables were occupied, and a young Asian couple stood waiting in the aisle ahead of me. The room was warm, clean, and well lit, which met the first of two checks I like to give to a first-time restaurant. The second was also met. At least half of the customers were Chinese, and happily, a third of those were middle-aged to elderly. A Chinese client once told me that the best Chinese food is served in any restaurant where you hear Mandarin spoken. Second-best is where you hear Cantonese. I asked him, “What if you hear nothing but English?” He said, “Go to an Italian restaurant.”
The couple ahead of me were taken to a table in the back. When the fiftyish woman in the Chinese-cut aqua dress waved a menu at me from halfway back, I sign-languaged my desire to wait for the tea sippers at a table in front by the window overlooking the street. She picked up on it and seated the two men who came in behind me.
It was just a few minutes before I was sliding into the far seat at the window table. I wanted a full view of the entire cast in the restaurant. By turning around to the window, I noticed that I could look straight across the street to the grocery store to the left of the China Pearl Restaurant. There was a large window on the second floor just above the grocery shop. I could visualize the old man and his grandchildren crowded into the window to get a view of the pandemonium below before a bullet took his life-and maybe that of our client. The clink of a glass of water being placed onto the table brought me around. I felt a tiny jolt from an instant of eye contact with the silk suit at the cashier’s desk, which I dismissed as meaningless, since so far there was nothing to distinguish me from any other drop-in customer.
I took the menu from a slight girl, about five feet tall, with a face that could have lit up the room if it could smile. She was somewhere between fourteen and twenty. Her beautiful, soft almond eyes never looked higher than the top of the table, which made her seem even smaller.
After losing her completely with intricate banter like, “Nice night,” and “Thanks for the water,” I realized that she was limited to menu-English. We finally made contact when I ordered the hot and sour soup and almond chicken ding with fried rice.
She took notes in Chinese, scooped up the menu, and padded back to the kitchen in Asian red cloth shoes that were the only bit of color in her outfit or personality.
The hot and sour soup spread its tiny fingers of fire to the outer reaches of my abdomen and made life seem good again. By the time of the almond chicken ding, my sense of values had returned, and I could give it an honest B minus-not overwhelming, but nevertheless dean’s list.
I was down to the last few grains of fried rice, when the silk suit was beside the table. If the waitress was personality-challenged, he was gifted. The smile was a fixture on the pleasant features, and seemed to come from the heart. He was warm, friendly without being intrusive, easy to talk to, amiable; sort of an Asian Dick Clark. The one respect in which they differed is that I have always liked, admired, and had a warm spot in my heart for Dick Clark. For some reason I couldn’t put into words, I had an instant distrust of the dude standing beside me. Go figure.
We covered the weather, inflation, and the quality of the meal. The first bumpy ground we hit was when I asked to speak with the owner, Mrs. Lee.
He asked if he might inquire why.
I said it had to do with the shooting of the previous day. A speck of stiffness crept in when he asked if I was defending the boy who shot Mr. Chen.
“I’m defending the accused. How did you know I wasn’t from the police?”
“The police have been over this many times.”
“I could have been from the DA’s office.”
He shook his head. “Too well dressed.”
We both laughed and were buddies again. He asked me to wait while he found her. I finished the tea before he came back and invited me to follow him to the rear of the restaurant. We went to the last table before the kitchen. Customers had vacated that section.
The fiftyish woman who had seated me was at the table, sitting erect with her hands folded on the table. The body language told me that this could be like prying open a clam. To add to the challenge, Dick Clark told me that she spoke very little English. He, however, would be delighted to interpret. It would have been hard to change the ground rules without a fluency in Chinese. I can barely fathom fortune cookies in translation.
“Mrs. Lee, my name is Michael Knight. I’m a lawyer. I represent Anthony Bradley.”
The name sharpened her rigidity. Dick Clark mumbled some Chinese, and she remained mute.
“Could you tell me what you saw yesterday?”
Again the translation. She looked at Dick Clark while she squeezed out a few sentences. There was obvious pain in what she was saying, and I wondered what her relationship to Mr. Chen might have been.
The translation from Dick Clark seemed a bit full for the number of words she had used. Either Chinese is a very cryptic language, or he was doing some embroidery.
“Mrs. Lee says that Mr. Bradley sat at the table you were at. She served him, since there were not enough waitresses. He watched through the window. When he left, she saw him go into the street. He had a gun. When the lion approached Mr. Chen’s store, he fired at Mr. Chen in the window above.”
I watched her during the translation. Those stoic eyes seemed to moisten when Mr. Chen’s name was mentioned. I asked him directly.
“Was she related to Mr. Chen?”
He leaned back in his chair and took a moment.
“I’ll tell you something, Mr. Knight. You may not understand, but I’ll tell you. We’re an alien people in this country. Even those of us who are citizens. We cling to our customs, our language. Our whole culture gives us a place where we’re accepted. Unlike your culture, we revere our elderly. They are our rock. Sometimes that reverence is indistinguishable from love. That was particularly true of Mr. Chen. He was like the root of our soul. When your Mr. Bradley killed Mr. Chen, he sent us into the very deepest mourning. Not just relatives, all of us.”
The half of me that was Puerto Rican understood, particularly the emotion of loss. Fortunately, my other half was dispassionate enough to press on.
“Would you ask her this? If the restaurant was busy, why did she take the time to watch Bradley after he left?”
He spoke the Chinese in a low tone of voice, being very gentle with this woman whose locked hands were beginning to tremble. I looked away to avoid embarrassing her. As I looked back toward the kitchen, I caught sight of the red shoes in the small gap between the door and the floor. They didn’t move.