Текст книги "Death Money "

Автор книги: Henry Chang

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“And where was that?”

“Gum Gwok, not far from here.” The Golden City was still fresh in Jack’s mind.

“Did he seem depressed?” Jack asked. “Or angry?”

“He was mad that the restaurant wouldn’t cover his losses from the mugging.”

“From working at Gum Gwok or here?” Jack continued.

“Both, I guess. He was angry with them all. They didn’t even offer him back what they took out of his tips. Then he quit.”

“When was this?” asked Jack, trying to get a read on the dead man’s recent frame of mind.

“It was in January. After Chinese New Year.”

“Know where he went?”

“No idea.”

The noisy clatter of kitchen work from inside the rear door interrupted them for a moment. “Do you know where he was from?”

“Not sure. He said he’d been a student, but needed to work and hoped to get something in Chinatown.”

“Why Chinatown?”

“He said his village association was there, and maybe they would help.” He worked his cigarette almost to the end. The Gee Association, Jack suspected, knew more than it was telling.

“What happened with the robberies?”

“You mean the police? Sing didn’t go. Said it was useless. A waste of time. He’d only lose another day’s pay.”

“So he didn’t report it?”

The man shook his head no as he finished his cigarette. “I don’t think so.” He answered Jack’s frown, saying, “I got robbed once. At knifepoint. Three guys against me, on a bike. The bosses didn’t help, but I reported it.”

“And what happened?” Jack asked.

“I went into the station and looked at photographs. But it happened at night. It was dark. They all wore hoodies, and they all looked about the same. I remembered the knives more than the faces, and I couldn’t pick out anyone for sure.”

“It’s good that you reported it,” Jack advised. “At least the cops know about it, could look out for crime like that.”

The man didn’t look convinced, changed the subject. “I lost two hundred dollars,” he said bitterly.

Jack redirected the talk. “Where did he live, this brother, Singarette?”

“Mox-say-go,” he said, grinning. “He was joking that he was living with Mexicans.”

“Mexicans?” Bronx immigrants from Mexico?

“Maybe one of Gooba Jai’s places.”

Gooba Jai was Chino-Cubano, one of the later waves of Chinese-Cuban immigrants who found their Spanish-speaking way to the South Bronx and bought blighted buildings in decaying neighborhoods, properties no one else wanted. Those derelict, rent-controlled tenements were set up as rent-a-bed deals for Chinese and Latino workers or visitors to the Bronx.

“I don’t know any addresses,” he said.

“Did he have any other problems?” Jack pressed. “Girlfriend? School?”

“No. But he mentioned a gambling situation, had to do with him getting robbed. Like he was trying to win back what he’d lost.”

“Gambling?” challenged Jack. “Up here? Where?”

“Don’t know, but everyone talks about Fay Lo’s.”

“Fay Lo?” Fat boy. “Where?”

Jack got the don’t know shrug again, just as the China Village manager that Jack had spotted earlier came out of the front door and peered into the alley.

“DEW NA MA GA HEI!“ he cursed in Toishanese as he spotted the deliveryman. Motherfucker! Your deliveries are getting cold!

Jack handed the man his detective’s card as he started moving his bike toward the front. He gave Jack a departing nod.

“Call me if you think of anything else,” Jack called out after him.

The manager cast a quick look in Jack’s direction and was momentarily puzzled. Then he shivered in the cold and ran back inside the China Village. Jack imagined him to be as glib as the manager of the Golden City, tactful, expeditious, but not very helpful. They volunteered nothing and spoke like they’d been pre-lawyered up.

Jack couldn’t recall much else on the Chinese-Cubans in the Bronx, but he felt like he’d struck a vein. He was pondering Mexicano Chino-Cubano crash pads and Fay Lo’s gambling operations when his cell phone jumped around in his jacket pocket.

He tapped up a number he didn’t recognize, but the phone voice belonged to Sergeant Cohen from the Three-Two.

“The report’s in,” he advised. “Report to the morgue, ASAP.”

ON THE WAY downtown, Jack tried to put together what he’d gathered. The dead man was a deliveryman/waiter/student named Chang, who’d been robbed and had a gambling problem. He’d been angry, maybe depressed. Maybe suicidal. The jumper/floater scenario was unreeling in his head.

He arrived at Manhattan’s West Side before he knew it.

Steel Cold Dead

HE STOOD IN the cold, stainless-steel stillness of the room, its wall of metal doors housing the dead, the after-world rendition of a Fukienese rent-a-bed. A female morgue assistant handed him the certificate of death. She said, “Dr. Jacobson will be right back,” before walking away.

Jack scanned the certificate. The decedent, John Doe, was listed as Asian. Under the section “COD,” the entry for cause of death stunned him: Sharp force piercing through heart. Manner of death: HOMICIDE.

But how? There’d been no blood and no visible trauma or defensive wounds. He imagined the frozen body in the frozen river again, was turning the image over in his head, when the medical examiner appeared. He looked like an Ivy League professor in a gray smock.

“A stab in the heart, Doctor?” Jack asked incredulously. “I didn’t see any blood.”

“It was easy to miss, Detective. A single thrust. A very thin wound.” Jacobson lifted a black hoodie sweatshirt, still wet, from one of the gurneys and held it open. He indicated a thin slit in the fabric where a sharp force had penetrated. “The sweatshirt and undershirt, everything was wet and black and bunched up. We didn’t see the wound until we got the clothes off.”

“But no blood?” Jack repeated.

“It’s possible, from floating in the cold water for hours,” the doctor suggested, “that any blood could have washed out. And it’s also harder to see blood on black.” He opened one of the metal drawers and slid out a rack with the decedent’s autopsied corpse. Chang, thought Jack. Jun Wah, aka Singarette. It comes down to a body on the slab at the morgue. A Y-cut where they’d opened him up ran from chest to navel, but what caught Jack’s eye was the single wound over the heart area, a thin vertical slit barely an inch tall, with matching bruises at either end.

“The skin normally contracts around the wound,” Jacobson said, “but the cold river water could have helped close it. But we can tell that it was a double-edged weapon, which is unusual.”

“Like a sword?” Jack asked.

“More like a dirk.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at the wound, trying to imagine the weapon. Like a Greek or Roman dagger, the kind you’d see in a knife collector’s mail-order catalog.

“Or a dagger,” the doctor continued. “In this case a short dagger, maybe a four-and-a-half-inch blade. See the rounded abrasions at either end of the cut? The dagger had a hand-guard. It pierced his heart but not through to his back. Severed the aorta and the veins around it.”

“It was driven in to the hilt then?” Jack said.

“With tremendous force. That’s what caused the hand-guard marks.”

Driven forward and held until the man was dead, the weapon could kill in less than three minutes.

“Given the angle of the thrust, I’d say it was a left-handed person, someone taller than the decedent. Maybe five foot ten inches, almost like yourself.”

“I don’t see any defensive wounds,” Jack said. “And you said only through the sweatshirt and undershirt, but not the jacket? So the jacket was open?”

“Yes.”

“So he never saw it coming?” Jack said as he gained clarity.

“We don’t know that.”

“He let his guard down. Or it was someone he knew.”

“That’s for you to find out, Detective, isn’t it?” Jacobson smiled faintly. He took from the gurney the knockoff Rolex that Chang had been wearing, laid it next to the corpse. It had stopped at 10:30 P.M.

“Estimated time of death is between nine thirty and ten P.M.,” Jacobson continued. “The casing and the metal clock mechanism freeze in the water and contract and slow to a stop. Within an hour or two.”

“Think he was dead before he hit the water?” Jack asked.

“Very possible,” Jacobson answered. “Or close to it. There wasn’t much water in his lungs.” He bagged the watch and gave it to Jack.

Ah Por, thought Jack. He’d want her to get a touch on the watch before it went into the crime lab. Maybe they’d get some prints off it. He took a last look at the corpse before Jacobson pushed the drawer back in.

“Good luck, Detective,” Jacobson said as he moved to the next body.

Jack thanked him and left the room of the dead.

Outside, the cold, crisp air revived him. His cell jangled with a familiar number.

“Find out anything, bro?” It was Billy Bow.

“Yeah, he’s Chinese,” snapped Jack. “Why?”

“Last name Chang, right?” teased Billy.

“And you know that how?” Jack countered.

“Ancient Chinese secret.”

“Stop fucking around, Billy. It’s a homicide deal now.”

“Meet me at Grampa’s.”

“What the fuck?” Jack started.

But Billy had hung up.

Golden Star

THE GOLDEN STAR Bar and Grill, also known as Grampa’s, was a revered Chinatown jukebox joint. Located on the far stretch of East Broadway, the hot spot was a big dugout basement three steps down from the street, far enough away from the core of Chinatown to escape the influence of the traditional old-line tongs.

Because Grampa’s mixed bag of Lower East Side regulars included Chinatown denizens, blacks and Latinos from the projects, and rotating teams of undercover cops, the popular bar was considered neutral turf even for the rival street gangs that rolled in and out. Hardheads looking for a beef usually took their differences down the street beneath the Manhattan Bridge or under the highway by the East River.

Inside, under dim blue lighting, a long, oval-shaped bar dominated the space. There was an arcade bowling game up front, a big jukebox set up in the middle, and a pool table in the back next to the kitchen.

Grampa’s was almost empty, with only a few late-afternoon stragglers looking for an alcohol fix before the dinner crowd drifted in. Billy sat at the far end of the bar, watching the door.

As he entered, Jack felt gnawing hunger and realized he hadn’t eaten since dawn. Between the river and the morgue, he’d lost his appetite and had been running on adrenaline. He signaled the barmaid and ordered a steak before Billy motioned him over to one of the empty booths.

Billy came over with two beers in his fist, slid in opposite Jack, and nudged across one of the bottles. They clanged glass, and each took a swig.

“So what do you have?” Jack asked eagerly.

“Slow down, kemosabe,” Billy said, taking his sweet time lighting up a cigarette. “You first.”

Jack recounted the basic facts of the case, keeping the details close to his vest. He knew Billy was dying to spill. His steak arrived, and he sliced into it as Billy began his tale.

“It’s a paper deal,” Billy offered. “Your dead man bought the papers off a college student who had dropped out and returned to the village.”

Jack nodded his okay, tucking into the savory plate. Keep coming, he motioned with the steak knife.

“Jun Wah Chang is really Yao Sing Chang, one of the village orphans.”

Jack took a gulp of beer, trying to digest the new information. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Gees were running a paper operation like many of the other associations were doing—getting their members to America by any means necessary.

“He called, looking for work in Chinatown restaurants. They thought he was calling from Canada.”

“Wait.” Jack emphasized with the point of the serrated knife. “You’re getting all this from the guy at Gee’s who didn’t know nothing from nothing this morning? But somehow from then to now, he suddenly remembers the guy’s whole life in China?” He could almost see Billy blushing red in the dim blue light.

“Maybe he called the village, all right?”

“Why so helpful all of a sudden?”

“Maybe because I conned him into thinking it was better to have you as a friend than as an enemy.”

“He didn’t seem to care this morning,” Jack said.

“Maybe he realized you can fix some traffic tickets or something.”

“Funny. Ha-ha.”

“Hey, he volunteered it,” Billy mock groused. “What the fuck do I care? You want the rest of it or what?”

“Shoot.”

“Since Yao’s an orphan,” Billy continued, “the Gee Association will pay for the cremation and services, whatever, on behalf of the village.”

“When?”

“The wake is tomorrow morning at Wah Fook.”

“So fast?”

“It’s symbolic, yo. You think anybody’s checking the ashes? They can bury him anytime. Whenever the cremation’s done. It’s all potter’s field anyways.”

“What time?”

“Nine to noon. They already posted an obit in the Chinese papers.”

“Ceremonial,” Jack observed. “What cemetery?”

“You gotta check with Wah Fook.” Billy seemed amused, watching Jack carve off pieces of Kim’s legendary rib eye, devouring them.

“Any other surprises?” Jack asked as they clanged the last of their beers. Billy chortled like a villain.

“You know those phone numbers on the menu paper?” Billy paused for effect as Jack waited for the punch line. “They’re restaurants all owned by Bossy Gee.”

BOSSY GEE lit up a few lights in Jack’s head. Prominent Chinatown businessman, big shot with the Hip Ching Association. Owns a bunch of Chinatown buildings. His family had a long local history, with connections to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“The eight-eight-eight prefix on those restaurant numbers?” Billy offered. “Bossy’s idea. The Lucky Eights. Bot bot bot. The Triple Eights.”

Gamblers’ numbers, suckers’ payout. He wondered if it was all just coincidence. Bossy Gee had been investigated by the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) for alleged ties to local tongs. Bossy Gee was known as the black sheep of the Gees. Not surprising that the association wouldn’t want to get dragged into any of his endeavors.

“The Lucky Dragon and Lucky Phoenix he acquired in a fire sale. The previous Fukienese owner’s daughter got shot and killed outside the Lucky Dragon. And the Lucky Phoenix was in debt after their accountant cooked the books and disappeared. Now Bossy’s leasing out the two joints to new Fuks.”

That explained the bleak and beat-down feel of the Lucky restaurants. They hadn’t been so lucky for the operators, first-generation Chinese immigrants in the South Bronx, more grist for the grind of ghetto crime.

Billy ordered another round of beers, snuffed out his cigarette butt. “The other two, China Village and Golden City,” Billy continued, “Bossy’s had them a long time. Guess they’re doing okay.”

Jack remembered the modified Chinatown-restaurant business models he’d visited. He finished his steak, recalling, Bossy Gee had two sons, one who joined the Marines, and another who joined the Black Dragons. One boy had a soldier’s dream; the other has a criminal record.

The beers arrived, and Jack decided to pace himself, figuring he’d have a long night ahead. Now he had even more questions than answers, and questions in Chinatown rarely led in just one direction. He knew it was too late to find Ah Por and decided to visit her in the morning with the knockoff wristwatch.

Someone started up the jukebox with Gloria Estefan’s “Cuts Both Ways.” It reminded him of Alexandra, but the warm and soft images of Alex naked in bed were crowded out by the memory of the cold and hard body on the refrigerated rack at the morgue.

He resisted the urge to call her.

“You hang out here,” Billy instructed. “I gotta close up the tofu shop. Then I’ll take the old Mustang outta Confucius, and we’ll go for a ride.”

“Where?” Jack asked skeptically.

“Didn’t you say Yao had gambling problems in the Bronx? You mentioned Fay Lo’s, right?”

“You know where Fay Lo’s is?”

“No, but I know how to get there.”

Jack shot him a you-must-be-high look.

“There’s a car, or minivan, that goes there,” Billy added.

“To Fay Lo’s?” Jack pressed.

“It’s like a junket, I hear. For the seniors, the old fart playas.” Billy grinned. “We can follow them.”

“Who?” Jack quizzed. “Where?”

“The minivan waits on Doyers. I think it’s a Ghost racket. Takes the old-timers to the tracks and titty bars, to Chinese gambling Bronx-style.” The Ghost Legion connection made Jack think about his onetime blood brother, Lucky Louie, Ghost dailo boss, who was useless to him now, lying in a coma at Downtown Medical.

“When?” asked Jack.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Billy said as he left the booth.

The door slammed behind him, and the song on the jukebox ended. Grampa’s was quiet again as Jack tried to find some connection between Chinatown and the Chinese in the Bronx, tried to work his way back through the clues and the questions doing a lion dance in his head.

He’d heard all the usual hard-luck tales from waiters and kitchen help, Chinese workingmen who’d been seduced by the idea of luck—every poor man’s chance to be emperor—recklessly wagering two weeks’, even a month’s pay on the nose of a horse or a dog, the flip of a card or the turn of a number.

The truth was they were desperate for luck, anguished over believing that they could change the miserable, hopeless cast of their low workingmen’s existence. They were gambling with their lives.

Finishing his beer, Jack pulled out his cell phone and called Alexandra. Her cheery greeting went to voice mail, and he hung up. He didn’t like not getting an answer, and he hated to leave personal messages. Instead he dropped some coins into the jukebox and waited for the song that had briefly brought him back to tender moments with Alex.

Muscle Mustang

BILLY POWERED THE old Mustang out of the underground garage at Confucius Towers. It was only a few blocks to Grampa’s, but he made a right on Bowery, gassed up on Houston Street, and took a quick cruise through the mean streets of the Lower East Side. Another right, going east, and the streets were wet and black. He rolled through the extended settlements of Chiu Chaos, Malaysians, and Vietnamese, continuing east to Essex, crossing Delancey into areas once Jewish, then Puerto Rican, and now Fukienese Fuk Jo land.

He circled back toward Grampa’s, past the housing projects on South Street, quietly amused as he thought about Jack, his Chinatown friend, the jook sing cop who was conflicted about whether he was more American or more Chinese.

But it was never that complicated for Billy; all he had to do was look in the mirror. And in New York City, it never took much for someone to call you Chink and remind you who you were.

He’d been more than happy to help Jack, even happier now that the trail was leading to gambling and drinking and titty bars. It’d been a long time since he’d visited the Bronx anyway.

He patted the compact Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol under his jacket and checked the dashboard lights as Grampa’s neon bar sign beckoned down East Broadway.

Rollin’ Dirty

JACK STEPPED OUT of Grampa’s as the black Mustang pulled up. He opened the passenger door, saving Billy a rise out of the driver’s bucket seat. Muscle car, thought Jack, tinted windows, mag wheels, chrome runner. The car looked old, but the engine was growling like it’d been souped up. The worst kind of gang-boy getaway car you could drive through an anticrime sector and not expect to get stopped for drugs and weapons, especially in the South Bronx.

“Haven’t seen this car in a while,” Jack said, sliding into the passenger seat. “What happened to the Range Rover?”

“The ex-wife got the Rover, that bitch,” Billy spat out. “But this bad boy gets me where I need to go.”

“No doubt,” Jack agreed.

They drove behind Confucius Towers and turned off Bowery onto Pell Street. Billy killed the headlights before he made the sharp left onto Doyers, going slowly up the inclining street, and pulled over when he saw the minivan around the bend.

Two old men wearing oversized down jackets and hunting caps approached the minivan. They were joined by three other old men. The driver fired up his lights, popped the door, and waved the men in.

The seniors looked like restaurant workers—waiters and da jop kitchen help—the kind you’d see inside the homey little Chinatown coffee shops or at the local OTB picking the ponies. They were the last stragglers from the old bachelor generation lost in America.

They reminded Jack of his pa, who had been buried for six months in the pastoral grounds of Evergreen Cemetery. The traditional Ching Ming grave-sweeping ceremonies would be observed by the Chinese in the coming weeks.

The minivan crossed Chatham Square, went down Catherine Street to catch the FDR on South Street. Billy followed it, a few car lengths back. When they hit the highway, Billy turned on the dash radio, and the rock station blared out an old Steppenwolf number. Billy cranked up the radio, slapping the steering wheel and bellowing along with his own misunderstood lyrics:

Roarin’ down the highway,

Cruising for adventure,

To whatever breaks our way …

Jack allowed Billy his two minutes of wild man, figuring the song was ending. When it segued to a commercial, Jack turned off the radio and asked, “They run a van up every night?”

“Not sure every night,” Billy answered. “But definitely weekends.”

“Their gambling jones so bad they need to go to the Bronx?”

“Yeah,” Billy said, keeping the minivan in sight. “Chinese love to gamble. It gives the working stiffs an excuse to hang out, have a few drinks, maybe score some pussy.”

A one-night escape from the shackles of their lost China dreams.

The lights across the East River danced, neon colors shimmering off the dark waters, the city lights of Brooklyn and Queens sparkling in the distance like a scattering of jewels. A full moon was frozen overhead.

Cruising at sixty miles an hour, the Mustang rolled low to the blacktop, its mag wheels biting into the curves of the undulating highway. The outer boroughs flashed by on the other side of the river as the black car muscled its way north toward the Willis Avenue Bridge.

Billy said, “You know what? You mentioned the Harlem River, right? My first thought, the niggas killed him. Or the spics. You know? The usual, ripping off the takeout boys. You know the deal. Chinese always getting fucked in the South Bronx, yo.”

Jack didn’t offer a comment to that but knew he’d likely have to check in with the South Bronx precincts to see what the crime profile was against Asian Americans and also to get the lay of the land. Rob the guy, sure, but dump him in the river? What kind of gangbanger would go through that much trouble to rob a deliveryman?

“Those motherfuckers,” Billy continued. “But I ain’t worried. I got my shit.” He patted the steel next to his ribs. “Punks don’t scare me.”

“You packing?” Jack asked, alarmed.

“Shit yeah.” Billy proudly flashed the gun inside his jacket. “Nine millimeter. Beretta. No boolshit.”

“Fuck, Billy. You should have told me that before I got in the car.”

“What the fuck?”

“You forget I’m a cop?”

“You think I’m rollin’ dirty?” Billy spat back. “I’m licensed, brother. Permit to carry. Straight up. Would I compromise your ass? I’m hurt. I got a businessman’s license because I carry and transfer phat stacks of dollars to the bank. A lot of Chinatown merchants got carry permits.” He blew out a breath and kept the Mustang behind the minivan. “Wow … so all right?” he said with a smirk. “We cool?”

Jack took a breath and nodded okay, but he’d have to watch out for Billy’s bad temper and his drinking. Not let him drive if he got anywhere near drunk. In the South Bronx, of all places.

Jack rolled down the window and let the freezing wind buffet his face as they approached the Willis Avenue Bridge.

“You still packing that thirty-eight?” Billy asked.

“Yeah.”

“You still carrying that shorty? For real? You kidding me. Every nigga with a nine out there, and you with that peashooter thirty-eight?”

The minivan bounced in the distance.

“Shit, Jacky, fourteen nines in a clip, against six thirty-eights? Damn, you must be high, whatever you’re thinking.”

Jack had considered it, after the near-fatal encounter in Seattle. In his mind’s eye he saw it again, his six-shot speedloader slipping into the Colt’s open cylinder at the approach of a tong enforcer with a semiautomatic in his fist, aiming for the kill shot. It was a nightmare he’d have to tell the NYPD shrink about.

The thought made him think about Alexandra, how she’d saved his life, but with the Bronx waiting in the distance, he kept his eyes on the minivan. He’d considered switching over to a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic, a nine-millimeter piece, but most cops were favoring the new Glocks. The Glock 19 was a light twenty-three ounces unloaded, with a polymer frame and a fifteen-shot magazine. Hard to fault. But not a conversation he wanted with Billy.

Jack also knew that, like Billy, other cops favored the Berettas. Italian made, and also a NATO standard. Then there was Smith & Wesson, flying the American flag. The M69 series was a double action, twenty-six ounces unloaded with a stainless alloy frame. It held thirteen shots and featured a combat trigger.

Bottom line, Jack figured, fifteen shots are better than thirteen. Those last two shots could save your life, which he knew was what most NYPD cops believed. The Glock was lightweight and had the top capacity with the least recoil.

He’d have to make a change soon.

They crossed the bridge, and Jack quickly scanned the dark river below, wondering again where Chang’s body had entered the water.

The Mustang blazed past Mott Haven and Hunts Point toward Pelham Bay. Before they knew it they’d crossed over into Westchester, the highway signs and the minivan leading them to the city of Yonkers and the racetrack.

What Jack remembered about Yonkers was that it was home to a large Irish and Italian population, and that the city had refused to desegregate its public-school system. In many ways, it was cop land.

A big billboard beckoned them to Yonkers Raceway.