In Chinatown, the young man at the Wah chok wui, Chinese “service center,” had reminded her of Johnny Wong. He had been too eager to assist her, overly inquisitive.
Fifty dollars to fill out the immigration forms.
She wasn’t looking to get a green card or Medicare.
Mona realized that she still had this effect on men, her beauty apparent even without makeup. The young clerk had spooked her, and she’d left the agency abruptly, but not before she’d discovered that she’d need a social security card, and non-driver’s license.
Other identification, like a passport, would follow from there.
She’d needed secrecy because, deep in her heart, she feared dead Uncle Four’s thugs would seek her out.
But soon her transformation would be complete.
She’d dumped the Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos in New York, had left behind the Gucci and Chanel outfits, the thousand-dollar designer handbags, the Valentino Sunglass Collectione, the Dolce & Gabbana accessories: all gone.
The fancy restaurants, the racetracks, all the hideaway clubs in New York, in Chinatowns along the East Coast. All gone. Those were perks that had masked her punishment, she’d realized, seeing it now with vision she hadn’t possessed earlier; the abuse she’d suffered had led to freedom.
If I allow it to happen, she’d thought, then I deserve it …
Because all bad things must end.
As all good things must also end.
The balance of yin and yang, the way of the universe.
Changing one’s habits was like changing one’s appearance. No more designer-label lifestyle, she’d thought, they’d be looking for that. Obviously, avoid the nightlife. The night being their time, their underworld.
If they find me, she resolved, it will be in daylight. Bok bok gwong gwong. All clear to see.
And I will not go quietly.
She remembered the letter-opener dagger in her jacket. Be prepared.
72 Hours
The bleak morning brought Jack back to the Ninth, where his vacation days were approved, where he accessed the precinct’s computer setup. He tapped into Seattle’s Bureau of Vital Statistics but didn’t find a birth certificate for Edward Ng. Or for Edward Eng. To Jack, this merely confirmed that Eddie hadn’t been born there but may have been relocated there as an infant.
There were twelve Edward Ngs listed on the school-system database but the ages were all wrong. None of them was in his mid-twenties now. Foreign immigrants and their immigrant offspring. Their addresses were spread across the span of the city.
Four of the Edwards had driver’s licenses but their DMV photos showed they were older men, and all were over five foot six. Too tall.
The Social Security databank yielded 148 Edward Ngs and Engs across the nation’s Chinese communities. All information requests had to be made in person.
Jack took a deep shaolin breath, then another, exhaling stress.
He tapped SEATTLE CHINATOWN into the keyboard.
The designation INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT appeared but took a long time to boot up. Jack rubbed his trigger fingers into his temples until the information came up. Compared to New York, Seattle was a small city, a couple of million people spread out across the great Northwest expanse. Chinatown was part of the International District, the I.D., a designation that Chinatown leaders didn’t like, seeing it as an infringement of Chinese culture and history there.
The Chinese had arrived in Seattle first, as miners and railroad coolies on the Northern Pacific, but then were driven out by racist hate. American hate. They’d created two bustling Chinatowns before fleeing to the East Coast, starting over in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Chicago.
The Japanese followed as America turned against the Chinese, becoming the dominant minority group after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts. They created Japantown. Nihonmachi. J-town thrived until World War II happened and America rounded up Japanese-Americans, forcing them into the internment camps.
The Filipinos, who were U.S. allies, founded Filipinotown.
The Vietnamese arrived after the lost war and cultivated the Little Saigon area.
Koreans and Indians added to the international Asian identity.
There were more than twelve thousand Chinese in Seattle, so it wasn’t going to be easy the way Billy Bow had joked, like “just pull up a chair” and wait for Eddie to walk by. But who knows? thought Jack. Shit happens.
Altogether, Seattle Asians totaled maybe fifty thousand people, crammed together in a district that mixed and muted all their cultures and true colors. More diversity, Jack realized, but less unity.
New York City, Jack knew, had more than fifty thousand residents in any one of its three Chinatowns. He pushed back from the computer and closed his eyes.
Alex came to mind and he pictured her on a plane somewhere over the Midwest. The CADS and the New York ORCA members, having booked their flights weeks in advance, had arranged for an early departure that would put them in Seattle around noon.
Jack was only able to get a last-minute flight that wasn’t scheduled to depart JFK until mid-afternoon. He envisioned early-evening traffic congestion, and rainy skies at Sea-Tac International.
0-Five
Jack hopped a downtown M103 bus to Chinatown. He didn’t see Captain Marino in the 0-Five, but proceeded to make copies of data from his open-case files, reviewing the information as it piled up. He pocketed one of the .22-caliber slugs that had been placed into the evidence file.
It was already afternoon when he caught the sai ba, minibus, on Market Street, its harried driver bouncing his passengers toward the Williamsburg Bridge, back to Sunset Park.
In his studio apartment, Jack changed into a black suit, over which he’d planned to wear an all-weather jacket. He tossed a permanent-press shirt and another dark suit into a backpack. He checked his Colt Special, and his badge. The kitchen garbage bag went into the hallway chute.
He made sure his studio’s windows were secured, locked, with the shades drawn. It wasn’t that he was planning a long trip but in Brooklyn, New York, it was better to be paranoid than sorry.
Knowing that the Chinese drivers were experts at skirting the traffic bottlenecks en route to JFK, he called one of the see gay radio cars from Eighth Avenue.
The flight was delayed.
Jack purchased a plastic disposable camera, and tried to work up a profile of Eddie while he waited. Eddie Ng, the ma lo, monkey; bad monkey. Shorty, the Red Star gang member as a juvenile, breaking-and-entering raps, the tattoos. What part had he played in the Ghosts shoot-out? What was the beef between him and the gang vic in Doyers alley, Koo Jai, a.k.a. Kid Koo?
Seattle was known for its great outdoors activities but Jack didn’t feel that Chinatown-wise Eddie was a sailing, kayaking, biking, and hiking kind of guy, especially in the raw weather patterns of the Northwest. Indoors, figured Jack, but probably not bowling, movies, anything like that. He’d want to go somewhere he could blend in, or be left alone. Something solitary. He didn’t figure to stray too far from Chinatown, risk losing his invisibility.
He found a seat near the boarding gate and fought the urge to close his eyes and catch an hour’s worth of power nap.
Curious George the monkey came to mind….
Shorty
Watching the eight ball, near the side pocket, he knew it was an easy shot. He saw the nine ball next, at the other end of the table, almost against the short rail, two feet from either corner pocket. He casually blew blue chalk off the tip of the stick, put English on the cue-ball stroke, and pocketed the eight. He hadn’t put enough draw behind the spin, however. Shit, he cursed quietly.