It goes without saying that Chinese food culture, which encompasses regions from Canton to Mongolia, is one of the world’s grandest and most diverse. But to go by the menus in Chinese restaurants in America from Chattanooga to Salt Lake City you’d be hard put to come to that conclusion when the menus so closely resemble each other and are littered with non-Chinese dishes.  To be sure, the U.S. has a good number of excellent Chinese restaurants, largely in big cities with Chinatowns, where the clientele is largely Chinese and speak the language. But even if you ferret out a special little Sichuan or Hunanese  storefront filled with Chinese customers, the chances of your getting the best out of the kitchen is highly doubtful.

         One problem is the non-Chinese customer himself who, as Andrew Coe writes in his book Chop Suey : A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, “most Americans still expect Chinese food to be cheap, filling, familiar and bland.”  Coe details how Chinese food became Americanized, as did Italian, Jewish and German food, when  millions of immigrants came to this country in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. Dishes like egg foo yung, pu-pu platters, mu shu pork, chow mein and General Tso’s chicken were, at best, adaptions of Chinese ingredients and flavors to please the American palate. Americans also expected fortune cookies at the end of their meal along with fried ice cream with bananas.

         I am looking at a typical Chinese-American menu from a suburban New York restaurant that lists 193 dishes plus 13 “chef’s specialties,” with 25 shrimp dishes and the same number of beef. Among this bewildering screed are items named “bourbon chicken,” “orange flavored tofu,” “roast pork snow peas,” “Happy Family” and “Lover’s chicken.” The most expensive thing on the menu is $17.

         I once learned a great lesson about getting the best out of a Chinese restaurant, including those highly regarded in New York and San Francisco, some as elegant as any restaurants in town. A Chinese restaurateur named Paul Chou invited me to dine with him in York’s Chinatown at his favorite place. Its name, now forgotten, doesn’t matter, because, he told me, the experience would be the same everywhere.

         When we sat down, the waiter brought my wife and me pink menus, all in English, and Paul a blue one in Mandarin. Paul said, “Give me those menus,” and folded them together and put them aside.

         “See those Chinese characters in the papers tacked to the wall? Those are the ones the Chinese are ordering, and I’ll choose a couple. But since I know where the chef comes from, Canton, I’m going to order his special dishes.”  Paul then asked for a pad and pen and jotted down his requested dishes in Chinese and called over the captain, who had  obviously been asked the same thing by many Chinese diners.

     While waiting for the food, Paul explained, “The dishes on your pink menu are the ones for western palates—Gen. Tso’s chicken, kung pao chicken, lo mein; the ones on mine are more truly Chinese, but the ones on the wall the night’s specials. What I wrote down were dishes from where the head chef came. You may not like them all but they’re going to be the best and most authentic.”

         What came to the table were dishes like sea snails (left) whose bottoms were snipped off so you could suck out the contents; seaweed chicken soup; grilled crab; chewy duck feet in a rich, winey dark sauce; a seafood platter with seven types of mollusks and fish; and, last but not least, congealed duck blood with noodles in soup, a specialty of the city of Nanjing. Paul was right that some were a bit too exotic for me, but I knew what he was aiming at.

         Then, to my surprise, he ordered orange beef from our pink menu, and it was sticky, sweet and unlike anything I’d just eaten.

         “I just wanted prove,” said Paul, “that unless you understand Chinese, you will never get the best out of a Chinese kitchen. Also, it helps to know the chef because they change frequently. When another restaurant hears about a new great chef, he is hired away quickly.”

         The lesson registered with a good deal of weight. For although I have had some special dishes in Chinese restaurants in the U.S. where the owner is willing to take a chance on a westerner’s palate, I can honestly say it’s very rare that the food tastes the way it does in restaurants where I’ve eaten in China, especially Taiwan, where I never had a bad meal and ate most dishes for the first time.  Most dishes in the U.S. are stir-fried, when, as in other countries, the Chinese have many traditional cooking techniques, including Cuan (quick boiling), Shuan (instant boiling), Ao (stewing), Hui (braising), Jian (frying in a flat-bottom pan, not a wok), Lu (frying in two stages), as well as steaming, baking, roasting smoking a “mud baking”—few of which show up on western menus.

         Probably the easiest way to eat authentic Chinese food is to go to one of the big dim sum restaurants in Chinatown. There everyone is shown and served the same dishes, chosen from rolling carts. And many of those dishes are not just dim sum dumplings. Sneak a peak at the tables filled with Chinese. Maybe they’ll even have congealed duck blood for you to sample.

 

        

 

         Katie told David what Dobell had told her, and David said, “Sounds like he’d like me to go back to the States ASAP. Can’t say I blame him.”

         “Well,” said Katie, “I think you’re safe for another few days. Get me some official, or even unofficial, documents from Max Finger. Dobell will tell us soon enough when we’ve got to go back.”

         “So who you interviewing now?” asked David.

         “I need to go back to everyone and get their reactions to all that’s happened, especially try to get some more background on Maureen Maloney. Photos of her while she was alive, that sort of thing. I called a stringer McClure’s knows at The Irish Times who says I can use their files. I’m actually very interested to see just what they have on the Laundries and if any stories had ever been assigned then killed.

         “I’ve got to make my time left count. If I’m ever to get back here I need more material. The fact is, all those priests who had been sexually molesting the women at the Laundries haven’t even figured in this story thus far. I need to dig into what was happening there. Remember, that’s how this whole project got started, when Joseph told us about the pedophile priests. The story’s turned into something else but the original story is still there and needs it be investigated.”

         “You think you can find these perv priests?” asked David, who thought that if he met up with them he would find it hard to restrain his temper.

         “Sara Garrison has a few in her files, and I think the files at The Irish Times will have some names. I’m not looking forward to meeting these creeps. Then, of course, I have to speak to the Church officials, get their side of the story, if there’s a cover-up.  I think they’ll speak to me if only to give me some holier-than-thou quotes about the poor Sisters of Charity who got murdered. Once I’m in, I’ll have the names in the files to get them to talk further.”

         Katie had, in fact, made inquiries with the Archbishop’s office in Dublin as soon as she’d arrived in Ireland, but as yet no one had gotten back to her.  Now it was time to clinch an appointment, since the murders had required the archdiocese to comment on what had occurred.  The official line, given in a written statement by Archbishop John Neill  (right), expressed sorrow and deepest sympathies for both the good Sisters and the poor woman who murdered them, reminding everyone of God’s ever forgiving character and ending with a plea for understanding and continuing prayer.

        

                                                 *                         *                         *

 

         David had already been able to go through some of the Garda files on pedophile crimes. Homosexuality had been decriminalized seven years before in Ireland, so the files involving arrests of consenting adults had been destroyed.  The pedophilia crime files remained, however, and, even though David had by then seen, heard and learned so much about the prevalence of pedophilia among religious, he was still amazed at how many of the remaining files related to priests and brothers.

         Many were heavily redacted, others stamped CASE CLOSED with no indication of whether there’d been a prosecution, much less a conviction. In most cases having to do with religious pedophiles notations were made that the case was remanded to the Church authorities. In all but a very few cases there was no follow-up, not even information as to the whereabouts of the priest or brother.  In the cases involving pedophiles who were not clerics, addresses were listed, as well as notations about the neighborhood being informed that the individual was a sexual predator to be kept watch over.

         Max Finger came in and looked over David’s shoulder in the interview room and said, “Find anything useful?
         David leaned back, clenched his hands above his head and said, “I am just astounded at the disparity between how the charges were handled when it involved a priest and when they involved anyone else.  Katie is right to want to get deeper into the connection with the Church officials here.”

         “Here and everywhere else there’s a Catholic diocese,” said Finger. “We’ve got hearsay evidence that there’s a perv brotherhood within the Church that not only shields them from prosecution but that connects them to individuals who share their sexual preferences.”

         “Did Katie and I tell you about this investigator named Richard Sipe we interviewed in California?” asked David.

         “I’ve heard of him, that’s all.”

         “Well, he told us he strongly believed there is in fact a kind of cabal of such priests and brothers. He even called it ‘The Network.’”

         Max Finger shrugged. “That I’ve never heard, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised.  At the very least they have their people in place to fight all accusations, with lawyers and psychiatrists on retainer, and a whole lot of politicians in their pockets.”

         “Same where I come from.”

         “Well, at least I think we’ve come to the end of the Maureen Maloney story.  And wasn’t it convenient that she as much as left a confession then killed herself. Nice and tidy. Didn’t really even get our hands dirty on this case. Cut and dry. The public’s happy, the newspapers are happy, and, despite the bad publicity, the archdiocese must be very happy.”

         “And your superiors?”

         “My superiors?” Finger laughed. “They are just thrilled at the way it turned out. As much as they wanted to find the killer quickly and were willin’ to have me be lead investigator, they’re just as happy I got no credit for solving the case. Which, of course, I didn’t.  Now I can go back to finding run-of-the-mill murderers unconnected with the Catholic Church.”

         “I don’t suppose I can Xerox any of these files for Katie?”

         “No, though she might be able to put in a formal request if it has to do with a current case. These don’t have anythin’ to do with Maureen Maloney or the serial murders. But she could ask.”

         “I’m going to miss you, Max,” said David, extending his hand.

         “It’s been grand, David. Next time I’m in New York we’ll have a drink and make a toast.”

         “Like what? ‘Here’s to good cops wherever you find them?’”

         “I was thinkin’ more like ‘Mazel tov!’”