The Usual Santas

by Peter Lovesey

  School children came down the street with their book bags and old folks mobbed the LeeLee Bakery for the discounted late-day pastries.

  Mak kept his eyes on the construction site.

  At six p.m. the work crew packed up their tools and left the tenement building. The men split up on the corner and Mak stayed a half-block behind Doe Jai and two others, following them down the long stretch of East Broadway until they passed beneath the Manhattan Bridge and turned off into Mechanics Alley.

  There, under the shadow of the looming bridge, was a blue car parked halfway onto the sidewalk. The noise was deafening. The roar and screech of the subway trains careening across the bridge assaulted his ears. In the rare intervals when there were no subways, the sound of traffic, five stories or so above, remained constant. It all made for a steady violent rumble, its rhythms broken only by the thuds and clangs of heavy trucks as they banged their way over the East River to Brooklyn or back.

  One of the laborers continued as Doe Jai and the other man got into the car.

  Mak stepped back away from the corner as the car came out of the alley and turned uptown. He wrote its plate number across his palm, wondering if Doe Jai regularly left the car there.

  Walking back along Division Street, he realized he had five hours before the midnight shift and decided to pay a visit to one of the gambling basements on Bayard. At rush hour and dinnertime the gambling joints were usually empty.

  Inside Number Seven, the basement was brightly lit with a mahjong game underway at the back of the long room. Otherwise, there were only a few of the association’s cronies hanging around, making lowball bets just to keep the action going.

  It was cold and for the true night crawlers the evening was very young.

  Mak saw the old man he was looking for, hunched over a card table near the back, where they kept pots of coffee and tea. He was reading a Chinese newspaper, occasionally looking up at the players at the mahjong table.

  This man, Jum Sook, was known to be a former boxer for the clan association. He’d been a Hung Kwun—a Red Pole enforcer—in the hierarchy. Retired now, his responsibilities to the clan consisted of managing the house supply of brandy, tea, cigarettes and coffee.

  The cagey old man had recommended Mak for the overnight security guard position at Confucius Towers, where the clan owned a number of apartments. Knowing Mak spoke English well, Jum Sook had made him the clan’s link to the building manager’s office where he was always to have his eye out for shady subleases. Mak had been on the job over four years and had helped thwart several rental scams.

  Jum Sook gave Mak a small grin and allowed him to sit at the card table.

  Mak told the story of Doe Jai’s assault and Pretty Boy’s suicide. Afterward the old man said quietly in Chinese, “You have no reason to kill anyone. The victim was weak at heart and could not find the courage to face his future.”

  Mak explained that he felt an injustice had been committed, one that required vengeance.

  Jum Sook shook his head sadly, then made a crude sketch with Chinese notations in the margins of his newspaper. The drawing looked a little like a screwdriver. The old man wrote six inches in Chinese next to it. Further down along the margin he wrote the phrase where the eye meets the nose.

  He never said another word. He just kept writing on the newspaper, directing Mak’s attention to the scrawl of Chinese characters. In silence, Mak read more phrases that sounded in his mind vaguely like a poem—an eye for an eye and he shall hate what he sees. Finally, Jum Sook drew a cartoon face with a drooling crooked mouth and a blind eye.

  Jum Sook stood up and rolled the newspaper into a tube, wrapping his fists around it. The old Red Pole enforcer held it at eye level and suddenly thrust a short jab, twisting his wrist at the end of it, striking like a Shaolin kung fu arrow fist.

  A few players entered the basement and Jum Sook stuck the rolled paper into his back pocket. He started to refill a teapot even as Michael Mak left the cool musty basement.

  the shift

  Mak went in through the porter’s trash door, avoiding the front lobby’s bank of black and white surveillance monitors. The security guards at their half-sized lockers in a basement room next to the building engineer’s office. The staff consisted of five guards and a supervisor. Michael Mak did the overnight, with the other guards splitting Mak’s shift on his nights off.

  He punched in at the time clock by the door. There were several boxes in a corner that the afternoon shift had signed for. He checked the log. Luck Yee Dental Offices accounted for two of the boxes that the day shift would then have to turn over to the receptionist. Mak knew that Luck Yee was one of the several offices that secretly disarmed their alarms, annoyed that the system frequently went off at night in response to electrical spikes, thunderstorms and blackouts.

  Few guards wanted the night shift, but it suited Mak. It was the one shift with no one looking over your shoulder. He just answered to a bank of surveillance monitors, a log book and a schedule of patrols controlled by a computer. There were no asshole supervisors or building managers like there were during the day. There were no deliveries to handle and no building inspectors or fire drills on the graveyard shift.

  The overnight was boring and lonely, but there was no bullshit.

  At four a.m. Mak activated the electronic Patrol Scan wand, pocketed the security set of master keys and proceeded to conduct his building patrol, top floor down to the basement. The patrol layout was structured around fifty coded electronic chips positioned strategically along the corridors and stairwells of the high-rise building. The chips’ locations were downloaded into the wand with a beep-tone each time the guard made contact, recording the time as well. The electronic patrol system was supposed to keep the guards focused on a diligent patrol round, ensuring that they walked the length of the corridors and checked the stairwells and didn’t nap in any of the porter’s supply rooms. A computer-generated weekly review of the patrols rated the guards’ performances. The day supervisor posted the results and admonished or commended individual guards.

  Mak actually liked the patrol routine. He always hit the chips in a timely fashion. The building patrol took an average of thirty-eight minutes and he scored consistently high accuracy.

  The patrol gave him a chance to stretch his legs, to get away from the security podium at the front lobby. He took the elevator to the top floor and walked down the corridor, twenty-five steps each way, touching the chips on the stairwell doors. He followed the pattern on the nest landing and made his way down, the silence broken only by his footsteps and the beep of the wand.

  Within thirty-four minutes he’d arrived at the ground floor of Confucius Towers and continued the patrol round, checking the doors of all the street-level storefront businesses and the basement exits that the porters and engineers used.

  On the way back up he returned to the Luck Yee Dental Offices, using the master key to get in. He went to the supply closet, grabbed a handful of latex gloves and took a small bottle from the shelf.

  Mak was done before thirty-seven minutes had expired. He wrapped up the patrol, tapping the wand against the last electronic chip in the locker room. He logged the wand back in, placed it in its charger and returned to the front lobby.

  It was 4:39 a.m.

  As usual, no one was around.

  At six-thirty a.m. Mak took his break and went down to the lockers. In the building engineer’s tool dump area, he found a rusty screwdriver that was about the right length. He placed it into a plastic sandwich bag and put the bag in his coat.

  He used the master key set to open the security supply closet and removed a cardboard box containing several pairs of discarded handcuffs left behind by former guards. The handcuffs were worn down and dented but still usable for restraining perpetrators. He removed one pair, tested it with his key, then put it into another plastic bag a
nd into his coat pocket.

  From his own half-locker he removed his aluminum mini-thermos and sipped a hot cup of dark bo lei tea before residents would be leaving for work. The weak dawn light would stream through the lobby and rush hour would begin.

  It was a new day. He wondered if the blue car would appear in Mechanics Alley.

  Eight-fifteen and Mechanics Alley was empty. Mak went to the Vietnamese shop on the corner and bought a grilled pork bahn mi sandwich, wolfing it down while he waited.

  A half-hour later there was still no sign of the car and he didn’t feel like waiting any longer.

  Maybe it was Doe Jai’s day off.

  Mak decided to return and check it out in the afternoon.

  Back in his tenement apartment, Mak put the screwdriver, latex gloves and the small bottle of anesthetic into a black zippered sack. He dropped the handcuffs into a rice bowl of cleaning fluid and drained two big shots of Remy before falling asleep in the shady morning light.

  It was early afternoon when he awoke, feeling rested. Eager.

  When he returned to the alley, the blue car was there and Mak strolled casually past to confirm the plate number.

  There was no doubt.

  He fought the urge to go by the construction site to sneak a look at Doe Jai, but he didn’t want to risk getting noticed by any of the work crew.

  Concentrate on the car, he told himself.

  As he came back down Henry Street, a few people were frantically making their way to the subway in the piercing cold February air. It was Friday. He had the night off. The opportunity to strike was at hand.

  He drifted over to the Duk Chen Seafood market. The Fukienese fish monger thought it strange that someone would buy just two hai crabs, but he could discern nothing from Mak’s appearance.

  Bait, the fish man figured.

  Mak carried the bag of crabs back toward Bayard, stopping at Mon Kee’s for takeout lo mein noodles. Noodles would be easy to digest, he thought, and would sustain him into the night.

  He knew that Friday was payday for the construction crews, and they usually stayed together for the crew boss’s free Chinatown dinner and for drinks and gambling after.

  Things would run late, maybe ten or even eleven o’clock, Mak figured. The freezing weather would mean fewer people out on the streets.

  All good, Mak thought, as he turned for home to prepare the tools he’d need for the job.

  Mak placed the bag of hai crabs into the kitchen sink. He put on a pair of the latex gloves and started eating his lo mein. He could hear the crabs scuttling and scratching around inside the brown paper bag.

  He took the handcuffs out of the rice bowl and put them on top of the takeout napkins, letting the cleaning fluid soak into them.

  The crabs scratching, poking around.

  He got an old face towel and wiped down the handcuffs, tossing everything into the black zipper sack.

  Chewing down the noodles, he took a black woolen cap from his closet. It was a ski mask that could be rolled into a seaman’s cap and worn that way. They sold them for two dollars on Canal Street at the first hint of winter. All he had to do was pull the eyeholes down. There was a bigger mouth hold also, but he wasn’t planning on having a conversation with Doe Jai.

  He finished off the noodles, then took from the bottom of his closet an object that resembled a black hand-held radio but was actually a stun gun. He’d purchased it by mail order from the Enforcement Brigade America catalog before the guns were declared illegal in New York.

  It came with a leather holster and a charger. For home defense purposes, like it said in the catalog.

  He opened the brown paper bag, turned it upside down and shook the two crabs into the kitchen sink. As he juiced up the stun gun, the crabs danced around the drain hole, their agitated pincers up high.

  Mak jabbed the gun at the first crab and it attacked immediately, clamping onto the gun’s electric prong. The jolt blew the crab back across the sink, but one claw remained fused to the metal prong. The severed claw turned lurid red. Mak tapped it against the side of the sink and it fell off, leaving a thin trail of smoke.

  The second crab, sensing electricity from above, backed away waving its ragged claws.

  Mak thrust the gun tip at its mouth. The crab flipped up into the air and landed on its hard shell in the sink, joints arched backwards. Two crabs fully cooked. Mak stared for a moment, then turned off the gun and placed it into the black sack.

  He cleared the crab carcasses from the sink and set the clock radio alarm to five p.m. Staying off the alcohol, he lay in bed, imagining how he would do it. It occurred to him that it might be best to leave the handcuffs on. That way if anything went wrong, he wouldn’t wind up wrestling in the gutter.

  Still, it would probably be best if he removed the cuffs. One less piece of evidence. Mak thought he’d take Doe Jai’s wallet as well. That would stall the identification process. While the brain bled.

  When the alarm went off, it was dark outside. Another Chinatown night was beginning.

  patrol

  Wearing the latex gloves, he approached Pell Street carrying the zippered bag like a knapsack. It was just before six p.m. and he waited until the work crew came out and went toward Mott. Doe Jai was among them as they trooped into Wong Kee’s Famous Pork Chop King.

  Mak figured give them a couple of hours, plenty of time to patrol the streets around Mechanics Alley and see what things looked like.

  Along East Broadway the foot traffic was thinning out as the evening turned black and ominous. He found a spot near where Market Street became Division. A place where he could observe from a distance anyone walking from the far Mott Street end. If Doe Jai wasn’t alone when he entered the alley, the attack would have to be postponed. Mak had twenty years of patience and was prepared to abort the mission today if necessary.

  Above him the subway trains shrieked.

  The street lamps were spaced far apart. A few were broken and the rest threw a sickly yellow glow over the tenements. Allen Street led north to Canal. He’d wanted to circle away from the alley in that direction. The sidewalks would be lined with stacked garbage bags from the restaurants, awaiting morning pick up. When he was done, he’d shove his tools into one of the bags and no one would be the wiser.

  He planned to use one of the payphones along Canal Street.

  His patrol led him past the dark car twice. He had to decide which stone bridge column to hide behind. One that provided a clear view of the car. There he’d roll down the ski mask and be good to go, everything ready.

  Several men came down East Broadway, but none of them resembled Doe Jai. It was early.

  A little after ten, two men came down East Broadway from Mott. As they got closer, Mak could make out that one of them was Doe Jai, carrying a tool bag.

  Mak backed away from the corner, retreating to his spot at the rear of the alley, where barbed wire fencing joined the graffiti-tagged stone column. From his view a few steps behind the car, he saw the two men part ways at the opening to the alley. He took several deep boxer’s breaths and unzipped the black sack.

  Doe Jai came down the alley throwing a look over his shoulder. He coughed and spat out a clot of phlegm. He passed the front of the car, opened the trunk and dropped the tool bag in. Doe Jai slammed the trunk shut, but all Mak could hear was the thunder of the subways above.

  Mak rolled down his ski mask and drew the stun gun from the sack. A blue spark jumped between the prongs when he juiced it up.

  Doe Jai had his key in the driver’s side door when Mak made his move. The door popped open. Mak barreled into him. Doe Jai managed to yell, “Dew! . . . Fuck!” but his cry was drowned out.

  He threw his arms up and Mak jabbed him with the stun gun where his jacket rose. The charge jolted Doe Jai across the hood of the car like he’d b
een slammed by a hundred-pound sack of rice.

  His hear racing, Make shoved the man face-down between the car and the building. He put a knee between Doe Jai’s shoulder blades, pulled the limp arms back and snapped on the handcuffs. He could see Doe Jai was struggling to even catch a breath and gave him another jolt.

  His body jerked spasmodically as Mak poured the drug from Luck Yee’s onto the rag. He cupped the rag over Doe Jai’s mouth and nose and held it in place until after the bridge noises subsided. Doe Jai still twitched against the hold of the handcuffs, even as Mak pocketed the stun gun and took the screwdriver from his bag. He rolled Doe Jai over and saw his slack, open mouth and half-closed eyes. He was still fighting against the blackness clouding his mind.

  Mak remembered his cousin Pretty Boy’s jagged scar torment, his humiliation, his sorrow and pain.

  He positioned the screwdriver tip on Doe Jai’s face where the nose meets the eye.

  Fuck you, was Mak’s last thought as he readied the jab thrust.

  He could feel the vibration from the subways above. The sharpened screwdriver tip shoved easily through orb, ligament, muscle and nerve. Doe Jai’s mouth jerked open in a silent scream as the steel shank penetrated tissue, carving out damage to the lobe, with Mak’s hand fishtailing as he pushed into the man’s brain.

  Mak imagined how one side of Doe Jai’s face would sag, the muscles weakened, leaving him to drool frequently. He’d have memory loss and speech impairment. Doe Jai, Knife Boy, would become a slurring, gooey idiot, seeing from one eye the horror he’d become, unable to understand what befell him.

  The righteousness of the Tao. The way of all things.

  He took Doe Jai’s thin wallet, removed the handcuffs and left him lying there beside the car. He left the alley riding a wave of adrenalin. North on Allen, Mak dumped the rag, the little bottle, the handcuffs and the screwdriver in one of the dozens of black garbage bags lining the curb.