A Thousand Pardons by Jonathan Dee Read Free Book Online Page B

said.
    “Right,” Harvey said, “there’s like eight of them. Anyway, we call and ask for a delivery, and they say no. No? They say no, we can’t, because our delivery guys are on strike. But you’re still open? I say. Sure. So Michael and I walk three blocks to Peking Grill, and we have to cross a god damn picket line to get in, and inside it’s empty except for one guy who’s sitting alone at a table and crying , for Pete’s sake. Sobbing. He’s the owner.”
    “Disgusting,” Mona said.
    Harvey glanced at her curiously but then went on. “So someone is apparently trying to unionize the deliverymen at all the Peking Grills, which I would think would be difficult because pretty much everyonewho works there is illegal, but nevertheless. They are picketing the owner not only for a wage hike but for back wages for all the years they say they were underpaid. I ask him if he’s had any calls from the papers, and he says yes, just that day, from somebody at the Post . He hasn’t returned it yet.”
    He sat back in his chair. “So I sense an opening here,” he said. “For us. For us to intervene.”
    Mona and Nevaeh just went on nodding, but Helen, who couldn’t help herself, said, “On which side?”
    The two women shot her an angry look, and all of a sudden Helen understood that they weren’t really following any of what Harvey said either but had just settled on nodding as the quickest way to get through these enthusiasms of his and back to their desks. Harvey, though, looked delighted and indulgently thoughtful, as if he were only pretending to think through a question for a student’s benefit, even though someone of his intelligence would have known the answer instinctively. “Well,” he said, “the deliverymen don’t really have much of a public image problem, do they? I mean, they risked their lives to get here, they’re being paid about two dollars an hour, they’re sleeping Christ knows where. Everybody already sympathizes with them. In New York, they do, at least. If we were somewhere in flyover country, they’d have a posse out for these guys, but hey, this is Manhattan. Whereas this owner, who came here in exactly the same circumstances but then had the temerity to actually succeed, to make himself a millionaire—his name is Chin, by the way—he’s being portrayed as the villain, he’s the one with the story that needs to get out. He’s the one in need of our expert services. Which is what I convinced him of last night while we ate some very delicious chow fun.”
    Helen Googled Chin and, sure enough, most of the references to him were scathing. She was printing out a few of them—Harvey disliked having links sent to him—when he opened his door and tried to beckon her into his office without the other two women noticing. “Mr. Chin and I are having lunch today at the Peking Grill up on Seventy-eighth Street,” he said when she came in. “I’d love it if you’d come along. You don’t have to do anything but take notes. But I think itwould be useful if he saw that we’re, you know, an operation here, that he wouldn’t just be putting his business in the hands of one old Jew who likes Chinese food.”
    They arrived at 11:30, which seemed early for lunch but was probably scheduled with an eye toward minimizing the presence of picketers; indeed there was only one sullen young Chinese man sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk who lifted his head and glared at them as they walked past him and the row of locked, scarred bikes.
    “Mr. Chin,” Harvey said. Chin sat by himself at the table closest to the kitchen, his hands in his lap. “My associate, Helen Armstead,” Harvey said as he sat down and looked around hopefully for a waiter with a menu.
    “You say you help me,” Chin said without looking up. “How you help this? Nobody come. Nobody call for delivery. Sixty percent of our weekday business, delivery.”
    “Well, it is a little early for the lunch trade,” Harvey said