Year of the Dog

by Henry Chang

  He put the Vigilante into the right cargo pocket of his down jacket. He didn’t bother to take extra bullets. Whatever was going to happen wasn’t going beyond the six he had chambered.

  When he finished the guk fa he decided it was late enough in the afternoon to check out the health clinic. He stretched his legs, remembering the agony he’d felt, and wished he had a god to pray to, for painkillers.

  No god; the doctor would have to do.

  It was all coming apart, he thought. How much more time did he have before the pain and sorrow bled out? Or was it all a dark killing shadow, spreading out behind the bitterness and despair, that no amount of time or forgiveness could cure?

  Bookie man. He felt his essence shrinking, becoming like a teng jai, sampan, in a dark tossing ocean.

  In the beginning, he had felt that it wasn’t a crime. He was just making a living, taking bets. Allowing the Chinese hindaai, brothers, to chase their dreams. Chinese were superstitious and loved to gamble. Who was the victim in that? The families or the associations usually resolved any problems that arose.

  Now, after a dozen years, crushed by this fatal sickness, he finally saw it for what it was.

  An underground life full of careless sins, chasing the dragon of good fortune. The dragon was devouring him from inside now. All part of the same evil. He was part of the trail of dirty money that travels in a circle. Money from gambling that makes its way to the pockets of gangsters. Money that translates into bak fun, white powder, and guns. Money that finances the smugglers of human cargo, feeding into slavery, prostitution. Becoming money again in the banks, the vicious cycle turning without end.

  Fresh Money

  Lucky left Kongo and Lefty by the front door of Number Seventeen’s basement to cover the mid-afternoon delivery of that evening’s bank; a brown envelope containing the usual denominations of dead presidents and statesmen: Hamiltons, Jacksons, Grants, and Franklins. The On Yee house manager and the courier walked past Lucky and disappeared into a back office.

  Maybe it was because the new year and the new stable of whores at Angelina’s had put him in a generous mood, but Lucky had had a change of heart; he was going to play wayward Koo Jai another way.

  Copping a plea on the phone, Koo had told him he’d raised nine thousand cash, but he’d admitted he had only the remaining watches to make up the balance, although he claimed their value would be greater than the twenty K the dailo demanded.

  Lucky had already figured he would take the cash for himself; he would let Lefty fence the remaining watches through his cousin’s shop in Toronto. Kongo would mule the watches north. They would split the proceeds.

  He heard Lefty laugh as he and Kongo popped Ecstasy pills.

  Lucky had answered Koo, “Okay, bring the shit. And bring the boyz, too. Let’s have a sit-down.” He wanted to keep them away from the heart of Chinatown to cut down the chances of the other crews noticing them.

  “OTB,” he said, “At four-thirty o’clock tomorrow. And don’t fuckin’ make me wait.”

  Legal End

  Jack spent days following the arrests of the Hong boy’s killers at Hogan Place with the assistant district attorneys, starting the numbing grind that was due process.

  At week’s end, Jack returned to Cabrini where they removed his stitches. There were two small scars on the left side of his chest, in the fleshy tissue slightly above but flanking the nipple. The little .22 bullet had passed through. Further down were the puncture scars on his left forearm, rounded indentations where the pit bull’s sharp teeth had clamped on. Fuckin’ mad dog.

  Pasini called, reminding him of his appointment with the department shrink. Standard procedure after suffering serious wounds in the line of duty. No, dying in some stinking hallway in the ghetto housing projects was not how he saw himself finishing out the job. The arm was one thing, but the chest wound above the heart was a warning, somehow. Yet any doubts he nursed made him less a cop, and he wasn’t looking for a disability deal.

  Afterward, after trudging through the thickening snow, he’d met Alexandra at Tsunami, halfway between her Loi-saida storefront and the NoHo precinct house. They drank sake and Sapporo, picked from the sushi and sashimi on the little wooden boats that passed by on the mini-conveyor belt that ran the length of the bar.

  “It’s in the hands of the prosecutors,” Jack said, “The punks basically turned on each other and implicated one another.”

  Alex broke out cigarettes and they lit up together, their conversation bracketed by puffs.

  “We got oral and written statements,” Jack continued, after touching glasses with Alex in a silent toast. “DNA matchups on all three,” Alex smiled sadly. “The murder weapons. Prints all over.” He was quiet a moment, his stare going long distance as he said, “The victim . . . he put up a helluva fight. Wasn’t enough. But he left sufficient evidence to hang them all.”

  Alex put her hand over his, her eyes misting. She tapped her glass against his again, brought him back into the moment.

  “What does your friend at Legal Aid think?” Jack asked.

  “Defense,” she exhaled. “They may contend the original entry and search was illegal. No cause.”

  He’d been following up a missing person . . . there had been the smell of marijuana at the door.

  “Or they may request a change in venue. Say they can’t get a fair trial in Manhattan, because there are too many Chinese, Asians, in the jury pool. They may want a Bronx jury, or one from Brooklyn. A judge of color, who’s sensitive to minority defendants.”

  Technicalities and racial politics hacking into the case . . .

  “They can delay, file appeals, assert medical claims, demand more evidence.”

  “This is going to take a while,” Jack said, finishing his sake.

  “I get it.”

  They shared the last of the big Sapporo over sunomono and seaweed salad.

  Outside, the wind gusted up and rattled the big picture windows.

  Jack paid the tab and they tapped glasses at the last swallow, with Alex saying “Happy New Year. To 1995.”

  “Yeah, Happy New Year,” Jack answered with a forced smile.

  They drained their glasses.

  They caught a cab, and he dropped her off at Confucius Towers before going on to Sunset Park. They had traded cheek kisses and awkward looks afterward, finally shaking hands before she tiptoed through the snow and faded into the lobby of the high-rise.

  Crossing the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn, Jack remembered the dead delivery boy. It didn’t feel like 1995 was going to be a happy new year.

  Storm

  The blizzard roared in overnight, an arctic juggernaut that blasted in from the northeast. Fifty mile gusts toppled tall trees onto rooftops and cars, ripping down power lines in the darkness. Half of Long Island and Staten Island were blacked out.

  NYC Transit rolled out two thousand snow plows, hundreds of salt spreaders. Sanitation pressed its two thousand men into twelve-hour shifts against the blowing two-foot drifts.

  The outer boroughs were flogged by the swirling whiteout.

  The airports were snowbound, hundreds of flights cancelled, with thousands of travelers stranded at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark.

  Commuter transit from New Jersey and Conneticut came to a blinding halt.

  The sub-zero overnight staggered to daylight, fifteen degrees. Wind-chill real feel was four degrees. The shrieking wind drove the thick flakes sideways. To augment Sanitation’s efforts, the city hired neighborhood kids to shovel the main streets. Still, the blizzard locked down the city: schools and businesses closed, disabled and abandoned vehicles made highways, bridges, and tunnels impassable. Frozen signals and switches crippled the subways and metropolitan railroads.

  In Manhattan, coastal flooding closed the Westside Highway and the FDR Drive.

  A broken water main on Delancey flooded the avenue and side streets, forming a half-mile slick of ice that further choked southbound traffic. In the Chinatown morni
ng, shopkeepers chopped at the ice and shoveled pathways down the slippery streets, forming walls of slush-capped snow along the curb. Every so often a gap, a cutout in the wall, allowed for passage to the other side of the street. Fire hydrants were cleared; the Chinese were pragmatic to a fault.

  Lunchtime was a trudging push of bundled bodies, hats and scarves wrapped around Chinese heads with watering eyes. Cars, trucks, and buses crept along, their exhaust trailing clouds of steam into the frozen air. Chinatown was digging itself out while the surrounding neighborhoods surrendered.

  Death Do Us Part

  They all stood around the couch in the front room, four distraught faces.

  “Dailo found one of the watches here,” Koo Jai admitted grudgingly. “Long story. It was out, on the bed, and he snatched it.”

  “Wha’ happen? How come?” was the best the dumbfounded Jung brothers could muster.

  “It was your fault,” muttered Shorty. “You were careless.”

  “How the fuck do I know he’s at the door?” bitched Koo Jai. “Fuckin’ nobody called me. I could’ve put the watch away. You messed up by bringing him. None of this would have happened.”

  “Bullshit,” Shorty said evenly.

  “Look, it don’t matter,” sneered Koo Jai. “He said he knew we were pulling jobs. Said he didn’t care. All he wanted was his cut. Said to bring everything we boosted.”

  “Hah, everything gone. No way,” mumbled the Jungs.

  “Dailo says we all gotta go.” Koo Jai was steadfast. “Meet down Bowery.”

  “Where?” in a chorus.

  “OTB. There’s a coffee shop next to the alley.”

  “Why there?” befuddled Old Jung asked.

  “Who the fuck knows? He wants a sit-down.”

  “Deew!! Fucked!” moaned Young Jung.

  “Just be prepared,” Koo Jai warned. “Keep your chins up, and your fuckin’ eyes open. Unless dailo asks you personally, I’ll do all the talking. If anything goes bad, we meet in Boston.” He nodded at the Jungs. “Call your cousins.”

  They exited the flat, the Jung brothers jittery, as if they were going to a funeral.

  Led by Koo Jai, they kept to the streets crossing Chatham Square; it was easier to walk through the dirty slush trails left by bus traffic. They came to the Bowery end of the square where access to the sidewalk was blocked by waist-high frozen drifts.

  Koo Jai and Shorty were first to crunch their way through to the sidewalk, the larger Jungs behind them clumsily lumbering along in their wake.

  Gusts of wind blew powdered snow off the street lamps and traffic lights.

  The dailo ’s crew turned the corner of Mott onto Bowery, moving in a loose triangle with Lucky at the point. Lucky saw Koo Jai and Shorty a half-block away, thought of the nine large in cash in Koo’s pocket, imagining how he was going to drop some of it on some fine ass and pussy at Angelina’s. Peripherally, he noticed the Jung brothers plodding behind them through the snowbank. Clumsy bitches, he thought, continuing on toward OTB.

  Old Jung slipped and fell to one knee, the sudden twist of his hip dislodging the pistol he carried in his waistband. The gun slid along the dirty ice but he was able to grab it and pull it back. A few steps ahead, Young Jung turned and cast an annoyed look at him.

  Kongo saw Old Jung dropping to one knee. He grunted as Old Jung’s hand came up holding a pistol; it looked as if he’d pulled it out of the snow. Whipping open his trenchcoat, the Ecstasy pushing him, he went for the sawed-off shotgun dangling at his hip.

  Koo Jai and Shorty both saw the dailo and his crew marching toward them. With their heartbeats spiking, they watched as Lucky drifted to one side. Behind him, the big Malaysian’s eyes were suddenly as large as don tots, egg tarts, as he drew the chopped shotgun.

  Lefty saw Young Jung staring at Kongo, astonishment on his face, momentarily frozen. Each of them instinctively reached for his gun.

  Lucky recoiled at the sound of the deafening blast from behind him, his gun hand automatically going inside his blazer. He glanced back to see Kongo loose another blast into the ringing air and Lefty aiming his Nine. When he swung his eyes back to Koo Jai, both he and Shorty were taking aim at him. One of the Jungs was rising up from the snow, emptying his pistol at them in a spraying arc.

  Lucky drew a gun from his inside pocket as Lefty fired mechanically, methodically, ahead.

  Kongo dropped the sawed-off, drew his pistol, and tried to aim at Koo Jai, but the dailo’s back blocked his shot. He saw the short guy, the little guy, jamming off little firecracker shots at them.

  Lucky felt the impact like a punch in the head, his body staggering backward. Suddenly, hot metal was tearing into him, twisting through him. Fuck! he heard himself yell, as his thoughts ceased.

  Painkiller

  Sai Go had crossed Doyers, was halfway down the alley shortcut when he heard the barrage of fireworks up ahead, somewhere on the Bowery. Probably some fools celebrating the Year of the Pig much too early. Two thunderous booms had made him recoil, the shock waves, he was sure, from China-made M-80s.

  He kept his eyes on the icy furrows as he took the shortcut again.

  Suddenly he saw Koo Jai, gun in hand, dashing at him, running through the alley like a madman, followed by a short kid who was equally bug-eyed.

  Sai Go’s breath caught in his throat as he flattened himself against the wall, his gun hand sliding down to his coat pocket. Koo Jai raced by just as Sai Go got his fingers around the Vigilante.

  Sai Go watched the short kid pass him, and was drawing the gun from his pocket when he heard the first shot. He felt an explosion inside his chest, sucking the breath out of him.

  Several more gunshots rang out.

  Then there was only abrupt silence, and the whiteness of the snow in the alley, drifting gently all around him.

  O-Nine

  Having covered for others during the holidays, Jack had returned to the day shift, feeling the bustle of the tour’s activity juicing him through the storm’s chaos into the afternoon hours. Outside the stationhouse, Sanitation part-timers cleared away the snow so the police vehicles could park. Jack took a late lunch, chowing down on a sandwich and chowder from Kim’s Produce. In the last hour of his shift, the phone rang. An urgent voice from Manhattan South put Jack on edge.

  “We got a hot shoot, in Chinatown. Multiple vics, near the OTB. See the CO of the 0-Five.”

  OTB? The Fifth Precinct?

  The 0-Five, Chinatown, was pulling him back, back into the gutter.

  Off - Track - Bleeding

  Jack badged a southbound M103 at St. Mark’s, scanning the distant stretch of the Bowery, seeing in his mind where it turned into Chatham Square, before becoming Park Row. He got to the scene in less than ten minutes, the bus driver skipping the stops after Delancey, until Jack pointed at the green facade of OTB.

  From the bus he could see EMS techs in the drifts, lifting someone dressed in a black leather blazer and steel-toe boots. The way Tat dressed, he thought. When he got closer he realized it was Tat, bleeding from a head wound. The tech was palm-pumping Tat’s chest as they snap-slid his gurney into the ambulance. Slush sprayed up from the spinning wheels, leaving a trail behind the lights and sirens speeding south toward Downtown Emergency.

  Jack surveyed the bloody scene as the uniforms kept back the crowd that had gathered. Two more patrol cars arrived, blocking off the crime scene from traffic.

  There was an odd symmetry to how the bodies lay: two on one side of OTB, two on the other, about fifteen, maybe twenty, feet apart. He started taking pictures with the throwaway plastic camera he always carried, locking in fresh images while waiting for Crime Scene to arrive. The big Malaysian on his back, a pair of startled eyes, was bleeding out under the sheet. The punk with the gel haircut, spread akimbo on a hump of snow, next to a mailbox, was Lucky boy’s wheelman, the one who drove the black car. Looked like he had a chest wound. A fatal one.

  The scene made Jack angry and sad at the same time. Though he tried
to keep his feelings out of it, he couldn’t help feeling sad for Tat—not Lucky anymore—and angry at the gangboy’s hair-trigger disregard for life.

  A dozen paces across from them there were two other bodies, face up at the curb. From their profiles, Jack noticed a familial resemblance between them. Both had multiple gunshot wounds, including head shots. The wind kept blowing aside the sheets that covered them so he placed dirty chunks of ice at the corners to keep them down.

  He picked up a blood trail near the entrance of the alley shortcut to Doyers.

  The first body in the alley was that of an old man, slumped down on the sidewalk against the side of a restaurant kitchen. His right shoulder leaned against the wall at an awkward angle, his head drooped to his chest. His left hand rested on the sidewalk in front of him, like he’d been trying to balance himself. His right hand was in his coat pocket, which was twisted behind him near the small of his back. Jack patted down the pocket and felt the outline of a gun.

  There were no discernible wounds.

  He snapped more pictures, wondering how the old man had tied into Lucky’s scene.

  The second victim was farther down the alley, past where it angled off toward Doyers Street. It struck Jack as odd. A younger man, late twenties. He’d fallen forward, crawled, and finally died. His down jacket was unzipped, with an inside pocket yanked out. His right pants pocket was torn, a couple of loose dollar bills flapping out. Nearby, some coins were scattered in the snow, leading in the direction of Doyers.

  The setup made Jack think robbery was involved somehow. Knowing Lucky and the gang world, he felt the shoot-out had to be part of a Ghost Legion power struggle, over money, or face. But nobody plans an ambush in broad daylight on a busy street, during a blizzard. Something unexpected must have happened, provoked by fear, or anger. Someone got nervous, and the situation exploded. They were all Ghosts. Or were they just Ghosts in name, gang unity giving way to greed and jealousy, the usual.