Death Money (7 page)

“Mexicans?”
Bronx immigrants from Mexico?

“Maybe one of Gooba Jai’s places.”

Gooba Jai was
Chino-Cubano
, one of the later waves of Chinese-Cuban immigrants who found their Spanish-speaking way to the South Bronx and bought blighted buildings in decaying neighborhoods, properties no one else wanted. Those derelict, rent-controlled tenements were set up as rent-a-bed deals for Chinese and Latino workers or visitors to the Bronx.

“I don’t know any addresses,” he said.

“Did he have any other problems?” Jack pressed. “Girlfriend? School?”

“No. But he mentioned a gambling situation, had to do with him getting robbed. Like he was trying to win back what he’d lost.”

“Gambling?” challenged Jack. “Up here? Where?”

“Don’t know, but everyone talks about Fay Lo’s.”

“
Fay Lo
?” Fat boy. “Where?”

Jack got the
don’t know
shrug again, just as the China Village manager that Jack had spotted earlier came out of the front door and peered into the alley.

“
DEW NA MA GA HEI!
“ he cursed in Toishanese as he spotted the deliveryman.
Motherfucker! Your deliveries are getting cold!

Jack handed the man his detective’s card as he started moving his bike toward the front. He gave Jack a departing nod.

“Call me if you think of anything else,” Jack called out after him.

The manager cast a quick look in Jack’s direction and was momentarily puzzled. Then he shivered in the cold and ran back inside the China Village. Jack imagined him to be as glib as the manager of the Golden City, tactful, expeditious, but not very helpful. They volunteered nothing and spoke like they’d been pre-lawyered up.

Jack couldn’t recall much else on the Chinese-Cubans in the Bronx, but he felt like he’d struck a vein. He was pondering
Mexicano Chino-Cubano
crash pads and Fay Lo’s gambling operations when his cell phone jumped around in his jacket pocket.

He tapped up a number he didn’t recognize, but the phone voice belonged to Sergeant Cohen from the Three-Two.

“The report’s in,” he advised. “Report to the morgue, ASAP.”

O
N THE WAY
downtown, Jack tried to put together what he’d gathered. The dead man was a deliveryman/waiter/student named Chang, who’d been robbed and had a gambling problem. He’d been angry, maybe depressed. Maybe
suicidal. The jumper/floater scenario was unreeling in his head.

He arrived at Manhattan’s West Side before he knew it.

Steel Cold Dead

H
E STOOD IN
the cold, stainless-steel stillness of the room, its wall of metal doors housing the dead, the after-world rendition of a Fukienese rent-a-bed. A female morgue assistant handed him the certificate of death. She said, “Dr. Jacobson will be right back,” before walking away.

Jack scanned the certificate. The decedent, John Doe, was listed as Asian. Under the section “COD,” the entry for cause of death stunned him:
Sharp force piercing through heart
. Manner of death: HOMICIDE.

But how?
There’d been no blood and no visible trauma or defensive wounds. He imagined the frozen body in the frozen river again, was turning the image over in his head, when the medical examiner appeared. He looked like an Ivy League professor in a gray smock.

“A stab in the heart, Doctor?” Jack asked incredulously. “I didn’t see any blood.”

“It was easy to miss, Detective. A single thrust. A very thin wound.” Jacobson lifted a black hoodie sweatshirt, still wet, from one of the gurneys and held it open. He indicated a thin slit in the fabric where a sharp force had penetrated. “The sweatshirt and undershirt, everything was wet and black and bunched up. We didn’t see the wound until we got the clothes off.”

“But no blood?” Jack repeated.

“It’s possible, from floating in the cold water for hours,” the doctor suggested, “that any blood could have washed out. And it’s also harder to see blood on black.” He opened one of the metal drawers and slid out a rack with the decedent’s autopsied corpse.
Chang
, thought Jack.
Jun Wah, aka Singarette. It comes down to a body on the slab at the morgue
. A Y-cut where they’d opened him up ran from chest to navel, but what caught Jack’s eye was the single wound over the heart area, a thin vertical slit barely an inch tall, with matching bruises at either end.

“The skin normally contracts around the wound,” Jacobson said, “but the cold river water could have helped close it. But we can tell that it was a double-edged weapon, which is unusual.”

“Like a sword?” Jack asked.

“More like a
dirk
.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at the wound, trying to imagine the weapon. Like a Greek or Roman dagger, the kind you’d see in a knife collector’s mail-order catalog.

“Or a dagger,” the doctor continued. “In this case a short dagger, maybe a four-and-a-half-inch blade. See the rounded abrasions at either end of the cut? The dagger had a hand-guard. It pierced his heart but not through to his back. Severed the aorta and the veins around it.”

“It was driven in to the hilt then?” Jack said.

“With tremendous force. That’s what caused the hand-guard marks.”

Driven forward and held until the man was dead, the weapon could kill in less than three minutes.

“Given the angle of the thrust, I’d say it was a left-handed
person, someone taller than the decedent. Maybe five foot ten inches, almost like yourself.”

“I don’t see any defensive wounds,” Jack said. “And you said only through the sweatshirt and undershirt, but not the jacket? So the jacket was open?”

“Yes.”

“So he never saw it coming?” Jack said as he gained clarity.

“We don’t know that.”

“He let his guard down. Or it was someone he knew.”

“That’s for
you
to find out, Detective, isn’t it?” Jacobson smiled faintly. He took from the gurney the knockoff Rolex that Chang had been wearing, laid it next to the corpse. It had stopped at 10:30
P.M
.

“Estimated time of death is between nine thirty and ten
P.M
.,” Jacobson continued. “The casing and the metal clock mechanism freeze in the water and contract and slow to a stop. Within an hour or two.”

“Think he was dead before he hit the water?” Jack asked.

“Very possible,” Jacobson answered. “Or close to it. There wasn’t much water in his lungs.” He bagged the watch and gave it to Jack.

Ah Por
, thought Jack. He’d want her to get a touch on the watch before it went into the crime lab. Maybe they’d get some prints off it. He took a last look at the corpse before Jacobson pushed the drawer back in.

“Good luck, Detective,” Jacobson said as he moved to the next body.

Jack thanked him and left the room of the dead.

Outside, the cold, crisp air revived him. His cell jangled with a familiar number.

“Find out anything,
bro
?” It was Billy Bow.

“Yeah, he’s Chinese,” snapped Jack. “Why?”

“Last name Chang, right?” teased Billy.

“And you know that
how?
” Jack countered.

“Ancient Chinese secret.”

“Stop fucking around, Billy. It’s a homicide deal now.”

“Meet me at Grampa’s.”

“What the fuck?” Jack started.

But Billy had hung up.

Golden Star

T
HE
G
OLDEN
S
TAR
Bar and Grill, also known as Grampa’s, was a revered Chinatown jukebox joint. Located on the far stretch of East Broadway, the hot spot was a big dugout basement three steps down from the street, far enough away from the core of Chinatown to escape the influence of the traditional old-line
tongs
.

Because Grampa’s mixed bag of Lower East Side regulars included Chinatown denizens, blacks and Latinos from the projects, and rotating teams of undercover cops, the popular bar was considered neutral turf even for the rival street gangs that rolled in and out. Hardheads looking for a beef usually took their differences down the street beneath the Manhattan Bridge or under the highway by the East River.

Inside, under dim blue lighting, a long, oval-shaped bar dominated the space. There was an arcade bowling game up front, a big jukebox set up in the middle, and a pool table in the back next to the kitchen.

Grampa’s was almost empty, with only a few
late-afternoon stragglers looking for an alcohol fix before the dinner crowd drifted in. Billy sat at the far end of the bar, watching the door.

As he entered, Jack felt gnawing hunger and realized he hadn’t eaten since dawn. Between the river and the morgue, he’d lost his appetite and had been running on adrenaline. He signaled the barmaid and ordered a steak before Billy motioned him over to one of the empty booths.

Billy came over with two beers in his fist, slid in opposite Jack, and nudged across one of the bottles. They clanged glass, and each took a swig.

“So what do you have?” Jack asked eagerly.

“Slow down,
kemosabe
,” Billy said, taking his sweet time lighting up a cigarette. “You first.”

Jack recounted the basic facts of the case, keeping the details close to his vest. He knew Billy was dying to spill. His steak arrived, and he sliced into it as Billy began his tale.

“It’s a paper deal,” Billy offered. “Your dead man bought the papers off a college student who had dropped out and returned to the village.”

Jack nodded his
okay
, tucking into the savory plate.
Keep coming
, he motioned with the steak knife.

“Jun Wah Chang is really Yao Sing Chang, one of the village orphans.”

Jack took a gulp of beer, trying to digest the new information. He wouldn’t be surprised if the Gees were running a paper operation like many of the other associations were doing—getting their members to America by any means necessary.

“He called, looking for work in Chinatown restaurants. They thought he was calling from Canada.”

“Wait.” Jack emphasized with the point of the serrated knife. “You’re getting all this from the guy at Gee’s who didn’t know nothing from nothing this morning? But somehow from then to now, he suddenly remembers the guy’s whole life in China?” He could almost see Billy blushing red in the dim blue light.

“Maybe he called the village, all right?”

“Why so helpful all of a sudden?”

“Maybe because I conned him into thinking it was better to have you as a friend than as an enemy.”

“He didn’t seem to care this morning,” Jack said.

“Maybe he realized you can fix some traffic tickets or something.”

“Funny.
Ha-ha
.”

“Hey, he volunteered it,” Billy mock groused. “What the fuck do I care? You want the rest of it or what?”

“Shoot.”

“Since Yao’s an orphan,” Billy continued, “the Gee Association will pay for the cremation and services, whatever, on behalf of the village.”

“When?”

“The wake is tomorrow morning at Wah Fook.”

“So fast?”

“It’s symbolic, yo. You think anybody’s checking the ashes? They can bury him anytime. Whenever the cremation’s done. It’s all potter’s field anyways.”

“What time?”

“Nine to noon. They already posted an obit in the Chinese papers.”

“Ceremonial,” Jack observed. “What cemetery?”

“You gotta check with Wah Fook.” Billy seemed amused,
watching Jack carve off pieces of Kim’s legendary rib eye, devouring them.

“Any other surprises?” Jack asked as they clanged the last of their beers. Billy chortled like a villain.

“You know those phone numbers on the menu paper?” Billy paused for effect as Jack waited for the punch line. “They’re restaurants all owned by Bossy Gee.”

B
OSSY
G
EE
lit
up a few lights in Jack’s head.
Prominent Chinatown businessman, big shot with the Hip Ching Association. Owns a bunch of Chinatown buildings
. His family had a long local history, with connections to Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“The eight-eight-eight prefix on those restaurant numbers?” Billy offered. “Bossy’s idea. The Lucky Eights.
Bot bot bot
. The Triple Eights.”

Gamblers’ numbers, suckers’ payout
. He wondered if it was all just coincidence. Bossy Gee had been investigated by the Organized Crime Control Bureau (OCCB) for alleged ties to local
tongs
. Bossy Gee was known as the black sheep of the Gees. Not surprising that the association wouldn’t want to get dragged into any of his endeavors.

“The Lucky Dragon and Lucky Phoenix he acquired in a fire sale. The previous Fukienese owner’s daughter got shot and killed outside the Lucky Dragon. And the Lucky Phoenix was in debt after their accountant cooked the books and disappeared. Now Bossy’s leasing out the two joints to new Fuks.”

That explained the bleak and beat-down feel of the Lucky restaurants. They hadn’t been so lucky for the operators, first-generation Chinese immigrants in the South Bronx, more grist for the grind of ghetto crime.

Billy ordered another round of beers, snuffed out his cigarette butt. “The other two, China Village and Golden City,” Billy continued, “Bossy’s had them a long time. Guess they’re doing okay.”

Jack remembered the modified Chinatown-restaurant business models he’d visited. He finished his steak, recalling,
Bossy Gee had two sons, one who joined the Marines, and another who joined the Black Dragons. One boy had a soldier’s dream; the other has a criminal record
.

The beers arrived, and Jack decided to pace himself, figuring he’d have a long night ahead. Now he had even more questions than answers, and questions in Chinatown rarely led in just one direction. He knew it was too late to find Ah Por and decided to visit her in the morning with the knockoff wristwatch.

Someone started up the jukebox with Gloria Estefan’s “Cuts Both Ways.” It reminded him of Alexandra, but the warm and soft images of Alex naked in bed were crowded out by the memory of the cold and hard body on the refrigerated rack at the morgue.