by Henry Chang
“Ew ke ma ga hei, motherfucker,” Billy cursed in his best Toishanese, the original tongue of the first immigrants to Chinatown. “Thousands of dollars in fines.”
Jack picked up what he needed, went toward Billy who continued to vent in the general direction of the slop boys in the back. They frowned and nodded their heads at everything he said.
Feigning surprise, Billy turned to Jack and laughed, “Oh shit, it’s Hawaii Five-0! Green cards out, everybody! Book ’em, Jack-O.”
Jack was happy to see Billy grinning, a momentary departure from the edgy-depressive that Billy normally was.
“Wassup, man? You look like you got some man tan there.” Billy took a breath, shook his head sadly as Jack plopped onto the counter the three plastic containers of bok tong go he’d taken from the refrigerator case.
“What’s up with the crowd outside Sam Kee’s?” Jack asked.
Billy chortled. “They’re waiting for the free for ngaap duck. The inspectors said it’s now illegal to hang ducks and chickens in the window, without temperature controls. Gave old man Kee a two-hundred-dollar fine, and a citation.”
Jack was shaking his head, looking for So what?
“So the old man catches a fit, threatens to throw the ducks into the street. All the old folks are hoping to catch a freebie.”
“It’s not going to happen,” Jack grimaced.
“I don’t think so, either.”
“All he’d be doing is inviting a Sanitation rap.”
“Jack, yo, ducks and chickens been hanging in Chinatown windows a hundred years. All of a sudden it’s a health issue?”
“Hundred Year’s Duck. Isn’t that the house special at Wally’s?”
“It’s all bullshit,” Billy continued, “When was the last time we had an epidemic down here? Eighteen-ninety-three or something?”
Through the frosted street window Jack saw the green car with the sanitation sergeant seated inside, idling at the corner of Bayard.
“The city’s just trying to pump bucks by pickpocketing the Chinamen, brother. Kee junior called it the Fuck the Duck Law. The Choke the Chicken Law.”
Jack chuckled, knowing that the more things changed in Chinatown, the more they remained the same. Been going on a hundred years. Old Man Kee had probably been too slow with the payoff, or the department had sent an overzealous, perhaps racist inspector looking to advance. The Chinatown lawyers found ways to work around municipal regulations all the time. Administrations changed. This, too, would pass.
“Everybody’s talking,” Billy said quietly, “about the Ping woman. The Fukienese one who got killed?”
Jack nodded, the cause of the demonstration at One Police Plaza.
“Three hoodie-wearing punkass, hip-hop motherfucker wannabe thug gangsters.” Billy’s eyes steeled over. “And I lost half the backroom boys yesterday ’cause they went to the protest at police headquarters.”
“It ain’t easy,” Jack said.
“Fuckin’ A that. The Fukienese Association wants the punks to hang. They hired white lawyers even. Sorta like a legal lynching.”
Jack checked his watch, thinking how long-winded Billy could get.
“But crime never takes a holiday, huh,” Billy joked. “So what else you need, kid? Some fun or some skin ?” Both were references to tofu products, but sounded perverted with drug and sexual innuendo.
The two of them broke out in laughter at this inside joke that arose from the many sweaty hours they spent in the cook room, boiling the beans.
Billy loosed a long sigh, adding, “You remember Jeff Lee? Got a little office in a warehouse on Pike Street?”
“Sure,” Jack said. “JK Trading, something like that.”
“Well, he was asking for you. I tried calling you, then I remembered you said you were away for vacation.”
“Why? What’s up?” Jack asked.
“Someone took like eight thousand worth of stuff, but they didn’t see no entry.”
That’s Ghost turf, thought Jack, dailo Tat’s territory.
“No forced entry? Didn’t Jeff call the cops?”
“Yeah, they came,” Billy answered. “The burglary cops, you know. They made a report, told Jeff they thought it was an inside job.” Billy leaned closer and said quietly, “Look, I told Jeff you’re out of the precinct, but he was just asking, maybe you could take a look around. Like a second opinion.”
Jack felt it again, the tension at the back of his neck, the reasons why he had to leave the Fifth Precinct. The Chinatown way, the Chinese mistrust of policemen and government officials, a historical divide covering centuries of corruption in China, and Hong Kong, where they’d refined corruption to an art form.
All the good things he accomplished as a cop here, made possible because he was Chinese.
All the bad things that happened along the way, also because he was Chinese.
Still, he thought he could have made a difference if only he could have kept his Chineseness out of it.
“C’mon,” Billy snapped, breaking Jack’s drift. “What fuckin’ inside job? Jeff works the place with his father and sister. It’s a desk and a coupla chairs, not JC Penney. They deliver to the vendors mostly. They don’t get a lotta walk-in traffic out there.”
“I had enough trouble in this precinct, Billy. I can’t chump some other cop’s report,” said Jack.
“I’m not saying that, but if your own folks really are robbing you, you sure don’t wanna hear it from some white cop who’s laughing inside.”
Jack shook his head at the raw truth in Billy’s words.
“Don’t worry about it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”
“I’m out, Billy,” Jack insisted.
“That’s what I told Jeff,” Billy half-protested. “Here, take his card anyway. Call him if you get any bright ideas.”
Pocketing the card, Jack noticed the United National, a Chinese-language newspaper, on the counter. Plastered across the front page were photos of the Kung family murder-suicide. The headline TRAGEDY, reminded him to visit Ah Por, hoping for clarity. “You done with this?” he asked, folding up the newspaper.
“Take it,” Billy answered.
“You heard about the shooting on Division? Players with AK-47s?”
“Yeah, it was on the radio,” Billy remembered.
“What’s up with that?”
“Don’t know. I can check with the Fuk boys later. They’re working the slop room in the afternoon.”
“I’ll call you tonight.”
“It’s Friday,” Billy grinned. “You know where I’ll be.”
Jack smiled. Friday night was always right for Grampa’s, a revered local bar dive.
The sky outside the Tofu King looked ominous again.
Billy put Jack’s containers into a plastic bag, threw up his hands, palms out, and shook his head to refuse Jack’s money.
Jack smiled and thumped his right fist over his heart to say thanks, and backed out through the cold, steamy door.
He took the shortcut down Park Street onto Mulberry, going along Columbus Park.
He didn’t expect them to be there, the old ladies, but he wanted to be sure, and it was along the way. He was right. Not a soul here, the wind too cold, and the leaves long gone from the trees. In the warmer seasons, the old women lined the fence around the park, squatting low on plastic stools, with their charts, and herbs, and the red books containing their divinations. It was much too cold now, and Jack knew Ah Por would be indoors. He remembered her because Pa had gone to her those years after Ma died. Mostly it was for lucky words or numbers, or any kind of good news.
More recently, Ah Por’s readings, in an oblique manner, had provided accurate clues for Jack. The Senior Citizens Center, he thought, stepping away from the park.
The dull red brick building hunkered down on the corner of Bayard under the flat sky, a stunted cousin to the art-deco colossus a block away at Baxter: the Tombs Criminal Facility, also known as the Men’s House of Detention, and Criminal Court
s Building. Its imposing facade was seventeen stories of cut limestone blocks, with solid granite at street level, circa 1938.
The red brick building was older, maybe a hundred years old. Its exterior was a blend of medieval-styled stonework, columns, and turrets. All the window frames were painted green. Jack remembered the place as his neighborhood grammar school, Public School 23, five stories of classrooms, auditorium, and cafeteria. Green linoleum throughout.
The school had served many generations of immigrants, including the Irish and the Italians. Ten years after Jack’s all-Chinese class had graduated, the community outgrew the school, redirecting its sturdy rooms to servicing the senior citizens and the various cultural and civic organizations. They served free breakfast to seniors now, at the same lunch tables and benches that Jack remembered eating at as a schoolboy. Jack recalled those free lunches: cheese sandwiches, split-pea soup, macaroni-and-cheese, peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. On rare occasions the kids would get a Dixie cup of ice cream.
When he stepped inside, it was as if the past had caught up with him, then surpassed him. The worn linoleum of his schooldays had been replaced by lighter vinyl tiles. Across the ceiling, hung new lighting, soft, but sufficiently bright for the elderly. The drone of people eating and talking filled the open space. Chung Wah, Chinese radio, played news and weather over the PA system, just under the chatter and gossip.
Jack went toward the back of the room, where he saw that the old kitchen of the public school cafeteria had been refitted with a half-dozen gas-burning wok stations. Against the wall was a long shelf with five large commercial-grade electric rice cookers.
On a bulletin board, in Chinese characters, they’d posted the different menus for every day of the month. Soups: winter melon, lotus root, fish, or vegetables. Main plates: chicken wings, pork, salmon, or beef, pork chops, and Chinese sausage. Fruit of the day was usually oranges.
Jack looked out over the lunch tables, scanning the room for Ah Por, one old woman in a field of bundled gray heads, most of them wearing overstocked off-color down jackets, donated by Good Panda, the company logo prominently screened across their backs. He continued scanning, his eyes sweeping over more than a hundred Chinese seniors slurping their steaming breakfasts of boiled rice congee, jook, dipping the little bits of bread they’d brought along. A free bowl this morning, funded by some charitable organization, city agency, federal food program, or tong. Whatever. Jack was happy to see the elderly eating heartily, jook, the staple of their lives. Jack knew that Pa had come here for a few jooks in his day, if not for the sustenance, surely for the camaraderie.
Abruptly, he spotted her at the end of the bench by the far wall. The oversized down jacket made her appear smaller, huddled over her plastic bowl. When Jack came to her side the other seniors regarded him with curiosity and suspicion, but Ah Por didn’t seem to notice him. Probably her eyes are failing, he thought, although he knew that the secrets she saw had nothing to do with her eyesight.
“Ah Por,” Jack said, just loud enough above the din.
She looked up and after a moment, he saw small darts of recognition in her eyes. A thin, weary smile crossed her lips. He could see that she had none of her instruments of divination, no red booklet or cup of bamboo sticks, but he remembered she sometimes applied face reading to everyday items, and with a clairvoyant’s touch, could provide a clue that, however obscure, proved to be on target.
This time, he needed consolation, clarity, more than a clue. Her words might exorcise the bad kharma clinging to him now.
“Ah Por,” Jack repeated, handing her the United National, splayed open at the dead Kung family’s photos. He pressed a folded five-dollar bill, folded square, into her ancient palm, gave her a smile, and a small bow of his head.
She ran a gnarled finger over the newsprint photos, closed her eyes. Slowly dropping her head to one side, as if straining to hear something, she said, “Fire.” She paused, then softly, “It is a sign of sacrifice.”
Her fingernails played over the text of the newspaper.
“Wind,” she said, “blows away fear.” Jack leaned in at the softness of her words.
“A cleansing is needed. Wash out the regrets. Sometimes it is necessary, to start anew.” Her palm passed over the school-posed pictures of the children.
“There is no fault in this.” Ah Por caught her breath, looked at Jack the way a grandmother looks at a schoolboy. “To be firm in punishment brings good in the end.” She put out her hand and whispered, “Go to the temple, say a prayer, and make a donation. Eight dollars.”
Jack palmed her another five-dollar bill, along with Jeff Lee’s business card.
She rubbed up the card between her fingers, a look of annoyance crossing her face before she closed her eyes.
She said “Malo.” Jack bent closer. “Bad,” she said. Bad, in Spanish? He was confused momentarily, until she opened her eyes, said it again. “Ma lo,” softening the Toishanese accent, meaning monkey.
“A monkey?” Jack asked. “You see a monkey?”
“A picture,” Ah Por answered, suddenly flashing him a puzzled look. “You’ve been shot,” she said matter-of-factly.
Jack was surprised that she knew. “Yes . . .” he started to answer, when she patted his left side under the jacket, where the ribs wrap around the heart.
“It was my arm,” Jack continued.
“No,” she said quietly. “Something else.”
She’s confused now, Jack thought. Could be dementia there.
“It was a while ago,” he heard himself explaining.
“No,” Ah Por repeated. “Not when . . .” Suddenly she started stirring the congee again, spooning up some, taking a slurp.
Jack knew the session was over. He thanked her, patted her gently across the shoulders. She seemed to shiver, and he backed away, leaving her to eat in peace.
She never looked up to see him leave the cafeteria of his childhood, more burdened now with answers he didn’t understand.
Outside, he puzzled over Ah Por’s words as he walked, the smell of Big Wang’s jook and yow jow gwai, fried cruller, in the back of his mind.
Turning left on Bayard, he passed a string of tong basements that doubled as after-hours gambling dens. During the Uncle Four investigation, Jack’s presence down in the dens had compromised several federal probes. His appearance had been duly recorded by DEA, and ATF, but he’d found out a female shooter could have been involved.
Someone, from one of the tongs, Jack figured, had also dropped a call to Internal Affairs, falsely accusing him of shaking down the gambling operators. The accusations had triggered an investigation, and he’d gotten suspended.
Somewhere, there was still a woman in the wind, he remembered, as he crossed Mott.
Pa’s Jook
Big Wang, a longtime quick-food restaurant on Mott, still made congee the old Cantonese way, thick and clumpy, instead of more recent overseas styles that were watery, without substance. Jack remembered going to Big Wang’s for Pa’s favorite jook, ordering out a quart container each morning after Pa was no longer able to leave the apartment. Jack would deliver the jook to Pa before reporting to the Fifth Precinct, feeding his father each day of those last weeks of his life.
The congee, another reason why Pa had refused to leave Chinatown. His jook, his Chinese newspapers, his particular baby bok choy. All his excuses to stay rooted.
When Jack’s jook arrived, he dipped in a piece of yow jow gwai, fried cruller and let it soak up the congee, pondering Ah Por’s words: sacrifice, a monkey, and a gunshot wound.
Hallucinations, mumbo jumbo, and witchcraft, Jack thought, but quickly remembered that her words had proven true in previous cases.
The congee had reminded Jack of Pa, and when he finished the bowl, he decided to visit the temple across the way.
Ma’s Prayers
The gilded-wood carving above the Mott Street storefront read TEMPLE OF BUDDHA. In the window an elaborate wood carving featured the various mon
ks and deities. A wooden statue of the Goddess of Mercy stood off to one side.
Inside, Jack heard Buddhist chanting from a tape in a boom box, saw red paper strips along the wall with black ink-brushed characters, the names of members and supporters. There was the smell of incense and of scented votive candles on pads floating in oil. In one corner, yellow plastic tags with the names of loved ones, the deceased arrayed in neat rows below the plates of oranges, the vases of gladiolas.
Imagining the death faces of the Kung family, he stepped up to the gods.
He lit three sticks of incense, bowed three times before the display of deities, and firmly planted the sticks in a sand-filled urn.
He thanked the sister monk, observing through the Buddha’s picture window how busy the morning street had gotten.
On the way out he slipped eight dollars into the red donation box, and bid his farewell to the Kungs.
AJA
He walked briskly toward Chrystie Slip, where the street turned left and ran into NoHo. He exhaled puffs of steam as he went, saw that the cold prevented all but the hardy and unfortunate from walking the streets. Once past the junkie parks, he came to a storefront that was once a bodega, but now flew a big yellow banner that read ASIAN AMERICAN JUSTICE ADVOCACY.
The AJA, pronounced Asia, was a grassroots activist organization staffed by lawyers giving back to the community in pro bono time.
Inside the open storefront was a jumble of desks and office machines. There was no receptionist at reception out front, so he went directly toward Alex’s little office in the corner.
He saw her through the small pane of glass in the wooden door. Alexandra Lee-Chow, late twenties but could still pass for an undergrad, going through the beginning of a divorce, at the start of what was looking like a bad day.
She was in a foul mood as he walked in. He hesitated. She waved him on, putting up a palm to silence him.
Jack put the plastic containers of bok tong go on the part of her desk that wasn’t cluttered with files and legal documents. He said quickly and quietly, “Just wanted to say thanks for Hawaii. And they told me you were out all morning.”