Year of the Dog (2 page)

Face and Death

One Astor Plaza was a twenty-story curved glass tower, a luxury high-rise condominium building seamlessly shoehorned into the middle of a neighborhood crossroads that spread out to include the Public Theater, the NYU and Cooper Union campuses, the East Village and NoHo. It was a doorman residence, had security in the lobby, and a concierge behind a black marble counter. A Commercial Bank branch anchored the rest of the main street floor. A two-bedroom unit cost 1.5 million dollars and the project had sold out during construction.

The sculpted neo-modern glass building towered over the main avenues that ran north-south through Manhattan, over the major eastside subway hub, and dominated that entire commercial corner of Cooper Square.

A big overweight man, Sergeant Donahoe, stepped out of the squad car.

“I’ve got Wong up there,” he said.

Police Officer Wong, Jack knew, was a rookie patrolman, a Chinese-American portable who could speak several Chinese dialects.

“Eighteen-A,” Donahoe continued. “You got the building manager, the security guard, the grandmother, all up there. The fire lieutenant’s at the fireboard in the lobby. Talk to him first.”

Jack sucked in a deep gulp of cold air. “What do you have?” he asked, steeling himself.

Donahoe gave him a sad look and shook his gray-haired head.

“It’s the whole family . . .” He paused and before he could continue, Jack had turned and was heading for the lobby.

The fire lieutenant, another tall Irishman, explained that they’d come to the scene because a ceiling smoke detector had activated and the alarm had gone out through the fireboard.

“When we got to the floor, there was no smoke,” he said. “But the ceiling detector was a combination type that also detected carbon monoxide.”

“So it was the carbon monoxide that set it off?” Jack asked.

“We took several readings,” the lieutenant said. “The CO levels were over eighty parts. And ten parts is unsafe.”

“Eight times lethal,” Jack noted.

“Hell of a thing on Thanksgiving Day. Anyway, my men are done upstairs.” The lieutenant added, “We’re just resetting the fireboard now.”

“Thanks for your help,” Jack said, grateful for the heads up as to what he was walking into.

Jack had heard many other cops deride the firefighters as thieves, referring to how they would take money and property from fire scenes. Quite often control of a crime scene that involved a fire was contested between the two commands, cops versus firefighters. Jack never saw it; he thought the firefighters had a tough job entering burning buildings, especially in winter. Even though he knew that the FDNY was still segregated—mostly white, mostly Irish—he had to give them respect for the hazardous jobs they did.

The elevators were fast, industrial quality steel polished into an elegant design.

The door to 18A was open, with yellow Crime Scene tape running across it. The firefighters had cranked open all the windows and evacuated all the residents of the eighteenth floor. P.O. Wong stood by the door with the building manager who nervously jangled a set of master keys. Jack introduced himself to the manager, nodded to Wong.

“I’ll need a statement from you,” he said to the manager. “Also, the security report, and information about the tenants.”

The manager was in shock. His face was pallid, voice shaky. He said sadly, “Certainly. I’ll be in my office on the main floor. It’s a terrible, terrible thing.” He walked slowly to the elevator.

Wong, who was shorter than Jack and built like a bulldog, pulled off one end of the yellow tape.

Jack asked him, “Wong, when accidents happen, do you think it’s destiny?”

P.O. Wong answered, “Well, this sure wasn’t an accident, but it could be destiny.” A puzzled look cross Jack’s face when he saw the Chinese grandmother seated on a folding chair just outside the apartment door.

“We had a hard time calming her down,” Wong told him. “She only speaks Taiwanese.”

Jack put his pen to his notepad. “Tell it,” he said quietly, glancing at the old woman.

“Grandma there gets a panicked phone call from Taiwan,” Wong began. “The in-laws are freaking out that something bad was going to happen here. They had received a letter from their son, the tenant, just today.”

Jack looked up from his pad.

“It sounded like he was saying good-bye,” Wong continued.

The old woman glanced at Jack, who was running worst-case scenarios in his mind.

“It took her a coupla hours to get here from Jersey,” Wong went on. “And then there was a delay at the front desk, the language problem, and they wanted to make sure who she was, things like that. They called upstairs, there was no answer. Then the building manager came up with the grandma and security, and used his master keys. Both locks were locked. When they opened the door the corridor detector went off.”

“So then the fire department arrived,” Jack commented.

“A few minutes after. So then we went into the apartment.”

Jack stepped inside the apartment, followed by Wong. At their feet was a crumpled-up quilt, crushed against the inside of the door.

The old woman still sat in stunned silence as they passed her. Jack scanned the room. It was very cold inside. The windows were wide open and lightweight curtains danced in the wind. Jack noticed an aquarium with eight Chinese goldfish floating belly up.

The floors were covered with off-white carpeting throughout.

The big room beyond, the open living room, was bathed in the dull gray morning light that flooded in through floor-to-ceiling windows, a flat wash that muted the few touches of color the room held. The modern, understated furniture consisted of a navy-blue L-shaped couch with a matching ottoman at one end, a wide-screen television, and a glass coffee table. One wall held a built-in shelf unit that displayed porcelain vases, terra-cotta figurines of Chinese men on horseback, and a miniature red, white, and blue flag of Taiwan. Everything was neat, like a deluxe hotel room after a maid had been through it. To one side was a kitchen area, set off by an island with a granite countertop that housed a sink and dishwasher. A stainless-steel refrigerator and matching cabinets lined the walls.

At the far end of a hall were the bedrooms.

Wong continued, “The son’s letter described some bad business deals, and told them he’d lost money in the stock market.”

Spread across the range top and the granite counters were an array of saucepans, and two small Chinese woks. There were ashes and charred lumps in all of them. Jack saw a box of wooden kitchen matches and a small can of lighter fluid. Someone had cooked up eight containers of charcoal briquettes on the range, dousing them up with lighter fluid to keep them all going.

“There’s an empty bag of charcoal behind the counter,” Wong said. “The son and his wife were depressed over their losses.” He continued, “The two children went to a fancy private school.”

Jack walked into the smaller bedroom.

“How old were the kids?” he asked.

“Five and six,” Wong said solemnly. “Two little boys.” He was disciplined enough to brief Jack with the factual information, but smart enough to keep his opinions and personal feelings to himself.

The boys’ room had twin beds with New York Yankees pillow shams and matching duvet covers. Between the two beds was a nightstand with a Mickey Mouse table lamp. A desk held a computer and over it were shelves full of children’s books. Stuffed animals were displayed on the dresser and a few large ones stood on the carpet: Pooh Bear and Tigger, Barney and Big Bird. Posters of Thomas the Tank’s adventures hung on the wall.

Jack felt his adrenaline building. He was thinking,
Murder-suicide,
bad enough, but why take the kids? Were they staying
together for the next life?
He took a deep breath, took the disposable camera out of his jacket pocket, and went toward the last room.

Heavy curtains were drawn back. The room was even colder than the rest of the apartment. The master bedroom was spacious enough so that the bodies didn’t seem to take up much room in it. A woman and two children lay on a large bed. A man was slumped over on a settee. Jack took a photo of the area, then three more individual shots as he approached the bed. He observed a bottle of NyQuil on one of the two night tables.

The Chinese woman lay on her right side, her left arm draped across the bodies of the two boys. They were supine, their arms at their sides, dressed in school uniforms. The three of them looked as if they were asleep.

In the far corner of the room were two large red ceramic bowls with dragon designs on them, strategically placed. Jack saw ashes in both. He leaned in closer and took some head shots of the victims.

The woman’s eyes were sunken and shadowed. She’d been crying for a long while. She’d dressed conservatively in slacks and sweater top. Jack guessed she was in her mid thirties. Over on the settee, the man was hunched, head down, his open eyes staring at the carpet. He had vomited. He appeared to be in his early forties.

The vomit was dark colored, and Jack guessed from the crust that had formed that it had dried for at least a day.

Opposite the body was a large Chinese armoire that blocked off a neat home-office area: desktop with computers, a printer, and a set of filing cabinets. On top of the cabinets was a stack of books. One was entitled
The Day Trader’s Bible
.

Jack used up the rest of his film, taking shots from different angles. He believed photos were a more efficient way to preserve his impressions than written notes and he wanted to take them himself before the crime scene became crowded with the coroner’s people and the crime-scene team.

When he was in Chinatown, Jack would drop the camera off at Ah Fook’s Thirty-Minute Photo, and Fook Jr. would develop his order first while he went next door to the Mei Wah, got a
nai cha
tea, and watched the gangboys roll by.

He dropped the disposable camera back into his pocket.

Outside the bedroom, Wong said, “Sarge notified the ME about twenty minutes ago. They’re en route in the meat wagon.”

“Okay,” Jack nodded. He knew Wong wasn’t being crude and insensitive. It was just cop talk, jargon they used to take some of the edge off of a traumatic event.

Wong moved toward the main door and the old woman, who was now weeping quietly. Jack went to the window wall of the living room. The view swept north toward the Empire State Building and the jumbled rooftops and billboards of the big city beyond.

The streets below were bustling, a tangle of pedestrian traffic crowding the intersection. The city was in a holiday season rush, and people poured out of the subways and buses, jamming the streets in every direction.

The world goes on,
Jack thought.
An entire family offered up to the
gods, gods of greed and desire, and the world stops not one second for
condolences. Too bad.

It wasn’t the first time Jack had seen dead children, but it was the first time he’d witnessed the end of an entire family. That they happened to be Chinese brought it closer to home, as he assumed it did for P.O. Wong. But as cops they instinctively protected themselves.

Cops got paid to sop up the daily horrors and bloody atrocities that the white-collar suits and ties didn’t want to deal with. Cops became hard-hearted, kept a professional distance from the victims, and worked in a way that didn’t affect them emotionally. Deeper involvement was a real danger that could lead to overzealousness. Frontline cops became numb to the daily onslaught of unspeakable crimes that crossed the desk blotter day and night. Fifty thousand arrests a year. In a city where teenage mothers disposed of their babies in the garbage, parents were known to kill their children and themselves out of anger, depression, desperation, very often in the grip of an alcohol-and-drug-induced rage.

The Taiwanese, like other Chinese, were obsessed with success and money. The present tragedy was the result of depression over the imminent loss of a certain lifestyle, but it was as much about shame, about
losing face.
Ma’s Buddhist beliefs came back to him:
greed and desire.
The Buddhists taught that wanting and having, the material world, could only lead to unhappiness. Life was suffering, and suffering came from desire, the desire for things, for hopes unfulfilled.
Eliminate
desire,
and you will eliminate suffering.

Suicide was not uncommon in America, Jack knew. Most were men, and they shot themselves. Then there were drug overdoses, risks taken to disguise a death wish, and, finally, assisted suicide from those who believed in the right to die.

At the apartment door, Jack saw the ends of the packing tape that had been used to secure a quilt over the door so none of the carbon monoxide could escape.

Eliminate desire.

He left Wong at the scene and went down to get a statement from the building manager. He knew the follow-up paperwork at the precinct, plus the reports from the coroner’s office, the notification of next of kin, the certificates from the funeral parlor, everything, would take up his next few shifts.

Finally, after sixteen hours on the job, with weariness pulling at his eyelids, he called for a Chinatown
see gay,
car service.

* * *

The Chinese driver spoke Cantonese, and took him straight out to Sunset Park, Brooklyn’s Chinatown, without asking directions. Exhausted, Jack powered down the window and let the icy wind slap him awake.

He’d been thirsty long before he reached his studio apartment, but once inside he went directly to the cupboard in the kitchenette, took out a few sticks of incense, and lit them. He shook off the ash and fanned the wiggling tails of smoke as he planted them at the little shrine he’d made for Pa on the Parsons table near the windowsill, where he’d placed an old photo of his father dressed in Chinese-styled
tong jong
clothing.

Pa was now seven weeks buried in the hard ground of Evergreen Hills.

Jack’s next visit to the cemetery wouldn’t be until mid-January, on what would have been Pa’s birthday.