Year of the Dragon (15 page)

Powers smiled back and added:
“M-goy nay”
- thank you very much.

The people applauded again. They looked delighted with him, as if watching some precocious toddler learning to walk. Their reaction was so overblown that he wondered if he had not made a fool of himself.

“I want to prove to you that I am with you,” he said, “that we your police department are with you. We want to stop the terror of these youth gangs. We want to end extortion in Chinatown. But we must have complainants. We must have people who will testify in court.”

Although his speech continued, there were no more smiles, no more applause after that.

He met with Mr. Ting. He sat in Ting’s empty restaurant in the middle of the afternoon, and Ting ordered tea brought to them by a waiter.

“I’ve come to you for help, Mr. Ting. You are perhaps the most respected man in Chinatown. If you would get behind my anti-gang program, it would have a chance.”

Ting poured out the tea. “Me no pay plotection to gangs,” he said. He had a high lilting voice. Close your eyes, Powers thought, and you might imagine yourself listening to an Irish tenor.

“You are a man of such stature,” Powers said evenly, “that they do not approach you. But they did shoot up your restaurant. They came in here and killed five people.”

“Not attack me, Captain,” said Ting. “Attack rival gang. Is accident. Target rival gang.”

Powers, who had been given no information on the progress of the investigation, did not know if this was true or not.

“Police department no solve case,” said Ting. “Chinese people have no confidence in police.”

Powers let this pass also. He said evenly, “Those weaker than you pay protection money every week, or else their shops are wrecked. In some cases they are assaulted. A few have been killed. You know that is true.”

Ting rose from his chair. The interview was over. He was smiling politely. “Chinatown behind you, Captain. In favor all the way. What you do, you take gang kid into alley. You beat with club. You put bag over gang kid’s head first so he don’t know who hit him. Chinatown behind you one hundred percent. No civilian complaints.”

So Powers went to see Koy, the last name on his list, the last person he thought his arguments might reach. The meeting took place in Koy’s office inside the Flowering Virtue Funeral Parlor. The place reeked of incense. Attempting to create a casual, almost convivial mood, one cop to another, Powers began by describing his meeting with Ting. Koy immediately began to laugh.

“Put a bag over their heads and beat them with night sticks. Mr. Ting told you that?”

The man was about the same age as Powers, and stood about as tall. But he was finer boned, and perhaps twenty pounds lighter. And he did not speak like a cop at all. He spoke with a British accent. He spoke like a prosperous British business man.

“Ting knows very well we can’t behave that way, and so do you. Sure, an occasional cop still beats up a prisoner from time to time. But the days when this department behaved that way as a matter of policy are over.”

Koy not only stopped laughing, but he assumed a solemn mien. “You must forgive Mr. Ting, Captain. In most parts of the world they are not over. Not in China, not in Hong Kong. Mr. Ting fails to understand the subtlety of the New York police mind, as you perhaps fail to understand the subtlety of the Chinese mind.”

The man wore glasses so dark that Powers could not see his eyes. The glasses annoyed him. So did Koy’s manner. The man was talking down to him, waving four thousand years of Chinese civilization in his face like a stale fish, and expecting him to be impressed. But Powers was here to learn something, and perhaps to find an ally, not to get angry.

“I have talked to nearly every association in Chinatown,” said Powers. “These people don’t even ask me questions. They just stare at me. There ought to be questions at least.”

“The Chinese are a very polite people, Captain. Certainly they have questions, but they fear you would not be able to answer them. Therefore, out of politeness, they do not ask them. No Chinese would ask them.” Again the arrogant, patronizing tone. Powers was like a hiker moving through strange country. He was obliged to ask directions because without them he might not find his way out the other side.

“What questions are you referring to?” he asked.

Koy commenced to lecture him. “Many commanders have come and gone in this precinct, Captain. How can the people of Chinatown give you any trust when you too might be gone in six months’ time, a year’s time? Suppose they sign a complaint against one of these gang leaders. The gang leader is arrested. He is out on bail within an hour, and moving up and down the streets of Chinatown every day after that. Perhaps a year passes before his case comes to trial, perhaps more. Even if convicted, he can be out on appeal for a long time. You promise you will protect the complainant now, but by then you might not be here. You may be an inspector in the Bronx, or police commissioner at headquarters.”

“That’s not too likely,” said Powers.

Koy, reacting for once like an ex-cop, laughed. “Perhaps you will retire and move to Florida,” he said, “and with your savings buy a hotel.”

“I don’t have any savings.”

“I believe you, Captain.”

“Help us with the gangs,” said Powers. But he felt like a man asking for a loan that was not going to be accorded. “In exchange, we will leave your gambling joints alone.”

“It is no secret that you are not allowed to touch our gambling houses,” said Koy, chiding him. “You mustn’t lie to us, Captain.”

They stared at each other. Powers realized he would get no help from this man, though for a moment his hopes had been raised. But he did not get angry. Koy was more sophisticated, more intelligent, and obviously better educated than he had expected. He was also the most important man in Chinatown and Powers was trying to refocus his image of him. To do so it was perhaps best to exert a little pressure and see what happened. “There are rumors about you on the street,” Powers suggested. “I suppose you know that.”

Koy sighed. “I’ve heard some of the old ones. Are there new ones as well?”

“I don’t know which are old and which new. I just got here.” He paused. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I was just wondering.”

A man entered the office carrying a teapot and cups on a tray. “How about some tea, Captain?” When Powers nodded, Koy began to pour.

“I understand,” Powers continued, “that you were a policeman in Hong Kong. Your rank was station sergeant, I believe.”

“True,” said Koy. “The rumors add that I left there with an awful lot of money. I suppose you’ve heard them.”

“Yes.”

“I was a policeman and policemen have been subject to calumnies since the dawn of time.”

“That’s true,” conceded Powers.

“And there’s nothing much we can do about it, is there?”

“Usually not.”

“Rumors against men like us are impossible to put down. All we can do is try to ignore them, don’t you agree?”

“Yes.”

“The rumors you have heard are certainly not true. But I did make some wise stock investments in Hong Kong. I acquired a modest amount of money and came here and bought this modest business.”

“In five years you also took over the most important tong in Chinatown.”

“It was time for new blood, Captain. I just happened to be there at the right time.”

“What made you decide to leave Hong Kong?”

It was as if Powers had Koy by the throat and was shaking him. They both knew this. He was trying to shake a reaction out of him. But none came that he could read.

“Hong Kong is a small place,” said Koy patiently. “A man like myself, a former policeman, found it impossible to achieve significant business success there. Where else could I go? The mainland was closed off. There was no other neighboring country to expand into. I was obliged to go abroad and seek my fortune, like so many of my ancestors. I came to New York. Also like so many of my ancestors.”

“I need help to stamp out the gangs,” said Powers.

“I don’t envy you your job, Captain. And I also don’t see why you should be so concerned. The gangs do not bother non-Chinese. If the citizens of Chinatown wish to put up with them, why should you care?”

“Well, extortion is a crime.”

“You must try to understand the Chinese mind. The Chinese have no sense of civic duty, and no tradition of charity towards strangers. To the Chinese, the Good Samaritan was a villain because he risked the security of his family to help a stranger. Whether you realize it or not, you are asking the people of Chinatown to do the same, to risk their families to help strangers, and they are not likely to do it.”

“Well, what course of action do you suggest I take?”

But Koy said, “The Chinese are a very patient people. They seem willing enough to put up with the gang problem until it goes away. They fail to understand why you don’t do likewise.”

“How long were you a cop?”

“Twenty-one years.”

How could this man have been a cop, Powers asked himself. Cops were men of feeling. Their enthusiasms and emotions, their fears, were close to the surface. Even their cynicism existed on a strictly emotional plane, youthful illusions gone rancid. Koy bore witness to none of this.

And Powers could not believe it. “Don’t you have any feeling,” he asked in a mild voice, “for the people who get ripped off every week?”

“The principal victims, as I understand it, are newcomers to Chinatown. Why should I feel for them? These people are not my family. They are not from my village. They must learn to protect themselves. There is nothing I can do for them. These youth gangs are merely unruly children. Teenagers. How can I control unruly adolescents? Do you have adolescent children, Captain?”

“I have two sons in college.” It seemed almost a sacrilege to mention them in front of this man.

“I too have a teenage son in Hong Kong - from a previous marriage. I haven’t seen him in a number of years. His mother writes to me about him. Since coming to New York I have married again. I have three daughters by the second marriage. One always worries about the young, Captain. But the Chinese do not turn to the police for help. The Chinese do not trust the police. Traditionally the law in China never protected anyone but landowners. The Chinese don’t go to the police because they fear being blamed themselves. And they fear reprisals from the criminals.”

It was incredible, Powers thought. A sergeant from a police department smaller than his own was lecturing him.

But he kept calm, and when Koy offered a second cup of tea, he accepted. They began to discuss the Chinese passion for gambling, and Koy had an explanation for it. Koy had an explanation for everything. Most Chinese worked such long hours, he said, twelve to fourteen hours a day, that when they had some time off their one desire was to raise their excitement level very high very fast. Gambling did this for them. But Koy did not admit, or even suggest, that he owned a gambling den himself. Also, he added, most Chinese owed big notes and gambled hoping to pay them off in a single night. But Koy did not admit or suggest that he held any such notes himself.

The undertaker showed him to the door saying: “Let’s meet again, Captain. Drop in any time. We’re cops. We understand each other.”

No we don’t, Powers thought, but he smiled warmly and shook hands. He had found Koy charming, fascinating, and more dangerous by far than he had suspected.

THE YOUNG blonde’s head and bosom poked out into the waiting room. “Captain Powers?”

Powers looked up. Nice nose, nice lips, really nice eyes.

“I’m Margaret. This way, please.”

Rising, he dropped the magazine onto the coffee table, strode at her elbow down a long airless tube of a corridor. “First time you’ve been up here?” she asked, but did not wait for an answer. She was very cheerful. Her mouth marched cheerfully forward in time with her feet. She must consider herself an expert at putting visitors at ease, he thought. It was as if cheer was a subject she had learned in college.

She was also tall and good-looking. In college, he would certainly have fallen in love with a girl like this, which was perhaps why he made no attempt to talk to her now. The Margarets of those days had always known how to make him feel clumsy, how to instill in him various forms of fear. There was fear in him even now walking beside her, he realized. Which was absurd - no girl this age could ever again cause his heart to flutter, cause him pain. That he was having an atavistic response to her anyway wasn’t pleasant. The fears of a man’s boyhood stay with him always, he supposed. A man must overcome them every day. The only girl who had never made him afraid, who had instilled in him confidence always, was his wife, and he had married her as quickly as he could.

He was not, however, afraid of Carol Cone. Margaret, showing him cheerfully into a conference room containing Carol and six men, introduced him only to Lurtsema, and cheerfully disappeared, stepping out of his life presumably forever.

If he was not afraid of Carol, this was because she fit into a different category in his mind - not girl, but wife; She was someone he might have lived with twenty years already. Wives were predictable. They tended to obey certain rules of conduct. Girls were not and did not.

The seven people stood with drinks in hand, waiting for him. Lurtsema, whom he had never heard of before two days ago, led him around and he shook hands with two other unknowns who were producers, and then with men whose faces were as familiar to Americans as the logos on breakfast-food boxes. The white-haired and avuncular anchorman, who was sometimes spoken of as a candidate for president, murmured a pleasantry. Then came two network correspondents only slightly less recognizable. Finally came Carol, who was wearing a suede dress that fit her rather snugly across the bosom.

He had expected she would be here. Was that the reason he had accepted Lurtsema’s invitation?

Though a big slob of a man, Lurtsema’s manners were almost courtly. But Carol cut his flowery introduction short.

“We’ve met before,” she said.

“Yes, we have,” agreed Powers, taking her hand. He shook it briefly and let go. “How have you been? Nice to see you again.”

Feeling Lurtsema glance quickly from one of them to the other, he said to him, “Is that a bar I see over there?”

“Indeed it is,” said the anchorman. “What would you like?”

Powers was wearing a dark business suit much like theirs, and took what they seemed to be drinking, whiskey over ice. Man the chameleon, he reflected, ever eager to blend in. The only man you trust is one who looks like you.

He had arrived prepared to pose as an expert on Chinatown. He was resolved to project an image as sober as any TV commentator. But he soon perceived that the various Chinatown atrocities, the murders, the relentless extortions, interested these people very little. Lurtsema’s whiskey interested them, and beyond that, since they were important men, they wished to seem interested only in problems of world moment. Were the Red Chinese moving in? How strong was the Taiwan influence?

He was disappointed to see how eagerly they awaited his answers. Then he realized that TV was not interested in human suffering - on either side of the cameras, apparently - but rather in entertainment, and so he decided instead to entertain them if he could - the alternative being to bore them. There was a funny side to Chinatown, too, if you could keep your sense of humor. He had certainly found much to laugh about there. He would give them that, and he began by describing some of the scams by which illegal aliens entered the United States.

“One travel agent in Hong Kong advertises worldwide tours to Mexico.” They were amused, and he continued. “Coolies come in on passports that identify them as bank presidents.”

They were all laughing.

“Japanese passports work quite well. Japanese businessmen are above suspicion. Some Chinese guy in Hong Kong, as I understand it, owns about fifty Japanese passports. He rents them out. About fifty Chinamen at a time land in San Francisco, show their Japanese passports to immigration, walk right out onto the street. The owner is waiting at the taxi line. He collects his fifty Japanese passports and goes back to Hong Kong and rents them out again. That’s how he makes his living. He’s in the passport rental business.”

An hour later Powers stood outside on the curb with Carol Cone. It was night and the cars were going by.” You were good up there,” she said. “You were charming. I was proud of you.”

Proud of him? “Thanks for the flowers, by the way,” he told her.

“Oh, did you get them?”

“I meant to call to thank you. But I’ve been so busy.”

“Well,” she said, after a moment, “I’ve got to be getting home.”

She began trying to flag down a taxi, but they went by full.

Powers could not decide whether he wanted to walk away from her or not, and so stalled. “Do you commute by train, or what?”

“Yes. From Grand Central.” She looked at him.

Again there was silence and he still couldn’t decide what he wanted to do.

“And you?” she asked. “Do you have to get home to your wife?”

All right, she had inserted a key into the door for him. But he would have to turn it himself. Maybe she had. One never got old enough to be sure. One hated to risk rejection, which was as unpleasant now as it had ever been.

“My wife’s working tonight.”

“Oh, a career girl, eh?”

“Not exactly,” he said, thinking: not like you. “Look,” he said, “we could have dinner.”

She nodded. “Where?”

He did not want to be seen with her by network people. Or by some cop. “How about the place you mentioned in your town? I have my car. You get a free ride home out of the deal.”

They were smiling at each other. “Agreed,” said Carol Cone.

The restaurant was candlelit. To read the menu Powers had to get out his half-glasses. This bothered him, and he did not know why. She knows I’m not twenty-five, he thought. But he felt better when they were folded and back in his pocket.

The waiter took their order and left. “I’m sorry about the night you came to my house,” said Carol conversationally. “I must have given you the impression that all I wanted was a fuck.”

More and more women used that word now, Powers knew. But from a woman’s lips it still made him flinch. Any woman’s lips.

“I can get that any night of the week, no problem,” said Carol conversationally. “If that’s what I want. In this town? Are you kidding? Any woman can. You and I didn’t even know each other. That’s all it would have been, just a quick fuck. I’ve never been much interested in that.”

Her face was lit by tottering flames, and she seemed to him almost as exotic as the Chinese. Her worlds were show business and big money, worlds he did not understand. If she also spoke a dialect different from his own, that was only to be expected.

“It wasn’t what I wanted at all,” Carol said.

“Well, I wish it had been.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“Because I was terrifically attracted to you, for one thing. And because I felt there was something between us.”

“You would have been disappointed.”

“I don’t think so,” he said firmly. A strange sort of compliment to give her, he thought.

She smiled back. Compliment received, and noted.

This was all so different from the time when he used to date girls. Then one complimented a date on her hairdo, not on how she might comport herself in bed. He was out of his depth. What was he doing here? Where did he think this would lead him? Was he fascinated by Carol, or by himself? He felt like a driver whose tires had caught in tram tracks. Instead of steering free at once he was letting the tracks carry him along, knowing they might sling him out at any time. It was dangerous. He might crash. It was also terrifically exciting.

During dinner, she brought forth her life for his inspection, course by course, like dishes out of the kitchen - he could sample any one he fancied. Catholic girls’ grade school. Catholic girls’ high school. Catholic girls’ college. Three similar casseroles, all faintly steaming. She had dined on them for years. He was intrigued. “I never went to school with boys in my life,” she said. “I thought I wanted to be a nun. I knew nothing about boys until I married one. What are you grinning about?”

“I went to Catholic boys’ schools. I never sat a day in class with girls. I wanted to be a priest.”

She thought about it. “Maybe you did become a priest. A cop is a kind of priest isn’t he? Cops believe in absolutes, just like priests. Good and Evil. The law. Cops decide what’s sinful and what’s not, just like priests. And they can lay on hands like a bishop. They can change a person’s condition just by saying so: You’re under arrest.”

Powers, who had realized the parallel long ago, was amazed that she had perceived so much. He was very pleased with her.

“I got married right away,” she said.

“I got married right away too.”

“But yours is a good marriage. Or so I gather.”

“Yes. It’s the best marriage I know anything about. I never had a doubt that I wanted to do it, and I’ve never had a doubt since.”

“You’re very lucky. Most marriages are not that wonderful. Mine wasn’t. I got pregnant the first night. I found that I didn’t like sex that much, and I didn’t like him that much.” She stared at the tablecloth.

“Were you a virgin on your wedding night?”

“Sure. Weren’t you?”

When Powers did not immediately answer, she said, “Weren’t we all?”

“Well, I was a virgin until pretty late in our courtship,” he conceded.

“You mean the two of you were - naughty?”

It made him smile. “Yes.”

“I think that’s very nice. Was she a virgin too?”

“She said she was. It took us about two weeks of poking around to make it, so I think she probably was.”

Virginity in a young man of twenty-three had been shameful even then, and he felt his cheeks go hot, as if the candle flame on the table between them was too close to his face. To this day no one knew his shame except his wife, and he wondered what had made him confess it to this woman, whom he barely knew. And why had he put such information into her hands. It was information that, by its nature, she could have got nowhere else - information she could hurt him with if ever she wished to testify against him. He knew better than to do this. Every cop knew better. Information was a cop’s first best weapon. One wielded it like a nightstick. One punished people with it. One clubbed them into submission. One put them in jail. Information to a cop was as valuable as money. It was the currency of the country every cop lived in. Like the trading beads of the Dutch settlers it might have little value in itself, but if you hoarded it for the best time and place, you could often use it to purchase astounding things.

In any case, you did not squander it. You did not give it away for no reason, as now.

“When I walked out on my marriage I only took two things with me, my baby and a steam iron. I never took a dime from him. I came to New York to start over. It was so hard, so hard.”

She had worked as a model. She went to photography sessions carrying her baby with her in a bassinette. Since it was a different studio every day, no one complained too much. When the baby was old enough to go to school she had found work in television commercials. But she didn’t want to be a shill, she wanted to be a newscaster, and so had started over still again. She had struggled and fought and put in the hours and had got where she was today.

Moved, he slid his palm across the rough-textured tablecloth until the side of his hand touched the side of hers.

“I don’t regret my kid. I never have a minute. You’ve got to meet her. She’s a great kid.”

He felt admiration for her courage and compassion for her suffering - emotions akin to love - and he hooked his small finger inside hers, interlocking like a golf grip.

“It’s nice to hold hands,” she said.” Yes.”

Holding hands was like twisting electric wires together. With the connection made current could flow. Powers could feel it flowing now, or thought he could. He thought Carol could feel it too.

“What’s your wife like?”

“She looks much like you.”

“Is she dark?”

“She has blue eyes like you. Her hair is streaked blond like yours.”

“And you’re crazy about her.”

“Yes.”

“Most men at a time like this would tell me their wife was a bitch. Thank you for being honest with me.”

“Carol-”

“I think I’m falling in love with you.”