“Bitch is dissing her own people,” Billy groused into Jack’s ear.
“She’s Korean,” Jack answered. “Not Chinese.”
“You know what I mean,” Billy bitched. “Asian. She too good for them?”
Jack, even as cynical as he’d become, didn’t see it that way. Behind the sexy smile, what he’d seen in her eyes was sadness and shame.
They were just lonely old men, Jack figured, seeking their young memories in the wrong place.
“She looks like an angel,” Billy continued. “But she’s an evil gold-diggin’ bitch. C’mon, fuck this.”
Jack could see the old men were already getting up from their end tables, heading in the direction of the toilets.
“Let’s go,” Billy said. “We got better places to spend our fuckin’ money.”
They went out past the big bald bouncer and headed back to the car at the underpass. Looking back, Jack saw the bright signage that continued to shine out BOOTY.
Fat Man’s Place
THE MINIVAN LED them south past Yankee Stadium to somewhere off the Grand Concourse, to a seemingly deserted street. Fay Lo’s was the Fat Man’s place, and Billy wanted to stay close enough to hook up with the group as they entered. He pulled up just past the corner as the minivan parked down the block from what looked like a closed diner-type restaurant. The sign above the graffitied roll-down gate advertised CHINA Y LATINA COMIDAS.
Jack imagined a Chinese Cuban, chino-Latino connection. Of the Chinese, the Chinese Cubans were here first, in the Bronx. Jack was sure there were fewer chino–puerto ricanos, chino dominicanos, chino mexicanos than there were Chinese Cubans.
It had taken them the better part of three hours, a circuitous trip through two boroughs and the county of Westchester, to finally arrive at Fay Lo’s. It was close to midnight, the black sky now deeper than Chinese mok ink.
They caught up to the men as they entered a dimly lit alley next to the diner. The driver pressed a doorbell and looked up at a little camera recessed into the brick wall. There was a buzzer sound, and the driver pulled open the door, waving the men in past a big Chinese door goon. He stopped Billy, who pleaded, “We’re all together!” A Toishanese chorus of “He’s with us!” from the old men confirmed it, and the big goon let them through.
Against better judgment again, Jack entered, relaxing his grip on the badge in his pocket and the Colt holstered on his hip. They followed the group into a big room, softly lit so that it looked vaguely like the Asian gambling sections at the Atlantic City or Indian casinos. Featured were mostly Asian games—thirteen-card poker, mini-baccarat, Hong Kong–style stud—with small rooms in the back section for high-stakes mah-jongg, fan tan button bets, and pai gow dominoes. Also in the spread were a few standard casino games like blackjack, roulette, and a bank of slot machines just to keep the gamblers’ girlfriends happy.
A pair of cute girls with cigarette trays casually offered packs of Marlboros and Newports along with little shot bottles of Johnnie Walker Black and XO.
In the far corner they’d set up a buffet table of yellow rice and beans, some pernil, chicken stew, and Chinese char siew, roast pork.
The betting action was moderate, mostly Chinese men chain-smoking around the tables. They looked like the workers he’d seen in the Golden City and China Village and in Chinatown, throwing down their tip money, their hustle pay of sweaty dollar bills, looking for the long odds—twenty, thirty, a hundred to one.
The gang boys stood out from the civilian players. They wore black leather jackets, muscle tees, cargo pants. They propped up their colorful punk haircuts with gel and tagged Chinese “ghost” tattoos on the sides of their necks, fists, and biceps. Inky word characters needled into their skin. Proud of it. Swagger. Willing to fight and die for the gang family. Though it all aided law enforcement in identifying members by their gang tats and nicknames.
They looked just like all the other Chinatown gang-bangers Jack had grown up around. Some of them were posted near the corners of the big room while others patrolled along the periphery, keeping their distance from the main floor so as not to make the gamblers nervous.
Besides the cigarette girls, the only other two women in the place were “dragon ladies,” fortyish dai ga jeer women who stayed back by the mah-jongg area and supervised the cigarette girls. They knew that Chinese men, when it came to gambling, regarded women as bad luck and wouldn’t gamble next to them. Luck don’t be a lady tonight. They also kept their distance from the main-floor action.
Jack spotted three cameras, managers watching everybody from a security room somewhere. The entire place could be closed off by electric roll gates that curled up inside the ceiling. They could lock down, in case of a raid, at the push of a button.
Not exactly a Chinatown mom-and-pop operation.
Jack wondered if the weekly take was as good as that of the Chinatown basements, which he knew was six figures of dirty tong money. It was early yet for the true night crawlers, but the loose action—maybe thirty or so players—followed in a flow that went to a wide stairway in the back. The steps led down into a basement area that was sectioned off for different betting venues and entertainment. There were areas with big-screen TV coverage of satellite-beamed horse races from Hong Kong and China, but also from as regional as Golden Gate or Delta Downs. A complete OTB schedule. Another section with booths where you could play video poker or blackjack. There were a couple of older men in team jerseys, who Jack guessed were Chinese Cubans or Chinese South Americans by their darker complexions, taking sports bets next to cable-TV monitors. They posted hourly specials where they took bets on the house version of lotto, offered odds on different-colored fighting fish that tore each other to bloody shreds inside a glass aquarium. Gamblers could play number combinations at sic bo, high-low, or bet on colors and numbers on a long-odds Wheel of Fortune.
Something for everybody.
Only a dozen gamblers roamed around the basement, watched over by a pair of bored Ghosts.
Jack followed Billy back upstairs to the main floor. In the back of his mind he felt like they were being watched.
“Split up,” Billy said. He went off toward the poker tables.
Jack avoided the Chinese poker games, which actually required focus and concentration, and instead went to the deserted fan tan table, which was situated near the middle of the floor. All he had to do there was bet on the number of buttons left over from a pile that a croupier separated into groups of four. He could watch the entire room from that vantage point.
He took out his winnings from Yonkers and started dropping casual bets onto the fan tan table. The croupier parsed out the ceramic buttons, slowly arriving at the remaining pieces, which would always number between one and four. Simple.
In the big card games area, he could see Billy betting along with the old men on sup som jeung—thirteen-card Chinese poker—and mini-baccarat. Billy accepted a shot glass of Johnnie Walker from one of the cigarette girls and threw it back in a single gulp. If they were being watched, betting separately in different areas would split the attention, and maybe they could fool them into thinking that they were really just two more gamblers out for a lucky roll. But now he knew he’d have to watch Billy’s drinking. They were both armed, in an environment where the Ghosts were armed as well.
No trouble, Billy, Jack whispered to himself, almost like a prayer.
Billy continued spreading his Yonkers money across the poker tables. There were occasional bursts of laughter from the group there.