Текст книги "Death Money "

Автор книги: Henry Chang

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Wah Fook

“WE TRIED TO call you,” the manager said as soon as he saw Jack enter the funeral parlor. “Two nights ago. He’s been interred already.” The manager paused. “At Saint Margaret’s. There’s another procession going out there in the morning. You can catch a ride out.”

Jack thanked him, went to Bowery, and caught a sai ba to Brooklyn.

When he got back to Sunset Park, he felt emotionally exhausted, with the various injuries barking at him now. He ordered gnow mei noodles at one of the soup shacks on Eighth Avenue, chased it with a pain pill, and wondered what Bossy or Solomon Schwartz had up his sleeves next.

Saints

SAINT MARGARET’S LAY above Astoria Boulevard on the edge of East Elmhurst, not far from LaGuardia Airport. Both destinations were familiar to Chinatown see gay drivers.

It was an old cemetery, not as big as Evergreen Hills or other cemeteries in Queens, and had only a small Chinese section, mainly from Chinese families that had moved into Elmhurst during the 1970s.

The elderly groundskeeper was accommodating to Jack’s badge, escorted him to the Chinese section. He saw a mash-up of Chinese surnames carved into the varied headstones protruding like crooked teeth from the hillside edge of the cemetery.

“Right there.” The groundskeeper pointed at a field next to the cemetery dump. There were no tombstones there, only small stone markers sunk into the uneven ground. A potter’s field. Upon closer inspection, Jack saw markers that were polished, brick-sized leftovers from some wholesale rock quarry.

Gradually, he found the Chinese character for “Chang”——engraved into flat gray stone. A respectful carving, considering it was a charity job. Tossed to one side was a small wooden slat that the cemetery used as a temporary grave marker. The slat had JUN WAH CHANG scrawled in black Chinese script.

Jack took the piece of wood and gouged out a shallow hole next to Sing’s stone marker. He’d put Sing’s family photo into a Ziploc bag and now placed it in his final resting place. Jack covered it over carefully and tamped down the ground with his hands.

He lit the three sticks of incense he’d gotten from the funeral driver and bowed three times. Rest in peace, he offered silently.

The sky seemed to brighten on the drive back to Chinatown.

He got the driver to let him off on Canal Street, across from the market vendors on Mulberry. He could see the colorful displays of fruit, the cherry stand, on the other side of the busy boulevard.

At the cherry stand, Huong was surprised to see him and knew it wasn’t a social visit.

“You’ve found justice for Sing?” she asked. Jack silently nodded yes as she took a breath, covered her mouth with her hand.

“He was a good man,” she said, shaking her head.

“He’s buried in Queens, under the name Chang,” Jack said. “Not much of a cemetery for Chinese. But anyway, I thought he’d want you to have this.” He handed her Sing’s Statue of Liberty photo.

There was sadness behind the happiness in her eyes as she stared at the photo. She took a calming breath, said, “This is the way I like to remember Sing. Smiling at the world.” She gave Jack a glance and a small smile.

“Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I can put this in my family’s temple. We can say prayers for him on all the holidays, and on his birthday.”

Which is Saint Patrick’s Day, Jack remembered, a few weeks away.

“And I still owe you a lunch,” he said.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Just let me know what place you like,” Jack added.

Huong smiled sadly and pocketed the photo as a group of tourists approached to buy cherries.

“I’ll let you know,” she answered as he backed away and turned with a wave goodbye.

Somehow he didn’t feel that date was going to happen, that they’d already come to the end of the chapter. He was almost to Bayard Street when his cell phone jangled. It was Sarge from the Fifth, a garbled connection from which Jack understood only the word “forensics.”

He was just two blocks west of the station house.

Fax Facts

THE WORDS TRANSFIXED Jack as he read the fax copy of the forensics report.

They’d found nothing matching on the can of abalone. There were only Gaw’s prints on the pack of Marlboros taken from his apartment.

Jack frowned as he kept reading.

On the carton of Marlboros taken from Gaw’s Town Car, there was a match on both Gaw’s and Sing’s fingerprints.

They’d both handled the carton at some point.

On the Zippo lighter, they’d found only Sing’s fingerprints on the insert, but both Gaw’s and Sing’s prints on the metal case.

Killer and victim linked again.

Jack had gotten two hits out of four. If this were baseball, he mused, he’d be considered a star. He felt the urge to squeeze Gaw about how he’d happened to be in possession of Singarette’s lighter, hidden in the apartment.

Not that he would be expecting an answer.

Jacked

AT THE TOMBS, Jack was greeted by somber black faces.

“Immigration came by,” the one named Ingram said with a frown.

“INS agents, on the overnight,” said Crawford, the tall one.

“They chained him and jacked him, man,” added Johnson, the youngest.

Immigration and Naturalization Service. Their agents were mostly law enforcement from other federal branches, sometimes military, but usually veteran officers. A big part of INS work was transporting criminal immigrants.

He knew two cold-case homicides trumped an attempted murder of a New York City cop and a possible homicide, but someone must’ve wanted Gaw really bad for INS to jack him out of the Tombs in the dead of night, within seventy-two hours of detention. Over a murder case, no less.

He knew it would jam his investigation to a halt.

“Did they say where he was going?” Jack asked.

“To Hong Kong,” Ingram answered. “Said he was going to meet Chinese justice.”

Jack nodded acknowledgment, knowing Chinese justice could mean a “Beijing haircut,” a nine-millimeter, hollow-point bullet to the head, ripping out the bad brains. Life is cheap in China. Then they’d bill the criminal’s family for the bullet.

Or it could mean years in a dark, airless cell.

Or it could mean disappearing inside the Chinese prison system, where maybe, with the Triad’s help paying off the warden and guards, Gaw would be set free. Free to resume his Triad life.

Or they just might decide it’s cheaper to shank him to death in prison, if rival Triads didn’t get him first.

Jack wondered if Bossy had his fingerprints on any of it. Wondered if the Hip Chings were connected somehow. Screw it, he decided, marching to Mott and Pell.

Bossy’s office.

He didn’t know if Bossy’d be there, but Jack pressed the button anyway. The receptionist buzzed him in and tried to stall him, but he barged into Bossy’s office and caught him by surprise.

Bossy coolly waved the indignant receptionist away, her cue to visit the ladies’ room. Jack gave her until the sound of the closing door before he began.

“Weapons were shipped to your office,” he said. “Probably your pretty secretary signed for them.”

Bossy maintained his frozen smile, clenched his fists, raised an eyebrow.

“Your driver Gaw’s good for the killing,” Jack continued. “And maybe I can’t prove it now, but I know you had a hand in it somehow. Maybe you got over on me, but it all comes back around, you know? And with your family’s history, I’m sure you know what that means.”

Bossy smirked, declined to dignify anything Jack had said with a response. He folded his arms, leaned back, and waited for Jack to leave.

The phone rang outside, and the receptionist quickly reappeared, throwing fearful looks in Jack’s direction. She answered the call but didn’t relax until he finally left Bossy’s office, her eyes following him until he turned and went down the stairs. He didn’t care about the surveillance camera on the wall or worry about Internal Affairs breathing down his neck.

Sing’s case was a matter of record now, and there’s wasn’t anything Bossy could do to alter that.

Golden Star

THE PARTY AT Grampa’s was spur of the moment, with Jack having spread the word through Huong and giving the Tombs cops a heads-up. It was a raucous, alcohol-fueled scene, occupying the booths along the side wall, with the Commodores and Isley Brothers jamming loud on the jukebox.

Grampa’s kitchen served the party plates of clams casino, fried chicken wings, and Chef Kim’s signature onion-smothered steaks and chops.

Jack threw the party at Grampa’s knowing a few extra blacks and Latinos weren’t going to raise any eyebrows here. He was happy to see his African American Tombs brother cops—Ingram, Crawford, and Johnson—enjoying cocktails in the second booth and digging the music. It occurred to Jack how much Ingram, Crawford, and Johnson sounded like a law firm.

He started his second boilermaker. Payback is a bitch, like they say. The party was small thanks for those who’d helped on Sing’s case.

He’d invited Ruben, Miguel, and Luis—the tres amigos—sitting in the third booth. Cervezas all around, and smoking up a storm cloud. The three Mexican truckmen seemed to fit well with the Loisaida Boricua regulars at Grampa’s.

He leaned back and imagined the headline scoop he owed Vincent Chin and the United National: KILLER OF CHINESE DELIVERYMAN EXTRADITED TO HONG KONG FOR PAST CRIMES. They’d have to do dim sum sometime. Taking a gulp of the icy beer, he still marveled at Ah Por’s bank clue. More yellow Taoist witchcraft. He fired up a cigarette and considered how his stitches weren’t pulling so much anymore. The boilermakers were beginning to scatter his thoughts, and the jukebox thundered on.

The only one who seemed out of sorts was Billy Bow, who sat across from Jack in the corner booth. Billy scarfed down a baked clam and chased it with some Dewar’s.

“So it boils down to stinky tofu,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “One Chinaman with a paper name snuffs another Chinaman with a paper name, both here illegally mind you, and no one except you really gives a shit how they jacked the killer back to China? Man, that’s fucked up.”

Billy had a way of putting things, especially when he’d had a few drinks. His words held some truth, however. Gaw and Sing were two invisible men who no one paid much attention to. One eked out a living on the edges of the restaurant industry. His invisibility got him killed. The other was a Triad criminal hiding in plain sight for twenty years. He cultivated his invisibility, and it allowed him to kill.

If Gaw hadn’t killed Sing, their lives would have gone on, almost predictably, and no one would have even known they existed.

Jing deng, Jack mused, destiny. Always in control.

Billy took another slug of the Dewar’s, turned his cynicism toward the rest of the party.

“Too many niggas and spics here tonight,” he muttered.

“Billy, stop,” Jack said. “They all helped me during the case. Just like you did.”

“Yeah, but … I know, but …” He shook his head.

“So relax, all right?” Jack pleaded. “Have another drink.” Then he leaned in, spoke just loud enough to be heard, “And don’t be such a fucking hater, okay?”

Before Billy could protest, Jack gave him a brotherly pat across the shoulders.

“And remember,” Jack continued. “I owe you a date at Chao’s.”

Billy brightened immediately, the thought of pussy erasing the racist spike in his brain. “That’s right!” he remembered alcoholically.

“All right,” Jack reinforced the change in mood, buying Billy another round. Better drunk than sorry. He could always get someone at Grampa’s to take Billy home if necessary.

By the third boilermaker, Jack began to put together what Ah Por’s witchy words actually meant. The rat could be a reference to the Year of the Rat, the coming year in the Chinese horoscope. Ten months away. Ah Por meant Bossy won’t see the next year? If so, according to her words, it’d be true that Bossy’s fortune was nothing more than death money. He’d never be able to spend it fast enough. The largesse would be left to whom? His Taiwanese wife? His gangster-wannabe son?

Maybe justice traveled in a slower circle, pondered Jack.

He watched Billy take his scotch to the pool table in the back, where a vampy white girl was waiting to hustle a willing fish like him.

Ruben was the first to leave, followed by Johnson. As the party wound down, Jack stopped keeping track of who left. By 1 A.M. the pace had slowed to a drunken slog. He didn’t see Billy anywhere and signed his running tab before leaving Grampa’s.

He was home by 2 A.M., noting the time display on the clock radio before collapsing onto his bed.

Backup

JACK AWOKE TO a brilliant morning, shaking off the lingering haze from the night’s boilermakers. He knew the sky was brilliant by the bright light knifing in at the edges of his shaded windows. He turned on the TV, surfed the channels until he came to local news, an item featuring the Lantern Festival in Chinatown. Chinese schoolchildren parading with lanterns around Chinatown.

He muted the sound, reached for his cell phone, which was vibrating on the nightstand.

There were two messages that he’d missed during the noisy scene at Grampa’s. The first one was from a Ninth Precinct number, an NYPD shrink named May McMann, about rescheduling an appointment.

The second message was from a number he didn’t know, but he recognized Alexandra’s voice right away.

“Heyyy, let’s meet at Tsunami, at four P.M.” Curt, to the point. He hadn’t seen her in more than a week.

When he tried to call the number back, all he got was disconnect.

He powered the audio back, watched as candlelit Chinese lanterns floated down Mott Street followed by a marching band from the Chinese school. Many businesses hung lanterns above their doors, inviting luck for the new year.

Then he thought about Sing. Singarette, who would have turned twenty-four this year. Yee say, the numbers whispered, twenty-four sounding like easy to die in Cantonese.

The images of Sing, from the river to the grave, tumbled in his brain. He didn’t think anyone would visit Sing at Saint Margaret’s, but he knew that cherry lady Huong would offer prayers and memorials at the Buddhist temple.

He won’t be forgotten.

On the TV screen, the Chinatown religious and civic groups marched along, joined by a contingent of Chinese auxiliary police officers.

He got up and looked at his stitches in the mirror, the jagged lines scabbing over now. He’d lose the stitches in a few days, he knew.

Not in a celebratory mood, he turned off the TV and lay back down on the bed. He couldn’t reconcile the mixed feelings in his head. Though he was happy that he’d caught Sing’s killer, the arrest felt hollow. Mak Mon Gaw might yet get justice, but for other crimes. And Bossy’d gotten away scot-free, at least for now. According to Ah Por, Bossy wasn’t going to make it to the next lunar New Year. We’ll see, thought Jack.

He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the chatter inside his head. He imagined the patchy ground of the potter’s field at Saint Margaret’s and the mourning sounds of an erhu far off in the distance.

Come Back

TSUNAMI WAS A sushi joint, located where the Lower East Side melted into the East Village, walking distance from Alex’s AJA storefront. They had a sushi bar where the fish snacks circulated around on a conveyor belt. You could order cold soba or hot udon or kushiyaki on the side.

He and Alex had celebrated there a couple of times before.

He pictured Alex’s pretty face. It’d been a week since he’d seen her, almost two weeks since they last made love. Coming straight out of Brooklyn by see gay, he hadn’t had the chance to stop in Chinatown to get her something sweet from Mott Street.

He was considering where to sit, bar or booth, when she walked in.

Alex gave him a peck on the cheek and ushered him into one of the empty booths, sliding in behind him. She looks great, he thought, something edgy around her eyes.

She ordered two large bottles of filtered sake as they settled in, a body distance between them that allowed them to look directly into each other’s eyes. Clearly happy to see each other.

They toasted a shot of the little sake cups, each catching a breath. Then the words poured out of her mouth, through the lips he remembered kissing tenderly. What she said stunned him, hit him harder than a lead sap, harder than a hundred-pound sack of rice.

“We have to back it up,” she said, locking his eyes. “Not see each other. For a while at least.”

He was speechless, wanted to protest, but knew to let her tell it.

“The son of a bitch,” she said with a frown. He knew she meant her soon-to-be ex-husband. “He somehow got a copy of a security tape from Confucius Towers.”

“No,” Jack said quietly, now understanding the edge he’d seen in her eyes when she walked in. She was the bearer of bad news.

“Yes. It shows you and me in the elevator, going up.”

“No,” he repeated, clenching his fists and taking a steadying breath through his nose.

“Yes. And it shows you,” she continued, “going back down alone.”

Before dawn, remembered Jack, the last time they’d made love. He downed his cup of sake, poured another. Her words made him feel awful, killed his appetite for sushi.

“He’s threatening to use the tape against me in the custody fight. Paint me as an unfaithful wife and unfit mother.” He felt helpless and guilty, didn’t know whether to apologize or add to her anger.

Jack’s fist tightened around the sake bottle as he poured her another cup. She drained it before continuing.

“I’m threatening a lawsuit against Confucius Towers and Tower Security,” she added. “But I don’t know if that’ll work.”

“Everyone suffers,” Jack said with a frown. “Especially the kid.” The divorce demands had driven a wedge between them. Should they have waited before giving in to their needs? She, a lawyer, should have known better. He certainly knew better. Billy had warned him countless times.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he offered.

“It’s nobody’s fault, Jack. He’s just an evil bastard.”

He reached across and took her fingers in his, caressed them as he tried to comfort her. He wanted to hold her, tell her it was going to be all right, but knew she’d passed there already. She was trying to get ready for a fight she didn’t feel was going to go her way. They eyed each other with apprehension and sorrow.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

She pulled her fingers away, poured herself a refill.

“The best thing you can do is to stay away from him in every way,” she said. “The last thing I need is you stalking him, anything crazy like that.” Her words cut through him, made him feel helpless to help her—this woman with whom he’d started to feel there could be a future—made him wish Lucky wasn’t in a coma and could arrange the dirty work.

Jack shook his head as she contemplated the little sake cup, before throwing it back.

“And we can’t be seen together,” she said quietly. That’s why she chose Tsunami, Jack realized, it was out of the way, outside Chinatown. They’d have to lay low.

He didn’t want to lose her. He cared more about her than anything else in his life, certainly more than anything in his cop life.

She leaned in and kissed him.

“It’s over, Jack,” she said, sliding out of the booth, her hand holding him back from following her. “For now.” She hesitated a moment, adding, “I’ve changed my cell phone number. But you know where to find me.” She meant at AJA, Jack knew.

She brushed a final stroke on his cheek and left the sushi joint.

He thought he saw tears welling in her eyes. He stayed back like she’d asked, watching her through the restaurant window with the big crashing wave overlay. She’d make her own way back to Chinatown and Confucius Towers, he knew, as she climbed into a cab. The passenger window rolled down, and the kiss she blew him almost broke his heart.

He had to trust what she was doing, that it was the right thing. For both of them.

He ordered another sake, drained the previous one. The rice wine smoothed the way for the pain in his stitches and bruises to mix now with the ache in his heart.

He hated the feeling of helplessness, unable to affect the consequences of what amounted to falling in love. Alex. Alexandra. Falling in love?

He worked the sake down, and with the afternoon light fading outside, he fired up a cigarette and deeply hoped, against his glowing cynicism, that there’d be more chapters to their story.