Another Friday Night in Newark

At Uncle Merl’s Bar & Grill

(Featuring Doc Boreese and Charley in…)

Chuckie Chan’s Revenge

“Golly, Great, Great GRAN’POP!!!

He’s dead!”

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

When I was a kid I had a perverse fondness for the great detectives of celluloid.  I always knew Holmes and Watson would chase the killer across marsh and swamp or through the heart of London and catch him (or her) with three minutes to go—plenty of time for Holmes to say something uplifting and smart.  Boston Blackie would beat the snot out of the bad guys, Nic and Nora Charles would calmly track down the villain, martinis in hand… they and their fellows all kept you riveted to your seat, and you always knew by flick’s end the ne'er-do-well would be caught.  I went on for several years waiting through entire movies for my heroes to figure out, literally, who-done-it.  And then… along came Chan!

He was plump, and the perpetual white suit and derby couldn’t hide it.  He was quiet, but when he spoke, Confucius ran for cover.   I think he owned a gun, but rarely showed or used it.  Through more than a century of detecting, Charlie dragged at least one (and at times two or three) of the dozen children in the Chan clan on every adventure (there are so many, I couldn’t get a legit count or nail down just exactly what was the actual name of number one son—or two or Charlie’s daughters).  And as soon as Charlie heard of a crime, you believed he knew who did it.  The rest of the movie would be spent merely gathering evidence and stewing the bad guy in his own juices and instructing his progeny to the craft.  What a cop!

To many in the American Chinese community, Charlie Chan drove them up a wall with his mild manner, broken English, and constant use of Chinese proverbs.  I apologize to them.  I understand that, to them, Charlie seems like an offensive stereotype—and by our modern standards in the twenty-first century, perhaps he is.  But to write Charlie off as nothing more than that is unfair to him.  Put in his original historical context of the 1920s and 30s, when “Yellow Peril” was very much alive and Chinese men were usually portrayed (when they were portrayed at all) as criminal thugs, opium addicts, or subservient laborers, Charlie Chan successfully challenged and broke that mold.  Detective Chan was not only an educated middle class professional, he was an authority figure who upheld law and order.  He was a positive role model not just for American Chinese, but for all Americans.  Charlie has always been a hero to me, and he and his movie family are about the best examples I can give of an immigrant practicing American citizenship and taking full advantage of the freedom he earned.

He’s a hero based on a real Hawaiian policeman, Chang Apana, just so you know.

You’ll notice I’ve used lot of my favorite Chan-isms!  From the Master’s mouth to you, and they still work.  I’ve quoted the movie that the line came from.

Charlie Chan has been the source of hundreds of hours of great mystery adventure for many fans as well as for me.  It is my hope that Charlie (and a distant great-great-grandson Chuckie Chan) will allow me to bring you a smile at Chan family expense, and in so doing keep the memory and spirit of the world’s greatest detective alive.

Thank you, sooo much.

“Death is a black camel that kneels unbidden at every gate.”

I’ve known Doc Boreese longer than bacon has known eggs.  The old boy was a wizard at dealing with the supernatural: werewolves, witches, IRS agents… Doc could handle them all.  He was fearless.  We roamed the world—okay, Newark, and usually just downtown—looking for evil and unclean spirits, and we had done so for several centuries.  Boy, you get to know someone pretty good in all that time!

So imagine my surprise when I turned off of Liberty Street and gum shoed it into Uncle Merl’s Bar & Grill to find Doc and Uncle Merl crying in their beers—literally—so I did a quick head count to see if any regulars at the bar had snuffed it.  The usual gang of suspects that hung out under the protective wing of Uncle Merl were all present and accounted for, sitting in their assigned bar stools, and Merl had paid all the bills for the month—I could tell ’cause the lights were still on—so it wasn’t a money problem.  But there they were, Merl and Doc, sittin’ Shiva and recitin’ the Tibetan Prayers for the Dead… literally.

Realizing the importance of a moment like this is a big part of my job.  I deal with horrific forms of supernatural death all the time, and knew that a certain degree of sensitivity, a certain degree of… tenderness is called for, so as not to disturb the deceased’s survivors any more than they absolutely have to be.  Consideration for their mental state, physical welfare, and well being in general all must be weighed, and words selected so as not to confront the bereaved with an unbearable sense of the finality of the infinite.  So in my best undertaker voice I asked, “What the fug’s up with you two, ya’ look like shit!  Who the hell died?”

Merl never lifted up from his Foster’s, although he flipped me a lovely bird, and Doc looked up and waved a newspaper clipping at me.  “Charley,” he moaned, “read this!”

I took it and glanced at the date.  It was an obit from a San Francisco rag.

Black Camel Kneels At Home of Charlie Chan

Charles Apana Chan, former Honolulu and San Francisco detective and prototype of the character "Charlie Chan" in the mystery novels that told of the detective’s adventures, died at San Francisco General Hospital at 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Mr. Chan was admitted to the hospital Thursday evening after having been run down by a van carrying a half-ton of illegal medical marijuana to a nearby pharmaceutical dispensary.  Two members of the San Francisco Police Department, who were at the dispensary testing the inventory at the time, gave their blood for transfusions, waving away the donuts and orange juice offered them in favor of “a cold beer and some cheese-its.”

Serving longer than anyone else on the local police force, Mr. Chan was one of the most picturesque and best-known characters in the city, despite the fact that he was one of only a few “straight” cops left in San Francisco.  Mr. Chan joined the police department when the city and county were incorporated after the great earthquake at the turn of the last century, and was one of its most popular members until he was pensioned in May 1982 after having been seriously injured in an automobile accident along with his chauffeur and lifelong friend, Mister Mantan “Birmingham” Brown of Irvington, New Jersey.  After that, Mr. Chan was employed as a rent-a-watchman through his fourth son Jimmy’s detective agency.

"He was the greatest detective I have ever known," was the tribute of Chan’s Precinct Captain William “Willie” Getem when he learned of his friend's death.  They had worked together for about twenty-nine years, and Chan had also worked with the Captain’s father and grandfather.  “They say he never lost his courage as he fought his way through years of Honolulu’s famous Opium-hula skirt smuggling ring, and later San Francisco’s ‘Fortune Cookie Wars’.”  Other veteran officers tell stories of his feats of daring, especially relating to the great Viagra heist when the sex drug was still in its dangerously experimental stages.  Chan captured an entire ring of hardened criminals, but was never able to locate the missing drugs.

Born at Canton, China, Mr. Chan was 128 years of age and still active.  He is survived by his widow, Mrs. Annie Lee Kwai Chan, fourteen children Henry, Lee, Ling, Iris, Francis, Tommy, Jimmy, Edward, Evelyn, Yolanda Toler, Charlie, Jr., Annie Kim Kwai, Kim and William “Willie” Duff, forty-two grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild, Charles “Chuckie” Chan, a cousin Kim Lee Chan, and a niece Rose Chan of Waverly Place, San Francisco.

Arrangements for the funeral, which will be at the Heaven of a Thousand Pleasures of the Flesh mortuary, have not been completed as of this morning.

The news hit me like a sucker punch to the groin and a bite to the ear from Mike Tyson!  I hadn’t worked with Charlie since 1921, The Case of the Downtown Spooks, when he saved me from being sucked into a haunted cathouse off of Broad Street.  While Charlie made his bucks in the straight world, he had the Chinese love of spirits and demons.  “Chinese people interested in all things psychic,” Charlie would say, smiling—and Chan didn’t smile all that much!  But take it from me, spirits and demons are like motorcycles and leather jackets—the minute you get a wife, they’re gone!  Honorable number one wife put the kibosh on that fast enough for Charlie!  But whenever Charlie had a murder in Manhattan, he’d go Jersey-side and come down to Uncle Merl’s bar, especially if he suspected that the corpse in his case was going to be giving us a bad time.  And it was always the same: Doc and I’d be talking at our usual table in the darkest corner of Uncle Merl’s Bar & Grill, and from behind us we’d hear a voice ask for…

“I’ll have a Cocktail de Bronx, please—that is one ounce vermouth, one ounce gin, juice of one quarter orange, one slice orange.  Shake all ingredients, except orange slice, with ice and strain into a cocktail glass.  Add orange slice and serve to me, please. And one same for my companion!  As great-great-grandfather has said, ‘Soothing drink, like summer shower, brings grateful relief.’  Thank you, sooo much.”

We spun around.  The voice had come from the end of the bar where, being served a Bronx Cocktail, was a young Oriental man, clad in a familiar white suit that sagged on him like any good hand-me-down should, and a matching derby that, while it didn’t sag as badly as the suit, looked as if it would fit better on any other head in the bar.  At any place but Uncle Merl’s, it might have been questioned as to why the young man was buying such an unusual cocktail for an empty stool.

Merl and Doc rose slowly and moved to the bar.  Merl spun around the white-clad lad on the stool until they were almost eye to eye.  “There’s only one man with balls big enough to ask for a Bronx Cocktail in a joint like this—an’ you ain’t him!”

The young man pulled back slowly and looked over at the empty stool, looked back at us, and nodded.  “So sorry.  I, Chuckie Chan, honorable descendent of great-great-grandfather, Charlie Chan, who say you are honorable Uncle Merl!  Strange tall man in purple bell-bottoms with fur-trimmed cuffs is Great Spirit Detective, Doctor Boreese.  Stranger short man with fly open is Number One Assistant, Charley, spelled ‘e-y’ not ‘i-e’.  So happy, make acquaintances with friends of ancestor.”

Merl had been studying the young man.  “You from Canton?”

“No.  Pasadena, California.”

“How long you been talkin’ like dat?”

“Since night great-great-grandfather join ancestors.  I, most honored to be last one to see him before he walk ’cross bridge.”

“Hmmm, interesting,” Doc mused.  “Is that when you started wearing Charlie’s old suits?  What’d he say to you before he kicked it?”

“Honorable great-great-grandfather say, ‘Go to #1 Liberty Street, in ironbound section, Newark, New Jersey.  Thank you, sooo much.  Find Doc, find Merl.’  Then honorable great-great-grandfather say something mos’ unusual.  Dying breath, he say, ‘Go fuck yourself!’  I always knew he not like me, but…”

You could sense the evil entering the room.  A loud hush fell over the bar and Chuckie stopped talking as all eyes fell on him.  “Not sure why amateur Chinese detective center of attention in room.  As great-great-grandfather once say, ‘Silence best answer when uncertain.’  Will say no more!”

Doc looked at Merl and shook his head, then turned to young Chan.  “Didn’t you think it was kinda strange Charlie would trust you with finding us, then tell you to go… whatever!”

“Thought most strange, but great-great-grandfather—”

“He didn’t tell you to ‘go fuck yerself’,” Merl spoke up.  “What he said was ‘Gafak Yoseff’!”  A cold chill filled the room as patrons of the bar began to leave and get as far away from the name as possible.  Beads of sweat began to appear on Doc’s forehead, and Merl went to the bar to fill up a pitcher with Butzh, his own home brew.

Young Chan took a deep breath and exhaled in a most pensive way.  Looking at Doc, he said, “Who?”  He obviously didn't realize his great-great-grandfather’s dying gasp had named his own murderer.

“Gafak Yoseff,” Doc spoke up, wiping the fear perspiration off his brow, “is the most evil Egyptian High Priest in the last three thousand years.  Charlie Chan busted him back in the 1930s, right when Gafak was trying to resurrect his old girlfriend from the third and a half dynasty, the Pharaoh Hottoddy’s older sister, and an even eviler specter there…”

“Gees,” I interjected.  “I remember her!  What was her name?  Nevatearsheet… what a freak.  When she was alive, she got her rocks off by cheating at knock rum at the royal card parties, then lifting her skirts and shaking her fanny at the other players she’d beaten.  Very often, she got so excited she’d rush the game along just to show her butt at the end, but the other players eventually tried to stop her.  At the Third and a Half Dynasty Annual Pharaoh’s Ball and Card Party, she tried to cheat her brother—and that’s when Hottoddy caught her.  The Pharaoh ordered her name changed from Nevatearsheet to a name that told of her crime, and she became Nokt Tusoon Tamoon!  Boy, talk about an evil bitch!  Murder, theft, tax evasion, shakin’ her tail feathers… and cheating at knock rum!”

“ ‘Cannot tell where path lead until reach end of road.’  Wondered still why great-great-grandfather sent me to dive bar in Jersey.  Wonder no more.”

Uncle Merl came out from behind the bar with a pitcher of a dark brew and four mugs.  “Yeah, well, drink this and you can stop bowing to an empty barstool and speaking like a waiter from Wo Hop’s.”  He didn’t have to tell Doc and me twice.  We’d been spillin’ Uncle Merl’s down-the-hatch magic potion for more than a hundred years, and knew better than to ask what was in it.  “Here, put that sissy cocktail down and drink dis.”  Merl pushed a mug at Chuck.  We all started to down the concoction and as we did, on the empty barstool next to Chuckie Chan, an outline began to materialize.  Chuckie was a little lost for words and sputtering like a split air hose, but Merl just leaned over to the form and said, “Hello, Charlie.  Sorry to hear you died.  You’re looking good though—fortyish, I ’spect.  I guess this means I’m gonna get stiffed on your bar tab!”

“ ‘Bills sometimes more difficult to collect than murder clues.’  Most happy to see honorable friends and great-great-grandson.  Tired of hearing my own wise sayings from old detective movies come from mouth of inexperienced puppy!  Now Chinese detective and progeny must find killers!”

“Golly, great-great-gran’pop,” Chuckie said, “am I glad to see you!  I—”

“Eh eh eh!”  The ghost raised one finger at his babbling relative.  “ ‘Assistants should be seen, not heard.’  Ancient ancestor once say, ‘Words cannot cook rice.’  So shut trap and learn!”  The spirit looked at Doc.  “Jus’ like his gran’father, number one son Thomas!  Mouth sends words out like flooding river, but between ears, not even a trickle.”

Merl made Chuckie another Bronx cocktail.  “Charlie, you mentioned Gafak Yoseff after your accident…”

“ ‘Accidents can happen, if planned that way.’  Was no misfortune.  Driver was wearing headpiece of Almost-High Egyptian priest, second assistant to Yoseff.  Was revenge killing for preventing return of Nokt Tusoon Tamoon, who is now returned from world beyond.”

“World beyond?” Chuckie said, puzzled.  “Cleveland, great-great-gran’pop?”

“My God!  How did he bring her back to life?!  An ancient spell?”

“Not sure.  From what honorable detective hear on news before being run down… Obamacare, I think!”

“It is difficult to pick up needle with boxing glove.”

We bade farewell to Uncle Merl.  Doc, Charlie Chan, his great-great-grandson Chuckie and I hotfooted it to Bloomfied Avenue and took the number 13 bus to the Newark Museum on Washington Street, which was currently setting up an Ancient Egypt exhibit; it seemed the likeliest place to go to pick up Gafak’s trail, and might explain why the rumors were saying he was in Newark.  It would have been a nice and short stretch of the legs, but Doc thought three guys with a semi-transparent apparition that didn’t need to move its feet to go walking through the heart of Newark might draw undue attention.  Getting on a Newark bus was a smart move.  People in Newark never looked at other people on a bus.  If you got caught looking at someone you might have to say “hello,” and in Newark, that could get you killed!

The bus driver, who was a semi-regular at Uncle Merl’s, refused to allow Charlie Chan a half-fare for being only half-solid.  This caused a small problem as we were forty cents short of exact change, which in Newark is a misdemeanor.  The other passengers took up a collection just to shut Doc up and get the bus moving again.  We walked amid the jeers of the crowd to the back of the bus, an area generally avoided.

The only thing we knew for certain was that there was a reason Charlie didn’t care for Chuckie.  The kid wanted desperately to follow in his great-great-gran’pop’s footsteps.  But Charlie Chan had the biggest flat-feet in the business, dead or alive.  Now that Charlie was no longer talking through the kid, what was coming out of Chuckie’s face wasn’t good.  When talking about Gafak Yoseff’s vanity being his soft spot, Charlie said, “ ‘Foolish rooster who stick head in lawn mower end in stew’.”  What came out of Chuckie’s mouth was, “A lion won’t cheat on his wife, but a Tiger Wood!”  It was more than Charlie’s old suits that Chuckie didn’t fit into.  It was easy to see that Chuckie was better suited to living on a California beach than gumshoeing in Charlie’s footsteps.

Hey!  Face facts!  It isn’t easy to be raised in the shadow of the world’s greatest detective.  Chuckie’s father, grandfather, and half the Chan family tried and failed to follow Charlie.  As far as our profession went, Chuckie had only one saving grace—he wasn’t packing heat, so he couldn’t shoot himself or anybody else before Gafak Yoseff got around to killing us.

“Golly, great-great-gran’pop, what are we gonna do if we do catch Gafak Yoseff and Nokt Tusoon Tamoon?  I mean, them bein’ dead already?”

“ ‘Detective without curiosity is like glass eye at keyhole—no good.’  Great-great-grandson not yet figure out reason I send him to see Uncle Merl yet?  Young Chan give us huge advantage.  Good policy to have murderer consider detective dope.  No doubt in humble deceased detective’s mind, young progeny quite good at projecting that quality.”

There was a rousing cheer when we exited the bus in front of the Museum.  It was twilight now, and the Museum was closed.  Doc was fishing through his satchel for a key to the city that Mayor William Henry Frederick Fiedler had given him in 1865.  For some reason though, the key wouldn’t fit in the Museum lock.  “What do we do now, great-great-gran’pop?”

Charlie shook his head sadly and looked at Chuckie.  “ ‘Mind, like parachute, only function when open,’ great-great-grandson.  ‘More than one way to remove skin from cat.’  Must find place where criminal got in and follow rat through hole.”

Chuckie nodded in agreement, looked at Doc, and said, “ ‘Squirrel who runs up woman’s leg will not find nuts’.”

“Huh?”

“Not to mind great-great-grandchild.  Walk round to other side of building with humble detective.  Look for small tear in screen to janitor’s room, crack in window glass.  ‘Much evil can enter through very small space’. ”

Sure enough, there wasn’t a hole big enough for an anorexic cat to squeeze through.  “Gosh, great-great-gran’pop, how’d they get in through that?  We’re supposed to follow through there?”

We could see the mystic light in Charlie’s eye fading slowly in the east.  “Confucius say, ‘No man is poor who have worthy son’.”  Confucius not live long enough to have great-great-grandson.  ‘Death is the reckoning of heaven.’  Need dead detective catch dead criminals.  This heaven knows; why you don’t!?!  Wait here, will open janitor’s entrance for most honorable spirit detectives and idiot progeny.”

The great detective looked like a genie flowing back into the lamp as he poured through the tiny opening.  Chuckie’s head was hanging low, but when the door opened, he flew through—and promptly missed a safety railing and fell ten feet to the basement floor.  Charlie, who was already inspecting a split-open packing crate from Egypt, walked over to the crumpled white suit on the ground.  “ ‘Advice after mistake is like medicine after dead man's funeral.’  Would suggest eyes enter room before feet, great-great-grandson.  Get off ground.  Detective find first real clue what Gafak Yoseff and Nokt Tusoon Tamoon doing in the manure pile of Garden State.”

Doc and I let that pass.  Charlie was just expressing the general national attitude towards us.  The only thing wrong with Newark that we could see were the politicians that ran it.  

The massive wooden shipping crate seemed to have been jimmied opened.  The wooden box housed a stone sarcophagus, and once the beautifully carved top had been removed, someone had violently sliced open the wrappings of the mummy within.  The contents hidden inside the mummy were strewn all about, as if whoever had been rifling through the contents was looking for a specific item.  There were jewels, gems, and jewelry from inside the mummy scattered all over the place.  “Hey Doc,” I moaned, “it looks like they wrecked everything!”

Before Doc could answer, Charlie looked at me.  “ ‘Very difficult to estimate depth of well by size of bucket.’  Thief looking for something, but destroy mummy of Pharaoh Hottoddy for spite!  Make mess, but not reason they come here!”

While the three of us were huddling around the dissected mummy, Chuckie had been fooling with another large box propped up against the wall that seemed to have been forced open, then partially closed, as if something were blocking the box from being fully shut.  Chuckie fooled with the rope tying the lid shut.  The knot came loose, the lid popped open suddenly, and Chuckie shrieked as very stiff body fell forward.  It landed on the floor, the fall pushing the Egyptian scimitar he’d been stabbed with right through his chest.  The corpse lay there face down, with a three-foot blade sticking out of his back.

“Golly, great-great-GRAN’POP!!!  He’s dead!”

Charlie removed the eternal bowler he wore and patted his dead forehead with his pocket hanky.  He looked down at the body and up at Chuckie.  “Very good, number one great-great-grandchild.  Glad to see all money your honorable father spend to send you to UCLA finally pay off!  Now pull out murder weapon and turn corpse on back.  Must see face. Thank you, sooo much.”  Chuckie grimaced, but did as he was instructed—clumsily.  “Ah, as I suspect,” Charlie continued.  “ ‘Curiosity responsible for cat needing nine lives.’  Man is janitor come into room to see where noise come from.  He carry small item which once belong to Nokt Tusoon Tamoon, being card player himself.  Unfortunately, janitor eight lives short of full cat.  Caught one in chest, now deader than door nail.  Too bad, but not our problem.  Semi-honorable great-great-grandchild, be so kind to lift left foot.”

Chuckie lifted his left foot—and promptly lost his balance and toppled over the stiff. “Thank you, sooo much, great-great-grandson.  There!  Silk bag with tiny pin prick holes.  Chinese detective suspect contain now-removed ancient Egyptian bug.”

“You mean like a sacred scarab beetle for ritual curses?” I asked.

Charlie shook his head.  “Wrong kind of bug, young man.  This bug easily carried to card game.  Before game, bug is quietly installed under table.  Needle stuck into wood on underside of table and point towards the user, so clever spring lay pressed against flat surface.  Tip of spring is left protruding a bit beyond edge.  This allow cheating spirit to slip card between spring and table surface.  Card will stay there until next desired.  Bug is three thousand years old, but will still work.  Many more such cheating devices to be found in ancient land.  Thinking Nokt Tusoon Tamoon back in business.  Quick!  Pick up great-great-grandson from floor.  Must buy bus ticket to Vegas!”

TO BE CONTINUED...

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