by Henry Chang
“It’s an underworld thing. You get a rival group to go against them.”
“What happens?”
“Whatever it is, gets settled. Money. Face. Whatever.”
“So the scum take care of their own?”
“Something like that.”
He watched her work the drink down, a frown returning to her lips.
“Look, just call the precinct,” Jack advised. “If you see anything funny, like men loitering on the block, maybe they’ll roll a car by.”
“We filed three police brutality cases with the Civilian Complaint Review Board last year. You think that’ll happen?”
“And if you got pepper spray, anything like that, don’t be afraid to use it.”
“Jack?”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t think I’m just being paranoid, do you?”
“No, but are you?”
She drained the glass, signaled the waitress for a refill.
“We take on difficult cases,” she said distantly. “It’s not like we haven’t received threats before.”
“So what’s different here? ”
“I don’t know. It feels a little more personal. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“Well, you have to be careful. Be alert, know who’s around you. It’s still New York City, lady.”
Jack remembered that she was already under stress from her legal work on the Ninety-Nine Cents shooting incident.
“What’s gonna happen with the Ping woman’s lawsuits?” he asked.
“They’re going to work their way through the courts. There’s a lot involved. It’ll be a long time before anyone sees justice,” she replied. Her second drink arrived and she took a quick sip, keeping the glass at her fingertips. “How about you?” she asked, leveling a look at him. “You look tanned, but tired.”
“Yeah, soon as I got back from Hawaii I caught a murder-suicide. The whole family, gone.”
“Was this the Taiwanese family?”
Jack nodded, taking a gulp from the bottle.
“It’s in the papers everywhere.” She shook her head. “How sad. You caught that case, huh?”
Jack nodded stoically, drained his bottle, and ordered a whiskey shot.
After two martinis, Alex slowly became unfocused, making a kamikaze dive into the no-pain zone. Jack downed the whiskey shot. He knew she’d needed to vent and he was glad he’d been available. He glanced at his watch, gave a credit card to the waitress, and put his arm across Alex’s shoulders.
“Thanks again for Hawaii,” he said.
“Least could I do,” she slurred.
Jack grinned. “Time to go, lady.”
The dark streets ran down toward Confucius Towers. Jack considered walking Alex directly to her apartment door, weighing it against the implication of escorting a tipsy, high-strung, and vulnerable woman going through a divorce, who was coming home to an empty apartment for the holidays.
The term she’d used, irreconcilable differences, came to his mind.
He was still considering as they reached the main gates of the Towers.
“Thanks,” Alex said firmly, pushing Jack away gently with her palms. “I’m okay from here.”
“Sure . . . ?” Jack asked. It appeared the night air had revived her.
“Sure. And thanks a lot.”
“For what?” Jack smiled.
“For listening.” She smiled back. “See ya,” she called as she marched toward the high-rise, swaying slightly as she went.
Jack watched until she was inside the guarded lobby, inside the elevator.
Turning away from the Bowery, Jack took a deep swallow of icy air and stepped off the curb between parked cars, looking for a taxi back to Brooklyn. He didn’t see any cabs at the corner. The light turned red.
Behind him, a dark form rolled up, and he recognized the low rumble of the engine even before he saw the black Riviera, running without headlights, boxing him in between the cars. Instinctively, he brushed his gun hand against the grip of the Colt.
He was not surprised when Tat Louie, one-time blood brother and now Ghost Legion dailo, came out of the back of the car.
“Hey, homeboy.” Lucky grinned. “I mean officer. Oh, I mean detective.”
“Keep it up, Tat,” Jack answered evenly. “If this car don’t move now, I got cause to look inside. Wanna bet I find a piece in there?” Now he grinned back. “Maybe on your big, ugly gorilla boy?” He shaped his hand like a gun, tapped the barrel finger against the tinted passenger window, imagining Kongo there.
Lucky’s smile turned into a sneer. He nodded at the driver’s window, and Lefty slid the Buick forward a body’s length. Lucky stepped up to Jack and they faced off between the parked cars.
Jack fired first. “What do you want, Tat?” He remembered that Internal Affairs had accused him of associating with known felons, of the extortion of Chinatown businessmen.
“You got news and I’m buying. Let’s talk, brother man.” Lucky lit up a smoke.
“We had that converation already,” said Jack, no patience on his face.
“Bullshit. You weren’t listening the last time. You didn’t wanna hear it. Just kept talking all that give up stuff. Your blue boyz took down Number Seventeen, and Fat Lily’s. But you know that. So what’s up, brother? Why are they targeting us? And then I find out you left the precinct. I thought you liked it here. Fight crime, all that.”
“Fuck you, Tat.”
“Aw, come on now. You know what? I think, inside, you like it here. You’ll be back. You’re the Chinese cop, remember? The new sheriff in town, gonna turn everything around. Ha, you think you make a difference? It’s Chinatown, man. Come on, give me a heads-up. I’ll help you make captain.”
“I don’t need the headache.”
“Right. You’d rather roll around in the gutter. You like to hang with those gwailo micks and guineas, with their stupid Chinaman jokes?”
“Kiss my ass.”
“Break it out then. You going gay-lo on me?” He smiled, softening his approach. “Look, what’s it take? I know, I know, money and pussy don’t interest you. You don’t like the bling-bling, the nice threads, the sexy cars?”
“You got nothing I want. If I needed all that, I’d get it on my own.”
“What the fuck? You think you’re gonna do twenty and get out? Then be a security guard somewhere?” Lucky hissed. “All I want is information. I ain’t asking you to get your hands dirty. Shit, you mean to tell me you’d rather side with the gwailos, man? You choose them fuckin’ mooks who used to laugh at us and call us chingchong wingwong ? Boy, you ain’t nothing but a Charlie Chan, hah.”
Jack didn’t take the bait, tossed it back at Lucky. “Here’s one for you, big boss. Lucky man. Your boys supposedly run the streets out here, right? Remember the warehouses down on Pike? The ones we used to run through? Well, someone’s busting rip-offs there. That used to be your turf, right?”
“Still is,” Lucky spat out, taking the bait.
“So that means . . . it’s your boys pulling the jobs?”
“Didn’t say that. And don’t try to punk me, kid. You ain’t made for it.”
“Maybe it’s not really your turf. Lots of Fuks and Dragons out here. Maybe they’re eating your dim sum again.”
“Ha ha, funny. You got jokes, son. But what’s it to you? You a partner?”
“Friend of mine got robbed. Any ideas?”
Lucky smiled, feeling the leverage shifting. “Not right now, Jacky boy. But let’s say I get a tip on a raid, or maybe, a surveillance setup. Or give me a heads-up, Whatcha gonna do when they come for you, bad boy? Maybe then something might occur to me, capisce ?” He chuckled at the wop word, backstepping to the black car. Before sliding inside, he said, “Give me a sign, Jacky boy. Give me a sign.”
“Get out while you can. It’s the last time I say it, Nothing I can do when they come for you . . .”
Jack could hear hyena laughter from inside the car as it growled and sped off, leavin
g a cold trail of vapor and smoke.
After a minute the night streets went quiet, and when the traffic light turned green again, Jack caught a yellow cab that took him back across the bridge.
Dailo’s Money
Sai Go stood inside the front vestibule of the OTB, just beyond the cutting wind that sliced inside each time anyone went in or out.
He kept a watchful eye on the streets that crossed Chatham Square, looking for the black car coming for the dailo’s cash in his pocket.
It was 1 AM in the dead of night.
In his mind he saw palm trees and Mickey Mouse, and a pack of gray dogs wearing numbers, yelping as they dashed around an oval track.
The Gold Carriage Bakery was promoting a Holiday Special to Disney World in Orlando, and Longshot Lee had signed on for the vacation junket along with two of the da jop, kitchen help. Chat Choy had called Sai Go and asked him to come along, saying Gum Sook also had committed to the trip and had brewed up a thermos full of special herbal tea for him.
They could all bet on the dogs together.
So he agreed, and they were off the next day. Meet early, get a few baos, and tea, before getting on the bus. Bring a few newspapers. He could sleep along the way if he felt tired.
The Special included a floor show with Hong Kong singers and dancers, and a Chinese lunch buffet the entire week.
The dingy fluorescent light that spilled out of the OTB cast morbid shadows all around as the black car rolled to a smooth stop at the curb. Behind the dark windows, Lucky recognized Sai Go pacing around inside the vestibule, as he’d been instructed to do.
Lefty flashed the headlights twice, keeping the horn silent.
They watched Sai Go come out of the OTB, then Lefty killed the lights. Sai Go stepped carefully along the frozen street, looking the car over as he went. The back window powered down, and he saw the dailo’s eyes.
“Get in,” said Lucky.
There was plenty of room for Sai Go as he slid onto the cushioned backseat. He handed over an envelope, saying, “Six thousand eight hundred.”
“And I know I don’t have to count this, right?” Lucky glanced at him sideways.
“Only if you like,” Sai Go said quietly.
Lucky counted a thousand out of the envelope and slipped the bills onto the backseat next to Sai Go.
“That’s yours,” Lucky said. “For Koo Jai. The matter is closed.”
“Thank you, dailo.”
“We don’t need to speak of it again.”
“Understood.” Sai Go exited the car, saying “Thank you” again as the Riviera pulled away to make the green light. Standing by the curb in the wind, his frosty breath curling out, he pressed the extra thousand in his pocket, squeezed the wad into a roll.
The black car skirted a turn around the Square and headed uptown.
Sai Go turned and walked away from the OTB, thinking about the odds at the dog tracks, and the warm Florida sun. The group had planned an early start, and he was already feeling tired, hunched up against the gusts that grabbed at each trudging step home.
From the rearview mirror, Lucky saw Sai Go move off the Square, and turned his thoughts to Koo Jai, the wiseass, but he decided to keep to himself the knowledge of paying the little brother’s debt. For now anyway. Lucky realized the possibility that Koo Jai was the real culprit behind the rip-offs, but Skinny Chin had gone to Hong Kong and wasn’t due back until after Christmas. Kid Koo ain’t going nowhere, figured Lucky. It’d keep until Skinny got back.
Lefty urged the car back toward Mott, checking his watch, and marking the time.
Hovel and Home
The building at 98 East Broadway was a dilapidated four-story red-brick tenement near Mechanics Alley, beneath the roar-and-rumble racket of the subway trains, trucks, and mini-buses banging across the Manhattan Bridge. The building had a Chinese convenience store in a step-down basement and a cosmetics chain store six steps up the side stairs. On the sidewalk an old Chinese woman, wrapped in a shabby down coat, sat behind a folding table that dangled socks and thermal underwear, plastic sandals, ball caps, and batteries.
The back of Number 98 had a fire escape leading from the fourth floor down to a sliding metal ladder that dropped into a tiny yard closed off by an eight-foot-high fence. On the other side of the fence was a parking lot and a small shed where the broccoli vendor stashed his hundred daily cases.
The old apartments were railroad flats, long and narrow, running from the front to the back of the building, two apartments per floor. What had once been a communal bathroom in the hallway had been converted to two closet-size bathrooms, one for each apartment. Each had a tiny window that vented out back, to the parking lot.
In tenement flat number two, Koo Jai stood by the window, naked in the dim daylight, looking through the window blinds to the icy streets below. The afternoon was overcast and static with mist that promised to turn to snow.
On East Broadway and Market, four Fukienese youths stood together, one with gel-spiked hair flanked by two others in black leather jackets, their hands tucked into their pockets against the cold. Koo Jai couldn’t see their eyes behind their flashy black sunglasses, but he felt they were up to no good. The fourth youth stood to one side, a rangy, solid-looking kid who kept his right hand inside the slash pocket of his black trench coat. He was slowly rocking from side to side, in a tai chi kind of way, his eyes peering over the edge of sunglasses, sucking in every movement in the intersection.
Fucking Fuks, thought Koo Jai. The cold of the front room felt good against his overheated skin. He remembered why he’d left the thick heat of the back room, and reached down beneath the window. He pulled up a short piece of baseboard, extracted a plastic-wrapped bundle, then slipped the board back in place.
When he peered through the blinds again, the four Fuks were gone and he wondered which of the Chinatown shopping malls they were going to hang out in.
Up to no fuckin’ good, he knew.
For a moment, he scanned the small dark room. There was the bulk of the faded black leather couch, a convertible number that had to be ten years old, one of the surviving pieces of furniture from when the apartment had been the Stars’ clubhouse, where the gang partied and brought their girlfriends for sex. This was when their brotherhood controlled these streets, before their leader Tiki, and three senior brothers, mysteriously disappeared, before the Ghosts rolled in with a hundred men and took over.
There was a cheap folding table in one corner and an array of mismatched shelf units and clothes cabinets stretching the length of the long wall leading to the back bedroom. Three metal chairs were folded, leaning against the table, in case he had visitors.
For a long time now, except for Shorty coming by occasionally to smoke a joint and down a beer, he never had visitors, and the place had become his apartment, drug den, love nest, whatever. The Jung brothers, Old Jung and Young Jung, were too lazy to climb even the one flight of stairs, and since he didn’t have a television set, they were even less inclined to drop by and hang out. Just as well, he thought, no interruptions when he brought his girls up, and less chance of any of the gang stumbling upon his stash of the loot they divvied up. He used the spot behind the baseboard at the window. Another spot was under the floorboards, beneath one of the full-length wall mirrors he’d got from Job Lot, the other one mounted in the back room, strategically placed so that he could see himself with the parade of women he brought to his bed.
He unwrapped the plastic bundle and admired the dozen watches inside. Six Rados, four Cartiers, and two Rolexes. Twenty-five gees worth of fine timepieces and he’d taken the best for himself. Shorty’d gotten a Rolex and a half dozen Movados, as had each of the Jung brothers. He removed one of the Rados, a gold woman’s piece that had a modern metallic bracelet and a square black face with diamond baguettes arranged on all four sides.
He held one of the Rolexes, ran his thumb along the watchband, across the face, caressing, feeling its mechanical splendor. He heard again the words
of the dailo still ringing in his ears: If there’s another rip-off, it’s gonna be on you.
Warnings from the dailo, whom he never saw except when he came to collect cash or to complain, this end of East Broadway being too far from the lucrative streets around Mott and Bayard, Canal and Pell, for social visits, were not too impressive. The next job’s gonna fall on me? Yeah, right. Fuck that. The next job’s gonna be by me, more likely. Imagine that shit, he groused mentally, drove here from Mott Street? To chew my ass?
Fuck that, fuck that, fuck that, kept banging on his ear.
Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself.
He kept the Rado, but bundled away the rest of the watches under the floorboards beneath the Job Lot wall mirror. When he eyed his reflection, he liked what he saw and paused in the shadows to admire his own nakedness. Almost five-foot ten, he had a body like Bruce Lee, but on steroids, and a face that could have starred in movies in Hong Kong. Handsome in a cool way. A lover and a fighter. It was because of all the women in his life, he smirked into the mirror. What facial hair he had amounted to a faint mustache and goatee, which he trimmed regularly because he knew the ladies liked it. And the ladies: Mimi at the New Wave Salon, who permed his hair, and shaped it according to pictures in Hong Kong movie-star magazines. Joanna, his dentist, who’d given him a winning smile. Angela, the seamstress who fixed his jackets, and who’d made it clear she wanted to get into his pants. Dana, the masseuse, who pampered his muscles, including the long one that hung loose beneath his stomach. Kitty, at the bank, who gave him the crisp new bills he liked. On and on. Women were taken in by his good looks, his dynamic energy, and his quick tongue. Some of the women would later appreciate his quick tongue in more earthy ways.
He heard the dailo ’s voice again and shook his head, remembering the Jung Wah Warehouse job. That job was mostly the Jung brothers, who had hot-wired the truck inside the warehouse after Shorty had wriggled inside and let them in. They drove off with the entire load, with Shorty locking up the warehouse neatly, and Koo Jai covering shotgun on the rip-off. But abalone and bird’s-nests? They’d unloaded the stuff to the Jung brothers’ cousins who operated a market in Boston Chinatown, but they hadn’t seen any money yet. What the fuck? It would be weeks, maybe months. He’d thought it was a stupid heist but went along to give the Jung brothers face.