by Henry Chang
“There’s a big chill on right now,” Sing advised. “But I’ll keep you posted.”
“Thanks.” Jack smiled sardonically.
After the ADA left, Jack pulled the Wanted posters from the open case files. A file that Jack had labeled EDDIE NG/SHORTY contained a juvenile offender mugshot of Keung “Eddie” Ng, who Jack believed was involved in the Ghost Legion OTB shoot-out that had left six dead, and Lucky in a coma. The photo was ten years old; a baby-faced kid who’d probably looked different now.
He took out a Wanted poster bearing the Shirley Yip image from Mona’s file and pocketed both. He would visit Billy Bow and the Fuk kid. After, Jack thought, he’d look for Ah Por, the old wise woman he knew, to see if she had any clues for him. At the Tofu King, the Fuk kid, Jing Zhang, recognized the karaoke photo of May Lon Fong that Jack had taken from her wallet. Zhang was leery about Jack the Chinese cop but Billy said, “It’s okay, JZee, he’s good police.”
Zhang relaxed, saying in broken Cantonese, “She kept to herself. She was old for that crowd.”
“Did she seem happy?” Jack asked. “Or was someone bothering her?”
Zhang frowned and shrugged his shoulders at the word “happy.” “The manager”—he glanced at Billy—“he’s a Ghost. He had his pick of the women. And there were the gang girls, always flirting with him.” He paused, scanned the store floor nervously. “But I never saw anything between him and her. Like I said, she was kind of old for him.”
“What time did she get off work?” Jack continued.
“Four thirty, mostly.”
“In the morning.”
“That’s right.”
“And she closed the club?”
Jing chortled. “The Ghosts close the club. They let her out a few minutes before they locked the gates.”
A dangerous time of night, thought Jack. But at least she lived nearby. Two blocks from Doyers Street. The few minutes it’d take for her to get home would be the last moments she’d have had to herself before encountering her ex-husband.
“What else?” Jack asked.
“That’s it. I’m in the kitchen most of the time.”
Jack dismissed the kid to his work, and Billy accompanied him to the back area, where they started slopping the beans.
After he left the Tofu King, Jack headed for the Senior Citizen Center, on a hunch that the old wise woman, Ah Por, would be there. Normally, Ah Por kept company with the groups of elderly fortune-telling women who gathered in Columbus Park, but the freezing weather prohibited that now. More than likely she’d be at the center, finishing off her bowl of congee, served free to senior citizens. Jack remembered her from the times Pa had brought him to visit the old woman, with her red book and cup of sticks, seeking lucky words, or numbers, or good news. This was after Ma died. Jack never forgot. He’d been a young child, and didn’t remember much of his mother.
More recently, Ah Por’s readings provided accurate if oblique clues for Jack, helping in his investigations. He found her in the back of the lunchroom, in a sea of old heads, listening to the Chung Wah Chinese Broadcasting’s radio program that was being played over the PA system.
“Ah Por,” Jack said, just loud enough to catch her ear, to make her glance up at him, a glint of recognition in her old eyes. He didn’t see any of her tools of divination but he knew she also applied “face reading” to everyday items, using them to channel with an eerie clairvoyant’s touch.
“Ah Por,” Jack repeated, handing her the photo of May Lon Fong and the expired driver’s license of Harry Gong. He pressed a folded five-dollar bill into her rheumatic hand, smiled, and bowed his head.
Ah Por ran a thumb over the smiling face of the woman in the photograph, over the karaoke microphone she held. She repeated the moves over the man’s face on the driver’s license. She pocketed the money and closed her eyes.
Jack remembered that she spoke softly, and leaned in closer.
“She is a snake.”
Huh? thought Jack.
“And he is a pig,” she added, her eyes snapping open. Dementia? considered Jack.
“They are incompatible. Better is the Snake with an Ox, or a Rooster.”
Jack realized she was referring to the animals in the Chinese zodiac.
“She is Fire, and he is Water,” Ah Por continued. “Worlds apart.” She paused, and shook her head. “He is still in love with her. But she is full with bitterness.”
Ah Por handed Jack back the photo and license.
“Their union can come to no good end.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, handing her the two posters from the open case files, slipping another five into her hand. She pocketed the money and held the Wanted posters apart, one in each hand. She swept her fingers across each of the faces, slowly rolling her head.
Jack leaned closer.
Lifting up the poster of Eddie Ng, Ah Por said, “Yuh,” meaning rain, followed by, “Lo mok,” Cantonese slang for Negro.
Jack noted Ah Por’s responses, although he continued to puzzle over their meaning.
From the second poster, the magazine photo likeness of Mona, Ah Por said yuh again. Is she confused? wondered Jack. She gave him a faraway look, adding, “Seui,” water.
“Water over water,” she concluded, handing him back the posters.
Jack thanked her again, wondering if it was all mystical mumbo-jumbo meant to torment him, another Chinatown curse.
Ah Por cackled, turned, and walked away, patting her money pocket, her signal to Jack that the session was over. He watched her disappear into the crowd of ancient folks milling about, their voices blending together amidst the sounds of Chinese radio.
The smell of congee had made him think of the Wong Sing Restaurant, where Harry Gong had worked. Jack decided to go along Columbus Park. He passed the string of Chinese funeral parlors that lined the street opposite the playgrounds and ballfields of the park side: the Chao Funeral House, the Wah Fook Parlor, the Sun Wing Parlor, the Wing Ching Parlor. Jack saw the large white tickets prominently posted on the glass doors of the parlor’s entrances; each ticket bore a Chinese ink-brushed name, each black on white ticket representing a deceased person.
There were eight tickets at the Wah Fook. Eight also at the Sun Wing. The Chao had posted six, and the Wing Ching, five. The funeral drivers would work double shifts this week.
Twenty-seven bodies leaving Mulberry Street, heading toward everlasting peace.
January and February were the cruelest months, Jack thought, with the deadly flu season and the subzero cold picking off the elderly and the infirm. At least two dozen deaths a week during these winter months. And they’d be receiving two more bodies quick enough, Jack knew, as soon as the Medical Examiner was done with May Lon Fong and Harry Gong.
Jack cut left to Mosco Street, then left again to Pell, and saw the place he sought a short distance up the street. The Wong Sing Restaurant featured home-style Cantonese dishes, with a side wall of quickie takeout: ningjouh, or haang gaai, “food walking” containers of chopped chicken, duck, or roast pork over rice, topped with a fried egg. Two countermen worked a range top where soup noodles cooked, and plated the various combinations.
There were eight small tables that could be arranged together. No tablecloths. Three waiters loitered around a shelf station filled with glasses and pots of tea. It was early enough for Jack to be their first customer, but this was a late breakfast for him. He ordered pei don jook, thousand-year-egg congee, with a yow jow gwai, fried cruller, that made for a hot, slurpy, and filling meal.
One of the waiters brought him a steaming glass of brown tea.
Jack drafted notes for the reports that he knew Captain Marino would ask for, then he observed the waiters between spoonfuls of jook. He thought about Harry Gong and his days as a waiter here.
Typically, Chinatown waiters worked a ten- to twelve-hour day, five, sometimes six days a week. The bulk of their take-home pay consisted of tips, which everyone underreported. The Wong Sing was a small
restaurant, and no one here was making enormous tips like the waiters in the large banquet-style restaurants. The full-time waiters could take off an hour or two between the lunch and dinner shifts, between 3:30 and 5:30 PM. Those who lived close enough could do their errands, spend time with their families, or make a quick run to OTB. The part-time waiters covered the full shift and helped the kitchen staff prepare vegetables during the dead hours.
The Wong Sing waiters laughed among themselves at an inside joke, and Jack understood their camaraderie. They’d spend more time here with their coworkers, their “brothers,” than they did with their loved ones. Family life had to suffer.
Jack imagined Harry Gong going home to an unhappy wife after twelve hours of waiting tables. He also imagined an exasperated May Lon, after an exhausting day caring for two children, facing a dead-tired lo gung, husband, who was deaf to her frustrations.
Jack knew that the demands of work and of parenting often broke families apart. None of the negative kharma he felt reflected well on relationships, fortifying Jack’s cynicism.
Collecting his notes, Jack remembered that he needed to see Chinese newspaper editor Vincent Chin, and finished his congee.
He left an extra dollar tip on the way out.
The United National was located on White Street, hidden behind the Tombs, a city detention facility, and the rundown building of the Men’s Mission. Vincent Chin managed the operation from its renovated storefront inside a converted warehouse building.
The newspaper had a staff of twenty: pressmen, reporters, and editors. They used freelance photographers and downloaded free graphics. The copy was typeset by layout men who inserted the tiny metal Chinese characters into the press forms by hand.
The United National had been Pa’s favorite, his hometown newspaper. Its editor had assisted Jack on previous cases in Chinatown by divulging hearsay details, loose street talk, and calls from anonymous tipsters: details that were inadmissible in court, unverifiable, and unprintable in the paper.
Vincent was sipping from a steamy take-out cup of nai cha tea when Jack walked into his little office. Jack proceeded to provide Vincent with the particulars of the May Lon Fong and Harry Gong murder-suicide case, sticking to the facts, leaving out the speculation.
Jack was happy to lay out the straight scoop for Vincent, knowing he would write the true story, and that the other Chinese dailies would have to follow suit if they wanted timely coverage. When Jack finished, he said, “But you know the deal. Don’t print it until the department okays it. You could probably add it late to tomorrow’s issue.”
Vincent nodded in agreement and said, “Call me,” smiling his Chinese Chesire-cat smile as Jack left his office.
Jack picked up his crime scene snapshots from Ah Fook’s and brought them back to the station house. He spread them across the desk and they brought back the scene. Dead hands together, in lifeless passage, the expressions on the faces of the deceased recalling the enormity of the killings, the color snapshots freezing the agony of their tragedy.
Jack stayed away from the emotional edge of it, setting out only the facts in his paperwork. He felt like a drink, but before he realized it, it was mid-afternoon. He left the paperwork on the captain’s desk, a neat overview awaiting only the ME and CSU reports. Included in the file were his quickie snapshots.
He came back to the squad room, where his attention wandered to the array of items he’d shown to Ah Por, still puzzling over the clues she’d given him.
Rain?
Water over water?
Lo mok?
They were hidden explanations, cloaked in yellow witchcraft and Taoist mysticism.
Mona. He remembered her voice, her words spoken in flight, accusing limo driver Johnny Wong of murdering Uncle Four. Mona. The fat man’s mistress, now a shadow in the wind.
Rain? Water Over Water?
Was Eddie Ng a lo mok, a Negro?
None of it made sense now but Jack’s experience was that all of it would tie in later, somehow.
He was about to step away from his desk when the old man entered the squad room. One of the uniforms pointed Mr. Fong, May Lon’s father, in Jack’s direction. Surprised to see him, Jack offered him a chair. The victim’s father sat and took a deep sighing breath.
“The families know now,” he explained, staring down at the worn linoleum floor. “I’ve come from the Wah Fook,” he said, shaking his head in quiet disbelief. “I made all the arrangements.”
“It’s a terrible thing, ah bok,” Jack said solemnly.
Old Fong glanced up at Jack, then again bowed his head toward the floor. Jack figured Fong had remembered things he’d wanted to say earlier, but he’d deferred to the presence of the shooter’s father, lo Gong; things he’d felt the Chinese detective would understand.
“She is … was a good daughter,” Fong said, “and a hard worker. Before she got married, she always had a job. Always made money, and bought things for the family.”
Jack nodded sympathetically. “She honored her parents.”
“Very much so.” Fong’s gaze bore through the floor. “And she was independent. Traveled all over.” He wrung his hands. “Then she got married.” His voice was tinged with regret.
Jack had heard the flipside already, a cynical scenario that again didn’t bode well for his own thoughts about marriage and family in this screwed-up modern age.
“May Lon didn’t like depending on her husband for money. She wasn’t used to the demands of young children, or being cooped up indoors all day. She’d felt isolated. Her husband was away at work most of the time. Her sadness grew deeper and darker. The pressure got to her. The clinic’s brochures explained it, but we never did find the right Chinese words for postpartum depression.”
Fong rubbed his temples, hunched his shoulders. “We never reported her beng, her illness. Everyone was afraid they would take away the children,” he said, drawing another deep breath. “Instead, she moved out. When she started working again, she seemed happy. She seemed happy when she visited the children.”
The karaoke job had been her salvation, but had brought only humiliation and anger to her husband. Ah Por had read their faces correctly: they were incompatible, like Fire and Water. Mix them together and you got tragedy.
“Husband said the sai louh, the little ones, needed their mother. We offered to watch the children full time,” Fong continued, “but husband was against it. Seniors, lo yun ga, should enjoy their golden years, he argued, not hassle with small children. What could we say to that?”
Jack could see the man’s eyes start to glisten, his grief rising to the surface, but the tears never flowed. He’d hide them inside until he got to family time, until after the funeral, after the burial. Then and thereafter, his tears would be eternal.
Fong rose from the chair and stared into the last of the afternoon light outside the squad-room window. His gaze finally came back to Jack, and with a nod of his head and a small wave of his hand, he said, “Thank you for your help. Your father was a good man, and raised a good son,” and turned away.
Jack watched him go down the stairs and out of the station house.
It was already dark when one of the uniforms from the evening shift dropped off the Medical Examiner’s report. Jack reviewed it along with the Crime Scene Unit’s.
The comparative reports confirmed the scenario Jack had envisioned: May Lon had arrived home, was surprised by Harry, was made to sit at the edge of the bed, and was shot shortly after. The Medical Examiner indicated COD, cause of death, as a GSW, a gunshot wound, through the frontal bone of the cranium, exiting via the back of the skull. CSU had found the twisted little slug behind the bed.
The kill shot was angled downward, indicating Harry must have been standing over her. Traces of gunshot residue, GSR, were found on her palm and on her face as well, which meant Harry was less than two feet away when he fired.
Was he talking to her? Pleading?
The wound in her right hand was a neat little r
ound hole in her palm that extended through it, as if she’d thrown up the hand to ward off the bullet.
Did he show her the poem? Did he read it to her?
So the .22-caliber hi-vel slug had torn through her hand before blasting into her forehead and skull, then crashed around, ripping up cerebrum and cerebellum before exiting the middle back her head, slamming her into the hereafter.
The amount of blood that seeped into the comforter indicated she’d bled out over a short time, but the high-velocity gunshot wound to the head had probably killed her instantly. The ME listed approximate time of death—expiration—as 4:30 to 4:40 AM.
The broken clock radio on the linoleum floor, stopped at 4:44 AM. The shooter hadn’t waited long. The desperate, despondent note poem in his pocket. Not long before he ate the gun.
According to CSU, the shooter had lowered his mouth over the gun barrel, his head bowed as if in prayer, when he pulled the trigger. The bullet bored through the top of his mouth, tumbled, and blew his brains out of the top left side of his head. He had GSR on his right hand, the gun hand. Also, some GSR stippling on his face and mouth area. Consistent with the murder-suicide scenario.
They’d likely match Harry’s fingerprints to the gun and the shell casings.
The ME listed the manner of death as DOMESTIC DISPUTE: estranged husband shoots ex-wife, then self, in double tragedy. Two children left behind.
Jack began to feel the weight of the early morning: fourteen hours on the job, the emotional drag of the case.
He really needed a drink.
He could see the Chinatown darkness outside the captain’s windows as he placed the reports on the desk in Marino’s empty office. The day shift had already given way to the night shift when Jack left the station house.
In his old neighborhood, he thought of all the different places he could go for Chinese fast food, but the familiar places now felt empty, unwelcoming, and the lonely winter night finally drove him back to Brooklyn, leaving him staring into a Sunset Park back street of all-night Chinese takeout joints.
Waiting for Buddha
Johnny Wong reached over to a tray in the corner and angled the antenna of the little transistor radio, keeping the Chinese music low-key, a Shirley Kwan Hong Kong pop ballad. He swiveled the antenna until the static cleared, then leaned back on his bunk.
