“Right. I have some questions—”
“Questions…”
“Kind of about who did this.”
“That’s exactly what we’d like to know, Mr. McCormick,” Inspector Tang said.
“The officer last night—Officer Polaski—said something about gangs. He said things like that don’t happen without a reason.”
“And you’re going to give me a reason?”
“No. I don’t know any reason.”
“Maybe your friend knows about a reason.”
“Maybe. Look, I was just wondering if you guys were going to go through any files to find them.”
“What files?”
“I don’t know. Your gang files. Yakuza stuff. I don’t know.”
“You’re telling me Zhang’s attackers were Yakuza? What makes you think that, Mr. McCormick?”
“God, I don’t know. I just want these thugs caught, okay?”
“Were they Japanese?”
“I don’t know.”
“If they were Yakuza, they would be Japanese.”
“I’m not saying they’re Yakuza.”
From the report, he read, “‘A large tattoo on left neck resembling the tail of a dragon.’ That could be Yakuza.”
“I don’t know if they’re Yakuza.”
“There are no known Yakuza in the United States now.”
“Then they’re probably not Yakuza. Maybe they’re Chinese. Daniel Zhang is Chinese.”
“And Zhang has connections to organized crime?”
“Christ, I don’t know.”
“Look, Mr. McCormick—”
“I’m an MD—”
“I assure you that we’ll do everything we can—”
“Do you have mug shots or something I could look at? Maybe one of the guys I saw—?” There was no response. “This is going nowhere,” I said. “Forget I called.”
“Wait, wait. Wait a second.” I could almost hear him smiling into the phone. “Why don’t you come down to the station, and we’ll talk a little. You can look through mug shots, if you want.”
Well, Inspector Tang, I wanted.
55
THE HUNK OF MUNICIPAL CONCRETE and glass called the Southern District Police Station rose impressively next to an elevated section of Interstate 80. Most of the building was blocky, small-windowed, Orwellian. But on the west, the concrete gave way to undulating glass, evoking ocean waves rippling along the highway.
The Gang Task Force was five floors up, located in a space crammed with cubicles and desks topped by computers. It could have been headquarters for a retail bank or an insurance company, except that most of the workers here packed heat. And handcuffs. And looked a hell of a lot tougher than your average loan officer.
The secretary pointed me to a cubicle at the far end of the room. There, a man sat with his feet on his desk, laughing with another guy in a cubicle across the aisle.
Mid-thirties, styled hair, two days’ stubble, sport jacket with an open shirt, Jack Tang could have been the swaggering lead cop from some hip Fox show. Chow Yun-Fat for the American set. Inspector Cool.
Tang pulled his sturdy-but-stylish shoes off the desk and stuck his hand out to shake mine. He didn’t stand. “That was fast, Mr. McCormick.”
“Speed limit all the way,” I said. “And it’s actually Dr. McCormick.”
Normally, the Mr. McCormick thing doesn’t bother me, but when I felt like I needed some respect, and when we’d already been over that territory before, I plugged the “doctor” thing. I always felt a little dirty when I did it.
“I know you’re a doctor,” he replied. “I got about a dozen doctors in my family, and they all get fussy about that, too.”
“I’m not fussy.”
“Of course you’re not.” He leaned back in his chair, indicated the one next to his desk. “You have anything else for me?” he asked as I sat.
“Only what I told you on the phone.”
“Which is not much.”
We didn’t seem to be getting off to a good start, and I told him that. “I’m this way with everybody,” he assured me. “Just look at this from my perspective, okay? I’m Gang Task Force, right? Extortion, assaults, prostitution, gun violations—anything nonfatal that has to do with gangs.”
“Sure.”
“And I have a case file bigger than my car.”
“Okay.”
“And the patrol officer figured this assault might be gang related, so your case ends up on my desk.”
“Reasonable.”
“But the investigation can’t go forward unless one of you two guys starts cooperating. At this point, you’re not telling me anything that would lead me to believe this was gang related. Except that the men in question were of a particular race and that they drove a nice car. So what am I supposed to do with that?”
“A guy got beaten up by three men with guns.”
He smiled, crossed his ankles, exhaled. Twenty years before, this guy would have been smoking like a chimney. “Your friend told Officer Polaski the whole thing was just a ‘misunderstanding.’”
“It wasn’t just a misunderstanding.”
“What was it, then?”
“I’m not sure, but I have a feeling.”
“A feeling?”
I told him I used to work for CDC, used to be a “medical detective.” I figured it would give me a little credibility.
“‘Medical detective.’” With another big exhalation, he leaned forward, as if he had to get to more important things: joking with his buddies, going over scripts for next week’s show.
Still, something in the momentum of our meeting had changed. “You were here to look at pictures. So let’s look at pictures.” He put his hands on his knees and hoisted himself out of the chair, led me over to a woman who sat in at the edge of the constellation of desks. “Dana, please show Dr. McCormick the mug shots we have for Asian gang members, affiliates, suspected members.” He looked at me, then back at her. “And Dana—be thorough. Give the doc here everything we have.” He disappeared to make a call, I assumed, to his agent about that NBC pilot.
Dana, a middle-aged black woman, led me to a computer. “You want any coffee, hon?” she asked.
“No thanks.”
“You sure?” She laughed. “Asian guys in their twenties or thirties. Ooo-wee. You’re going to be here awhile.”
She logged me on to the workstation and brought up the cataloging program, hit a couple of keys to sort for race, age. A full screen of names came up.
“How many are here?” I asked.
“Oh, maybe six hundred in the system, the ones who’ve been booked and have mug shots. You come get me when you’re finished with those. Then we’ll get you the binders with the other ones.”
“The other ones?”
“The ones who were detained but not booked. We get their pictures just to have them on file.”
“How many of those?”
“A couple hundred more,” she answered cheerfully.
So, ooo-wee, I was going to be there awhile. And the hangover worked through my brain like a bone saw. “Maybe I will take that coffee, after all.”
56
THE FOLKS AT THE SAN Francisco Gang Task Force had been busy over the years. There were the mug shots, of course, and then the binders: photo after photo of sour-looking young men against nondescript backgrounds. The photos were labeled: “Benny Tan, aka, Legs, aka Bean.” Many also had “known associate” or “? associate.” The name of an organization followed. Joe Boys. Wah Ching. United Bamboo. Jackson Street Boys.
I put the cup to my lips and sucked the early afternoon tar that was on tap at the SFPD.
Two hours later, after all the quality time spent with two-dimensional, dangerous-looking people, I found almost nothing. On the computer, I brought up the one mug shot that interested me. Unlike the gent who’d slapped his paws on the hood of my car, who swung the bat into Daniel Zhang, this man’s face was pocked with acne scars. He had no ta
ttoo. And he was not smiling. But there was something about the eyes, I thought. Similar bone structure, perhaps. A caption underneath the picture read: Michael Kwong, member Tun Bo On org.
The second thing I’d found—a picture in the binder—may or may not have been the man with the baseball cap who’d stuck his gun into my face the night of Daniel Zhang’s beating. The eyes drooped at the sides and the whites were bloodshot, as if this guy were, like me, on just the other side of a hangover.
“Mr. McCormick, how’s it coming?”
“Señor Tang,” I said, smiling. “It’s coming along okay. I found two—”
I indicated the picture of the guy who could have been the man in the baseball cap. Tang glanced at it, ran his finger over the identifying information. “William Yun. Billy Yun. Not your guy.”
“You sound pretty sure.”
He hunched over my shoulder to the computer, opened a new window, typed “Yun” into the search field, and hit a key. The screen filled with text and, in its upper corner, a small picture of the man in the binder photo. “Mr. Yun is currently serving eight years at Folsom for attempted murder,” Tang said.
“Okay,” I said. “Not him. What about the other guy?”
Tang closed the window with Billy Yun’s mug on it, and stared into the dead-looking eyes of a man named Michael Kwong. “Probably not.”
“Probably?”
“Michael Kwong is no longer in the country.”
“How do you know that?”
“If he’s here, he’s stupid.”
“Can you elaborate?”
If my insistence bothered Tang, he gave no sign of it. He bent to the computer again. “There was a racketeering charge against him. About seven years ago, we indicted six guys, Kwong was one of them. He served two years at Pelican Bay before his conviction was overturned on a technicality. Only way to get rid of him was to deport him to Hong Kong.”
“Who is he?”
He clicked back to the picture, ignored my question. “Besides, Michael Kwong was not muscle. I can’t imagine him whacking some guy with a baseball bat.”
“But who is he?”
Tang straightened. “There are five big crime syndicates—triads—in Hong Kong: 14K, Sun Yee On, Wo Sing Wo, Wo Hop To, Tun Bo On. Michael Kwong was with Tun Bo On, the smallest of the five. He was sent here, we believe, to expand their operations into California.”
“So the—what are they called? Triads? They aren’t normally active here?”
“The triads are Chinese grown and cultivated, and otherwise Asian oriented. The money’s much bigger for them over there, but periodically, they make pushes into Canada and the States.”
“And Michael Kwong was part of that?”
“We think. Tun Bo On was hammered pretty hard by Hong Kong and Taiwanese police back in the early nineties. They lost a lot of ground in Asia, and we think they expanded here in California and in Vancouver to increase revenue. It didn’t go too well for them, though.”
“No?”
“Nah. We nailed Kwong eleven months after he got off the boat. There were rumors that he was a big cheese in Hong Kong, but it turned out he was a low-level operator—a dai lo, street boss in HK. Two gambling halls under his belt, small potatoes. He comes here with big ideas, he affiliates with a local street gang, gets a little vice going, a little gambling, some drugs. We worked with the FBI and busted him under RICO. Murder-for-hire rap.”
“So you guys think he’s out of here.”
“The triads sent a minor guy to test the waters. Kwong gets busted, they retreat.” Tang clicked back to the image of Michael Kwong. “There hasn’t been any triad activity in the States since then, but we’ve had some signs that the triads might be making a play for SF again. We’ve hammered the youth gangs and some tong members, so there’s something of a power vacuum now. The triads could be trying to take advantage of the chaos.”
“The Chinese triads.”
“Right. Triads are only Chinese.”
“And the tongs are also Chinese?”
“No. Homegrown. Chinese-American.”
“And the youth gangs?”
“Same. U.S.”
“So maybe this Kwong guy is working for them.”
“Michael Kwong is triad. He’s Chinese.”
“Maybe he’s a tong member.”
“Then he’s not Michael Kwong,” the inspector said, frustration creeping into his voice. “Kwong is triad.”
“Jesus, I thought biochem was confusing.” Frustration at not understanding—the same tight feeling I got when trying to figure out fatty acid oxidation in med school—was filling my head. Ten minutes ago, I thought that effing Chinese gangs were just effing Chinese gangs; now I had tongs, triads, and youth gangs. “All right. Enlighten me: who are the tongs?”
Tang looked at his watch. “I don’t have time for the history lesson, Mr. McCormick. I’ve got someplace to be.”
“Then I’ll walk you to your car, Inspector. I think the history lesson might be important.”
“We’ve had Chinese trouble in this city since the nineteenth century, right? Coolies come from the mainland to build the railroads. They’re profoundly bummed about being in a racist country so far from home. The tongs pop up to help these guys. They start out as community organizations and merchants’ associations. They help the new arrivals with places to gather, help them with jobs and so on. But these profoundly bummed guys are also profoundly bummed about having no women. So, the vice industry kicks up. The coolies numb themselves with opium, which was legal, by the way. They gamble for companionship and to pass the time. The tongs see the money to be made in prostitution, gambling, and opium. They fight over turf for the illegal trade, and, voilà, the Tong Wars of the nineteenth century.” Tang scooped up his cop stuff—jacket, gun, cuffs, sunglasses, breath mints—then headed for the elevator. I stuck to his heels. “Don’t you have some diseases or something to detect?”
“I would, but we won the war against disease.”
“Yeah. And we stamped out crime yesterday. Anyhow, things quiet down and don’t really get kicking again until immigration law changes in the sixties and normalization of relations with the mainland in the seventies. Then the gates open, new immigrants come, their kids come. The kids are disaffected and picked on; they coalesce into the youth gangs. There starts to be some violence, some turf battles.”
“Tong Wars of the twentieth century,” I said.
“No. The Tong Wars were fought by tongs—the old guys—who operated their gambling and prostitution as well as their legit businesses. No, these were youth gangs. They started out pretty innocent—selling firecrackers—then took a page from the criminal gangs back in Asia and started shaking down merchants in the area for protection money. Initially, they had no connection to the tongs. But they were making more and more trouble, so the tongs decided to deal with the Huns rather than to fight them. Some of the tongs linked up with youth gangs. The tongs got street muscle; the gangs got places to hang out and some legitimacy.”
“Not like the Mafia.”
“Hell no. The American Chinese mafia is a myth. Think of the tongs and the youth gangs as two separate groups with different but intersecting interests: the young guys get places to hang out, places rented for them by tong members. They go from being a bunch of kids with small-time rackets to kids with small-time rackets and elder affiliation. The old guys get the irritating youth off their backs, and get the bonus of someone to protect gambling and vice establishments.”
The elevator stopped on the basement floor. We stepped out into a bleak hallway. “You heard of the Golden Dragon Massacre?” Tang asked.
“No.”
“In 1979, a youth gang called the Joe Boys opens fire in the Golden Dragon restaurant to kill some guys from a gang called the Wah Ching. No Wah Ching were hit, but five bystanders were killed. Eleven others were wounded. In ’83, Wah Mee Club in Seattle, fourteen people hogtied and shot. Christmas Eve, ’82, New York City, three murdered
in a Chinatown bar in a turf war. A thirteen-year-old was gunned down. A gang called the Asian Boyz was linked to twelve murders in one year in the mid-nineties.”
“That seems like ancient history.”
“Allen Leung, a community leader and former head of Hop Sing Tong, was gunned down last year. Last week two Mexican illegals were beaten to death a couple blocks from Central Station. Asian gang involvement is suspected in both cases. That recent enough for you, Mr. McCormick?”
We were in a large garage now, and Tang made his way to one of the unmarked Chevys that sat, beetle-like, in a long line of other unmarked Chevys.
“These guys are violent and uncontrolled. SFPD got hip to things after Golden Dragon and created the Gang Task Force to deal with them. We’ve done a pretty good job crippling the youth gangs with RICO, and have actually managed to bring down a few tong members. The situation is in flux, though. Hop Sing, for example, is now legit. But in flux or not, I still don’t see any connection to your friend Zhang. My gut says this is a waste of time.” Tang put his hand to his lips.
“When did you quit?” I asked.
“Sorry?”
“Smoking.”
Tang pulled his fingers from his lips. “Nice catch. The doctor in you or the disease detective?”
“The former smoker.”
“Ha. You know what cigarette is in Chinese?”
“No.”
“Yan. Also means ‘to castrate.’”
“I can see the public health campaign already.”
“Yeah.” Tang laughed. We were standing in front of the car now. He reached for the door, opened it. “Look, Dr. McCormick, I love talking about this stuff. It’s my life, right? And I’m happy you’re interested, but I really got to go.”
I sized up Inspector Tang. Perhaps because he took the time to talk to me when he didn’t want to, perhaps because he was a former smoker, I’d begun to trust the guy. “It wasn’t just a misunderstanding,” I said.
Tang smiled. In that moment, I realized he’d played me—let me get comfortable, let me ask my dumb questions. His gut told him there was more, and his gut knew I would tell him. “Where’s your car?” he asked.
Flawless Page 19
