Chinatown Beat jy-1

by Henry Chang

  In that equation, he'd known that women had all the power. Asian women could sell out, cop to the plea, give up the struggle, because they were desired. Asian men had to live with their struggles for acceptance. In his mind it sounded bitter. It felt the same.

  He ordered another round and they watched Grandpa's fill up with radio car drivers and their raucous passengers of the night. Pretty ladies and gangsters. Gato Barbieri wailed out of the jukebox and when they finished their drinks, Jack left Billy at the bar, each of them feeling sadder and more alone.

  Karaoke

  The Sing Along Song Club was a walk-up assembly-hall space in the White Tiger Crane Kung Fu Academy. The school was operated by the Hip Chings on weekdays only. The hall was recast as the Sing Along from nine at night until three a.m. every night of the week.

  Young men from the Association came each night and rolled out the tables, laid on the tablecloths and topped them with candles. Liquor was inside locked wall cabinets that folded out into a display shelf behind a long, low wooden bar, with red-topped barstools that the students sat on during Kung Fu practice. The other long wall was lined with mirrors.

  It was a turnkey disco-ball operation. Hit a switch, dim the lights. The huge flat-screen projection TV lit up the backwall. Pin spots of light spun off the mirrored ball. The Samsung CD-OK laser karaoke machine kicked in. Pick up a microphone and follow the bouncing ball.

  Every half hour, smoke rolled in from the Fogmaker 200, and they punched up the audio. The girls in black mini-dresses came out with trays of Remy XO cognac and served them at the covered tables.

  Dragons were posted near the doors, and they screened for weapons.

  The place usually opened with Hong Kong college students and got cooking after midnight when the hardcore older crowd came in from the gambling joints, the tracks, the late action at OTB. The siu jeer, young lady hostesses, arrived at twelve-thirty and picked off the single men.

  The CD-OK machine had a capacity of fifteen thousand songs and videos in a single compact disk, and featured auto-mike mixing and echo for giving the singer a pro sound even after a fifth of XO.

  The cognac had been stolen from Chin Wah Distributors, twelve bottles a case, twenty-five cases in all. A twenty-five-thousand dollar score by the Dragons, more when the girls served it out at a hundred-fifty each fifth. Counting the five-dollar cover, they cleared a thousand a night, easy. Not counting the fifty-dollar bags ofJamaican, the hundred-dollar glassines of Chinese Number Three, balown sooga.

  The Sing Along had contest nights during which the collegiate Hong Kong wannabees partied hearty. Toward the Double Ten parties, celebrating the anniversary of the founding of the Republic of China on October tenth, more people crushed in from out of town, hungry for the action, and the Association gladly fed the volatile mix.

  It was past midnight.

  Johnny watched Mona follow Uncle Four up the flight of stairs into the Sing Along. He had been told to return in an hour, and was considering what to do with the hundred dollars he had left after his losing streak at Yonkers.

  He decided he was hungry and went for a quick sieve yeh at the Harmonious Garden. The chef boiled him up some noodles and chopped in pieces of soy-sauce chicken and roast pork. There was a Hong Kong Star magazine for him to read and after that there wasn't enough time to go to Fat Lily's so he went back to the Sing Along and waited.

  The karaoke game wasn't for old men. They sat around smoking cigars and drinking cognac, watching thirty-year-old ladies chirp wistfully about better times and romances lost and found.

  It was only the second visit for Mona, the Sing Along not being one of her favorite places. Too many gang kids and hom sup, horny, Chinatown men. Still, she sat in her place beside Uncle Four, who had met up with Golo Chuk, the three of them at a table beside the mirrored wall. She glanced at her reflection in the candlelight and noticed the group of men at the next table, smiling, making eyes at her. She flashed her eyes, then ignored them. The club was crowded and the hostesses were working the room, but there weren't enough of them to go around.

  The men were Taiwanese, Mona judged by their accents, banker types, from their suits and ties. They were working on their second fifth of XO and smoking up a storm cloud.

  Golo picked up on them, figured them as bok los, northern Chinese, slumming for southern Cantonese snatch.

  "Shan mei," one of the bankers said across the tables. "Don't you remember me?"

  Uncle Four and Mona exchanged looks, hers saying, He's mistaken, I don't know them.

  Golo thought, How dare they insult us in our own place!

  "n ma da," he said in his best cutting Mandarin. "What the fuck are you looking at?"

  That started it.

  Two of the suits closest to Golo stood up as he pushed back from the table. In a single motion, Golo kicked out one man's kneecap, and driving his hung kuen, red-style fist, full force, split open the other man's face. Glass tumblers flew across and crashed into the mirrored wall, shattering onto Uncle Four and Mona.

  Suddenly, the Sing Along was in pandemonium, emptying out as the Black Dragons beat the hell out of the Taiwanese, trying to cool out Golo Clink.

  The pin spots of light kept whirling and the song machine kept wailing even as the Dragons dragged the bloody men across the empty hall.

  Fear

  Johnny flung down the racing form as people dashed out of the Sing Along. He jumped out of the car just in time to hold the door for Mona and Uncle Four.

  "What happened?" he asked once they were inside the car.

  "A fight," huffed Uncle Four. "Faan ukkei, get home."

  Johnny wasn't sure which home Uncle Four meant but started the car. He looked in the rearview and saw fear in Mona's eyes.

  "Henry gaai," she said coolly, and he turned the car toward the Henry Street condo. It was a short drive, and he could feel the heat of Uncle Four's anger curling the short hairs on the back of his neck.

  Quickly enough he was there, watching as Uncle Four marched Mona into the China Plaza, her heels clicking along the stone lobby floor, clutching the little purse to her bosom.

  When they were out of sight, he doused the headlights and killed the engine. He felt helpless, and stayed in the car until the lights on her balcony came on. When the light went instantly to black, he fired up the car, and thought about Fat Lily's.

  But his pockets were empty, and he wheeled the limo around, looking toward his home.

  It was bad enough when Uncle Four drank too much cognac, but now he was in a simmering rage.

  He grabbed Mona, then shoved, tearing the silk of her blouse, ripping it off along with the black lacy bra. He slapped her across the face, which he never did, not wanting the bruises to show, but this time leaving a dull pink palm print, and sprinkling bloody spittle from her mouth. Shoving her onto the bed, he grabbed her by the hair, slapped at the back of her head.

  She knew not to resist, or be defiant. It would only enrage him further. Play along, suffer it. He'd be more forgiving in a day or two, and then it'd be flowers and champagne.

  He unbuckled his belt and slipped it off the loops, whipped her with it across the buttocks.

  "I cannot face you," Mona sobbed. "I won't dare next time. Please forgive me," she whimpered, choking on her words.

  At this, he tossed the belt aside, stripped her skirt and panties off and turned her over. He dropped his trousers and forced her legs apart.

  She cried out and he shoved her face into the pillows, plowing into her. Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, she was thinking, have mercy on me, as Uncle Four vented his hatred hard inside her.

  Cop

  Daylight came again, made stark those things that had blended in with night and artificial light. The alarm on Jack's watch jingled. He barely noticed it and took five minutes to roll off Pa's bed of clothes. He went to the green-streaked sink to splash water on his face. It was too late for breakfast and too early for roll call at the 0-Five. But he'd had enough of the dead air and the dark
night. From the knapsack he extracted the cellular phone, the pager, another disposable InstaFlash. He opened all the windows before he left the apartment, the cool morning breeze at his back as his feet pounded the stairs until he stepped onto Mott Street and into the roar of the morning.

  The tension was building. He could feel it pulling, grabbing inside his shoulders.

  When he entered the stationhouse he passed an old Chinese woman seated at one of the benches, bleeding from the mouth, her eyes glazing over from the shock, a broken half circle of jade bracelet in her hand.

  P.O. Jamal Josephs, a.k.a. Jay Jay, brushed past Jack with a wet paper towel and gave it brusquely to the old woman. Turning, he threw a pissed-off look in Jack's direction.

  Jamal was a leading member of the Ebony Guards, a black fraternal police organization that had success nullifying sergeants' examinations based on charges of discrimination and cheating. Recently, thirteen thousand cops had been tested and five hundred made sergeant. The Guards alleged widespread cheating among white cops and filed suit against the City for allowing the exam to be compromised. The Department of Investigation was figuring out how many, if any, of the five hundred had prior access to the exams.

  When Jay Jay came back he leaned into Jack, jerking his two fingers back at the old woman, saying, "She keeps flashing me the peace sign, Yu. `Hock-kwee, hock-kwee,' she keeps saying, and I know what it means, Jack. I know what it means and I don't need it, okay?"

  Jack said, "What does it mean, Josephs?" He walked over to the old woman without waiting forJayJay's answer, sat down opposite her and spoke quietly in Toishanese, watching the look on her face go from surprise back to fear, to resignation, telling her story.

  When she finished, Jack came back from the bench. Jay Jay, waiting with crossed arms, said with a challenge, "Hock-kwee means black devil. It means nigger, right?" Jack was silent looking from Josephs back to the old woman.

  Jay Jay said, "See, Jack, I know what it means and don't need it, know what I'm sayin'?"

  Jack leaned in closer, said into Josephs' eyes, "That's right, Josephs, you don't like it but there it is. It wasn't the peace sign, man, it was two, like in two black African American soul brothers from the Smith Houses mugging a seventy-year-old Chinese grandmother, busting out her dentures, but all you can hear is nigger, right?"

  "Fuck that racist shit," Jay Jay said in a low growl.

  "Yeah, fuck it," Jack answered, "'cause half the fuckin crime in the Projects is committed against Asians by blacks, and what's racist about it is that you can't face up to it, how badly you're fucking up as a people."

  Sergeant Paddy Staten-Island-Irish Murphy got his considerable girth between them.

  "Be nice, boys," he huffed. "Don't want to spoil the captain's morning, do we?"

  "Fuck you, Jack," Jay Jay, a.k.a. P.O. Josephs said, backing away.

  "Likewise, brother. "Jack watched Josephs storm off, knew that was the way it was in this precinct, this city, this country.

  The white cops resented the black cops for the breaks they got on the examinations, saw them as quota promotions, affirmativeaction freeloaders. Male cops disliked female officers. Black and Latino cops resented the few Asian cops who were advanced on the coattails of their struggle, ignoring that the yellows were academically better prepared.

  Jack wasn't one of them. Any of them. He was becoming the loner in his professional life that he was in his personal life. So they couldn't figure him out; the inscrutable Oriental, Detective Charlie Chan, they joked behind his back.

  The NYPD didn't possess any more sanctity than the rest of the city. If indeed the force was a mirror of society, then racism and sexism had to be a part of the reflection, the culture of violence and racism going hand in hand, as American as a Colt.45.

  The highest ranking Chinese was a captain in the 0-Seven, a hometown boy who grew up on the Lower East Side, whose promotion no doubt chafed more than a few rednecks from Staten Island to the Bronx. The old veterans didn't care for the shine of Chinese brass. It blinded them from seeing the bigger picture of a cop's duty: to protect, to serve.

  Sergeant Murphy took Jack over to the locker room.

  "Don't let 'im bug ya, Jacky boy," he said. "He's so fella shit it's gushing out his fingernails. That's why he got bounced out the Three-Four and the Nine-Seven. 'Tween you an me, the niggers can't hold a candle to the Chinamen." He grinned.

  Jack's anger flushed, spread sideways.

  "Yeah, Paddy," Jack said, pulling away, "you know it. My father and grandfather waited tables full of good laddies like yourself. And did your laundry, too. They didn't like you, but they never spit in your food, or cursed about the small change you left on the tables. They could have, but they never did. They just went about their business. Them good Chinamen, Paddy."

  Murphy stood there speechless, the red rising in his cheeks.

  Jack turned and went up the stairs, the tension at the back of his head now.

  Back to work, his mind was telling him, let the work clear out the funk of Pa c passing. His anger had been vented, and he channeled what remained of the adreno-rush toward the open-case files on the desk.

  He took three breaths, centered himself, focused. The thinnest file was the most recent, labeled Chinatown Rapist using the headline slug from the Daily News. The report said that a slender Asian man in his twenties was raping young Chinese girls on the Lower East Side. Detectives from the Sex Crimes unit had officially taken over and composite sketches had gone out, and were posted throughout the Fifth and the Seventh Precincts, in apartment buildings, Bung chongs-factories-bodegas, on corner lampposts. By-the-book procedure.

  A week after the headlines, he'd struck again. A six-year-old Taiwanese girl this time. Forced her to the roof at knifepoint and sodomized her. Right back into the neighborhood, snatched another one right under their noses.

  They had semen samples and Chinatown rumors. The Fuhienese, the new ones, it must be them. One of the boat slaves. Who else could go so low but theFuk Chow?

  The Benevolent Associations respectfully pressured the police for action. The families of the victims secretly met with their tongs.

  Now, there was only the waiting.

  Jack went from the file to the night-shift blotter on the wall behind him. There was a notation after the shift changed that four Chinese men had been admitted to Emergency at Downtown Hospital with nonlethal gunshot wounds. All were Fukienese, and all claimed to be victims of a drive-by shooting by perpetrators unknown. Beat cops at the alleged shooting location found no evidence of any shooting.

  Somebody's lying about something Jack thought immediately, to cover up something bigger. For a moment his mind drifted, then he caught himself. The night dicks. Their shift, and they'd caught the squeal. He'd be wasting his time.

  He went back to the files.

  The last file, which he'd titled Fuk Ching/Golden Venture, was thick with photographs and news articles.

  Ten Chinamen had drowned in the rough and frigid chop as hundreds more jumped ship. The reports had crackled back and forth on the Fury's radio. The Coast Guard plucked up the dead bodies, rounded up the shivering human cargo for Immigration. They were counted, declared a menace, shuffled onto buses for detention, escorted by a flotilla of police wearing surgical masks.

  The backlash began almost immediately. The media painted them ugly, called them "human contraband," "economic refugees," the newYellow Peril, coming to take American jobs, to take food out of the mouths of American children. The New York Post declared Thousands Feared in NYDungeons, dragging up the Ghost of Fu Manchu, and illegal alien slaves kept prisoner by Chinese se jai, snakehead, gangsters. The tag "Snakeheads" was added to the American vocabulary.

  At City Hall, the first black mayor said nothing. No black voices rose up to decry the new slave trade.

  One ship a week, seven hundred workers per, thirty thousand a head. Twenty million per shipload. It wasn't the first time Chinese people jumped ship. Grandpa had done it several
times in the Forties. America didn't want the Chinese then, didn't want them now.

  Never had a Chinamen's chance, thought Jack, frowning at the irony.

  He scanned the most recent report describing gunfire blasting the pre-dawn quiet over Teaneck, a sleepy New Jersey town near the Hackensack River. The state troopers had arrived at the rented Fuk Ching safehouse and found the bodies.

  On the first floor, two Chinese men lay dead of knife and gunshot wounds. In the basement, two others, bound with duct tape, shot in the head point-blank. Outside the house, another wounded man, DOA at Hackensack Medical.

  A Chinatown gang war had spilled across the river.

  Stuck to the case file was a square of yellow memo on which he had written Alexandra Lee-Chow, AJA, 10 a. m.

  The methods of the flesh smugglers had morphed, and suddenly Chinese boat people were detained in Honolulu, Southern California, San Francisco Bay, San Diego Harbor, Jacksonville Bay, and as close as Baltimore, and Charlotte. Now they had arrived in New York City, crashing only because a violent rift between the Fuk Ching smugglers prevented transport from reaching the mother ship Venture.