Edgar
One can spot the secret police by their body language. Some you can spot because they are simply poor actors. They wear the wrong clothes, have the wrong haircut, and speak as though they were reading their lines. However, those that are professional, and can get at least the externals correct, are then betrayed by the unconscious expressions of their body. The martial arts teach one to become much more aware of body movement. Before beginning martial arts training, I judged people on how they looked and what they said. Now I judge them by how they move. I find this a more accurate indicator since, though the other two can be faked, only a master of self-control could fake the way they moved.
Movement expresses the basic internal dynamics of a person’s character. If a person walks as though he’s got his thumb up his ass, he usually does. It is difficult to specify exactly what it is about a person’s movements. Like trying to describe the smell of fried bacon, it is an experience. Bacon smells like bacon, frightened people move like frightened people, confident people move like confident people. Every internal feeling and thought can express itself through movement, and this movement can be recognized.
My minor talent in reading body language came in handy when on occasion, I would act as lookout and muscle for a small-time local pot dealer in Taipei.
Taiwan was a police state. For forty-two years the island had been under martial law, ensuring that the Guo Ming Tang (Nationalist) government maintain absolute power. Taiwan’s police force is probably the best-trained and most professional force in Asia. Even though Taiwan was a police state, one never had the impression that there were many police around. In the best tradition of Chinese subtlety, the police monitored everything without making their presence obvious. It is not until after living there for a while that one begins to recognize where the police are. Less than half are in uniform, the rest blend in with the general population. The cook at the corner noodle stand, the vendor selling newspapers, the high-school student carrying books, the doorman sitting in the open lobby of an apartment building, all could be undercover police.
The secret police are the most difficult to spot. Not being required to pass military grooming regulations, they could disguise themselves to pass for a variety of professions.
They were responsible for political activities and keeping tabs on foreigners. Any open criticism of the government, justified or not, was considered sedition under martial law and would attract the attentions of the secret police. Because of this, newly arrived English teachers were warned not to discuss Chinese politics at any time if one wished to remain in the country.
The official history and political views were all of the `glorious leader’ type of propaganda. Western students who studied recent Chinese history from books banned in Taiwan, knew Chiang Kai Chek was just another despot. However, the temptation to enlighten one’s English students on history and politics could result in the secret police arriving at your room at three in the morning with orders to have you on a plane and out of the country within an hour. Filling in the cracks of government surveillance was a community watch/ informant program that enlisted maybe 15% of the population to report on anything unusual. Taipei was a city with many eyes and ears, and very few secrets.
I had been in Taiwan for about two months and after purchasing a motorcycle, I spent the better part of each evening hanging out in the American Red Light district known as Sugar Daddy Row.
It was raining as usual, and so I headed for the Shaolin Pub, a small pub run by two former hostess girls Wendy and Angel. It had an intimate and subdued atmosphere, and also being located in the middle of the Sugar Daddy row it was the ideal staging grounds for another night of unbridled debauchery. I parked my motorcycle in one of the back alleys.
On the way, I passed several `Hostess’ bars, which I never visited. I had been to a couple while in Hong Kong and I knew that the cost of drinks was way out of my budget. Another financial hazard was that should you get horny enough to want to `buy out’ one the girls, it could cost you a month’s pay. When it came to hostess bars, I felt discretion was the better part of honor. Stationed outside these bars were the barkers, elderly gentlemen who have been peddling Pun-tang to American G.I.’s since the Korean War. Now their clientele consisted mostly of German engineers and American importers. They would sit on their stools in front of the girly clubs gossiping and smoking cigarettes. Whenever a foreigner would pass by, they would jump up and say `Hey Mister American, you like beautiful girl? Come for only one drink, please.” A dramatic bow followed this with one arm extended out towards the entrance. I passed by these old boys hundreds of times, and though I never went in, they still jumped up with arm extended every time I walked by.
Ahead of me was a group of Chinese middle managers for some plastics, electronics, or export company. Dressed in grey suits with ties loosened and collars undone, they walked with confidence they didn’t really feel. They would all pretend to be gregarious, which is not easy in a culture where you are taught from infancy that the nail that stands out gets hammered. But the western disease of ego had infected even this far corner of the world. The effect of hundreds of Hollywood movies has instilled the idea that they should all be somehow making more noise and having more fun. How exactly all this fun was to be had was unclear. `Look!’ one would say, `I have a funny way of drinking my beer.’ `Terrific!’ The others would chime in, and everyone would laugh harder than the joke deserved. Usually, they would play drinking games until they were too drunk to come up with any more lame jokes. Then, piling into a taxi, they would disappear into the fog.
There was only a small neon sign to indicate the entrance to the Shaolin Pub and lost amongst the cacophony of neon, it was easy to overlook. Wendy was the first to greet me as I walked in. She was the older of the two hostesses but also had the largest bust. She would lean over the bar pressing her arms together so that her breasts would bulge out of the invariably low cut dress and ask in a Marylyn Monroe like voice, “High boys. See anything you like?” She would flutter her impossibly large eyelashes and smile. Even the dullest accountant was able to spot the opening for a one-liner, which was always a “Yea baby, I see a couple of things I like.” Wendy would pretend not to understand for a moment, and then, looking down at her breasts, she would say in feigned embarrassment, “Oh, you so bad!”
How many hundreds of times Wendy must have played this skit I can only guess. Yet it always succeeded in giving even the most boring of clerks the feeling they were witty. The first time she tried that skit on me I knew the set-up was too obvious. When the question was asked, I replied with, “Gee I don’t know, but if you’ll drop your panties and bend over the bar I might be able to come up with something.”
“Oh you really are a bad, bad man,” Wendy replied.
After that, we had an unspoken understanding, she wouldn’t play me for a fool tourist, and I would tip big and drool appreciatively at her charms.
I spotted a Filipino man sitting at the bar talking to an Australian businessman, tie loosened, jacket hanging from the chair. My instincts told me he was a pot smoker. Scoring in a strange country under martial law is a delicate matter. It takes time to find out who the players are and when you can’t speak the language, it takes even longer. I had scored some grass from one of the Hostess Girls I had picked up two weeks earlier. She was, however, flakey, and she could only provide small amounts. I always try to find several sources since, at any time, one source could dry up and leave you stuck and having to go through the long ordeal of making new connections again.
I sat down beside the two men at the bar to listen to the conversation. They were making small talk and I gathered they had only just met and were exchanging pleasantries. They quickly reached a point where the conversation petered out, and there was a silence, each turning their chair around to survey the rest of the bar. I was already turned around, and as he turned around, he was forced to look directly at me. He raised his glass in a salute and said `cheers’. He drank a swig. I did the same.
“Edgar” he said.
“Smack” said I.
There was a pause as we both looked out at the bar. Wendy’s too-perfect-to-be-real breasts caught our attention as she walked among the tables joking in a naughty manner with the patrons who were mostly businessmen taking advantage of the happy hour. I guessed Edgar was Filipino when I first saw him. I decided to use one of the dirty phrases in Tagalo I had learned from a Filipino busboy I had worked with back on the airport strip in Toronto.
“Malakee an tee tee ko? (Do you have a big prick?)” I asked as though asking for the time of day.
Edgar was momentarily stunned. Did he hear correctly? Did the big Gwailo really ask about the size of his prick in his native tongue? His eyes widened in shock. I could see the thoughts passing through his head. Was I a queer? Was I picking a fight? Or was I some asshole with a sick sense of humor. I saw a mischievous glimmer in his eyes. He had guessed correctly.
“Boo tang ee na mo! ” He replied in Tagalo, drawing out the vowels in a musical rendition. I knew that phrase too – fuck your mother!
“Right after I’m done with yours,” I said in English this time. I raised my beer in a toast. I knew I was pushing the edge, and he might still take a swing at me.
“Boy, you really are an asshole,” said Edgar tapping his beer against mine in salute.
“I know. It’s a gift,” I said humbly.
I wasted no time in getting to the point.
“So Edgar, where can I buy some ganja.” Edgar looked shocked again. Was I some new kind of undercover policeman? A Caucasian nark?
“What are you a cop or something?”
“Yeah, right. Like I’m going tell ya if I was.”
I called Wendy over.
“Edgar thinks I’m a cop.”
“What you crazy? This Mr. Smacky. He is English teacher from Canada,” said Wendy in a serious voice.
My credentials established Edgar relaxed. We finished our beers, and Edgar motioned me to follow him. We went out of the bar and up another flight of stairs into what was an office that seemed to be deserted and undergoing renovations. He took out a small knife and punctured some holes into the side of the beer can he had brought from the bar. We sat on the floor in the dark, bathed in the cool neon light that came through the windows, and smoked a large chunk of black Hash from the beer can.
Edgar asked me how I guessed he was holding.
“I spotted you the minute I walked in.”
“So you sat down beside me and started talking to me just so that you could get stoned?”
“Yea . And I also thought you were cute.” I said fluttering my eyelids.
“Booo..” Edgar trailed out the first vowel of the Tagalo phrase that ended with ‘your mother’.
“Booo…” I countered.
The Taipei drug culture was a small intimate affair. Heavy drugs were virtually unknown on the island, and marijuana use was confined to a small group of Chinese entertainers, expatriates from western countries, and a few `overseas’ Chinese, those that had gone abroad to study or work and had picked up the habit there.
Alcohol and drug abuse among the Chinese themselves was almost unheard of. Even though they had easy access to alcohol, young people almost never drank. The college beer parties and booze fests of western higher education didn’t happen here. The only drug that was occasionally abused were amphetamines, a habit that some picked up from the Japanese. But this was not used for recreation but rather to improve one’s productivity and as an aid for all-night studies preceding exams.
Edgar supplied Hash and marijuana to the expatriate community, only occasionally and reluctantly selling to Chinese, and even then only overseas Chinese. Dealing with locals meant not knowing whom you were dealing with. They could be gangsters looking to rip you off, or informants for the police. Either way, Edgar didn’t bother with them.
Edgar was from a small village on Luzon Island in the Philippines. He was about twenty-five when I first met him. A slim but well proportioned five foot three, with more Spanish than Malayan features, he could pass as a native in both Madrid and Mexico. Like most Filipino men, Edgar sported a mustache to show machismo, but Edgar had a baby face that gave one the impression that he was an adolescent who’d used a black marker on his lip to see what he’d look like when he got older. Instead of the menacing macho look Edgar desired, he came off as slightly comical. The bar girls would cuddle him and say, `Why don’t you look all manly with that nasty old mustache’ while Edgar blushed like a schoolboy.
Unlike other Filipinos who were in the country on domestic work visas, Edgar had a diplomatic passport. This unusual privilege was afforded Edgar and his sister by his mother’s Sugar Daddy, a Chinese diplomat who was stationed in the Philippines. Edgar’s mother was his mistress there, and one of the favors he bestowed on her was to send her children by a previous marriage to Taipei. Edgar and his sister Martha lived in a comfortable apartment in an up-scale but fashionable area of town. Edgar used his ‘diplomatic pouch’, his luggage was not allowed to be searched by customs officials, to smuggle Hashish in from the Philippines where the cost was five dollars an ounce, and sell them to the expatriates, who were happy to find any drugs at all, for up to four hundred dollars an ounce. This made Edgar popular among the expatriate community, which suited him fine since he preferred the company of westerners to that of any Asians.
It was on a few occasions when Edgar had a deal going with some overseas Chinese that he would ask me to come along and cover his back.
I obliged since, from the day that I met him in the bar, Edgar had kept me supplied with all the Hash I wanted and refused to accept any payment in return. When I’d offer money, it was always `No, just by me a beer.’ Somehow we had bonded, perhaps it was my bravado and bizarre sense of humor. I think it impressed Edgar’s `Latino macho shit,’ which is how I referred to his sense of honor.
Edgar was worried about being busted, not because of doing jail time, he had diplomatic immunity, but because he would be expelled from the country permanently. Taipei was his home. The Philippines held out no hope for him. In the Philippines, he would be just one more bastard son of a kept woman with not enough education to ever dream of finding a job. His best chance would be the slow death of menial labor or the quicker death of booze and drugs.
In Taipei, Edgar, like the rest of us, could pass himself off as a prince among men. The anonymity provided freedom from his background. On the face of it, he was not bad off. He had a nice apartment, expenses paid for by Taiwan tax dollars. For transport, Edgar drove a sporty little scooter with a sleek white faring, a hot pink banana seat, and pink lightning bolt decals. It was the height of fashion at the time. He made good money from his `business,’ was well known and popular at all the clubs in town, and ran with a fast crowd of hookers, entertainers, and expatriates.
However, all that would change if he were busted. Spending the rest of his life sniffing glue sitting on the stoop with the chickens in a sweltering Manila ghetto was the stuff of nightmares.
One of Edgar’s overseas Chinese customers was a strange fellow who went by the name of Caesar. He ran a small nightclub located on the top floor of an office building in an industrial area of town. There were seldom any customers in the club, and one guessed that he had other sources of income and that the club was more a rich kid’s toy than a viable business venture. Details about his background were vague. The story was that he had gotten into some kind of trouble in the states, and his wealthy parents had exiled him back to Taiwan, believing that the conservative values and lifestyle of the homeland would rub off on their middle-aged son. It didn’t.
I had met Caesar before I met Edgar. At the time, a friend had informed me that a certain Chinese club owner was selling Hash, and he arranged for me to meet him. I went to the club that occupied two suites on the top floor of an office building. The interior was reminiscent of a sixties-style coffee house with bare wooden floors, low coffee tables, and pillows to sit on. Above the bar was a badly painted mural of Jimmy Hendrix playing guitar in rainbow heaven. The stereo system and record collection filled an entire wall. I sat at one of the small coffee tables and waited for Caesar to join me. After an hour, he sat down.
“I’m here to see you about…” I began,
“Shhh don’t say anything now.” He looked around the room nervously and left. There were only three other people in the room easily recognizable as American exchange students. Two hours later, he returned.
“In a few minutes, go upstairs, wait until I’m gone, don’t say anything,” Caesar whispered.
The name of the club was The Bird’s Nest, and its meaning became clear after I went upstairs. There, on the roof of the apartment building was an old pigeon coop about eight feet by ten feet that was raised on posts so that one had to climb a small ladder to reach the door. Caesar had roughly converted it into his living quarters. It was a filthy, clotted affair with a small television, a stereo system, coffee maker, and piles of clothes heaped into the corners. I wondered If he bothered to clean out the pigeon shit before laying the mattresses on the floor. Pigeon feathers were still clinging to the rough wooden walls. This is where Caesar slept after locking and bolting the heavy steel door that provided the only access to the roof. Here, in his little pigeon coop, he finally felt safe.
“What are you so paranoid about?” I asked.
“Hey fuck you. You don’t know these fucking Chinese. Secret police, narcs man, they’re everywhere. Those fucking Chinese you can never tell who’s a narc.”
I thought it odd he should refer to his race in the third person.
Caesar was a short, chubby man in his early forties. He sported a heavy metal look, chains hanging from a studded black leather belt, black ‘Metal Head’ T-shirt, and long black hair streaked with grey. He spoke English without an accent and had studied at Berkeley many years ago.
After one last fearful glance through the cracks in the walls, he took out a small chunk of Hash wrapped in tinfoil and handed it to me.
“Would you mind if I smoked some before I go?” I asked.
“No, not here.” Cesar’s face wrinkled up into the kind of look an old Chinese grandmother makes when she catches her grandson masturbating.
“Look, I know you want to try some, so I already rolled you a spliff.” Caesar pulled a thin joint from his jacket pocket and handed it to me furtively.
“Just take this and smoke it once you get away from here.”
I thanked him and was grateful no further conversation was needed to get out of Caesars’ paranoid pigeon coup.
Finally, after so many hours, I was able to score some hash, but it was underweight and overpriced. I wasn’t too fond of Caesar for that, and to make matters worse, he was also starting to make me feel paranoid. It was around three in the morning when I was finally on my bike again. I checked the streets for unmarked cars, but the area was deserted. I rode about three blocks to get away from The Bird’s Nest and pulled into a dark and deserted ally to smoke that spliff. I turned off the bike to better hear any approaching cars, but it was silent. My tolerance and been down since supply was sporadic, and I would have to make an eighth of an ounce of Hash last a month, so the spliff did its work. Sitting in the dark ally in a deserted section of Taipei at three in the morning added considerably to the seed of paranoia, Caesar had implanted. Back on Sugar Daddy Row, the night was still young, and the usual crowd will have moved from the Shaolin Pub to the Woodstock disco. At that time of night, I could make it across town in about forty minutes, being able to employ all the advantages of two-wheeled travel such as driving along sidewalks and scooting through red lights.
I was making my way through the old downtown, an area notorious for old-style gangsters, lots of Karaoke Bars, and Love Hotels. Traffic was heavy, so I had to stop at a red light. A blue BMW pulled up beside me. There were two Chinese men inside the car dressed in grey business suits. They appeared to be in their mid-forties. The window rolled down, and the man on the passenger side spoke to me in good English, not overseas education, but the best local instructors could provide.
“`Hi, are you American? “
Shit, here we go again, I thought, the guy wants to practice his English during a red light.
“No, I’m Canadian.”
“Oh. Where from in Canada?”
“Toronto.”
`Toronto is very good place. Why are you out so late?”
The hair on my neck began to stand up. This was not the type of question that a typical Chinese would ask. Since I was sitting higher up, I could only see the passenger. I bent down as if trying to come closer in order to hear better, but really so that I could also see the driver better. They both sat very erectly.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
The driver looked very serious. The passenger was smiling, but his eyes betrayed a watchfulness.
“I said you are out having good time?”
“Oh, Yea. Out with some friends.”
“Where did you go tonight?”
Now I knew they were police.
“Buffalo Town. You know Buffalo Town?”
Buffalo Town was the name of a large disco and nightclub in a part of town well away from Caesar and the Bird’s Nest but also located on the road I was on so that it would jibe with my present location.
“Oh, Buffalo Town is very dangerous. Many gangsters and drugs there.” I had only been there once and didn’t recall seeing either.
“Really? I didn’t know that.”
The light turned green. They didn’t move. The passenger and driver exchanged words. I guess they were deciding whether to pull me over and sniff me a new asshole. I had a small amount of Hashish in my sock, a guaranteed ticket back to Hong Kong if I were busted.
“Ok. Be careful driving home.”
“Thanks and same to you.” I smiled brightly.
I wondered if they had followed me from Caesar’s. No, then they would have caught me in the lie and pulled me over for sure. No, they were just on patrol, and judging by his excellent English, they were the secret police. I began to wonder if Caesar’s paranoia wasn’t justified after all.
I never needed to score from Caesar again and would have been happy to have had nothing further to do with him, but for a rumor a few months later that Caesar was busted. The story goes that with the help of his parent’s influence, he was able to avoid doing jail-time.
A few days later, he had called Edgar and ordered an unusually large amount of Hash. Edgar quoted an enormous price, but Caesar didn’t haggle. Edgar quickly put two and two together and asked me to be back up. He wasn’t going to go through with the deal anyway, and Edgar made sure he had not a speck of incriminating evidence anywhere on his person or premises, but he wanted to see for himself if Caesar was acting as an informer.
They had arranged to meet at the Shaolin pub, our usual rendezvous, since, as Sun Tzu says, make the enemy fight on your ground. We had worked out a routine. Edgar would never carry anything when meeting his customers. He would stash the drugs disguised as garbage in one of the back alleys and later, after receiving the money, they would stroll down the ally and retrieve the dope.
I would arrive at the location ahead of time and scope out the area. No one outside our intimate circle of friends knew of my connection with Edgar so I could watch anonymously from the surrounding crowd for any trouble. If there was trouble, I could move in unexpectedly from behind.
The night of his meet with Caesar I arrived at the Shaolin early and took a stool at the end of the bar that afforded the best view of the pub. Things were quiet, and nothing seemed out of place. About fifteen minutes before the appointed time, two Chinese men in grey business suits walked in. I had a complete view of their bodies as they walked in the door. They were secret police, a term approximating FBI and DEA rolled into one. Their walk was too confident, and they were too aware of their surroundings, not polite Chinese behavior at all. The Chinese way is to exude an air of humility. Swaggering was not polite behavior.
The two policemen took seats at a table at the other end of the bar. They turned their chairs around and began scanning the room. I ignored them, pretending to be mesmerized by Wendy’s antics behind the bar, but instead discreetly observing the scene in the reflection of the mirrored back wall. Basic spy-craft. Five minutes later, Caesar walked in. He appeared even more nervous and paranoid than usual. He looked everywhere except at the two Chinese men at the bar. That settled it – he was with them. The way he avoided looking in their direction was a giveaway. When I ordered my beer, I had quickly drunk two-thirds of it and then let the bottle coast. This way I could finish my beer and leave without looking as though I was in a sudden hurry. I was in a hurry since Edgar was scheduled to arrive any minute, and I needed to warn him before he arrived.
I finished the last little bit in the bottle and said, “Well I’m off. Gotta get back, or else the wife will kill me.” I joked to Wendy, who knew I had no wife.
I went downstairs and out onto the street. I stopped on the corner to light up a smoke and discreetly scanned the two lanes for signs of Edgar and more police. There was a parked car across the street with heavily tinted windows. I tried to see if there were any people inside. Them someone must have lit a cigarette, and for a moment, I could see a glow through the window. Edgar pulled around the corner on his white scooter. I caught his eye briefly, then turned and started walking away. That was our signal. Edgar kept driving without giving the club or me a second glance, and I continued down three blocks to where my bike was stashed. I always parked three blocks away from the rendezvous point since, in case of pursuit, it would be easier to lose pursuers through the tangle of alleys on foot and backtrack later than risk the open streets on an identifiable motorcycle.
We met later at a prearranged second rendezvous. The Ploughman’s, at the center of the Ding Hao shopping district, was an English style pub that served as the hang out for executive expatriates. Edgar had already gotten a booth in the back and had ordered two beers.
“Smack what happened?”
I told him the story.
“Fucking Caesar that asshole. I knew he was trying to set me up. See, you can’t trust Chinese, even those overseas Chinese. They act like their Americans, but they’re still Chinese inside.”
“Well, there are assholes in every culture,” I said in a halfhearted defense of the Chinese.
“Hey, I owe you another one.”
“Don’t mention it.”
I waited a week before going back to Sugar Daddy row. There were other areas to party in. I returned to the Shaolin and ordered a beer. Michele, the other hostess, came over.
“Heya Smacky how’s life?” said Michele without any of the coquettishness of her partner Wendy.
“The usual – non-stop fun and excitement. Nie Neh? (And you?)”
“Oh, I have problems with my boyfriend. He always drink too much and play with other girls.”
I was close with Billy, her fiancé. He was a local television soap opera star who also ran his own nightclub in Ding Hao. Since we were both born on the same day and year, and being both sardonic, womanizers with a touch of manic depression and a death wish, we had bonded instantly.
“Well, Billy is a handsome and charming boy. It’s hard to fight off all those women all the time.”
“Yea, I know those bar girl all chase after him.”
“But don’t worry, none of them are as beautiful as you.” This was true. Michele was in her early thirties with a sensuous face and a well-endowed body. – drop-dead gorgeous.
Michele smiled and waved her hand at me, and then she took a slightly more serious tone.
“I haven’t seen your friend Edgar for a while, is he alright?”
“Yea, he’s fine. He’s just been busy with some business elsewhere.”
“It’s just as well he didn’t come here for a while.”
“Why, something up?”
“Last week two policemen come in here and they waited around for Edgar to show. But he not come so they show me his picture and ask if I know where he might be. I tell him he is only sometime customer, and I not see him for long time.”
“Have they been back since then?”
“No, but you never know when they will come back to look again.”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. No one like police in Taiwan anyway.”
I left her a large tip.
Edgar didn’t get away entirely clean. His police file was getting thicker. There were cross-references with other known associates added. He was still safe. His stepfather’s Guan She (connections) was good and would protect him from any real harm. However, political climates change, and men grow tired of their mistresses.