Blood in the Water

by Michael Prescott

  “We was all ready to get it on,” Eng said, “and you make us stand the fuck down. It fuckin’ sucks.”

  They had both turned to look at him. Chiu stared them down. There were times when it helped to talk their language. This was one of those times.

  “Who’s running shit here?” he asked calmly. “You bitch-made punks wanna take over? You wanna coach this team?”

  Lam shook his head. “Nah, dai lo. It’s not like that.”

  “Then shut up. Keep your fucking mouths shut.”

  Grudgingly they faced forward. Lam cranked the ignition and put the Caddy in gear, reversing out of the parking slot.

  Chiu had learned many secrets of power as dai lo of the Long Fong Boyz, and one of those secrets was to withhold information from his subordinates whenever possible. Volunteer nothing. Leave others in the dark. This inevitably placed them in a position of weakness.

  Sometimes he thought he could write a book about the things he’d learned. Management Secrets of a Tong Warrior, maybe. He was ideally positioned to do so.

  His father was Chinese, an immigrant from the Szechuan province. His mother was a dark-eyed Latina. She’d raised him while his dad was off drinking and whoring and finding excuses not to send money home. Though his mother meant well, she never knew what to say to him, so for the most part she said nothing at all. With no real family of his own, he’d found a sense of belonging among the older kids who roamed the streets, jacking cars and shaking down massage parlors. To placate his mom, he’d stayed in school, at least enough of the time to earn a diploma, even qualifying for the honor roll on occasion; but his real education had been on the streets.

  He was jumped into the Panlong Fong at sixteen—a ritual that required taking a beatdown from his gang brothers. He got three of his ribs kicked in, suffered two black eyes and a busted ankle. It was no big thing. He was in.

  But he didn’t stay in. At eighteen he went to college in Baltimore, graduated with a BBA, and spent four months in New York City, occupying a cubicle and following orders.

  Then he quit and returned to Jersey City, taking up the life he’d known.

  The nine-to-five world wasn’t for him. He couldn’t tolerate the boredom, the conformity, the kowtowing to people he could have defeated in any contest of wits or strength. Though it reduced his mother to angry sobs and mystified his former teachers, he would follow his own path.

  Not as a member of the Panlong Fong, though. He set about organizing his own crew, spending money and buying credibility. It was a risky game. The Panlong Fong didn’t like competition, and one of their shotcallers, an OG named China Dog, put a price on Chiu’s head. Luckily, China Dog was arrested in an FBI-DEA sting a few weeks later, the Panlong Fong were broken up, and the contract lapsed, leaving Chiu alive and in control of his own crew, perfectly positioned to move in on territory that had been suddenly vacated.

  Chiu was selective in his recruiting; so far he’d limited the gang to twenty-six members and a few hangers-on. The Long Fong Boyz were an independent set, unaffiliated with any tong or dragonhead, though willing to get in on a joint venture when the money was good. Currently they occupied a small apartment complex in Hoboken, formerly used by a Guatemalan crew who’d been persuaded to relocate by the judicious application of force. All his men hung there, watching kung-fu movies, eating take-out, drinking and getting wasted. Girlfriends came and went.

  It took brains to run a crew. It took strategic thinking. Consider his approach to Bonnie Parker. When word reached him of a blond female who’d visited Crossgate Gardens on the night of Joey Huang’s murder, Chiu had put out feelers, inquiring about any known or reputed hitter who matched the description. Parker’s name had come up.

  A less prudent man would have moved on her immediately. Chiu knew that killing a white woman in a small town entailed greater risk than knocking off a rival gangster on the city streets. He’d taken the trouble to confirm Parker’s identification as the hitter. One of his contacts was a police officer with a gambling problem, who was on the hook to the gang. Chiu persuaded this individual to obtain Bonnie Elizabeth Parker’s Department of Motor Vehicle records, which included her driver’s license photo, home address, and vehicle registration. The photo was shown to the witnesses in the project, garnering positive responses. It was all very neat and methodical. A jury trial could not have been fairer.

  Then there was the challenge of actually carrying out the hit. While his subordinates saw the storm as an inconvenience, Chiu recognized it as an opportunity. Without power, Parker would be more vulnerable to a surprise attack in her home. The police checkpoint, which had been easily circumvented by taking the Escalade off-road through a cemetery and a patch of woods, would provide plausible deniability.

  His years on the streets and his years as a student had come together for Chiu in one great truth—that all of life was a battleground. Everything was strategy and tactics, perseverance and discipline. The long-range planner prospered. The shortsighted fell by the wayside. The race was not to the swift, but to those who could see farthest and persist longest.

  Chiu was smarter and better educated than his rivals. And he intended to go far. Someday, people in Chinatown wouldn’t be telling stories about Sing Dock and Mock Duck. They would be telling stories about him.

  The Escalade hummed south, skirting rubbish in the streets. Up front, his men were disturbingly quiet. Chiu knew they would never openly challenge him. They were soldiers, supremely loyal, and they would follow him straight into hell. But they needed reassurance sometimes. Like children—and they were barely older than children—they required a soft voice and a comforting hand.

  “Listen up, little brothers.” This was a term of affection, one he knew they appreciated. “Parker’s story ain’t been told yet. From here on, we decide her quality of life. You get that? She don’t know it, but right now she’s just a cunt hair away from being dead.”

  “She coulda been dead already,” Eng said petulantly. He held the MAC in his lap, stroking it like a puppy.

  “Yeah, she could’ve. But what we need right now is discipline. We gotta play the long game.”

  “What game?”

  “I got a call from Lee at the Golden Duck. Fish Face is missing.”

  Eng turned in his seat. “Tommy? Shit.”

  “He’s probably just off gettin’ his knob gobbled by some skank,” Lam said.

  Chiu wasn’t so sure. “Parker and I had a parley in her Jeep. She said the Italians were behind the hit. I called bullshit, ’cause why would they drop only one body? But now …”

  Eng blinked. “You think those fuckin’ pasta shitters coulda clipped Tommy?”

  “Could be.” Chiu smiled. “Or Parker could be lying to save her lo faan ass.”

  Lam’s voice was low, thoughtful. “Maybe she’s in it with the wops. Maybe they, you know, outsourced the hit.”

  Chiu nodded. The same thought had occurred to him. “She gave up the Italians real fast. She might’ve been straight with me, or she might’ve been spinning a story with just enough reality in it to play me for a fool.”

  “How we gonna know?”

  “We keep an eye on her. If she’s tight with the Cosa Nostra crowd, she’ll do a sit-down with them before long.”

  Lam made a sound signifying understanding. “That’s why you had us plant the thing.”

  “Now you’re catching on, Monkey.”

  The nickname was affectionate. Every member of his crew had a gang name. Eng was Kicker. Chiu himself was Yellowjacket.

  And Joey Huang—he’d been Cricket. The name had suited him. A small, inoffensive creature.

  “If Parker killed Joey,” he said quietly, “with or without the Italians, we’ll know soon enough. Then we come a-knockin’, and her life takes a turn for the worse. We use harsh measures. We get fucking extreme. And we put Barbie in a body bag. She will be girl, interrupted. You feel me?”

  Heads were nodding. “I feel you, dai lo.”

  “Good
. Then drive.” Chiu laid his head against the back of the seat. “I want outta here. I don’t like this shitty hick town.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Bonnie found her Jeep unlocked, the key still in the ignition. Her purse was there, but the tote bag full of weapons was gone.

  She’d been effectively disarmed. Terrific.

  Come to think of it, she did have one more firearm. And she wanted it now, because she felt extremely naked without it.

  She climbed into the Jeep, instantly soaking the seat cushion. With the engine running, she turned on the dashboard blowers to dry off and warm up. Her teeth were still clacking, and unpredictable shivers racked her body. She remembered the blanket in the backseat, draped it around her like a shawl, and hugged herself, slapping at the patches of numbness in her lower legs, willing herself back to life.

  Then she got the Jeep moving and left the boardwalk behind.

  Downtown Brighton Cove was only three blocks from the beach. The streets were still navigable. She made it to her office in two minutes, parking in the alley between her building and the one next door. She let herself into the lobby and climbed the stairs in darkness to the second floor, her waterlogged sneakers squeaking with each step.

  By habit she flicked the wall switch in her office, before remembering that the power was out. She beamed her keychain flashlight into the kneehole of her desk and there it was, a Smith 1911 semiautomatic pistol duct-taped to the side panel.

  It had occurred to her that a girl in her line might attract a few enemies. If one of them showed up at her place of work while she was seated at her desk, she wanted a loaded gun within reach.

  She peeled off the tape and removed the gun. It was a .45, too big and noisy for a hit kit. When doing a hit, she preferred a smaller caliber gun that could be more effectively silenced.

  She checked the magazine. It was fully loaded—eight rounds. She’d had more ammo at home, but it had gone into the tote bag.

  Eight rounds wasn’t a hell of a lot when you were going up against people who toted machine guns, but it sure beat nothing at all. She felt better with the gun in her hand, and better still when she’d shed her wet clothes, toweled off with a sweatshirt, and donned a spare outfit she kept at the office—shorts and a maroon tee with the words Jersey Girl printed across the breasts. Not that she was particularly proud of living in New Jersey; she just liked the shirt.

  She even had a second pair of sneakers at hand, and another hat, a gray newsboy cap with a certain turn-of-the-century charm. Never let it be said she was unprepared for a sartorial emergency.

  Dressed and newly armed, she felt almost like herself again. Only one thing remained to be done. She pulled a wastebasket into the center of the room, leaned over it, and calmly and deliberately threw up.

  She’d been so goddamn sure it was all over. And she’d been afraid. As tough as she liked to think she was, as cool and heartless, she’d been so very afraid.

  Not afraid merely of dying. Afraid of missing out. What she’d discovered with Des just this evening was something worth preserving and exploring. Something that could really go somewhere, maybe lead her out of the dark maze of her life. Maybe take her to a place where dealing with death and facing torture weren’t the costs she paid for being alive.

  Or maybe not. She might be fated to stay on this course till the end. Her flashlight beam moved to the photo of the original Bonnie Parker on the wall. Her namesake grinned at her, a stogie jammed defiantly in her mouth, a gat in her hand. That other Bonnie seemed to say that you could pretend to yourself all you liked, but there was no way out except the way she herself had found, when she and Clyde were torn apart in a bloody fusillade.

  Fuck that. Clyde’s Bonnie was dead, and today’s Bonnie was alive. That was enough for now.

  She locked up her office. At the end of the hall there was a washroom. She checked herself out in the mirror in the glow of her flashlight. Her hair was a tangled mess peppered with bits of debris. She brushed it clean, then dried her windbreaker with hand towels and shrugged it on.

  Returning to the Jeep, she stashed the .45 under the driver’s seat, then headed for the checkpoint at the edge of town. She was still intent on getting to Devil’s Hook. If anything, planting the ticket stub in Dante’s car was more urgent than ever. It would confirm the story she’d told Chiu, and maybe get him and his crew off her back for good.

  Three squad cars, their light bars flashing, were stationed at the checkpoint. The role of the police was to keep looters out of town, not to keep residents in, so logically there was no reason for her to be stopped. But she expected to be, and she was. Maguire’s troops were always on her case these days.

  Tonight it was the chief himself who took the lead. He waved her to a stop with an imperious hand and strode up to the Jeep through the shimmering downpour.

  “Hello, Parker,” he said with his customary malicious bonhomie. “Surprised to see me?”

  “Not really. I always knew you were too dumb to come in out of the rain.”

  She noticed Bradley Walsh loitering in the background, obviously eavesdropping.

  Maguire aimed his flashlight at her. “Where are you off to?”

  “Sunday drive.”

  “It’s Monday.”

  “I’m getting a late start.”

  Bradley smiled at this.

  The chief was unamused. “You’re heading out of town shortly before midnight in the middle of a hurricane. You won’t say why. Why shouldn’t I believe you’ve got trouble in mind?”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “A lot of houses are standing empty right now. They make tempting targets for looters.”

  “Gimme a break. You got nothing to tie me to any burglaries. All those donuts have clogged the arteries to your brain.”

  The flashlight explored the Jeep’s interior, the cone of light falling on her purse. “That handbag of yours looks pretty heavy. What are you carrying?”

  “Lady products.”

  “I never know what women mean by that.”

  “Tampons, moisturizers, a vibrator for those lonely nights.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  She did mind, actually. She had just remembered that her set of lockpicks was inside the purse. If Maguire wanted to hold her on suspicion of burglary, the pick set would be just the ticket.

  “You’ve never seen a vibrator?” she asked, stalling.

  “Not one of yours. I’m guessing it’s designed to withstand extreme cold.”

  “Sorry. You don’t have a warrant.”

  “I don’t need a warrant. This is a public street.”

  “You need probable cause.”

  “With you, Parker, there’s always probable clause. You’ve always lived up to your name.”

  “It’s a perfectly good name. I can’t help it if Clyde Barrow’s main squeeze used it too.”

  “No, it’s more than a coincidence. It’s something spooky. You’re just like her. You’re like her in every way.”

  “Am I?” She leaned toward him. “They say she shot a lawman once.”

  Maguire’s face puckered up in a squinty scowl. “That sounds like a threat.”

  “Just a historical observation.”

  He gave her a long look. The rain had picked up, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  She wondered if he’d forgotten about the purse. She hoped so. If he found the lockpicks, he would search the rest of the car and turn up the unlicensed .45.

  “I’ve been finding out about you, Parker. You’ve led an eventful life. Did you love your parents?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “I think you did. At least you were loyal to them. Loyal enough to avenge their deaths.”

  “You’ve gone off the deep end, Dan. That’s a dangerous move for a guy as shallow as you.”

  “They were murdered. You saw it. And you made sure the killers didn’t get away with it. Didn’t you?”

  “Seriously, you gotta stop f
ortifying the cough syrup with Night Train.”

  Bradley was studying her, a quizzical expression on his face. He hadn’t heard this story before, it seemed. And now he had some idea of why the chief had flown to Buckington, Ohio.

  “Truth is,” Maguire said, “a jury might take pity on you. Orphan girl, all alone in the world, taking the law into her own hands. They might not send you away for too long. Not for that. But it opens up a whole can of worms, doesn’t it, Parker? I mean, all the things you’ve done since?”

  “Can of worms, barrel of monkeys—it’s just a matter of perspective.”

  “Once the door’s open, even a little, all the rest of it will come out. Your clients will start to talk. We’ll make them talk. We’ll have leverage. How many people have you killed by now? A dozen? More?”

  Bradley turned away. At first she thought she couldn’t look at her. Then she realized she was talking into his portable radio.

  “I’ve never killed anybody, Dan,” she said with a smile. “I’m a law-abiding citizen.”

  He snorted. “You can’t even say it with a straight face.”

  “I just think it’s funny how obsessed you are with me. You’re like a dog chasing its tail.”

  “I see myself more as Captain Ahab hunting the white whale.”

  “Yeah, that worked out great for him.”

  “Keep riding me, Parker. It’s not going to help. I’m on to you. Now let me see that purse.”

  Bonnie blew out a breath. “Sheesh. We back on that again? A girl can’t leave her own home—”

  “You weren’t at your own home. You were at 113 Chestnut Avenue, the home of Mr. Desmond Harris. Your Jeep was parked out front until about an hour ago.”

  “You’re so observant. It’s what I love about you.”

  “What’s in the purse?”

  Things were getting dicey. She couldn’t put him off much longer.

  “Chief.” Bradley holstered the radio on his belt. “We got an alarm ringing at Jay’s Deli.”

  “Aw, shit.” Maguire gave up. “Stay out of trouble, Parker.”