An explanation

Half an hour later, Agent Robin arrived near Central Park in plain clothes and found Lin Rui's food truck with its comical food graphics.

It was the lunchtime rush, and crowds of tourists wandered around, looking for somewhere suitable to eat.

To increase sales, Lin Rui had no choice but to "sell his looks," going outside the truck himself to hold up a menu board and draw in customers, as well as taking payments and making change.

Linda, meanwhile, went inside the food truck, putting orders into the microwave to heat, grabbing drink cups, and filling them with milkshakes, coffee, and the like.

Compared with the simple stalls elsewhere selling grilled sausages and such, Lin Rui's food truck offered more varieties of food, a richer range of flavors, better quality, and reasonable prices. Business was so good it made others green with envy.

Agent Robin was in no hurry to approach. Instead, he quietly timed things from nearby for half an hour, estimating the truck's sales.

"Hell, this isn't the only food truck near Central Park, and it's not the only place selling burgers and sandwiches. How does this kid have such an astonishing customer conversion rate?"

Almost any tourist who passed Lin Rui and had even a slight desire to eat would stop.

Even with the line in front of the truck already stretching over a dozen meters, the customers showed no sign of dwindling.

Quite a few people saw the crowd of customers and, even without seeing Lin Rui, instinctively followed the herd and came over to take a look.

After all, going with the crowd might not be the best choice, but it generally wouldn't be too bad.

During that half hour, Agent Robin also saw a vehicle come specifically to restock the food truck. Several large insulated boxes and drink containers were moved on and off, indicating at least a thousand dollars in sales.

The driver was a man of Mexican descent. Lin Rui gave him fifty dollars outright for his trouble, making him grin so broadly that even his back molars showed.

Only when the flow of customers eased a little did Agent Robin approach to introduce himself. But he deliberately played a prank with his greeting. "Hi, I'm an IRS auditor. Please show me your sales tax ID."

Lin Rui carefully studied the "uninvited guest" before him and calmly asked in return, "Could you show me your credentials first?"

"Hahaha..." Robin laughed heartily, pulled out his badge, and displayed it. "Kid, I'm Agent Robin, narcotics, city police. You actually weren't scared. You've got pretty good nerves."

Lin Rui didn't give him a friendly look.

He had long since noticed a fellow loitering near the food truck, neither joining the line nor leaving, just watching from nearby.

Although the fellow wore plain clothes, his bearing and behavior weren't those of an ordinary person. He was either checking taxes or looking for trouble. In the worst case, the gangsters collecting protection money had come calling.

"Give me a taco combo and a large milkshake." Agent Robin sat on a folding chair in front of the truck. "Your business is more than twice as good as your competitors nearby. You must be making quite a bit."

"Are you here to check taxes or bust drugs?" Lin Rui tapped a few keys on the register, printed a taco order ticket, and handed it to Agent Robin. "Five dollars, please."

After running into two rebuffs, neither soft nor hard, Agent Robin could only chuckle awkwardly and pay up. He would fill his stomach first.

Once the customer rush subsided a little, Lin Rui sat down in front of the agent with a plate of fried rice and ate slowly with a spoon.

Linda also came out from behind the truck's preparation counter, took off her work apron, and brought over a plate of fried rice of her own.

"What are you eating?" Robin looked at their rather different food and suddenly felt that the taco in his hand wasn't quite so appetizing anymore.

"Just Chinese fried rice." Lin Rui spoke as he ate. "I'm fine eating burgers for a meal or two, but I can't stand eating them every day, so I have to prepare my own lunch."

"Doesn't look bad." Agent Robin sighed and returned to the subject. "All right, let's talk business.

"This morning, a city council member from the Presbyterian Church called the head of our DEA field office and said that someone was harassing a charitable project in the city.

"And the person doing the harassing was an informant for a detective under our field office."

Lin Rui remarked expressionlessly, "Wonderful. A narcotics detective uses a drug dealer as an informant. No wonder you can't eliminate the harm caused by drugs."

Agent Robin shrugged. "Can't be helped. Drug dealers have plenty of information and connections. When necessary, we can arrest them to pad our numbers, too.

"If you came to New York to fight drugs, you'd choose to keep a few informants as well. Otherwise, it'd be hard to handle the current situation on our own.

"After all, New York is an international metropolis. Drug consumption is just too high. You have no idea how hard we work fighting drugs."

Beside them, Linda couldn't help swearing, "Fuck. So those stories I heard from my teachers were all true. Narcotics cops are acting as protective umbrellas for drug-dealing scum."

Robin glanced at Linda and asked, "Miss, you are...?"

"This is Linda. She studies journalism at New York University and aspires to be an investigative reporter. Right now, she's doing practical social experience work here with me," Lin Rui introduced her.

Hearing that Linda was actually a reporter in training, Agent Robin immediately grew more serious and hurriedly said, "Wait, everything I just said was a joke. Let's get back to business.

"Doyle-that's the name of the drug dealer extorting protection money from you, right? Hmm... He's been on the streets for over ten years. It's about time he went to prison for a rest."

"So... you came to see me just to tell me that?" Lin Rui felt that this DEA agent must want something else.

Sure enough, Robin smiled cheerfully. "Leon, if this were just about a drug-dealer informant who's been working for years and has stopped listening and is slipping out of control, I wouldn't have come to see you at all.

"But something that gets the Presbyterian Church to call is pretty interesting. I checked your file. I have to say, you ran into big trouble and then stumbled into a pile of dog-shit luck.

"You entered on an international student visa. You were originally supposed to attend a public high school in New Jersey, then see if you could get into a university.

"But you never enrolled, nor did you choose to hide away, work illegally, and wait for an amnesty. Instead, you went to The Bronx and found Pastor Essen Borg.

"Honestly, that's very strange. You took an absolutely terrible opening and somehow turned it around a full hundred and eighty degrees.

"Don't tell me it was a coincidence.

"With my years of experience handling narcotics cases, I never believe in coincidences. There's definitely something wrong with you. I just haven't found out the reason yet."

Agent Robin looked very pleased with himself, wearing an expression that said, "I've seen through you. Don't lie to me."

Even Linda stared at Lin Rui with interest and asked quietly, "Leon, are you a spy sent by Country Z? Is Pastor Borg your contact?"

"Nice imagination. Now that you've seen through me, should I kill you to silence you?" Lin Rui rolled his eyes, his tone mocking.

"Be serious. Actually, I'm curious why you went to Pastor Borg, who runs a little church, too." Linda gave Lin Rui a push. "You've brought the police to your door. You'd better give a reasonable explanation."

"You want to know why I found Pastor Borg so precisely? It's simple." Lin Rui gave an account that was half true and half false:

"What actually happened was that I fell out with the intermediary arranged beforehand and had to find a way to survive on my own. As for why I went to Pastor Essen Borg, it was because he'd been on the TV news."

"The news?" Linda looked puzzled.

"To live better in New York, I deliberately watched a lot of TV news about New York online before coming to the United States. First, to practice my listening, and second, to get firsthand information.

"Pastor Borg had been on the news for holding charity events. I remembered his church and its address. That was a fallback I'd prepared for myself from the start.

"If I ended up homeless in the United States, going to a church pastor would be better than going to the police, right? In fact, my caution and multiple preparations saved me."

Having finished his answer, Lin Rui looked at Agent Robin again. "Do you accept that explanation?"

Agent Robin kept a stiff expression, maintaining it throughout, instinctively refusing to believe in low-probability events.

Linda, on the other hand, saw the light. She knew Pastor Borg really had been on television, so Lin Rui's explanation made sense-it was perfectly reasonable for a boy going abroad alone to study to gather some extra information.

Just as things grew a little tense, several unfriendly-looking fellows approached from a distance.

Their leader was short, fat, and balding, and spoke with a South American accent. He stopped in front of the food truck and shouted amid a stream of curses:

"Hey, kid, are you the one running this food truck? So you come to Central Park during the day. You've had me looking for you these past two days.

"Don't you know that making money on Manhattan's streets means paying protection money? Or do I need to teach yellow-skinned monkeys like you how to follow the rules?"

The men gathered in a semicircle, hemming the three of them in. As they cursed, they deliberately kicked the tables and chairs to provoke trouble, setting off a clattering racket and sending quite a few tourists who had been approaching scattering away.

Lin Rui looked back, recognized the thug causing trouble, and scoffed. "Doyle, what a coincidence. Our first proper meeting, and we've been looking for you, too."

He looked back at Agent Robin. "Go on, Mr. Policeman. Your numbers have come calling."