Death Money

by Henry Chang

  “So fast?”

  “It’s symbolic, yo. You think anybody’s checking the ashes? They can bury him anytime. Whenever the cremation’s done. It’s all potter’s field anyways.”

  “What time?”

  “Nine to noon. They already posted an obit in the Chinese papers.”

  “Ceremonial,” Jack observed. “What cemetery?”

  “You gotta check with Wah Fook.” Billy seemed amused, watching Jack carve off pieces of Kim’s legendary rib eye, devouring them.

  “Any other surprises?” Jack asked as they clanged the last of their beers. Billy chortled like a villain.

  “You know those phone numbers on the menu paper?” Billy paused for effect as Jack waited for the punch line. “They’re restaurants all owned by Bossy Gee.”

  BOSSY GEE lit up a few lights in Jack’s head. Prominent Chinatown businessman, big shot with the Hip Ching Association. Owns a bunch of Chinatown buildings. His family had a long local history, with connections to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

  “The eight-eight-eight prefix on those restaurant numbers?” Billy offered. “Bossy’s idea. The Lucky Eights. Bot bot bot. The Triple Eights.”

  Gamblers’ numbers, suckers’ payout. He wondered if it was all just coincidence. Bossy Gee had been investigated by the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) for alleged ties to local tongs. Bossy Gee was known as the black sheep of the Gees. Not surprising that the association wouldn’t want to get dragged into any of his endeavors.

  “The Lucky Dragon and Lucky Phoenix he acquired in a fire sale. The previous Fukienese owner’s daughter got shot and killed outside the Lucky Dragon. And the Lucky Phoenix was in debt after their accountant cooked the books and disappeared. Now Bossy’s leasing out the two joints to new Fuks.”

  That explained the bleak and beat-down feel of the Lucky restaurants. They hadn’t been so lucky for the operators, first-generation Chinese immigrants in the South Bronx, more grist for the grind of ghetto crime.

  Billy ordered another round of beers, snuffed out his cigarette butt. “The other two, China Village and Golden City,” Billy continued, “Bossy’s had them a long time. Guess they’re doing okay.”

  Jack remembered the modified Chinatown-restaurant business models he’d visited. He finished his steak, recalling, Bossy Gee had two sons, one who joined the Marines, and another who joined the Black Dragons. One boy had a soldier’s dream; the other has a criminal record.

  The beers arrived, and Jack decided to pace himself, figuring he’d have a long night ahead. Now he had even more questions than answers, and questions in Chinatown rarely led in just one direction. He knew it was too late to find Ah Por and decided to visit her in the morning with the knockoff wristwatch.

  Someone started up the jukebox with Gloria Estefan’s “Cuts Both Ways.” It reminded him of Alexandra, but the warm and soft images of Alex naked in bed were crowded out by the memory of the cold and hard body on the refrigerated rack at the morgue.

  He resisted the urge to call her.

  “You hang out here,” Billy instructed. “I gotta close up the tofu shop. Then I’ll take the old Mustang outta Confucius, and we’ll go for a ride.”

  “Where?” Jack asked skeptically.

  “Didn’t you say Yao had gambling problems in the Bronx? You mentioned Fay Lo’s, right?”

  “You know where Fay Lo’s is?”

  “No, but I know how to get there.”

  Jack shot him a you-must-be-high look.

  “There’s a car, or minivan, that goes there,” Billy added.

  “To Fay Lo’s?” Jack pressed.

  “It’s like a junket, I hear. For the seniors, the old fart playas.” Billy grinned. “We can follow them.”

  “Who?” Jack quizzed. “Where?”

  “The minivan waits on Doyers. I think it’s a Ghost racket. Takes the old-timers to the tracks and titty bars, to Chinese gambling Bronx-style.” The Ghost Legion connection made Jack think about his onetime blood brother, Lucky Louie, Ghost dailo boss, who was useless to him now, lying in a coma at Downtown Medical.

  “When?” asked Jack.

  “I’ll be back in an hour,” Billy said as he left the booth.

  The door slammed behind him, and the song on the jukebox ended. Grampa’s was quiet again as Jack tried to find some connection between Chinatown and the Chinese in the Bronx, tried to work his way back through the clues and the questions doing a lion dance in his head.

  He’d heard all the usual hard-luck tales from waiters and kitchen help, Chinese workingmen who’d been seduced by the idea of luck—every poor man’s chance to be emperor—recklessly wagering two weeks’, even a month’s pay on the nose of a horse or a dog, the flip of a card or the turn of a number.

  The truth was they were desperate for luck, anguished over believing that they could change the miserable, hopeless cast of their low workingmen’s existence. They were gambling with their lives.

  Finishing his beer, Jack pulled out his cell phone and called Alexandra. Her cheery greeting went to voice mail, and he hung up. He didn’t like not getting an answer, and he hated to leave personal messages. Instead he dropped some coins into the jukebox and waited for the song that had briefly brought him back to tender moments with Alex.

  Muscle Mustang

  BILLY POWERED THE old Mustang out of the underground garage at Confucius Towers. It was only a few blocks to Grampa’s, but he made a right on Bowery, gassed up on Houston Street, and took a quick cruise through the mean streets of the Lower East Side. Another right, going east, and the streets were wet and black. He rolled through the extended settlements of Chiu Chaos, Malaysians, and Vietnamese, continuing east to Essex, crossing Delancey into areas once Jewish, then Puerto Rican, and now Fukienese Fuk Jo land.

  He circled back toward Grampa’s, past the housing projects on South Street, quietly amused as he thought about Jack, his Chinatown friend, the jook sing cop who was conflicted about whether he was more American or more Chinese.

  But it was never that complicated for Billy; all he had to do was look in the mirror. And in New York City, it never took much for someone to call you Chink and remind you who you were.

  He’d been more than happy to help Jack, even happier now that the trail was leading to gambling and drinking and titty bars. It’d been a long time since he’d visited the Bronx anyway.

  He patted the compact Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol under his jacket and checked the dashboard lights as Grampa’s neon bar sign beckoned down East Broadway.

  Rollin’ Dirty

  JACK STEPPED OUT of Grampa’s as the black Mustang pulled up. He opened the passenger door, saving Billy a rise out of the driver’s bucket seat. Muscle car, thought Jack, tinted windows, mag wheels, chrome runner. The car looked old, but the engine was growling like it’d been souped up. The worst kind of gang-boy getaway car you could drive through an anticrime sector and not expect to get stopped for drugs and weapons, especially in the South Bronx.

  “Haven’t seen this car in a while,” Jack said, sliding into the passenger seat. “What happened to the Range Rover?”

  “The ex-wife got the Rover, that bitch,” Billy spat out. “But this bad boy gets me where I need to go.”

  “No doubt,” Jack agreed.

  They drove behind Confucius Towers and turned off Bowery onto Pell Street. Billy killed the headlights before he made the sharp left onto Doyers, going slowly up the inclining street, and pulled over when he saw the minivan around the bend.

  Two old men wearing oversized down jackets and hunting caps approached the minivan. They were joined by three other old men. The driver fired up his lights, popped the door, and waved the men in.

  The seniors looked like restaurant workers—waiters and da jop kitchen help—the kind you’d see inside the homey little Chinatown coffee shops or at the local OTB picking the ponies. They were the last stragglers from the old bachelor generation lost in America.

  They reminded Jack of his pa, who h
ad been buried for six months in the pastoral grounds of Evergreen Cemetery. The traditional Ching Ming grave-sweeping ceremonies would be observed by the Chinese in the coming weeks.

  The minivan crossed Chatham Square, went down Catherine Street to catch the FDR on South Street. Billy followed it, a few car lengths back. When they hit the highway, Billy turned on the dash radio, and the rock station blared out an old Steppenwolf number. Billy cranked up the radio, slapping the steering wheel and bellowing along with his own misunderstood lyrics:

  Roarin’ down the highway,

  Cruising for adventure,

  To whatever breaks our way …

  Jack allowed Billy his two minutes of wild man, figuring the song was ending. When it segued to a commercial, Jack turned off the radio and asked, “They run a van up every night?”

  “Not sure every night,” Billy answered. “But definitely weekends.”

  “Their gambling jones so bad they need to go to the Bronx?”

  “Yeah,” Billy said, keeping the minivan in sight. “Chinese love to gamble. It gives the working stiffs an excuse to hang out, have a few drinks, maybe score some pussy.”

  A one-night escape from the shackles of their lost China dreams.

  The lights across the East River danced, neon colors shimmering off the dark waters, the city lights of Brooklyn and Queens sparkling in the distance like a scattering of jewels. A full moon was frozen overhead.

  Cruising at sixty miles an hour, the Mustang rolled low to the blacktop, its mag wheels biting into the curves of the undulating highway. The outer boroughs flashed by on the other side of the river as the black car muscled its way north toward the Willis Avenue Bridge.

  Billy said, “You know what? You mentioned the Harlem River, right? My first thought, the niggas killed him. Or the spics. You know? The usual, ripping off the takeout boys. You know the deal. Chinese always getting fucked in the South Bronx, yo.”

  Jack didn’t offer a comment to that but knew he’d likely have to check in with the South Bronx precincts to see what the crime profile was against Asian Americans and also to get the lay of the land. Rob the guy, sure, but dump him in the river? What kind of gangbanger would go through that much trouble to rob a deliveryman?

  “Those motherfuckers,” Billy continued. “But I ain’t worried. I got my shit.” He patted the steel next to his ribs. “Punks don’t scare me.”

  “You packing?” Jack asked, alarmed.

  “Shit yeah.” Billy proudly flashed the gun inside his jacket. “Nine millimeter. Beretta. No boolshit.”

  “Fuck, Billy. You should have told me that before I got in the car.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “You forget I’m a cop?”

  “You think I’m rollin’ dirty?” Billy spat back. “I’m licensed, brother. Permit to carry. Straight up. Would I compromise your ass? I’m hurt. I got a businessman’s license because I carry and transfer phat stacks of dollars to the bank. A lot of Chinatown merchants got carry permits.” He blew out a breath and kept the Mustang behind the minivan. “Wow … so all right?” he said with a smirk. “We cool?”

  Jack took a breath and nodded okay, but he’d have to watch out for Billy’s bad temper and his drinking. Not let him drive if he got anywhere near drunk. In the South Bronx, of all places.

  Jack rolled down the window and let the freezing wind buffet his face as they approached the Willis Avenue Bridge.

  “You still packing that thirty-eight?” Billy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “You still carrying that shorty? For real? You kidding me. Every nigga with a nine out there, and you with that peashooter thirty-eight?”

  The minivan bounced in the distance.

  “Shit, Jacky, fourteen nines in a clip, against six thirty-eights? Damn, you must be high, whatever you’re thinking.”

  Jack had considered it, after the near-fatal encounter in Seattle. In his mind’s eye he saw it again, his six-shot speedloader slipping into the Colt’s open cylinder at the approach of a tong enforcer with a semiautomatic in his fist, aiming for the kill shot. It was a nightmare he’d have to tell the NYPD shrink about.

  The thought made him think about Alexandra, how she’d saved his life, but with the Bronx waiting in the distance, he kept his eyes on the minivan. He’d considered switching over to a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, a nine-millimeter piece, but most cops were favoring the new Glocks. The Glock 19 was a light twenty-three ounces unloaded, with a polymer frame and a fifteen-shot magazine. Hard to fault. But not a conversation he wanted with Billy.

  Jack also knew that, like Billy, other cops favored the Berettas. Italian made, and also a NATO standard. Then there was Smith & Wesson, flying the American flag. The M69 series was a double action, twenty-six ounces unloaded with a stainless alloy frame. It held thirteen shots and featured a combat trigger.

  Bottom line, Jack figured, fifteen shots are better than thirteen. Those last two shots could save your life, which he knew was what most NYPD cops believed. The Glock was lightweight and had the top capacity with the least recoil.

  He’d have to make a change soon.

  They crossed the bridge, and Jack quickly scanned the dark river below, wondering again where Chang’s body had entered the water.

  The Mustang blazed past Mott Haven and Hunts Point toward Pelham Bay. Before they knew it they’d crossed over into Westchester, the highway signs and the minivan leading them to the city of Yonkers and the racetrack.

  What Jack remembered about Yonkers was that it was home to a large Irish and Italian population, and that the city had refused to desegregate its public-school system. In many ways, it was cop land.

  A big billboard beckoned them to Yonkers Raceway.

  Trotters

  AT YONKERS RACEWAY the horses didn’t gallop around a mile-long track with diminutive jockeys on their backs, Jack knew, like at Aqueduct or Belmont Park. Instead, drivers sat in sulky rigs pulled by horses that trotted unnaturally around a half-mile oval.

  The old men went to the half-empty spectator grandstand and stood by the railing, the only Chinese at the track. Billy parked the car, and they walked to a spot near the men. Jack watched as Billy sidled up to them, eavesdropping at first, then engaging in small talk. Afterward, he drifted away toward the teller windows to place his bets.

  The men stayed put, and Jack realized that they’d already made their bets with the Chinatown bookies involved with the junket operation.

  Billy came back with a program and a fistful of tickets, surprising Jack by giving him three of them.

  “I overheard their bets,” Billy bragged. “Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  The horses on Jack’s tickets, according to the program, were named Emperor’s Sword, Dragon’s Tale, and, to Jack’s amazement, Alexandra’s Choice. Their race position numbers spanning the first three races were 3, 6, and 8, all lucky Chinese numbers. The number 3 was a magic number. The number 6 sounded like “luck” in Cantonese, and number 8, bot, implied riches.

  Jack wasn’t surprised that the men had bet on those numbers, and probably not on the names of the horses.

  A moving gate led the sulkies to the start, and suddenly they were off, the horses trotting furiously for position. The spectators all watched the colorful numbers on the eight sulkies chasing the leader around the oval track.

  Lucky

  THEY WON TWO out of the three races, placing in the third, with Billy whooping it up alongside the old men. He’d gotten close and had established a gambler’s hingdaai, or “camaraderie.”

  Jack figured it could come in handy later. His three tickets won him sixty-six dollars, which he offered back to Billy, who wouldn’t hear of it.

  The three races had taken almost an hour. For the time being, they were all winners.

  “Let’s go,” Billy said as the men headed back toward the minivan. “They’re going to the strip joint next.”

  That’ll be another hour, thought Jack, but we can wait in the car.


  They followed the minivan onto the highway and back to the Bronx. Traffic was light going south, and Billy had to slow down so as not to get too close to the minivan. He tapped the radio and another Steppenwolf tune rocked out. Pounding the steering wheel, he again mangled the lyrics.

  … On a magic carpet ride!

  Spread your thighs girl,

  Open wide girl,

  Let your fantasy take you away!

  Jack wondered if Billy had managed to sneak a drink at the track.

  “Perfect!” Billy declared as the song ended. “They said there was a Korean stripper in from Seoul. A real knockout. Goes by the name Soomi.”

  “Good for them. We’ll wait in the car,” Jack said, still worried about Billy’s drinking.

  “You kiddin’ me?”

  “C’mon Billy, that’s all just titillation.”

  “Well, you got the tit part right,” Billy said sardonically.

  “It’s crass, Billy,” Jack said.

  “It’s ass, brother. Trust me, I won’t get you in trouble. You promised that lawyer lady you’d be a good boy or something?”

  Jack smiled but didn’t dignify Billy’s poke at Alexandra with an answer.

  “Okay,” he relented. “But just one beer.”

  “One’s all we need, bro.” Billy grinned. “And it ain’t the beer I’m thinking about.”

  The entire trip took about twenty-five minutes. They parked under the overpass as the minivan stopped down the block from a big flashing sign that announced BOOTY. Silhouettes of naked dancers flanked a smaller sign with the words GENTLEMEN’S CLUB.

  “Yeah Booty’s!” Billy cheered.

  “You been here before?” Jack asked.

  “Just once. One of my customers threw a Christmas party here.”

  A huge black bouncer guarded the door, a bald, six-foot-five, three-hundred-pound load of hurt. He could have been a lineman for one of the local football teams. “Booty” rang a bell in Jack’s head as he tried to recall something from old police blotters, something about Bronx mafiosi and Latin Lords drug dealers teaming up to take over the area’s vice rackets. Jack imagined that, like most jiggle joints, Booty’s was mobbed up.