Year of the Dog (18 page)
Authors: Henry Chang
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Hard-Boiled, #Mystery, #Crime
The world below was a cloudy gray drift of mountain ranges and valleys with the occasional appearance of roads, a small city or village. He’d passed this way many times before, he remembered, flying west from Toronto, where he’d broken in the first credit-card crews, to Vancouver, where the Red Circle was a top player in spite of the authorities.
Now, seated comfortably on Air Canada Flight 688, Gee Sin was cruising at twenty thousand feet, descending toward Vancouver, for a two-night layover before the long flight back to Hong Kong. He saw the Canadian coastline below and took a deep breath, as if a weight had been removed. He was already out, out of the United States, out of American airspace, out of its legal jurisdiction. Out of sight and out of mind.
He would not be present for any investigation into the shootings over the bus routes, or the bad blood between the Fukienese crews, or the feuding tongs. The Red Circle’s financial involvement would be on hold until the Fukienese side cleaned up its own house.
The attention that the shootings brought was disappointing.
Best to postpone for now.
Credit-card operations in the numerous cities would proceed as scheduled.
While descending, Sin considered the Chinatown murder of Uncle Four, and decided that the matter of the stolen gold pandas and diamonds would be given to Grass Sandal. He would be instructed to arrange a meeting with the Chinatown limousine driver whom the New York City police had in custody. The incarcerated driver could provide details and clues leading to the missing mistress.
Best to do it from Hong Kong, he thought, where he had vastly more control of matters.
One of the triad’s law firms could start the necessary legal machinery needed to obtain the interview from there.
Otherwise, the holiday had been going well. A handful of
shoppers
had been arrested, as expected, but the majority were bringing in significant sums. Besides, shoppers could be recruited everywhere; they were expendable.
The volume from the phone and mail-order houses surpassed even his expectations. Grass Sandal had had to close or vacate several receiving locations because they’d filled up with electronic swag after they had been used for a number of weeks. Millions of dollars worth of laptops, camcorders, game systems, cameras, computer software were consolidated for reshipment, then passed through the fences, stores they had arrangements with. The goods were converted to cash and became counterfeit Gucci and Prada bags in Hong Kong, hills of
bak fun,
white powder in Cambodia, then changed to currency again in Europe, Canada, America.
Cheat the people all around
.
The strategy of the triad was paying off.
Inside the small Pell Street walk-up, Sai Go sat slumped on his sofa, considering Chat Choy’s suggestion that they embark on another gambling junket. Sai Go wasn’t hungry, and didn’t feel like visiting Choy at Tang’s Dynasty like he usually did, collecting bets from the waiters while he was there.
The battery in the bathroom scale had died, but he knew he was still losing weight. The cancer was feeding on him from the inside.
He powered on the TV, muting the sound to the Chinese cable program. The casino at Foxwoods was promoting a cabaret show with Taiwanese talent, Longshot Lee had announced, “sexy” singers and dancers in skimpy neo-mod outfits. The
hom sup lo,
horny bastard, coming out in him. Twenty-five dollars would cover the round-trip bus, a buffet meal at Woks to Go, and twenty dollars worth of betting coupons and store discounts. Gum Sook had countered with The Plaza in Atlantic City, also staging a Chinese floor show, featuring a troupe of beautiful Malaysian acrobats in holiday costumes. And the buffet was Chinese, not
gwailo.
They’d decided on Foxwoods.
What the hell,
Sai Go thought,
why not go along with them?
It’s only three hours up the highway. It was a
gwailo
holiday but he’d just as soon play a few hands of Chinese
pai gow,
poker, or some
mini-thirteen
.
Many of the casinos offered a separate space for Chinese and Asian games of chance, featuring
sik bo, pai gow,
poker, or dominoes, and
bak ka lo,
baccarat. They kept blackjack and roulette action conveniently to one side just to keep the girlfriends of the players happy.
He imagined it in his head.
Drinks all around, brought out on
trays by girls in gaily colored cheongsams.
Asian high rollers having a hoot. Winning sometimes and playing it up, but losing, mostly.
It was the last image he saw before passing out.
It was the bleating of the phone somewhere that awoke him. He wasn’t sure if it was one of his cell phones, or the apartment phone. He’d left the lamp and the TV on; some Taiwanese soap opera with subtitles was playing silently.
Sai Go considered answering the phone but fatigue kept his limbs from responding. Then the answering machine came on.
House phone,
he heard his own hoarse tired voice on the recording.
The caller was Gum Sook, asking if Sai Go had decided to go on the trip to Foxwoods, that he could brew up some tea. “Call Longshot,” he said, “if you want to go.”
Following that, his cell phone rang, and though he turned, reaching, his legs wouldn’t respond. He grabbed for the edge of the bed with his hands and rolled his body over. The cell phone kept ringing.
He was suddenly jolted by deep knifing pain in his legs, in his bones, knees, and ankles. He gritted his teeth, heaving breaths through his clenched jaw, until he could bear the pain no more and crashed into the blackness.
His view slowly settled on the clock radio as he regained con-ciousness. It was afternoon, a Monday, still December. Sai Go recalled the pain in his legs and gingerly moved them. Surprisingly, they carried him off the sofa as if nothing had happened. Relieved, he went to the bathroom sink, splashed water on his face.
Painkillers,
he was thinking,
in case it comes back.
They’d surely have something at the clinic.
He thought of returning Gum Sook’s call. He resolved to
jup sau may,
tie up loose ends. He’d withdraw his twenty-five thousand and close his account at U.S. Asia. He’d like to collect his last debts at OTB, from Lum Kee the fish-ball vendor, and two waiters at Garden Palace.
Send a card to the
chun chik,
relatives, in Honk Kong. Spread the word. He,
Fong Sai Yook,
has passed.
Maybe place an ad in the Chinese obituaries.
Return the packs of telephone calling cards to Big Chuck Chan.
Visit Lo Fay, the all-purpose lawyer at the association’s Credit Union. He was good for immigration, divorces, and other loose ends.
He’d ask Gum Sook to call and look in on him twice a week, to report the death when the time came. He’d arrange a cash incentive for Gum Sook.
Sai Go gargled, coughed, and spat into the sink, rinsing from the faucet without looking for blood in the spittle.
He put on his cheap down jacket and went down the stairs, exiting onto the street in the direction of the health clinic, and OTB.
Inside the New Canton, KeeKee spread open the
China Post
and explained the racing results to Bo. She slid her French-tipped nail down the newsprint until she came to the eighth race.
“Here,” she said,
“American Freedom.
Paid one hundred eighty-eight to show.”
“My horse won?” Bo exclaimed.
“No, but
you
won anyway. For coming in second.”
“I won by coming in second?” Bo asked, incredulous.
KeeKee laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll cash it for you when I go for lunch.”
Bo thought of Sai Go, wanting to thank him, to share the lucky winnings. She considered treating him to
yum cha, dim
sum,
or a box of Fei Dong pastries, when he showed up for his next haircut.
Doyers Street was an icy slope and Sai Go stepped carefully over the slick compressed snow. He followed the twisting street until he came to the narrow alley that split out behind the Bowery, the same alley used by Hip Ching hatchetmen in their bloody forays against tong rivals, sixty years before. Nowadays, the alley was commonly used as a shortcut from Doyers to Chatham Square, leading out to the Bowery.
Less snow had accumulated in the alley. Sai Go exited from the gap between buildings next to OTB, a half block from the health clinic.
OTB looked crowded and he decided to stop by on the way back from the clinic.
The health clinic was closing, and Sai Go could only explain his painful episode to the technician, who apologized that he was not authorized to dispense medications. The clinic doctor would return the following afternoon.
Walking back, he saw that the vestibule of OTB had emptied.
Inside, he found the two waiters and collected from them, waiting around afterward for the street vendors. He stood at the far end of the floor, scanning the crowd milling about for the next race. In the tubercular air, he resisted the urge to cough, afraid that his phlegm would show bloody red. His thoughts strayed dizzily to a commotion on the betting floor. A curse rang out and immediately became
madda focker
in six dialects. A group of market workers laughed, and a construction crew cheered.
He didn’t see any street vendors and was heading toward the front of the parlor when Koo Jai, appearing frazzled, tramped through the doors.
Koo Jai immediately spotted Sai Go and came toward him angrily. Looking around, he hissed, “You fuckin’ complain to the
dailo,
hah?” Noticing the eyes around them, stealing glances their way, Koo Jai leaned toward Sai Go and whispered, “You watch your fuckin’ back, old man.”
Sai Go stood silent a moment watching pretty-boy Koo stomp out of OTB.
He laughed quietly to himself.
Ha, threatening a dead man, the
irony of it.
Still, he was insulted by the threat and resolved to get his gun out of the lock box and carry it in his coat pocket. He knew he was sure to die.
But he sure wasn’t going to lose face.
Sai Go put down the cup of
guk fa,
chrysanthemum tea, and opened the metal box, empty now except for his run money wad of hundreds, and the Vigilante revolver in its holster. He took the gun out of the holster, flipped the barrel out to confirm that six bullets were nesting there, then pressed the barrel back in with a click of his thumb.
He put the Vigilante into the right cargo pocket of his down jacket. He didn’t bother to take extra bullets. Whatever was going to happen wasn’t going beyond the six he had chambered.
When he finished the
guk fa
he decided it was late enough in the afternoon to check out the health clinic. He stretched his legs, remembering the agony he’d felt, and wished he had a god to pray to, for painkillers.
No god; the doctor would have to do.
It was all coming apart, he thought.
How much more time did
he have before the pain and sorrow bled out? Or was it all a dark
killing shadow, spreading out behind the bitterness and despair, that
no amount of time or forgiveness could cure?
Bookie man.
He felt his essence shrinking, becoming like a
teng jai,
sampan, in a dark tossing ocean.
In the beginning, he had felt that it wasn’t a crime. He was just making a living, taking bets. Allowing the Chinese
hindaai,
brothers, to chase their dreams. Chinese were superstitious and loved to gamble. Who was the victim in that? The families or the associations usually resolved any problems that arose.
Now, after a dozen years, crushed by this fatal sickness, he finally saw it for what it was.
An underground life full of careless sins, chasing the dragon of good fortune. The dragon was devouring him from inside now. All part of the same evil. He was part of the trail of dirty money that travels in a circle. Money from gambling that makes its way to the pockets of gangsters. Money that translates into
bak fun,
white powder, and guns. Money that finances the smugglers of human cargo, feeding into slavery, prostitution. Becoming money again in the banks, the vicious cycle turning without end.
Lucky left Kongo and Lefty by the front door of Number Seventeen’s basement to cover the mid-afternoon delivery of that evening’s bank; a brown envelope containing the usual denominations of dead presidents and statesmen: Hamiltons, Jacksons, Grants, and Franklins. The On Yee house manager and the courier walked past Lucky and disappeared into a back office.
Maybe it was because the new year and the new stable of whores at Angelina’s had put him in a generous mood, but Lucky had had a change of heart; he was going to play wayward Koo Jai another way.
Copping a plea on the phone, Koo had told him he’d raised nine thousand cash, but he’d admitted he had only the remaining watches to make up the balance, although he claimed their value would be greater than the twenty K the
dailo
demanded.
Lucky had already figured he would take the cash for himself; he would let Lefty fence the remaining watches through his cousin’s shop in Toronto. Kongo would mule the watches north. They would split the proceeds.
He heard Lefty laugh as he and Kongo popped Ecstasy pills.
Lucky had answered Koo, “Okay, bring the
shit.
And bring the boyz, too. Let’s have a sit-down.” He wanted to keep them away from the heart of Chinatown to cut down the chances of the other crews noticing them.
“OTB,” he said, “At four-thirty o’clock tomorrow. And don’t fuckin’ make me wait.”
Jack spent days following the arrests of the Hong boy’s killers at Hogan Place with the assistant district attorneys, starting the numbing grind that was due process.
At week’s end, Jack returned to Cabrini where they removed his stitches. There were two small scars on the left side of his chest, in the fleshy tissue slightly above but flanking the nipple. The little .22 bullet had passed through. Further down were the puncture scars on his left forearm, rounded indentations where the pit bull’s sharp teeth had clamped on.
Fuckin’ mad dog.
Pasini called, reminding him of his appointment with the department shrink. Standard procedure after suffering serious wounds in the line of duty.
No, dying in some stinking hallway in
the ghetto housing projects was not how he saw himself finishing out
the job.
The arm was one thing, but the chest wound above the heart was a
warning,
somehow. Yet any doubts he nursed made him less a cop, and he wasn’t looking for a disability deal.
Afterward, after trudging through the thickening snow, he’d met Alexandra at Tsunami, halfway between her Loi-saida storefront and the NoHo precinct house. They drank sake and Sapporo, picked from the sushi and sashimi on the little wooden boats that passed by on the mini-conveyor belt that ran the length of the bar.
“It’s in the hands of the prosecutors,” Jack said, “The punks basically turned on each other and implicated one another.”
Alex broke out cigarettes and they lit up together, their conversation bracketed by puffs.
“We got oral and written statements,” Jack continued, after touching glasses with Alex in a silent toast. “DNA matchups on all three,” Alex smiled sadly. “The murder weapons. Prints all over.” He was quiet a moment, his stare going long distance as he said, “The victim . . . he put up a helluva fight. Wasn’t enough. But he left sufficient evidence to hang them all.”
Alex put her hand over his, her eyes misting. She tapped her glass against his again, brought him back into the moment.
“What does your friend at Legal Aid think?” Jack asked.
“Defense,” she exhaled. “They may contend the original entry and search was illegal. No cause.”
He’d been following up a missing person . . . there had been the
smell of marijuana at the door.
“Or they may request a change in venue. Say they can’t get a fair trial in Manhattan, because there are too many Chinese, Asians, in the jury pool. They may want a Bronx jury, or one from Brooklyn. A judge of color, who’s sensitive to minority defendants.”
Technicalities and racial politics hacking into the case . . .
“They can delay, file appeals, assert medical claims, demand more evidence.”
“This is going to take a while,” Jack said, finishing his sake.
“I get it.”
They shared the last of the big Sapporo over
sunomono
and seaweed salad.
Outside, the wind gusted up and rattled the big picture windows.
Jack paid the tab and they tapped glasses at the last swallow, with Alex saying “Happy New Year. To 1995.”
“Yeah, Happy New Year,” Jack answered with a forced smile.
They drained their glasses.
They caught a cab, and he dropped her off at Confucius Towers before going on to Sunset Park. They had traded cheek kisses and awkward looks afterward, finally shaking hands before she tiptoed through the snow and faded into the lobby of the high-rise.
Crossing the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn, Jack remembered the dead delivery boy. It didn’t feel like 1995 was going to be a happy new year.
