by Henry Chang
The National had a staff of twenty that included pressmen, reporters, editors, photographers, and managers. Compared to the other major Chinese dailies, it couldn’t claim the highest circulation, or the lowest newsstand price. In fact, the National was the only paper without a color section, the only Chinese newspaper that still typeset by hand the thousand Chinese characters it needed to go to print. They had special typewriters for the different fonts, other machines for headlines and captions.
The United National sold for forty cents a copy and appeared on the newsstands every day but Sunday.
The National was Chinatown’s hometown paper.
It had been Pa’s favorite, his only newspaper.
Clue
Vincent Chin said in bilingual-accented English, “What we’re not writing is that Big Uncle had a mistress, that the killing was a Hakka drug deal that got twisted somehow. It’s hearsay. We can’t prove it, we can’t print it.”
Jack kept fishing. “Other enemies? A double cross?”
“Some people suspect the Ghosts, others say the Dragons, or the Fuk Ching. It’s Chinatown fantasy as far as I’m concerned.”
“What about the mistress?”
“It’s gossip. Someone spotted her in a gambling house. But no one’s come forward with a picture, an address, or a body.”
“If you had a mistress, wouldn’t you keep it hushed up?”
“Yes, but it’s Chinatown. You can’t shut down loose talk. That’s all it is.”
“How’d you hear?”
“People call up. You can’t imagine the calls we got.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Jack checked his watch, almost nine p.m. “Was it a man who called, or a woman?”
“A man,” Vincent said. “Does it matter?”
“I don’t know.” Jack left his cop card on the typewriter. “But if there’s anything else you can think of . . .”
“I’ll call you, or Alex.”
“Perfect. Thanks for your time,” Jack said, and shook Chin’s hand.
Outside, Jack took a deep swallow of the cool night air and trailed the backstreets of Chinatown, letting murder and motive tumble around in his head. When no answers fell out, he took a long look at the basements running down Mott Street under colored neon lights, and remembered Tat “Lucky” Louie.
He nursed two cups of coffee at the Me Lee Snack shop, eavesdropping on Hip Ching gossip: old men’s chatter about a fight at a karaoke club. Hong Kong bitch was the last phrase he picked out of the thick Toishan accents.
Then he returned to Pa’s apartment and ate monk’s vegetarian jaai, studied the pictures of the dead man, and waited for midnight to drop.
Number Nine Hole
The room was a hazy brightly lit basement, thick with the smell of whiskey, coffee, and cigarettes. They were two-fifty, say three- hundred people crammed together, Chinese men shoulder-to-shoulder, three deep at the gaming tables. Dragon Ladies serving XO and coffee to the high rollers.
Jack stepped into this eclectic mix of waiters, businessmen, hoodlums, cowboys, and street-gang kids. He saw how the younger men seemed to group together, how the Ghostboys had a certain swagger here, the throng parting for their every move from table to table. No doubt who this place answered to. The anxious crowd played mahjong, fan tan, paigow, thirteen-card poker, betting on fighting fish every half hour. Eight tables were working hard, especially at consuming the whiskey they were spreading around. Jack played the tables along the fringe, leading to the far back of the long room. There was a door there. The little white fan-tan buttons weren’t turning up right; it cost Jack a ten-spot to watch that door. They all shifted, now betting at the thirteen-card table, almost at the far end. Another ten-spot rode his hand against the House. He saw some of the young guns exit through the doorway which led to a back room and a connecting courtyard. Jack’s cards won heads and tails, suddenly upping him twenty bucks. He picked up his money and moved smoothly toward the doorway.
A procession of street kids cut him off. He was letting them drift by when he felt the bump, the heft, of gun-barrel metal jammed into his side, just below the ribs. “Move,” the voice said. Before he could turn he was swept up by a crew of Ghost Legion darkshirts, pushed into the back room, where another gun pressed into his temple. He was turned around, slowly, arms stretched sidewise. He felt hands yank the Colt Special from his waist, brought his eyes to bear on a familiar face, fuller now and jowly, with a thickset body, leaning to one side. Around him hate was beaming from Ghost faces, just itching for trouble.
Jack felt the heavy metal slide away from his temple, saw the man step back, a disgusted look on his face. The man reached across Jack’s neck and lifted the chain with the detective’s badge dangling from it.
“Tat Louie,” Jack said.
Lucky let the chain run across his fingers before he balled up his fist and yanked the badge from Jack’s neck.
“You gotta lotta balls coming to squeeze me,” he said. “That badge ain’t shit down here.”
“If I wanted to squeeze you I wouldn’t have come alone.”
“Hey, I’m pissing, I’m so scared,” Lucky hissed. “What the fuck you want coming down here?”
“I need help, Tat.”
“You need help, call nine-one-one,” he cracked. The Ghosts howled.
“That’s funny, Tat. Just like it’s funny how somebody whacked Uncle Four and nobody knows nothing.”
Lucky almost smiled. “Don’t worry about it, Jacky boy; you know, it’s Chinatown.”
Jack straightened. “I know eight months ago you made peace with the Black Dragons. Uncle Four set it up and put his name on it.”
The Ghosts spread back, giving them some room.
“Yeah, so you know it wasn’t us,” Lucky said, holstering the heavy Python revolver.
“Maybe there was a double cross.” Jack grinned.
“Maybe you should go fuck yourself,” Lucky said, lighting up a cigarette. He blew smoke into Jack’s face.
“It wasn’t random, wasn’t a robbery. More like a pro job,” Jack said through the haze. “Was it the White Tigers? Born to Kill, the Fuk Ching?” Jack hesitated.
“Yeah, it was alla them, especially them little Fuk Chow pricks.”
“Come on, Tat, let’s deal. I know you got problems.”
“Do I look worried?” He blew more smoke at Jack.
“You should be. The Fuks and the Namese boys been chopping you up.”
Lucky chortled, took a drag on the cigarette. “You crack me up,” he said, the others sneering behind him.
“You gave up Market Street,” Jack pressed.
“What the fuck you smoking, man?”
“Come on, Tat, let’s deal.”
“Deal? You got nothing I want.”
“They say he had a girlfriend, brought her gambling.”
“You’re wasting my time, Jacky boy.”
“Now she’s disappeared too.”
“Don’t know nothing about it.”
“Hong Kong type. A karaoke singer?”
“Can’t help you, man.”
Jack took a breath, hadn’t expected to last this long and knew he was on a roll.
“Yeah,” he said, “but I can help you. I can make it tough for the Fuk Ching. I can have their cars towed.”
Lucky wasn’t impressed, blew smoke from his nose.
“I can put heat on their gambling joints,” Jack pushed on. “I can roust the Namese boys, shake them up a little.”
Lucky seemed vaguely interested now. “Keep talking,” he said.
“I need a face, a name.” Jack was fishing deeper water now. “I can access the department’s computers, find out where all your enemies are.”
“And you don’t care one bit if we whack them all,” Lucky spit out contemptuously.
“I do not give a fuck,” Jack said. “I wish you all would whack each other out the same day. Make my job a lot easier.”
“Bring me some information,” Lucky said, snuff
ing the cigarette.
“I need a face, a name.”
“You’re chasing shadows, man. It’s smoke.”
“So we dealing or what?”
Lucky was intrigued now, though he couldn’t show it in front of the Ghosts. He said, “Give me a sign, Jacky. I’ll be listening.”
The darkshirts whisked Jack through the courtyard, through a hallway leading to a side street. Lucky held up Jack’s chain, let the badge dangle before he tucked it into Jack’s pocket.
“You got some fuckin’ balls coming down here, boy,” he said, suddenly snapping an uppercut into Jack’s gut, a sucker punch driving Jack to his knees. As the Ghosts moved off laughing, Jack gasped for air and heard Lucky grinning words through his teeth.
“That’s for old times,” he snapped.
Busted
When dawn faded in, an FBI/DEA task force took down the Fuk Chou Association leadership, arresting nineteen illegals in connection with the murders in Teaneck and the grounding of the Golden Venture.
Public Morals Division came and shut down the Twenty-Eight after complaints surfaced from gamblers who’d been robbed there.
At noon, Jack watched as the Department of Transportation brownshirts hitched up a line of parked cars, saw the scowls on young Fuk Ching faces as municipal tow trucks hauled away their Firebirds/Trans Ams/Camaros. The trucks lurched off Lafayette, then headed west toward the piers as Jack turned in the direction of Mott Street.
Things were getting stirred up on East Broadway, and Jack was happy to take credit for it.
Send a message to Lucky, he was thinking.
Ghost Brother
The gray nimbostratus sky of October floated in from the Atlantic, dropped over Chinatown in an uncertain change of seasons, from a summer that had been boiling hot to a lifeless autumn that muted the changing of colors.
Gray clouds drifted past the red pagoda motif of the On Yee building, down the ceramic tilework, the wind whipping up the Association’s red, white, and black banner, the cloth cut jagged along its perimeter so that it appeared to be a dragon’s tail.
Lucky stood beneath the banner, plugged into a Walkman, and lit up. K-Rock on the airwaves.
From the rooftop he could see all of Chinatown, from the river to the east, and west as far as the unending line of tractor trailers dodging into the Holland Tunnel.
He looked north, seeing past Little Italy as far as Soho. South, he saw the Jersey shoreline where it crept behind the torch of Liberty, just barely visible above the city skyline.
He could see across the Manhattan Bridge running east-west to Brooklyn, a new frontier of opportunities. The streets below filled up with tourists, and he turned up the Walkman, sucking on the stick of smoke that came up sickly sweet into his nostrils. The chiba smoke relaxed him and he thought about Jack. The truce was on hold. If the cops could find the Big Uncle’s girlfriend that would take suspicion off of him.
But Lucky wasn’t surprised. He heard it on the grapevine, about Jack stirring up shit on the streets, rousting the Fuk Chings, busting the Yee Bot. Eventually, Lucky wanted pictures of the undercovers from the Asian Squad but figured it was too soon to play that card. He decided to toss Jack a bone, something to keep him busy, out of the way.
Revelations
Things picked up, but not the way Jack expected.
There was a sniper on the roof of the Smith Houses, which scrambled the SWAT boys out of Headquarters, shut down the Brooklyn Bridge, sucked uniforms out of patrol.
A demonstration at City Hall.
A Terrorist Alert at the Stock Exchange.
Jack was the next man up when the B&E report came into the squadroom, a breaking and entering into a Henry Street apartment, called in by the night janitor.
Apartment 8H was empty, dead air sitting on top of the silk-covered bed. Clothes in the closet, Dior, Versace, Tahari, expensive petites left behind. Designer shoes stacked below. Vuitton bags in every configuration.
It wasn’t a burglary, more like someone looking for someone, with a vengeance.
The kitchenette was neat, except for the splash of mahjong tiles on the countertop. The refrigerator empty. No garbage in the covered bin.
No personal papers, no pictures. Nothing to put a face to the tenant of the apartment. Nothing to indicate anyone had lived there the last few days.
Jack envisioned a young woman, someone who’d gone on vacation. He went down to the management office, requested the apartment lease.
When Wah Yee Tom turned up on the ownership document, Jack knew for sure that the Uncle Four deal had a woman in it, the woman who had the answers he needed.
He snatched up one of the mahjong tiles, the bak baan, a white board, a clear slate. He pressed the ivory block inside his fist, squeezing it as if it might yield a clue. He thought of Ah Por again, knew if she could channel anything, the bak baan was the cleanest choice, unencumbered by numbers, characters, or symbols. Then he remembered the keys, and started to see how things were coming together. One of the keys fit the apartment lock, but the mechanism was too mashed up for it to turn. When he got down to the lobby, the other two keys worked perfectly. One for the front door, one for the mailbox. He went back in the direction of Mott Street, thinking of Ah Por and Lucky, fearing that time was running out.
Heaven Over Earth
Now she saw rolling hills and fields in broad open valleys, uplands bisected by steep slopes and wretched soils, an unbroken ridge of shale, limestone. The train climbed up from the plateau toward the Alleghenies. Mona closed the blinds and placed the plastic bag on the table, emptied it out.
There were packets of money bundled inside brown laundry paper, a plastic box with columns of gold Chinese Pandas, a small black velveteen pouch.
She took a breath, unzipped the pouch, turned it so that diamonds tumbled into her cupped palm, their brilliance pulsing even in the shadowy daylight behind the blinds, the sight of them freezing her eyes.
Maybe two dozen there, she thought. She poured them back into the pouch, gathered up the rest of the payback from the table.
Count it later. Everything fit perfectly into the empty mahjong case she’d carried the gun in. The case slipped into a neoprene knapsack, all stashed inside the Samsonite. The gun came out of the garment bag, the silencer unscrewed, the magazine ejected. She wrapped all of it in a hand towel, stuffed it into the side compartment of the Rollmaster, and let the light back into the room.
Rugged terrain streaked by, and she could see great lakes far to the north, imagined the Chinese gold coast of Toronto there, considered the possibilities. Seven Chinatowns, newer and cleaner than New York, but lots of Hong Kong Chinese in each. Hip Chings, probably. She watched until the sun began to set behind the mountains. There was no appetite in her stomach and she knew she had to avoid the other passengers.
By nightfall the train had descended into Pittsburgh, then raced west across Ohio and Indiana. She fell asleep in her clothes on the narrow bed, snuggled in beside the knapsack, and awoke fitfully with the first light that filtered in through the blinds.
She brushed her teeth, combed her hair, straightened her clothes. She felt excited and weary at the same time. Coffee and sweet bread came from the dining car. She added XO, finished it off with a chain of cigarettes.
She could keep on the run, she knew, and even be successful in eluding the police, whose energy and resources would dim after a week or so. But Golo would only be satisfied with the return of the gold and diamonds, or if he had a body with which to account to his superiors for the losses. Golo, she knew, would be harder to evade. Johnny was her wild card, in case Golo got too close. She consulted her jade piece, which suddenly felt cool to her touch.
Beware, it said, rain follows thunder.
Move on.
Chicago was a layover where she ducked the passenger lounge in the terminal, keeping the Rollmaster close. Passing the outskirts of Chinatown, she found Wentworth Street, came upon a shopping mall where she filled herself with jook
congee and jow gwai, fried bread. On Archer Boulevard she bought melon cakes from a Chinese bakery. She searched along Canal Street, combed the shops along Twenty-Fourth. At the Oriental Gift Shop she found a Chinese box of dark mahogany, which had the symbolic Double Happiness etched in brass on top, a polished wood rectangle with ornate hinges and a sliding drawer. The small gold stick-on label underneath read “Made in China.”
She paid for it with cash.
The next train, the California Zephyr, god of the west wind, would carry her the rest of the way. There were Chinese families aboard; she avoided them.
The SuperLiner crossed the Mississippi, passed the vast bulk and sprawl of prairie lands, tilled and planted with grains, soils of black and red loess. From her window the sky was so big she felt no one would ever catch her.
It was midnight when they arrived in Omaha.
Thirty-six hours out of the Big Uncle’s power now, only two things worried her and both were men. Golo would surely come after her, backed by the Hip Chings on both coasts. Johnny would want to keep running, jump the country. Keep him calm, under control, she thought. She still needed him, if only for the extra cover he might provide.
The Zephyr surged westward, into the Rockies, through coniferous forests of Ponderosa pine, fir and spruce, sailing through the Divide, passing river canyons and gorges of sedimentary rock. Her window scanned mountain peaks with rolling alpine meadows, timberline savannahs following the Colorado River. A view so striking she had to chase it with brandy to steady herself.
Sell Johnny on the jewelry distributor angle—he’d hook into that. Let him dream about Big Money. Daylight awoke her in Salt Lake City. A soft yellow afternoon.
She kept the rubberized knapsack beside her, made a phone call from the platform.
Lost
Jack couldn’t find Ah Por. She wasn’t among the old women in the park on Mulberry. When he reached out to them, they provided no clues. He squeezed the mahjong tile inside his pocket, felt his palm get sweaty even as he turned toward Mott Street.
