Family Business

by S. J. Rozan

  Unorthodox ways. Uh-huh. I determined this might be a good time to say the nothing she clearly wanted from me.

  Tan eyed us and put down her cup. “They’ll make mistakes,” she went on. “They’ll almost certainly lose nonprofit status. None of them understand what that requires. The tong will go back to operating in the shadows of what they’ll call a social club, but that’s how tongs and triads have worked for two hundred years. They can survive without me.”

  Mel asked, “What will you do?”

  “I’ll go back to Hong Kong.”

  “Back home.”

  Tan looked at the photo on the wall for a long silent moment. Sitting back in her armchair, she said, “I was born in Hong Kong. We were poor. Very early I saw who had power—not the schoolgirls in their blue skirts and blouses, walking home in cringing groups to protect themselves from the leering men. And from the gang boys, who roamed the streets. At fourteen I joined the Black Shadows. I fought my way in. At first Johnny Gee, the leader, was amused. He was sure I’d lose a fight, fail an initiation task. I never did. So he decided to take me to his bed, as he did with the girls who hung around hoping to attract a gang boy’s attention. I refused. I liked Johnny, and eventually, after my place in the tong was secure, we did become lovers. But to do it then, on those terms, would have doomed my chances of becoming an equal member.

  “As I thought he might, Johnny sent someone—his lieutenant, Cho—to teach me a lesson. We fought. I won. I could have killed Cho, but I judged that would be a mistake. I left him lying where we’d fought and walked back to the teahouse where the Black Shadows gathered. I told them where he was. I stood, wearing his blood and my own, while Johnny sent a boy to see. The boy came back, reporting that he’d found Cho injured. He’d called an ambulance and watched from across the street as they took him to hospital.

  “I didn’t know what to expect next. Johnny might have killed me. I stayed where I was. Johnny and the others stared. Then he began to laugh. He jumped up, slapped me on the back, and welcomed me to the Black Shadows. After that no one challenged me. Not even Cho, once he recovered. I moved quickly through the ranks and became a Red Pole, an enforcer. It was one of my duties to deal with disobedient members. I enjoyed it.” She picked up her tea again and sipped, seeming to be waiting for a response.

  Mel said nothing. I supposed being raised in Scarsdale might make this kind of story a little unsettling.

  It might also leave holes in your local knowledge. “The Black Shadows are the gang affiliated with the Li Min Jin,” I said.

  Tan’s small smile seemed directed at “affiliated,” but she nodded. “In Hong Kong, and here,” she said. “When I came to New York I brought my affiliation with me. I was too old for a street gang. Coercing payments from merchants and mugging tourists provides fewer thrills as you age, and stabbing members of other gangs in fights over territory might make a boy feel like a man, but for myself, I was no longer interested in that sort of crude exercise of power. I had relatives in New York and decided to start again, here, where no one knew me.

  “I’d stayed in school during my gang years, and as it turned out I had a talent for numbers. Early on Johnny Gee put me in charge of the Black Shadows’ financial affairs.”

  “From Red Pole to White Paper Fan?” Boy, Lydia, you sound like an expert.

  Tan gave me the look you’d give a show-off child. “To use the traditional titles, yes. Few of the gangs and tongs do anymore. The Black Shadows weren’t as formal as that.”

  “The Li Min Jin is, though,” said Mel. “Isn’t it?”

  “Your uncle was traditional in many ways. That was one.”

  “Forgive us the interruptions,” Mel said. “Please continue.”

  Tan nodded. “As Johnny Gee and the other boys grew into men, they found that what I’d done, my investments, my purchases of land and businesses, had made the Black Shadows not wealthy, but well enough off. Those who wanted to put their pasts behind them and become respectable were able to do so. I understand that some of them, in the years since I left, have done well. Of course I had a share also, which I liquidated and brought with me when I came to America.” She smiled. “I’d never been out of Hong Kong. As the plane rose into the clouds I looked out and saw the Dragon Boat festivities in the harbor. Then Hong Kong was gone. The flight was interminable. When the pilot announced we were descending, I looked out the window once again, to see my new home. We were flying over what I now know was Flushing Meadow Park. I saw banners, kites, and Dragon Boats. I laughed. How much luckier a sign could I hope for? My cousin and her husband were waiting for me at the airport, as they said they’d be. Not long after, I offered my services to Choi Meng for the Li Min Jin.”

  “I see,” said Mel.

  Tan gave Mel a long, steady look. “I’m not sure you do. I told you the story of my past so you’ll understand I’m resolute about achieving my goals. I determined to join the Black Shadows and I did. I chose my time to leave Hong Kong and come to New York. I found a way into the Li Min Jin. Now, before I leave New York and the Li Min Jin, there are things I must do, and to do them I need to know what will become of this building.”

  “I can’t tell you yet. I have a lot of factors to weigh.”

  “I suggest you weigh them, then. And let me know your decision. Sooner, Wu Mao-Li, rather than later.”

  17

  Mel and I got nothing more from Tan Lu-Lien, nor she from us. I had nothing to give, of course. Mel wouldn’t be pushed into a decision on the building—or into revealing the lines of her thinking—and Tan refused to elaborate further. When I put down my cup, Tan didn’t move to refill it. That was the end of the tea party.

  “Boy,” I said to Mel when we were back out on Bayard Street. “That woman is more intimidating drinking tea than any other tong member I’ve ever met swinging his fists.”

  “Agreed.” Mel stared back at the building. “Was she threatening me? I mean, I’ve known her all my life!”

  “Should auld acquaintance be forgot. I think this was the stage before that. She was saying she will threaten you unless you deliver. And that if she threatens you, you can count on her to carry through. Equal rights aside, the Li Min Jin is losing out by not making her the new leader.”

  “They certainly are.”

  “Though,” I went on, “one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. A weakening of any tong is good for Chinatown.”

  “Except,” Mel said thoughtfully, “for people who’re glad the Li Min Jin has been holding out on Jackson Ting and stopping Phoenix Towers. People who don’t know the building’s mine now and think the tong owns it—those people might want to keep the tong powerful, at least for a while.”

  “And who would those people be?”

  Mel looked off down the street, where shoppers were going in and out of the fruit store and the stationery store, and tourists with three-scoop cones were leaving the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.

  “For one thing,” I said, answering my own question, “they’d include people like my brother and the Chinatown Heritage Society.”

  “Your brother would support strengthening the tong?”

  “Oh, no, no, no. Mr. Straight Arrow?” I didn’t tell her about the cow Tim had had over dinner the previous night when he thought I might be working for the Li Min Jin. “But at the funeral he was mumbling about goals aligning. He might not be unhappy if the tong stayed strong long enough to face down Jackson Ting.”

  Mel nodded, and then she gestured to the buildings set to be demolished if Phoenix Towers were allowed to proceed. “Also, anyone living there.”

  “And let’s not forget tong members who don’t want to lose their building. Members who haven’t heard about you, or at least hadn’t yesterday morning, and thought it was the Li Min Jin’s decision. They’d want a leader who didn’t want to sell.”

  “And so you’re thinking”—Mel brought her gaze back to me—“if people thought Mr. Chang did want to sell, he might have been killed by som
eone in the opposition. Someone inside or outside the tong. It might have nothing to do with Uncle Meng’s message to me.”

  “If Tan Lu-Lien’s right, Chang would have crushed any challenger. If he wouldn’t have lost a vote, or whatever it is they do, and someone wanted him gone, he’d have needed to be removed another way.”

  “God,” Mel said, shaking her head. “I wish I knew what it was he was going to tell me.”

  “Do you suppose there’s anyone else who’d know? Though if Tan, in her position, didn’t even know he had a message for you from your uncle… Still, how about Loo Hu-Li? Would it be worth asking him? Or Ironman Ma?”

  “I hardly know Ironman Ma at all. I don’t know if my uncle, or Mr. Chang, would have confided in him. But Mr. Loo, he was here when Uncle Meng came from Hong Kong. He’s the last remaining member from those days.” Mel smiled. “What Tan said about him—that’s my memory, too. He always looked as though he had a toothache. But I guess we could ask him. Although if Mr. Chang wasn’t a shoo-in and did have a challenger, it would have been Mr. Loo.”

  “Which means Loo might be Chang’s killer. Yes. I think we need to talk to him anyway,” I said. “Because he also might not be. If he can tell us something, great. If he can’t, or won’t, we won’t know any less than we do now.”

  “Except we will have alerted Mr. Loo that there’s something to know. But then we can watch and see what he does about it.”

  I grinned. “Shaking trees. You think like a detective.”

  “I’m going to take that as a compliment.”

  “As intended. But you know, thinking like one doesn’t mean you have to act like one. If the fact that he might be the killer makes you nervous about speaking to him, I can try him without you.”

  “No, no, I’ll come. Mr. Loo might feel some obligation to me as Uncle Meng’s family. If you think it’s worth it, let’s do it.”

  It might have been worth it, but we couldn’t do it. We went back and knocked at the Li Min Jin’s door only to discover Mr. Loo was not in. While Beefy was telling us that, the cop at the door got a call on his cell. The cop upstairs did, too, and came galloping down the five flights. The crime scene had been released. With unseemly glee they both trotted past us and off down the street, leaving Beefy to close the door in our faces.

  * * *

  Mel went to her office, glad, she said, to have work to focus on. I called Bill.

  “Have a good time with the gangsters?” he asked.

  “My head is spinning. How about if I walk over and pick you up and we stroll to the river?”

  “I never say no when a beautiful woman offers to pick me up. I’ll meet you downstairs. I’ll be the one who looks excited. You’ll be the one who looks like the Exorcist.”

  He was waiting outside Shorty’s when I got there. He ground out his cigarette, and we walked the couple of blocks down Laight Street to the park by the Hudson. The midday sun cast weaving shadows from the half-bare branches as we sat at a table under the trees. “So it was a profitable morning?” Bill asked.

  “I don’t really know.” I recounted for him our trek through Big Brother Choi’s apartment, where the only outstanding fact wasn’t even a fact: Mel’s sense that something was amiss at the family altar. Then I told him about Tan Lu-Lien, who she was and what she’d wanted.

  “Sounds like my kind of gal.”

  “You’d have hit it off big time. You could’ve compared tattoos and arm wrestled and who knows what all. I bet she even smokes.” I watched ducks paddling around by the pier and sun glittering off the water. “I don’t know what she’s really getting at,” I said. “She says she doesn’t care what Mel decides, she just needs to know, but that doesn’t make sense to me. Although she’s definitely a plan A, plan B, plans C through double Z type. Maybe she’s just arranging her exit in different ways based on Mel’s decision.”

  “Will Mel tell her, once she decides?”

  “I’m not sure, though I don’t see why she wouldn’t. She didn’t seem to quite believe Tan was threatening her, but her decision on the building will be public soon enough. I’m hoping Loo can shed light on Big Brother Choi’s last message. But whether he can or not, Mel’s going to have to decide something. And in case her inclination is not in the direction of Jackson Ting, did you come up with anything useful in our chess game with him?”

  “Mostly background. Interesting, but I’m not sure how useful it is.”

  I shifted to face him. “Please proceed.”

  “I called some suppliers and contractors I know. Some had done work for Ting and others hadn’t, but they all knew who he was and no one sang his praises. He wants fast and cheap. He likes glitz, but he doesn’t care about quality. He makes rash decisions and then refuses to rethink them. And he kisses up to people he considers important.”

  “And his bad points?”

  “Hah. They also say he argues about every bill that crosses his bookkeeper’s desk, but he attends all the five-thousand-dollar-a-plate dinners he can get to. They did admit, reluctantly, that once he’s agreed on a price he pays promptly. Sounded to me like that’s about the only reason they keep bidding on his work. You don’t get a fair price, but you can keep your cash flow going.”

  “Is that how the construction business works?”

  “Isn’t it how every business works? The guys at the top squeeze the guys at the bottom?”

  “Probably,” I said glumly. “Did anyone have any suggestions about where to find the skeletons in his closet?”

  “Sorry. For what it’s worth, they’re all sure he has them. Though they don’t necessarily want them found.”

  “What do you mean? Why not?”

  “Some of these guys are eyeing the Phoenix Towers project with lust in their hearts.”

  “Damn. Self-interest rears its ugly head again. Well, I put Linus and Trella on the trail of Jackson Ting’s finances. Haven’t heard back, but they haven’t been at it long.”

  As I said that my phone burst out with “Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad.”

  “Linus making a dramatic entrance?” Bill said.

  “That’s not his ring. That’s the client ring.” I tapped the phone on. “Lydia Chin.”

  “Hey, Lyd! It’s Ironman. What’s happening?”

  I raised my eyebrows at Bill while I said, “Well, hey. Not much, Ironman. What about you?”

  Bill raised his eyebrows back. He leaned in to listen, but I swatted him away.

  “You looked so gorgeous yesterday,” Ironman said, “that I wondered why we ever lost touch. Can I buy you a drink?”

  “You don’t have to lay it on so thick. I’d be happy to have a drink with you. When were you thinking?”

  “That wasn’t laying it on thick,” he protested. “Just telling it like it is. So how about now? Make up for lost time, you know?”

  “You mean now, right now? Okay, but it’s a little early for a drink. I’d go for tea.”

  “Tea it is. Miansai?”

  “Twenty minutes?”

  “Too long to wait.”

  “I’ll see if I can make it in nineteen.” I clicked off.

  “Ironman Ma?” Bill said as I put the phone away. “Gangsters have your phone number?”

  “Many have yours,” I pointed out. “He’s taking me out for a cup of tea. Because I’m gorgeous.”

  “Although you are, in fact, gorgeous, do we really think that’s his reason?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been this same gorgeous for the last ten years and I haven’t heard a peep from him. Well, gotta go. Told him twenty minutes and we’re meeting at a hoity-toity tea place on the Lower East Side.”

  “Not in Chinatown?”

  “Interesting, no?”

  I stood and so did Bill. “You don’t mind if I come with you.”

  “I do.”

  “Not as a bodyguard. Heaven forfend. But the implication of your meeting place is he doesn’t want to be seen with you. Not a sentiment I’d ever feel, by the way.”
/>   “I should hope not.”

  “I’m just wondering who it might be by whom he doesn’t want to be seen.”

  “Did you really say that?”

  “I can say it again.”

  “Don’t bother. Let’s go.”

  18

  Bill and I zipped through Soho to the tea shop. As we approached it, Bill crossed to the other side of the street. Right before I pulled open Miansai’s door I saw him take up his post, slouching into a doorway and looking for all the world like just another New York bum. He does that so well.

  Miansai is a place I don’t like. It’s a tea shop within a retail store, and the bags, belts, and bracelets are their focus. Their teas tend toward mocha pumpkin spice chai latte and that kind of nonsense. The indoor tea bar was empty, so I walked through to the patio at the back. Ironman wasn’t waiting for me. Strike one. I chose a table in the sun and had just ordered a pot of Kenyan organic first-flush BOP—the simplest thing on the tea menu—when Ironman breezed out from the shop. He spoke to the waitress as he blew by her and landed at my table like he was stealing second.

  “God, was I right or was I right? You look delicious.” He grinned. “What the hell, girlfriend? Why have we not seen each other in all this time?”

  Noting the bulge of a holster under his classy sport coat, I said, “Could it be because I’m a private investigator and you’re a gangster?”

  “Oh, come on, Lyd! I’m a tong member. We’re not all gangsters.”

  Lyd. My brothers, yes; arrogant smarmy criminals, no. Strike two. My teeth grated, but I smiled. “Oh really? What is it you people do, then?”

  “We’re a nonprofit. Me, I run our youth programs.”

  “Oh, you’re the liaison with the Black Shadows? Or do you do on-playground recruitment?”

  “Hey! Basketball! Nine-man! Fucking ping-pong! We sponsor a track team and a Little League team. Lion dancers and drummers. We have a guy who teaches martial arts to little kids, kindergarteners. You should see them throwing their cute little kicks. Wholesome shit like that, baby, that’s what I do.”