Year of the Dog

by Henry Chang

  Doyers Street was empty, the icy slush offering no clues. He crossed over to May May’s convenience store, bought a box of ziplock bags and a fat black permanent marker.

  He was bagging the different guns when CSU arrived. They proceeded to work the scene for evidence such as blood samples, laying down markers near the ejected shell casings, snapping pictures with their big wide-lens cameras.

  Jack stepped back as the Medical Examiner’s team showed up and started pronouncing the bodies. When they zippered up the black body bags, placing them into the morgue’s minivan, Jack remembered that the commanding officer of the Fifth Precinct was expecting him.

  He pictured the old run-down stationhouse on Elizabeth, three blocks north, and headed in that direction.

  0 - Five

  He hadn’t seen the captain in more than a month, since his promotion to Detective Second Grade, during the award ceremony at One Police Plaza, well after the captain had quashed the IA investigation, and before his transfer out to the 0-Nine.

  When Jack entered the big office Captain Marino’s expression revealed that he was about to do something he didn’t agree with. He extended his hand.

  “Welcome back, Jack,” he said as they shook. “I have to say, it’s not sitting right with me, to have to bring you back this way. Hernandez and Donelly caught the case, and rightfully, it’s theirs.”

  Jack half-shrugged, knowing the captain well enough to keep his mouth shut. He let the commanding officer continue.

  “But the chief’s been all over my ass. The case is so high profile we need some quick answers. The street cleared out when the shooting started, and Hernandez and Donelly can’t find any witnesses. Look, you know the players. And we know you used to be friends with one of the vics. The dailo, Tat Louie.” The captain thought he saw disdain narrowing Jack’s eyes. He looked away. “There’s so much heat on this it’s melting the snow outside headquarters.”

  Jack nodded knowingly, and let him continue.

  “Chief wants the press off his ass.” He gave Jack a look that was more a request than a command.

  Jack knew what high profile meant. Shootings and gang violence always brought out the TONG WAR headlines in the Post and the News. The Chinese media, acutely aware that bad news would scare off the tourist-trade, the lifeblood of the community, would criticize the police for allowing the gang-bangers to run amok in the first place.

  “Get me something, Jack,” Marino said quietly.

  Jack, almost feeling sorry for him, said, “Okay, Cap’n. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Hernandez and Donelly gave him the cold shoulder on the way out, but Jack crunched his way back through the snow, following the blood trail in his head, to OTB where the uniform squad watched over the evidence.

  Pieces of Death

  The guns stacked up as a small arsenal: pricey Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter automatics for Lucky’s Ghosts, cheaper Spanish-made Taurus pistols for the others.

  Lucky had carried the 5906, a ten-shot customized hybrid with an aluminum alloy frame and a cockless hammer. It was light to the draw and compact, easy to conceal. Tat, with his cool expensive gun, which he hadn’t had the chance to fire.

  The EMS techs at Downtown Medical had advised Jack that Tat had slipped into a coma and was on life support.

  The Ghost with the spikey gel hair had packed a 910 featuring an ambidextrous hammer drop. According to the ME’s report, gunshot residue was found on his left hand. The gun was also a ten-shot piece, that he could carry half-cocked, ready for action in his quick-draw Combat holster. Dependable, and deadly. He’d emptied the clip, died reaching for the second magazine.

  The big Malaysian had an eight-shot 3913 with a thick rubber grip for his large hand. A soldier’s gun. The solid pistol never cleared his back pocket. Instead, his big piece of bad news was the double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, a twelve-gauge featherweight Japanese Winchester. He’d chopped down the stock and barrel, cutting it short so he could carry it beneath his coat. A nasty piece of work, sure to take fighters down.

  He’d gotten off both barrels.

  The other vics in the face-off told the other part of the story. All had soldier guns. The one in the alley died with a Taurus 938 in his hand. He’d emptied the ten-shot clip of the .380 automatic, an inexpensive import. Great bang for the buck. The bangs hadn’t saved him from getting shot in the back.

  Of the two stocky vics who looked related, one also had a Taurus, a PT11 racking ten shots. Cheap but reliable. He’d fired eight shots, leaving two in the magazine.

  The other one had brandished a Ruger Redhawk, a .357 Magnum that weighed two pounds, a heavy carry. It was a thunderous six-shot revolver, and it’s report alone would freeze all the action.

  He’d emptied the cannon.

  The odd piece was found on the old man in the alley: an outdated Italian model, Trident Vigilante. A snub-nose .32-caliber revolver that chambered six Smith & Wesson cartridges. Super light, less than a pound. A belly gun with a light kick. Good for close combat. But why? An old man dying of cancer?

  He’d carried it in his jacket pocket without a holster.

  His final moment had brought his hand to the gun.

  Where was the connection?

  Personal Effects

  Jack made out the reports for the six corpses lying in the morgue’s chilled slabs.

  Lucky’s wheelman, the gel-haired Ghost, whose street name was Lefty, had carried in his jacket a set of keys in a black key-case, a pair of knock-off Fendi sunglasses, and a small spray tube of breath freshener. There was a plastic baggie with a dozen little red pills, and a murky snapshot of an Asian girl giving head. He had forty-four dollars, an unlucky Chinese number for him, thought Jack. In his jeans they’d found a cell phone, and a driver’s license with a DOB dated 1970, and the name Cham Yat Lee. The license had a bogus Mott Street address. Number 17A, Jack knew, was an On Yee gambling basement.

  The large Malaysian was identified by his Indonesian NRIC National Registry card as Bat Boon Kong, twenty-six years old. In his coat he’d had a pack of bootleg Marlboros and a Zippo lighter featuring a grinning skull and crossbones. He carried a hundred eighty-six dollars, and a roll of quarters. Was he looking to pack a hard-knuckled punch, or was it just coins for the parking meters? There was a pair of fake Oakley sunglasses and a business card for Oriental Massage Bodywork. A set of keys attached to a jade-stone dragon. From his pants they’d taken a bloody cell phone, identical to the one found on Cham Yat. Kong had worn a heavy gold bar-link chain around his thick neck, dangling a fat jade lucky Buddha against his massive chest, but there was no ho toy, good fortune, at the end of his story.

  The other two dead Ghosts outside OTB shared more than a passing resemblance; they shared the same surname, Jung, and birthdate, in 1971. They were twins, but not identical. Close enough, thought Jack.

  According to their driver’s licenses, one was named James, one Joseph.

  Jimmy and Joey Jung. The Jung brothers. They’d both worn black stone foo dogs around their necks, and between them they had fifty-one dollars and change. They had lived in the same apartment in the Rutgers Housing Projects out past Pike, near the river.

  Jack remembered hanging out there with Tat and Wing during their teenage summer nights that now seemed so long ago.

  Each brother had a matching set of keys, and identical blackface ladies’ Rado wristwatches in their pants pockets.

  Macho guys with women’s watches?

  The two watches were stamped with sequential serial numbers.

  Of the two bodies in the alley, Jack wrote up the bullet-riddled vic first. His driver’s license gave his name, Koo Kit Leng, and address, 98 East Broadway. Easy enough to check out; Jack knew those streets well.

  Koo was twenty-six years old.

  In Koo’s jacket Jack had found a set of keys on an OTB promo key ring, and a cracked pair of imitation Ferragamo sunglasses. There was a pack of Kools with a disposable Bic lighter rubber-banded to it, and a rol
l of breath mints. In his jacket’s inside pocket were business cards from a Tong Yen dry-goods store in Boston’s Chinatown, and from KK’s Karaoke club on Allen Street, with the name Tina and a phone number scrawled across the back of the card.

  He’d worn a silver chain with a shiny letter K charm attached.

  Jack remembered the two single-dollar bills protruding from Koo’s ripped pants pocket, and the trail of coins scattered in the snow of the alley.

  He had no other money or valuables on him.

  Robbery or double cross, figured Jack.

  The last body in the alley was the big mystery.

  The old man, Fong Sai Go, had carried a plastic wallet that contained some business cards: lawyer, social security, hair salon, and a gold-plated Chinese talisman card. There was also a Health Clinic notecard with his home address and a chemotherapy schedule that indicated he was a fifty-nine-year-old cancer patient. Terminal.

  He’d carried keys and a cell phone in his left coat pocket, a multicolored ink pen in the right. There was a Foxwoods Casino promotional card, in Chinese, in his shirt pocket. He was wearing a jade-stone gourd-shaped charm around his neck, and had exactly eight hundred eighty-eight dollars in his right coat pocket.

  A dying old man spending down his luck? wondered Jack.

  In his mind, Fong Sai Go wasn’t shaping up as a homicide, but because of the gun in his possession, Jack felt he needed to check out the old man’s Pell Street address, and also to speak to the lawyer on the business card.

  Projects

  The elderly woman who lived in the Rutgers Projects apartment appeared senile, or had Alzheimer’s, Jack couldn’t tell which. She managed to explain that the Jung brothers were her grandsons, and the food stamp card was hers. They’d done the shopping for her.

  She couldn’t grasp the idea that her grandsons were dead. When would they be home? They were her caregivers.

  Jack decided to get her some assistance through Alexandra’s contacts at Chinatown social services.

  Hovel

  Inside Koo’s place at 98 East Broadway, Jack walked through a run-down railroad apartment that someone had tossed. A couple of pieces of floorboard were out of place, and the stash spots were empty. Nothing in the apartment provided any real clues to how the body in the alley had come to that end. There were only a few pieces of old furniture and some cheap ornaments of a life on the edge.

  The landlord hid behind a managing agency that admitted Koo was a longtime tenant.

  They had no idea what business he was in, but the rent was paid regularly.

  The managers were interviewing new tenants even as Jack left the agency.

  Sampan

  He found old Fong’s tenement walk-up on Pell, badged the super, and spoke to him in Toishanese, their common tongue. The swarthy man liked that Jack could speak the dialect and let him right into the apartment.

  The place looked straightened up, neat. Nothing in the refrigerator. No garbage anywhere, cleaned the way someone would when leaving on an extended vacation. His vacation was to the next life?

  The only thing Jack noted was a torn scrap of thin wrinkly paper on a VCR shelf. There were different Chinese nicknames and numbers written on the delicate paper. On a hunch, Jack licked his thumb and touched it to the scrap. When it melted, he grinned knowingly.

  It was the kind of soluble paper that old-time bookmakers used.

  Jack called the lawyer’s number on the card, but only got voice mail.

  He headed back along Mott Street, meaning to stop by later at Downtown Medical to see if there’d been any change in Lucky’s condition.

  Dailo’s Demise

  They’d placed Tat’s clothes and possessions in a big black plastic garbage bag and slipped it under his bed by the respirator.

  In a Gucci billfold, Lucky had carried an eight-hundred-dollar stack of crisp fifties, and two fresh condoms. Ribbed Trojans. Slotted into the inserts were two credit cards, and a driver’s license with another bogus address. Jack knew that number 29A Mott, was another one of the On Yee gambling basements. He was surprised that Lucky had used his real name Tat Louie on the credit cards.

  There were three red pills in a little ziplock bag and a set of keys on a Cartier keychain. He’d worn an Oyster Rolex, Armani shades, and a thick gold-braided chain with a round medallion stamped with the Chinese word fook, or luck.

  Jack remembered the medallion from their neighborhood years when they had been like blood brothers.

  Tat’s luck had run out.

  They’d also bagged his cell phone, identical to the ones found on the Malaysian, Kong, and on Cham. Courtesy of an On Yee corporate account, no doubt, thought Jack.

  The last item seemed out of place; a ladies’ blackface Rado wristwatch they’d taken from his blazer pocket. Its serial numbers picked up the sequence where the Jung brothers’ Rado watches left off.

  The shoot-out was over watches, and money, more than likely.

  Jack looked at Tat’s comatose body and considered what a waste his old friend’s life had been. Punks, playing at living large; every one with a tattoo, a gun, and some pocket money. But not one of them ever had a future. Their days were numbered the second they signed on to the fast life, the easy money.

  This is how it ends for you? Kept alive by a machine only because we hope you have testimony to give?

  The gang had fallen out over money. Different factions, different agendas. But that was expected, happened all the time in gangland.

  Got anything to add to that, Tat?

  He didn’t think Tat was going to be much help but persuaded himself to stay a while longer. In the quiet room he watched the slow rise and fall of Tat’s chest, listening for the occasional ping of the machine that mechanically measured out the remaining breaths of Lucky Louie’s life.

  While he waited, Jack checked the serial numbers of the wristwatches with Rado loss prevention. He was informed they were from the Hong Kong Region territory, part of a batch that had been stolen out of Sheung Wan.

  Jack wasn’t surprised that they’d wound up in New York’s Chinatown.

  He wanted to call Hong Kong but realized it would be the middle of the graveyard shift there, with their intel shut down. Instead, he returned to Sunset Park for a bracing shower and a change of clothes. In the bathroom mirror, he saw the scars on his chest and forearm healing nicely. Only then did he remember that Ah Por had touched those spots during his last visit, before he’d gotten wounded, when he’d thought she’d been confused.

  She’d already known.

  He felt the urge to visit her again, as soon as the evidence cleared.

  At 9 PM he called Hong Kong. Putting on his best Chinatown Cantonese for the Royal Hong Kong Police, he confirmed off the record that the heist, orchestrated by the Red Circle triad, had been a quarter-million-dollar payday for them.

  The payback had found its way down to six dead people in Chinatown.

  Dead Men Talking

  When he got back to the 0-Five there was a big file envelope waiting with his name on it. The captain had signed for it and left it on the desk where Jack had been working the case.

  The Medical Examiner’s reports were inside, a thick sheath of papers and photographs; six sets of clinical observations and explanations, one set for each victim.

  Except for the old man, the other five corpses all had gang tattoos. This didn’t surprise Jack. He knew they were Ghost Legion, gwai, Lucky’s crew. Tat, Cham, and big Kong all had the Chinese word ghost tattooed onto their left biceps. The gang tats were black ink, but in different script or block styles.

  gwai

  What interested Jack was the tats on the other players: the two Jung brothers, and Koo Kit. Each had a quarter-sized red star tattooed on his back, just below the right shoulder. An eight-pointed star. Old tattoos, Jack could tell, because of how the red tint had faded.

  None of them had the word ghost tattooed anywhere.

  But they were all Ghosts, had to have had criminal
records. Jack knew their rap sheets would blow their shady covers.

  Jack noted the ME’s indications that Lucky and his crew all had alcohol and Ecstasy in their systems. Again, not unusual for them.

  They’d indicated gun-shot residue on Cham’s left hand. A lefty. The other shooters were all right handed.

  Jack remembered what a miracle it had been that no civilians had gotten hurt. Thank the blizzard for that.

  The comparative reports from the Medical Examiner’s office and the Crime Scene Unit listed Cause of Death (COD), what or who caused the death, and offered a tentative scenario, how it had probably happened.

  They’d matched the fingerprints on the shell casings to the shooters, making it clearer.

  Ballistics and Foreign Sics

  Except for Lefty—Cham—all the other gang vics had suffered multiple gunshot wounds. Lefty had expired due to a single kill-shot wound determined to have come from the .357 Magnum revolver of Joey Jung. The magnum slug had drilled a hole in Lefty’s chest and exploded half his heart out through his back.

  Kong, the big Malaysian, had taken eight hits from four different guns; two in the chest from Jimmy Jung’s nine-millimeter, two more in the stomach from Koo Kit’s .380. Joey Jung had shattered Kong’s right hip with two .357 Magnum rounds, but it was a pair of high-velocity .22-caliber slugs that had put out the big man’s lights.

  Two twenty-twos through the right eye.

  They’d extracted the killshots from inside Kong’s skull, where the spinning metal pieces had torn up half his brain matter before fragmenting, flattening against bone.

  Jack imagined the scene with wicked clarity, tracing the gun battle in his mind, seeing all the players with the star tattoos exchanging gunfire with Lucky’s crew. It had to have happened so fast Tat never got to draw his gun. Thirty seconds, less than a minute.