by Henry Chang
He went to the table and took a gulp from the bottle of mouthwash there, gargled, and ejected the green spew into a plastic garbage pail. Thinking it might be better to cool his plan to rob the Fuk’s mahjong club, he sucked out the rinse where it leached into his gums and spat again. The old floorboards still creaked under the dingy linoleum, even after he’d covered it with cheap area rugs from Kmart.
From the back room he could hear the rustling of the comforter, then a soft murmur, like a sigh. He went toward the musty heat, the Rado in one hand, his cock in the other as he thought about Tina, lying exhausted but insatiable in his bed.
She was the night manager at KK’s Karaoke, a basement spot on Allen Street. Koo Jai had done her several times and he knew she hoped to be his girlfriend, even thought she could get rid of the others.
He slipped under the comforter, in the darkness behind the drawn shades, feeling for her. He put the Rado on her wrist, and she moaned, thinking, Not the handcuffs again.
Koo Jai nuzzled the nape of her neck, his cold hard body sucking the heat from the comforter and the hot contours of her backside.
“Ooooh,” she moaned, so cool. She turned and nestled all of her soft and wet parts against him. Admiring the Rado, she slipped her head down to his stomach and wrapped her hot lips around the thick popsicle there.
He watched the tangle of hair pumping back and forth on his lun cock, and wondered how long before he could rob the mahjong club.
Pay off
Bo crossed the Bowery toward the long blocks of jewelry stores that ran down the northside stretch of Canal Street. Fifty shops named Treasure Diamonds, Lucky Star Jewelry, Royal Princess, Golden Jade, Canal National Gems, with the lights blazing from their windows brightening the concrete gray gloom drifting west toward the Holland Tunnel.
She always made her payments on the first Sunday morning of every month, as soon as the stores opened, so she wouldn’t be delayed by other customers.
Almost to Mulberry Street, she paused at the bulletproof glass door of Foo Ling Jewelry and Jade, and waited to be buzzed in.
The Foo Ling’s street windows displayed a dazzling array of diamond rings, bracelets, necklaces, and custom setups mounted with rubies or emeralds, all gleaming under the brilliant halogen lights. There were trays of gold medallions, racks of thick glittering chains, and a section of rich green jade pieces, some carved and beaded into pendants.
She stepped into the dry heat spreading from the lights, went past the display counters along the walls.
The bald-headed old Chinese man sat alone in the back end of the store, his fat bottom propped against a wooden stool. He twisted his frown into a half-sneer, half-smile, removing his finger from the remote door button as he watch Bo approach. Her eyes avoided his.
Hom Sook was how she was first introduced to him, her contact for remitting the monthly payments, and that was how she addressed him regularly now, always reminded how the spoken Chinese words sounded like hom sup, horny, old lech.
The name fit him well, she thought.
Hom Sook was sixtyish, obese, and reeked of the pork dumplings and curry chicken that he loved so much. He had a big head with reptilian features: thin lips, hooded eyes, and a flat nose.
Bo pictured this snakehead each time she prepared her payment envelope.
This time he’d worn the cheap gray rayon shirt with a design of tigers and eagles dueling in the background. He smirked, leering at her, when she handed him the envelope of money.
Bo had always kept the exchange brief, waiting just long enough to see him make the notation. She didn’t want to engage him in conversation, knowing where it would lead.
“Leng nui,” he called her, pretty woman. “ You look tired,” he said in a slithery voice. “How are things with you?”
“Fine,” Bo answered evenly. “Thank you.”
“Have you reconsidered our offer?” he asked, the snake tongue licking his lips.
They had wanted her to whore for them, had promised her a choice of regulars, clean-cut family men who were easy to please. Easy work, they’d said. Money for laying on your back.
“No, thank you,” Bo repeated as he counted out the money, then made a notation in his black book. Seeing this, Bo turned for the door. The old lech swallowed back his lust, his eyes keening to the soft sway of her backside as he made her pause before buzzing her out.
“Leng nui,” he chortled, “see you next month.”
Outside the Foo Ling, Bo took a deep breath, welcoming the cold breeze that swept down Canal. She felt better as she walked, thinking of a small sunny village in the south of China, picturing her daughter and her mother there, half a world and three lifetimes away.
Time and Space
Bo sat in the quiet solitude of her little rented room above Market Street, the silence broken only by the clicking of her bamboo needles, seated at the foot edge of the single bed, her voice a whisper chanting Buddhist nom mor nom mor prayers. She continued knitting this version of her rosary, a black scarf with the Chinese words for struggle, jung jot, stitched across the top in white relief.
In the black yarn were all the colors of bad luck.
In the white yarn, absent color, the insidious tone of death.
She was playing off the bad luck.
Several inches below the Chinese characters was a repeating pattern of horizontal S’s, or white snakes. Two rows of them totaling twenty-five, now twenty-six with the one she was stitching in place.
Twenty-six snakes now. Twenty-six payments to the snakeheads.
She paused, and took a breath, let her eyes rove over the bowl of leftover jik sik, instant ramen, on a tray, over the top of the used dresser, to the grainy photograph of three women:
herself, and Mother, and small daughter in tow.
Only the child was smiling.
The little girl’s mother and grandmother wore uncertainty on their faces, had small lights of hope and resignation in their eyes.
Abruptly, Bo wrenched her attention back to the clicking needles, clicking faster now, left to right, an impatient rhythm.
She hadn’t seen them in more than a year, but they spoke every week, using the discount prepaid telephone calling cards that Sai Go had gotten for her.
Nom mor nom mor nom or may tor fut.
She focused on the needles working the yarn: slip, stitch, purl, her fingers, hands, wrists in active articulation. The same energy came from her hands when she’d cut Sai Go’s hair, massaged his shoulders.
The black acrylic scarf was almost two feet long, knitted in monthly installments of white snakes.
She prayed for strength to finish it, knowing it would take years before she’d be able to pay off the snakeheads.
Nom mor nom mor no more slip stitch, loop through, the ball of yarn twisting in the little plastic basket. Drop the white yarn, wrap the black, complete stitch.
In the back of her mind she remembered the myriad of forgotten jobs, and then the New Canton, and measured the price of freedom.
Secret Society
Gee Sin rolled down the middle window of the van just a crack, then leaned back and sipped his steaming nai cha as he observed the area around the foot of the Manhattan Bridge.
The generic gray minivan with dark-tinted windows was parked off Division Street, providing him with cover against wind or rain, with a good view of East Broadway where Forsyth Street reached up to Chrystie Park.
Gee Sin could see the rows of businesses beneath the high bridge girders: several storefront employment agencies, Chinese vendors with outdoor ATM machines, a MoneyGram shop, and a Western Union at either end of the street. On the opposite block was a hole-in-the-wall store that sold cell phones and prepaid telephone cards flanked by a fruit stand and a stall that sold socks and thermal underwear, toothbrushes and soap, necessities for newly arrived Chinese who were about to travel yet again.
Things had been set up just the way they’d planned, Gee Sin thought. Made it convenient to find work, get cash,
and remit payments. Cell phones and prepaid cards to call home regularly, and be reminded about their debts.
The steam from the cup swirled toward the sliver of open window, as he felt a quick sweep of icy wind across his bald pate. The intersection was noisy and crowded this early afternoon. The bundled people shuddered under the thunder of the subway trains overhead. The only dialect he heard was Fukienese.
Gee Sin was pleased to see the streets in this area were wider, able to accommodate sweeping turns, and the stretch of streets along Chrystie Park allowed a dozen buses to park there.
There was a Mobil gas station at the corner of Allen. He’d arranged a cash-only gas-up deal with the franchise owner for the overnight buses that parked along Pike Street. His scheme for the Hung Huen was about to bear fruit. The triad, washing money, had arranged for the financing of a fleet of coach buses, two dozen to start. Since many of the riders would be Fukienese, the Fuk Chow gang would run the daily operations.
Gee Sin, or Paper Fan, as the triad members respectfully addressed him, had orchestrated every step. He had seen how important the American expansion of the Chinese restaurant industry was. As more and more Chinese restaurants, take-out shops, and dim sum teahouses flourished in far-flung American cities, the demand for cheap Chinese-speaking labor also grew. Entrepreneurs had even demanded that certain tong-connected construction crews be transported to the locale of the new restaurant, to be housed and fed there as they built— and inflated—the costs of the business.
The Fukienese, the latest wave to fill the demand for coolie workers, were sent to restaurants and malls from Richmond to Rochester, as far west as Ohio, and north to Montreal.
Twelve dollars one-way to Boston or Philadelphia would drive any competition out.
The idea that they needed a transportation system to shuttle these workers back and forth from New York’s Chinatown, the hub, made Gee Sin realize that the unregulated tour-bus business was also a natural for moving contraband along the interstates.
A patrol car cruised by.
He adjusted the cup in his hand, placed it into the slide-out cup holder between the front seats. From his pocket he fished out a bogus driver’s license the triad had created for him. The name they’d used was Bok Ji Fan, another version of White Paper Fan. He studied the photograph with a sad knowing smile.The weight of fifty years sagged around his eyes, the brows bushy and flecked with gray. He stared out of deep-set, sunken eyes within a haunted, pale face. He reminded himself that there was much to do, and his time in America was short. He was not one who was keen on travel; the month away from Hong Kong was long enough already.
As White Paper Fan, he’d gotten accustomed to the creature comforts of Hong Kong that accorded his rank and seniority in the Red Circle.
New York was nothing but cold and gray grit.
Gee Sin thought about the triad’s Grass Sandal rank liaison officer who would drive them back to the rented condo apartment outside Chinatown. Scanning the street, he saw a bus discharge its passengers and head toward the park, exhaust pouring from its tailpipe. From a side street, a line of black funeral cars swept past him. He was glad to see the bad luck spirits fade into the avenue.
He checked his watch again, confident Grass Sandal would arrive soon. The street was productive, which was all he’d wanted to see. He pocketed the fake license, then picked up the cup, sipped the tea carefully, and watched traffic as he shut the window with his free hand.
Watch Out
Koo Jai sat upright in his bed and reached across for the lady’s watch, a gold and black Rado nestled in the soft hollows of his thick comforter, where it had landed after Tina flung it at him in a fit of jealous fury. She’d finally realized that his other girlfriends weren’t going to disappear.
Fuck that little cunt. He grinned to himself; there’d be another piece of ass soon enough, another quickie conquest. Any village girl out of the Guangjo backwater, who’d never seen better than a Timex, would surely give it all up for the diamond-speckled watch. Why do I waste my time on jealous bitches anyway? he asked himself.
He placed the Rado on the metal folding table and leaned back against the pillows. He drained the last of the bottle of Tsingtao beer and was considering opening another when there was a knock on the door.
Tina, he thought, coming back to beg forgiveness. Maybe he’d let her suck his cock if she was truly repentant.
Another knock, and then Shorty’s voice froze him
“Koo,” Shorty called, “open up.”
Strange, Koo Jai thought, pulling his pistol from beneath the pillows as he quietly stepped toward the front door.
“Shorty?” he replied. “You alone?”
“No,” Shorty answered.
“Open up!” demanded a second voice he instantly recognized as belonging to the dailo.
But here? Now? Why? Koo Jai shook off the panic, shoved the gun under the sofa cushions, then reached for the door.
Lucky smirked at the sight of Koo Jai in his black briefs.
Kongo stepped inside, tossing two cartons of cigarettes and a bag of pills onto the sofa as Shorty backed into the room, followed by Lucky.
Koo Jai moved away from the door.
Lucky spotted the butt of the pistol protruding from beneath the cushion. “Kai dai, punk.” He grinned. “You expecting trouble?”
“No,” answered Koo Jai, still confused by the surprise visit. “It’s just that no one ever comes up here.”
“Right.” Lucky snickered. “Just you and the leng nui , the pretty girls.”
Kongo stood between the sofa and Koo Jai, letting his duster hang open to show the scattergun hanging by his side. Lucky threw Shorty Ng a hard look, saying, “Take a walk. Check the park for Fuks and come back in ten minutes.”
Shorty glanced at Koo Jai, before squeezing past Kongo, relieved to escape from the overheated room.
Sensing Koo Jai’s confusion, Lucky said, “Relax. The smokes and the pills are for you boys out here. Something to keep you going while you’re watching the streets, especially near the park.” Lucky stepped to the front window, checked the view on East Broadway.
“Why? What’s up?” asked Koo Jai.
“I want you all to keep an eye on the street where the Chinese buses are parked.”
The puzzled look stayed on Koo Jai’s face.
Lucky said, “See if any Fuks are hanging around. Are they getting on the buses? Or following in their cars? Or are they just putting muscle on the street?”
“Can’t you tell me what’s coming down?” Koo Jai asked, pulling on his pants.
“Don’t ask so many fuckin’ questions,” Lucky warned. “And don’t forget, we still want the motherfuckers who been robbing our members.” He turned toward the back of the apartment. “Whaddya got back there? That the love nest?”
Koo Jai followed Lucky to his bedroom, the heavy footsteps of Kongo behind him.
“Shit, it’s hot as hell back here,” Lucky said.
“Makes the girls take their clothes off faster,” Koo Jai deadpanned.
Lucky noticed the black-faced and diamond Rado, lifted it from the folding table.
“Nice,” he said. “I know just the girl for this. You don’t mind, right?”
Koo Jai shook his head as Lucky pocketed the watch.
“It’s Christmastime, you know.”
Koo Jai nodded, keeping the smile on his face.
Lucky grinned at stone-faced Kongo. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, huh?” He laughed at his own joke, continuing, “Or maybe she’ll get Lucky.”
Kongo kept his eyes on Koo Jai as they left the apartment.
“Keep watching,” barked Lucky. “And keep that fuckin’ cell phone on.”
Koo Jai closed the door and listened to the sound of their footsteps thumping down the stairs. He sat on the sofa and retrieved his gun, suspicion in his heart about the change in the dailo ’s demeanor. He felt suddenly thirsty, and tried to find clarity in another bottle of Tsingtao.
K
ongo led the way out of the tenement. Lucky squeezed the Rado in the sweaty palm of his big hand as they came onto East Broadway. They headed for the black Buick, Lucky thinking, Lee’s watches, wondering if Skinny Chin took better care of his list of serial numbers than he did of his merchandise.
White and Red
The Ecstasy sharpened his instincts, Lucky felt, but the more he took, the more he needed to get the same bounce. Now the ma huang and his instincts were bracing him up.
Gray light in late afternoon. The streets looked slippery, under a mushy white coating. He passed over the Gucci loafers, thinking how streetwise he was, and laced up the black steel-toed Doc Martens with the rubber traction soles.
Imagining himself in a fight, he raised his hands in a Wing Chun–style pose, striking a sloppy cat-stance. The loose-fitting carpenter jeans puffed up where extra pockets held a box cutter, a cell phone.
He popped another one of the red pills and washed it down with a chug of Grey Goose from a pint-sized bottle, a taste from the twenty cases they’d taken from Fook Lau Liquors.
Another gambling debt squared up and then some.
He sensed he should press the element of surprise, and ambush Koo Jai again. Kongo was holed up in a catnap with some Malay ho, and Lefty, fighting off a hangover from the free vodka, had crashed in the clubhouse.
Go alone this time, pull off a bluff, see what turns up.
He walked over to East Broadway, kept his gun hand near the nine in his pocket as he stepped up and knocked on Koo Jai’s door.
No answer.
He punched up Koo Jai’s pager, standing there quietly but heard only silence from within. He knocked again, waited another minute before going back down the stairs. At the rear of the street landing, he checked the fire escapes above him, didn’t see any movement there.
