Year of the Dragon

by Robert Daley

  Nikki Han said something in Chinese - probably that he would return later - and backed up the stairs to the street, as did his two friends, or bodyguards, or whatever they were.

  The Chinese couple said nothing. Their lips moved but no sound came out. Powers allowed himself to be bowed out of their laundry. There was no way, given the magnitude of their fear, that he could convince them that he would try to help, try to prevent whatever was to happen to them. Up on the street he peered about for Nikki Han, but did not see him and, although he waited a few minutes, the gang leader did not return. Powers, with a precinct to run, could not stand idle above the laundry forever, and this made him recognize still another of the disadvantages under which he worked. The gangs could outwait him any time. They had nothing else to do except make collections. They could outwait a whole precinct of cops.

  He began to attend meetings of the various Chinatown Associations, the first of them the Mott Street Merchants Association, forty to fifty Chinese adults sitting in the auditorium of P.S.63.

  “We can put an end to protection payoffs,” said Powers from the stage. “But we need your cooperation. The law requires that you sign a complaint. The law requires that you testify in court.”

  The people below him showed no reaction. They were like passengers aboard an airliner listening to instructions in the use of the emergency gear. What to do in the event of a catastrophe. But the idea was unthinkable. The entire subject was unthinkable. The listeners were not listening. They were only being silent.

  “I know you are worried about wasting endless time in court,” Powers said. “That’s why I went to see the district attorney. He has agreed to appoint a special assistant district attorney to handle these cases as expeditiously as possible.”

  He paused, wetting his lips, hoping for encouragement. But there was none. “I know you are worried about reprisals. For those of you who will come forward and sign complaints, I will assign foot patrolmen to protect your places of business as much as is humanly possible. We will do everything we can.” Below him no one moved. Not an expression changed. They stared at him as though he was a comedian sent to entertain them. His first jokes may have failed, but perhaps he had better ones up his sleeve. At any moment he might bring forth a joke that would make them chuckle.

  Powers turned to one of the men who had introduced him. “I am afraid that a number of these people don’t understand English too well, Mr. Wang. Perhaps if you could translate my remarks into Chinese-”

  There had been no reaction from Wang either. After staring a moment at Powers, he stepped to the edge of the stage and spoke three or four lines in Cantonese. There was still no reaction from the crowd. When he turned back to Powers he was smiling. “That does it,” he said in English.

  Powers said, “Did you tell everything? It took me about twenty minutes, and you about twenty seconds.”

  Wang nodded sagaciously. “Chinese is a very economical language, Captain,” he said. “I see,” said Powers.

  He addressed the Lee Family Association in the reception hall of the group’s building on Mott Street. Tea and rice cakes were served, and Powers stood on the dais, the only white face and blue uniform in the room, the only one not named Lee, also.

  He began to speak - by then he was half through a crash course in Cantonese at Berlitz. “Joa san” he said. Literally this meant good morning, although it was 8:00 at night. But there were no words in Cantonese for good afternoon or good evening, and joa san would do, particularly since it was not an easy phrase to speak, for Cantonese was a language of tones. The same word pronounced in nine different tones had nine different meanings. Joa went down in tone on the 0, and up on the a, and when he had spoken these words, after a kind of astonished moment of silence, the assembled Chinese began grinning and applauding.

  Powers smiled back and added: “M-goy nay” - thank you very much.

  The people applauded again. They looked delighted with him, as if watching some precocious toddler learning to walk. Their reaction was so overblown that he wondered if he had not made a fool of himself.

  “I want to prove to you that I am with you,” he said, “that we your police department are with you. We want to stop the terror of these youth gangs. We want to end extortion in Chinatown. But we must have complainants. We must have people who will testify in court.”

  Although his speech continued, there were no more smiles, no more applause after that.

  He met with Mr. Ting. He sat in Ting’s empty restaurant in the middle of the afternoon, and Ting ordered tea brought to them by a waiter.

  “I’ve come to you for help, Mr. Ting. You are perhaps the most respected man in Chinatown. If you would get behind my anti-gang program, it would have a chance.”

  Ting poured out the tea. “Me no pay plotection to gangs,” he said. He had a high lilting voice. Close your eyes, Powers thought, and you might imagine yourself listening to an Irish tenor.

  “You are a man of such stature,” Powers said evenly, “that they do not approach you. But they did shoot up your restaurant. They came in here and killed five people.”

  “Not attack me, Captain,” said Ting. “Attack rival gang. Is accident. Target rival gang.”

  Powers, who had been given no information on the progress of the investigation, did not know if this was true or not.

  “Police department no solve case,” said Ting. “Chinese people have no confidence in police.”

  Powers let this pass also. He said evenly, “Those weaker than you pay protection money every week, or else their shops are wrecked. In some cases they are assaulted. A few have been killed. You know that is true.”

  Ting rose from his chair. The interview was over. He was smiling politely. “Chinatown behind you, Captain. In favor all the way. What you do, you take gang kid into alley. You beat with club. You put bag over gang kid’s head first so he don’t know who hit him. Chinatown behind you one hundred percent. No civilian complaints.”

  So Powers went to see Koy, the last name on his list, the last person he thought his arguments might reach. The meeting took place in Koy’s office inside the Flowering Virtue Funeral Parlor. The place reeked of incense. Attempting to create a casual, almost convivial mood, one cop to another, Powers began by describing his meeting with Ting. Koy immediately began to laugh.

  “Put a bag over their heads and beat them with night sticks. Mr. Ting told you that?”

  The man was about the same age as Powers, and stood about as tall. But he was finer boned, and perhaps twenty pounds lighter. And he did not speak like a cop at all. He spoke with a British accent. He spoke like a prosperous British business man.

  “Ting knows very well we can’t behave that way, and so do you. Sure, an occasional cop still beats up a prisoner from time to time. But the days when this department behaved that way as a matter of policy are over.”

  Koy not only stopped laughing, but he assumed a solemn mien. “You must forgive Mr. Ting, Captain. In most parts of the world they are not over. Not in China, not in Hong Kong. Mr. Ting fails to understand the subtlety of the New York police mind, as you perhaps fail to understand the subtlety of the Chinese mind.”

  The man wore glasses so dark that Powers could not see his eyes. The glasses annoyed him. So did Koy’s manner. The man was talking down to him, waving four thousand years of Chinese civilization in his face like a stale fish, and expecting him to be impressed. But Powers was here to learn something, and perhaps to find an ally, not to get angry.

  “I have talked to nearly every association in Chinatown,” said Powers. “These people don’t even ask me questions. They just stare at me. There ought to be questions at least.”

  “The Chinese are a very polite people, Captain. Certainly they have questions, but they fear you would not be able to answer them. Therefore, out of politeness, they do not ask them. No Chinese would ask them.” Again the arrogant, patronizing tone. Powers was like a hiker moving through strange country. He was obliged to ask directions
because without them he might not find his way out the other side.

  “What questions are you referring to?” he asked.

  Koy commenced to lecture him. “Many commanders have come and gone in this precinct, Captain. How can the people of Chinatown give you any trust when you too might be gone in six months’ time, a year’s time? Suppose they sign a complaint against one of these gang leaders. The gang leader is arrested. He is out on bail within an hour, and moving up and down the streets of Chinatown every day after that. Perhaps a year passes before his case comes to trial, perhaps more. Even if convicted, he can be out on appeal for a long time. You promise you will protect the complainant now, but by then you might not be here. You may be an inspector in the Bronx, or police commissioner at headquarters.”

  “That’s not too likely,” said Powers.

  Koy, reacting for once like an ex-cop, laughed. “Perhaps you will retire and move to Florida,” he said, “and with your savings buy a hotel.”

  “I don’t have any savings.”

  “I believe you, Captain.”

  “Help us with the gangs,” said Powers. But he felt like a man asking for a loan that was not going to be accorded. “In exchange, we will leave your gambling joints alone.”

  “It is no secret that you are not allowed to touch our gambling houses,” said Koy, chiding him. “You mustn’t lie to us, Captain.”

  They stared at each other. Powers realized he would get no help from this man, though for a moment his hopes had been raised. But he did not get angry. Koy was more sophisticated, more intelligent, and obviously better educated than he had expected. He was also the most important man in Chinatown and Powers was trying to refocus his image of him. To do so it was perhaps best to exert a little pressure and see what happened. “There are rumors about you on the street,” Powers suggested. “I suppose you know that.”

  Koy sighed. “I’ve heard some of the old ones. Are there new ones as well?”

  “I don’t know which are old and which new. I just got here.” He paused. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I was just wondering.”

  A man entered the office carrying a teapot and cups on a tray. “How about some tea, Captain?” When Powers nodded, Koy began to pour.

  “I understand,” Powers continued, “that you were a policeman in Hong Kong. Your rank was station sergeant, I believe.”

  “True,” said Koy. “The rumors add that I left there with an awful lot of money. I suppose you’ve heard them.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was a policeman and policemen have been subject to calumnies since the dawn of time.”

  “That’s true,” conceded Powers.

  “And there’s nothing much we can do about it, is there?”

  “Usually not.”

  “Rumors against men like us are impossible to put down. All we can do is try to ignore them, don’t you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “The rumors you have heard are certainly not true. But I did make some wise stock investments in Hong Kong. I acquired a modest amount of money and came here and bought this modest business.”

  “In five years you also took over the most important tong in Chinatown.”

  “It was time for new blood, Captain. I just happened to be there at the right time.”

  “What made you decide to leave Hong Kong?”

  It was as if Powers had Koy by the throat and was shaking him. They both knew this. He was trying to shake a reaction out of him. But none came that he could read.

  “Hong Kong is a small place,” said Koy patiently. “A man like myself, a former policeman, found it impossible to achieve significant business success there. Where else could I go? The mainland was closed off. There was no other neighboring country to expand into. I was obliged to go abroad and seek my fortune, like so many of my ancestors. I came to New York. Also like so many of my ancestors.”

  “I need help to stamp out the gangs,” said Powers.

  “I don’t envy you your job, Captain. And I also don’t see why you should be so concerned. The gangs do not bother non-Chinese. If the citizens of Chinatown wish to put up with them, why should you care?”

  “Well, extortion is a crime.”

  “You must try to understand the Chinese mind. The Chinese have no sense of civic duty, and no tradition of charity towards strangers. To the Chinese, the Good Samaritan was a villain because he risked the security of his family to help a stranger. Whether you realize it or not, you are asking the people of Chinatown to do the same, to risk their families to help strangers, and they are not likely to do it.”

  “Well, what course of action do you suggest I take?”

  But Koy said, “The Chinese are a very patient people. They seem willing enough to put up with the gang problem until it goes away. They fail to understand why you don’t do likewise.”

  “How long were you a cop?”

  “Twenty-one years.”

  How could this man have been a cop, Powers asked himself. Cops were men of feeling. Their enthusiasms and emotions, their fears, were close to the surface. Even their cynicism existed on a strictly emotional plane, youthful illusions gone rancid. Koy bore witness to none of this.

  And Powers could not believe it. “Don’t you have any feeling,” he asked in a mild voice, “for the people who get ripped off every week?”

  “The principal victims, as I understand it, are newcomers to Chinatown. Why should I feel for them? These people are not my family. They are not from my village. They must learn to protect themselves. There is nothing I can do for them. These youth gangs are merely unruly children. Teenagers. How can I control unruly adolescents? Do you have adolescent children, Captain?”

  “I have two sons in college.” It seemed almost a sacrilege to mention them in front of this man.

  “I too have a teenage son in Hong Kong - from a previous marriage. I haven’t seen him in a number of years. His mother writes to me about him. Since coming to New York I have married again. I have three daughters by the second marriage. One always worries about the young, Captain. But the Chinese do not turn to the police for help. The Chinese do not trust the police. Traditionally the law in China never protected anyone but landowners. The Chinese don’t go to the police because they fear being blamed themselves. And they fear reprisals from the criminals.”

  It was incredible, Powers thought. A sergeant from a police department smaller than his own was lecturing him.

  But he kept calm, and when Koy offered a second cup of tea, he accepted. They began to discuss the Chinese passion for gambling, and Koy had an explanation for it. Koy had an explanation for everything. Most Chinese worked such long hours, he said, twelve to fourteen hours a day, that when they had some time off their one desire was to raise their excitement level very high very fast. Gambling did this for them. But Koy did not admit, or even suggest, that he owned a gambling den himself. Also, he added, most Chinese owed big notes and gambled hoping to pay them off in a single night. But Koy did not admit or suggest that he held any such notes himself.

  The undertaker showed him to the door saying: “Let’s meet again, Captain. Drop in any time. We’re cops. We understand each other.”

  No we don’t, Powers thought, but he smiled warmly and shook hands. He had found Koy charming, fascinating, and more dangerous by far than he had suspected.

  THE YOUNG blonde’s head and bosom poked out into the waiting room. “Captain Powers?”

  Powers looked up. Nice nose, nice lips, really nice eyes.

  “I’m Margaret. This way, please.”

  Rising, he dropped the magazine onto the coffee table, strode at her elbow down a long airless tube of a corridor. “First time you’ve been up here?” she asked, but did not wait for an answer. She was very cheerful. Her mouth marched cheerfully forward in time with her feet. She must consider herself an expert at putting visitors at ease, he thought. It was as if cheer was a subject she had learned in college.

  She was also tall and good-lo
oking. In college, he would certainly have fallen in love with a girl like this, which was perhaps why he made no attempt to talk to her now. The Margarets of those days had always known how to make him feel clumsy, how to instill in him various forms of fear. There was fear in him even now walking beside her, he realized. Which was absurd - no girl this age could ever again cause his heart to flutter, cause him pain. That he was having an atavistic response to her anyway wasn’t pleasant. The fears of a man’s boyhood stay with him always, he supposed. A man must overcome them every day. The only girl who had never made him afraid, who had instilled in him confidence always, was his wife, and he had married her as quickly as he could.

  He was not, however, afraid of Carol Cone. Margaret, showing him cheerfully into a conference room containing Carol and six men, introduced him only to Lurtsema, and cheerfully disappeared, stepping out of his life presumably forever.

  If he was not afraid of Carol, this was because she fit into a different category in his mind - not girl, but wife; She was someone he might have lived with twenty years already. Wives were predictable. They tended to obey certain rules of conduct. Girls were not and did not.

  The seven people stood with drinks in hand, waiting for him. Lurtsema, whom he had never heard of before two days ago, led him around and he shook hands with two other unknowns who were producers, and then with men whose faces were as familiar to Americans as the logos on breakfast-food boxes. The white-haired and avuncular anchorman, who was sometimes spoken of as a candidate for president, murmured a pleasantry. Then came two network correspondents only slightly less recognizable. Finally came Carol, who was wearing a suede dress that fit her rather snugly across the bosom.

  He had expected she would be here. Was that the reason he had accepted Lurtsema’s invitation?

  Though a big slob of a man, Lurtsema’s manners were almost courtly. But Carol cut his flowery introduction short.