“When?” asked Jack.

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Billy said as he left the booth.

The door slammed behind him, and the song on the jukebox ended. Grampa’s was quiet again as Jack tried to find some connection between Chinatown and the Chinese in the Bronx, tried to work his way back through the clues and the questions doing a lion dance in his head.

He’d heard all the usual hard-luck tales from waiters and kitchen help, Chinese workingmen who’d been seduced by the idea of luck—every poor man’s chance to be emperor—recklessly wagering two weeks’, even a month’s pay on the nose of a horse or a dog, the flip of a card or the turn of a number.

The truth was they were desperate for luck, anguished over believing that they could change the miserable, hopeless cast of their low workingmen’s existence. They were gambling with their lives.

Finishing his beer, Jack pulled out his cell phone and called Alexandra. Her cheery greeting went to voice mail, and he hung up. He didn’t like not getting an answer, and he hated to leave personal messages. Instead he dropped some coins into the jukebox and waited for the song that had briefly brought him back to tender moments with Alex.

Muscle Mustang

BILLY POWERED THE old Mustang out of the underground garage at Confucius Towers. It was only a few blocks to Grampa’s, but he made a right on Bowery, gassed up on Houston Street, and took a quick cruise through the mean streets of the Lower East Side. Another right, going east, and the streets were wet and black. He rolled through the extended settlements of Chiu Chaos, Malaysians, and Vietnamese, continuing east to Essex, crossing Delancey into areas once Jewish, then Puerto Rican, and now Fukienese Fuk Jo land.

He circled back toward Grampa’s, past the housing projects on South Street, quietly amused as he thought about Jack, his Chinatown friend, the jook sing cop who was conflicted about whether he was more American or more Chinese.

But it was never that complicated for Billy; all he had to do was look in the mirror. And in New York City, it never took much for someone to call you Chink and remind you who you were.

He’d been more than happy to help Jack, even happier now that the trail was leading to gambling and drinking and titty bars. It’d been a long time since he’d visited the Bronx anyway.

He patted the compact Beretta nine-millimeter semiautomatic pistol under his jacket and checked the dashboard lights as Grampa’s neon bar sign beckoned down East Broadway.

Rollin’ Dirty

JACK STEPPED OUT of Grampa’s as the black Mustang pulled up. He opened the passenger door, saving Billy a rise out of the driver’s bucket seat. Muscle car, thought Jack, tinted windows, mag wheels, chrome runner. The car looked old, but the engine was growling like it’d been souped up. The worst kind of gang-boy getaway car you could drive through an anticrime sector and not expect to get stopped for drugs and weapons, especially in the South Bronx.

“Haven’t seen this car in a while,” Jack said, sliding into the passenger seat. “What happened to the Range Rover?”

“The ex-wife got the Rover, that bitch,” Billy spat out. “But this bad boy gets me where I need to go.”

“No doubt,” Jack agreed.

They drove behind Confucius Towers and turned off Bowery onto Pell Street. Billy killed the headlights before he made the sharp left onto Doyers, going slowly up the inclining street, and pulled over when he saw the minivan around the bend.

Two old men wearing oversized down jackets and hunting caps approached the minivan. They were joined by three other old men. The driver fired up his lights, popped the door, and waved the men in.

The seniors looked like restaurant workers—waiters and da jop kitchen help—the kind you’d see inside the homey little Chinatown coffee shops or at the local OTB picking the ponies. They were the last stragglers from the old bachelor generation lost in America.

They reminded Jack of his pa, who had been buried for six months in the pastoral grounds of Evergreen Cemetery. The traditional Ching Ming grave-sweeping ceremonies would be observed by the Chinese in the coming weeks.

The minivan crossed Chatham Square, went down Catherine Street to catch the FDR on South Street. Billy followed it, a few car lengths back. When they hit the highway, Billy turned on the dash radio, and the rock station blared out an old Steppenwolf number. Billy cranked up the radio, slapping the steering wheel and bellowing along with his own misunderstood lyrics:

Roarin’ down the highway,

Cruising for adventure,

To whatever breaks our way …

Jack allowed Billy his two minutes of wild man, figuring the song was ending. When it segued to a commercial, Jack turned off the radio and asked, “They run a van up every night?”

“Not sure every night,” Billy answered. “But definitely weekends.”

“Their gambling jones so bad they need to go to the Bronx?”

“Yeah,” Billy said, keeping the minivan in sight. “Chinese love to gamble. It gives the working stiffs an excuse to hang out, have a few drinks, maybe score some pussy.”

A one-night escape from the shackles of their lost China dreams.

The lights across the East River danced, neon colors shimmering off the dark waters, the city lights of Brooklyn and Queens sparkling in the distance like a scattering of jewels. A full moon was frozen overhead.

Cruising at sixty miles an hour, the Mustang rolled low to the blacktop, its mag wheels biting into the curves of the undulating highway. The outer boroughs flashed by on the other side of the river as the black car muscled its way north toward the Willis Avenue Bridge.

Billy said, “You know what? You mentioned the Harlem River, right? My first thought, the niggas killed him. Or the spics. You know? The usual, ripping off the takeout boys. You know the deal. Chinese always getting fucked in the South Bronx, yo.”

Jack didn’t offer a comment to that but knew he’d likely have to check in with the South Bronx precincts to see what the crime profile was against Asian Americans and also to get the lay of the land. Rob the guy, sure, but dump him in the river? What kind of gangbanger would go through that much trouble to rob a deliveryman?

“Those motherfuckers,” Billy continued. “But I ain’t worried. I got my shit.” He patted the steel next to his ribs. “Punks don’t scare me.”

“You packing?” Jack asked, alarmed.

“Shit yeah.” Billy proudly flashed the gun inside his jacket. “Nine millimeter. Beretta. No boolshit.”

“Fuck, Billy. You should have told me that before I got in the car.”

“What the fuck?”

“You forget I’m a cop?”

“You think I’m rollin’ dirty?” Billy spat back. “I’m licensed, brother. Permit to carry. Straight up. Would I compromise your ass? I’m hurt. I got a businessman’s license because I carry and transfer phat stacks of dollars to the bank. A lot of Chinatown merchants got carry permits.” He blew out a breath and kept the Mustang behind the minivan. “Wow … so all right?” he said with a smirk. “We cool?”

Jack took a breath and nodded okay, but he’d have to watch out for Billy’s bad temper and his drinking. Not let him drive if he got anywhere near drunk. In the South Bronx, of all places.

Jack rolled down the window and let the freezing wind buffet his face as they approached the Willis Avenue Bridge.

“You still packing that thirty-eight?” Billy asked.

“Yeah.”

“You still carrying that shorty? For real? You kidding me. Every nigga with a nine out there, and you with that peashooter thirty-eight?”

The minivan bounced in the distance.

“Shit, Jacky, fourteen nines in a clip, against six thirty-eights? Damn, you must be high, whatever you’re thinking.”