Death Money

by Henry Chang

  Those three tickets were issued to driver Mak Mon Gaw and were paid off by Lucky Food Enterprises. Another of Bossy’s companies, figured Jack. The NYS driver’s license for Mak identified him as male, with brown eyes, his height five feet eleven inches. His photo face was the every face of a middle-aged Chinatown man. Black hair, dark eyes giving a Long March stare. An expressionless face, unremarkable, inscrutable. Waiter, accountant, laborer, entrepreneur, everyman. Nothing to indicate he was a cabbie or chauffeur or radio driver. His date of birth was February 2, 1951, which made him forty-four years old. Forty-four, mused Jack, an unlucky Chinese number that sounds like “double-death” in Cantonese. Born in the Year of the Tiger. Mak had a Chinatown address: 8 Pell Street, apartment 3A. A Hip Ching apartment on a Hip Ching street, Jack figured, diagonally across from Half-Ass.

  He ran Mak Mon Gaw for priors or warrants, but the man had no criminal history. The way the name was romanized indicated he was from Hong Kong, or China, originally. Jack reconsidered him as a person of interest and was about to access the Immigration Department’s database when his cell phone buzzed.

  The female dispatcher’s voice asked, “What’s your twenty, Detective Yu?”

  “Fifth Precinct,” he answered. “Computer room.”

  “Stand by,” she instructed.

  He was puzzled by the call, proceeded to print out the information he’d accessed. He was folding the copies into his pocket when footsteps thumped up to the second floor, coming in his direction.

  Two hulky shadows appeared in the doorway. Their faces looked familiar, and no introductions were necessary. Internal Affairs. Hogan and DiMizzio, big white cops with neat haircuts and eyes like steel rivets. They’d investigated Jack previously, after the murder of Uncle Four in Chinatown.

  Jack had been wondering when it would come, the IA inquiries, popping open the case like a poison pus pimple, with their innuendoes, their boldfaced lies, the tough-cop-and-honest-cop routines. It hadn’t taken long this time, less than two days after he’d picked up Bossy’s trail. A day after interviewing him in his office.

  It was clear Bossy was sending a message, saying who he was by siccing the IA cops on him.

  They stepped into the room with the same contemptuous attitudes on their faces.

  But it didn’t surprise Jack this time, and the pressure only confirmed that he was pushing in the right direction.

  Hogan kicked it off. “Up to old tricks, huh, Yu? Harassment?”

  “Setting up a shakedown, huh?” DiMizzio taunted. Jack shook his head, didn’t dignify the insults with a response.

  “Detective Yu,” Hogan said, “can you explain why you were in the South Bronx on Thursday night, February fifteenth?”

  “Where you encountered a plainclothes detail from the Four-One?” DiMizzio said.

  It was the same quick questioning, eye-swiveling routine, meant to keep the subject off balance. It didn’t faze Jack this time.

  “I was off duty,” Jack said. “Me and a friend went for a drive. We took the east side, the FDR, to the Bronx. We were crossing over for the West Side Highway back to Manhattan when we ran into the plainclothes guys.”

  The answer seemed to satisfy them; if they’d had more, they’d play it out. But Jack knew they were working him, just warming up.

  “Why did you interview James Gee?” asked Hogan.

  “Normal course of investigation,” answered Jack. “Just due diligence.”

  “And questioning his son?” asked DiMizzio.

  “The guy had priors.” Jack shrugged. “He was a natural suspect.”

  “Enough for you to visit his house in New Jersey?”

  “Normal course of investigation,” repeated Jack.

  “So what led you to Mr. Gee’s doorstep?” Hogan asked.

  Jack gave them an abbreviated account of his investigation. He couldn’t tell them about Ah Por’s yellow witchcraft, the assistance from his incipient alcoholic Chinatown pal Billy Bow, nor about the illegal Chinese gambling and drug-dealing places he’d visited or the criminal element he’d been around.

  “That’s it?” DiMizzio cracked.

  “So,” Hogan added, “you’re going by the words of disgruntled co-workers, illegal wetbacks, some gossip from old men, and the convenient bullshit from an ex-con Chinatown gangbanger trying to save his own ass?”

  “Yeah, if that’s how you want to put it,” Jack said with a mock grin.

  “Mr. Gee gives you an alibi,” DiMizzio said with a frown, “but you choose to ignore that.”

  “The man practically offered me a bribe,” Jack said, “a security job. Is that what he promised you for dogging me off the case?”

  “You got something against rich people?” DiMizzio asked.

  “You wouldn’t. That’s because you get off on catching cops, not criminals.”

  “What’s with the smart mouth, Yu?” snapped Hogan.

  “Just taking a page from IA,” Jack said. “It fits the tone of your question, right?”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll be watching you, smart ass,” said DiMizzio.

  “Look,” Hogan said, “just stay the fuck away from James Gee, got it?”

  Jack bit his tongue and cursed silently as the two IA bulls turned and stomped out. He waited until their footsteps receded before following the trail back to Pell Street.

  Golden City

  BOSSY WATCHED FROM the backseat of the Town Car as Mon Gor loaded a case of Remy from the Golden City basement into the trunk. Bossy hadn’t told Mon Gor about the visit from the Chinese cop. What the Triad had advised him held true for Mon Gor also: the less he knew, the better. The chaai lo would drop the case soon anyway, he thought. Bossy leaned back and recollected what he knew about his longtime driver, who’d driven him to and from all the places of his overnight debauchery: whorehouses like Chao’s, Fat Lily’s, and Booty’s, where he liked his young, dark-skinned see yow gay, soy sauce pussy.

  Mon Gor was rangy, almost as tall as Bossy himself. He’d arrived in Chinatown in the 1970s and, as an accommodation to the Hok Nam Moon Triad, Duck Hong hired him as a truck driver for the noodle company. He was around twenty years old then, around forty now.

  All the trips to the racetracks—Aqueduct, Belmont, Roosevelt, and Yonkers.

  All the bars and clubs, like Lucy Jung’s, Grampa’s, Yooks, Wisemen, Macao, China Chalet, or the Chinese Quarter. All driven to by Mon Gor.

  All the hot sheets joints and happy-ending massage parlors on the outskirts of Chinatown.

  His father, Duck Hong, had told Bossy that Mon Gor was once one of the top kung fu students in Hong Kong, a wing chun man. There were stories about his heroics in Chinatown bar brawls. Soon after, he became Duck Hong’s personal driver, also reluctantly driving the Gee women to facials and massages, to mah-jongg games and yum cha. Driving his son Francis wherever until he happily got his own license at the age of seventeen.

  Now the women were gone, and so was his father. And Francis had his own car, the obnoxious red one.

  Now it was just him and Mon Gor. Bossy and driver.

  MON GOR HEADED back to the kitchen entrance for another box. Provisions for the condo Bossy’d agreed to try out, on the edge of Sunset Park. A two-week free trial run, fully furnished. The two weeks allowed him to scout the rest of waterfront Brooklyn, near the East River bridges. Extra time to consider other condominium developments, funded by Triad money behind barely legit front corporations.

  He was relieved not to go back to Edgewater. And happy to be so close to Manhattan.

  Mon Gor waited by the doorway for one of the da jop from the kitchen. His friends and associates had twisted his name Mak Mon Gaw into Mon Gor, a nickname, which in Cantonese sounded like “night brother.”

  Because he usually worked at night, driving the denizens of the dark hours.

  Nobody ever saw him in daylight, except Bossy and occasionally the family. It was like he was invisible in daylight, this barroom avenger, who was rumored to be a Triad man himself. He�
��d supposedly intervened in three near fights in the Hip Ching gambling basements, resulting beneficially to the Pell Street tong.

  But in daylight he was invisible.

  MON GOR TOOK a box from the puzzled kitchen worker and came back to the car trunk. A big box of roast duck and for yook and see yow gay. Fast food snacks would suffice until he had a chance to check out the takeout counters in Sunset Park Chinatown. Bossy straightened as Mon Gor slammed the trunk shut.

  “Gau dim,” Mon Gor said in his slang Cantonese, “all done.” It was the same answer he’d given the Triad elders when asked if he’d washed the first matter, of the traitorous deliveryman. All done.

  Snow flurries began falling from the slate Bronx sky.

  “Gau dim,” Mon Gor repeated almost to himself as he slid behind the wheel and glanced at the rearview mirror.

  “Good,” Bossy said. “Now drop me off in Brooklyn and you’re done.”

  “Mo mun tay, Bossee,” Mon Gor answered. “No problem.” He fired up the engine and pulled the car away from the curb, turning for the FDR drive south.

  Sunset Park and then home to Pell Street.

  Mo mun tay at all.

  Mak the Knife

  THE SNOWFLAKES GOT thick and heavy, and Jack left a trail of dark footprints in the thin layer of white that covered the way back to Pell Street.

  Number 8 Pell, Mak Mon Gaw’s address, was an old four-story, redbrick building that dominated the north corner of Pell and Bowery. The storefronts along Pell included a Chinatown gift shop, a China travel agency, and a Buddhist temple, but on the Bowery side the building was anchored by Bamboo Garden restaurant, a Chinese grocery store, and a small bakery.

  In big block letters, the word ORIENTAL was still visible, high up on the faded green façade that overlooked the boulevard.

  Jack noticed there were two sets of fire escapes on the Pell Street side, but just one set above the Bowery side, which led him to believe the main exit for the building’s tenants was number 8.

  He went through the unlocked street door, a bad habit from an earlier time when Chinatown people didn’t bother to lock their front doors, when crime was almost nonexistent.

  Times had changed.

  Jack looked at the mailboxes. Unlike some of the older Chinatown tenements where the tenants all had their own scattering of mismatched metal boxes screwed into the wall, number 8 Pell had an old but standard split panel of metal mailboxes, recessed into the wall. The mail carrier keyed open the top panel, folded it down, and inserted the mail. Then he relocked it.

  Each individual mailbox was vented so the tenants could see if they’d had mail delivered. There were three vertical rows of six mailboxes each, meaning there were eighteen apartments in the building.

  These mailboxes meant that the building had been renovated over the decades and now had more new families than the old flow of transient single men. A few of the tenants’ names had been neatly typed and inserted into the little slot at the top of each mailbox. Newer tenants, figured Jack. Some of the tags had been whited-out, with the new tenant’s name in black marker staking a claim over it. A newcomer tagging over another immigrant’s story.

  Most of the mailbox name tags were old, meaning the tenants had lived here a long time, over generations of the same family, the apartment passed down. The name Jack was looking for, Mak Mon Gaw, was one of the old ones. It was just a crude lettering, MAK/GAW, that barely fit into the name slot.

  MAK/GAW handwritten on yellowed paper, not touched in twenty years.

  There wasn’t any mail in his box.

  Jack looked down at the baseboards, the floor, any tiles that might seem loose. He scanned the areas around both door frames, ran his fingers along the edges. He didn’t find the spare key that top-floor tenants sometimes secreted downstairs just in case they got locked out. Men, whipped at having to call lo por, and having their wifeys come down four flights to chide them before letting them back into the building.

  It didn’t matter to Jack.

  Chinatown was smaller then, he remembered, and he and his teenage pals had explored all the Chinatown rooftops, traveling across the heights the way immigrants did in the previous century. Across the rooftops. The rooftops ran evenly on both sides of the street until halfway down the block, near Doyer, where they butted up against taller buildings on the Bloody Angle. Still, someone could run across the rooftops on Pell and descend, emerging on Bayard or Bowery or Doyers or Mott. It was how the Hip Chings had defended their turf so well through the decades.

  But only the people who had to went up and down.

  Jack knew the rooftops here and how the apartments were situated. Mostly straight railroad flats and a mix of L-shaped, one-bedroom setups. People who really had money combined two apartments into one and occupied the entire floor.

  Rent control ruled, but fong day, or key money, a codicil, gave landlords a cash trump card.

  Along the way, Chinatown learned to play by its own insular set of rules.

  THE STREET WAS a fresh layer of white. See gay drivers would keep their cars indoors during off-hours, saving themselves the trouble of scraping off eight inches of snow and ice before the next job, especially if they were working a wedding or driving out to a freezing Chinese burial at one of the cemeteries in Brooklyn or Queens.

  There were only two indoor commercial parking garages in Chinatown. One was Municipal Parking, which was five blocks away on Pearl Street. A lot of local folks parked there. The other was more expensive, the Rickshaw Garage, which was just around the corner, a block and a half from Pell.

  Jack decided to try Rickshaw first. Keep the car close to home. Always good to go, ready to roll.

  AT RICKSHAW, JACK badged the garage manager, telling him a lie about investigating a stolen-car ring and requesting a list of long-term customers. He didn’t want his real inquiries leaking out in case an attendant had a cozy relationship with a driver.

  The manager called up the annual accounts listing on the computer screen and showed Jack where to scroll the file. Jack quickly found the plate numbers he was hoping to find, numbers belonging to Mak Mon Gaw’s Lincoln Town Car.

  “Can you check the key log and tell me which of these vehicles is presently in the garage?” Jack asked.

  “Most of our long-term customers use their cars to get to work,” the manager offered. “Early birds, out at seven in the morning, back by seven at night.” He took a quick key inventory, checked off the garaged cars for Jack.

  The Town Car was still out.

  “Seven to seven, huh?” Jack said. “I’ll be back later.”

  HE CONSIDERED RETURNING to the Fifth Precinct but didn’t want anyone reporting his ongoing investigation back to Internal Affairs. He also realized he hadn’t eaten since before getting whacked across the head the night before and decided to buy takeout before dropping by the Tofu King.

  Billy was busy managing the afternoon tofu rush, but offered Jack the use of his quiet little office at the back of the shop, where he could enjoy his gnow nom faahn in peace while trying to figure things out.

  Jack wolfed down pieces of savory brisket and wondered about Bossy’s driver. Sure, it would have been easy to slip the lobby door lock of number 8 Pell, go up to 3A and cop-rap on the apartment door. But banging on doors didn’t always work in Chinatown, not if people were illegal immigrants or didn’t respect the police, especially yellow police. He didn’t want his person of interest to get nervous, maybe disappear, before he could question him.

  The man had worked for Bossy Gee for years. Maybe the family trusted him. Dependable, steady. Maybe he had some insight into the home invasion, about Bossy’s intentions, or about the Gee family indiscretions.

  Based on the locations of his traffic violations, Mak Gaw was probably familiar with the Bronx, especially the South Bronx during an overnight illegal U-turn halfway between Booty’s and the possible crime scene at the riverside pocket park in Highbridge. He knows the area after dark.

  Jack re
viewed the copy of Gaw’s license. At five foot eleven inches tall, he fit part of the medical examiner’s profile of the knife-wielding perp.

  Jack finished off the brisket with the rice, measuring the distance from person of interest to suspect. He considered the dark angles of Gaw’s surname.

  Gaw sounded the same as gow, or gao, or gau, depending on the dialect and intent of reference. Based on the tone and accent, gaw meant “enough already,” “to rescue,” “a man’s penis” (luk gow), “to teach,” “a dog,” and “old style.”

  The phonetics danced in Jack’s mind, teaching a dog in the old style. A lesson in payback?

  The other part of his name, Mak, as in lo mok, was the Cantonese equivalent of “nigger.”

  Having lived as a single man in Chinatown, Jack had found it convenient to buy takeout food regularly. Most single men didn’t cook and got by on a wide variety of Chinese takeout.

  Sooner or later, Gaw will have to come out for food. If he parked during the afternoon, he’d surface around evening. If Gaw returned to the garage late, it’d probably be better to sit on number 8 and wait, Jack figured.

  He passed Billy loading buckets of tofu and decided to check Rickshaw Garage again.

  “YOU ONLY LEFT a couple of hours ago,” the manager said. He seemed annoyed as he checked the key log again. “It’s still early. Most of the long-term haven’t come back yet.”

  Jack could see that Gaw’s Town Car was still out. “I’ll be back,” he repeated.

  Outside, the snow had stopped falling, and the afternoon looked like evening. It occurred to him that if for some reason Gaw had parked the car elsewhere, he could very well be in the apartment already.

  He left the garage through the Elizabeth Alley exit and went toward the Fifth Precinct down the street. He walked halfway down the block before he saw the undercover Impala he was looking for, the one he’d driven to Fort Lee the day before.

  THE SERGEANT AT the duty desk looked like he was happy to be out of the cold. He said, “That old Chevy’s headed for the mechanic’s. Something hinky with the transmission, won’t go over twenty. Can’t catch anyone going twenty.” He paused. “And the heater don’t work.”