Telegraph Hill

by John F. Nardizzi

  He squatted on the hillside path for a few more minutes. Watched the ground far below, and monitored any approach from the top of the hill. Coit Tower, smooth and creamy-gray, pronged the sky above him. Music wafted from cars parked on top of the hill, the ominous storm of Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir.’ Every now and then, a hiker scrambled over the hillside. Some wore designer boots and sipped the remains of a North Beach coffee, walking slowly, rubbing their calf muscles. Others, prepared and determined, maneuvered skillfully over the rocky hill.

  Ray sat down on a rock wall. He was done with Lucas. He should stop all work now, and head back to Logan. There was no paying client.

  But he couldn’t do that. Not with the way things were. He had unearthed a young woman from her sanctuary—inadequate though it was—and now he owed her. He thought of Diana and his old apartment; they had lived at the base this hill, just a few hundred feet down.

  Ray looked out at the bay, the sky shot through with orange-pink clouds. Then he dialed Antonio’s home. Tania picked up.

  “How did it go?”

  “Pretty well. I think Lucas made some type of indirect admission—he tried to kill me. Or someone did.”

  He heard a sharp intake of breath. “Are you OK?”

  He relayed the details of the meeting. “Lucas turned out to be nervous and erratic. I think pressure is building on him; he’s botched things pretty badly, first in Marin, and again today. Mistakes bring unwanted interest. He’s into things that he is not accustomed to, street-level stuff.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He admitted to representing some low-level triad guy years ago. Not much more. He brought poorly disguised friends to the meeting, two Asian goons. And Lucas’s body language told me everything I suspected.” Ray glanced around but no one was watching him.

  “What do we do now?”

  “I need you to stay out of sight. Just relax with Antonio, OK? I’ll be traveling for a few days.”

  “Where are you going?” Tania asked.

  “It’s time to bring the war home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Pondering it. I’ll call later.”

  They said goodbye. He walked to the top of the hill, looking warily. He hailed a cab. The driver raced down Telegraph Hill until he hit Van Ness, timing it perfectly so that the lights eased to green and the cab glided toward Market Street. Ray appreciated the finesse.

  He knew that they had no chance to outrun their problem. They were massively outgunned, and there were any number of young bloods who would try to make a mark by assassinating Tania. And probably him too.

  He called Dominique and briefed her on the meeting. “The triad boss mentioned in that report,” he said, “time to pay a little visit.”

  “What is that going to do?”

  “I’m not sure. But everyone hates trash dumped on their lawn. I’m just moving trash to where it gets some attention.”

  A long pause. “You be careful. Need any help?”

  “I can get her address from my databases. She may have taken steps not to be found.”

  “The boss is a she?”

  “Yes. Victoria Chang. She’s Tania’s stepmother.”

  Dominique was quiet. Ray looked around again. He wanted to keep moving. “I gotta go. Thanks for everything.”

  “Thank me in person,” she said.

  “I’ll call you.”

  Chapter 30

  The 747 eased its bulk onto the tarmac in East Boston, following the blue lights to the terminal. After the rustle of weary passengers, Ray exited the plane and headed to the rental car section. He wore a cream colored suit over a burgundy silk shirt with a black and silver tie. He wanted a blend of colors that suggested a creative talent, a radical bravado—it went a good distance with gangsters. And bravado was possibly all he really had.

  All day long, his frustration had grown. He was uncertain what he could do for Tania. Lucas had reamed him; he should have picked up something earlier, some subtle tick in his demeanor. Maybe he had been too intent on the other aspects of the trip, a return to the city that was once home to all loved. Distracted by the hunt for Bobby Cherry. He had let his customary thoroughness slide.

  The Black Fist would never stop hunting Tania, he realized. In the modern world, people could be found easily, as she had been. Privacy was a quaint concept, something smashed open as easily as dashing an egg on concrete. Hiding out like a renegade would only get her killed. Another tactic was needed.

  It was past 9:00 PM when Ray arrived in Harvard Square. He drove on Brattle Street where tony shops gave way to grand homes along brick sidewalks. He stopped in front of 101 Brattle Street, a Second Empire Victorian mansion surrounded by an eight foot tall brick wall. The house had been built for Judge James Wagner in 1826. Stately oak and elm shrouded the front yard. A tower rose from the Mansard roof, which combined with the arched dormers to give the house an appearance of edgy watchfulness.

  The sense of watchfulness was not misleading. The property bristled with modern security features, noticeable to only a trained eye. Security cameras rotated silently every twenty feet; motion detectors and parabolic sound detectors had been installed, all under the control of round-the-clock security personnel located in a refurbished carriage house behind the main house. Three armed guards patrolled the perimeter of the walls; two others kept watch in the house.

  In June 1957, the Wagner mansion had been purchased by C. Dalton Scott, a respected Boston lawyer. A series of transactions involving real estate trusts obscured the name of the true owner, Paul F. Chang. He moved into the home that summer. Chang modernized the house, making it secure, as if he were a Ming emperor facing his enemies across a barren plain. Which he was, in a sense: he had been installed as the head of the northeast crime syndicate. Years later, in 1978, the house passed into the hands of his hand-picked successor, his only daughter, Victoria Chang.

  Victoria Chang was educated in business and the law, taking degrees at the highest academies in Beijing. She was a striking young woman, inheritor of her mother’s luxuriant black hair and her father’s angular Mandarin features. But hers was a frosty beauty, and few knew her well. In a culture where females had been traditionally praised for their docility, she stepped forward as a paragon of a new breed. Her father noted her keen talents and favorably compared them to the less stellar ones exhibited by his sons. He believed that cultivating an individual’s unique talents—regardless of gender—was a sacred duty, and he quickly elevated Victoria to high positions within the syndicate. She married a longtime business associate of the Chang family, a marriage that cemented centuries-old business dealings between the families. Her husband later died unexpectedly, and she never remarried. At age 37, she was dispatched to Boston, where she oversaw the operations of the Black Fist Triad.

  Victoria quickly gained a formidable reputation. In 1978, various Chinatown gangs controlled carefully drawn sections of the city, where they demanded payments from merchants operating within the territory. When City Hall began to implement a massive redevelopment scheme for downtown Boston, gangs near Kneeland Street, one of the main areas slated for redevelopment, grew concerned about their soon-to-be shrunken revenue base. One of those gangs, Triple Dragon, was involved in a turf war with Red Horse, a Chinatown gang never expanded beyond heroin trafficking. Triple Dragon was rudderless after a number of its top leaders were imprisoned. In an attempt to salvage its declining fortunes, the tong was pressing for new opportunities. Its members often secretly traded information with other gangs, and these side deals created conflicting loyalties.

  On September 21, 1978, local bosses of Triple Dragon and Red Horse met at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on Tremont Street. Over courses of dim sum, they discussed the various problems facing the gangs. But not everyone was enjoying the lunch. A brawl broke out. Gangsters wielding machetes warred with each other until the marble floors were slick with blood. Eight gangsters were killed, six of them Triple Dragon soldiers.r />
  Revenge killings followed, and a full-out war was imminent. There were shootings during daylight hours in local markets, men opening fire near crowded outdoor markets. Bystanders were hit or, in some cases, killed. The growing number of spectacular shootings began to attract the attention of law enforcement.

  The ruling council of the major triads met and ordered the cantankerous bosses to put aside their quarrels. Outside interference was the great evil that all the triads guarded against. Also, it gave racist Boston cops an excuse to beat and rob Chinese gangsters under the guise of enforcing the law. The honored code of underground warfare was being flagrantly violated.

  But the meetings broke down, and Triple Dragon and Red Horse continued their street war. Within a few days, the ruling counsel agreed to sever the offending extremities.

  Late at night on October 6, 1978, at the direction of Victoria Chang, a group of Black Fist soldiers fanned out into Chinatown.

  The leader of the Triple Dragon, the stylish Ang Lee, was hunched with his crew, playing cards in a sweaty basement behind the Shanghai Restaurant on Tyler Street. He was down $6,000.00. He jabbed at his Kung Pao shrimp and swore over his relentless bad luck.

  His luck soon worsened. In the dark morning hours, he stepped out of a rear door to the restaurant for a cigarette. He was met by three triad members. One of the men stepped forward and crushed his skull with a pipe. The men shoved his body into the back of a delivery truck and he was never seen again. It was widely speculated among the bosses that Lee had become well-dressed fish chum.

  One day later, the Red Horse boss, Paul “Ghost” Zheng, stumbled into his office. His face was minus his nose; a sign around his neck read “No sniffing,” a warning to dogs seeking to piss on new turf. His crew growled about revenge. The following week, as Zheng’s wife left a local market, she was struck by a car and killed. The matter was determined to be an accident, although bystanders whispered that the driver appeared to be aiming for someone in the narrow quarters. A few days later, Zheng’s brother, a restaurant owner, was found garroted in the basement. The family reported the case as a robbery, although no money had been taken.

  And so it went, a numbing campaign of violence, directed at selected family members of the warring bosses. The nerveless efficiency of the campaign bled all defiance from the gangs. In less than a month, the bosses agreed to recognize the old Kneeland Street boundary as fully restored. Bereft of leadership, the remnants of Triple Dragon and Red Horse were absorbed by the Black Fist Triad. The media glare was passing to newer scandals and the gangs were left to prey on their own kind amid the teeming streets of Chinatown.

  The campaign marked the beginning of the Black Fist’s decades-long dominance of the Northeast vice trade. With each passing year, the Chang family coiled deeper and deeper into the Boston underworld, moving into counterfeit goods, prostitution and drug trafficking. By the late 1990’s, cash was laundered through a variety of legitimate businesses: massage parlors, salons, contractors, small restaurants that handled mostly cash transactions. The melding of drug money with legal business revenue proved impossible for law enforcement to track in any meaningful way.

  As the businesses prospered—many now wholly legitimate—Victoria Chang continued to oversee triad operations from her mansion in Cambridge. Her youthful beauty had gracefully subsided, and she looked the part she played: hard, aloof, able to tap into old-world connections with the refined touch of a bygone era. She remained the unchallenged head of a multimillion dollar black world.

  Ray looked at the house and patted the snub-nosed .357 revolver under his belt. He quickly thought better of it, and placed it under the seat. The metallic weight of the gun did little to reinforce his confidence: the people here would be sufficiently armed to outshoot him, that he was certain. Tonight’s maneuver was all finesse.

  He drove his Cadillac to the black iron gate barring entry to 101 Brattle Street. A black intercom, almost unnoticeable, was set among the small pines lining the driveway. Ray reached out and rang.

  A metallic voice: “Who is calling please?”

  “Ray Infantino. I’m here to see Victoria Chang.”

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “Please tell her I am here on short notice to discuss Tania Kong.”

  “Ms. Chang does not see anyone without an appointment.”

  “I am certain that she will want to discuss the name Tania Kong. Please tell her that I recently concluded my meeting with Mr. Michaels.”

  Silence and the intercom went dead. A few minutes later, it came back on. “Please wait by the gate, sir.”

  Ray sat with the engine idling, and waited in the darkness. Cars rolled by the entrance way, wheels drumming a rhythmic bump as they crossed the brick crosswalks. He listed to the radio and rehearsed the introduction he had prepared. Then he caught himself—who the hell knew what would work once he was in the house? He needed to stay flexible.

  He smelled an earthy tang in the air, and savored the scent.

  They let him stew for over an hour before the intercom crackled to life. “Mr. Infantino, please come in.”

  The gate slid aside and Ray drove inside. He headed up a long, semicircular driveway paved with red brick. He passed by dense yews, forsythia, juniper and hemlock.

  The main house was lit here and there with ground lights. Ray pulled up to an iron fence and stepped outside the car. On the porch, he could see a pair of bronze doors.

  A well-dressed, unsmiling Asian man appearing to be in his fifties stepped outside. Two young Asian men followed; they were carrying machine guns. “Stop here!” one of them said sharply. The men patted Ray down methodically, fingering his pockets and jacket. He raised his chin and let them poke. Satisfied, they stepped back. Ray walked behind the older man, and entered the front hall.

  The house was lavishly decorated. The interior doors were heavy oak, fitted with dark brass handles. The deep red walls were lit by artfully arranged lanterns. Antique wooden chairs inlaid with mother of pearl, silk tapestries. From the immediate room to the left—Ray thought it looked like a drawing room or library—came the scent of leather and old paper.

  “Please have a seat,” the man said. “Ms. Chang will meet with you in a moment.” Then he exited.

  Ray sat down on a mahogany colored sofa. A red and gold Chinese opera mask stared back. For a second, he wondered if something had moved behind the hollow eyes. Cherrywood bookshelves lined with hardcover books, mostly Asian and Spanish art.

  A door clicked opened. An Asian woman walked into the room. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon. Her porcelain skin, although no longer the flawless cream of youth, gave her a look of indeterminate age. She was dressed in a dark colored suit with white pinstripes. The suit went well with her eyes, which were reptilian and unforgiving. Ray looked hard at those eyes, so luminously out of symmetry with the rest of her preserved elegance. There was nothing withheld in Victoria’s bearing, no Zen Buddha bullshit; she wielded considerable authority, wielded it openly. Nothing bombastic or insistent, but Ray could sense that she had long ago decided that it fit her style to show that power was at her command. Ray felt an odd jolt of satisfaction. Here was someone whose appearance matched her reputation.

  “Mr. Infantino.” She did not offer a hand.

  “Ms. Chang.”

  “Would you like some tea?” she asked with a half-dead smile that quickly slipped off her face.

  “Yes, thank you.” Within moments, an elderly Chinese man entered the room, bearing a teapot on a tray with two cups. He placed the tray on a dark wooden table next to Victoria, and then departed.

  “I am taken aback by your manner of approach today.” Victoria’s voice was controlled and melodious.

  “How so?”

  “I am not accustomed to visitors just dropping by my home without prior contact. I expect you have an urgent need, however, and I will try to accommodate you. Please, sit here,” she said, pointing to a plush chair. Ms. Chang glided toward her
chair and sat down, her face highlighted in muted crimson by a Japanese lamp shade. She poured herself a cup of tea.

  “I am here to tell you I have located your stepdaughter, Tania Kong, as directed by Lucas Michaels. She updated me on her recent escapades with the triad.”

  Victoria shook her head. “Tania and I do not speak,” she said. Her hands were crossed on her lap.

  “Did Lucas tell you he retained me?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Please explain your purpose here today.”

  “Lucas hired me to find a young woman for someone he described as a client. That woman is Tania. After I found her, I suddenly found myself the target of an unhealthy bit of attention. Several men tried to kill her. They were sent by my own client—and your lawyer—Lucas Michaels. I know Lucas represented members of your group many years ago.”

  Victoria blinked several times before lapsing back into a corporate coolness.

  “I do not think Lucas made the decision to involve those men,” Ray continued. “I think that certain forces in his world simply required that a poorly executed plan at the Senator Hotel be rectified. But his cleanup attempts have failed. Several times. Your lawyer is slipping in his old age. Maybe it’s the warm weather. Maybe they didn’t teach executions in law school back in the fifties.”

  Victoria sipped her tea. “And what does this have to do with me?”

  “Beside the fact that the girl is your daughter—if not a daughter by blood? A well-connected WASP lawyer is a great asset, I would think, for someone in your position. A lawyer like that has a pleasing scent. But Lucas overreached. Despite his reputation—or because of it—he has made some powerful enemies. He has a reputation as a showboat. Believe me, there are lawyers in the AGs office in Massachusetts who would love to skewer Lucas. I think he’s now close to cooked. Maybe even charred a bit.”