Sweat Read online

  Summer tour buses clogged the road, unloading kids on summer vacation and foreign visitors from the far corners of the globe. A group of Australian tourists stopped Jake and asked if he would take a picture of them in front of the bronze Einstein statue that went undiscovered by most tourists.

  “Thank you,” a young boy in the group said as Jake returned the camera.

  “You’re welcome,” Jake replied, patting the boy on the head.

  Traffic snarled at the intersection of Constitution and Twenty-Second, and it wasn’t the result of driver error. The Department of Transportation had cleverly designed the intersection in such a fashion that Route 66, a major highway, dumped directly onto an already congested twenty-five mph street. For added confusion, and to test driver reaction time, a stoplight rested at the foot of a very short off-ramp.

  Well here I am, Jake thought, checking his watch.

  He sat down on a dark green park bench with its wrought iron legs and stretched one arm along the back as if making a move on an imaginary date. He checked his watch again. He was right on time. Here I am. Where are you?

  The light turned red and Jake’s attention turned toward the homeless man in the median who went to work on the cars stopped in traffic. He approached the window of every vehicle, holding a sign that simply, and quite needlessly, read “Homeless.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Jake whispered to himself.

  Jake let the morning sun wash down on his face as he watched the cycles of the cars stopping and the homeless man making his silent pitch. It was an amazing study in sociology. People in suits, in air-conditioned cars, with the windows up, and the radio on. People with breakfast in their stomachs and a three dollar drive-thru super soy latte resting in the cup holder. The privileged going face-to-face with the unfortunate.

  The homeless man seemed oblivious to his own plight. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, both of which were old, but neither of which were dirty, torn, or tattered. He held his head high and looked the drivers in the eyes. In ten minutes he successfully panhandled his way, through pity or determination, to two dollars and twenty-three cents.

  Jake was ready to give up. He looked over his shoulder at the wide stretch of grass and a group of people his own age playing Frisbee football. It was a beautiful morning, even if he was being stood up on his blind date. It had only taken a few weeks of work to realize that sitting on a park bench was better than being in the office. Jake turned back to the homeless man just in time to catch his sociology lab rat heading right for him.

  “Follow me, Jake,” was all he said as he passed in front of the bench, the stench of eau de homeless trailing behind him.

  Jake sprang to his feet, mouth gaping, and fell into position two paces back. The unshaven man in jeans, t-shirt, and worn sneakers walked fast, back straight as a board, a posture rarely seen in the slouching Generation X and seemingly spineless Generation Y. He walked with an unmistakable purpose, and given the direction they were heading, Jake surmised the only possible destination was the Potomac River.

  Jake followed his leader into the shadows near the riverbank, the concrete arch of the bottom of the Roosevelt Bridge forming the homeless man’s roof. He shared the barren ground and man-made retaining wall of the river with two other address-lacking tenants. Boxes, plastic, garbage bags, and winter clothes were stacked neatly in piles, wrapped with bungee cords of various colors and lengths.

  “Please have a seat, Jake,” the homeless man said, gesturing to an old chair with a torn wicker seat and cut-off legs. Jake took the offer and sat down, his knees nearly straight, his feet out in front of him. It felt like a beach lounge chair, without the sand, and it was surprisingly comfortable. The view wasn’t bad either. Kennedy Center to the right, the Tidal Basin in the distance to the left.

  Al Korgaokar, homeless person extraordinaire, emptied his morning’s change into a small hip-hugger bag and zipped it shut. One of the straps on the bag was torn, repaired with a mix of string and rubber bands. Al pulled a red milk crate from his shelf, a crawl space in the upper reaches of the “apartment” where the ground met the bridge structure above. He flipped the crate upside down and sat down next to Jake.

  “My name is Al Korgaokar,” he said, enunciating every syllable carefully. The measured, almost insultingly slow pronunciation was the product of forty-eight years of people butchering his name.

  “You can call me Al,” he said trailing off into the first verse of the Paul Simon song. Jake’s first thought was that Al could have been an extra in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. His second thought was if Al was a singer by trade, he needed no further explanation for his homelessness.

  Al Korgaokar didn’t act homeless, even among the packrat existence of his living room. Deep blue eyes flashed both a warmth and brilliance, mixed with a certain inexplicable flightiness. His reddish-brown hair reached just below his earlobes and ran around his neck in a perfect line—a cut given by a local homeless man who specialized in hairstyles for his peers. “The Hairman,” as the homeless barber was known, charged fifty cents or a cup of decent booze, per cut. The man with the scissors and toothless grin never went back to the shelter broke or sober.

  “Or you can call me ‘K,’” Al continued. “A lot of my friends here on the street like that one.”

  “I’ll go with Al. I’m Jake Patrick, but I guess you already know that.”

  “Yeah. Knew the name was Jake. Jake the Snake—an average quarterback with a great name.” Al dug through his belongings for something he didn’t find and looked up. “So, Jake, what can I do for you? What’s your problem?”

  “Actually, I don’t have a problem.”

  “Sure you do. You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  “Well, it is not really my problem,” Jake said.

  “Even if it wasn’t your problem before, it is now. You just learned the first rule of politics. Don’t care. If you don’t care, it won’t be your problem.”

  Jake shrugged his shoulders and nodded simultaneously in a sign of complete confusion. “I’m here because Marilyn said you might be able to help.”

  “Jake, Jake, Jake. Keep up. I’m not a psychic and you’re not famous, at least not yet. I already know why you are here. You gotta stay one step ahead—that is the first rule of survival.”

  “I was answering your question.”

  “Some questions are rhetorical. And your answer wasn’t an answer to the question I asked.”

  Jake wanted to leave, but knew he would regret it. “So you know Marilyn?” he asked dubiously.

  “I know what you’re thinking. How in God’s name does Marilyn know a homeless guy?”

  “Well, yeah, I guess that is as good a place to start as any.”

  “How about a more tactical question? Something like…how in the world did she contact me?”

  Jake didn’t have the energy to keep up. “Okay. I’ll bite. How did she contact you?”

  “Like the rest of the world.”

  “Which is…?”

  “She called.”

  “She called?”

  “Jake the snake, for heaven’s sake,” Al responded, laughing at his own rhyme before turning to the right and digging through a box of what any normal homeowner would call crap. He pulled out an article from the New York Times.

  The below-the-fold headline read: Thirty Percent of Tokyo Homeless are Homeowners. Al handed the article to Jake. Jake glanced at the headline and put the paper in his lap.

  “What’s wrong? Don’t believe everything you read?” Al asked.

  “No.”

  “Maybe you’re smarter than you look after all.”

  “So you’re a homeowner?”

  “Yes. I’m a homeowner. Don’t I look like one? Own a car, too. Homelessness is nothing more than a state of mind.”

  “Never looked at it that way.”

  “Most people wouldn’t.”

  “Can I ask a question?”

  “Shoot. I’ve got nothing pressing,” A
l said, inhaling deeply as he stretched his arms out to embrace his environment.

  “If you’re a homeowner and you are choosing to be homeless, why don’t you just lend your house to someone who doesn’t want to live on the street? Let someone live there who needs it?”

  “I do, Jake. My brother lives there. He is more needy than anyone I’ve ever met.”

  Al stared at Jake, sizing up the young man. Jake looked around at Al’s belongings, his life on display.

  “So Marilyn called you?”

  “I have a phone line with an answering machine. I check it every few days from the phone booth at Potomac Point Park.”

  “Why?”

  “You never know who may try to get in touch with you,” Al said, more lucid than a minute ago. “So, back to the first question. How can I help you?”

  “Your first question was actually ‘what’s your problem?’”

  “Touché, Jake. Touché.”

  “I need help finding a girl.”

  “Hey, buddy, don’t we all. And if you think it is hard now, try angry, unemployed, and homeless. Those are not three qualities the ladies are looking for.”

  Jake laughed. Al didn’t.

  “Who is the girl?”

  “Her name is Wei Ling and she is Chinese.”

  “Ling?”

  “Yes”

  “Well, there aren’t too many of those. Why don’t we look for a John Anderson in Chicago while we’re at it?”

  “She is from China, but she was working in the garment industry in Saipan.”

  “The garment industry in Saipan?”

  “Yes.”

  “We call those sweatshops here in the real world.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You say ‘garment industry’ and I say ‘sweatshop.’ Let me educate you. Girls from poor Asian countries pay a couple thousand dollars, money they don’t have, to work in these sweatshops for pennies a day. Saipan is sweatshop-central U.S.A.”

  “I didn’t think we had sweatshops in the U.S.”

  “Most people don’t…and as long as the price is right on their khaki pants in the Sunday advertisements, most Americans don’t care.”

  While Jake thought about the statement, Al continued. “Saipan is actually very interesting. It straddles a political fence. Saipan is a giant international employment loophole. Companies operating on the island don’t need to adhere to the intricacies of United States employment law. Workers are paid well below the minimum salary their stateside counterparts receive, and it is all perfectly legal. As a United States territory, Saipan gives companies, domestic and foreign, an opportunity to manufacture goods that are officially ‘Made in the U.S.A.’ These companies corner the market on cheap labor and U.S. businesses pay no import tariffs because the goods aren’t technically ‘imported.’”

  Jake’s head was spinning. The heat and a homeless man giving him a speech on international labor gave him vertigo.

  “What do you want with the girl?” Al asked.

  “Marilyn didn’t tell you?”

  “I’m not asking Marilyn, I’m asking you.”

  “I think the girl is in trouble.” Jake pulled out the fax and tried to hand it to Al. Al looked at it for a split second, and left it in Jake’s hand without reading it.

  “So what does this have to do with you?”

  “Nothing, I guess. I just want to help. I want to know who she is.”

  “Jake, Jake, Jake. If you knew who she was, what would you do?”

  “I don’t know. Find out if the fax is for real. Find out who is running the company, who is keeping her against her will. Write some letters.”

  “Write some letters?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You go to school, Jake?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you study?”

  “I’m getting my Masters in English Literature.”

  “No wonder you want to write a letter.”

  “The pen is mightier than the sword,” Jake snapped.

  “Oh Jake, now you are singing my song. I love banter. Shall we take a minute to flex our mental prowess? Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”

  “What?”

  “Mark Twain. I thought we were exchanging quotes.”

  “No thanks.”

  “You lose. So, who the hell are you going to write a letter to?”

  “I don’t know. This is Washington—there has to be some group willing to raise a little hell. There is a protest every week in this town.”

  “Forget the letter, Jake. Why don’t you just talk to your father?”

  “How did you know about my father?”

  Al looked at Jake but didn’t answer the question. “Why don’t you just talk to him?”

  “I already did. He said he took care of it, but I don’t believe him. I even called the Saipan Police Department and they said everything checked out.”

  “So why don’t you believe them?”

  “I don’t know about the Saipan Police, but I could tell my father was lying.”

  “And if they were both lying?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Wrong answer.”

  Jake was getting perturbed. “Then what is the right answer, Al?”

  Al stumbled with the rebuttal. “What are you going to do to help this girl?”

  “Whatever I can.”

  “Well Jake, there are a million tragedies played out every day in this world. If there aren’t a hundred dead bodies no one cares. You may not be able to help this girl, Jake. Just so you know. Some things are beyond our control as humans.”

  “Well, I’d feel better about myself knowing I tried.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. Failure has a flavor all its own, and you aren’t going to see it as a pizza topping any time soon.”

  “Probably tastes like giving up,” Jake answered.

  Al rubbed his three-day-old stubble. “Okay, Jake. I’ll see what I can find out. Give me a couple of days.”

  Al dug through a small pile of street throwaway goodies and pulled out a cloth environmentally-friendly shopping bag with a faded picture of the earth on the side. Al stuffed a pair of shoes, a few newspapers, and a sweatshirt into the bag. He stood and smiled at Jake, his reddish-brown hair and blue eyes alive. “I have somewhere I need to be, Jake. Gotta run. Come back in a few days.”

  “How long is a few days?” Jake asked, looking for a specific day and time. “Does that mean Wednesday? Thursday…?”

  “A couple of days, Jake. It’s not like I’m going anywhere. I don’t move to the winter house until November,” Al said, laughing.

  Al walked away, leaving his front door open and his guest standing in his living room.

  Jake asked a parting question. “No offense, but how are you going to find out about a girl halfway around the world?”

  “Jake, I have my ways. I wasn’t always homeless you know.”

  “Yeah, I know. You’re a homeowner.”

  “A homeowner who used to work in intelligence.”

  “Intelligence?”

  “Yeah, intelligence, Jake. That’s how I met your father,” Al said walking away. “Come back in a couple of days,” he added over his shoulder, his voice echoing under the bridge.

  Chapter 15

  Chow Ying walked from Union Station to Chinatown, a fifteen minute stroll through what used to be some of the meanest streets in D.C. Gone were the open-air crack markets and shooting galleries, the hookers and the pimps. A prolonged police crackdown in the late-Nineties eventually took its toll on the local dealers. Those who didn’t end up behind bars, or dead, simply migrated across town, one rundown block at a time, until they reached southeast D.C. or Anacostia. The crackdown on dealers had been good for the neighborhoods but hell on the crack consumers who had to follow their fixes across the city.

  Chow Ying glided through barren lots and boarded up buildings that melted together, a ghost town on the verge of transformation into
half-million-dollar condos. He walked without a care, map in hand, cigarette dangling from his lips. He ignored the group of young men who heckled him from a slow-moving, low-ride Cadillac with tinted windows and gold-framed license plates. Chow Ying was on a mission. It was a simple one. Do whatever it takes to stay alive long enough to figure out how he was going to stay alive.

  D.C.’s Chinatown was shrinking by the day. Construction of the city’s main sports venue, the Verizon Center, opened the floodgates of development hell on Chinatown and its quiet existence as a ten-square-block neighborhood north of the Capitol. Development led to higher land values, higher taxes, skyrocketing rent. One by one, half the Chinese businesses were bought out, moved, or just disappeared. Starbucks, CVS, and a conglomeration of franchised watering holes moved in, all with signs in English and Chinese to keep the right atmosphere. Burgers and fries were going head-to-head with kung pao chicken and hot and sour soup, the winner to be decided later.

  But a healthy handful of restaurants and other Chinese establishments survived, and Chow Ying knew that even a shrinking Chinatown was his best bet for lying low in a city he didn’t know. He checked his map, turned the corner at Seventh Street, and walked half a block. He stopped walking at the bottom of the steps beneath an unprofessionally crafted sign with Chinese characters. He made his way up, pushed open the door to the four-story, ten-room crash pad formally known as the Peking Palace, and asked for a luxury suite just for kicks.

  The old Asian man behind the counter, dressed in a sweaty cotton tank top and matching white shorts, smiled and handed him the key to Room 312. “The stairs are in the back, just follow the hall,” the old man said, pointing with a boney finger attached to a bonier arm. “The gourmet buffet breakfast starts at seven o’clock,” the old man added, just to show that he, too, had a sense of humor.

  Chow Ying threw his bag on the only chair in the room, a leftover piece from an old dining room set bought at a yard sale. He punched the button on the window air-conditioning unit and a cool stream of air steadied out. Relief. He pulled out the piece of paper he had received from Mr. Wu and looked at the name and address. It was nothing more than ink on paper. He had no feelings for what he was going to do. He didn’t have time to get emotional. Time was ticking. C.F. Chang didn’t ask you to do something at your leisure. You were always on the clock. ***