by Henry Chang
Alex turned away, stating into the phone, “That’s unacceptable. Shen Ping bled out waiting for the ambulance.” She sat down, flashed Jack a disgusted look, and quietly hung up the phone.
“The Shen Ping killing.” She rubbed her eyes. “You know, it’s all over the news, with the protests and everything. Anyway, the family wants to sue the city, EMS, the criminal justice system.” She paused. “And the NYPD, and anyone else connected to the killing.”
Listening to her, Jack had already anticipated the complaint.
“EMS took more than twenty-five minutes to respond to the location,” she began. “Out past Allen Street. The paramedics claim that commercial traffic, gridlock, boxed them in.”
Jack listened patiently.
“Now, understand, local merchants have been complaining for months that law enforcement—cops, court officers, and other city personnel—abuse their parking permits by using Chinatown streets as their personal, long-term parking lot. DOT turns a blind eye to police parking but issues tickets to Chinese truckers who can’t get to the curb and are forced to unload in the middle of the street.”
Jack shook his head in sympathy.
She paused, only to say, “I’m sorry to blow this out on you, Jack.”
“It’s a rough day,” he said. “I had a couple bad ones myself—”
“So my parents tossed you a luau ?” Alex interjected, jerking the conversation another way.
Alex had hooked him up, he recalled, with the Hawaiian vacation package, when he’d needed the break badly, after his troubles in the Fifth. He’d been wounded, but still brought back a perp from San Francisco to cap the murder of Chinatown tong godfather Uncle Four. There had been a promotion at the end of it all.
“Yeah.” Jack smiled, remembering. “Roast pig, poi, mahi-mahi, the works.”
She nodded, smiled, then the hardness came back into her face.
“The kid who was the shooter,” she said sourly, “had three outstanding warrants, and should have never been released from juvie. He had a history of violence and somebody screwed up.”
The phone jangled again.
Jack could see it was important and started to leave.
I’ll call you, he mimed with his index and pinky fingers, pausing at the door.
In turn, Alex pointed at the plastic containers. “Thanks for the bok tong go,” she said quietly, smiling a sad smile as Jack backed away.
Day for Night
The sixteen-story mirrored glass office building at Two Mott Street was the tallest building in the area, anchored at street level by a Citibank branch and a tourist-trade gift shop. The On Yee Merchants Consortium was rumored to be one of the landlords, and they occupied the entire third floor, as well as the penthouse level. The tong made their arrangements in the penthouse, Lucky remembered, as he strode through the lobby.
It was the Ecstasy that was powering him through the nights, but now in the daylight, it kept him from the sleep he needed.
Lucky rode the closet-sized freight elevator to the roof landing and went to the far end. He took a deep gulp of the cold morning air, exhaled, and torched up a sensimilla joint, sucking deeply so that the tip burned a bright orange. The smoke settled him, allowed him to slow down, to see the bigger picture of the forces circling around him. When he looked out over the jumbled patchwork of rooftops, the expanse of Chinatown reached for the horizon. To the east, across the square, he saw the growing enclave of Fukienese Chinese immigrants, their Fuk Chow Native Association building flying the red flag of the People’s Republic high above its tiled pagoda balcony.
Lucky remembered a childhood time when mainland supporters, the commies, would never dare fly the crimson flag for fear of being attacked and having their businesses vandalized or torched. Men wearing masks would come around, guns in their waistbands, to administer a beat down or a stabbing.
Times had changed.
While the old men of the tongs dithered with their deals, the young men who contested the streets had considerations of their own: controling the dirty money flowing through their rackets.
Lucky sucked heartily on the jay, scanning the view of old Chinatown, the core streets that the long ago Chinese bachelors first called home, eking out small lives under the heels of the whites, who didn’t like them and didn’t want them here. Still, the community grew. Now, the Fukienese were driving the boundaries north and east, their numbers swelling into the tenements that had housed the WASPs, the Irish, Italians, and Jews, and the Toishanese and Cantonese before them.
The windy rooftop refreshed him, and the marijuana brought him back down. His thoughts were still scattered from the Ecstasy, but he was beginning to see a pattern forming. As street boss of the Ghost Legion, Lucky was no student of history, but he was an admirer of the Romans, and before them, of the Mongolian hordes. He’d seen the videotapes Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, with Chinese subtitles, and The Great Khan, both movies left behind by some loser in Number Seventeen gambling basement.
He’d learned that the Roman Empire collapsed because it became too large to manage, and corruption from within ate at it like a cancer. This is what he feared would happen to the Ghosts. Already his lieutenants in the Boston and Philadelphia Chinatowns were complaining that new bar clubs and card parlors had opened up, but away from the main streets. These new operators were members of village and fraternal organizations that were defiant when challenged. To help these upstarts, other groups like the Ma Ching—Malaysian gangsters— had arrived from the West Coast.
The New York Ghosts had gotten fat and comfortable, the complaint went, and they were reluctant to travel the interstate to muscle up their ranks. Lucky also knew that trouble was brewing in Chicago, with rumors that a splinter group of Ghosts was threatening to break away. More locally, the threat was Fukienese, challenging all comers to the long stretch of East Broadway and the side streets that ran like tentacles from it. Prostitution rackets from the snakehead sex slaves complemented gambling spots and the white powder of the China-based groups.
The more defiance there was at the fringes, the more face Lucky would lose and then more ambitious factions would question his leadership.
The Mongols were a different history. They conquered all, but were eventually swallowed up, becoming one with the peoples they’d overwhelmed. Like the Mongols, the big threat to Lucky lay to the East: China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Would the old-line tongs, and the Hong Kong triads fall in step and sacrifice the Legion for more powerful paramilitary alliances from overseas?
Lucky sucked off the last of the joint, and flicked the burnt roach off the roof. He didn’t like the thoughts of being sacrificed or swallowed up. Trust no one was the one motto he believed in. But like the Romans and the Mongols, wasn’t it all jing deng, destiny? If so, was there a way out for him? Take his fat accounts and run? Change his identity? Disappear?
He laughed at his own momentary fear.
No need to panic, he thought. There was plenty of time yet. A pair of Chinese tour buses swung through Chatham Square below, bound for Atlantic City.
Lucky imagined cases of pills in the belly-holds of the coach buses stealing down I-95, a million tabs of Ecstasy rolling south from Montreal, party pills bound for clubs and dance joints all along the eastern seaboard. Tons of tax-free cigarettes from the Indian reservations. Let the Fuks ride shotgun on the deliveries. Fuckin’ A, he thought, the Ghosts could skip the muleing altogether, and just pick up the pills at the scheduled stops. They could spend more time on distribution. The volume would increase and the Legion would lessen its exposure and risk. If the system worked well, Lucky could see alcohol, fireworks, AK-47s, and China White, all flowing down the pipeline.
Ka-ching ka-ching, already counting the money.
Lucky had heard other stories from the streets. Rumor had it, the Hung Huen—Red Circle Triad—had some unsatisfactory dealings with the Hip Chings.
Lucky considered his new grudging respect for the Hung Huen. Green Circle, yell
ow circle, fuckin’ pink circle, it was all the same to him; Chinese secret societies. He saw it all as Fu Manchu bullshit that the whitey gwailos played, impressed by that crap with the candles and incense and chicken blood with the zombie chanting. In reality though, Lucky knew the triads were huge, sophisticated Chinese gangs that were major criminal players in Europe, and in Central and South America. More recently, they’d made inroads into North America by way of Canada.
Lucky knew he needed to be careful the Ghosts wouldn’t be swallowed or sacrificed, yet he felt it was too early to set up a sit-down deal with the triads. See how the bus routes worked out first, Lucky figured. Besides, a partnership of the On Yee and the Bak Bamboo triad controlled the buses that carried junkets to casinos in Atlantic City and to Foxwoods in Connecticut. The Bak Bamboo was considering expansion of their routes to include Chinatowns within the tri-state area. He wanted to see what arrangements surfaced before he made his move.
See what happens, Lucky smirked, slowly remembering the value of patience in the face of change. He saw the red flag in the distance, and turned away from the cold wind that whipped in from East Broadway.
Sampan Sinking
Sai Go awoke on his sofa bed, still fully clothed except for his shoes, groggy and unsure how he’d gotten there. He had no idea what time it was, but in the somber light that crept in along the edges of the window blinds, he could make out the closet wall and the mirror above his dresser. Also, the two boxes of summer clothes he’d taken out in case he decided to go somewhere sunny and warm. It was early afternoon, but with a twilight sky outside his window. When he rolled out of the bed, he felt a twinge of pain in his shoulder and was reminded that he needed a haircut, which included a massage.
He pulled out a gray-metal lockbox from under the dresser, dialed the numbers until the combination was right, and opened it. There were the stacks of prepaid telephone calling cards, a few of which he used with his cell phones to take bets, a wireless transmission that couldn’t be traced. Most of the cards were for sale, on consignment from Big Chuck Chan, who was the leading Chinatown distributor of international calling cards. All the gamblers knew Sai Go sold the cards and bought from him because of the dollar discount he offered. Big Chuck was one of Sai Go’s regular bettors and the stack of phone cards served as collateral toward his credit line.
Underneath the stacks was a gun in a holster. He slipped the weapon out of the quick-draw belly-holster and caressed it. The Trident Vigilante was Italian-made, had a matte-nickel finish with black hard-rubber grips, and a six-shot cylinder that took the .32 caliber Smith & Wesson cartridge. The snub-nosed revolver was ultralight, only sixteen ounces, and the thirty-two cartridge produced less kick than the thirty-eight. It was a very practical belly gun, good for close combat but bad for distance accuracy. He had sawed and filed down the hammer so it wouldn’t snag on the draw.
Sai Go didn’t like automatic pistols because he worried they would jam up, and if he kept it on his belly with the safety off, he was afraid he would blow off his balls if he had to quick-draw and caught the trigger wrong. With the revolver, no such problems. Draw and shoot. No cocking action. Simple and quick. He’d seen enough gambler fights to know whoever got in the first hit was usually the winner. The first two shots, the muzzle explosions shocked the eardrums, causing a momentarily freeze. The man who didn’t freeze up was going to walk away. The other man, dead.
Sai Go put his money on the revolver.
At the bottom of the box were two small packs of money, and an envelope that contained a booklet and a certificate for the fifty-thousand-dollar life insurance policy he’d bought from Nationwide. He had kept up the modest payments, all these twenty years since his wife left, thinking that if he ever remarried, he’d have something more to offer a woman than an aging divorced man who couldn’t even claim a legitimate occupation.
The insurance was like a bonus prize, like a Ginsu knife.
He could remove his ex-wife’s name as beneficiary and could designate a new beneficiary at any time. He didn’t have children, had no one else in mind. Ha! The irony of it all, with him dying now, and no one else to benefit from it. The policy was paid up until next summer, a season he wasn’t expecting to see.
He tucked the envelope back into the side of the box, and removed the packs of money, crisp twenties and fifties, a couple of thousand, emergency cash, run money. Well, it was an emergency now, he knew, and he with nowhere to run.
He imagined a village in the south of China, near Toishan, but far enough away from Guangjo city to still be considered farm country. The village of generations of his family, scattered now, the remaining few relatives there no longer on speaking terms with him, especially after the divorce. Sure, he thought, go home to the village where no one wants me, so they can watch me die?
He was calm, rested now after the long sleep. He had a vision of himself in Thailand somewhere, a sunny tropical vista with brown-skinned girls to ease his remaining days. Spend the nights drinking Singha beer and feasting on satays, chow kueh teow noodles, and tom yum soup.
When he thought better of it, he felt he could just as easily go to Fat Lily’s or Angelina’s for brown-skinned girls, and to Penang or Jaya Village for Thai beer, roti, and hainam chicken. For the sunny vista he could take a bus south on the interstate, or take the train with the glass skylight roof down to Florida somewhere for a few weeks. Somewhere sunny and not too far. A cruise to one of the islands? What would he do with a shipload of lo fan strangers? He could just as well be alone in Manhattan, if he only turned off his cell phones and stayed out of the OTB and Chinatown.
He was taking it all very well, he thought, with some resignation, of course, but what else could he do really? Get hysterical? Get depressed? Beg the gods for forgiveness and salvation? Be hopeful even when the doctors offered no hope? He wasn’t the suicidal type, and even though he feared the pain to come, he didn’t see himself wasting half the time he had left being sick from the radiation. He wasn’t going to roll up in bed and wait to die.
He’d made it to fifty-nine, Sai Go mused, what the hell. He’d led a decent life, generally speaking, and hadn’t committed any evil he couldn’t face up to.
There were no relatives to notify. He wasn’t leaving anything to anyone, and his plot in the old Chinese section of Peaceful Valley cemetery had been paid in full years ago. Now he needed to spend whatever he had left, and try to avoid a painful death, even though he’d quit the meds, and canceled the chemotherapy.
Three or four months?
If he were a family man, there would be many other considerations, but he was alone. So the question was did he really want to go on a vacation to die, or to hang around Chinatown until the end? He could stop taking bets and just enjoy the final days. Take a junket to Atlantic City or Connecticut and play some cards games with the Chinese high rollers. He’d get comped with a lot more bang for the buck, and it would be only a three-hour bus ride from Chinatown.
The thoughts went back and forth inside Sai Go’s head even as he slurped hot jook, and chewed the crisp fried crullers at Big Wang’s. He read his Chinese newspapers and couldn’t help but scan the racing sections.
At the U.S. Asia Bank, his Happy Valley payout had been wired, and now his account had grown to over thirty-eight thousand. Even minus the six thousand for the dailo, he still had over thirty thousand to spend during his last months. There was another two thousand on the street he had to collect, but he didn’t anticipate a problem. These bettors were his family: the waiters, cooks, kitchen help, the street vendors and deliverymen. Ten-dollar bettors and hundred-dollar players, he’d treated them all fairly, with a savvy blend of camaraderie and no-nonsense. He never let his credit get too far in front and had built a loyal following. None of which mattered anymore, Sai Go knew, the game was over.
He went east on Catharine Street toward Henry, those streets crowded even in the cold with sidewalk vendors of fruit, vegetables, and seafood stores stacked against meat and poultry m
arkets and a string of bakeries. Trucks and vans idled at the curb, their exhaust pipes steaming, as they rushed their deliveries with one eye out for the chow pai ticket of the brownie traffic cops.
On Henry Street, the buildings were turn-of-the-century brick tenements, mostly Jewish back then, but now overwhelmingly Chinese. A section of the Manhattan Bridge rose up in the near distance.
The New Canton Hair Salon had a blue awning with a cartoon of a pair of scissors and a comb drawn across the front. It was a small storefront sandwiched between a noodle shop and a poultry market on a dilapidated block of Henry Street.
The salon was unlike the new and shiny hair, nail, and massage “emporiums” that dominated Pell and Doyers Streets. There was graffiti on the outside of the New Canton. Inside was a run-down room with six barber chairs and a small counter near the door. There were mirrors on the walls, and shelves full of shampoo, lotions, and towels. The helpers washed hair at two basin stations, side by side behind a plastic partition.
As he approached, Sai Go could see there were two barbers on duty and no customers in the shop. One cutter was a vampy-looking Chinese girl with reddish hair, who showed a lot of skin and a tattoo of a cat on her shoulder. The other was Sai Go’s regular, a woman he knew as Bo, which meant precious. She’d been trimming his hair once a week for almost two years now.
Ms. Chu Bo Jan.
Bo was not one of the full-time stylists, the pro hair designers. Instead, she rented one of the barber chairs three to four days a week for a sixty-forty split between her and the salon owner. The owner, KeeKee, was an occasional bettor with Sai Go, and she had explained Bo’s situation when he inquired, privately, why an older woman, still handsome, had come to be a part-time haircutter.
Precious
Bo was indebted to the snakeheads, one of many thousands who were paying off a thirty-thousand-dollar deal with Chinese human traffickers, for passage to America. The deal involved bogus passports, fraudulent paperwork, and sometimes the promise of jobs. The illegals placed relatives in China as human collateral against breaking the contract.
