by Joe Bruno
It was now 2 am, but the bar was open and packed with customers. At Castillas, if the bar was open, the kitchen was open, and people were there munching on hamburgers and skirt steak sandwiches, stuffed with steaming peppers and onions. Junior was not hungry, but he sure needed a drink.
“Give me a double Remy, with a water backer,” he told the bartender, a short, stocky bleached blond woman in her fifties named Louise, who if she ever smiled, her face would crack.
“Whats-a-matter, Junior?” Louise said. “You don't look too good. Got the flu, or something?”
“Yeah, I got the flu and something,” Junior said.
Louise took Junior's drink around the bar to a table behind him. She placed the drink on the table, along with the bottle of Remy.
“You sit here,” she told Junior. “The owners are out of town and I've got to work straight through the next seven days. I can't afford to get the flu.”
Junior sat at the table. “Fine with me.”
“Want something to eat?” Louise said. “I made some nice chicken soup. It does wonders for the flu.”
“No thanks. Just the bottle's fine.”
After downing double Remy after double Remy, Junior's fever seemed to be breaking. Or he was getting so drunk, he couldn't feel anything anyway.
It was now nearly 4 am and Louise told the remaining customers it was time for “last call.” In minutes, the last few stragglers staggered out the front door and Louie locked the door behind them.
She handed Junior a key. “Here's the key to the front door. I have an extra one. I'm sleeping on a cot in the back by the kitchen, 'cause I gotta open up at nine in the morning. Freaking daytime bartender's got the flu too. Lock up when you leave. And there's more Remy behind the bar if you need it.”
“What about the alarm?” Junior said. “How do I set it?”
Louie made a fist. “I'm sleeping in the back with a baseball bat. I don't need an alarm.”
“Be careful where you use that bat.”
“Don't be a wiseguy,” Louise said. “Make yourself comfy. I'm conking out.”
“Thanks, Louise. I owe you one.”
Louise forced a weak smile. “Too bad I'm a dyke. If I weren't, I'd take you into the back with me, so you could give me that one you just said you owed me.”
Louise disappeared into the kitchen
Junior drank until dawn. Then he cleaned up after himself and let himself out of Castillas, locking the door behind him.
He staggered the two hundred yards or so to Chatham Green, and in minutes, he unlocked the door to his apartment. Thankfully, he had no chain to contend with.
There was nary a sound inside and the apartment seemed empty. He checked his father's bedroom just to make sure. No one was there. Then he went into the living room to view the scene of the crime.
He bent down, and sure enough, there was a crack in the wooden floor where Big Fat Fanny had done her header. It looked as if someone had dropped an anvil from the ceiling.
The blood had been wiped clean, but from that moment on, whenever Junior saw Big Fat Fanny, and he would see her often, all he could think about was that bloodied, beached whale, out cold on his living room floor, her plastic, puffed-out panties waving in the wind.
How freaking embarrassing.
CHAPTER 13
The Mayor of Chinatown
Hung Far Low, all three hundred pounds of him, sat alone at a two-seat table, in a coffee shop on Pell Street. Wearing his omnipresent three-piece white suit, he looked like a Chinese version of Sydney Greenstreet's Senior Ferrari in Casablanca. He chomped on a pork bun and washed it down with greasy Chinese coffee, swill so vile no non-Oriental would ever dare swallow it.
Hung Far Low had a decision to make and it was not going to be an easy one. Junior Bentimova, the son of Tony B, who was still holding on tightly to his chintzy Italian Boss of Bosses crown, had done something of great disrespect. Despite what the police report had said, Norman Chung did not slit his own throat, stab himself three times in the back and throw himself off a Knickerbocker Village rooftop. As witnesses reported back to him, the killer was one of Junior's henchman, a cretin named Billy the Blade. Hung Far Low knew for sure the official police report on Norman's death was pure garbage, written by crooked cops on Tony B's payroll.
Hung Far Low intended to get even. If he didn't get even, the Dagos might think they had a even slight chance of regaining power in Chinatown. The neighborhood had gone from Lasagna to Chicken Chow Mein and Hung Far Low was going to make sure it would stay that way forever.
The Italians had ruled Chinatown since the early 1900's. In 1923, an Italian ex-boxer and boxing promoter named Johnny Keyes, real name Canonico, had somehow been elected Mayor of Chinatown. The story on the Chinatown streets was that Keyes and a few hundred of his greaseball buddies, cracked some Chinaman heads in order to win the vote, even though at that time the Chinese outnumbered the Italians 3-1 in the neighborhood.
As the years went by, the Italians began treating the Chinese people like crap. Up until the late 1960's, if the Chinese even dared try to play football, soccer, or basketball in Columbus Park, the Italians would beat them up and stab the heck out of their ball, telling the Chinese to, “Stay the fuck out of our park.”
All this began to change in the late 1960's, when Chinese businessmen finally started to get smart. They combined their money and approached the Italian tenement landlords in Little Italy, one at a time.
“How much do you want for your building?” they'd politely ask.
“I ain't selling to no Chinks,” invariably would be the Italian owner's first response.
“But sir, if you were selling, how much do you think your building would be worth?”
Now here's where the Dago's greed got the best of them.
“Hey, I bet my building's worth half a million bucks.”
Now the Chinese already did their real estate comps and they knew the building was worth three hundred grand, tops. Now was the time for them to drop their hook.
“Really, sir. How about if we offered you one million dollars for your building, would you sell it to us then?”
Dollar signs rolled in the Dago's eyes.
“Yeah, but I'd want the contract signed for half a million dollars and I want the other half a million under the table, in cash.”
“No problem, sir.”
And this is how the Chinese began throwing the Italians out of Chinatown and Little Italy, one building at a time.
The Chinese started buying dozens of tenements, paying two, and sometimes three times what they were worth. The Italian landlords lived in fancy places in Brooklyn and Staten Island, so they really didn't care what happened to the old neighborhood anyway. In a few years, the Chinese owned more than half the buildings in Chinatown and in Little Italy. That's when the purge began.
All of a sudden, Italians who were paying sixty bucks a month, for a two-bedroom cold-water flat, got notice that their rents were being raised to three hundred dollars a month. Most Italians could not pay that much rent, and the ones that could, thought it was dumb to live in a rat-infested tenement, when for less money they could move into new digs in nearby Chatham Green, Chatham Towers, Knickerbocker Village, South Bridge Towers, or in the newly built Independence Plaza on the lower west side of Manhattan.
The apartments the Italians vacated in Little Italy solved another problem for the Chinese businessmen. Most of them were involved in an illegal human smuggling racket, headed by men and woman called Snakeheads. These Snakeheads sneaked illegals into America from China, at a whopping thirty grand per head. Thousands of the illegals were coming into Chinatown every year, but they had no place to live. So the former two-bedroom apartments, now rented for at least three hundred dollars a month, split by hordes of illegal Chinese immigrants, sometimes as many twenty people living in a two-bedroom apartment.
Floors of entire apartments were filled with mattresses for people to sleep on. But illegal immigrants were rarely
inside the apartments, except to sleep, because they had to work 18 hours a day, in one of the hundreds of Chinese restaurants in New York City, at less than minimum wage, for many years, just to pay the Snakeheads the rest of the thirty grand they owned them. Either that, or get their hands chopped off and they wouldn't be able to work anyway.
So buying out the stupid Italians had served several purposes for the Chinese in Chinatown. They had gotten rid of the Dago slime, and as a result, they had filled the apartments for three hundred bucks a pop and more, making their real estate investment quite profitable after only a few years, even though they had grossly overpaid for the buildings in the first place.
And most importantly to the old-timers, they gained control of the ball field in Columbus Park. Screw those Dagos where they breathe.
As for the tenements in the neighborhood still owned by Italians, the landlords were now stuck with a losing investment. They either had to sell to the Chinese at bargain basement prices, or stick it out and hope their buildings burned to the ground, so that they could collect the insurance money.
Some buildings actually, but never accidentally did.
Now why should Hung Far Low care about the death of a mere gambler like Norman Chung? In Chinatown, even the Chinese people didn't like Norman too much. In fact, it was quite possible, Norman's own mother wasn't too crazy about him either. Norman was surly, unfriendly, disrespectful and for those who cared about these type of things, downright freaking ugly.
Yet, Norman Chung could do something most other Chinese men could not do; shoot a gun reasonable straight. Norman was not the greatest shot by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, he was a pretty lousy shot by any measure. But at least Norman shot in the general direction of the people he was supposed to be shooting at. And sometimes, maybe by luck, he even hit the person the bullet was intended for in the first place.
Bravo for Norman!
This was not the case with 99 percent of the other Chinese shooters on the Planet Earth.
Most of the Chinese gangs employed kids right off the illegal boats from China. As an initiation into the gangs, these morons had to perform hits; kill people whom the bosses said needed to be dead.
Some hits were performed on crowded Chinatown Streets, but most were in Chinese restaurants, where those illegal fools would barge in, flailing away with their nines. They'd shoot paying customers, cooks, waiters, a few Peking Ducks, and sometimes, by luck, even the guy they intended to shoot in the first place. But this did not happen too often and the collateral damage was severe for all Chinese businesses in Chinatown.
Yet this was not the M.O. of Norman Chung, who Hung Far Low secretly used to eliminate the opposition, or anyone else who disrespected his gambling, drug dealing, or illegal immigrant smuggling operations. When he wanted someone to die, Hung Far Low trusted Norman Chung to do the right thing without messing up too much of the furniture. Norman would follow his prey, sometimes for days, and always do the dirty deed where there was no innocent victims, and more importantly, no witnesses.
Now Norman Chung was dead and Hung Far Low was out his best henchman, a killer nobody even knew worked for Hung Far Low in the first place.
Hung Far Low was now awaiting the arrival of the second best man in his operation, Yuan Dum Fuk, who wasn't a great shooter either. But he made up for that fact by handing a knife pretty damn good. And with a knife, you can only kill one person at a time, which in Chinatown, was a good thing indeed for the local businesses, especially the restaurants.
Hung Far Low was half way though his Chicken Chop Suey when Yuan Dum Fuk walked through the front door of the coffee shop..
“Have a seat,” Hung Far Low said.
Yuan Dum Fuk took a seat on the opposite side of the table from Hung Far Low.
To say that Yuan Dum Fuk was thin, was like saying water was wet. He wore the traditional all- black outfit worn by Chinese gangsters, right down to the waist-length, zippered, black leather jacket. His face was rodent-like and covered with so many pimples, it looked like a connect-the-dots worksheet.
“I have a job I need for you to do,” Hung Far Low said.
“You mean 'a piece of work'?” said Yuan Dum Fuk.
Spit and Chop Suey flew from Hung Far Low's mouth, spraying the table and Yuan Dum Fuk's face and chest. “What are you? A Wop all of a sudden?”
Yuan Dum Fuk wiped his face with a napkin. Then bowed his head. “No shu ling. I am Chinese. First and foremost. Always Chinese.”
“Then cut out the 'piece of work' crap. Speak like a Chinaman, for Budda's sake.”
“OK shu ling.”
“And cut out the 'shu ling' crap too. We're here in America. You can just call me 'boss'.”
“Yes boss.”
The waiter arrived with a tray filled with a dozen egg rolls. He placed the tray in front of Hung Far Low.
Hung Far Low eliminated the first two eggs rolls with only four bites. He spoke with his mouth full, causing bits of the egg rolls to dot Yuan Dum Fuk's chest. “I need Billy the Blade to disappear.”
Yuan Dum Fuk's eyes bulged from his emaciated face. He bent forward and whispered, “You want me to kill lo fan?”
Four more bites and two more egg rolls went bye-bye down Hung Far Low's gullet. He belched twice, then said, “You have a problem with that?”
“No boss, but may I humbly ask why?”
“No, you may not humbly ask why. I've always operated on a need-to-know basis, and you no need to fucking know.”
Four more bites and two more egg rolls went sayonara into Hung Far Low's belly. “Now go and don't let me see your face again until Billy the Blade is no more.”
“How do you wish me to do this?” Yuan Dum Fuk said.
“With anything but a gun,” Hung Far Low said. “You have the disease of the Chinese. If you use a gun, you have as good a chance of shooting yourself in the balls, as you do of shooting Billy the Blade.” The front door of the coffee shop opened and a beautiful Chinese girl entered. Just turning eighteen years of age, Lilly Low stood tall, broad and buxom, unlike the past generations of Chinese women who were flat as a board and looked like teenage boys. Her black almond eyes seemed to sparkle and her red pouting lips pointed upward, bringing her chin up with them.
She sashayed over to Hung Far Low's table. “Hello father.”
Yuan Dum Fuk jumped up to attention, while Hung Far Low quickly devoured two more eggs rolls.
“This young gentleman was just leaving,” Hung Far Low said to his daughter. He waved his hand at Yuan Dum Fuk in dismissal.
Yuan Dum Fuk bowed to his boss, then to Lily. He did a military about-face and exited the coffee shop.
Lily sat down opposite her father.
“Would you like an egg roll?” he said, pointing at the tray with only four egg rolls left.
Lily shook her head. “How many did you eat already? I see four left. So you either ordered a half a dozen egg rolls and just started, or more likely, you ordered a baker's dozen.”
Hung Far Low bowed his head. “Straight dozen. Chinese restaurants no give extra egg roll to nobody.”
Lily scanned the coffee shop. She spotted the waiter and signaled for him to come to the table.
“Take these four eggs rolls away right now,” she told the waiter. “My father has eaten enough already.”
The waiter grabbed the tray and Hung Far Low grabbed the waiter's arm. “Put them in a doggie container. I will take them with me.”
Lily's face hardened. “If you don't stop this gluttony, your heart will explode. The doctor has told you many times, you need to drop at least a hundred pounds.”
Hung Far Low took a sip of coffee. “To do that, my dear daughter, I will surely have to cut off both my legs.”
“You're probably right. But please don't eat like that in front of me. I don't have to watch you slowly gorging yourself to death. Mother is already with God. I don't want to be left all alone in this world.”
“Don't worry. I'm going on a di
et soon. They call it the new Atkins diet. I can eat all the meat, chicken and fish I like. Bacon and eggs too. And I can drink all alcoholic beverages, except beer. How's that for a diet?”
“Fine, if you're an American. But no lo mein noodles, or even rice noodles for you. And no fried rice. In fact, you can't eat white rice either. No dumplings. And no egg rolls. That's for sure.”
Hung Far Low shook his head. “Don't discourage me before I even start. But I can have soup. Lots of soup. Egg drop. Hot and sour soup. But no wonton soup, because of the dumplings.”
“Hot and sour soup has dumplings too.”
“So I'll give the dumplings to the dog.”
“We don't have a dog.”
“So, we'll get a dog. A big dog. The dog will help me to stay on my diet.”
She smiled. “Then the dog will get fat like you.”
“Then we'll get two dogs. One to get fat and the other to stay skinny.”
She reached across the table and grabbed her father's hand. “Oh father, you worry me so much. One dog will be enough. I'll start searching for one today. Maybe a nice German Shepard. Like Rin Tin Tin on TV.”
“That would be nice.”
“In fact, you can get a lot of exercise walking the dog. It would be good for you in so many ways.”
Hung Far Low shook his head. “The dog walking part is no good. A man of my exalted status cannot be seen walking a dog in public.”
“Ok, so I'll walk the dog. As long as you stay on your diet. But if I so much as see you look at an egg roll, I'll make the dog do his nasty stuff in the apartment, on your favorite Chinese newspaper.”
“Agreed. I'll start on the Atkins diet tomorrow morning.”
She snapped her fingers for the waiter. “No, you start on your diet right now.”
The waiter arrived and put the Chinese container holding egg rolls on the table.
Lily told her father, “Those four egg rolls, I'll take them with me now.”
“Can't I just have one more big Chinese meal, before I go cold turkey on this diet?”