Текст книги "Death Money "

Автор книги: Henry Chang

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

Fifth

COMMANDING OFFICER MARINO was reportedly attending a promotions award ceremony at headquarters. His office was empty.

Jack climbed the creaky wood steps of the Fifth Precinct, found his faxes from Saint Barnabas in a bin by the detectives’ desks. The pictures of the assault victim, Dewey Lai, reminded him of some of the postmortem photos he’d developed at Ah Fook’s.

The gangbanger had the requisite bruises all over his body, expected in a typical beatdown. In the gang world, nobody was nobody unless they got in a kick or two and bragged about it later. But the pictures from the emergency-admit bay of the victim’s head and face were more telling. Both eyes were eggplants swollen shut—one more shut than the other. Bloody boot cuts to both sides of the head. On one side of his neck was a tattoo of the Chinese word for “dog,” gau. On the flip side, he had a number 7 carved into his fadestyle haircut, representing the seventh letter in the alphabet, G, for “Ghosts.” Another true believer.

There was a pair of bloated fat lips on top of a swollen jaw. All the injuries of the kind that it’d take more than ten days to heal.

They would have killed him if that was their intent, Jack thought. So why? Was it just another stupid gang-boy beef? Or had Singarette owed Fay Lo’s and wound up having to deal with Ghost muscle? Ex-blood brother Lucky, Ghost dailo, might have some answers to that, if he wasn’t lying in a coma.

But maybe dog tattoo boy would sing, if Jack could find him.

He started making phone calls again.

By the time he left the precinct, the sky was gray. The neon colors of the restaurant signs had come to life, but there were few people on the street. He noticed a familiar figure, a woman approaching Wong’s Wash n’ Dry across the way.

Alexandra, he realized happily.

He crossed the street, watching Alex through the shopwindow as she handed her ticket to the lady clerk. There was no one else in the shop.

He entered as the clerk disappeared behind a wall of dry-cleaning racks. Alex turned as he approached. She was pleasantly surprised.

“Heyyy,” she said, smiling.

“I saw you come in,” Jack said, touching her hand.

“I needed my red suit. For the legal-aid fund-raiser tonight.”

He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her, felt the softness of her body against his. He savored the floral scents in her hair, took an extra shaolin breath.

She gave him a quick kiss, wiping the color from his lips with her fingers.

They separated as the clerk reappeared with the red suit.

“Your tickee?” the clerk asked Jack.

“Ngo deih yat chai,” he answered. “We’re together.” He was pleased to see Alex smile at the remark.

Outside, Alex checked her watch and turned toward Mott Street. She threw a look back at Jack and mimed a phone call with her forefinger and pinkie. Jack smiled and gave her a thumbs-up.

The sky darkened after she turned the corner, and he looked toward Canal and Mulberry Streets. Where would Huong’s Mexican connection lead to? he wondered.

Mox-Say-Go

HUONG, WHO HAD apparently explained the situation to Luis, made the introduction as they were packing up the vans. Luis was short but looked strong, like a pit bull. Jack showed his badge, assured him in his schoolboy Spanish, “No problema. Soy policía de Nueva York. No es la inmigración.” His words seemed to relax Luis, showing he was cool—not INS, not immigration police.

“¿Qué quieres?” Luis asked, climbing into the big truck.

“I need to find where he lived,” Jack said.

“He stay with Ruben and Miguel.”

“Where?” Jack pressed as Huong watched them from the van.

“Climb in,” Luis said.

THE BIG TRUCK rolled north, with Jack riding shotgun, up to Hunts Point. Luis—Luis Enriquez—unloaded a few cases of melons to the sprawling night market, then drove them west into Mott Haven.

The place was an old building in a row of rundown tenements, a couple of blocks off the Bruckner Expressway. Jack wondered if it was one of Gooba Jai’s places. A chino-latino rent-a-bed hostel?

They went to a second-floor apartment where one of Sing’s keys fit the lock. The interior had been partitioned into smaller units, everyone sharing two little toilets and a kitchenette.

The small rooms could sleep up to three people, each on a folding cot. Luis spoke quietly to two men. They looked rugged, like they were used to hard work and long hours. Luis’s explanation of Sing’s demise sobered the men as Jack showed them the river photos.

“Ay Dios mío,” whispered Ruben. Miguel shook his head and frowned. With Luis’s labored English translation and Jack’s high-school Spanish, they coaxed Sing’s story out of the men.

They’d been co-workers, they explained, on the Sang Farm’s trucks, delivering produce like bok choy and Chinese cabbage, mushrooms, snow peas, green onions. They pointed to Sing’s cot. There was a piece of carry-on luggage underneath.

They’d known him about two months, as Chino more than as Sing, delivering to Chinese restaurants and markets in the Bronx. Chino was an added asset because he could speak Chinese, which sped up the deliveries.

Jack pulled out the carry-on, noticed there weren’t any closets anywhere in the room. In the carry-on was an extra set of clothes—a hoodie sweatshirt, jeans, socks, a pair of sneakers. Nothing valuable. In one of the inside pockets was a bus stop map and a ticket stub.

They liked working with Sing, the men continued. He always pulled his own weight and was generous with cigarettes and food. They liked Chinese food, and he always did the ordering for them.

In a sloppy scribble on the back of the bus map were the words “edge water.” No other identification, or anything, left behind. Jack pocketed the map and ticket stub as they gave him back the photos of Sing.

“Hombre.” Ruben nodded respectfully.

“When did you see him last?” Jack asked.

“Dos noches,” said Miguel. “Two nights ago.”

“We dropped him off,” added Ruben, “on a delivery.”

“Delivery?” Jack asked. “For what?”

“Abba-lone-nay,” Ruben enunciated, “abalone” in Spanish. “He say Chinese love it. Very expensive.”

“He sold two cases,” Miguel added, “and two carton cigarettes.”

“Two cases of abalone?”

“Si, he say someone buy two cases, cash up front,” said Ruben. “Sing, Chino, he tie a rope around each case so he can carry one in each hand.”

“We dropped him off,” offered Miguel. “It was only two blocks’ walk. And he was supposed to meet us after, for cerveza.”

“Where?”

“At Chino’s.” He hesitated. “But the real name is Booty.” The word set off another bell in Jack’s head. “This was what time?”

“About eight P.M.,” answered Ruben, checking his watch, “like now.”

“Can you drive us there?” Jack asked Luis. “I’ll pay for gas and cerveza.”

“No problema,” Luis said.

“Sure,” added Miguel. “Anything for el chino amigo.”

THEY WENT BACK out into the night, four men in a big truck rolling west to the Highbridge section. They pulled over near a one-way street, with Booty’s in the opposite direction, and dropped Jack off.

“He go down that way,” Ruben said, pointing. “He say customer waiting for him by the end.”

Definitely somebody was waiting, thought Jack, maybe with a dagger in hand. He’d given twenty dollars for cerveza to Luis, told them to get started at Booty’s without him.

He waved them off and began walking toward the smell of water.

The growl of Luis’s truck faded around a corner, gone. Jack continued down the street, following the dim and stranded pools of lamplight to the river. He tried to imagine Sing’s thoughts and feelings as he marched through the cold, toward what might have been his last moments on earth. I’m carrying a ten-pound case of canned abalone in each hand, using the ropes to hold each one like it was a briefcase. Also carrying two cartons of cigarettes inside a back sack.

Hands restricted, vulnerable to attack.

The delivery has been paid for in advance. I’ve already made my profit, so this is just to close off the deal.

Confidence. A deceptive quality.

Then go to meet my amigos at Booty’s, or Chino’s, and have a few cervezas. Tomorrow’s another day, right?

The long, two-block walk west to the riverfront ran through a desolate stretch of ghetto parkland.

He’d been taken completely by surprise, thought Jack. Sing’s jacket open, for a single thrust through the heart. A lucky strike? Or diligently practiced? The assailant was taller, the coroner had said.

When Sing never shows, the Mexicans think nothing of it. They figured maybe Sing got lucky or something, shacking up elsewhere. It wasn’t the first time el chino didn’t roll in until dawn.

Gradually the streets led to a pocket park, the kind that got created by waterfront development deals and later named after politicians or city big shots. It was the early stages of gentrification butting up against the decay of the ghetto.

The little stretch of park had only six wood benches, facing the water, on land that had to be paved over anyway in order to get to the railroad tracks.

He didn’t know if it was parkland or Metro North, or DOT, but the pocket park seemed public and unsecured. He noted the broken chain-link fence around a track-repair shed. You could drive a car into the area if you knew about the little back street that ran along the waterfront.

He arrived at a low railing that separated the parcel of riverside embankment from the raised concrete landing. The bank sloped off a bit, but at high tide the river would rise to the landing. If you aren’t paying attention, or if it’s dark, you can walk twenty feet out and already be knee deep where the underwater bank drops off.

Deep enough to float a body away, shove it off toward the middle of the river?

Behind him, the landing had enough space to park two or three cars, dark and distant from the solitary lamppost some fifty yards back. He heard the wind, the lapping, rippling of waves. Otherwise so quiet and deserted here that you could probably kill someone. And get away with it.

He didn’t see any obvious traces of struggle or blood evidence.

He stayed there almost half an hour, trying to sort it out. Sing, the Chinese orphan from Poon Yew village, was a “paper man” who had followed a trail of established immigrant communities eastward across Canada to New York City. He came to America looking for a new future but found instead a length of steel dagger through the heart somewhere on these cold-blooded streets of the South Bronx.

Jack knew that it wasn’t a random, or thrill, kill. Someone had worked it out, played the whole con, followed the hit list, and tried to wash it. Someone with a purpose, a mission. Someone who’d picked the location and set up the exchange at nighttime, when it was dark and the tide was high.

Someone who knows the area.

If it was just a gambling debt, then the suspicion fell on Fay Lo and the Ghosts. The Ghosts were capable of it, for sure, but it didn’t seem like their style. The Ghosts were ruthless and calculated and would have simply snatched Sing off the street and left his body in a barrel somewhere. Not some bogus abalone-and-cigarette setup in the South Bronx.

He knew if he poked Fay Lo, he’d probably lawyer up and charge police harassment. He wasn’t expecting to get a straight answer out of the Fat Man anyway.

If they were trying to make an example of Sing, why dispose of his body in the river? The street face of it asked, Who collects from a dead man? Gamblers are scared off. It’s bad luck, and there’s a death stain on the gambling establishment.

Jack remembered Sun Tzu’s advice to strike where your opponent is weakest, and thought about gau jai—Ghost Doggie Boy—probably recovering somewhere in one of the Ghost crash pads in Chinatown.

IF IT WAS more than a gambling debt, then maybe the bad blood between Sing and Bossy Gee’s restaurants figured in his murder. Was it something he said? Something that caused one of the restaurant managers to lose face? Angry words worth dying for?

Jack had no clue. Or rather, he had a lot of clues that didn’t make sense. Like Ah Por’s words, Money is the root of all evil.

He considered the Mexicans. Luis, Ruben, and Miguel struck him as hardworking, willing to take on dirty, low-paying jobs. In many ways, the mox-say-gos were the new Chinese coolies, facing the same racist discrimination that the Chinese of earlier generations suffered. Jack could understand the reluctance to notify law enforcement. Immigrants filing police reports on other immigrants? Not likely, thought Jack, when they couldn’t even be sure of each other’s names and identities.

Nobody else ventured down the streets during the time he stayed in the pocket park. No vehicle drove by. He knew he’d have to return in daylight and check out the area again.

Daylight

IT HAD STARTED to snow, the flurries sticking to the dirt surfaces of the pocket park. Everything looked uglier in daylight, desolate and cold. Daylight alone didn’t reveal any secrets. The pocket park was as deserted in daytime as it was at night.

There was no evidence mixed in with the litter that the wind had swept down from the avenue. No signs of a struggle. No telltale footprints or tire marks or bloodstains like cops always found on TV shows.

No wallet, no pack of cigarettes or lighter or scattered cans of abalone. Nothing but river debris and detritus left behind by the low tide. It’d been two nights since the Mexicans last saw Sing, and any evidence, if there’d been any, could have already washed off or blown away.

He’d have to find his clues elsewhere, and he decided to take the subway down to the Ninth Precinct, where the computer system was more updated than the Fifth’s antiquated setup.

Back to the Future

His cell phone jangled as he arrived at the Ninth, signaling a voice mail that he’d missed while he was underground in the subway. He didn’t recognize the number, but the message was from Alexandra, explaining that she’d be out of touch for a few days.

“Situation” was the word she used, and he understood that to mean something related to her ongoing divorce battle. The message had a tense, awkward undertone to it and ended with a curt “Call you when I get back.”

When he got to the detectives’ area, there were two messages with his name on them. The first one was a reminder to reschedule his appointment with the department-assigned shrink. The second was from the captain, waiting for a progress report on the John Doe now turned homicide.

Jack fired up the detectives’ desktop unit and accessed the crime-file database under “Illegal Gambling and Organized Crime.” The information was listed by precinct, and under Chinatown’s “Fifth Precinct,” he found an array of Chinese mug shots; mostly older men he didn’t recognize but knew were designated sacrificial lambs whenever the vice cops were pressured to conduct a gambling raid.

Among the mug shots was an old one of Fai “Fay Lo” Yung, identified as a Chinatown businessman and associate of the On Yee tong. He had to be pushing fifty. Eleven arrests over eight years, all of them lawyered out. A homely man, he had a round head and a thick neck, and even though it was only a headshot, Jack could see why they’d nicknamed him Fay Lo for “fat man.” All the old gambling raps on his sheet were from different locations in Chinatown, but nothing over the last five years. It was like he went underground and disappeared.

Judging from the operation in the South Bronx, Fay Lo had come a long way and had learned a thing or two about organized illegal gambling. But he was still an old-timer, from the old school that didn’t believe in executing its delinquent losers. Dead men don’t pay. They believed in making their welshers “work off” their debts by laboring for construction crews doing the nastiest jobs, or by stealing, or muling some China white or bootleg cigarettes across state lines.

The Ghosts killing Sing on their own? A single stab through the heart? Unlikely.

It didn’t make sense.

BY THE TIME he updated the report for the captain, the winter afternoon outside looked like evening, dark already at 5 P.M. He stood up from the desk and stretched his legs, changing his stances from tiger to horse to long bridge squat, popping tendons and ligaments as he considered how the clues had come his way.

A cremation and a lady in red who sold cherries on a frozen street corner.

A tres amigos of Mexican laborers who’d pointed the way. But not the why.

Something personal? Or simple, like a gambling debt?

The motive escaped Jack. He planned to make more phone calls and considered enlisting Billy’s help again. Although the leads had taken him in different directions, as he’d discovered on previous investigations, all roads inevitably led back to Chinatown.

Fish

JACK FOUND BILLY at Grampa’s, trying to convince the part-time barmaid to visit his apartment after her shift. He complained as Jack guided him into one of the booths.

“Why is it every time I’m feeling lucky, you come along and drag me away from happiness?”

“That’s not happiness, that’s just sex,” Jack said with a grin. “She’s already wise to your game anyway.”

“Well, sure, after you just cock-blocked me, whaddya expect?”

“I need your help, Billy,” Jack said.

“Whoa, where have I heard that before? This is where you promise not to cum in my mouth, right?” Billy leaned back and gave Jack enough face to play out his rope. When Jack finished explaining, Billy barked, “WHAT? I hate those punk-ass Ghosts! And you want me to go down to their gambling basements?”

“Not for gambling, Billy. I want you to check it out,” explained Jack. He showed him the hospital photo of Ghost Doggie Boy. “For anybody who looks like this.”

Billy narrowed his doubtful eyes at the photo of the Ghost. “Got a tune-up. Was it something he said?”

“Should be healed up a bit. Might be wearing shades, though. And might still have a fat lip or swollen jaw.”

Billy shrugged and rolled his eyes.

“What?” asked Jack.

“I could do it, but …”

“But what?”

“But,” Billy began, grinning, “ain’t that what they pay you to do?”

“You got a short memory, Bow. The last time I went down there I got suspended from the job. If I don’t have a warrant, my word don’t mean shit.”

“So what does that make me? Like a spy? A private eye?”

“More like a CI, a confidential informant.”

“Oh yeah? Sounds like a rat. But don’t those guys get paid, somehow?”

“Yeah, you get paid in drinks here at Grampa’s. And a bonus round at Angelina’s, if things go right.”

Billy glared at Doggie Boy’s photo, staring it down like he was memorizing it.

“Okay, I’m in.” Billy smirked. “Twenty bucks up front.”

“What?”

“You expect me to walk around just peepin’ at people and not betting? Ain’t that a bit obvious?”

“Stretch it,” Jack said, giving Billy the twenty.

“I wasn’t planning on losing,” Billy said as he finished his beer.

JACK SAT IN the front of the Wonton Dynasty, nursing his gnow nom noodles, across the street from the gambling basements on Mott. He was waiting for a call back from Billy, CI gambling while on surveillance.

Slurping the noodles, Jack had figured the Ghosts would still put Doggie Boy to work, earning his keep even though he was recovering. They’d have him working inside, out of sight, maybe watching the back door of one of the basements—number 55 or number 69—that the gang protected.

“Go to the back and ask for a cup of tea,” Jack had advised Billy. “The drinks are always in the back.”

Billy popped out of number 55 in fifteen minutes, shaking his head no when he spotted Jack in the noodle joint.

“No luck, boss,” Billy said over the cell phone. “Seen a few scumbags. But not that one.” He went down the block and disappeared into number 69.

Jack planned his next move as he waited.

Less than ten minutes later, Billy was back on the street, telling Jack over the cell phone, “Strike two, bro. They must’ve gotten this boy off the main drag.”

“Go to Mulberry Street,” Jack directed. “Number 79. The Video Palace is a front. Go out the back to the courtyard. They got keno and video poker there. Probably dealing cigarettes and weed, too.”

“Dime bags? How much should I buy?”

“Come on, Billy!”

“Only kiddin’, bro!”

“Just see if he’s there,” Jack groused.

“Okay, relax!” Billy snickered. “Dewey lay, right? If I see him, I’ll call you.”

Jack took a breath, recovered the Zen that Billy had drained out of him.

Let it go. Let it flow.

HE HEADED TOWARD the Harmonious Garden, walking north on Baxter Way past cop cars, prisoner vans, and corrections personnel at the monolithic Tombs facility. He greeted some of the uniformed corrections van drivers whom he’d met while signing off prisoner transfers to Rikers Island. They slapped palms as Jack continued toward the Chinese restaurant at number 99.

The Harmonious Garden was a cramped fast-food joint that had a back door leading to a cinder-block bunker slapped up in the courtyard between buildings. The hidden bunker also led to the rear exit of 79 Mulberry Street, so gamblers could secretly walk through the block without being seen on either street.

Jack knew the On Yee tong covered the little operation with pocket money and probably supplied the bootleg cigarettes and whatever alcohol and drugs they were peddling. He wasn’t surprised that the Ghosts ran the gambling joint under the noses of the Fifth Precinct, two blocks away, and the DOC, in the shadow of the Tombs.

The Chinese were still invisible to many of the uniformed, or uninformed, officers in the area, who mainly wanted to finish their shifts and not have to deal with the bewildering, insular Chinese community.

He ordered a quick som bow faahn plate, put his cell phone on the table, and kept a discreet eye on the back door. Billy should be almost there, he thought, sipping the hot cup of house tea the waiter had plopped down onto the plastic tabletop. He was wondering how he could get to Fay Lo without him lawyering up, when the back door swung open.

Jack watched as a gang member stepped through, wearing an oversized pair of knockoff Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses. A short and scrawny guy, thought Jack as the gangsta summoned a waiter and began placing orders. A punk ass with a dailo attitude.

The cell phone buzzed, and Jack saw Billy’s message: SAW HIM. HE JUST LEFT OUT BACK.

Thanks, Jack thought sardonically, timing is everything. He turned his attention back to the junior gangbanger and now saw the Chinese word for “dog” tattooed on his neck.

Dropping a few dollars on the table, Jack pushed back and rose from his seat.

“Hey gou jai!” he called out. “Doggie Boy!” Like he was an old acquaintance.

Doggie Boy sized Jack up, sneered, and spat, “Who the fuck are you?”

Jack flapped open his jacket to flash the gold detective’s shield. “Let’s talk, kai dai.”

“Fuck you!” yelled Doggie Boy, suddenly darting out of the side door of the restaurant.

Jack sprinted after him, both of them zigzagging across Baxter Way. They were almost to the Tombs when Jack pounced and slam-tackled him into the side of a corrections van. The uniformed officers recognized Jack and prepared for backup response.

Jack twisted Doggie into an arm lock, forced him into the van.

“You make me chase you, punk kai dai?” Jack threw him against the wall of the van.

“What the fuck?” Doggie protested. “I didn’t do nothing!”

“Then why’d you run?” Jack said as he cuffed him to the prisoner’s railing.

“I got enough trouble without cops.”

Jack pulled a switchblade out of Doggie’s jacket. “Well, now you got more trouble coming,” Jack threatened.

“Fuck you! I didn’t—” Doggie cursed as Jack bitch-slapped him across the face, sending the fake D&G shades flying and revealing the bruises still evident around Doggie’s eyes.

“Owwww fuck!” Doggie howled.

Jack braced him against the prisoner bench and showed him the river photo of dead Sing.

“Oh shit!” Doggie cursed, shaking his head. “What the fuck is that?”

“He owed Fay Lo,” Jack said. “And you punk asses killed him when he couldn’t pay up!”

“What? No, man! You got that shit all wrong!”

“You suckered him and killed him!”

“No, man! Thass crazy! Who da fuck collects from a dead man?”

“Yeah, you were trying to make an example out of him.”

“Thass crazy, yo! Swear to God, we didn’t have nothing to do with killing him!”

“Who did then?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Look, boy. You keep boo-shitting me, and I don’t have the time to waste. We’re already here at the Tombs. See my brothers outside? They can process you quick, get you off to Rikers.”

“Naw, man. No way. I didn’t do nothing!”

“Yeah, you. And your Ghost punks.”

“No way!” Doggie continued protesting. “Thass crazy.”

“I’m going to charge you with promoting and protecting an illegal gambling enterprise,” Jack said, stone-faced. “And weapons possession for the stiletto. Then I’m going to bust the blockhouse and tell them you gave it up, and we had to arrest you just to make it look good. Gonna tell them you’re my snitch now, okay, bitch? How you think that’s going to play? And you probably got priors and probation and whatever other shit you got on your sheet that will put you on the express back to Rikers anyway. You know how the brothers there will welcome your tight little Chinese ass, right?”

Jack’s last sentence seemed to get Doggie Boy’s attention.

“But I didn’t do nothing,” he started to whine.

“Right. You caught a beating for nothing outside Fay Lo’s. I know who did it,” Jack bluffed. “But here’s your chance to tell your side—why they tuned you up.” Jack pointed to the uniformed guards on the street. “Or I turn you over to them.”

Jack paused, pushed open the van door, and turned to leave. “Last chance,” he offered, watching Doggie’s eyes glaze over for what seemed like forever.

“All right!” Doggie yelled bitterly before surrendering what the rival gang boys had beaten out of him.

“The guy was into Fay Lo for five K,” he began. “Mostly from card games. They knew he worked at one of Bossy Gee’s restaurants and knew he was mad at Bossy’s people.”

“Go on.”

“He delivered to Bossy’s house and knew the location. So Fay Lo washed the debt in exchange for the address.”

“Why Bossy’s address?”

“I don’t know.”

Kidnap, arson, robbery, or murder? wondered Jack. “What’s the address?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me, boy!” Jack barked. “Bossy’s boys tuned you up for something you didn’t know?”

“They wanted to know how we knew the address.”

“And you gave Sing up.”

Doggie nodded. “They wouldn’t stop beating me!”

“You got him killed,” said Jack.

“He got himself killed!”

“So what happened? You went to the house …”

“Not me! I don’t have the rank for that. Only the dailos.” He took a quick, hard breath. “Fuck! First I get beat by those Dragon faggots, now I get beat by the cops!”

“I never beat you, punk. You called me ‘fuck’ one time too many, that’s why you got slapped. You can’t take a bitch-slap, you better get the fuck out of the bad-boy business.”

“All bool-shit! That’s all I got,” Doggie said. “So charge me or let me call the lawyer. No fears!”

Bossy or his people—probably the Dragons, who were arch enemies of the Ghosts anyway—killed Sing as some kind of payback, figured Jack. But payback for what? He stared down Doggie Boy, thinking, Charge him now and arrest him for illegal gambling, but open a pool of worms on Chinatown organized crime and confidential informants. And attract an Internal Affairs investigation into possible police misconduct.

Or play catch and release? Throw Doggie back into the swamp. Pull him out whenever needed. A snitch. A born-to-be bitch. A fish.

Ghost dailo Lucky wasn’t any help anymore, thought Jack, but now he had another confidential informant to work on, a low-level, street-rank 49. A say gou jai, dead dog, in the Ghost Legion.

Jack decided to release him.

“It’s your lucky night, punk!” Jack uncuffed Doggie and booted him out of the van. “Your takeout should be ready now!” he called out, watching Doggie shuffle off back toward the Harmonious Garden.

A fish in a barrel.

The Tombs guards allowed Jack the use of their internal directory, and the first call went as he expected: the night operator at Edgewater PD informed him that shift detectives were out in the field, but if it was an emergency, she might be able to patch through a message.

Jack left his number, said he’d be in Edgewater in the morning.

He checked the time, figured it wasn’t too late to be calling Vincent Chin.