by Henry Chang
“That right?” Sarcasm again.
“I think you guys got the real motivation,” Jack said. “Like payback.”
“Wasn’t me,” Franky said. “Wasn’t us.”
“Where were you four nights ago?” Jack pressed.
“Gambling, like every night.” Franky sighed. “Then karaoke, in the basements.”
“Going to be a lot of witnesses for that, I bet.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Give me a reason to believe any of that’s true.”
Franky finished his gee pa, pushed the plate aside. “Give me a reason why I should even continue talking to you.”
“No, you give me a reason,” Jack said, “why I shouldn’t have Traffic Division ticket and tow that shiny red car of yours every time it’s in Chinatown. Tell me why I shouldn’t get your probation violated over hanging out with known criminals in a known organized-crime location. Tell me why your Chinese ass doesn’t want to get sent back to Rahway or Trenton State, even for a minute.”
Franky was taken aback by what Jack knew about him.
“I didn’t violate nothing,” he said meekly.
“You’re violating my intelligence, kai dai, so let’s stop fucking around,” Jack said. “You all beat my vic’s name out of your rivals, and he winds up dead.”
Franky took a breath, licked his lips. “But I didn’t violate nothing,” he quietly insisted.
“Maybe I don’t think you did it. But I know you know something about it.”
“Okay.” Franky surrendered an answer. “I would have done it, gladly, if Father hadn’t shut us down. He never liked the gangs involved in our family business and forced us out of it.”
“He was going to handle it?”
“I didn’t say that,” Franky said. “I’m just telling you that we didn’t do it. Not me, not my boys.”
“Your father kept you out of it?”
“Correct.”
There was a silent moment as Jack fought back a smile. He’d let Franky Noodles off the hook for now but realized he had a new angle on Bossy Gee. If father and son didn’t do it, who did?
On the street outside Half-Ass, he could see two Dragons peering into the storefronts, moving along.
The answers, Jack had a hunch, were here, on this street, in the Hip Ching gambling den behind Half-Ass, at Bossy’s realty office, and in other locations in Bossy’s underworld. But not now, Jack knew, not in daylight. He’d return after dark, he decided, when Chinatown nightlife controlled the streets.
He watched as Franky Noodles waved to the counterman on the way out, suddenly in a hurry to get back to his red Camaro.
Fish in a barrel, Jack mused as he exited Half-Ass.
HALF-ASS WAS A twenty-four-hour greasy spoon, home to Pell Street regulars and Chinatown truck drivers dropping in for a quick yeen gnow or hom gnow faahn meal deal.
After sunset, most Chinatown families were home for the evening, surrendering the day to family dinner, Hong Kong videotapes, Chinese TV variety shows.
Families cooked their own rice in an electric pot and prepared a wok full of hot stir-fried vegetables, later adding in fast-food sides of sook sik cha siew roast pork, for yook, see yow gai, soy-sauce chicken, from takeout joints like Half-Ass.
Later at night, the local denizens who frequented Half-Ass weren’t so family oriented: Chinese gamblers from the basements, voracious johns from Fat Lily’s or Chao’s cat-houses, see gay drivers, cabbies, Black Dragon gang kids, made members of the Hip Ching tong, and their cronies.
All the seedy, shady creatures of the night, their dirty playtime until dawn.
JACK RETURNED TO Chinatown at midnight, made his way to the corner of Mott and Pell. The area was deserted except for an occasional passerby and what looked like a few gang kids at the far end of the short street.
All the office windows in the corner building were dark, but he noticed the black bulk of a radio car parked outside 36 Pell. There was no driver in the see gay, which made Jack wonder if this could be Bossy’s car. He pulled out a pen and jotted the license number on his wrist anyway.
Farther up the block he could see a few people outside Half-Ass, shuffling and stamping their feet against the cold. They’d probably been gambling in the basement that extended beneath Half-Ass and had come up for air, maybe a change of luck.
Jack knew to go through the doorway adjacent to Half-Ass, into the courtyard behind, and down the short flight of concrete steps to the basement. Sometimes the kitchen da jop gathered outside the back exit of Half-Ass, taking their smoke breaks in the courtyard, tempted themselves by the card games, the flow of gamblers, and the large sums of cash money exchanging hands under their feet.
Jack kept his head down. Half-Ass was half full, its windows foggy as he went past, through the grimy corridor into the cement courtyard.
He stepped down into the basement. He nodded and grunted at an old man seated on a metal folding chair near the door, and that seemed enough to let him slide into the mix. The basement was crowded, and he lit one of Billy’s Marlboros before feigning interest behind one of the chut jeung card games while covertly scanning the room. The usual assortment of restaurant workers off the late shift and gang kids, other losers returning from Atlantic City or Foxwoods with their last-ditch bets.
Mostly men smoking up a cloud of cigarette haze, matching expletives in Toishanese and Cantonese across the half-dozen rectangular tables. Only traditional poker games here—chut jeung, sup som jeun—seven-card and thirteen-card poker. No dew hei pussy mah-jongg games here. Women played mah-jongg.
No Las Vegas–style nights here. No casino games, just a notorious Chinatown Chinese poker joint. The Ghosts were way ahead by comparison, much more innovative than the Hip Chings, offering blackjack and mini-baccarat for the ladies at their gambling joints.
Here on Pell Street, men bet a week’s pay or more on the number of buttons in a fan tan bowl, on a color or a favorite table. Now that’s manly! Legendary players have won restaurants, or lost them. Their houses, their cars, their passports, and Rolex watches.
The gambling basements swallowed everything.
At the rear of the floor, the gang kids who had any money left had pooled their dollars and were betting together, cussing as their collective bao slowly disappeared.
Jack didn’t see anyone his own height, mostly five-eight and under. Excluding the gang kids, nobody looked very suspicious, just another gathering of hard-luck stories, damaged people, and lonely lives.
He dropped ten bucks on top of one of the bet boxes drawn on the brown butcher paper covering the sup som jeung table. He lost that promptly, the dealer sweeping his money off the table with a grin.
He went to another table and peeled off a couple of Lincolns. He hadn’t noticed any obvious left-handers slapping down money or cards on any of the tables. Dropping a Lincoln onto one of the end boxes, he won ten bucks. Pure luck.
Occasionally he’d jerk his eyes up abruptly, flash scanning the tables to see if anyone was paying any particular attention to him. No one seemed to care.
Deciding to see if any persons of interest were up in Half-Ass, he headed back to the courtyard. He grunted toward the old man on the way out, who seemed pleased that he was leaving.
He crossed the cement courtyard, back into the grimy building corridor leading out to Pell, when the first blow came over his left shoulder. It struck him hard across the back of his head, sent him reeling forward into the wall of the narrow hall. Something metal.
The second and third blows came in rapid hits on his neck and shoulders as he threw up a blocking arm and fought for balance. A jackhammer knee drove him to the dirty linoleum floor.
He yelled and started to draw his Colt, his head spinning. Twisting away from the direction of the attack, he caught the flash of a man in dark clothes darting out to Pell Street.
He struggled to his feet, the Colt in hand now, trigger finger ready.
When he staggered out of the building the street w
as empty, the neon colors of the restaurant and bar signs swimming in his head. He took a few cold shaolin breaths, stabilizing, but it wasn’t until a few minutes later, when he’d regained his equilibrium, that he realized the black see gay was no longer parked in front of 36 Pell.
The cold night air had revived him a bit, and he went directly to Grampa’s, three blocks away.
In the blue darkness of one of the booths, the barmaid gave him half a bag of ice, which he used as cold compress to his head, shoulders, and neck. It was a warning, he knew. He’d been hit hard enough to stun but not to kill. Besides a few lumps, he couldn’t find any blood on himself. If they’d wanted him dead, they’d have snuffed him.
The ice dulled the pain, and Grampa himself sent a boilermaker over to his solitary booth. Jack dropped the shot glass into the beer mug, chugged half of it back. He could feel the alcohol flowing to his brain and cooling down the pain inside him.
The warning only strengthened his resolve. He knew he had to be close to something if they’d felt the need to attack him. And they didn’t care if he was a cop.
He threw back the rest of the boilermaker, pulled out his cell phone, and called for a radio car back to Sunset Park. First thing in the morning, he determined, he’d run the license-plate number he’d scrawled on his wrist on the DMV and the Traffic Division databases.
Night Rider 2
ONE IN THE morning and he was restless, his last night in the Edgewater house. He poured some XO into a tumbler, gulped a hit, and took his last look around the dark kitchen, the curtained living room.
It isn’t the fifty thousand cash they’ve stolen, Bossy thought—he’d make that back in a month. Nor the three Rolex watches, which were payment swag from a Chinatown jewelry-store owner who’d gambled and lost down number 15 basement. He didn’t care about all that, almost as if the money lost were something he’d kept handy, for ransom, for just the circumstances that occurred. All part of the deadly circle of money, he thought. No big loss.
But what did matter was his father’s death. He could never forgive that. The great Duck Hong dying like that, with a whimper. He knew nothing would bring his father back, but the face of it was unforgivable. They’d stolen what amounted to death money.
The Hok Nam Moon Triad elders would also certainly retaliate for the death of a senior brother, especially against the On Yee and the Red Circle member Fay Lo. It was more than the Hip Chings could handle, but the Hok Triad could carry the fight from Hong Kong through its many members in the overseas cities and communities to wherever the On Yee had a presence. They’d already battled in Chinatowns in Boston, Montreal, Toronto, and San Francisco, but vengeance would be paid out over the seasons, measured but forceful and significant. Some of it was payback for feuds dating back a hundred years.
Bossy poured some more XO, tossed it back. Just lay low, he was told. Don’t draw attention to the Triad.
This wasn’t only a little turf battle between the earners on the street anymore. Of course, the fighting between the Dragons and Ghosts would continue until their dailo were replaced, but the Triad took over, advised Bossy to stay out of it. The less he knew, the better.
Bossy disagreed. “He’s my father, my family. I deserve a say in it.” With regard to the On Yees and Fay Lo, he’d deferred to the Hok Nam Moon: let the Triads battle it out and wash the fat troublemaker. He agreed to keep a low profile and was determined to keep his enthusiastic son Franky out of it. The idiot was an easy target—everyone knew he was Bossy’s son—careless and reckless, wanting to descend into the pit of America as fast as his hero older brother, Gary, had wanted to ascend.
Let the street gangs do their work.
Let the Triad big boys do their work.
But regarding the matter of the takeout deliveryman who’d betrayed them, he’d wanted a personal touch, not some psycho hit man from Hong Kong intruding into his family affairs.
He preferred someone he could trust, someone who was familiar with the days and nights of his life. Someone who knew his family’s background and had exhibited loyalty.
The Hok Nam Moon relented, and they’d quickly come to an agreement on who would begin the retributions.
No one was surprised, not even the killer.
But Bossy was surprised, though not shocked, at the jook sing Chinese cop showing up so quickly at his doorstep and office. He had hoped that the matter would have simply disappeared, washed away forever.
The chaai lo annoyed him more than unnerved him.
It had caused him to make a few phone calls.
He finished the XO as a white wash of car headlights swept across the kitchen walls. He lit a Marlboro and watched the walls dim and then fade to dark again. After a minute he could hear tires crunching gravel, then the purring engine of the black car outside. He checked his Rolex. Right on time. The headlights flashed off. He imagined the driver, Mon Gor, waiting patiently, but always ready to go on a moment’s notice.
The XO and the nicotine leveled the tension, refocused him on more immediate, primal needs. He’d considered a quick trip to one of the strip clubs. The roomy black car always reminded him of the sex jaunts to Booty’s, which had always provided a secluded spot for blow jobs from the dancers. Mon Gor knew the drill and always exited the car for a cigarette walk, far enough for a ten-minute BJ on the backseat.
Bossy rejected the thought of Fat Lily’s; too many Chinatown johns knew him there, and the whores weren’t as pretty. Instead he imagined himself at Chao’s, on the edge of Chinatown, picking the youngest-looking siu jeer out of the lineup.
The alcohol rushed through his blood and made his balls tingle.
Finishing the cigarette, he tossed a last angry look toward the dark living room and headed for the waiting car.
Transporter 1
IT WAS SNOWING lightly the next morning as Jack zipped back to Chinatown in a see gay out of Sunset Park.
The Chinese driver maintained a running dialogue with his radio dispatcher, injecting a few murmured expletives between the static lines.
Jack scanned the dark sky above the slick highway, shook his head. Of course, he didn’t think Bossy himself stabbed Sing through the heart, hauled him through the freezing water, and shoved him off into the Harlem River. He didn’t do the dirty work; he hired people for that. Contracted it out. Or the tong arranged it, and they were all complicit.
“Fuck your mother!” the driver hissed. “Dew nei lo may,” to his dispatcher. It broke Jack’s focus as the driver swerved to exit off the BQE and back onto the streets.
“Jong che,” dispatch squawked. “Accident on the Brooklyn Bridge! Avoid!”
The driver turned the black car around toward the Manhattan Bridge, the next-nearest Chinatown crossing.
Jack noticed the driver’s knowledge of the routes, figured it was part of the business of transporting people from one place to another destination. Those destinations could be airports, train and bus terminals, and the city had many other points of interest. But if you drove the overnight shift, it was a different clientele. Sure, the airports and terminals were still there, but so were the nightclubs, the gambling joints, the motels, and the whorehouses. All the all-night dives like Half-Ass and Grampa’s and Lucy Jung’s.
The interior of the car was gray, dark as the sky outside, but clean, without magazines or personal items, unlike the cars of some of the drivers who used their own family vehicles to make extra money.
Always on call, Jack thought, real Chinese cowboys. Saddle up, ride out. A lot of single or divorced men. The lifestyle didn’t help family life. These were the men who disdained the obsequious restaurant work of their peers, the back-breaking labor of the Chinatown coolie construction gangs, the grinding days of the street vendors in the heat and freeze and rain and snow.
No, they preferred to mount their leased, air-conditioned Town Cars to ferry others to destinations sometimes deemed illegal, but where the tips were better than good and where one could do well in the gwai lo city.
There were no other clues in the see gay car. No family photographs or Chinese saints on the dashboard. No faux-Chinese firecrackers hanging off the rearview mirror. No takeout containers or water bottles or Chinese newspapers.
Just another hustling guy trying to make a few extra bucks.
But of course he didn’t think Bossy himself did the killing. Franky Noodles, either: Too obvious, and he doesn’t fit the profile. They’d kept him out of it, had protected the wannabe golden boy.
The radio car crossed the Manhattan Bridge before Jack knew it and was rolling into Chinatown. The driver drifted his car right, down through Fukienese East Broadway and around to Confucius Towers, a block’s walk to the Fifth Precinct.
If it wasn’t Bossy, it’s someone he trusted.
He paid the driver an extra five and crossed Bowery from Confucius Towers toward the Fifth Precinct.
Run DMV
THE KNOTS AT the back of his head, neck, and shoulders grabbed at him, but Jack had spread on the mon gum yow, Tiger Balm, let it do its mentholated relief work for him. The shift cops wrinkled up their noses as he passed. He went to the second floor of the Fifth Precinct, to the main computer, and logged in.
According to the Department of Motor Vehicles database, the black Lincoln Town Car was five years old, a 1990 model that was leased by and registered to Golden Mountain Realty. Bossy’s company.
When he ran the plate numbers through the Traffic Division site, the connection became even clearer. Over the past two years, the Town Car had received four traffic violations: one for running a red light near Chinatown, issued to Francis Gee, Bossy’s bad seed, aka Franky Noodles. The fine was paid by Golden Mountain Realty.
Two tickets were for daytime standing in a no standing zone. From the addresses on the tickets, Jack remembered the locations of the Lucky Dragon and China Village, two of Bossy’s Bronx restaurants. The last violation was for an illegal U-turn in the South Bronx six months earlier, on a street not far from Booty’s, or Chino’s, strip club. Late at night.