Death Money

by Henry Chang

  He scanned the street. It wasn’t the Mulberry Street he remembered, dotted now with overseas enterprises, distributorships, wholesalers’ storefronts, a few restaurants.

  “Xe Lua,” he suggested, Vietnamese. “On your break?”

  She looked down the street at Xe Lua’s banner, a familiar flag.

  “Okay,” she said as other customers rushed by.

  He doubled back toward the Seniors’ Center, wondering if she’d actually show up, feeling her eyes on his back.

  Old and Wise

  HE FOUND AH Por quickly this time, in the same location as before, by the big back window near the exit door to the courtyard. She was watching one of the TV monitors when he sat and touched her hand. It took a moment for her to recognize Jack, the young image of his father.

  He nodded and smiled, gave her Singarette’s fake Rolex. And a folded Lincoln.

  She looked at the knockoff, ran a thumb over it.

  “Canal Street,” she said, handing it back.

  Sure, Jack thought, Canal for knockoffs.

  He handed her the Yonkers racing program.

  “Som lok bat,” she counted, “three, six, eight.”

  The program was unmarked, but she’d picked their three winning numbers.

  What does it mean? wondered Jack as Ah Por dismissed him and went back to the TV monitor. He thanked her and left the beehive of age and wisdom.

  Eddie

  HE WENT BACK to Mott Street, to Eddie’s, where he took one of the small tables in the back and made calls over the noise of the Chinese News radio station.

  It wasn’t until the third call, to Saint Barnabas Hospital, that he got a hit. The staff had admitted an emergency case by the name Dewey Lai, an assault victim, ten nights earlier. Dew Lay again, their little joke, fuck you.

  Jack requested that the hospital fax the pictures of the admittee, which it was required to take, to the main number at the Fifth Precinct. After all, he was already in the precinct.

  He called Alexandra, feeling the bag of cherries in his pocket. But all he got was the answering machine and her cheery voice.

  He shifted his thoughts back to the body in the river.

  Engine

  JACK WAITED FOR the woman in the red jacket at Xe Lua. The place had a bamboo feel and a fake little inside bridge you crossed over to get to the back, where Jack took one of the side tables.

  He was hoping she’d spill something good and thought about ordering a for che touh, Vietnamese beef-broth rice noodles with sliced meat, one of his antidotes to the New York City winter.

  He kept an eye on the front door, turning over the past hours in his head. In murder cases, cops usually worried about the first forty-eight hours because they feel the perpetrator will flee the area and the jurisdiction.

  Because the identification was missing, and because of the way the body was dumped, Jack didn’t feel the time constraint. The killer wasn’t thinking about fleeing, he figured. The perp wasn’t sweating over having left evidence, over getting caught. He was counting on living in plain sight, like he regularly did. He’d just washed away the matter, sai jo keuih. Very devious of him, always thinking, one step ahead. Maybe the vic would sink and never surface. Or it’d take so long that they’d barely recognize him as human when he did rise up. Even if he did float up, they’d never know who he really was, invisible illegal immigrant.

  Jack wasn’t surprised that the Ghosts protected Fay Lo’s.

  But the Chinese beatdown raid? Did it have anything to do with anything other than the usual gang beef? Chinatown’s dominant gang had its fingers everywhere. But in the Bronx? Had the Chinese Cubans, the chino cubanos, built up alliances? Who knows? Was it all just about a gambling debt? The Ghosts were challenged by the Dragons everywhere they operated. Was someone trying to make an example of Singarette?

  SHE WALKED IN, the red jacket glowing, exchanging greetings with the waitstaff, the cashier, obviously a regular here. She spotted Jack and demurely took a seat at his table, aware of the attention swinging her way. He half rose and poured her a cup of hot tea, addressing her politely.

  “Dim yeung ching foo nei?” he asked. “How should I address you?”

  “Just call me Huong,” she answered, a slight Vietnamese accent on her Hong Kong Cantonese now. Huong, remembered Jack, meant “rose” in Vietnamese. The color red again. She had a robust aura about her, a wholesome look. Mature fruit, but not old tofu.

  Wasting no time, she ordered a bun cha gio, vegetarian vermicelli, to his hearty pho engine, for che touh.

  “It’s freezing out,” Jack said, observing the half-empty restaurant. “Must be bad for business.”

  “That’s how it is in February and March.”

  “How did you know him?” Jack asked. “About the wake?”

  “I saw the name in the free newspaper, that the wake was at Wah Fook. Very close by. Jun Zhang. I wasn’t sure it was him.”

  He took a sip of tea. “How do you know him?”

  “We were co-workers,” she answered, gung yau. “At a restaurant.”

  “What can you tell me about him?”

  “What happened to him?”

  “He drowned.” He spared her the details for the time being. It wasn’t exactly a lie.

  “Sad,” she said. “How did it happen?”

  “I was hoping you could help me with that,” Jack said. He leaned in over the table.

  “You mean was he depressed or something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He told me his name was Sing, and he was from Poon Yew village. Everyone called him Sing. He was a friendly guy.” She paused. “Everyone liked him.”

  Not everyone, apparently, thought Jack. He knew sing meant “promotion” or “star” in Cantonese.

  “What restaurant?” Jack followed.

  “China Village,” she said distantly, like it was an unwelcome memory. “Up in the Bronxee. Not far from the subway.” Her words rang a bell in his head, fleshing out his victim now, small details slowly coming into focus.

  “He made deliveries, takeout orders,” she continued. “Sometimes they made him take party deliveries to the boss’s house in New Jersey. He didn’t like that because he lost time traveling and was losing tip money.”

  Always moving, Ah Por’s words, Jack remembered.

  “He told me he was an orphan,” she said sadly. “His father was a miner who died when he was three. A mine collapsed. His mother died a year later. There was an earthquake, and they couldn’t find any relatives, so they put him in the orphanage.”

  Jack shook his head in sympathy, encouraged her to continue.

  “He said he worked in Vancouver, and Toronto, before he came to New York.”

  From the north, again Ah Por’s words.

  Their food arrived, and they continued talking through the hot-pot aromas of Southeast Asia, pho and gio.

  “You mentioned that he saved you once,” Jack said. “How?”

  “I went on a delivery,” she said. She took a breath. “There was no one else to go, and it was in the afternoon. It was already dark, but the address was close by, so they thought it would be okay.”

  Jack nodded for her to continue.

  “When I rode past a playground, some kids chased after me. Calling me names. I became afraid they wanted more than the food.” She sipped her tea. Three of them surrounded me. I stayed on the bike and dropped the delivery on the sidewalk.” She shuddered. “They started grabbing at my clothes, touching me.”

  Jack felt rage rising from his heart to his knuckles.

  “I felt so afraid,” she whispered. “That’s when Sing rode up and starting swinging his bicycle chain at them. Screaming like a wild man. They backed off like he was crazy, and we got away. I quit at the end of that week. But he saved me.”

  Jack freshened up her cup with more hot tea.

  “What a shame. He had a birthday coming up. He said he wanted to see the parade, then celebrate in Chinatown.”

  “Parade?”<
br />
  “He said his birthday was the same day as that Irish holiday. When they drink all day and have a big parade.”

  “Saint Patrick’s Day?”

  “Everyone wears green.”

  “Right.”

  “We were the same age,” she said with a sigh. “Twenty-four.”

  Twenty-four, yee sup say, sounding like “easy to die” in Cantonese. Huong looked older than twenty-four, thought Jack, probably because she’d been weathered by the outdoor elements.

  “Any idea where he lived?” Jack pressed.

  “No.” She hesitated. “But mox-say-go might know.”

  “Mox-say-go?” asked Jack. Mexican? He tried remembering what the China Village deliveryman had said.

  “Luis, he works with Cao on the big truck. They supply us from the market.”

  “He knows Sing?”

  “They gave him a ride to Chinatown a few weeks ago. I only got a look at Sing when the truck was pulling out.”

  “Where is this market?” Jack asked.

  “The one in the Bronxee.”

  “Hunts Point?”

  “Sounds like that.”

  “Where can I find Luis now?”

  “They come back down at six, to unload the vans and pack up for tomorrow.”

  Mexicans, the South Bronx. A crash pad somewhere.

  “Do you know anything about a lighter?” he asked.

  “Lighter?”

  “A cigarette lighter.”

  She thought for a moment, finishing her gio. “Oh, he had a silver one. With a say yun touh on it.”

  “A skull?”

  “Yes. A smiling skull.”

  Airborne, thought Jack. He called for the check. He’d stop by the Fifth Precinct station house for the Saint Barnabas fax, then come back for Luis.

  “Do you know if he had any other problems?” he asked.

  “He got robbed. He was angry about it, that the restaurant wouldn’t help him.”

  “Gambling problems?”

  “He never mentioned anything. He didn’t seem like that kind of guy.” A pause. “Didn’t you say it was an accident?”

  “I don’t know that.” A copspeak response.

  The waiter came back and said to Jack, “Sorry, sir, it’s already paid.”

  Jack started to protest.

  “This place is my people,” Huong said. “So you have to give me face. You may treat me next time, okay? But it will be at a much more expensive restaurant.”

  He had to grin at that, and accepted.

  “Just find out what happened to him, Detective,” she said. “He was a good person, and I pray the gods will be merciful to him.” She put on her jacket, and they shook hands before she went back out into the bitter cold, to the cherries by the curb.

  When he left Xe Lua, she was quickly selling fruit next to the van’s gas generators, steaming in the frozen afternoon.

  Fifth

  COMMANDING OFFICER MARINO was reportedly attending a promotions award ceremony at headquarters. His office was empty.

  Jack climbed the creaky wood steps of the Fifth Precinct, found his faxes from Saint Barnabas in a bin by the detectives’ desks. The pictures of the assault victim, Dewey Lai, reminded him of some of the postmortem photos he’d developed at Ah Fook’s.

  The gangbanger had the requisite bruises all over his body, expected in a typical beatdown. In the gang world, nobody was nobody unless they got in a kick or two and bragged about it later. But the pictures from the emergency-admit bay of the victim’s head and face were more telling. Both eyes were eggplants swollen shut—one more shut than the other. Bloody boot cuts to both sides of the head. On one side of his neck was a tattoo of the Chinese word for “dog,” gau. On the flip side, he had a number 7 carved into his fadestyle haircut, representing the seventh letter in the alphabet, G, for “Ghosts.” Another true believer.

  There was a pair of bloated fat lips on top of a swollen jaw. All the injuries of the kind that it’d take more than ten days to heal.

  They would have killed him if that was their intent, Jack thought. So why? Was it just another stupid gang-boy beef? Or had Singarette owed Fay Lo’s and wound up having to deal with Ghost muscle? Ex-blood brother Lucky, Ghost dailo, might have some answers to that, if he wasn’t lying in a coma.

  But maybe dog tattoo boy would sing, if Jack could find him.

  He started making phone calls again.

  By the time he left the precinct, the sky was gray. The neon colors of the restaurant signs had come to life, but there were few people on the street. He noticed a familiar figure, a woman approaching Wong’s Wash n’ Dry across the way.

  Alexandra, he realized happily.

  He crossed the street, watching Alex through the shopwindow as she handed her ticket to the lady clerk. There was no one else in the shop.

  He entered as the clerk disappeared behind a wall of dry-cleaning racks. Alex turned as he approached. She was pleasantly surprised.

  “Heyyy,” she said, smiling.

  “I saw you come in,” Jack said, touching her hand.

  “I needed my red suit. For the legal-aid fund-raiser tonight.”

  He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her, felt the softness of her body against his. He savored the floral scents in her hair, took an extra shaolin breath.

  She gave him a quick kiss, wiping the color from his lips with her fingers.

  They separated as the clerk reappeared with the red suit.

  “Your tickee?” the clerk asked Jack.

  “Ngo deih yat chai,” he answered. “We’re together.” He was pleased to see Alex smile at the remark.

  Outside, Alex checked her watch and turned toward Mott Street. She threw a look back at Jack and mimed a phone call with her forefinger and pinkie. Jack smiled and gave her a thumbs-up.

  The sky darkened after she turned the corner, and he looked toward Canal and Mulberry Streets. Where would Huong’s Mexican connection lead to? he wondered.

  Mox-Say-Go

  HUONG, WHO HAD apparently explained the situation to Luis, made the introduction as they were packing up the vans. Luis was short but looked strong, like a pit bull. Jack showed his badge, assured him in his schoolboy Spanish, “No problema. Soy policía de Nueva York. No es la inmigración.” His words seemed to relax Luis, showing he was cool—not INS, not immigration police.

  “¿Qué quieres?” Luis asked, climbing into the big truck.

  “I need to find where he lived,” Jack said.

  “He stay with Ruben and Miguel.”

  “Where?” Jack pressed as Huong watched them from the van.

  “Climb in,” Luis said.

  THE BIG TRUCK rolled north, with Jack riding shotgun, up to Hunts Point. Luis—Luis Enriquez—unloaded a few cases of melons to the sprawling night market, then drove them west into Mott Haven.

  The place was an old building in a row of rundown tenements, a couple of blocks off the Bruckner Expressway. Jack wondered if it was one of Gooba Jai’s places. A chino-latino rent-a-bed hostel?

  They went to a second-floor apartment where one of Sing’s keys fit the lock. The interior had been partitioned into smaller units, everyone sharing two little toilets and a kitchenette.

  The small rooms could sleep up to three people, each on a folding cot. Luis spoke quietly to two men. They looked rugged, like they were used to hard work and long hours. Luis’s explanation of Sing’s demise sobered the men as Jack showed them the river photos.

  “Ay Dios mío,” whispered Ruben. Miguel shook his head and frowned. With Luis’s labored English translation and Jack’s high-school Spanish, they coaxed Sing’s story out of the men.

  They’d been co-workers, they explained, on the Sang Farm’s trucks, delivering produce like bok choy and Chinese cabbage, mushrooms, snow peas, green onions. They pointed to Sing’s cot. There was a piece of carry-on luggage underneath.

  They’d known him about two months, as Chino more than as Sing, delivering to Chinese restaurants and
markets in the Bronx. Chino was an added asset because he could speak Chinese, which sped up the deliveries.

  Jack pulled out the carry-on, noticed there weren’t any closets anywhere in the room. In the carry-on was an extra set of clothes—a hoodie sweatshirt, jeans, socks, a pair of sneakers. Nothing valuable. In one of the inside pockets was a bus stop map and a ticket stub.

  They liked working with Sing, the men continued. He always pulled his own weight and was generous with cigarettes and food. They liked Chinese food, and he always did the ordering for them.

  In a sloppy scribble on the back of the bus map were the words “edge water.” No other identification, or anything, left behind. Jack pocketed the map and ticket stub as they gave him back the photos of Sing.

  “Hombre.” Ruben nodded respectfully.

  “When did you see him last?” Jack asked.

  “Dos noches,” said Miguel. “Two nights ago.”

  “We dropped him off,” added Ruben, “on a delivery.”

  “Delivery?” Jack asked. “For what?”

  “Abba-lone-nay,” Ruben enunciated, “abalone” in Spanish. “He say Chinese love it. Very expensive.”

  “He sold two cases,” Miguel added, “and two carton cigarettes.”

  “Two cases of abalone?”

  “Si, he say someone buy two cases, cash up front,” said Ruben. “Sing, Chino, he tie a rope around each case so he can carry one in each hand.”

  “We dropped him off,” offered Miguel. “It was only two blocks’ walk. And he was supposed to meet us after, for cerveza.”

  “Where?”

  “At Chino’s.” He hesitated. “But the real name is Booty.” The word set off another bell in Jack’s head. “This was what time?”

  “About eight P.M.,” answered Ruben, checking his watch, “like now.”

  “Can you drive us there?” Jack asked Luis. “I’ll pay for gas and cerveza.”

  “No problema,” Luis said.

  “Sure,” added Miguel. “Anything for el chino amigo.”

  THEY WENT BACK out into the night, four men in a big truck rolling west to the Highbridge section. They pulled over near a one-way street, with Booty’s in the opposite direction, and dropped Jack off.