Death Money (24 page)

There was a China passport and student visa banded together, which he’d purchased from the real Jun Wah back in Poon Yew village.

These were the items Sing had considered most valuable, enough to keep them safe: a photo of his real family and, ironically, the passport visa he’d bought for a new future in America.

Ah Por’s yellow witchery had paid off again.

Jack signed for the items, slipped them inside his jacket, and on the way out wondered if the victim’s file was the right place for what was left of Sing’s life. On Canal Street, the offices and commercial businesses had begun to shut down, workers anticipating the rush hour home.

Looking east, he decided to make one more visit before leaving Chinatown.

Wah Fook

“W
E TRIED TO
call you,” the manager said as soon as he saw Jack enter the funeral parlor. “Two nights ago. He’s been interred already.” The manager paused. “At Saint Margaret’s. There’s another procession going out there in the morning. You can catch a ride out.”

Jack thanked him, went to Bowery, and caught a
sai ba
to Brooklyn.

When he got back to Sunset Park, he felt emotionally exhausted, with the various injuries barking at him now. He ordered
gnow mei
noodles at one of the soup shacks on Eighth Avenue, chased it with a pain pill, and wondered what Bossy or Solomon Schwartz had up his sleeves next.

Saints

S
AINT
M
ARGARET’S LAY
above Astoria Boulevard on the edge of East Elmhurst, not far from LaGuardia Airport. Both destinations were familiar to Chinatown
see gay
drivers.

It was an old cemetery, not as big as Evergreen Hills or other cemeteries in Queens, and had only a small Chinese section, mainly from Chinese families that had moved into Elmhurst during the 1970s.

The elderly groundskeeper was accommodating to Jack’s badge, escorted him to the Chinese section. He saw a mash-up of Chinese surnames carved into the varied headstones protruding like crooked teeth from the hillside edge of the cemetery.

“Right there.” The groundskeeper pointed at a field next to
the cemetery dump. There were no tombstones there, only small stone markers sunk into the uneven ground.
A potter’s field
. Upon closer inspection, Jack saw markers that were polished, brick-sized leftovers from some wholesale rock quarry.

Gradually, he found the Chinese character for “Chang”—
—engraved into flat gray stone.
A respectful carving, considering it was a charity job
. Tossed to one side was a small wooden slat that the cemetery used as a temporary grave marker. The slat had
JUN WAH CHANG
scrawled in black Chinese script.

Jack took the piece of wood and gouged out a shallow hole next to Sing’s stone marker. He’d put Sing’s family photo into a Ziploc bag and now placed it in his final resting place. Jack covered it over carefully and tamped down the ground with his hands.

He lit the three sticks of incense he’d gotten from the funeral driver and bowed three times.
Rest in peace
, he offered silently.

The sky seemed to brighten on the drive back to Chinatown.

He got the driver to let him off on Canal Street, across from the market vendors on Mulberry. He could see the colorful displays of fruit, the cherry stand, on the other side of the busy boulevard.

At the cherry stand, Huong was surprised to see him and knew it wasn’t a social visit.

“You’ve found justice for Sing?” she asked. Jack silently nodded
yes
as she took a breath, covered her mouth with her hand.

“He was a good man,” she said, shaking her head.

“He’s buried in Queens, under the name Chang,” Jack
said. “Not much of a cemetery for Chinese. But anyway, I thought he’d want you to have this.” He handed her Sing’s Statue of Liberty photo.

There was sadness behind the happiness in her eyes as she stared at the photo. She took a calming breath, said, “This is the way I like to remember Sing. Smiling at the world.” She gave Jack a glance and a small smile.

“Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I can put this in my family’s temple. We can say prayers for him on all the holidays, and on his birthday.”

Which is Saint Patrick’s Day
, Jack remembered,
a few weeks away
.

“And I still owe you a lunch,” he said.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Just let me know what place you like,” Jack added.

Huong smiled sadly and pocketed the photo as a group of tourists approached to buy cherries.

“I’ll let you know,” she answered as he backed away and turned with a wave goodbye.

Somehow he didn’t feel that date was going to happen, that they’d already come to the end of the chapter. He was almost to Bayard Street when his cell phone jangled. It was Sarge from the Fifth, a garbled connection from which Jack understood only the word “forensics.”

He was just two blocks west of the station house.

Fax Facts

T
HE WORDS TRANSFIXED
Jack as he read the fax copy of the forensics report.

They’d found nothing matching on the can of abalone. There were only Gaw’s prints on the pack of Marlboros taken from his apartment.

Jack frowned as he kept reading.

On the carton of Marlboros taken from Gaw’s Town Car, there
was
a match on both Gaw’s and Sing’s fingerprints.

They’d both handled the carton at some point
.

On the Zippo lighter, they’d found only Sing’s fingerprints on the insert, but
both
Gaw’s and Sing’s prints on the metal case.

Killer and victim linked again
.

Jack had gotten two hits out of four. If this were baseball, he mused, he’d be considered a star. He felt the urge to squeeze Gaw about how he’d happened to be in possession of Singarette’s lighter, hidden in the apartment.

Not that he would be expecting an answer.

Jacked

A
T THE
T
OMBS
, Jack was greeted by somber black faces.

“Immigration came by,” the one named Ingram said with a frown.

“INS agents, on the overnight,” said Crawford, the tall one.

“They chained him and
jacked
him, man,” added Johnson, the youngest.

Immigration and Naturalization Service. Their agents were mostly law enforcement from other federal branches, sometimes military, but usually veteran officers. A big part of INS work was transporting criminal immigrants.

He knew two cold-case homicides trumped an attempted
murder of a New York City cop and a
possible
homicide, but someone must’ve wanted Gaw really bad for INS to jack him out of the Tombs in the dead of night, within seventy-two hours of detention.
Over a murder case, no less
.

He knew it would jam his investigation to a halt.

“Did they say where he was going?” Jack asked.

“To Hong Kong,” Ingram answered. “Said he was going to meet
Chinese
justice.”

Jack nodded acknowledgment, knowing Chinese justice could mean a “Beijing haircut,” a nine-millimeter, hollow-point bullet to the head, ripping out the bad brains.
Life is cheap in China
. Then they’d bill the criminal’s family for the bullet.

Or it could mean years in a dark, airless cell.

Or it could mean disappearing inside the Chinese prison system, where maybe, with the Triad’s help paying off the warden and guards, Gaw would be set free. Free to resume his Triad life.

Or they just might decide it’s cheaper to shank him to death in prison, if rival Triads didn’t get him first.

Jack wondered if Bossy had his fingerprints on any of it. Wondered if the Hip Chings were connected somehow.
Screw it
, he decided, marching to Mott and Pell.

Bossy’s office.

He didn’t know if Bossy’d be there, but Jack pressed the button anyway. The receptionist buzzed him in and tried to stall him, but he barged into Bossy’s office and caught him by surprise.

Bossy coolly waved the indignant receptionist away, her cue to visit the ladies’ room. Jack gave her until the sound of the closing door before he began.

“Weapons were shipped to your office,” he said. “Probably your pretty secretary signed for them.”

Bossy maintained his frozen smile, clenched his fists, raised an eyebrow.

“Your driver Gaw’s good for the killing,” Jack continued. “And maybe I can’t prove it now, but I know you had a hand in it somehow. Maybe you got over on me, but it all comes back around,
you know?
And with your family’s history, I’m sure you know what that means.”

Bossy smirked, declined to dignify anything Jack had said with a response. He folded his arms, leaned back, and waited for Jack to leave.

The phone rang outside, and the receptionist quickly reappeared, throwing fearful looks in Jack’s direction. She answered the call but didn’t relax until he finally left Bossy’s office, her eyes following him until he turned and went down the stairs. He didn’t care about the surveillance camera on the wall or worry about Internal Affairs breathing down his neck.

Sing’s case was a matter of record now, and there’s wasn’t anything Bossy could do to alter that.

Golden Star

T
HE PARTY AT
Grampa’s was spur of the moment, with Jack having spread the word through Huong and giving the Tombs cops a heads-up. It was a raucous, alcohol-fueled scene, occupying the booths along the side wall, with the Commodores and Isley Brothers jamming loud on the jukebox.

Grampa’s kitchen served the party plates of clams casino, fried chicken wings, and Chef Kim’s signature onion-smothered steaks and chops.

Jack threw the party at Grampa’s knowing a few extra blacks and Latinos weren’t going to raise any eyebrows here. He was happy to see his African American Tombs brother cops—Ingram, Crawford, and Johnson—enjoying cocktails in the second booth and digging the music. It occurred to Jack how much Ingram, Crawford, and Johnson sounded like a law firm.

He started his second boilermaker.
Payback is a bitch, like they say
. The party was small thanks for those who’d helped on Sing’s case.

He’d invited Ruben, Miguel, and Luis—the
tres amigos—
sitting in the third booth.
Cervezas
all around, and smoking up a storm cloud. The three Mexican truckmen seemed to fit well with the
Loisaida Boricua
regulars at Grampa’s.

He leaned back and imagined the headline scoop he owed Vincent Chin and the
United National
:
KILLER OF CHINESE DELIVERYMAN EXTRADITED TO HONG KONG FOR PAST CRIMES
.
They’d have to do
dim sum
sometime
. Taking a gulp of the icy beer, he still marveled at Ah Por’s
bank
clue.
More yellow Taoist witchcraft
. He fired up a cigarette and considered how his stitches weren’t pulling so much anymore. The boilermakers were beginning to scatter his thoughts, and the jukebox thundered on.

The only one who seemed out of sorts was Billy Bow, who sat across from Jack in the corner booth. Billy scarfed down a baked clam and chased it with some Dewar’s.

“So it boils down to stinky tofu,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “One Chinaman with a paper name snuffs another
Chinaman with a paper name, both here
illegally
mind you, and no one except you really gives a shit how they jacked the killer back to China?
Man
, that’s fucked up.”

Billy had a way of putting things, especially when he’d had a few drinks. His words held some truth, however. Gaw and Sing were two invisible men who no one paid much attention to. One eked out a living on the edges of the restaurant industry.
His invisibility got him killed
. The other was a Triad criminal hiding in plain sight for twenty years.
He cultivated his invisibility, and it allowed him to kill
.

If Gaw hadn’t killed Sing, their lives would have gone on, almost predictably, and no one would have even known they existed.

Jing deng
, Jack mused,
destiny
. Always in control.

Billy took another slug of the Dewar’s, turned his cynicism toward the rest of the party.

“Too many niggas and spics here tonight,” he muttered.

“Billy,
stop
,” Jack said. “They all helped me during the case. Just like you did.”

“Yeah, but … I know, but …” He shook his head.

“So
relax
, all right?” Jack pleaded. “Have another drink.” Then he leaned in, spoke just loud enough to be heard, “And don’t be such a fucking hater, okay?”

Before Billy could protest, Jack gave him a brotherly pat across the shoulders.

“And remember,” Jack continued. “I owe you a date at Chao’s.”

Billy brightened immediately, the thought of pussy erasing the racist spike in his brain. “That’s
right
!” he remembered alcoholically.