Lucky

by Henry Chang

  A van jai brought the hookers into and out of Queens for the day or night tours in Flushing. The Dai Huen Jai, Taiwanese Big Circle crime group, ran a hot-sheet hotel and massage operation on a hill overlooking Main Street where it crossed the expressway.

  Hookers “R” Us. 24/7. Sick pussy money.

  The whores shared their reinvigorating soups and ethnic comfort food with Lucky, their teas and potions nursing him back.

  Thai cutie Bettie Bootwang boiled up a lusty tofu laksa that nourished him for two days. She made him hock gee ma for dessert.

  Ah Won jeer was local Toishanese, also a monthly regular at Angelina’s. A pretty face cooking up pei daan jook congee with an OD of yeen say cilantro. She brewed him Teet Gwoon Yum tea, liquid strength from the Goddess of Mercy.

  Marisol Flores, china-dominicana, a firecracker body serving up an extra mean sopa de mondongo, had also massaged him. Everywhere.

  Feeling had returned to his feet—legs, calves, thighs—energy coursing everywhere through his body, including his lun cock. The hos took care of that as well, Lucky’s generous dailo rep preceding him.

  Before he knew it, three days had passed and he was back to old tricks. Alcohol and sinsemilla. Thank you, Bettie and Marisol.

  These ladies he loved worked for gai wong Jojo Yang, pimp and small-time drug dealer. Lucky knew Jojo had had a beef with the On Yee when Charley Joe’s faction muscled him out of a massage-parlor deal. Jojo was Chiu Chao, tough-minded, which meant he held a grudge. In addition, Lucky had always treated Jojo’s ladies well, and Jojo appreciated that.

  The Chiu Chaos were a main line to Southeast Asian heroin, but Jojo was only a small-time dealer. His priority was pussy. And money.

  It wasn’t by chance Lucky had paged Jojo Yang. After all, who knows better how to treat a man than a posse of whores?

  And Jojo had waited on Main Street as agreed. Riding shotgun was Jadine Jung, his bottom lady, grifter and actress. She was all big eyes and black hair cut into bangs, a full-bodied bundle of tricks. Lucky had plans for her as well.

  But now, with his synapses reconnected, he considered how payback was going to go down.

  The first thing he needed was firepower, and he knew exactly where to go. He purchased two large screwdrivers from Flushing Hardware and called a see gay. The driver transported him to Little Italy, the corner of Hester and Mulberry.

  The old neighborhood had had its heyday a hundred years back, when it was a haven for new Italian immigrants. Now it was just five blocks of mobbed-up restaurants, cafés, and gift shops, supported by the few thousand Italian old-timers who hadn’t long ago escaped to Brooklyn, Staten Island, and Long Island. Now, surrounded on all sides by Chinese chink businesses, it was just a barnacle on the hull of the big ship Chinatown.

  But for Lucky, it was still where Tony Biondo and what remained of the Campisi crew operated. Tony bought all the Chinese baak fun heroin he could get his hands on, and never hesitated to barter weapons for drugs.

  At 10 a.m. the Chinese businesses had already begun to bustle with local traffic, while the Italian shops waited impatiently for the tourists. The buildings along Hester Street were quiet, and Lucky knew them well. They were old buildings with a flat stretch of rooftops breaking the skyline. Due to the blind alleyways, the hidden courtyards, the narrow gaps between buildings, and the fire escapes, one could enter a building on Hester and exit from another building on Mulberry, Mott, or Grand Street. The scheme had worked well for generations of mafiosi, but the buildings were now teeming with Chinamen who never fixed the broken door locks at street level.

  He entered 98 Hester, made his way up the five flights of tenement stairs. The building was quiet—anyone working had already joined the rat race, and students were long out to school.

  The rooftops brought back memories, brought a smirk to his face. Looking down to one of the hidden courtyards, he remembered when there’d been a little tomato patch tended to by an old mafioso. The neighborhood toughs had tormented the Chinese kids then, so Lucky and his friends would urinate off the roof into the capo’s garden, laughing at how he was going to make his piss-tomatoes into gravy, salsa di pomodoro. “Cheese-eatin’ fuckers,” he said to himself.

  But this morning he had a different mission. He crossed the Mulberry rooftops, deserted as usual, toward Grand. Number 300 Mulberry, once a salumeria on the street, had had several reincarnations as Chinese restaurants but was now a Chinese supermarket. The metal kitchen exhaust ducts that ran outside up to the roof had long since been abandoned.

  He readied the big screwdrivers for the rusted metal plate that covered a section of exhaust fan. The screws were deadlocked, as he’d suspected, but with the two heavy-duty screwdrivers, he pried the plate off easily.

  Looking inside the duct, he saw what he’d left there almost a year earlier. Being prepared. Sun Tzu, always the Boy Scout. A rubber duffel bag, one of two he’d purchased from the Army Navy Surplus store on Canal Street. He yanked it out, slung its heavy weight off his shoulders.

  He left the screwdrivers and carefully stepped back down to the street.

  He caught a cab on Canal. The driver was a Pakistani who knew the way to Flushing and didn’t ask any other questions. And that was just the way he liked it.

  The hooker house was empty, like he’d figured. Jojo had driven the ladies out to Main Street and they’d be out for the day.

  He popped an ecstasy, opened the heavy duffel on Marisol’s bed, and pulled the heaviest piece out first. The shotgun, a sawed-off Mossberg 500 with a pistol grip and a folding stock, was six pounds of pure terror. Needs oil, he thought. He racked it, loving the metal chik-cock sound. Pulled the trigger for a dry click. Everyone hits the ground.

  The second piece was sexy, a black Uzi nine-millimeter with two twenty-round clips. Not a drive-by ghetto gat, fixed to go full auto if necessary. Oil, he thought again. He took a swig from the bottle of brandy on Bettie Bootwang’s night table, savoring it as it rushed toward the ecstasy in his blood.

  The last pieces were two nine-millimeter semiautomatics, a fancy Beretta, and a throwaway Taurus. He racked and checked the action on both. Except for a metal lunch box, the bottom of the bag was lined with small packs of nine-millimeter ammunition, two boxes of shotgun shells, and a can of oil, all wrapped in cleaning rags.

  Inside the lunch box were two fist-sized eight-ounce tubes. He handled them carefully, knowing the stunning power that the military flash-bang grenades could generate. Blow your mind, motherfuckers, make you temporarily deaf, dumb, and blind. He’d taken them from 61 Mott gambling basement (61M) after a Filipino Marine MP bartered them against a thousand-dollar run of bad luck. Go Marines, he sniggered, the few, the proud.

  He returned them to the lunch box and placed everything back into the rubber duffel. Took another drink from Bettie’s bottle. The ecstasy jitterbugged inside him, and he remembered Cigarette Boy and Spareribs, talking shit over his inert body at the hospital. Dailos Loy Sung and Taiwan too.

  Really, motherfuckers?

  He reached for his new disposable cell phone and knew the calls to make.

  Thanks But No Thanks

  The call came in the early morning, as he considered the new workday.

  Of course he’d hoped for it, but the intervening five days had dulled Jack’s expectation. He wasn’t surprised, though, because that was the way Lucky did things, always trying to keep the other side off balance, off guard. He’d been that way since they were kids.

  The number wasn’t familiar, that too not a surprise. He saved it on redial anyway.

  “Yo!” Lucky barked in his A-Dog voice. “Gonna make this short and sweet.”

  “Go,” Jack countered, putting down the half-eaten cha siew bao and pressing the cell tighter to his ear.

  “Thanks for helping me outta there. That’s it. Let’s say I owe you one.”

  “Then let’s
meet. Up on the high ground. You need to come in.”

  The high ground, the term they used for that level stretch of tenement rooftops on Henry Street, across which, as teenagers, they’d stalked and caroused. The flat run allowed them to move from one end of the block to the other, throwing pebbles at the broken-down ghetto windows, dropping water balloons on the rats and cats in the alleys below. Teenage summers spent guzzling Cokes and slurping Icees under the blazing sun, tanning pale Chinese bodies brown.

  Later, the Cokes and Icees became beers and weed, as they watched the world change below. There were three of them then, three Chinatown blood brothers. Until Wing Lee got killed that sixteenth summer of their Chinatown lives. The rooftops full of secrets.

  “Nah,” Lucky snorted. “For what?”

  “Trying to save your life, boy.”

  “Again with the ‘witless protection’?” Medicated contempt in his voice. “You mean rat everyone out and I get to run an egg-roll stand somewhere? Change my name? Paper ID? Ha! Giving me what they put our grandfathers in jail for?”

  “Whoa, slow down, Mr. Historian.”

  “I have to kill someone before they wanna protect me? Wanna make me a paper son?”

  “You can request a location, Tat.”

  “Sure. Any place that’s nowhere, right? I’d rather die, bro.”

  “There’s that death wish talking again. Let’s roll it back . . .”

  “You don’t get it, Jacky boy. Forward’s all I got. I ain’t waiting to die somewhere selling takeout.”

  “Yeah, why waste time, right?”

  “Funny. You got jokes.”

  “Funny like a funeral.”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  “Funny like you in a ditch.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “In a back alley somewhere.”

  “Never gonna happen.”

  “In a box going to a potter’s field.”

  “You watchin’ too many Hong Kong movies, boy.”

  “No one cares. No one visits. In a year, no one even remembers who the fuck you were.”

  “Like they’ll remember you? Yellow-face hero cop? Running-dog chump for the gwai lo white boys?”

  “You’re suicidal. Guess that’s why they call you guys Ghosts.”

  “I just came back from the dead. I got a second chance and you want me to disappear?”

  “A second chance for what? To get killed for good this time?”

  “Be real. Me disappearing’s gonna close some of your cases?”

  “It’s a limited-time offer, Tat.”

  “Limited time’s all I got, bro.”

  “C’mon, let’s meet on the high ground.”

  “Tell you what—I get the chance, I’ll come by your crib. What’s the address?”

  Jack hesitated, not because he didn’t trust Lucky but because it sounded like he was blowing him off. He knew it might be his last shot, so he gave Lucky his Sunset Park address.

  “See ya around, kid,” Lucky laughed.

  “Wait . . .” Jack asked of the dial tone. His connection to Lucky now deader than ever.

  2 Lucky

  Two Mott Street, a sixteen-story mirrored-glass triangle, was barely twenty years old, a modern Chinatown building. It sat on the corner of Mott and Chatham Square, along the north-south thoroughfare that led down into the Seaport and the Financial District.

  It was a professional building anchored by the busiest branch of Citibank in Chinatown. On the upper levels were doctors’ offices, dentists, accountants, immigration lawyers, and travel agencies.

  Wedged into the corner of the shiny stone and tile lobby was a small counter where Ah Fai, the janitor who doubled as part-time security, stood observing the people as they came and went on the elevators. He was there only a couple of hours a day during the rush, a make-work ceremonial post. Getting unfamiliar clients, patients, and contractors to sign the counter log was a hit-or-miss proposition, especially when groups of people entered the building, invariably bound for the travel agencies and immigration lawyers. Building management considered the building safe, and they weren’t willing to pay for full-time legitimate security.

  Everything was recorded on a closed-circuit surveillance system anyway.

  Ah Fai checked his watch and waited for noon to end the shift.

  The Lotus Pearl café was crowded with locals enjoying their cheung fun and baos, reading Chinese newspapers and freebie magazines. No one paid much attention to the two workmen in blue coveralls and hard hats, sipping their cardboard cups of nai cha, heads down at the end of the narrow counter along the window wall. Between them was a canvas tool bag and a coil of white cable wire.

  A woman in a black bubble coat sat on a stool at the other end, nursing a cup of ning mung cha. She wore black Wayfarers that shielded her eyes, which were looking toward the building across the way. 2 Mott Street.

  The workmen noticed a van jai pulling up at the corner curb and discharging a group of travelers with rolling luggage. Yau haak tourists.

  The woman in the black coat exited the Lotus Pearl as the tour group headed toward the mirrored building.

  Leaving their teas on the counter, the two hard hats also left the café.

  It was almost noon.

  Ah Fai watched them enter the lobby, young people jabbering in Mandarin. Obnoxious, he thought with Cantonese prejudice. Probably heading for Taiwan Tours on the sixth floor. They barely paid him any mind as they passed.

  Behind them a few steps, a woman wearing black sunglasses was unzipping her black coat. Ming sing like a movie star. He was admiring the little black dress she wore underneath as she slowly headed his way.

  He was preparing to be helpful when her high heels wobbled and slid, causing her to lurch forward, spilling contents from her handbag onto the floor in front of him.

  “Oh my god!” she cried. “Sooo embarrassing!” He saw a makeup kit, lipsticks, nail polish, a tampon, and a gold foil sheet of condoms. When she bent and kneeled to retrieve the scattered items, the minidress rode up her thighs and her breasts threatened to overflow the top.

  Ah Fai was mesmerized, kneeling to help her as she scooped up lipsticks and nail polish.

  “You were going to which office?” he asked, smiling his best smile, tucking the condoms back into her handbag. He barely noticed the two men wearing blue hard hats, waving a clipboard at him as they passed. Contractors, going to the manager’s office, he thought as his eyes went back to her breasts.

  “You know, I actually think I’m in the wrong building,” she said, straightening up. “Let me make sure. But thanks so much anyway.” His heart sank as he watched her exit the building, looking briefly back at the facade before stepping out of sight.

  He took a breath, his attention divided between the tour group probably on six and hoping the sexy lady in black would come back.

  The two blue hard hats who’d gone upstairs couldn’t have been further from his mind.

  ***

  The smallest room on the eighth floor was a money drop disguised as a sales office. There was a chair-and-desk setup with a phone and a computer monitor. A wall shelf of catalogs featuring products from mainland China. The products actually involved were untaxed cigarettes, contraband counterfeits, and stolen alcohol, collateral proceeds from the gambling dens on Mott Street.

  Charley Joe sat at the desk, calming his craving for Hop Lee’s Cantonese crab and lobster, which he planned to order for lunch.

  Dup Choy sat on the only other piece of furniture, a knockoff designer couch. He considered lighting a bootleg Cohiba and pissing off the entire eighth floor again.

  The knock at the door caught their attention. The cartons of untaxed Marlboros promised by Cigarette Boy, thought Charley, rising from behind the desk. He patted his pockets for his lighter as Choy opened the door.

  Th
ey were surprised to see the two workmen wearing blue hard hats. Both Chinese, observed Choy as he pocketed the Cohiba. The men drew guns from their coveralls and shoved their way inside.

  Before Choy could form the words Lucky and Jojo, a gun barrel slammed him across the side of his head. He was reeling, seeing reds and blacks even as the second blow broke his nose. A hoof kick to his balls took the wind out of him and dropped him onto the couch. He couldn’t see through the pain that Jojo had a gun pressed to the back of Charley’s comb-over.

  “Open the safe!” Lucky barked as he pistol-whipped Dup Choy again, sending bits of gum and teeth across the floor. Choy, the On Yee enforcer, reduced to a bloody whimpering mess.

  Charley Joe fell to his knees in terror, shaky fingers on the safe’s dial. Jojo, with a grin on his face, tossed Lucky a pair of swinging handcuffs. A pimp product from the bondage trunk of tricks. He had a second pair for Charley.

  Lucky pressed a knee into the back of Choy’s head and cuffed him, hands behind, through the armrest of the couch.

  “You’ll never get away with this,” Charley said, trembling as he swung the safe door open. Jojo cuffed him to the desk as Lucky scooped the safe’s contents into the tool bag. They left Dup Choy bleeding on the couch and headed for the stairwell.

  It took them only a moment to get down to the street.

  At the edge of the Seventh Precinct on the Lower East Side, Jack was at the end of an assisted case, translating and explaining to the uniforms on scene how the Fujianese grandmother they’d responded to had just gotten scammed out of her life savings. A Chinese man-and-woman con team was working the area.

  The emergency call had been patched through the Fifth Precinct—2 Mott Street Room 808. Possible assault. He was within a five-minute straight shot down the Bowery to Chinatown, but the patrol car he’d badged, flashing lights and whooping sirens, got him there even faster.

  There was nobody in the lobby of 2 Mott as he took an elevator to the eighth floor. Room 808, according to the floor plan on the elevator wall, was at the end of the L-shaped corridor. A stairway in between.