Hot Poppies

by Reggie Nadelson

  I thought about Dawn’s limo driver the night before: was he Pete’s man? Did the driver tell Pete Leung about his wife and me?

  Pete opened the door for me: I asked him how he knew to find me at the club and he said, “You told me.” But I didn’t. Maybe Pete showed up to stick it to me, to let me know he was onto me and Dawn, or maybe he really was desperate like he said.

  “The shit that Dawn uses. The heroin you were talking about. Does it have a name?”

  Pulling off his glasses, Pete rubbed the back of one tan hand across his face. Then I saw his eyes unshielded by the glasses and I realized Pete knew exactly what I’d done with his wife. I don’t know how, but my insides shriveled with knowing it, with guilt, and a faint whisper of fear. There were guys who would kill you for what I had done.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “It has a name. They call it Hot Poppy. See you around, Artie.”

  12

  He sat on the hood of the silver Porsche near the 23rd Street pier, a carton of coffee next to him. A cigarette hanging from his plump mouth, he played with the photographs like a deck of cards, shuffling them, squaring the pack, selecting one of the pictures and holding it up to the streetlight, then spinning it with his fingers, a magician at a children’s party.

  I’d been right about Jerry Chen. He never was out of town. I didn’t know for sure until I got his call at the club and met him on 23rd Street. Another Chinese girl had turned up dead. An ice skater, on her way to the Skyrink over at the new sports complex on the pier, had tripped on something in the snow. It was a human arm. The arm was attached to a body.

  “Another.” I looked at the crowd that had gathered. “Dead?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Claw marks? Like Rose?”

  “Yeah.” Chen tossed me a picture. That’s her.”

  Fifty yards away, police tape cordoned off the area. The yellow tape, the blue and white cars, the red lights and orange traffic cones were bright as kids’ toys against the snow.

  On the other side of the yellow tape, a couple of guys from the ME’s office were arguing about the death, when, how, which angle, what temperature it was when she froze. When they had pulled her out of the frozen drifts, Chen told me, she was stiff, naked and white. No one seemed interested in the girl herself. As one of them said later, “She’s already dead.”

  The white jacket was gone and Chen wore a dark blue coat. He was whistling, whistling and playing with the photographs when he saw me. He let a couple more pictures fly out of his hand. In a waist-high snowdrift, under a streetlight, two or three stuck face up. I didn’t have to look to know they were pictures of girls, Chinese girls and a white Cadillac with wire wheels. I gathered them up.

  Jerry reached over and took the pictures out of my hand. “Have you seen other pictures like this, Art?”

  “And if I have? Let’s say I have.”

  “What do I fucking know? Over the last year or so, these pictures have turned up. Pictures of Chinese girls that were dead. We even found one or two of girls who became dead soon afterwards.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Girls who worked in sweatshops. Girls who worked in restaurants. There’s also been a similar thing in Toronto.” He watched as the body was zipped into a black bag and carted away. Then a TV crew arrived and Chen leaped off his car.

  “Wait for me.” Chen smoothed his hair. “If this thing leads where I think, the four bloody horsemen got a new addition.”

  “What thing? What?” But Chen was already in front of the TV camera. I walked over and watched the show.

  Jerry Chen talked to a reporter and he was good, ignoring the camera but always aware it was on. He liked it. From what I’d seen of him on the box, it liked him back. Chen was cool, he was earnest enough and the hair wasn’t blow dried. Jerry Chen came off ethnic but American and I noticed when the cameras went on, he dropped the British affectations and quit swearing.

  Extortion. Illegals. Sweatshops. Exploitation. Chen talked frankly. He explained how good policing could help and how badly the city needed more cops. He did his turn, delivered his soundbites, smiled. Chen was a pro. There followed a round of handshakes with the reporter and crew. Chen gave the producer a friendly peck on the cheek and strolled back to his car.

  “Right, Art. Let’s talk. Get in.”

  I got in. “You ever heard of Hot Poppy?”

  He revved the engine and pulled away. “Hot what?”

  “Hot Poppy. Some kind of heroin that’s coming out of China.”

  “I don’t think so, Art.” He laughed. “I heard of everything coming out of China, I’m the man to know on China, but I sure ain’t fucking heard of some shit named Hot Poppy.”

  “So it’s something new.”

  “Someone’s handing you a line. There’s a million names for all kinds of dope. Or it’s old stuff in a new package. If it fries your brain, who gives a shit what they call it?”

  I kept my mouth shut and wondered how come Chen didn’t know what Pete Leung knew.

  “It looks like the weapon that destroyed Rose’s face is almost a dead fucking cert to be the spike those goons threw at you in the elevator. I told you we thought there were some partial prints at Abramsky’s that matched the spike?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Well there were also some prints at your pal’s shop that matched some on a few of the pictures we found.”

  “The same as the spike?”

  “No, different. Personally, I don’t think it’s Hillel, but they’ll run all the tests. So you understand how the DNA thing works?”

  “Some,” I bluffed. “A little. Not really.”

  “Me neither,” he said, and we laughed. For the first time, I liked Jerry Chen.

  “Anyway we got some kind of match. We’ll look for some fucking creep who gets his weapons in Hong Kong. The warehouse where they went for you, what sort of goods did you get the impression were stored there?”

  “Produce. Vegetables. I smelled them.”

  “You won’t be surprised to hear it was a front.”

  “For?”

  “Paper goods. Toilet paper. Money.”

  “Money.”

  “Yeah, money. It’s always money, And there’s a thousand ways to launder it.”

  “I think one of them knew my name.”

  “I don’t think so, Art. Unless maybe with all this fucking snow and not a lot of action, you stood out. You’ve been running around a lot. Like I said, they don’t go for white cops a lot.”

  Possessed, like a crazy man with an evil wind on his back, Chen drove up the Westside Highway, then doubled back and drove downtown. The wind had cleared the sky and there were stars over the river. Between the new apartment buildings, we roared down South End Avenue, past the Holocaust Monument, back onto West Street and into Battery Park. In the snow, Clinton Castle looked like Dracula’s Christmas card, and at the landing pier where the boats leave for the Statue of Liberty, Chen pulled up and cut the motor. He leaned back and looked out at the harbor and Ellis Island.

  “Your people come over on a boat?”

  “I took a plane.”

  “You feel American?”

  “Yeah.”

  Chen raised his navy blue shoulders, his expression full of disdain and self-loathing. “I don’t feel like any shit. So I bloody well don’t feel China Chinese. So what?” Some kind of torment gnawed Chen’s liver. He spat the words. “I hate all this shit, Art. I used to really fucking feel for the Irish on St Pat’s Day, you know, Art? Everyone thinking the Irish are pukey fucking drunks or wobble-ass cops instead of Yeats or Roddy Doyle or something. You know what it feels like, if you’re a slant, to be identified with pongs who kill girls? If you’re a slant, you’re a money-grubbing dog who believes in lucky numbers.”

  “Take it easy, Jer,” I said.

  “You know what I fucking hate? I hate going to parties and hearing how everyone’s adopting a Chinese baby because there’s all these baby girls, because no one wants a baby
girl in China. Funny, ha ha. Lot of smartasses want Chinese babies.” Jerry laughed. “You know what I heard someone say at one of those dos on Central Park West, all these rich-ass movie people? I heard some woman say, ‘Ask for the fat babies. They fatten the babies up for export.’ You got kids, Art? Any little Cohen munchkins?”

  “No. Why?”

  “There’s been some trouble in the schools around Bed Stuy. I’m not saying it’s happening, but the fucks been asking where kids live, posing as members of the Board of Ed. If you know a kid, put them in the picture, OK?”

  I thought of Justine. “Thanks for telling me. You got any?”

  Jerry snorted. “My wife doesn’t like kids. My wife doesn’t like me. I think I’m drunk, Art.”

  “You want me to drive?”

  “Fuck that shit,” he said. “Listen to me, Art. I don’t do lucky numbers. I don’t keep fish tanks. I’m not a comic guy or a nerd. I’m married to an all-American girl who grew up in bloody Oklahoma City. I tell you about my wife? She didn’t like London, we came here. I became an American. It’s ten years already. She doesn’t like New York. I drink too much. I got ulcers.”

  “There’s something else. Isn’t there?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I also happen to be in love with a regulation JAP. A Jewish princess, first division. I don’t know which way to run. I lie to everyone. Fuck it.” He took his Dunhills out of his pocket and pitched them through the window. “I hate these smokes,” he said. “You got some Winstons?” Chen picked some cigarette ash off the coat.

  “Vicuna?” I asked.

  “Alpaca.” Chen glanced at the harbor one more time, taking in the Statue of Liberty and the frozen scenery and said, “You didn’t know we’re just as fucked up as you Russians, right, Art?”

  “I always figured you Chinese had class, Jer. Culture.”

  “Well there’s high Chinks and low Chinks, and most of us are real low. We say, ‘Oh, sir, I am an ant. I am nothing, don’t know nothing about bullet hole in the wall of the store.’ I hate the crooks and killers that get here by working the human rights angle, then victimize the whole bleeding community.”

  I shifted my aching legs. “Is there a point to this, Jer? Or is this some kind of immigrant pow-wow?”

  “It’s the same old crap. Some poor bastard steps out of line in New York, you lean on the family back home. Before, it was government fucks. Now it’s criminal fucks. Make a mistake in New York City, your mommy in China pays. But the poor suckers keep on coming. The Golden Mountain. Promised land. Praise the Lord. Look at the pictures, the big white Cadillac, the smiling girls. Streets paved with gold. So it fucking goes.” Chen got out of the car and pissed on the snow, then got back in. The cold seemed to have sobered him up some. He turned the key in the ignition.

  “Let’s go see my friend Henry Liu. He’s always good for a laugh and maybe he knows something. I’m real fucking totalled. Pissed. Let’s go get a drink.”

  On the way to Chinatown, he drawled, “So, Art, I am wondering if you’ve maybe seen a picture of the dead girl at Abramsky’s. Rose, that is. Cause we didn’t find one. I ask about the picture, Art, because I think someone is paying Mr Snap a whole lot of dough for the pictures. Someone, some hood, some bad fuckster is getting pictures so they can ID the girls that owe them. I think Mr Snap is even taking pictures to order. I think Mr Snap is either the killer or as good as and I know you know.”

  “Where did you get this Mr Snap thing?”

  “Same as you,” he said, the car weaving into Pearl Street, the slush spewing up onto the windows. “Same as you. From Pansy.”

  At seventy, Henry Liu was a natty dresser. He showed me his platinum watch; it had two faces, one that told the time in New York, the other in Hong Kong.

  Liu watched us eat with patrician benevolence in a private dining room at the Red Swan. Chen sampled some crispy duck. “This is excellent, Henry,” he said, flattering the old man, and added casually, as he reached for another portion, “Anything new, Henry?”

  “This and that.” Henry turned to me. “I tell you something. Me and Jeremy, good friends, do favors for each other. Lot of new illegals now, in spite of Congress hates immigrants. You think if Congress refuse driving license, it stops people coming?” He laughed raucously.

  “All of them from where’s the place, Jer?”

  “Fuzhou.”

  Henry looked up. “Fuzhou. Canton. Even Hong Kong. People shit-scared of Chinese taking over. Hong Kong up the spout. Everything’s gonna change. This year, next year. They ran away from commies one time already, like me. Like me, dive into Mirs Bay in 1949, swim with sharks, get to Hong Kong, cross over barbed wire.” An old man with a real relish for life, he had honed and polished his story for almost fifty years.

  “Supply and demand, Art,” Jerry said. “A lot of people want to get the fuck out, a lot of people oblige with papers and transportation, for a price. What else d’you know, Henry? You know a guy that takes photographs of women, Henry?”

  “Sure.” Henry chuckled. “Plenty.”

  “A particular guy.” Jerry patted his mouth with a napkin. “I’ll have a little more of that garlic sauce if there is any.”

  “Maybe I know someone who talks to you, but he needs assurances. His lawyer say so.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He’s coming.” Henry Liu took out a portable phone and flipped it open, spoke very briefly, flipped it shut, waved his arm to summon more food and, by the time a platter of lamb and scallions arrived, so did a skinny boy with a crewcut.

  The kid who showed at Henry’s was skinny and he looked frightened, but he was manipulative. He didn’t speak except when ordered to speak and his mouth was turned down with the sullen expectation of punishment. With one foot he scratched the back of his other leg. The way he lifted his scrawny shoulders let you know he considered himself a victim, or wanted you to, a persecuted member of the disenfranchised. It was all horse shit. He was a hood.

  Henry gestured to a chair. Even sitting, the boy stooped. Jerry Chen gave no sign of recognition, but I could have sworn it was the same kid I saw Chen slap around on the street Tuesday morning, maybe even the same kid Hillel described; the kid didn’t have a quiff, but when I looked hard, the tips of the crewcut hair showed reddish dye.

  Chen smiled charmingly at the kid and at Liu and said, “Henry, can you translate?”

  “I try,” Henry said, and spoke to the kid, who stared at his feet.

  “Eat something,” Jerry told the boy, doing the relevant mime. To Henry he said, “Ask him if he knows a man who takes pictures of Chinese girls. In a white Cadillac. Goes by the name Mr Snap.”

  Henry said to Chen, “He would like you can help him with driver’s license if he help you.”

  “What’s wrong with his license?”

  “It got taken away.”

  Unperturbed by the preliminary bullshit, Jerry Chen took out a business card and scribbled on the back. “Tell him this will help. If he gets picked up, tell the patrolman to give me a call. OK? Now.”

  “Maybe he seen this photographer.”

  “How tall is he?”

  “Like your friend.” Henry pointed to me. “Very tall.”

  “How fat?”

  “Fat,” Henry reported. “Fat like two of you, Jeremy.”

  Chen led the kid patiently by the nose, took him around the territory to streets, apartments, even area codes I never thought of. I was rusty. Chen cajoled, smiled, patted the kid’s knee, told him to eat. He was very good, a seducer, a detective of real talent. I had almost forgotten how slow it could be, like dragging your body through a swimming pool knee deep in molasses, all the digging around for evidence that could take you into a dozen blind alleys, the well-intentioned citizens who gave you the wrong information, the informants, like this jackass, who lied. Jerry never lost it with the kid. A couple of times, Jerry adjusted his belt as if he’d eaten too much, but it was so the kid would see his gun. It was an old trick.

  “
What else?”

  The boy mumbled something to Henry.

  “What’s he speaking?” I said.

  “This and that. I speak Cantonese, Mandarin. This boy is Fujianese. I don’t like them, but I do business with them. You surprised, detective? Business is business. He say someone planning a big snatch on ship coming with new illegals.”

  “They take them straight off the ship if they can,” Chen explained. “They figure if someone spends thirty grand plus to get over from China, they’re gonna spend an extra ten to stay alive. Illegals spend six months on a ship to get over from China, creeps kidnap them right off the ship. They take girls a lot of the time. It’s easier. No one gives a shit. There’s always more. Even if some fuckwit professor at NYU tells us, no more crime in Chinatown. Ha ha.”

  “There is someone who can maybe help you, he says,” Henry reported, relaying a version of what the kid said.

  “Is that the one they call Chicken Chicken?” Jerry said.

  “No,” said Henry. “Chicken Legs.”

  “Not Chicken Lips?”

  “Chicken Legs,” Henry insisted. To me he added, “You see Cantonese, Mandarin, Fujianese, all different. All different names. Sometimes we use nicknames that sound like name.”

  Under my breath, I muttered to Jerry, “This is where we enter the twilight zone.”

  Chen nodded. “This kid doesn’t know shit.”

  “There’s a whorehouse,” Henry said. “The woman drives a white Caddy sometimes.”

  Jerry Chen sat up. His body tensed. “Where? Where? Where the fuck is this whorehouse?”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Tell me where it fucking is or I’ll hurt you,” said Chen.

  The boy lifted his head half an inch in Henry’s direction and said, “Ludlow Street.”

  Twenty minutes later, me and Jerry Chen, both half crocked now, were on the second floor of the shitty brownstone on Ludlow Street trying to pick a lock. The hall was covered with linoleum. The light was broken. From one apartment, I could hear a lot of snores. Someone cried. Someone puked their guts out.