"Where is the body?"
"I told you already, I don't know. I was at home with my wife!" interjected the visibly irritated Alexander Fu Sheng, or "Alex," as Jenny, with whom he had in fact been (at home), called him during their infrequent and often disappointingly succinct sexual interactions.
He pictured his young, Canto-pop-star wife waiting for him by their artificial fireplace, slowly sipping a raspberry martini. She's not the one in that picture up there, by the way: that's some lady who was in a 1970's martial-arts film with Alex.
The man who was asking the questions was leaning over him. The other man was sitting in the corner, at a sturdy wooden desk, rifling through some files. Alex wasn't handcuffed. These smug mother-fuckers had no idea what he could do to them.
"Listen Fu Sheng, there are pictures from yesterday morning of you at the scene of the crime. Besides, your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon."
Alex knew they couldn't prove anything. He hadn't broken a single law since coming to the States. That was the life he'd left behind. They didn't have shit on him, and we both knew it.

Oh, I'm sorry. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jerry. I'm a benign tumor that Alex found behind his left ear about seven months ago. This story becomes more about me a little later. Don't worry, I'll get to that part eventually. Anyway:
"I've never been arrested before. You don't even have my prints on file," responded Alex, coolly.
"Hey Larry, he's pretty sharp." Said the man at the desk. Smoke from the neglected cigarette pinched between the second knuckles of his index and middle fingers curled in thin wisps toward the small vent near the ceiling above his desk. "Remember when you moved here, Al? Remember all that boring paperwork? Remember when they took your prints then?"
"Shut up, Morris! They don't take fingerprints when people immigrate here," shot Larry.
"I think you mean 'emigrate,' don't you?"
"I'm not sure. I always forget which means coming and which means going."
"It doesn't help that the migrant is always technically both. You know, because he's got to leave one country to go to another. You know what I mean?"
"Yeah. Hey Alex, how's your English?"
"Pretty good, why?" Alex didn't know what these idiots were jabbering on about. His English was superb. He knew that Larry was right the first time. He clearly said "immigrate here." There was nothing to debate. These guys were idiots, any half-brain could figure that out.
"Well, Morris and I were just wondering, when you came here, did you immigrate or did you emigrate?"
"Both."
"Tryin' to be a smart guy, you chink piece of shit?" Larry's closed fist swiped at where Alex's face should have been, but the martial-artist and film star, was waiting for just this sort of thing to happen. Alex ducked the blow and shifted forward in his chair, simultaneously grabbing the pistol from Larry's shoulder holster and stomping on the bridge of his right foot, shattering bone. Morris stood up quickly fumbling for his gun, but Alex elbowed him in the face, knocking him out cold. He jumped and gripped an exposed pipe, from which he hung momentarily before fluidly kicking the cover from the vent and disappearing into the police-station's climate control ducts.
Once outside, Alex sprinted toward the alley behind the station and dove into a dumpster just as a throng of uniformed police officers burst from the building's doors and ran toward the street. They piled into their squad-cars and screeched off into the night. Alex waited a few minutes before slowly climbing from his odorous hideaway. He cautiously made his way toward a nightclub a few blocks away. When he arrived, he muttered something to the doorman who went inside and promptly returned with a set of car keys. Alex thanked him and darted behind the building where a cherry red Porsche 911 Targa was parked. He opened the driver-side door and found himself face to face with his evil twin brother, James Fu Sheng.
Alex and James had once been competing heirs to their father Winslow Fu Sheng's underworld empire in Hong Kong. After accidentally blinding an innocent karaoke singer during a botched armed robbery of a discotheque, Alex vowed to turn his life around, pursuing his childhood dream of becoming a C-list martial-arts film star.
Here he found himself, face to face with the life he had managed to avoid for nearly fifteen years.
"Heard you beat up some cops tonight," said James, casually.
"What the hell are you doing here?"
"Waiting for you, dummy."
"Here in LA, not in my car."
"Oh, you know, the usual: crime, drug trafficking, the illegal procuring of priceless ethnically-relevant artifacts, murder. So, how have you been?"
"Good, good. Hey listen, would you mind driving? I have a headache."
"No that's fine."
The two got out of the car, switched places, and James started the engine. Alex threw the loaded pistol into his brother's lap, and the two shared a good belly laugh. As James drove the high-performance european sports car down a winding ocean road toward Alex's modestly-sized (but nevertheless quite expensive) home, Alex drifted into a peaceful slumber, thinking all the while about how simultaneously bizarre and enjoyable his legal mishap and fraternal reunion had been.
I did not fall asleep, for I was suspicious of James and his unannounced return. I had concocted a relatively plausible scenario in which James had come to LA for some criminal reason, been photographed somewhere, killed someone, and the local police had mistaken him for his brother. After several months of existence attached to Alex's nervous system, I had been growing restless and longed more than anything to be set free. I generally occupied my time analyzing Alex's life and picturing his attractive wife naked. Tonight, however, my thoughts were on James and the potential legal trouble, about which Alex didn't seem very concerned. The one thing I couldn't piece together was how James had gotten into Alex's locked Porsche. I supposed that it might have been left unlocked and he had locked it from the inside. Perhaps he had picked the lock. Or, perhaps he had posed as Alex and retrieved the keys from the nightclub doorman, left the door open and returned them, and then locked the doors from the inside.
Suddenly, James lost control of the vehicle and it careened toward a brick wall. I'm not quite sure what happened to Alex or James, but in the jolt of the crash, I was separated from Alex and I floated into the ether, free at last from my tumorous prison. I now roam the universe performing simple magic tricks for the children of stars. Edit this page (you have permission)

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