Old Joo sniffed the night air, a pungent mix of restaurant compost and stagnant water, and sauntered down the sidewalk. Even his encounter with the fat foreign woman in the long skirt didn’t upset him like it might have some other night. That boy in the alley was an alien, all right. And the police paid handsomely for help catching the illegal immigrants. If only he were young again, Old Joo wouldn’t have to split profits with anyone else.
He shook his head. These river hoppers thought they’d blend in with the rest of the Korean-Chinese population in Yanji. Didn’t they know Old Joo could single them out from half a kilometer away? Shabbily dressed and bone-thin, they stood out based on their stunted height alone but were even more recognizable by their eyes, their haunted, vacant, famishe
