Telegraph Hill (18 page)

Chapter 29

Ray felt certain that the bar was being watched.
He looked around. People walked the sidewalks, peering into cafes and
restaurants. A homeless guy with a brown beard rolled around on the sidewalk in
front of a corner liquor store.

Ray headed north on Grant Street past the blues
bars. He took a quick right, crossed Green Street and then walked into Genoa
Place. The backs of three-story apartments loomed over the narrow alleyway. For
a second he regretted entering—the alley was too isolated. He picked up his
pace, jogging to the end of the cool, deserted alley, peering cautiously onto Union
Street. No one stood watching, no male-packed cars menacing a corner.

So this was the end of the line for Lucas. Ray had
seen rich clients—politicians, executives, celebrities—reduced to frantic phone
calls when the props failed, and the arc of their burnished life thudded into
the ground. The right neighborhood was a trap, and a career could be pissed
away on one astoundingly dumb decision. He had no idea why Lucas was working
for the triad, but clearly, he was deeply involved.

Ray looked back. A blue Acura blocked the alley
entrance. A tinted window simmered and slid silently down.

Ray sprang out of sight behind the corner of the
building. He ran up Union Street and saw a cab stop at the intersection and
begin to accelerate. He yelled, and the cab’s brake lights flashed red. He ran
to the cab, opened the left car door and jumped inside. “Go right on Kearny.
Then down Vallejo to Sansome.” The driver gunned the musty Chevrolet up the
hill. Turned right, then left on Vallejo. Ray pulled out the nine millimeter,
keeping it low. The driver turned left on Sansome, the sheer face of Telegraph
Hill rising high overhead on their left. They headed toward Fisherman’s Wharf.

Too late.

The blue Acura surged into view on the right. Ray
glanced over, caught images— sunglasses, half-rolled windows, taut faces, a gun
barrel pointing. The cabby glanced over and hammered the brakes. The front end
of the taxi dove earthward. The sour smell of burning rubber. Several popping
sounds, and the rock-face of the hill smoked. Ray watched as the Acura tried to
stop, its wheels smoking the pavement. The car skidded down the street,
trailing a smoky wake. Other cars slowed or veered off to one side.

Ray could hear honking and yelling. A crash as two
cars collided behind them. The cabby was wailing wildly, unable to gather
himself, his taxi vulnerably becalmed in the middle of Sansome Street.

Ray flung open the door and leaped from the cab,
racing toward the base of the hill. A long cement staircase meandered up the
steep side of Telegraph Hill. About thirty yards up, the path turned steeply
into thick underbrush. A series of wooden steps ran uphill several hundred
feet.

Ray ducked behind a cement column. He looked back
at the street. No one was following. The blue Acura peeled away. A few cars
were tangled in the middle of the street. People stood in the middle of the
street, gaping, while others yelled about the gunshots, urban tales of narrow
escapes.

A German couple thought they had stumbled upon a
film set; they approached several men who looked vaguely famous and asked for
autographs.

Sirens in the distance.

Squatting behind the column for a few minutes, Ray
scanned the area. He turned and hiked up past small, shaded cottages on either
side, accessible by way of narrow paths lined with century plants and pine.
Wild parrots flitted and chattered overhead. Every few minutes, Ray looked back
warily, but he felt better here. Telegraph Hill was a tree-sheltered labyrinth
of one way streets and dead ends, alleys that zigzagged over the overgrown
hill. He knew the hills well from having walked them almost every day while
living in the neighborhood. He would meander through the hidden paths and get
back to North Beach.

He squatted on the hillside path for a few more
minutes. Watched the ground far below, and monitored any approach from the top
of the hill. Coit Tower, smooth and creamy-gray, pronged the sky above him.
Music wafted from cars parked on top of the hill, the ominous storm of Led
Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir.’ Every now and then, a hiker scrambled over the hillside.
Some wore designer boots and sipped the remains of a North Beach coffee,
walking slowly, rubbing their calf muscles. Others, prepared and determined,
maneuvered skillfully over the rocky hill.

Ray sat down on a rock wall. He was done with
Lucas. He should stop all work now, and head back to Logan. There was no paying
client.

But he couldn’t do that. Not with the way things
were. He had unearthed a young woman from her sanctuary—inadequate though it
was—and now he owed her. He thought of Diana and his old apartment; they had
lived at the base this hill, just a few hundred feet down.

Ray looked out at the bay, the sky shot through
with orange-pink clouds. Then he dialed Antonio’s home. Tania picked up.

“How did it go?”

“Pretty well. I think Lucas made some type of
indirect admission—he tried to kill me. Or someone did.”

He heard a sharp intake of breath. “Are you OK?”

He relayed the details of the meeting. “Lucas
turned out to be nervous and erratic. I think pressure is building on him; he’s
botched things pretty badly, first in Marin, and again today. Mistakes bring
unwanted interest. He’s into things that he is not accustomed to, street-level
stuff.”

“What did he say?”

“He admitted to representing some low-level triad
guy years ago. Not much more. He brought poorly disguised friends to the
meeting, two Asian goons. And Lucas’s body language told me everything I
suspected.” Ray glanced around but no one was watching him.

“What do we do now?”

“I need you to stay out of sight. Just relax with
Antonio, OK? I’ll be traveling for a few days.”

“Where are you going?” Tania asked.

“It’s time to bring the war home.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure yet. Pondering it. I’ll call later.”

They said goodbye. He walked to the top of the
hill, looking warily. He hailed a cab. The driver raced down Telegraph Hill
until he hit Van Ness, timing it perfectly so that the lights eased to green
and the cab glided toward Market Street. Ray appreciated the finesse.

He knew that they had no chance to outrun their
problem. They were massively outgunned, and there were any number of young
bloods who would try to make a mark by assassinating Tania. And probably him
too.

He called Dominique and briefed her on the
meeting. “The triad boss mentioned in that report,” he said, “time to pay a
little visit.”

“What is that going to do?”

“I’m not sure. But everyone hates trash dumped on
their lawn. I’m just moving trash to where it gets some attention.”

A long pause. “You be careful. Need any help?”

“I can get her address from my databases. She may
have taken steps not to be found.”

“The boss is a she?”

“Yes. Victoria Chang. She’s Tania’s stepmother.”

Dominique was quiet. Ray looked around again. He
wanted to keep moving. “I gotta go. Thanks for everything.”

“Thank me in person,” she said.

“I’ll call you.”

Chapter 30

The 747 eased its bulk onto the tarmac in East
Boston, following the blue lights to the terminal. After the rustle of weary
passengers, Ray exited the plane and headed to the rental car section. He wore
a cream colored suit over a burgundy silk shirt with a black and silver tie. He
wanted a blend of colors that suggested a creative talent, a radical bravado—it
went a good distance with gangsters. And bravado was possibly all he really
had.

All day long, his frustration had grown. He was
uncertain what he could do for Tania. Lucas had reamed him; he should have
picked up something earlier, some subtle tick in his demeanor. Maybe he had
been too intent on the other aspects of the trip, a return to the city that was
once home to all loved. Distracted by the hunt for Bobby Cherry. He had let his
customary thoroughness slide.

The Black Fist would never stop hunting Tania, he
realized. In the modern world, people could be found easily, as she had been.
Privacy was a quaint concept, something smashed open as easily as dashing an
egg on concrete. Hiding out like a renegade would only get her killed. Another
tactic was needed.

It was past 9:00 PM when Ray arrived in Harvard
Square. He drove on Brattle Street where tony shops gave way to grand homes
along brick sidewalks. He stopped in front of 101 Brattle Street, a Second
Empire Victorian mansion surrounded by an eight foot tall brick wall. The house
had been built for Judge James Wagner in 1826. Stately oak and elm shrouded the
front yard. A tower rose from the Mansard roof, which combined with the arched
dormers to give the house an appearance of edgy watchfulness.

The sense of watchfulness was not misleading. The
property bristled with modern security features, noticeable to only a trained
eye. Security cameras rotated silently every twenty feet; motion detectors and
parabolic sound detectors had been installed, all under the control of
round-the-clock security personnel located in a refurbished carriage house
behind the main house. Three armed guards patrolled the perimeter of the walls;
two others kept watch in the house.

In June 1957, the Wagner mansion had been
purchased by C. Dalton Scott, a respected Boston lawyer. A series of transactions
involving real estate trusts obscured the name of the true owner, Paul F.
Chang. He moved into the home that summer. Chang modernized the house, making
it secure, as if he were a Ming emperor facing his enemies across a barren
plain. Which he was, in a sense: he had been installed as the head of the
northeast crime syndicate. Years later, in 1978, the house passed into the
hands of his hand-picked successor, his only daughter, Victoria Chang.

Victoria Chang was educated in business and the
law, taking degrees at the highest academies in Beijing. She was a striking
young woman, inheritor of her mother’s luxuriant black hair and her father’s
angular Mandarin features. But hers was a frosty beauty, and few knew her well.
In a culture where females had been traditionally praised for their docility,
she stepped forward as a paragon of a new breed. Her father noted her keen
talents and favorably compared them to the less stellar ones exhibited by his
sons. He believed that cultivating an individual’s unique talents—regardless of
gender—was a sacred duty, and he quickly elevated Victoria to high positions
within the syndicate. She married a longtime business associate of the Chang
family, a marriage that cemented centuries-old business dealings between the
families. Her husband later died unexpectedly, and she never remarried. At age
37, she was dispatched to Boston, where she oversaw the operations of the Black
Fist Triad.

Victoria quickly gained a formidable reputation.
In 1978, various Chinatown gangs controlled carefully drawn sections of the
city, where they demanded payments from merchants operating within the
territory. When City Hall began to implement a massive redevelopment scheme for
downtown Boston, gangs near Kneeland Street, one of the main areas slated for
redevelopment, grew concerned about their soon-to-be shrunken revenue base. One
of those gangs, Triple Dragon, was involved in a turf war with Red Horse, a
Chinatown gang never expanded beyond heroin trafficking. Triple Dragon was
rudderless after a number of its top leaders were imprisoned. In an attempt to
salvage its declining fortunes, the tong was pressing for new opportunities.
Its members often secretly traded information with other gangs, and these side
deals created conflicting loyalties.

On September 21, 1978, local bosses of Triple
Dragon and Red Horse met at the Grand Hyatt Hotel on Tremont Street. Over
courses of dim sum, they discussed the various problems facing the gangs. But
not everyone was enjoying the lunch. A brawl broke out. Gangsters wielding
machetes warred with each other until the marble floors were slick with blood.
Eight gangsters were killed, six of them Triple Dragon soldiers.

Revenge killings followed, and a full-out war was
imminent. There were shootings during daylight hours in local markets, men
opening fire near crowded outdoor markets. Bystanders were hit or, in some
cases, killed. The growing number of spectacular shootings began to attract the
attention of law enforcement.

The ruling council of the major triads met and
ordered the cantankerous bosses to put aside their quarrels. Outside
interference was the great evil that all the triads guarded against. Also, it
gave racist Boston cops an excuse to beat and rob Chinese gangsters under the
guise of enforcing the law. The honored code of underground warfare was being
flagrantly violated.

But the meetings broke down, and Triple Dragon and
Red Horse continued their street war. Within a few days, the ruling counsel
agreed to sever the offending extremities.

Late at night on October 6, 1978, at the direction
of Victoria Chang, a group of Black Fist soldiers fanned out into Chinatown.

The leader of the Triple Dragon, the stylish Ang
Lee, was hunched with his crew, playing cards in a sweaty basement behind the
Shanghai Restaurant on Tyler Street. He was down $6,000.00. He jabbed at his Kung
Pao shrimp and swore over his relentless bad luck.

His luck soon worsened. In the dark morning hours,
he stepped out of a rear door to the restaurant for a cigarette. He was met by
three triad members. One of the men stepped forward and crushed his skull with
a pipe. The men shoved his body into the back of a delivery truck and he was
never seen again. It was widely speculated among the bosses that Lee had become
well-dressed fish chum.

One day later, the Red Horse boss, Paul “Ghost”
Zheng, stumbled into his office. His face was minus his nose; a sign around his
neck read “No sniffing,” a warning to dogs seeking to piss on new turf. His
crew growled about revenge. The following week, as Zheng’s wife left a local
market, she was struck by a car and killed. The matter was determined to be an
accident, although bystanders whispered that the driver appeared to be aiming
for someone in the narrow quarters. A few days later, Zheng’s brother, a
restaurant owner, was found garroted in the basement. The family reported the
case as a robbery, although no money had been taken.

And so it went, a numbing campaign of violence,
directed at selected family members of the warring bosses. The nerveless
efficiency of the campaign bled all defiance from the gangs. In less than a
month, the bosses agreed to recognize the old Kneeland Street boundary as fully
restored. Bereft of leadership, the remnants of Triple Dragon and Red Horse
were absorbed by the Black Fist Triad. The media glare was passing to newer
scandals and the gangs were left to prey on their own kind amid the teeming
streets of Chinatown.

The campaign marked the beginning of the Black
Fist’s decades-long dominance of the Northeast vice trade. With each passing
year, the Chang family coiled deeper and deeper into the Boston underworld,
moving into counterfeit goods, prostitution and drug trafficking. By the late
1990’s, cash was laundered through a variety of legitimate businesses: massage
parlors, salons, contractors, small restaurants that handled mostly cash
transactions. The melding of drug money with legal business revenue proved
impossible for law enforcement to track in any meaningful way.

As the businesses prospered—many now wholly
legitimate—Victoria Chang continued to oversee triad operations from her
mansion in Cambridge. Her youthful beauty had gracefully subsided, and she
looked the part she played: hard, aloof, able to tap into old-world connections
with the refined touch of a bygone era. She remained the unchallenged head of a
multimillion dollar black world.

Ray looked at the house and patted the snub-nosed
.357 revolver under his belt. He quickly thought better of it, and placed it
under the seat. The metallic weight of the gun did little to reinforce his
confidence: the people here would be sufficiently armed to outshoot him, that
he was certain. Tonight’s maneuver was all finesse.

He drove his Cadillac to the black iron gate
barring entry to 101 Brattle Street. A black intercom, almost unnoticeable, was
set among the small pines lining the driveway. Ray reached out and rang.

A metallic voice: “Who is calling please?”

“Ray Infantino. I’m here to see Victoria Chang.”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“Please tell her I am here on short notice to
discuss Tania Kong.”

“Ms. Chang does not see anyone without an
appointment.”

“I am certain that she will want to discuss the
name Tania Kong. Please tell her that I recently concluded my meeting with Mr.
Michaels.”

Silence and the intercom went dead. A few minutes
later, it came back on. “Please wait by the gate, sir.”

Ray sat with the engine idling, and waited in the
darkness. Cars rolled by the entrance way, wheels drumming a rhythmic bump as
they crossed the brick crosswalks. He listed to the radio and rehearsed the
introduction he had prepared. Then he caught himself—who the hell knew what
would work once he was in the house? He needed to stay flexible.

He smelled an earthy tang in the air, and savored
the scent.

They let him stew for over an hour before the
intercom crackled to life. “Mr. Infantino, please come in.”

The gate slid aside and Ray drove inside. He
headed up a long, semicircular driveway paved with red brick. He passed by
dense yews, forsythia, juniper and hemlock.

The main house was lit here and there with ground
lights. Ray pulled up to an iron fence and stepped outside the car. On the
porch, he could see a pair of bronze doors.

A well-dressed, unsmiling Asian man appearing to
be in his fifties stepped outside. Two young Asian men followed; they were
carrying machine guns. “Stop here!” one of them said sharply. The men patted
Ray down methodically, fingering his pockets and jacket. He raised his chin and
let them poke. Satisfied, they stepped back. Ray walked behind the older man,
and entered the front hall.

The house was lavishly decorated. The interior
doors were heavy oak, fitted with dark brass handles. The deep red walls were
lit by artfully arranged lanterns. Antique wooden chairs inlaid with mother of
pearl, silk tapestries. From the immediate room to the left—Ray thought it
looked like a drawing room or library—came the scent of leather and old paper.

“Please have a seat,” the man said. “Ms. Chang
will meet with you in a moment.” Then he exited.

Ray sat down on a mahogany colored sofa. A red and
gold Chinese opera mask stared back. For a second, he wondered if something had
moved behind the hollow eyes. Cherrywood bookshelves lined with hardcover
books, mostly Asian and Spanish art.

A door clicked opened. An Asian woman walked into
the room. Her hair was pulled back in a chignon. Her porcelain skin, although
no longer the flawless cream of youth, gave her a look of indeterminate age.
She was dressed in a dark colored suit with white pinstripes. The suit went
well with her eyes, which were reptilian and unforgiving. Ray looked hard at
those eyes, so luminously out of symmetry with the rest of her preserved
elegance. There was nothing withheld in Victoria’s bearing, no Zen Buddha
bullshit; she wielded considerable authority, wielded it openly. Nothing
bombastic or insistent, but Ray could sense that she had long ago decided that
it fit her style to show that power was at her command. Ray felt an odd jolt of
satisfaction. Here was someone whose appearance matched her reputation.

“Mr. Infantino.” She did not offer a hand.

“Ms. Chang.”

“Would you like some tea?” she asked with a
half-dead smile that quickly slipped off her face.

“Yes, thank you.” Within moments, an elderly
Chinese man entered the room, bearing a teapot on a tray with two cups. He
placed the tray on a dark wooden table next to Victoria, and then departed.

“I am taken aback by your manner of approach
today.” Victoria’s voice was controlled and melodious.

“How so?”

“I am not accustomed to visitors just dropping by
my home without prior contact. I expect you have an urgent need, however, and I
will try to accommodate you. Please, sit here,” she said, pointing to a plush
chair. Ms. Chang glided toward her chair and sat down, her face highlighted in
muted crimson by a Japanese lamp shade. She poured herself a cup of tea.

“I am here to tell you I have located your
stepdaughter, Tania Kong, as directed by Lucas Michaels. She updated me on her
recent escapades with the triad.”

Victoria shook her head. “Tania and I do not
speak,” she said. Her hands were crossed on her lap.

“Did Lucas tell you he retained me?”

She shook her head slowly. “Please explain your
purpose here today.”

“Lucas hired me to find a young woman for someone
he described as a client. That woman is Tania. After I found her, I suddenly
found myself the target of an unhealthy bit of attention. Several men tried to
kill her. They were sent by my own client—and your lawyer—Lucas Michaels. I
know Lucas represented members of your group many years ago.”