Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Three

By the time he'd settled on the duck, though, several officers had entered the restaurant, a detective and two patrolmen, and they were beginning to question the customers. The patrolmen were interviewing the female tourists, a process that, to the untrained eye, looked very much like flirting.

The detective was a tallish fellow in his middle thirties with tightly groomed dark hair and heavy dark brows. Greek or Italian, Tommy thought. No, German/Irish. The detective dressed a bit like a dandy, but Tommy had one of his feelings. He prophesied this detective was one of the good ones—he couldn't even speculate why.

The detective had homed in on Che. (Bingo, detective.) Walking up to Che's table, the policeman began asking questions in English. What was his name? Could he tell the police anything about a shooting that had occurred four doors down?

At first, Che simply responded by smiling and nodding, shining the detective on in that way. After a brief time, however, the man responded to the officer's queries in Cantonese, delivering a long series of insults and profanities at the detective, but in a quiet and polite tone. The detective, whose name was Mueller (Bingo, Tommy), responded with the time-honored American tradition of speaking to Che louder and more slowly in English. This only incensed the other man, who sweetly redoubled his insults.

Detective Mueller called to the patrolmen and asked one to fetch a translator.

Well, you got a handful there, detective, Tommy reflected. Glad I'm not involved.

Still, there was no sign of Mae, who'd gone into the back and had not reemerged. It dawned on him that he was getting no duck there that night.

Oh, fuck it.

"He speaks English fine," Tommy said aloud.

"What was that?" the detective said, looking in Tommy's direction.

"He speaks English fine. I've seen him around the neighborhood. He's fuckin' with you."

Che gave Tommy a dirty look, one that might have cowed anyone else. Tommy chuckled under his breath. Mueller matched Che's look with one of his own, and the detective repeated his questions to the man, again in English. The man continued to feign ignorance, but now did so in belligerent silence.

A few minutes later, an Asian patrol officer entered and, after a short few words with the detective, began to pepper Che with questions in Korean. The result was more silence.

"He's not Korean," Tommy said after the first few questions.

The patrol officer looked at him. "You speak Korean?"

"Not very much." It was a half-truth. "But that guy's Chinese."

Mueller stared up at the ceiling as if in communion. "You speak Chinese, then?"

"Yeah, some," Tommy replied.

"What was this guy saying earlier?"

"He told you to go fuck your mother, among other things."

At that moment, Che focused his full attention on Tommy and spewed a toxic stream of threats and insults in the most vulgar of Cantonese. The young man clearly had hoped his earlier mild tone would bore the police officers, and they simply would go away. He didn't like, nor did he expect, this additional attention and was pissed at Tommy for it.

Again, Tommy chuckled. The invectives were much the same as the man had used on the detective, and Tommy was a tad disappointed he hadn't gotten any fresh material. Suddenly the devil was in him.

"So, Detective ... Mueller, is it? I'm not certain, but I think that guy you're talking to came in here with that fellow over there and that guy on the far left." He pointed to the other two loners in the establishment. "I think the one on the left has a knife."