Текст книги "Death Money "

Автор книги: Henry Chang

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Mak the Knife

THE SNOWFLAKES GOT thick and heavy, and Jack left a trail of dark footprints in the thin layer of white that covered the way back to Pell Street.

Number 8 Pell, Mak Mon Gaw’s address, was an old four-story, redbrick building that dominated the north corner of Pell and Bowery. The storefronts along Pell included a Chinatown gift shop, a China travel agency, and a Buddhist temple, but on the Bowery side the building was anchored by Bamboo Garden restaurant, a Chinese grocery store, and a small bakery.

In big block letters, the word ORIENTAL was still visible, high up on the faded green façade that overlooked the boulevard.

Jack noticed there were two sets of fire escapes on the Pell Street side, but just one set above the Bowery side, which led him to believe the main exit for the building’s tenants was number 8.

He went through the unlocked street door, a bad habit from an earlier time when Chinatown people didn’t bother to lock their front doors, when crime was almost nonexistent.

Times had changed.

Jack looked at the mailboxes. Unlike some of the older Chinatown tenements where the tenants all had their own scattering of mismatched metal boxes screwed into the wall, number 8 Pell had an old but standard split panel of metal mailboxes, recessed into the wall. The mail carrier keyed open the top panel, folded it down, and inserted the mail. Then he relocked it.

Each individual mailbox was vented so the tenants could see if they’d had mail delivered. There were three vertical rows of six mailboxes each, meaning there were eighteen apartments in the building.

These mailboxes meant that the building had been renovated over the decades and now had more new families than the old flow of transient single men. A few of the tenants’ names had been neatly typed and inserted into the little slot at the top of each mailbox. Newer tenants, figured Jack. Some of the tags had been whited-out, with the new tenant’s name in black marker staking a claim over it. A newcomer tagging over another immigrant’s story.

Most of the mailbox name tags were old, meaning the tenants had lived here a long time, over generations of the same family, the apartment passed down. The name Jack was looking for, Mak Mon Gaw, was one of the old ones. It was just a crude lettering, MAK/GAW, that barely fit into the name slot.

MAK/GAW handwritten on yellowed paper, not touched in twenty years.

There wasn’t any mail in his box.

Jack looked down at the baseboards, the floor, any tiles that might seem loose. He scanned the areas around both door frames, ran his fingers along the edges. He didn’t find the spare key that top-floor tenants sometimes secreted downstairs just in case they got locked out. Men, whipped at having to call lo por, and having their wifeys come down four flights to chide them before letting them back into the building.

It didn’t matter to Jack.

Chinatown was smaller then, he remembered, and he and his teenage pals had explored all the Chinatown rooftops, traveling across the heights the way immigrants did in the previous century. Across the rooftops. The rooftops ran evenly on both sides of the street until halfway down the block, near Doyer, where they butted up against taller buildings on the Bloody Angle. Still, someone could run across the rooftops on Pell and descend, emerging on Bayard or Bowery or Doyers or Mott. It was how the Hip Chings had defended their turf so well through the decades.

But only the people who had to went up and down.

Jack knew the rooftops here and how the apartments were situated. Mostly straight railroad flats and a mix of L-shaped, one-bedroom setups. People who really had money combined two apartments into one and occupied the entire floor.

Rent control ruled, but fong day, or key money, a codicil, gave landlords a cash trump card.

Along the way, Chinatown learned to play by its own insular set of rules.

THE STREET WAS a fresh layer of white. See gay drivers would keep their cars indoors during off-hours, saving themselves the trouble of scraping off eight inches of snow and ice before the next job, especially if they were working a wedding or driving out to a freezing Chinese burial at one of the cemeteries in Brooklyn or Queens.

There were only two indoor commercial parking garages in Chinatown. One was Municipal Parking, which was five blocks away on Pearl Street. A lot of local folks parked there. The other was more expensive, the Rickshaw Garage, which was just around the corner, a block and a half from Pell.

Jack decided to try Rickshaw first. Keep the car close to home. Always good to go, ready to roll.

AT RICKSHAW, JACK badged the garage manager, telling him a lie about investigating a stolen-car ring and requesting a list of long-term customers. He didn’t want his real inquiries leaking out in case an attendant had a cozy relationship with a driver.

The manager called up the annual accounts listing on the computer screen and showed Jack where to scroll the file. Jack quickly found the plate numbers he was hoping to find, numbers belonging to Mak Mon Gaw’s Lincoln Town Car.

“Can you check the key log and tell me which of these vehicles is presently in the garage?” Jack asked.

“Most of our long-term customers use their cars to get to work,” the manager offered. “Early birds, out at seven in the morning, back by seven at night.” He took a quick key inventory, checked off the garaged cars for Jack.

The Town Car was still out.

“Seven to seven, huh?” Jack said. “I’ll be back later.”

HE CONSIDERED RETURNING to the Fifth Precinct but didn’t want anyone reporting his ongoing investigation back to Internal Affairs. He also realized he hadn’t eaten since before getting whacked across the head the night before and decided to buy takeout before dropping by the Tofu King.

Billy was busy managing the afternoon tofu rush, but offered Jack the use of his quiet little office at the back of the shop, where he could enjoy his gnow nom faahn in peace while trying to figure things out.

Jack wolfed down pieces of savory brisket and wondered about Bossy’s driver. Sure, it would have been easy to slip the lobby door lock of number 8 Pell, go up to 3A and cop-rap on the apartment door. But banging on doors didn’t always work in Chinatown, not if people were illegal immigrants or didn’t respect the police, especially yellow police. He didn’t want his person of interest to get nervous, maybe disappear, before he could question him.

The man had worked for Bossy Gee for years. Maybe the family trusted him. Dependable, steady. Maybe he had some insight into the home invasion, about Bossy’s intentions, or about the Gee family indiscretions.

Based on the locations of his traffic violations, Mak Gaw was probably familiar with the Bronx, especially the South Bronx during an overnight illegal U-turn halfway between Booty’s and the possible crime scene at the riverside pocket park in Highbridge. He knows the area after dark.

Jack reviewed the copy of Gaw’s license. At five foot eleven inches tall, he fit part of the medical examiner’s profile of the knife-wielding perp.

Jack finished off the brisket with the rice, measuring the distance from person of interest to suspect. He considered the dark angles of Gaw’s surname.

Gaw sounded the same as gow, or gao, or gau, depending on the dialect and intent of reference. Based on the tone and accent, gaw meant “enough already,” “to rescue,” “a man’s penis” (luk gow), “to teach,” “a dog,” and “old style.”

The phonetics danced in Jack’s mind, teaching a dog in the old style. A lesson in payback?

The other part of his name, Mak, as in lo mok, was the Cantonese equivalent of “nigger.”

Having lived as a single man in Chinatown, Jack had found it convenient to buy takeout food regularly. Most single men didn’t cook and got by on a wide variety of Chinese takeout.

Sooner or later, Gaw will have to come out for food. If he parked during the afternoon, he’d surface around evening. If Gaw returned to the garage late, it’d probably be better to sit on number 8 and wait, Jack figured.

He passed Billy loading buckets of tofu and decided to check Rickshaw Garage again.

“YOU ONLY LEFT a couple of hours ago,” the manager said. He seemed annoyed as he checked the key log again. “It’s still early. Most of the long-term haven’t come back yet.”

Jack could see that Gaw’s Town Car was still out. “I’ll be back,” he repeated.

Outside, the snow had stopped falling, and the afternoon looked like evening. It occurred to him that if for some reason Gaw had parked the car elsewhere, he could very well be in the apartment already.

He left the garage through the Elizabeth Alley exit and went toward the Fifth Precinct down the street. He walked halfway down the block before he saw the undercover Impala he was looking for, the one he’d driven to Fort Lee the day before.

THE SERGEANT AT the duty desk looked like he was happy to be out of the cold. He said, “That old Chevy’s headed for the mechanic’s. Something hinky with the transmission, won’t go over twenty. Can’t catch anyone going twenty.” He paused. “And the heater don’t work.”

“That’s okay, Sarge,” Jack said. “I’m not chasing anyone. And I’m not going far.” Just four blocks and parked on a stakeout.

The sergeant raised his eyebrows, frowned, and blinked before tossing Jack the Impala’s keys. “Knock yerself out, Detective,” he said.

“Thanks, Sarge,” Jack said fraternally, stepping his way out of the Fifth.

JACK FIRED UP the Impala, let it idle a few minutes before he geared it. The Chevy sputtered away from the curb, and he made a right on Canal, another onto Bowery. Two blocks. He took a slow right onto Pell, saw the street was sparsely trafficked, saw a few customers in Half-Ass as he rolled by. He continued past Doyers, pulled the junker halfway onto the sidewalk down from Macao Bar, and killed the engine.

He adjusted the rearview and the driver’s-side mirrors to frame the street, number 8, and Half-Ass. Knowing it could turn out to be a long night’s stakeout, he took a few shaolin breaths and leaned back. He watched the street through the side view.

He knew it would be wise to proceed with caution, remembering getting slugged in the head and knowing that Singarette had been killed by a single knife thrust.

The perp’s got some fighting skills. His gun hand drifted instinctively to the Colt, brushed its solid metal bulk. But I also got .38-caliber kung fu.

The frigid temperatures had kept many people off the streets. Most of the people who came through Pell were taking a shortcut across to Mott, trying to get home. Some were stragglers who drifted to Macao Bar for drinks or to Half-Ass for diner fast foods.

He finished off the cooled container of jai fear and focused on the street. The other businesses were still open despite how deserted the street looked. Shifting to the rearview mirror, he imagined the faces of all the people who’d helped bring his case back to Chinatown: Sing’s co-workers; the tres amigos, Luis, Ruben, and Miguel; Huong the Vietnamese lady in red; lowlifes like Doggie Boy; with inadvertent clues from Bossy Gee himself and from his son Francis “Franky Noodles.” And without Billy Bow’s timely help, Vincent Chin’s research, and even Ah Por’s arcane clues, he’d be at a loss on how to proceed.

He left the car to check for lights on in the top windows of number 8. Two of the windows were lit by fluorescent rings on the ceiling. He couldn’t be sure which was apartment 3A and went back to the Impala.

Two hours had passed before he knew it. Only four people went into number 8 Pell: a grandmother with a grade-school child, a young woman with an infant. No one went in or out of the travel agency or the gift shops.

Flight to Fight

ANOTHER UNEVENTFUL HALF hour went by.

In the rearview, a man turned the corner from Bowery onto Pell, crossed over to Half-Ass, and went inside. Jack rolled down the driver’s-side window to get a better look.

The man came back out.

Tall enough, thought Jack, preparing to exit the Impala. In the mirror he could see the man pull out a pack of cigarettes, shake one out. He lit it and took a deep drag, held it until he hissed out a slow stream of smoke and steam that hung in the frozen air. Apparently waiting for his takeout, he glanced up at the top floors of number 8.

Jack turned and watched him through the rear window as he took another pull off the cigarette. The realization hit Jack like a slap in the face, He’d lit the cigarette with a lighter in his left hand. The mirrors had thrown Jack off. The man now held the cigarette in his left hand. And he now fits the medical examiner’s profile of the killer.

Jack slid out of the Chevy, quietly closing the driver’s door. He walked slowly toward Half-Ass thinking, Brace him quick, watch his hands, and keep at arm’s reach.

The man looked back into Half-Ass like he was checking on his takeout. Jack started crossing over and saw that the man quickly took notice of him. A look of recognition? As Jack got closer, the man started to back away toward Half-Ass, toward the building hallway where Jack had gotten slugged. He resembled the driver’s license photo of Mak Mon Gaw.

Jack didn’t want him running into the gambling basement and immediately flapped open his jacket, flashing his badge.

“Hey dailo!” Jack called. “What’s the rush, brother?” The man didn’t answer, continued to back into the building entrance.

Jack reached for the man’s shoulder only to have his hand deftly brushed aside, the man oddly smiling as he turned and dashed into the building. To Jack’s surprise, he didn’t head to the courtyard for the gambling basement but instead sprinted up the first flight of stairs leading to the upper floors. Jack sprinted after him, almost one flight behind. He braced himself with both hands as he dashed through the narrow landing, toward the next flight of uneven wood steps.

Two huffing flights up the stairway, Jack could see the man’s heels, their footsteps thundering up the rickety stairs. His heart hammering as he continued the chase up.

He can escape to Doyers or Bowery, using the roof stairs or fire escapes going down.

The man made it to the roof door, charged through it with a grunt. The door swung back, slamming. Jack paused when he got to it, took quick warrior breaths, and drew the Colt.

He lowered his shoulder at the door, thinking, He couldn’t have gotten more than a few yards out.

He barged onto the roof in a combat stance, sweeping a 360-degree arc with the Colt, wary of anything behind him.

The roof door slammed shut again, blocking out the dim light that came from the stairwell.

There was nothing but the darkness.

Two stories above the streetlamps. A cloudless sky, the only light from the full moon above. In the distance, condo lights from high-up picture windows of Confucius Towers, winking down at the Chinatown rooftops.

It was dead quiet except for the blood beating in his ears. Doyers to his right. Bowery to his left. He has to be around here somewhere. In his crouching advance, Jack scanned the inky roofscape as his eyes adjusted to the dark. A tangle of TV antennas, black, blocky skylights and stairwell sheds, rows of restaurant exhaust ducts, boiler-room chimneys, and scattered piles of construction debris everywhere.

Every step he took was black pitch beneath broken sheets of ice and snow. Everything looked like menacing shadows. There were too many places to hide, to duck behind. Chinatown rooftops were a good place to ambush a vic. Dark, isolated, quiet. No civilians to witness the crime.

He hadn’t called it in, wasn’t expecting backup cops. But he knew he didn’t want to end his career on a frozen Chinatown rooftop.

Ahead of him was the front roof edge, forty feet above Pell. He could see faint illumination from the streetlamps below.

Low walls that separated the rooftops ran on either side of him.

He took a few stealthy steps forward, changed his position, did another 360 sweep with the gun. Look for the fire-escape landings.

He heard a thud to his left, like something got knocked over. He found his balance and leaned in that direction. Footsteps would have given more, he thought. But if someone tossed something as a decoy, a misdirection …

He stepped to his left, glanced again over his shoulder as he moved forward. He caught a glimpse of something metallic in the moonlight and instinctively threw up a bow arm block. He felt the sting of cold steel as it sliced through his sleeve and bit into the bone of his elbow.

He fell backward onto the ice, his elbow taking the brunt of it. The swing of his gun hand smacked the Colt against a frozen hump and sent it clattering across the icy blackness. He could feel the blood gushing out of his arm and kicked upward at the attacking shadow, scuttling on his back, backward toward his Colt.

The attacker slashed at his legs, following with a series of lightning hoof kicks and dragon stamps, trying to stomp Jack off the roof, into oblivion. Sending heel kicks at his groin. The kicks came so fast and furious it felt like Jack was fending off two attackers.

Jack countered with a series of upward kicks and knee blocks, absorbing the attack with his legs. He looked back for the Colt, saw it gleaming on the snowy ice a body’s length away.

The man tried a few squatting stabs that Jack blocked with his hands. The knife caught the flap of Jack’s jacket and ripped it open. Still on his back, Jack continued to kick upward with leg blocks, trying to take out the attacker’s knees. He forced his body backward, desperately trying to reach the gun.

He could see the knife in the moonlight, held high in the man’s left hand. As he dove for the gun, the man leaped over him, positioning himself to bring the knife down.

Rolling over as he palmed the Colt, Jack squeezed off a blind shot over his shoulder. The blast froze the man as Jack straightened, jamming off another wild round as he rose on one knee.

The knife trembled in the man’s hand.

Jack leveled the Colt on him and cocked the hammer. “Drop the knife!” he yelled. “Drop it or join your ancestors!”

The man waggled the knife. He had a long face with a clenched jaw, and his eyes looked demonic in the moonlight.

Jack blasted a round into the icy patch of roof between the man’s legs, splattering snow over his feet.

“You feelin’ me, kai dai?” Jack said with a snarl. He could feel the blood oozing down his left arm, warm and slick-sticky now. He cocked the hammer again.

The man wavered for another second, thought better of it, and finally dropped the knife.

“On your knees!” Jack ordered. “On the ground!”

The man slowly complied. Jack pushed a foot into his back and forced him prone, held the Colt on his neck as he cuffed him with his blood-wet hand. He reached over for the man’s knife and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

Jack yanked him back up by the elbows and marched him back down the creaky stairs. He perp-walked him up Bowery, toward the station house. Running on adrenaline now, he hoped he wouldn’t bleed out on the short two-block march to Elizabeth Alley.

“Gaw, right?” Jack challenged. “You slugged me the other night, didn’t you?”

The man spat at the sidewalk, but his eyes were scanning the street as he stumbled along. He swiveled his head to check behind him, and Jack grabbed him by the collar.

“You’re good when your target’s not expecting it, huh?” Jack said, pushing him along. The man never responded, kept a frozen frown on his face as they turned from Bayard onto Elizabeth Alley, to the Fifth Precinct.

“You killed Zhang with a single stab because he wasn’t expecting it. You coward bastard.” Jack marched him past the duty desk and shoved him into the holding cage. He now belonged to the desk sergeant.

While the sergeant processed him, Jack carefully placed the bloody knife in a plastic baggie. He gave it to the sergeant, along with the DMV copy of Gaw’s driver’s license.

EMS arrived and tended to Jack’s wounds, trundling him into an ambulance as they rolled him back to Downtown Medical. Jack knew they’d stitch him up, give him a few shots to kill the pain. He wanted to pass out but knew he couldn’t, not before getting Gaw’s prints and making a few phone calls.

He took a deep, fortifying breath, resisted the urge to close his eyes.

IT TOOK AN hour and a half to clean and sew him up and spike him, considered fast service and only because he was a cop. The twenty-two stitches on his left elbow and forearm, the bandaged shallower cuts on both knees and shins. He knew that by then Gaw would have been transferred to the Tombs, in detention and awaiting orders to be taken to Rikers.

He checked in on Lucky, still in a coma in the Critical Care ward at the other end of the building. His boyhood pal, Tat “Lucky” Louie, with IV tubes in his arms, a plastic respirator over his mouth. Lucky, wounded in a bloody shoot out that left most of his crew dead. Lucky, the sole survivor.

In the quiet room, he watched the slow rise and fall of Lucky’s chest, listening for the soft ping of the machine that kept him alive. That’s it, brother? This is how it ends for you? Another gangbanger bites the dust?

HE CAUGHT A ride with an EMS tech headed back to Chinatown on the evening meal run.

At the Fifth, the sarge handed Jack a copy of Gaw’s prints.

“He wanted a phone call,” the sarge said. “Had this lawyer’s card in his wallet.” The business card belonged to Solomon Schwartz. “But you know,” Sarge said with a grin, “the shoddy service around here, the phones ain’t working.”

“Thanks, Sarge.” Jack laughed weakly, heading back out to Bayard.

AT THE TOMBS, Jack asked the familiar officers for help.

“Anyone tries to bail him, lose the paperwork for a few hours. I’ll be back in the morning. This guy’s in deep, and we don’t want to chase him. Trust me. It’ll be good press, and I’ll make sure you won’t regret it.”

The Tombs officers allowed Jack to make phone calls, send fingerprint faxes and voice mail. When he finished, he took a cab to Sunset Park.

Back in his Brooklyn apartment, he stripped down carefully, avoiding the stitches. He remembered to set his clock alarm before exhaustion and the pain medication dropped him into oblivion.