Less than five minutes later, Sal returned the call. ‘What’s so urgent, cheese head?' 
he asked. ‘You forget where you put your dick?’
    ‘Where are you?’ Tommy asked.
    ‘In the sweatshop.’
    ‘At the office?’ ‘Wrangling the news.’
    ‘Late on another deadline,’ Tommy guessed.
    ‘You called just to question my professionalism? You’re out of the news racket one 
day and already you’ve lost all sense of brotherhood?’
    Leaning forward in his chair, hunched over his desk, Tommy said, ‘Listen, Sal, I need 
to know something about the gangs.’
    ‘You mean the fat cats who run Washington or the punks that lean on the businessmen 
in Little Saigon?’
    ‘Local Vietnamese gangs. The Santa Ana Boys...’ Cheap Boys, Natoma Boys. You already 
know about them.’
    ‘Not as much as you do,’ Tommy said. Sal was a crime reporter with a deep knowledge 
of the Vietnamese gangs that operated not only in Orange County but nationwide. While 
with the news-paper, Tommy had written primarily about the arts and entertainment.
    ‘Sal, you ever hear about Natoma or the Cheap Boys threatening anybody by mailing 
them an imprint of a black hand or, you know, a skull-and-crossbones or something like 
that?’
    ‘Or maybe leaving a severed horse’s head in their bed?’
    ‘Yeah. Anything like that.’
    ‘You have your cultures confused, boy wonder. These guys aren’t courteous enough to 
leave warnings. They make the Mafia seem like a chamber-music society.’
    ‘What about the older gangs, not the teenage street thugs, the more organized guys - 
the Black Eagles, the Eagle Seven?’
    ‘The Black Eagles have the hard action in San Francisco, the Eagle Seven in Chicago. 
Here it’s the Frogmen.’
    Tommy leaned back in his chair, which creaked under him. ‘No horse’s head from them 
either, huh?’
    ‘Tommy boy, if the Frogmen leave a severed head in your bed, it’s going to be your 
own.’
    ‘Comforting.’
    ‘What’s this all about? You’re starting to worry me.’ Tommy sighed and looked at the 
nearest window. Clotting clouds had begun to cover the moon, and fading silver light 
filigreed their vaporous edges. ‘That piece I wrote for the Show section last week - I 
think maybe somebody’s threatening to retaliate for it.’
    ‘The piece about the little girl figure skater?’
    ‘Yeah.’
    ‘And the little boy who’s a piano prodigy? What’s to retaliate for?’
    ‘Well-’
    ‘Who could’ve been pissed off by that - some other six-year-old pianist thinks he 
should have gotten the coverage, now he’s going to run you down with his tricycle?’
    ‘Well,’ Tommy said, beginning to feel foolish, ‘the piece did make the point that 
most kids in the Vietnamese community don’t get mixed up in gangs.’
    ‘Oooh, yeah, that’s controversial journalism, alright’
    ‘I had some hard things to say about the ones who do join gangs, especially the 
Natoma Boys and Santa Ana Boys.’
    ‘One paragraph in the whole piece, you put down the gangs. These guys aren’t that 
sensitive, Tommy. A few words aren’t going to put them on the vengeance freeway.’
    ‘I wonder..
    ‘They don’t care what you think anyway, ‘cause to them, you’re just the Vietnamese 
equivalent of an Uncle Tom. Besides, you’re giving them a whole lot too much credit. 
These assholes don’t read newspapers.’
    The dark clouds churned from west to east, congealing rapidly as they moved in from 
the ocean. The moon sank into them, like the face of a drowner in a cold sea, and the 
lunar glow on the window glass slowly faded.
    ‘What about the girl gangs?’ Tommy asked. ‘Wally Girls, Pomona Girls, the Dirty 
Punks. it’s no secret they can be more vicious than the boys. But I still don’t believe 
they’d be interested in you. Hell if they got steamed this easily, they’d have gutted me 
like a fish ages ago. Come on, Tommy, tell me what’s happened? What’s got you jumpy?’
    ‘It’s a doll.’
    Sal sounded bewildered. ‘Like a Barbie Doll?’
    A little more ominous than that.’
    ‘Yeah, Barbie isn’t the nasty bitch she used to be. Who’d be afraid of her these 
days?’
    Tommy told Sal about the strange white-cloth figure with black stitches that he had 
found on the front porch.
    ‘Sounds like the Pillsbury Doughboy gone punk,’ Sal said.
    ‘It’s weird,’ Tommy said. ‘Weirder than it probably sounds.’
    ‘You don’t have a clue what the note says? You can’t read any Vietnamese at all not 
even a little?’
    Taking the paper from his shirt pocket and unfolding it, Tommy said, ‘Not a word.’
    ‘What’s the matter with you, cheese head? You have no respect for your roots?’
    ‘You’re in touch with yours, huh?’ Tommy said sar-castically.
    ‘Sure.’ To prove it, Sal spoke swift, musical Italian. Then, reverting to English: 
And I write to my nonna in Sicily every month. Went to visit for two weeks last year.’
    Tommy felt more than ever like a swine. Squinting at the three columns of ideograms 
on the yellowed paper, he said, ‘Well, this is as meaningless as Sanskrit to me.’
    ‘Can you fax it? In maybe five minutes, I can find someone to translate.’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘I’ll get back to you as soon as I know what it says.’
    ‘Thanks, Sal. Oh, hey, you know what I bought today?’
    ‘Do I know what you bought? Since when do guys talk shopping?’
    ‘I bought a Corvette.’
    ‘For real?’
    ‘Yeah. An LT1 Coupe. Bright metallic aqua.’
    ‘Congratulations.’
    ‘Twenty-two years ago,’ Tommy said, ‘when I first came through the immigration office 
with my family and stepped into my first street in this country, I saw a Corvette go by, 
and that was it for me. That said everything about America, that fantastic-looking car, 
going by so sleek.’
    ‘I’m happy for you, Tommy.’
    ‘Thanks, Sal.’
    ‘Now at last maybe you’ll be able to get girls, won’t have to make it anymore with 
Rhonda Rubbergirl, the inflatable woman.’
    Asshole,’ Tommy said affectionately.
    ‘Fax the note.’
    ‘Right away,’ Tommy said, and he hung up.
    A small Xerox machine stood in one corner of his office. Without turning on any room