Текст книги "Death Money "

Автор книги: Henry Chang

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

O. G.

THE MORNING BROUGHT Jack back to the side streets behind the Tombs facility. He was looking for Vincent Chin, editor of the United National, Chinatown’s oldest Chinese-language newspaper. Vincent had assisted Jack on previous Chinatown cases by providing not only what was fit to print but also neighborhood gossip, street talk, and unsubstantiated chatter from old women and shiftless men in smoky coffee shops.

The United National was Chinatown’s hometown paper and had been Pa’s favorite.

Jack followed the streets leading into TriBeCa, the gentrified “triangle” of streets below the Canal Street thoroughfare. He’d brought along two containers of nai cha tea from Eddie’s.

The National was located in a renovated storefront on White Street across from the Men’s Mission and was the only Chinatown newspaper without a color section. The pressmen still typeset by hand the thousands of Chinese characters needed to go to print.

Vincent, who looked younger than his forty years, was in the copy room reviewing what the pressmen had laid out when Jack walked in.

“In my office,” Vincent said. “I’ll be a few minutes.”

A SMALL OFFICE, but on the editorial desk along the wall, Vincent had laid out an array of Chinese news articles, arranged in a loose chronological order, featuring Bossy Jook Mun Gee and his family.

Jack couldn’t read all the Chinese words, but he scanned the accompanying photographs and could figure out what the story was about. Everything in black and white, Cantonese block characters like ideographs.

The first news article, in a “Profiles” piece, was a full-page historical perspective on three generations of a prominent family.

The Gees.

The Gees were an old-line Chinatown family, dating their presence in New York City to 1925, to the remnants of the bachelor generation. There was a posed studio photo of the patriarch, Gee Duck Hong, with floral accents and a Chinese landscape in the background.

Old man Gee started Dynasty Noodles, which became the largest Chinese pasta manufacturing company on the East Coast. Expanded the gwai lo taste for lo mein, chow mein, and wonton noodles. A Gum Shan, a mountain of noodles.

There was a photo of Bossy Jook Mun Gee, who’d been promoted to director at Dynasty Noodles, and in a separate photo with his young sons, Gary and Francis, attending local gifted schools.

Jack smiled. Three generations of a successful, assimilated Chinese American family.

“What the article doesn’t mention,” Vincent said, coming into the closet office, “is that the old man Gee Duck was in bed with the Hip Ching Association and had his greedy fingers big time in paper identities and illegal alcohol and untaxed cigarettes.”

“Good morning.” Jack grinned.

“Morning.” Vincent smiled. “The old man had Triad connections with the Hok Nam Moon in Toishan, and to an import-export company that tied him to the opium and heroin trade.”

“Nice guy,” Jack said.

“The article doesn’t mention his arrests for bookmaking, extortion, and gambling rackets. All before my time,” Vincent said. “In 1950, his partner in Dynasty Noodles died mysteriously while on a trip to Taiwan—something about a traffic accident and a heart attack.”

Jack took a sip of his nai cha. Bossy was known to be a backer of the Hip Ching gambling dens, Chinatown liquor stores, and dry-goods companies he could manipulate to smuggle contraband.

The Chinatown buildings the old man bought, with the backing of the Gee Association, when nobody wanted them back in the 1930s, were now worth untold millions. Vincent added, after taking a moment to add brown sugar to his tea, “They have an office on Pell Street. Manage all the real estate and businesses there.”

The second article included a photo of a younger Bossy, maybe fortyish, smiling on a pristine lot of land in Edgewater, New Jersey, not far from the Yaohan Plaza Japanese sushi mall on the waterfront.

It was an architectural feature, translated from Design Digest magazine. Bossy James Gee was planning a large renovation of his house to accommodate an extended immigrant family. The article featured a rendering of the house with all the latest gadgets and accoutrements: a koi garden inside a security perimeter, a two-car garage, a satellite dish, an outdoor pool with a hot tub.

His sons looked older in the accompanying photo. Teenagers? One much taller than the other. Standing off in the distance. Dad, doing all the posing, and talking for them all.

A modern family in a suburban setting.

There was no mention of the actual address of the site, but a traffic sign in the photo showed its proximity to Yaohan Plaza.

Attached was a little follow-up article on complaints from longtime residents of Edgewater about Asians building “monster homes” in the area. Bossy’s neighbors, citing construction noise and inconveniences and traffic problems, complained that the large, three-level houses were ostentatious and detracted from the “rustic simplicity” of the neighborhood.

“Same thing happened in Vancouver and Toronto. And other places,” said Vincent. “Wealthy Chinese immigrants arrive in a formerly all-white area. They buy a house, tear it down. Then they build a giant multilevel house on the plot, to the resentment of the neighbors.” He blew the steam off his tea. “Hey, Asians have big families, right? But it’s caused big problems. Whole Chinese communities have been uprooted in the face of what some consider racism and moved to more isolated but friendlier locations.”

The fourth piece was an investigative report on surveillance operations conducted by the OCCB—the Organized Crime Control Bureau—focusing on Jook Mun “James” Gee as a member of the Hip Ching tong, being investigated for illegal gambling, smuggling contraband, and affiliation with the notorious Chinatown Black Dragons street gang. Possible ATF investigation. The Hip Chings themselves were targets of a federal probe into RICO—Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations—activities.

Bossy had hired Solomon Schwartz, one of the top criminal defense lawyers in the city. There were no indictments. Schwartz got “circumstantial evidence” dismissed at that point.

“They nicknamed him ‘Bossy,’” Vincent continued, “because of the way he liked to order people around. Bossy Gee, only son of the legendary Gee Duck Hong. Fifteen years ago he was accused of hiring an underaged Chinese girl for a massage, and then molesting her. The teenager wanted to press charges, but her mother stopped her, and the case was settled out of court.”

Did Bossy pay off the family, or threaten them?

“Rumor has it that Bossy’s wife wanted a divorce,” Vincent said. “But he refused. Eventually she moved back to family in Taiwan. Guess she felt that she’d lost face and didn’t wanted to hear Chinatown gossip.”

Two small news items were taped together. One featured an honor guard of old Chinese veterans from the local American Legion Post placing a wreath at the Kimlau Gate on Memorial Day, honoring Chinatown’s war dead. The other item was a mention of a military funeral proceeding out of the Wah Fook parlor. A photo of Marines in parade dress uniforms, shouldering the flag-draped coffin of “Gary” Ying Hong Gee, on Mulberry Street. Another photo showing Gary posing proudly in uniform.

Both men were quiet for a moment as they sipped their teas.

“The story is that Gary Gee wanted to serve his country and then use the GI Bill to go to college. He wanted to study law, wanted to make a difference. He wanted to earn it on his own, not use his father’s Chinatown influence. Joining the Marines seemed like a good choice.” Jack knew what Vincent meant. Despite a few global hot spots, it had been a peacetime military, with the United States patrolling the world.

“Gary was the tangerine of his father’s eye,” Vincent added. “But almost at the end of his tour, there was a Hezbollah truck-bomb attack on a Marine barracks. You probably remember, it was in the Middle East. Twelve thousand pounds of TNT killed about two hundred Marines. Gary was one of them.”

They stared at the photo of the military funeral outside the Wah Fook.

“His father and grandfather were devastated, mourning the death of their favorite child. They had twenty-five cars in the funeral cortege. Younger brother Frank went along but didn’t hide his displeasure at being forced to go to the cemetery. He got into a fight with a photographer from one of the other dailies.” There was a small photo of Frank, a scowling juvenile face, fists clenched and cocked at the camera.

Jack imagined the casket being lowered into the ground, a soldier trumpeting taps in the background.

“The old man, Duck Hong, died a couple of months ago.” Vincent frowned. “He had a heart attack at home. Not many details, just an obituary. Apparently they handled it all in New Jersey.”

“They didn’t want to publicize a natural death?” Jack said, guessing aloud.

Vincent shrugged, didn’t have an answer.

After a run of bad press, is Bossy just trying to stay out of the limelight? Jack wondered. Just trying to run his business low key? Was there more to the story? Money—he heard Ah Por’s whisper again—evil. He swept the news items and photos into a folder and pocketed them inside his jacket.

Jack thanked Vincent, and they agreed to do dim sum sometime. He knew Vincent would appreciate an inside scoop when the case got resolved.

Taking the side streets back into Chinatown, Jack headed for Pell Street, where the Hip Ching ruled, with the vicious muscle of the Black Dragons. Looking for a prominent man from a powerful Chinatown family, and for answers to questions still floating in the frigid morning.

THE FIVE-STORY, BROWN-BRICK building at the corner of Mott and Pell was one of the few that still featured Chinese roof architecture, curved tiles that resembled lengths of green bamboo on a slanted, pagoda-style façade.

A Baskin-Robbins ice cream shop occupied the large storefront on Mott, but the building’s entrance was at 36 Pell.

The second-floor apartments had all been converted to commercial offices featuring large picture windows that overlooked the busy corner. Signs in the windows promoted a Hong Kong travel agency, an immigration lawyer, an accountant, and a real-estate broker.

Jack wondered if the Hip Chings owned the building. Many of the Chinatown tongs and family associations had a history of purchasing buildings on the same street where their clan headquarters were located. In Depression-era New York City, many white building owners desperately sought to liquidate their holdings to reduce landlord liabilities, and in turn, the Chinatown Chinese snapped up whatever properties they could.

Jack also wondered if Bossy Gee, a Hip Ching crony, owned a piece of the building.

He stepped into number 36 and scanned the office listings posted on the wall.

Bossy’s company, Golden Mountain Realty, was away from the window offices out front, but was the first room off the short flight of stairs. Gold plastic letters, GOLDEN MOUNTAIN REALTY, gleamed above the entrance.

The industrial-gray door was a neat piece of hardware—solid steel with a top half-panel of thick glass, heavy-duty locks and door handle—the kind of door you’d expect at a ghetto check-cashing place, not a Chinatown realty office.

The other doors on the landing were pushovers by comparison.

He pressed the door button and waited. He noticed the surveillance camera, high over his left shoulder in the far corner of the window wall. Covers all the businesses and residents’ comings and goings. On the other side of the glass panel was a reception area, a pretty lady behind a desk with a computer screen and phone-fax setup. She looked to be in her thirties, was probably older but still kept herself looking good. Business jacket, professional look.

She buzzed him in.

Jack badged her right away. She seemed to be alone in the office, and he wanted to put her at ease. “I need to speak with Mr. Gee,” Jack said, glancing at the open door to an empty inner office. The place had a new-car smell.

“He’s not here today,” she answered in her smiling Hong Kong Cantonese. “But I can try to call him. What is this about, ah sir?”

“Just tell him it’s a police matter.” Jack smiled politely as she gestured toward one of the quilted black leather chairs. Knockoffs from China, he thought. He sat down, scanning the office as she made the call. There were real-estate postings on the walls, photos of various buildings in Chinatown and other locations in the Tri-State area. Commercial as well as residential properties. Most of the listings centered near Chinese or Asian communities—Chinatowns, K-Towns and J-Towns, Little Saigon/Malaysia/Bombay, etc. There was a long counter on the wall behind him where the realty sections from various Chinese-language newspapers featured their own listings and properties.

One of the listings was a luxury home in Edgewater, New Jersey: 88 Edgewater Lane.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not picking up. He may be in the field.” She sounded like she’d practiced the line.

“Could you try once more?” Jack asked, nodding his thank you as she tried the call again. He wondered if she was being loyal to her boss, Bossy Gee, and was just playing him, the chaai lo. He tried to recall Singarette’s notation on the New Jersey bus map.

She let her call continue for a full minute before announcing, “He’s still not picking up. Sorry.”

“Can you try his cell phone?”

She called, but after a few seconds said, “It’s going to voice mail.”

Jack extended his NYPD detective’s card to her.

“Please have him call me,” he said.

“Ho ahh.” She smiled. “Certainly.”

She buzzed him out, and as he stepped back through the heavy door, he felt like he’d beaten lockdown at Rikers.

She was still smiling at him as he turned away from the hallway camera and walked down the stairs to Pell Street.

OUTSIDE THE FIFTH Precinct on Elizabeth Alley, he looked for the undercover cars and found an old Chevy Impala, its NYPD parking placard visible on the dash.

The sergeant at the duty desk didn’t recognize him at first and continued reviewing the assignments on his roster as he gave Jack another once-over.

“The Chevy’s with Fields and Malone,” he said finally, tossing Jack the car keys. “They’re in court until the end of the shift.”

“I’ll have it back before then,” Jack promised. “Thanks.”

He ran the engine a few minutes, letting the Impala warm up before heading for the West Side Highway toward the George Washington Bridge. The GWB would take him across the Hudson into Fort Lee, New Jersey.

He didn’t know the area well but figured he could find Edgewater directly, since it was part of the same county.

On the Edge

HE KEPT THE frosted bathroom lights off. There was enough daylight from the vent windows, he felt.

The coolness of the marble floor curled around his ankles.

He ran the shiny brass faucet for a few seconds, catching a dim glimpse of himself in the mirror, before cupping the warm water in his hands and bringing it to his face. The rinse felt welcoming, purifying. Some of the splash left wet blotches on the sleeves of his blue Ascot Chang bathrobe.

He didn’t care.

His vision was blurred by the second and third rinse, and it took him a minute to refocus on the face in the mirror. Except for the puffiness under his eyes, he decided he didn’t look too bad for a man whose next milestone birthday would make him sixty years old, five cycles of the Chinese horoscope.

Nobody is guaranteed six cycles, he thought, especially considering all the trouble he’d had in recent years.

He smoothed the excess water from his hands into his hair, roughly combing it back with his fingers. He patted his face dry and left the towel by the side of the polished stone sink, remembering that he’d canceled the cleaning woman’s contract two weeks earlier because it didn’t matter anymore.

He’d decided to move out. The only question was where.

He padded quietly, in his soft Jimmy Choo slippers, through the silence in the big empty house, past the rare jade vases and the classical Chinese calligraphy framed and hanging on the pearly walls, down the thickly carpeted steps, and around to the modern walk-through kitchen, where he powered up the small TV on the counter, already set to the Chinese cable channel. Just to have some noise in the house. Made it feel like he wasn’t alone.

HE POURED HIMSELF a shot of XO and tried to remember which days they’d lined up for showing the house.

He was pleased to be using his own realty company, thereby cutting costs dramatically, and trusted the veteran agents to whom he’d given the exclusives to sell what was where he and his family had lived the last fifteen years of his life. A lot of history, good and bad.

The tri-level house had been silent since his father’s funeral, since his mother and wife returned to Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively. Franky, his son, hadn’t been home in days, which wasn’t unusual.

“James” Jook Mun Gee, businessman and entrepreneur, knew he didn’t need the house anymore. What was once a social statement was now just a bad memory, where bad things had taken place, and where bad feelings still lingered in the air.

He downed the XO and poured another.

He considered his other places in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not too far from New York City. Nice, two-family-type homes he could relocate to. Big enough for the extended family from overseas. But he knew Franky would never go.

He’d be alone most of the time.

In the end, he didn’t really want to leave New York City. Too many opportunities and, besides, his Hip Ching and Triad associations were all in the city.

He’d been considering condominiums in Sunset Park, the Brooklyn Chinatown, or on the outskirts of the Flushing, Queens, Chinatown. Places where he can blend in. He pulled a Cuban cigar from a crevice in an intricately carved ivory tusk, engraved with the legends of the Five Villages.

He fired up the cigar, no longer expecting a wife’s complaint about the smell.

The realty agents all carried air freshener, he knew.

Sell the house, he focused. He’d make an easy half-million profit in the sale anyway. Next, move to smaller digs. Allow for his estranged wife and his wayward son, Franky, but not let them limit him. A condo in Manhattan? The women would like that. Better values in Brooklyn? He knew Franky wouldn’t give a shit whatsoever.

Somewhere he could start anew?

He kept having the flashbacks.

He’d wanted to retreat to one of the other homes, but conditions were inappropriate. He’d alerted his agents in Brooklyn. Not far from Manhattan, with easy access.

He didn’t want to live in the house much longer.

And the flashbacks just made things worse.

THE IMPALA HELD its own on the highway, and Jack could see the GWB in the distance. He wondered about the old man, Bossy’s father, Gee Duck Hong, and what his life must have been like. As a younger man he would have been a prominent member of the bachelor generation in Chinatown—Jack’s father’s generation—when Chinese bachelors satisfied their needs with alcohol, opium, gambling, and prostitutes in an atmosphere of organized tong crime and racial discrimination. It was a time when Chinese hatchet men fought each other with meat cleavers and hammers on Doyers Street, and along Mott and Pell; men who had never before wielded a knife or tool in anger learned quickly from the gwai lo whites, vicious gangs like the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery Boys. This was Gee Duck Hong’s time. Pioneering times, and tribalism, for the Chinese in New York City. Wealthy merchants shunned the lowly laundrymen and street vendors as class struggle laid bare the conflicting internal politics of Chinatown, even as the community was fighting for its very life against municipal corruption and racism.

Pa’s history lesson faded in Jack’s brain as the old Chevy crossed the bridge and brought him into Fort Lee.

He drove through upscale bedroom communities with stately homes in the million-dollar range, surrounded by tall, hardy trees, natural vistas, a nearby lakefront. He cranked down the window and caught the rich scent of old money in the rush of cold air.

There was still some snow cover, not unusual at the higher elevation, with chunks of frozen slush shoveled to the curbside. He passed rows of bare hedges, graveled driveways, and finally found the street that led to the Edgewater station house. Soon enough, he came to a modern brick facility with multipurpose trailers forming a perimeter. There was plenty of open parking in a back lot, but Jack parked the Chevy as close as he could get to the main entrance.

THE DETECTIVE ON duty seemed to be waiting for him, a beefy guy with ruddy cheeks in a rumpled suit. He had a salt-and-pepper military haircut. Jack wondered if he’d just come in from the cold, imagining him in the woods in camouflage gear, bow hunting deer or blowing away a bear with an assault rifle.

Jack broke the awkward quiet by placing his ID and gold shield on the duty desk.

“So what’s up, brother?” the Jersey detective greeted Jack, direct but accommodating, while pointing toward one of the metal folding chairs. He took another look at Jack’s ID and badge, apparently having never met, much less ever having had a conversation with, a Chinese cop, NYPD, federal, or otherwise.

“I’m working a homicide,” Jack began in his perfect Lower East Side English, “which could be connected to something that might’ve happened out here.”

“Might have happened?” The Edgewater cop seemed pleasantly surprised by Jack’s command of the language.

“Something like kidnap, burglary, robbery. Or home invasion, arson?”

“Out here?” The crew cut narrowed his eyes. He was reviewing local crimes in his head.

“In Edgewater. Could be tied to a Mr. James Gee.” Jack added, “A big house. I don’t have an address.” He thought he saw the man blink on Gee.

“This was how long ago?”

“Has to be recent,” Jack offered. “A few weeks, coupla months maybe.”

There was a long pause as the two men sat back, sizing each other up. You have a lot of that out here, wondered Jack during the delay, or hardly any? A crime happens just across the river, in another state, but unless it’s a notorious case with a federal tie-in, he’d never hear about it.

“You’re right. There was a home invasion,” the Jersey cop finally offered, like it was bait. “In February. What now? You got a lead for me?”

“Not yet,” Jack countered, “but I got a victim who maybe died because of it. Your home invasion had Chinese victims?”

“We don’t record data based on race.”

“I know that.” Jack shrugged, working the cop-brother angle. “Just off the record, anything with a James Gee?”

The crew cut took another long breath. “Okay,” he said. “But anything you get comes my way. Gang intel, organized crime, immigration. Everything.” Color rose on his face.

“You got it,” Jack said.

“It’s the only open case in my jacket,” he said frowning. “And anybody who comes and fucks around in my backyard, they gotta pay. Whether the victim helps us or not.”

“How’s that?”

“The victim, Mr. Gee—it wasn’t ‘James’ as I remember, something else Chinese—was cooperative but didn’t give us anything really useful. I got the idea he knew more than he was telling.”

“Go on.”

“Gee said he had no enemies that he knew of and was unaware of any threats against him or his family. We later thought it might have something to do with his son Francis, who had two criminal mischief and grand theft auto beefs here. We didn’t get anywhere with that.”

“How’d it go down? The home invasion?”

“Patrol got the call, a nine-eleven,” he said, “during the change of shift. A resident of Edgewater Lane complained that a car had sideswiped him at high speed as he was pulling in outside his home. He claimed the car came from the direction of Mr. Gee’s house.”

“He knew the location of Mr. Gee’s house?” Jack asked.

“He said ‘the Chinaman’s house.’” The crew cut watched for a reaction from Jack.

Nothing but his inscrutable face.

He continued the tale.

“So patrol went to the location. Some lights were on inside the house. No one answered the front door, but the side doors were open. They found Mr. Gee and his father inside. Both were bound and gagged. Gee had a gash on the back of his head, nothing serious, and the old man complained about chest pains. They put out a call for EMS.”

“How many perps? How’d they gain access?”

“Mr. Gee said he had a security alarm system but hadn’t activated it for the night, as he thought his son might be coming home late. He said the alarms in the area had activated last year during the nor’easter, and again when we had the tremors in the Palisades. They had to wait a long time for the alarm company to respond. So he kept the system off until they were ready to sleep. Most of the time he said it was just him and his father. That night, three armed men surprised them.”

“What happened to the old man?” Jack remembered Vincent Chin’s words, natural death.

“He had a massive stroke before EMS arrived. They pronounced him at the hospital.”

“What about the son?” Jack asked.

“Wasn’t home. Was at a party, and the alibi’s good.”

Jack shook his head. “He had nothing to say?”

“Again, nothing that was helpful. But not surprising, since he’s on probation here.”

“Probation? You got him on a leash?”

“Yeah, but he hasn’t violated, as far as we know.”

Jack remembered the house mentioned in the architecture magazine.

“What’s the address?” he asked, wondering if Bossy Gee was at home.