A few more Ghosts came onto the street, took up space on the opposite corner. They observed all that passed, signaling to one another across the street with cat whistles, woofing at pretty girls, flexing the tattoos on their skinny arms.

The two leaders shook hands, and then the Big Uncle ambled down Bayard Street.

Jack watched the Ghosts strut off, keeping his eyes on Lucky, who turned and stared through his black glasses momentarily at the Fury. Lucky raised his middle finger and waved it loosely, sneered, then crossed the street and disappeared around the corner.

A tinge of sadness colored Jack's vision, but he pushed away the feeling it brought. Tat Louie was a stranger now, deep on the other side of the law.

Jack grabbed the roll of composite sketches and slid out of the car.

Inside the Tofu King, he saw Billy stamping about, waving a yellow paper in his hand, cursing, "niggers with badges, them motherfuckers." He slammed the paper down on the counter, turned, and sawJack. He shook his head and frowned, the corners of his mouth turning down.

Jack stood ready to listen, his face sympathetic, nodding. "The Department of Health, Wealth, I should say, came yesterday," Billy hissed. "Then this motherfucker gives me a ticket 'cause there's some papers in the street. Told 'im it wasn't my shit, must've blown down from the corner, from a car or something, you know? The kid swept this morning already. What the fuck you want me to do? Put him out there all day with a broom in his hand? Motherfucker says `Eighteen inches from the curb, bro. You got garbage, you got a violation.' Just like that, the motherfucker. I called him a spear-chucking, watermelon-eating black cocksucker. He laughs and walks away. Shit. Gonna cost me seventy-five. That's a lotta dao jeung. Damn it, City Hall makes a killing off of Chinamen. Chinatown is a goddamn gold mine to them. The traffic pricks cut tickets by intimidation. They know most Chinese don't speak enough English to argue. Health and Sanitation target the restaurants. Department of Buildings, Fire Code inspectors, they go after the construction crews. Plainclothes issues summonses to sidewalk peddlers, grocers, the gift shops. Everyone down here's paying some fine, payoffs not included. It's bullshit. No other minority group in the city pays off like the Chinese do. How come we don't have no NAACP?"

Billy paused to catch his breath. "Man, the city's got more niggers on the payroll than Welfare, and they all drop down here like the black plague, gettingpaid, busting on the yellow man."

Jack shook his head, then Billy grinned. "I'm telling you, Jack, I gotta get out of this business." He tossed Jack a bean milk.

"Write it off, Billy," Jack said. "It comes with the turf." He gave Billy a few of the composite sketches. "I need you to post these. Show 'em to your workers. See if they hear anything."

"This the guy, huh? The Chinatown Rapist?"

"That's our impression of the guy."

"What a scumbag. I'll post 'em Jack, sure, but I don't know."

"What?"

"There's a thousand guys out there look like this."

"We gotta start somewhere." Jack looked out the window, scanned the street where Lucky had been.

"Sure, I'll keep my ears open," Billy said. "What else is up?"

Jack put down the milk. "You seen Tat around, Billy?"

"Tat?" Billy's brow knitted. "That low life? Yeah, I seen him. Runs around with them punks following him."

"They ever come in here?"

"Tried to sell me one of the fucking hundred-dollar orange trees on Chinese New Year."

"What happened?"

"Dad was paid up with the On Yee and they called there off."

"Good."

"Otherwise I'd of blown them away. Tat don't fucken scare me."

Jack watched him, said, "Where's he hang now?"

Billy grimaced. "What you want that scumball for?"

"Nothing personal, Billy."

"Cops and hoods, huh?" Billy smirked. "The good turn bad, the bad gets worse. You sure like stepping in shit, Jack."

"I know it," Jack agreed. "Supposed to be good luck." He offered a dollar for the drink.

"Don't embarrass me, Jacky," Billy said sternly, andJack put his cash away.

"Try the basements on Mott, Number Nine, Number Sixty-Six," Billy said quietly.

"Okay, one more thing."

"Shoot."

"You got any cardboard boxes? I'm cleaning out the old place."

Billy read Jack's eyes. "Oh, yeah, I heard. Sorry about your old man." He paused. "He was a right guy. A standup Chinaman, Jack."

"Yeah," Jack said very quietly. "That he was."

"Come by later, I'll tell the kid, put some aside."

"Thanks."

"You okay with it?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

They were silent a moment, then Billy's ire came back and he yelled at some of the new workers as a tractor-trailer rolled in out front.

"Damn joohies," he said, referring to the cadre of newly arrived teenage Fukienese he had working upstairs in the hot room. "They just don't get it. I told them, `Learn English. You won't have to run away every time the gwai-lo comes in. You can do better. You don't have to be stuck working here."'

He took a deep breath. "You think they listen? `How come you still here?' the wiseguy says."

A crew of the young wetbacks sauntered toward the street and the tractor trailer. Billy shook his head at them, said derisively, through his frown, "Look at 'em, clothes don't match but they perm their hair. At lunchtime they squat in the alleyway and pick their noses and spit clams on the wall. They talk too loud, and they laugh like hyenas. Refugees."

"Good help is hard to find," Jack sympathized.

"Cheap good help is hard to find," Billy countered. "If it weren't for me, they'd still be in the village, wearing them rubber sandals, gong hen, the shit still between their toes." He watched them unloading the trailer, said, "You're in America, I keep telling 'em. Be American."

"Yeah," Jack twisted, "Be like us. Misery loves company." They slapped palms and Jack added, "One last thing, I need to know about the Fuk Ching."

Just then it got busy in the shop, a sudden line of Midwestern tourists gawking at the Yellows, each buying souvenir packs of sweet tofu cake.

Jack wised to Billy's busy situation.

Billy patted him on the shoulder, tipped his chin at him and said, "Later, Grandpa's, around midnight." Then he moved off into the hubbub, toward the truck.

Jack finished the daojeungand went out the side door, past the helpers unloading the sacks of beans, past the deliverymen with their carts full of cheungfun, broad noodles. He took a last look at Billy, who was barking orders into the air, then he put on his shades, and slipped into the Chinatown afternoon.

Old Woman

Because of the nature of the crime, as well as the race of the victim and the perpetrator, Jack took it personally, felt the case needed special attention. So he carried the victim photographs and the perp sketches down the side streets, on his day off, on neighborhood time.

He came off of Mott onto Bayard, walking briskly toward the Tombs detention facility, toward the gaggle of old women gathered on the corner of Columbus Park.

The fortune-telling ladies, elderly women who would have appeared more at home in a Toishan dirt village, congregated by the entrance to the park, squatting on low wooden footstools, spreading out their charts, drawings, herbs, the tools of their divinations. Some had little umbrellas raised against the mist.