Death Money (18 page)

“I’ve got nothing to hide.”

Almost as if on cue, the receptionist’s voice came over the phone speaker on his desk. “Your car is waiting downstairs now,” she announced. Bossy stood up behind the desk, indicating the meeting was over.

Jack stood up as well. “Thanks for your time, Gee
saang
,” Jack said coolly, heading for the door before turning back again. “Just one more thing. I’ll need to speak to your son. Frank, is it?” He watched Bossy’s face turn pink, then red.

“Why?” Bossy’s eyes narrowed. “He wasn’t there that night.”

“Just routine.” Jack smiled into Bossy’s taut mask. “Just to eliminate him from the scenario.”

“Well, he doesn’t come home much. And he keeps changing his phone number.” Bossy’s eyes showing Jack to the door now.

The son trying to evade law enforcement?
Jack dropped another NYPD detective’s card on the desk.

“If you speak with him, please ask him to call me.”

“Certainly,” Bossy replied, but the look on his face said,
Like hell I will
.

Jack went out and nodded to the smiling receptionist as he left. When he got downstairs, the street was crowded with late-afternoon activity, but he didn’t see Bossy’s car waiting anywhere.

He decided not to wait for Franky Noodles’s phone call and went up Pell to pay Half-Ass a visit.

When he passed Doyers Street, he noticed a red Camaro parked at the bend, halfway onto the sidewalk.
Bossy’s kid must be in the vicinity
.

Half-Ass looked like its name: a half-ass paint job on a half-ass renovation of what was once a Chinatown association front. A Hip Ching
tong
storefront on the shortest street in Chinatown.

A simple hand-painted sign hung above the door and picture window. In big-brush block letters
KONG SON RESTAURANT
, with a few smaller Chinese characters and the number 9, for 9 Pell Street. Kong Son was the official business name, but local
jook sings
—American-born Chinese, or ABCs—had nicknamed the place Half-Ass for its appearance. But their fast-food plates were notoriously popular. It was a place frequented by locals and Pell Street regulars, with a big takeout trade to
tong
affiliates. It was a pit stop for Chinatown truckers and car-service jockeys breaking for a quick hit of Chinatown comfort food.

Pa had brought Jack here many times as a kid.

H
E PUSHED IN
through the squeaky aluminum door and ordered a cup of
jai fear
at one of the stools along the coffee
counter, casually scanning the room as he waited.
The small front tables empty
. He glimpsed a customer stepping away from the hot-plates counter:
short
, maybe five-six but built thick like a
foo
dog under the tight designer leather jacket. Moving like he thought highly of who he was, carrying a generous plate of
gee pa faahn
back to his table of gang-bangers. They were Black Dragons, easy to see by the dragon tattoos on their hands, arms, and necks.

Turning to the steamy wall mirror above the coffee and tea stations, Jack viewed the gang near the back wall. The round table had a group of eight: four young Chinese gang-bangers, three of their groupie girlfriends, and, from the memory of a scowling cemetery photo in Jack’s mind, one Francis “Franky Noodles” Gee. The Foo Dog.

The other gangsters tried to keep their backs to the wall.

The girls looked fourteen but were probably eighteen and wore a dozen tropical colors highlighted into their feathered hairstyles. The four wannabes wore spiky punk hair and leather jackets, looked more like players in a rock band than stone-cold fighters in a vicious street gang.

The girls nursed their bubble teas and giggled while the guys cussed, smoked cigarettes, and drank fluorescent-colored soda.

Franky, who looked noticeably older than the pack around him, was the only one chowing down this afternoon.

Jack’s cup of
jai fear
arrived, and he spooned in some sugar without taking his eyes off Franky. It was clear to him that Franky wasn’t Sing’s killer.
Too short
, according to the ME’s profile, and, as Jack could see watching him fork a piece of pork into his mouth,
not left-handed
.

Leaving a dollar on the counter for his coffee, Jack stepped to the Dragons’ table, attracting wary looks from a few of them. When he pulled back a chair and sat, the table went silent.

Jack quietly laid his gold shield on the table and pulled back his jacket to reveal the butt of his Colt Special. Franky gave the groupie girls a look, and they left Half-Ass,
carrying
, Jack knew, the gang’s guns in their knockoff designer handbags. It was common practice in Chinatown gangland; no one got busted for weapons possession, and any cop who pulled a gun would have to justify it.

Franky and Jack glared at each other, but both knew better, wisely choosing to play it cool and see what the deal was before they ruined Half-Ass’s afternoon.

“So
what?
” Franky said, shrugging as Jack put his badge away.

“So I just met with your father,” Jack said.

“That right?” Franky’s nonchalant response drew sniggers from the four Dragon boys.

“Know what for,
Francis?
” Franky’s frown indicated he didn’t like the mocking way Jack used his name.

“You picked up your weekly
bribe?
” he countered. All the Dragons snickered.

“You really want to talk ‘home invasion’ in front of the scrubs?”

The snickering stopped.

“Better check the streets, boys,” Franky said, “before your
dailo
gets pissed off again.” They left Half-Ass as Franky went back to scarfing down his pork-chop rice. “I wasn’t home that night,” he said between bites.

“I know you have an alibi for that night,” Jack offered.

“Yeah, and like I was going to rob my own family,
right
.” Franky shook his head.

“But if it’s got anything to do with why a body floated onto my desk,” Jack said, “you’d better say something now.”

“I don’t know anything about that.” Smooth, like his father, like he had experience being coached by counsel.

“Your B-team tuned up a Ghost named Doggie Boy and got my victim’s name.”

“I don’t know anything about
that
, either,” Franky repeated coolly.

“Then a couple of weeks later, my vic winds up dead.”

“Again,
Detective
, I know nothing about this.” Franky’s tone,
like father like son
, was superior. “But if what you say is true, the Ghosts should be your main suspects.”

“You like the Ghosts for the home invasion?”

“Sure. You say they had the information, they’re good for it. And those fuckers are the only ones with the balls to pull it off.”

But why would they kill Sing?
wondered Jack.
Not like Jun Singarette was going to talk about any of it
.

“That’s not enough,” Jack said.

“My father told you about one of them saying, ‘No fears’?”

“He did.”

“‘No fears’ is the slogan of some of the senior Ghost boys’ crews. They think they’re hot shit.”

“You told your father this?”

“What do
you
think?” Franky said.

“I think Ghosts hit your father’s house,” Jack said. “But I don’t think they whacked my victim.”

“That right?” Sarcasm again.

“I think
you
guys got the real motivation,” Jack said. “Like
payback
.”

“Wasn’t me,” Franky said. “Wasn’t us.”

“Where were you four nights ago?” Jack pressed.

“Gambling, like every night.” Franky sighed. “Then karaoke, in the basements.”

“Going to be a
lot
of witnesses for that, I bet.”

“Yeah,
right
.”

“Give me a reason to believe
any
of that’s true.”

Franky finished his
gee pa
, pushed the plate aside. “Give me a reason why I should even continue talking to you.”

“No, you give
me
a reason,” Jack said, “why I shouldn’t have Traffic Division ticket and tow that shiny red car of yours every time it’s in Chinatown. Tell me why I shouldn’t get your probation violated over hanging out with known criminals in a known organized-crime location. Tell me why your Chinese ass doesn’t want to get sent back to Rahway or Trenton State, even for a minute.”

Franky was taken aback by what Jack knew about him.

“I didn’t
violate
nothing,” he said meekly.

“You’re violating my intelligence,
kai dai
, so let’s stop fucking around,” Jack said. “You all beat my vic’s name out of your rivals, and he winds up dead.”

Franky took a breath, licked his lips. “But I didn’t
violate
nothing,” he quietly insisted.

“Maybe I don’t think
you
did it. But I know you know something about it.”

“Okay.” Franky surrendered an answer. “I would have done it,
gladly
, if Father hadn’t shut us down. He never liked the gangs involved in our family business and forced us out of it.”

“He was going to handle it?”

“I didn’t say that,” Franky said. “I’m just telling you that we didn’t do it. Not me, not my boys.”

“Your father kept you out of it?”

“Correct.”

There was a silent moment as Jack fought back a smile. He’d let Franky Noodles off the hook for now but realized he had a new angle on Bossy Gee.
If father and son didn’t do it, who did?

On the street outside Half-Ass, he could see two Dragons peering into the storefronts, moving along.

The answers, Jack had a hunch, were
here
, on this street, in the Hip Ching gambling den behind Half-Ass, at Bossy’s realty office, and in other locations in Bossy’s underworld. But not
now
, Jack knew, not in daylight. He’d return after dark, he decided, when Chinatown nightlife controlled the streets.

He watched as Franky Noodles waved to the counterman on the way out, suddenly in a hurry to get back to his red Camaro.

Fish in a barrel
, Jack mused as he exited Half-Ass.

H
ALF-
A
SS WAS A
twenty-four-hour greasy spoon, home to Pell Street regulars and Chinatown truck drivers dropping in for a quick
yeen gnow
or
hom gnow faahn
meal deal.

After sunset, most Chinatown families were home for the evening, surrendering the day to family dinner, Hong Kong videotapes, Chinese TV variety shows.

Families cooked their own rice in an electric pot and prepared a wok full of hot stir-fried vegetables, later adding in fast-food sides of
sook sik cha siew
roast pork,
for yook, see yow gai
, soy-sauce chicken, from takeout joints like Half-Ass.

Later at night, the local denizens who frequented Half-Ass weren’t so family oriented: Chinese gamblers from the basements, voracious johns from Fat Lily’s or Chao’s cat-houses,
see gay
drivers, cabbies, Black Dragon gang kids, made members of the Hip Ching
tong
, and their cronies.

All the seedy, shady creatures of the night,
their
dirty playtime until dawn.

J
ACK RETURNED TO
Chinatown at midnight, made his way to the corner of Mott and Pell. The area was deserted except for an occasional passerby and what looked like a few gang kids at the far end of the short street.

All the office windows in the corner building were dark, but he noticed the black bulk of a radio car parked outside 36 Pell. There was no driver in the
see gay
, which made Jack wonder if this could be Bossy’s car. He pulled out a pen and jotted the license number on his wrist anyway.

Farther up the block he could see a few people outside Half-Ass, shuffling and stamping their feet against the cold. They’d probably been gambling in the basement that extended beneath Half-Ass and had come up for air, maybe a change of luck.

Jack knew to go through the doorway adjacent to Half-Ass, into the courtyard behind, and down the short flight of concrete steps to the basement. Sometimes the kitchen
da jop
gathered outside the back exit of Half-Ass, taking their smoke breaks in the courtyard, tempted themselves by the card games, the flow of gamblers, and the large sums of cash money exchanging hands under their feet.

Jack kept his head down. Half-Ass was half full, its windows foggy as he went past, through the grimy corridor into the cement courtyard.

He stepped down into the basement. He nodded and grunted at an old man seated on a metal folding chair near the door, and that seemed enough to let him slide into the mix. The basement was crowded, and he lit one of Billy’s Marlboros before feigning interest behind one of the
chut jeung
card games while covertly scanning the room. The usual assortment of restaurant workers off the late shift and gang kids, other losers returning from Atlantic City or Foxwoods with their last-ditch bets.

Mostly men smoking up a cloud of cigarette haze, matching expletives in Toishanese and Cantonese across the half-dozen rectangular tables. Only traditional poker games here—
chut jeung, sup som jeun
—seven-card and thirteen-card poker. No
dew hei
pussy mah-jongg games here. Women played mah-jongg.

No Las Vegas–style nights here. No casino games, just a notorious Chinatown Chinese poker joint. The Ghosts were way ahead by comparison, much more innovative than the Hip Chings, offering blackjack and mini-baccarat for the ladies at their gambling joints.

Here on Pell Street, men bet a week’s pay or more on the number of buttons in a
fan tan
bowl, on a color or a favorite table.
Now that’s manly!
Legendary players have won restaurants, or lost them. Their houses, their cars, their passports, and Rolex watches.