He knew it would jam his investigation to a halt.

“Did they say where he was going?” Jack asked.

“To Hong Kong,” Ingram answered. “Said he was going to meet Chinese justice.”

Jack nodded acknowledgment, knowing Chinese justice could mean a “Beijing haircut,” a nine-millimeter, hollow-point bullet to the head, ripping out the bad brains. Life is cheap in China. Then they’d bill the criminal’s family for the bullet.

Or it could mean years in a dark, airless cell.

Or it could mean disappearing inside the Chinese prison system, where maybe, with the Triad’s help paying off the warden and guards, Gaw would be set free. Free to resume his Triad life.

Or they just might decide it’s cheaper to shank him to death in prison, if rival Triads didn’t get him first.

Jack wondered if Bossy had his fingerprints on any of it. Wondered if the Hip Chings were connected somehow. Screw it, he decided, marching to Mott and Pell.

Bossy’s office.

He didn’t know if Bossy’d be there, but Jack pressed the button anyway. The receptionist buzzed him in and tried to stall him, but he barged into Bossy’s office and caught him by surprise.

Bossy coolly waved the indignant receptionist away, her cue to visit the ladies’ room. Jack gave her until the sound of the closing door before he began.

“Weapons were shipped to your office,” he said. “Probably your pretty secretary signed for them.”

Bossy maintained his frozen smile, clenched his fists, raised an eyebrow.

“Your driver Gaw’s good for the killing,” Jack continued. “And maybe I can’t prove it now, but I know you had a hand in it somehow. Maybe you got over on me, but it all comes back around, you know? And with your family’s history, I’m sure you know what that means.”

Bossy smirked, declined to dignify anything Jack had said with a response. He folded his arms, leaned back, and waited for Jack to leave.

The phone rang outside, and the receptionist quickly reappeared, throwing fearful looks in Jack’s direction. She answered the call but didn’t relax until he finally left Bossy’s office, her eyes following him until he turned and went down the stairs. He didn’t care about the surveillance camera on the wall or worry about Internal Affairs breathing down his neck.

Sing’s case was a matter of record now, and there’s wasn’t anything Bossy could do to alter that.

Golden Star

THE PARTY AT Grampa’s was spur of the moment, with Jack having spread the word through Huong and giving the Tombs cops a heads-up. It was a raucous, alcohol-fueled scene, occupying the booths along the side wall, with the Commodores and Isley Brothers jamming loud on the jukebox.

Grampa’s kitchen served the party plates of clams casino, fried chicken wings, and Chef Kim’s signature onion-smothered steaks and chops.

Jack threw the party at Grampa’s knowing a few extra blacks and Latinos weren’t going to raise any eyebrows here. He was happy to see his African American Tombs brother cops—Ingram, Crawford, and Johnson—enjoying cocktails in the second booth and digging the music. It occurred to Jack how much Ingram, Crawford, and Johnson sounded like a law firm.

He started his second boilermaker. Payback is a bitch, like they say. The party was small thanks for those who’d helped on Sing’s case.

He’d invited Ruben, Miguel, and Luis—the tres amigos—sitting in the third booth. Cervezas all around, and smoking up a storm cloud. The three Mexican truckmen seemed to fit well with the Loisaida Boricua regulars at Grampa’s.

He leaned back and imagined the headline scoop he owed Vincent Chin and the United National: KILLER OF CHINESE DELIVERYMAN EXTRADITED TO HONG KONG FOR PAST CRIMES. They’d have to do dim sum sometime. Taking a gulp of the icy beer, he still marveled at Ah Por’s bank clue. More yellow Taoist witchcraft. He fired up a cigarette and considered how his stitches weren’t pulling so much anymore. The boilermakers were beginning to scatter his thoughts, and the jukebox thundered on.

The only one who seemed out of sorts was Billy Bow, who sat across from Jack in the corner booth. Billy scarfed down a baked clam and chased it with some Dewar’s.

“So it boils down to stinky tofu,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “One Chinaman with a paper name snuffs another Chinaman with a paper name, both here illegally mind you, and no one except you really gives a shit how they jacked the killer back to China? Man, that’s fucked up.”

Billy had a way of putting things, especially when he’d had a few drinks. His words held some truth, however. Gaw and Sing were two invisible men who no one paid much attention to. One eked out a living on the edges of the restaurant industry. His invisibility got him killed. The other was a Triad criminal hiding in plain sight for twenty years. He cultivated his invisibility, and it allowed him to kill.

If Gaw hadn’t killed Sing, their lives would have gone on, almost predictably, and no one would have even known they existed.

Jing deng, Jack mused, destiny. Always in control.

Billy took another slug of the Dewar’s, turned his cynicism toward the rest of the party.

“Too many niggas and spics here tonight,” he muttered.

“Billy, stop,” Jack said. “They all helped me during the case. Just like you did.”

“Yeah, but … I know, but …” He shook his head.

“So relax, all right?” Jack pleaded. “Have another drink.” Then he leaned in, spoke just loud enough to be heard, “And don’t be such a fucking hater, okay?”

Before Billy could protest, Jack gave him a brotherly pat across the shoulders.

“And remember,” Jack continued. “I owe you a date at Chao’s.”

Billy brightened immediately, the thought of pussy erasing the racist spike in his brain. “That’s right!” he remembered alcoholically.

“All right,” Jack reinforced the change in mood, buying Billy another round. Better drunk than sorry. He could always get someone at Grampa’s to take Billy home if necessary.

By the third boilermaker, Jack began to put together what Ah Por’s witchy words actually meant. The rat could be a reference to the Year of the Rat, the coming year in the Chinese horoscope. Ten months away. Ah Por meant Bossy won’t see the next year? If so, according to her words, it’d be true that Bossy’s fortune was nothing more than death money. He’d never be able to spend it fast enough. The largesse would be left to whom? His Taiwanese wife? His gangster-wannabe son?

Maybe justice traveled in a slower circle, pondered Jack.

He watched Billy take his scotch to the pool table in the back, where a vampy white girl was waiting to hustle a willing fish like him.

Ruben was the first to leave, followed by Johnson. As the party wound down, Jack stopped keeping track of who left. By 1 A.M. the pace had slowed to a drunken slog. He didn’t see Billy anywhere and signed his running tab before leaving Grampa’s.

He was home by 2 A.M., noting the time display on the clock radio before collapsing onto his bed.

Backup

JACK AWOKE TO a brilliant morning, shaking off the lingering haze from the night’s boilermakers. He knew the sky was brilliant by the bright light knifing in at the edges of his shaded windows. He turned on the TV, surfed the channels until he came to local news, an item featuring the Lantern Festival in Chinatown. Chinese schoolchildren parading with lanterns around Chinatown.

He muted the sound, reached for his cell phone, which was vibrating on the nightstand.

There were two messages that he’d missed during the noisy scene at Grampa’s. The first one was from a Ninth Precinct number, an NYPD shrink named May McMann, about rescheduling an appointment.