“There is a dai lo baan,” she added, falling into a breathy exclaiming cadence. A big boss? wondered Jack. Organized crime or Bruce Lee movies? There was a pause, and Ah Por glanced up at the TV monitor, distracted.
He quickly slipped her another folded five, took the baggies back, and passed her the keys.
She took a couple of long breaths, feeling the cuts and edges of the different keys.
“There is a very small closet,” she began. A locker, storage, Jack thought.
“Bo, see,” she added. Precious and a key? Jack wondered. A safe, or safe deposit?
“Mo yung,” she said as she flipped another key. “Useless.” Its use had expired? A transient key, a changed lock cylinder?
She handed back the keys as Jack slipped her one of the snapshots of the deceased. A face reading. She held the photo with both hands, seeing the river-wet face with dripping hair falling back from it, caressing the image of the dead man with her thumbs, murmuring like she was comforting a grandchild with a fever. Don’t worry. It was all just a nightmare, this journey to the West.
“What?” Jack wondered aloud.
“North,” she said. “He came from the north.” Yeah, north Manhattan, Jack remembered. Maybe the Bronx? Or even farther north? The routes of human smugglers.
“He’s always moving,” she continued. Immigrants on the move? Like migrant workers? he pondered. Or moving, like on a bike? A deliveryman? A student with a part-time job?
Ah Por closed her eyes, switched to the Toishanese dialect, saying, “Money is the root of all evil.” She placed the snapshot gently on the table and pushed it back to Jack. He took a moment to absorb her last statement before giving her the five-dollar tip he had ready. The root of all evil.
She pocketed the five and smiled, dismissing Jack with a wave of her gnarled hand. She resumed watching the Hong Kong movie as if Jack had never been there. He knew it was a wrap, finished, gave her a small bow, and left the table.
He went back through the elderly crowd toward the front door, where the winter wind seeped in and reminded him of death in the cold and uncaring city.
OUTSIDE, THE DAY was still steel gray as the wind had blown itself out.
North, Jack was thinking, Ah Por’s word.
He dropped down to the Brooklyn Bridge station and caught another subway northbound, with the South Bronx addresses rattling like dice in his head. He was seeing snake eyes, but what was clear to him: a dead Asian with forty-four cents in his pockets had put him on this 4 train to visit four Chinese restaurants, all situated in the confines of the Forty-Fourth Precinct. He didn’t like the way the numbers lined up, four being the number that the Chinese hated the most, say in Cantonese, sounding phonetically like death. In this case, death times six.
He heard Ah Por’s words of yellow witchcraft in his head. Not that he was superstitious, just wary of what destiny might hold.
The train rattled, rumbled its way out of Manhattan.
The restaurant locations clustered around the subway lines, with the Lexington and the West Side lines pushing across the Harlem River to the mean ghetto streets of Highbridge, Tremont, Morrisania, where the immigrant Chinese restaurants served and delivered to the gwai lo devils at their own peril. Hard and bitter mining, ngai phoo, eking out a living in the gum shan, in the mountains of gold.
A bleak ghettoscape flashed by outside the train windows as the subway emerged aboveground. Always moving, he heard Ah Por saying inside his head.
Speak No Evil
BILLY LOOKED UP from the steamy foo jook bean sticks as the English secretary entered the Tofu King.
“Du mort yah?” Billy asked, working his slang Toishanese. “What? Add something to the Chin order?”
The secretary glanced around, nodded toward a back room. “Let’s talk in your office,” he said.
“Sure,” Billy said, pulling off the sanitary plastic gloves. It was how they usually tallied their tofu orders. They went into the small makeshift office, and Billy closed the door.
“What’s up?” Billy asked, turning to see the man reaching into his coat. The motion froze Billy momentarily, made him think of his gun in the desk drawer. But what came out of the coat was a fresh pint bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, which he placed on the desk.
“About your chaai lo police friend,” the secretary started with a frown. Billy put two clean shot glasses on the desk, and they sat down.
“You weren’t much help.” Billy smiled disarmingly. The man snap-twisted off the cap and pushed the bottle toward Billy.
“Those restaurants belong to Jook Mun Gee,” the secretary began. “And I don’t want to go near whatever this is.”
“Jook Mun Gee?” Billy said, interest piqued.
“Correct.”
Billy poured two big shots from the small bottle.
“And I can’t involve the association,” the man continued.
Billy raised his glass, said, “I understand completely.”
They clinked, and each threw back a full swallow.
“Off the record,” Billy said as he refilled their glasses. “My cop friend.” He toasted. “He’ll appreciate the favor.”
Backtrack
JACK GOT OFF at Mount Eden and decided to check out the two restaurants closer to the West Side lines, then work his way back farther west to the river, where the other two restaurants were. The takeouts’ addresses appeared to be at least six city blocks apart, as if they’d agreed to keep the spacing fair and even, not be too close so as to eat out of each other’s golden rice bowl.
The only people on the streets looked die-hard ghetto, sullen, but the two “Lucky” restaurants weren’t too far off the beaten track of burned-out tenements, graffitied, abandoned buildings, and vacant lots.
The first place, Lucky Dragon on West Tremont, was just a hole-in-the-wall fast-food takeout joint. The shop looked worn down, neglected, like it’d had a hard-luck history. Hopeful immigrants looking for their piece of the American Dream, thought Jack.
There were no customers, and Jack wondered if they’d just opened for the day.
He didn’t see a delivery bike anywhere, but inside it was a typical mom-and-pop takeout counter with no seating. You bought food like it was a ghetto liquor store: cash went into a teller’s slot, where a girl took your order and made change. The eggroll specials came out from behind the Plexiglas, boxed and bagged to go. No hanging around.
Protocols of the streets ruled, Jack knew, like the dealers on the corners.
Cop and go, yo. Don’t be lingering at this motherfucka …
No problema, hombre. Buy and blow.
No troubles, man. Five-oh on the roll.
Farther behind the Plexiglas was a fast-food kitchenette where a middle-aged Chinese husband-and-wife team was firing up the dark woks and preparing soups and side dishes for the lunch special rush. Fried rice, eggroll, and a discount can of no-name soda: $2.99. No delively.
Jack badged the cashier girl, who called out to the man at the wok, who turned and looked at Jack a long moment before waving him in. The girl pressed a buzzer until he went through a notch at the end of the counter.
“Ni yao shen me?” he asked Jack, working the oily ladle. “What do you want?” Mandarin, thought Jack, but with a Fukienese accent. The wife watched them, stirring a pot of simmering wonton broth as Jack showed the man the photo of the deceased.
“Know this person?” Jack asked in his clipped Mandarin. The man glanced at the snapshot, shook his head, and, without missing a beat swirling the ladle, answered, “Wo bu zhidao,” I don’t know, as Jack showed him the menu scrap with the phone numbers.