Death Money

by Henry Chang

  A few blocks away, he could hear the rumble of a Metro North train, and in the far distance the lights of the George Washington Bridge twinkled. Farther south, he could make out the façade of Yankee Stadium. In the darkness, he realized they were near the Highbridge section where he’d been earlier in the morning.

  “The homies nicknamed this place Chino’s,” Billy said, “because of all the Chinese waiters and market guys from Hunts Point who used to come here.”

  They watched the old men enter the club and, against Jack’s better instincts, followed them. The black bouncer barely noticed them, just another bunch of little Chinamen.

  T. A. P. tits. ass. pussy.

  BOOTY’S WAS DEEP and wide. In a past life it might have been a garage or an auto repair shop. Now one of the long walls had been mirrored, in front of which a narrow runway, like a catwalk, supported the prancing of the dancers. There was a pole at either end. Under the dramatic play of track lights above, the scene was like a raunchy off-Broadway musical. Way way off-Broadway, thought Jack.

  Along the opposite wall was a long bar where you could get a tiny slice of pizza with your second overpriced drink. Some twenty little tables in two long lines filled the rest of the space.

  There weren’t that many Chinese from what Jack could see in the otherwise dim lighting. There were a few other Asians—he couldn’t tell what kind, Filipino or Cuban maybe—but most of the patrons on this cold night were black and Latino, many wearing Yankees or Knicks caps and sweatshirts.

  Jack waited by the bar across from where the runway began and ordered a beer just to hold his spot there.

  Billy made his way to the area where the old men sat, at the other end of the runway. He ingratiated himself by buying them a round of the joint’s watered-down beer with the cash they’d helped him win. He ordered a Jack Daniel’s for himself, also probably watered down.

  “Gangsta’s Paradise” played over the loudspeakers, and the girls on the runway—two white, one black—continued dancing. They wore dangerously high heels, G-strings, and barely there bikini tops. They stole glances at themselves in the wall mirror that was angled to reflect full-body views as they swayed and gyrated under the stage lights. They knew their poses well, letting their breasts dangle just right, perfect, with their lower parts beckoning whenever they bent over.

  The men nearest to the runway got their dollar bills ready. More, gimme more. Yeah, right there, baby girl, culo, clika.

  Flesh trade, Jack thought, they got that terminology right.

  The girls worked through their simulated pornographic poses. One of the white girls humped the end pole while sucking on a long red blow job lollipop.

  “Hom lun,” one of the old men chortled in Cantonese. Suck cock.

  The second girl, a bootylicious black princess, played with a pink dildo as she spread her legs open to a bow-and-arrow pose, pretending to jam herself.

  “Eww hei,” another of the old men said in Toishanese. Fucking pussy.

  The other white dancer, near the first pole, went from a pile-driver pose, which exposed her bottom, to crawling on all fours, which brought a chorus of wooos from the crowd.

  The music pounded on.

  The men seated farther back folded their dollar bills into little airplanes and hurled them like darts toward the stage. As if on cue, the three dancers pulled aside their G-strings, momentarily revealing shaved and waxed labia and anuses to the delight of the men. The music amped up even more, and a crew of pink-wigged waitresses made their rounds.

  The old men nursed their beers and waited for the Korean girl.

  The dancers gathered up their dollar bills and changed places on the runway to give the other customers an equal-opportunity viewing. And to suck up more money. After another ten minutes, the song changed to “Waterfalls,” and the dancers gleefully squirted each other’s privates with water pistols shaped like phalluses. There was another set of lewd poses—standing doggie, reverse cowgirl, missionary spread—as the girls on the ends spun around, rubbing their crotches and butts against the long, hard poles, wearing only their G-strings now.

  Jack figured they’d been there almost half an hour.

  A new rotation began as an Asian girl stepped to the front end of the runway and started her routine at the first pole, farthest from Billy and the old men. Jack could see they were eager for her to dance her way to their section.

  The pop/rap beats changed to a rendition of “Sukiyaki.” Jack frowned at the racial overtones playing out but couldn’t take his eyes off her. The Korean girl named Soomi sexy-strolled around the pole amid a chorus of low moans from the men nearest her. Soomi was a knockout, drop-dead sexy gorgeous, a perfect voluptuous body on a Victoria’s Secret frame, almost six feet tall, strutting atop sequined fuck-me high heels. She wore a tiny glittering G-string and a transparent brassiere that showcased her large budding nipples.

  Someone yelled “Kimchi!” and she giggled.

  She had a pretty Asian face framed by long black hair, an exotic-fantasy look that captivated the mostly non-Asian audience of lechers and perverts. Jack didn’t count himself among them but couldn’t help admiring her beauty, and even though he’d expected it to be this way in places like this, he was still turned off by the bestial behavior of the men in this so-called gentlemen’s club.

  Soomi continued her routine by bending over and adjusting her platform heels. There were more hoots as Billy came over to Jack, licking his lips at the closer view.

  “She got a butt like Jennifer Lopez,” he crooned. “Lips like a blowhole, titties bouncing like Jell-O!”

  Jack shook his head, took a pull from his bottle of warming beer. Billy was mesmerized, hypnotized, like all the men, gunned down by Soomi’s raw, visceral display of her shaved womanhood. Like a prime cut of sashimi, considered Billy, more yellowtail hamachi than red toro. Brown eye, in the other men’s eyes. She offered a sweet smile to the men seated near the runway who were laying money at her feet. She paraded in front of them, kicking the bills toward the mirror wall, removing her see-through bra in teasing stages.

  “Sukiyaki” remixing over the speakers.

  A few gyrations, shaking her JLo booty, and she had her bra off, tossing it mischievously at the mirror. Million-dollar breasts with puffy nipples. She saw in the glass how beautiful she really was. A blessing. A squadron of dollar airplanes crashed into the mirror wall near her. She spread her feet apart, bent over, waved to the crowd between her legs, her long black hair pooling onto the stage. Then she slowly straightened up, turned, and braced her back against the glass wall. She spread her feet wide again, cupped her breasts in her hands, and stroked her nipples with her thumbs until they were hard and stubby.

  Crumpled balls of paper money plopped and bounced onto her end of the runway. Soomi pulled up the shiny front patch of her G-string, and more dollar bills appeared at her feet. She wiggled the string so that it nestled into the folds of her fleshy labia. This provoked another round of moans from the front row. Billy winked at Jack, folded a few dollar airplanes, and went toward the front section.

  Jack could see him pitching them in Soomi’s direction as she slid to the floor and did a slow doggie crawl, slapping the assorted scatter of dollars toward the mirror. Billy wadded up a few more dollars and tossed them, like hand grenades, toward the other dancers. Just like Billy, mused Jack, trying to keep everybody happy.

  Soomi smoothly shifted into a bow-and-arrow pose, spreading her legs into a horizontal V. With her free hand she pulled back on the G-string again so that it spread open her glistening lips. After a few moments, she rolled over and turned to the men on the other side. Come-hither smile on her face. She pulled the string back and forth again. Everybody gets a peek. Horny men with gaping mouths and astonished faces.

  More. Gimme more.

  The money rained down on her. She smiled, scanned the crowd, gave them a cute wave of her hand. Glancing at the old men, Jack saw them looking lustfully, longingly, in her direction. Jack knew th
at with their old eyes, and seated at the far end in the dim light, they were only getting a general impression of Soomi, not yet the intimate view they were hoping for. They patiently waited for her to make her way to them.

  Soomi did a spread V, her womanhood facing the other way now. When she turned her rear toward Jack, looking back at him over her shoulder, he locked eyes with her. In that odd, frozen moment, he felt he saw a sister, and she a brother or an ex-boyfriend she’d left behind.

  Soomi never looked his way again. She did another five minutes of standing doggie and reverse cowgirl with the long lollipop in her mouth. When the music signaled the new rotation, she skipped the end pole. Instead, she went back along the mirror wall, gathering up her dollar bills, stuffing them into what was probably a knockoff Prada bag. She quickly disappeared with her booty bag into a restricted dressing room that the club provided for the dancers.

  Jack could see the disappointment on the old faces. They’d waited forty-five minutes and had only gotten a cheap, distant glimpse. Maybe the sight of all the jiggling flesh made them feel like young men again, Jack thought, but at the rate of twenty bucks just for a lap dance, none of them were, in Billy’s words, going to score some pussy here tonight. Billy might be able to afford the imported ladies at Angelina Chao’s, but these old men would probably wait until the junket brought them back to Chinatown and the cheap whores, yau leng yau peng, at Fat Lily’s. Temporarily young again for one-third the price.

  “Bitch is dissing her own people,” Billy groused into Jack’s ear.

  “She’s Korean,” Jack answered. “Not Chinese.”

  “You know what I mean,” Billy bitched. “Asian. She too good for them?”

  Jack, even as cynical as he’d become, didn’t see it that way. Behind the sexy smile, what he’d seen in her eyes was sadness and shame.

  They were just lonely old men, Jack figured, seeking their young memories in the wrong place.

  “She looks like an angel,” Billy continued. “But she’s an evil gold-diggin’ bitch. C’mon, fuck this.”

  Jack could see the old men were already getting up from their end tables, heading in the direction of the toilets.

  “Let’s go,” Billy said. “We got better places to spend our fuckin’ money.”

  They went out past the big bald bouncer and headed back to the car at the underpass. Looking back, Jack saw the bright signage that continued to shine out BOOTY.

  Fat Man’s Place

  THE MINIVAN LED them south past Yankee Stadium to somewhere off the Grand Concourse, to a seemingly deserted street. Fay Lo’s was the Fat Man’s place, and Billy wanted to stay close enough to hook up with the group as they entered. He pulled up just past the corner as the minivan parked down the block from what looked like a closed diner-type restaurant. The sign above the graffitied roll-down gate advertised CHINA Y LATINA COMIDAS.

  Jack imagined a Chinese Cuban, chino-Latino connection. Of the Chinese, the Chinese Cubans were here first, in the Bronx. Jack was sure there were fewer chino–puerto ricanos, chino dominicanos, chino mexicanos than there were Chinese Cubans.

  It had taken them the better part of three hours, a circuitous trip through two boroughs and the county of Westchester, to finally arrive at Fay Lo’s. It was close to midnight, the black sky now deeper than Chinese mok ink.

  They caught up to the men as they entered a dimly lit alley next to the diner. The driver pressed a doorbell and looked up at a little camera recessed into the brick wall. There was a buzzer sound, and the driver pulled open the door, waving the men in past a big Chinese door goon. He stopped Billy, who pleaded, “We’re all together!” A Toishanese chorus of “He’s with us!” from the old men confirmed it, and the big goon let them through.

  Against better judgment again, Jack entered, relaxing his grip on the badge in his pocket and the Colt holstered on his hip. They followed the group into a big room, softly lit so that it looked vaguely like the Asian gambling sections at the Atlantic City or Indian casinos. Featured were mostly Asian games—thirteen-card poker, mini-baccarat, Hong Kong–style stud—with small rooms in the back section for high-stakes mah-jongg, fan tan button bets, and pai gow dominoes. Also in the spread were a few standard casino games like blackjack, roulette, and a bank of slot machines just to keep the gamblers’ girlfriends happy.

  A pair of cute girls with cigarette trays casually offered packs of Marlboros and Newports along with little shot bottles of Johnnie Walker Black and XO.

  In the far corner they’d set up a buffet table of yellow rice and beans, some pernil, chicken stew, and Chinese char siew, roast pork.

  The betting action was moderate, mostly Chinese men chain-smoking around the tables. They looked like the workers he’d seen in the Golden City and China Village and in Chinatown, throwing down their tip money, their hustle pay of sweaty dollar bills, looking for the long odds—twenty, thirty, a hundred to one.

  The gang boys stood out from the civilian players. They wore black leather jackets, muscle tees, cargo pants. They propped up their colorful punk haircuts with gel and tagged Chinese “ghost” tattoos on the sides of their necks, fists, and biceps. Inky word characters needled into their skin. Proud of it. Swagger. Willing to fight and die for the gang family. Though it all aided law enforcement in identifying members by their gang tats and nicknames.

  They looked just like all the other Chinatown gang-bangers Jack had grown up around. Some of them were posted near the corners of the big room while others patrolled along the periphery, keeping their distance from the main floor so as not to make the gamblers nervous.

  Besides the cigarette girls, the only other two women in the place were “dragon ladies,” fortyish dai ga jeer women who stayed back by the mah-jongg area and supervised the cigarette girls. They knew that Chinese men, when it came to gambling, regarded women as bad luck and wouldn’t gamble next to them. Luck don’t be a lady tonight. They also kept their distance from the main-floor action.

  Jack spotted three cameras, managers watching everybody from a security room somewhere. The entire place could be closed off by electric roll gates that curled up inside the ceiling. They could lock down, in case of a raid, at the push of a button.

  Not exactly a Chinatown mom-and-pop operation.

  Jack wondered if the weekly take was as good as that of the Chinatown basements, which he knew was six figures of dirty tong money. It was early yet for the true night crawlers, but the loose action—maybe thirty or so players—followed in a flow that went to a wide stairway in the back. The steps led down into a basement area that was sectioned off for different betting venues and entertainment. There were areas with big-screen TV coverage of satellite-beamed horse races from Hong Kong and China, but also from as regional as Golden Gate or Delta Downs. A complete OTB schedule. Another section with booths where you could play video poker or blackjack. There were a couple of older men in team jerseys, who Jack guessed were Chinese Cubans or Chinese South Americans by their darker complexions, taking sports bets next to cable-TV monitors. They posted hourly specials where they took bets on the house version of lotto, offered odds on different-colored fighting fish that tore each other to bloody shreds inside a glass aquarium. Gamblers could play number combinations at sic bo, high-low, or bet on colors and numbers on a long-odds Wheel of Fortune.

  Something for everybody.

  Only a dozen gamblers roamed around the basement, watched over by a pair of bored Ghosts.

  Jack followed Billy back upstairs to the main floor. In the back of his mind he felt like they were being watched.

  “Split up,” Billy said. He went off toward the poker tables.

  Jack avoided the Chinese poker games, which actually required focus and concentration, and instead went to the deserted fan tan table, which was situated near the middle of the floor. All he had to do there was bet on the number of buttons left over from a pile that a croupier separated into groups of four. He could watch the entire room from that vantage point.

 
; He took out his winnings from Yonkers and started dropping casual bets onto the fan tan table. The croupier parsed out the ceramic buttons, slowly arriving at the remaining pieces, which would always number between one and four. Simple.

  In the big card games area, he could see Billy betting along with the old men on sup som jeung—thirteen-card Chinese poker—and mini-baccarat. Billy accepted a shot glass of Johnnie Walker from one of the cigarette girls and threw it back in a single gulp. If they were being watched, betting separately in different areas would split the attention, and maybe they could fool them into thinking that they were really just two more gamblers out for a lucky roll. But now he knew he’d have to watch Billy’s drinking. They were both armed, in an environment where the Ghosts were armed as well.

  No trouble, Billy, Jack whispered to himself, almost like a prayer.

  Billy continued spreading his Yonkers money across the poker tables. There were occasional bursts of laughter from the group there.

  The fan tan croupier swept away his dollars, and Jack bet the box again, feigning attention this time. He could see how “Singarette” Chang, like other workingmen with dreams, could be sucked into the fake glamour of the gambling life. With a little luck, you could build up a bundle, but if you were unlucky, if the cards were flipped against you, then you could wind up with a ton of debt and heartache. Then the gang boys and the loan sharks would circle you in a frenzy.

  He lost three straight fan tan games and took his remaining money to the roulette table. He bet the action groups and the colors, letting the wheel spin under the bouncing white ball while he continued to scan the room. While he was winning on red, a whoop and holler jumped out of Billy, which caught the Ghosts’ attention.

  Jack watched them size Billy up. No trouble, Billy, echoed in his mind. Scooping up his winnings, he moved next to Billy, hoping the Ghosts would let it pass. Giving him the eye-fuck nod, Jack said, “Let’s roll. You got people peeping you now. I got the scene already, and there’s nothing left but trouble.” It’s not like I got a warrant or anything, but I got a peep of the guy’s life in the months before he got himself killed.