Also by Henry Chang
Chinatown Beat
Year of the Dog
Red Jade
Copyright © 2014 by Henry Chang
Published by
Soho Press, Inc.
853 Broadway
New York, NY 10003
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, to events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chang, Henry, 1951—
Death money / Henry Chang.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-61695-351-5
eISBN 978-1-61695-352-2
1. Yu, Jack (Fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. New York (N.Y.). Police
Department—Fiction. 3. Chinese—United States—Fiction. 4. Chinatown
(New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.H35728D43 2014
813’.6—dc23 2013045378
v3.1
For Laura Hruska,
Boss Lady at Soho Press (1935–2010).
Thank you
, doh je nei,
for opening the gate to the streets of Chinatown. Rest in peace, always
.
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Flow
Six Skirts, Ten Shirts
AJA
Floating
North
River
Smooth and Easy
Jouh Chaan Breakfast
Short Circuit
Yum Ga Fear
Gee Whiz
Speak No Evil
Backtrack
Steel Cold Dead
Golden Star
Muscle Mustang
Rollin’ Dirty
Trotters
Lucky
T. A. P. tits. ass. pussy.
Fat Man’s Place
Stinkin’ Badges
Home
Field of Dreams
For Jong
Old and Wise
Eddie
Engine
Fifth
Mox-Say-Go
Daylight
Back to the Future
Fish
O. G.
On the Edge
Flash-Forward
Franky Noodles
Night Rider 2
Transporter 1
Run DMV
Golden City
Mak the Knife
Flight to Fight
Knowledge Is Power
Flow
Senior Secrets
Wah Fook
Saints
Fax Facts
Jacked
Golden Star
Backup
Come Back
Acknowledgments
Flow
IT WAS 7 A.M. when Detective Jack Yu stepped into the frigid dawn spreading over Sunset Park. A slate-gray Brooklyn morning with single-digit temperatures driven by wind shrieking off the East River. He scanned Eighth Avenue for the Chinese see gay radio cars but saw none, only a couple of Taipan minibuses, sai ba, queued up a block away from the Double Eight Cantonese restaurant.
The wind gusted fierce and he regretted not wearing one of his Army Airborne sapper hats. The minibuses were slower than the car service jocks, but with early morning rush-hour traffic already streaming into Manhattan, it wouldn’t make much difference. And although he’d wanted the quiet solitude of one of the black radio cars to review his thoughts for his appointment with the NYPD-assigned shrink at the Ninth Precinct, he’d also felt the need to be connected, wanted some proximity to Chinese people, his own people, civilians. The twenty-five-minute bouncy rush across the BQE to Manhattan’s Chinatown, an undulating ride to people’s jobs, schools, to whatever their piece of the Gum Shan, Gold Mountain, demanded of them, would work as well, he decided.
“Leung kwai,” the driver said in Mandarin, and Jack handed him the two dollars.
Jack took a window seat and shifted his Colt Detective Special along the small of his back so that it wouldn’t poke him when he sat against the worn seat cushions. A Hong Kong variety show played over a monitor behind the driver, more static than music, beneath the banter and cell-phone conversations of the other dozen passengers. Chinese-American life on the expressway, Jack mused. With Pa’s passing, he was alone at the end of the Yu family line.
He could see the Verrazano Bridge fading in the distance, the guinea gangplank, as they swerved away from the Brooklyn Chinatown.
The minibus shifted gears for the highway. From his window he saw broad residential tracts, industrial parks, high rises leading the way to the office buildings of downtown Brooklyn.
Housing projects and ghetto neighborhoods rushing by.
Jack took a deep shaolin boxer’s breath through his nose and tried to collect his thoughts. It had been six months since his return to the Chinatown precinct, before his old man passed away. His Fifth Precinct cases had taken him to West Coast Chinatowns and back to New York City, but along the way he’d processed a dozen dead bodies, had been beaten by Triad thugs, mauled by a pit bull, and shot twice. He’d also killed two men. All this, especially the last two, would be of interest to the shrink. He was advised that it’d be good to talk about it.
Cemeteries, graffitied rooftops, whistling by. The minibus shifting gears again. Billboards beckoning poor people to Atlantic City to gamble away their monthly checks.
And then, just as suddenly, the memory that there was a woman in his life now, a fiery Chinatown lawyer going through a messy divorce. They had become drinking buddies, then graduated to friends, and finally, they’d crossed the line. They’d shared a weekend together, and now he couldn’t keep Alexandra, Alex, out of his mind.
The minibus made its gassy sprint through the edge of Brooklyn toward the Manhattan Bridge, and before he knew it he saw the icy East River below.
He thought he’d have known better than to get involved with someone going through an acrimonious divorce, with a young daughter, sure to face custody and support issues. But in light of all that had happened in Chinatown, and after, when they’d been by each other’s side, there was no longer any need to tiptoe around their feelings. They’d crossed the line that separates friends from lovers, and in the back of his cop’s mind, he wondered what the consequences would be.
The river wind reminded him of the salty scent of silk sheets, curled damp around Alex as she lay naked next to him.
He wanted to bring her something sweet.
Jack hoped to squeeze in an early bird meeting with Captain Marino, CO of the Fifth Precinct, before picking up some desserts from the Tofu King around the corner from the station house. He’d still have time to drop off the sweets at Alex’s Lower East Side storefront office, then catch a bus north for the shrink session at the Ninth Precinct. Half the plan was ambitious, touch and go. He decided to follow the possibilities and forgo whatever didn’t go with the morning’s plans.
The minibus churned across the metalwork of the span and descended into Chinatown. It careened onto Division Street and dropped its passengers off beneath the desolate bridge.
Division was a wind tunnel channeling icy gusts off the high-rise curves of Confucius Towers, whipping onto the streets below. Alex’s apartment at Confucius Towers was where they’d given in to intimacy.
Jack zipped his Gore-Tex parka up to his chin, lowered his head into the wind, and went toward Bowery. The Fifth Precinct was four blocks away, close to the Tofu King. Alex liked the bok tong go and the dao foo fa treats, he knew. He marched on until he turned the corner of the Towers. His cheeks felt windburned, his lips frostbitten, but Bayard Street was just another block. He wondered if Captain Marino had arrived early.