The refrigerator was stocked for a single person: two bricks of tofu, some gai choy, vegetables, and a gallon jug of dao jeung, bean milk. There were leftover salad greens, a half-dozen eggs, a piece of flank steak, dumplings, and noodles in the freezer.
Jack sat down at the little table and waited for the coroner’s wagon. Crime Scene would arrive soon enough. Nobody here was going anywhere. The waiting made him wonder again why he’d caught the case, and reminded him of all the Chinatown events that had led up to his recent transfer from the Fifth Precinct. The adrenaline had begun to ebb from his body. Fatigue slowly crept back in.
He remembered how, seven months earlier, he’d gotten a hardship transfer out of Anti-Crime, to be closer to Pa in Chinatown, who’d been terminally ill. The transfer had brought Jack back to the 0-Five, back to the old neighborhood, where he’d grown up, where he’d lost boyhood friends and his innocence, and from which he’d thought he’d finally escaped.
The old man had died recently, and Jack’s grief and guilt were still fresh in his heart. He’d moved out on Pa, but only because Chinatown was no longer the same place for him as it was for his father. Jack’s Chinatown was colored by violence, death, and a feeling of helplessness that he hated.
He’d become a cop, thinking he’d make a difference. The difference was he’d become as cynical and hard as the gangboys he’d left behind.
He was on the job, working Canal Street with the Anti-Crime plainclothes squad, when Pa passed away. Jack had found him, after stopping to pick up jook, congee, for the old man, after the day shift. He’d missed the chance to say good-bye, to try and apologize for the clashes they’d had. And now Jack was the last man standing in the Yu bloodline. Two hundred years of family history on the edge, in Mei Kwok, America.
Not long after the burial, a Chinatown tong big shot had gotten himself murdered. Jack was given the case. Uncle Four, leader of the Hip Chings, had been shot coming out of an elevator at 444 Hester Street. One man was in custody, awaiting trial. Another suspect had vanished.
During the investigation, Jack had been suspended by Internal Affairs, but still managed to bring back from San Francisco’s Chinatown a New York limousine driver whose name was Johnny “Wong Jai” Wong. A person of interest, a Hong Kong Chinese woman, was still at large. They knew her only as Mona.
The case was pending trial.
Johnny Wong’s name brought back memories: a short heavyset body lying on the floor, halfway out of a small elevator, the doors bumping up against his ample waist. The vic was Uncle Four. Someone had popped a couple of .25-caliber hi-vels into the back of his head.
Jack had followed Mona’s words, her phone tips to him, to California. But when he arrested Johnny Wong for the murder, Johnny, in turn, had pointed the finger at Mona, Fat Uncle’s mistress.
Now Johnny was in a cell in Rikers, still claiming he had been framed.
Jack remembered chasing a woman, thirty yards distant, a gun in her hand, desperately pulling a rolling carry-all behind her. She’d escaped from that San Francisco rooftop and disappeared.
Jack knew he’d have to testify to that. So far, none of the Wanteds they’d put out on her had come back, but they had Johnny and the murder weapon, with his prints on it. Sooner or later, the case was going to have its day in court.
Jack recalled the picture of Hong Kong songstress Shirley Yip, torn from Star! Entertainment, a Chinese magazine. It was the closest likeness they had of Mona; according to Lucky she was a dead ringer for the celebrity.
Toward the end of his tour in the Fifth, Jack had bumped up against his boyhood friend Tat “Lucky” Louie, who’d tried to recruit him into the ranks of dirty cops on the On Yee tong’s payroll. Lucky would have known about the Golden Galaxy, a karaoke dive that was operating on his turf. But Lucky was only being kept alive now by a respirator at Downtown CCU; he’d been caught in a gangland shoot-out between disgruntled Ghost Legion factions. The shoot-out had left seven bodies outside Chinatown OTB, and a possible shooter in flight.
Lucky’s luck had run out.
Then there was Alex. Alexandra Lee-Chow, Chinatown activista lawyer. Pretty and hard-nosed, but with a soft heart. She was going through a bitter yuppie divorce. And she was drifting in and out of alcoholic self-medication, just like he was.
Since they’d known one another, Jack had steered her past a drunk and disorderly charge, and she’d helped him with his Chinatown cases. During bouts of grief and misery, they’d commiserated and become drinking buddies.
Two budding alcoholics working their way up.
Jack noted that he could use Alex’s connections in the Administration for Children’s Services for the newly orphaned children, as well as Victim’s Services. In addition, there was faith-based support for young victims left parentless. The man and his wife were dead, but their children had to be cared for.
The karaoke photo of the woman reminded him vaguely of Mona. She was like a chameleon. From the little popgun she’d squeezed off firecracker shots at him as he chased her across that rooftop.
Then she was gone. “In the wind.” He wondered how far she had flown.
The trilling of his cell phone broke his reverie. The number on the readout was one he didn’t recognize.
“Detective Yu?” The voice spoke Toishanese, the old Chinatown dialect.
“Yes, who’s this?”
“I am the father.” The words froze Jack. “Of the dead man.”
“You were here earlier,” said Jack.
“Yes, I found the”—a hesitation—“Say see, the bodies …”
“Sir, I need to speak with you,” Jack said in dialect.
“We can meet with you. About half an hour.”
“We?” Jack asked.
“Myself,” the voice answered, “and the father of the dead woman.”
Jack checked his watch. It was 6:18 AM, dark still, but dawn around the edges. He heard the sounds of Crime Scene arriving outside on the quiet street, the voice of the rookie uniformed cop.
“Where?” Jack asked, rechecking his watch.
He left CSU to their work and canvassed the adjacent apartments. The neighbors had heard nothing. No arguments, yelling, sounds of struggle. In the middle of the night, som gong boon yeh, they’d been dead asleep.
An old couple in the apartment above heard a bang, but couldn’t agree whether there had been one or two. They’d thought it was the street door slamming or the noise of the overnight garbage trucks. Or maybe some lon jaai, prankster kids, blasting firecrackers.
He left the building as dawn broke over Chinatown, made a left on Bowery, and headed north toward Canal.
The Nom San Bok Hoy Association was located on the Bowery, north of Hester, past the block of Chinese jewelry stores and the Music Palace Chinese Theater, where the gangboy shoot-outs in the audience were becoming a bigger thrill than the Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups on the big screen.
The Music Palace was becoming obsolete, due to a lively Chinese videotape rental market. Chinese-language entertainment in the comfort of a living room beat a musty, seedy theater hemmed in by perverts, lowlifes, and gangsters. Lucky’s Ghosts had fought with both the Dragons and the Yings over this turf.
Why risk your life for a movie? The Nom San Bok Hoy got its name from landmarks in the villages of the clans who’d emigrated. In their province of the south of China, there were two mountains, one in the north and one in the south. Jack’s ancestors traced their lineage to the village of the south mountain, nom san. An adjacent village had been located at the north river, bok hoy. The villagers got along well and had historically formed alliances. When they arrived in New York’s Chinatown, they organized a club, an association for family members and affiliates of their clans. Jack’s father had arrived with the third or fourth generation of landed Chinese, a junior member of a small group.