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Overview
Taipei is rocked by the back-to-back murders of a recent lottery winner and a police captain just as the city is preparing to host the big Austronesian Cultural Festival, which has brought in indigenous performers from all around the Pacific Rim to the island nation of Taiwan. Jing-nan, the proprietor of Unknown Pleasures, a popular food stand at Taipei’s largest night market, is thrown into the intrigue. Is he being set up to take the rap, or will he be the next victim? The fallout could jeopardize Jing-nan’s relationship with his girlfriend, Nancy, who is herself soon caught up in the drama, and is increasingly annoyed at Jing-nan’s failure to propose to her.
Jing-nan also has to be careful not to alienate his trusty workers Dwayne and Frankie the Cat, who are facing their own personal trials. Dwayne struggles to reconnect with his roots as a person of aboriginal descent, while septuagenarian Frankie helps a fellow veteran with dementia, intertwining stories that illuminate decades of Taiwanese history.
Jing-nan, meanwhile, has to untangle the mystery of the killings while keeping his food stall afloat against hip new competition. Both his life, and his Instagram follower count, hang in the balance.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781641294805 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Soho Press, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 06/13/2023 |
| Series: | A Taipei Night Market Novel , #4 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Sales rank: | 542,357 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.23(h) x 0.74(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
On the morning of the last full day of his life, Boxer pulled the corners of the 7-Eleven sales receipt flat onto the desk with his thumbs and index fingers. He was afraid the slip of paper would lift up its edges and fly away. Reluctantly, Boxer lifted his right hand and gingerly picked up his phone.
The display read 8:03 a.m., a few hours before he usually woke up. He pressed the home button and tapped the Ministry of Finance app, the one that automatically reads QR codes. He muted the phone, focused the camera on the receipt, and tried to hold his hands still.
Maybe it had all been a dream. Maybe Boxer was in for yet another rude awakening.
The phone buzzed and a pop-up message indicated that the receipt was indeed a winner in the latest drawing—200,000 New Taiwan dollars in cash! That was as much as he made in half a year.
He thought about his old friends, guys he had known since they shoplifted candy together. Boxer and his friends had learned a lesson early on: leave the tourists alone. One time, when Boxer was eight years old, he asked a white couple by Longshan Temple for change. He wasn’t even trying to pickpocket them, but a policeman had dragged him into an alley, and beat and kicked him until he passed out.
He touched his right eyebrow at the memory of the thrashing. As a grown man, he understood now what had set off the policeman. What would happen if the visitors went to the local precinct and complained about the beggar boys? The cop would have been demoted or fired because it had happened on his beat. Moreover, if Taiwan’s reputation wasn’t good, no one would visit and spend like they were handing out play money. Whenever they paid for things, tourists always chuckled to themselves.
The trick to avoiding harassment was to rip off other Taiwanese. Boxer did so for a long time. He and his friends stole scooters and bicycles for years. The gang only broke up as its members moved on to bigger things.
Tiger, who had deep pockmarks like black dots on a big cat’s face, started hanging out in clubs and selling drugs for a syndicate. He had died in jail.
Ah Quan had moved into computer fraud early, with fake magnetic strips to withdraw money from ATMs. One day he disappeared. Boxer had heard that Ah Quan changed his name, moved south, and became a legitimate programmer.
Jessy was a rich kid who just wanted to steal. He was sloppy and his dad got him out of trouble so many times. Finally, enough was enough and his father shipped him off to Canada.
I’m the only one of my generation striving in the streets of Taipei, thought Boxer, but my day has finally come. Now that he was sitting pretty, he could call up his co-workers at the bar and show them how much they had underestimated him.
“Boxer is really a generous guy!” he could hear them say. He would ply them with food, drink, and maybe more, depending on how appreciative they were.
He just had to get the money first.
Most receipts could be redeemed at convenience store chains like 7-Eleven and FamilyMart. But his prize was far above the NT$1,000 limit. He had to go to a bank to collect. If he wanted to get to the closest Chang Hwa Bank branch when it opened at nine, he had to leave soon.
The thought of leaving the apartment gave him a panic attack. Boxer clamped his entire left hand flat over the receipt in case it started yelling.
He had to make sure not to wake up Siu-lien!
Boxer cautiously turned his head, expecting to find her still asleep beneath the threadbare sheets. Instead, Siu-lien was sitting up in bed, her arms hugging her folded knees.
“I heard your phone buzz,” she said, her words and eyes tired and angry. “The sound of that receipt checker woke me up.”
Boxer cleared his throat.
“Good morning, honey,” he said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”
You mean you didn’t want to wake me because you wanted to get the money for yourself,” she threw back at him. “That’s my winning receipt you have over there, right?”
“Our receipt,” Boxer said too loudly and too quickly. “You paid for the cigarettes, but if I didn’t ask you to buy them for me, we wouldn’t have won.”
Every paper receipt in Taiwan is a lottery ticket for cash prizes from the government. It’s the Ministry of Finance’s way of ensuring that people ask for receipts for their purchases. When the QR codes are scanned for lottery winnings, they create electronic trails of taxable income that can be checked against businesses that try to cheat. The tax money that came in far outweighed the monthly prizes, which topped out at NT$10 million—about 340,000 American dollars. If you hit that, you could move to America.
Boxer and Siu-lien hadn’t been good about keeping receipts. The agency only held drawings every two months, and the government counted on people like them to discard potential big winners or put them through the wash. The latest drawing had been held a few weeks ago, but Boxer and Siu-lien only managed to retrieve receipts from their pockets and wastebaskets last night to check them. The first seven were all duds. The very last one caused Boxer’s phone to exclaim “You’ve won!” in a chipper cybergirl voice.
They were amused at first. “Free bag of chips,” Boxer said. Then they read what the app said.
“We’re lucky that I smoke,” Boxer declared, smiling as if to offer his yellow and purple teeth for proof of his habit. “And you’ve been trying to get me to quit for years.”
“We’re lucky that I managed to hold on to that receipt!” Siu-lien said.
Boxer picked at the mole on the side of his chin. “We said we’d split the money evenly.”
Finally, Siu-lien wavered. “We did,” she said.
He stood up triumphantly with as much dignity as a lanky, shirtless functioning alcoholic could muster. “I’m going to the bank now to get our money.”
Siu-lien slid across the mattress and put her feet on the floor. “Hold on, Boxer. I’m coming, too!”
Boxer shoved the receipt to the bottom of his left pants pocket and wagged a finger at her with his right hand. “You don’t trust me, huh?” He snatched a work shirt from the back of the chair and punched his arms through the short sleeves. “You never think I’m good enough for you, Siu-lien. Is that it? Are you trying to make me leave you?”
She sat on the side of the bed and put one foot on top of the other. “Of course I trust you, Boxer. I just think we should both be there in person. Don’t you think it’s something we should do together?”
His shirt was now on, and he was finishing the fifth and last intact button. “Don’t get sentimental on me,” said Boxer. “It’s just money.”
He scratched his right ear and tried to stand straight. Siulien reminded him of a judge who had considered his fate back when he was a juvenile. She had known, just as Siulien surely did now, that Boxer was likely to deviate from The Good, but if called out on his bad intentions, he would deny them, and later do something even worse to make up for being humiliated.
“Okay,” said Siu-lien. “I’ll see you at work, then, Boxer.” She knew well enough not to expect him to come straight home with the money without meeting up with his friends and treating them. That lot wouldn’t crawl out of bed before noon to search for a legitimate job, but they would throw something on and wash their faces for free treats. The best outcome was for him to show up at the bar with her half of the money intact.
Siu-lien and Boxer both worked at a dive called BaBa Bar near Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall Station. He was a combination bartender-bouncer for the rougher and younger crowd at the basement level. She poured drinks on the ground floor for the older men who still called her young lady.
Boxer shoved his right foot into a sandal and regarded Siu-lien in the sticky orange sunlight. She was still pretty, especially when you first saw her, like a colorful beach stone still wet from the tide. After you got it home and it was dry, you’d see that it was whitening in places and had a number of surface imperfections. You’d still keep the rock, though.
Siu-lien examined Boxer as he crouched to gingerly put on his left sandal. The strap was coming apart and the puckering leather was rubbing the skin between his toes raw. Boxer looked much older than 45, and Siu-lien noted that as he straightened up, popping sounds came from his bones. He sighed when finally erect.
“I’ll see you tonight,” he said. “I’ll definitely leave your share of the money untouched,” he added, gathering his hands together in a promise to her and a prayer that he could keep his word.
Siu-lien gave a grim smile and smoothed the sheet around her.