A Brew to a Kill (18 page)

Cursing, the boy raised his fists to strike again.

Now Esther jumped in, pummeling his Dragon Fire logo. “Leave my fiancé alone!”

Billy froze, clearly distracted by Esther’s bouncing bustier. She wasn’t doing much damage—but she
was
confusing the heck out of our opponent, giving Mrs. Li enough time to sweep in.

Employing a martial arts technique known only to elderly Chinese
yeh-yehs
, she gripped her grandson’s earlobe between two fingers and tugged hard. Dragon Boy yelped like a startled puppy, and the fire went out of him.

Using her prodigious weight advantage, Mrs. Li hauled her helpless grandson to the other side of the kitchen.

Esther and I took the opportunity to beat a hasty exit—no easy task, since we were forced to push a protesting Dante down the stairs in front of us. Sputtering and cursing the three of us blew through the green archway and onto the sidewalk.

“Why did you pull me off?” Dante cried. “That’s the bastard who ran over Lilly Beth! He deserves a beat down!”

“It’s not our job to beat anyone down,” I said. “We’re not above the law. We
tell the
police
what we found out here. Got that?”

“But he must—”

“We tell the police,” I repeated, trying to cut through Dante’s adrenaline-fueled fury. “Listen to me: There’s a difference between working to see justice done and exacting your own.”

“Yeah, Baldini, calm down,” Esther said then yanked his arm. “I’ll help. Come with me…” She pulled him across the street, through a curtain of hanging plastic weather strips,
and into his favorite hole-in-the-wall dumpling shop. “Eat some pork buns.”

“That kid was ready to tear our boss apart!” Dante cried, pointing back across the street. “How is eating pork buns going to help?!”

“Eating pork buns always helps.”

“Lower your voices,” I scolded.

The little dumpling shop was packed with customers. Okay, so most of them were speaking Cantonese, stuffing their faces, and ignoring us, but the last thing we needed here was a scene. Still, I wanted Dante to know—

“I did appreciate your help. Thank you for jumping in.”

Esther pouted. “And what am I, re-steamed milk?”

“Thank you, too, Esther. You were very brave, the way you busted in.”

Dante snorted. “Busted or
busty
?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Esther snapped.

“It means the shock and awe that you inflict doesn’t come from your fists.”

“Stop bickering, you two, or I’ll cancel your wedding.”

“No problem,
Mother
,” Esther shot back with a sigh. “Alas, what kind of a ceremony could we have had anyway? No cupcakes, no egg tarts—and a bad-luck number of dowry trays.”

That’s when I noticed the activity across the street. I nudged my team. That mysterious black door next to the green archway had slid open to reveal an elevator shaft. Inside was a primitive freight car, little more than a metal cage.

Dragon Boy emerged with another youth. Each pushed a wheeled cupcake rack. A moment later, a third man stepped into the light.

“What is that third guy carrying?” I whispered.

The man was older than the others and much bigger. Good thing, too, because he was carrying bulging black bags, one over each shoulder. Each sack looked as large as a sailor’s kit.

“You’re right, Boss, that’s weird. What could be in those black bags?”

“Well, they’re not restaurant supplies. Those come in neat
boxes, and you certainly wouldn’t carry fruits or vegetables in polyester bags.”

“They’re big enough to be body bags,” Esther noted uneasily.

Dante frowned. “Let’s follow.”

“From a distance,” I insisted. “We don’t need any more violence.”

“But what if—”

“No buts, Dante. I may not be your
yeh-yeh
, but I’m still your boss.”

“Come on, before they get away!” Esther cried. Pushing through the hanging weather strips, she raced off, heels clicking on the pavement as she ran down Mosco.

Dante glanced at me. “Women who wear bustiers should never,
ever
run.”

We caught up with our bouncing barista at the end of the block. Cautiously, all three of us peered around the corner. There was no sign of Kaylie’s van—but I finally got a look at the Dragon Fire food truck.

Bright red with gold trim, the vehicle’s elaborate artwork depicted a coiled dragon, its fiery breath providing the heat beneath a giant wok.

“Cool design,” Esther whispered as we watched the big black bags being loaded into the truck. Next, Billy and his helper rolled Kaylie’s cupcake racks up a steel ramp and into the belly of the beast.

“Wonder what’s on today’s menu?” As Esther craned her neck, I heard a man loudly curse.

“Son of a bitch!”

For a split-second I thought we’d been spotted. But the shout came from the other side of Mulberry, near Columbus Park.

“Who the hell did this?!” The raging man circled his sleek BMW. Every window had been slapped with dozens of neon orange stickers bearing the
Two Wheels Good
bicycle logo.

The man clawed at the stickers, trying to pull them free, but the glue wouldn’t budge. The most he could manage was to shred some of the orange paper with the edge of his key.

“What’s going on?” I wondered aloud.

“Dude’s Beemer is parked illegally, in the middle of a designated bicycle lane,” Dante explained. “Guess he just expected a ticket. Looks like Fairway’s people thought he deserved more than that.”

“Yeah, and Big Brother is still watching,” Esther said, pointing. “Or should I say Big Sister? Check her out.”

Frizzy blonde hair in a ponytail, athletic body clad in silver sports bra and bicycle shorts, a pink sweatband around her forehead, Warrior Barbie sat astride a sleek chrome racing bike in the middle of a narrow stretch of Columbus Park. The girl was tittering with undisguised glee as she used her smart phone camera to capture the reaction of BMW guy.

“Whatever means necessary,” Dante said, echoing Fairway’s refrain.

I could tell he was impressed. Esther was, too. And I understood their frustration with scofflaws. There were enough of them in this town—men and women who thought they could get around the rules and regulations that the rest of us lived by because they could afford to pay the traffic tickets or their lawyers or do whatever it took to game the system.

It angered me, too. But it wasn’t an excuse for committing crime—because that’s what this was: vandalism. And as I considered Warrior Barbie’s gratification from this guy’s grief, I couldn’t help wondering how she’d feel if she learned he’d parked there because his little girl went missing, or his elderly mother had suffered a heart attack.

And how far would Fairway’s people go? If someone did something more serious than this (at least in their eyes), would they consider more extreme illegal acts justified? A necessary means to accomplish their “better ends”?

Just then, a diesel engine rumbled. The
Dragon Fire
truck was pulling away from the curb. We watched it lumber down Mulberry.

I checked my watch. “We have time.”

“Time for what, Boss?” Esther asked.

“I’ll tell you on the way. Taxi!”

“F
OLLOW
that food truck!”

“Huh?” Our newly minted citizen cabbie (Mr. Jun Hon, according to his hack license) turned in his seat for clarification, his lined brow wrinkling even more. “Where you going, lady?”

“You see that truck ahead of us? The one with the dragon breathing fire under a giant wok? Well, wherever it goes, I want you to follow.”

Sitting at my left in the cab’s backseat, Esther pushed up her glasses. “Geez, Boss, if you needed a nosh, we could have gone back for pork buns.”

“We’re not following the
wok
,” I said. “We’re following what’s on it.”

“The cupcakes?” said Dante, at my right.

Sitting in the middle, I shook my head. “The black bags.”

O
UR
odyssey began as we rolled down Mulberry—the section that paralleled Columbus Park.

Esther was right about the area’s history. Over a century
ago, this placid green space was the historical site of Five Points, one of the most dangerous slums in the country, until New York’s leaders became fed up with their violent turf wars and swept it away, replacing it with this park.

The “Columbus” name was meant as a tribute to the community’s Italian population back when it had been Italian. The influx of Asian immigrants (up to and including our cabbie, Mr. Hon) eventually reduced little Italy to its current few blocks of restaurants, cafés, and souvenir shops. The only thing named Five Points these days was a restaurant in Noho and Dante’s favorite arts collective, housed in a converted firehouse nearby.

At the intersection with Bayard, our taxi hung a right and practically came to a standstill. It took us nearly fifteen minutes to negotiate the relatively short distance from here to Mott to Canal.

“Alas,” Esther sighed, “the drawback of ‘four wheels’ in Chinatown.”

The roadway was so narrow that the five- and six-story brick structures—most of them cramped tenements dating back to the nineteenth century—felt like towering hulks. Delivery trucks and cargo vans were the biggest issue. Drivers pulled over and bailed out, sometimes with their motors running, to unload boxes, barrels, and bins.

We rolled by more Chinese take-out joints, hair salons, dry cleaners, green-grocers, two aromatic herb stores, and a very popular acupuncture clinic.

“Pin It!” Esther cried.

Dante rolled his eyes, and I pointed out another site: a striking, pagoda-like building housing a jewelry store and a bakery on its ground floor. “Mike once told me this address used to be the headquarters of a notorious Chinatown gang.”

“On Leong Tong,” our driver informed us.

According to Mr. Hon, this “Chinese Merchants Association” was now simply an alliance of Chinatown businessmen, but for nearly one hundred years—and as late as the 1990s—On Leong Tong leaders were running protection rackets out
of this building with a street gang known as the Ghost Shadows.

“Nice name,” Esther said.

“Maybe,” our driver said. “But methods—not so nice.”

Dante pointed out they had nothing on the Italians. I couldn’t argue. Just a few blocks away, in what was left of Little Italy, sat a café where the Genovese family had a “social club” and bookmaking operation, until the Mafia-busting Rudy Giuliani put an end to the party.

Before he’d run for mayor (or president, for that matter). Giuliani had been a U.S. attorney, wielding the RICO law like a sledgehammer to bust up the Five Families with charges of extortion, labor racketeering, and murder for hire. His efforts resulted in four thousand convictions and only a handful of reversals.

“It must have felt good—bringing down guys that bad,” I said.

“Ha!” barked Mr. Hon.

“You don’t agree?”

“How good you feel when bad guys put a price on your head?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It never happened to me.”

“Hold up,” Dante interrupted. “You’re telling me that Giuliani had mob contracts put out on him?”

The cabbie and I both nodded.

“How much?” Dante asked.

“First contract, eight-hundred thou,” said Mr. Hon. “Second contract, four-hundred thou.”

“That doesn’t sound like a lot,” Esther replied.

“A lot for scumbag! Rudy G one lucky lawyer.”

At last, we escaped the congestion and gloom of those former tenement streets. Turning onto Bowery, we felt the world open up again as the blocked light gave way to sun and sky. This six-lane boulevard offered vast space between buildings and boasted many newer ones—Confucius Plaza being a shining example.