Chinatown Beat (24 page)

"I'm interested in seeing justice done," Jack answered coldly.

"You see where I'm going with this, Detective? Even if the judge doesn't grant Mr. Wong bail, there's enough doubt here that no jury will convict him."

"Well, that remains to be seen. Johnny Wong's prints are on the murder weapon. At the very least, he's an accomplice."

"Yeah, Tight. See you in court." Littman left the captain's door open as he walked out, not bothering to look back.

Captain Mario said to Jack, "What do you think?"

Jack looked off into the distance. "The woman who took a pot shot at me in San Francisco? She's definitely involved. This guy, Johnny Wong, maybe he's dumb enough to be a fall guy, or maybe he's really in deep. But he's a flight risk, and no judge is going to grant him bail and let him walk, not with his prints on the piece."

His eyes focused, came back into the room and settled on the captain. "I'm willing to bet that the old men on Pell Street are paying for Littman because they're sniffing at something in the wind. They need Johnny's help to figure out what happened and they're buying time."

There was a brief silence. Then Jack said, "If Johnny's not the shooter, then it's the woman. Give the Hip Ching a couple of weeks and see what they turn up."

"What makes you think they can find out what you can't?" the captain asked.

"Chinatown doesn't end at Delancey Street, Captain. It stretches to Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and China. It reaches out to Chinese settlements everywhere. Sooner or later, there won't be enough space in the yellow world for a pretty Chinese woman to hide."

Marino frowned.

"At any rate," Jack finished, "Wong's arrest takes the pressure off us. And headquarters, too."

"Keep me posted," Marino said.

Jack went down the creaky stairs to the street. Night rain began to fall. He was off duty now and thirsty. He headed toward the Golden Star bar.

He'd talked a good game, but he was uneasy. He didn't see Johnny for the perpetrator, yet keeping him in custody was necessary. The longer he was incarcerated, the more pressure would build up. The longer it took to bring him to trial, the more time the Hip Ching would have to conduct their own investigation. If Mona was guilty, they had the best chance of scouring the world to find her. And then, eventually, the old men from Pell Street would produce evidence givingJohnny an alibi; witnesses would suddenly come forward with dated racetrack tickets, or cancelled passes to some Atlantic City concert featuring Hong Kong singers. They'd provide testimony as to Johnny's whereabouts at the crucial time that would be hard to disprove, that would be just believable enough to sway a jury, and the DA would decide to quash the indictment. The press was another matter, especially the Chinese press. While Johnny was in custody, the media feeding frenzy would abate. For the mainstream newspapers, the case would quickly fade, become just another seedy Chinatown killing. In the Chinese-language press, the left-wing journals would cheer for Johnny. The right-wing conservative papers would like Johnny lynched, but they would never mention Big Uncle's mistress. By the time the case resurfaced-with Littman for the defense playing for delay Jack knew he'd be in a new precinct and out of the spotlight.

Finally, he reached the bar. The sounds of jukebox music spilled out of the door as he came through it, out of the cold rainy night.

At One Police Plaza the auditorium was packed with cop families, police cadets and veterans creating a proud field of deep NYPD blue. The Emerald Pipers band wailed, then applause punctuated the presentation of awards.

Jack stood on the stage in his neatly pressed blue uniform, before the mayor, the commissioner and an array of department brass, all applauding as the deputy chief pinned the Combat Cross above the gold badge over Jack's heart. It had taken him two shootouts to earn the little green-lacquered stripe with a cross in the middle, plus a promotion to Detective Third Grade, a step up in rank that carried a pay raise. The Internal Affairs investigation had been quashed.

When he looked out over the auditorium, Jack felt exhilarated yet sad. There was no family in the audience waiting for him.

He thought of Pa, and how proud he might have been. Maybe.

By Thanksgiving, Widow Tam ceased to wear all black when she appeared in public, but kept the mask of grief on her face. At home, alone in the dark living room overlooking Chinatown, she wore her red embroidered nightgown every night to bed, her head nestling into downy pillows, wrapped in the blood color of new luck.

She felt thankful.

Her happiness had been completed when the police arrested Jun Yee Wong for her husband's murder and she received the Full Benefit, US $200,000, from Universal Life. Opening the windows, she felt the bite of frost tumbling out of the north, and began to think of sunny places where she could escape the New York City winter.

Jack celebrated alone, chasing a line of boilermakers at the Golden Star. When he'd had enough, he returned to the park. He'd finally tracked down Ali Por to the free clinic at the Old Age Center. She was strapped to a gurney and connected to an intravenous line, dehydrated and delirious. The nurse said she'd been there almost a week and that, although the fever was breaking, nothing the old woman said made any sense.

Jack reached out from his alcoholic haze and placed the bak baan, mahjong tile, in her veiny clutch.

Ali Por rolled her eyes at him, called him jai, son, and passed the tile from palm to palm. She said what sounded to Jack like panda sun, diamond sky, wind of salt water, and began to tremble.

The nurse took the tile, returned it to Jack, and told him to leave as Ali Por lapsed into unconsciousness.

In the street, Jack repeated Ah Por's phrases but could not squeeze any clarity from them. He wandered down Mott Street, spinning from the boilermakers, clueless.

Sleep came in snatches of blinking REMs, fitful tiny periods of rest in a night of tossing and disconnected dreams.

When Jack awoke, he found himself on the floor in the daylight of Pa's apartment.

The sun was high and bright, unusual for a day in late October. Sunlight streamed into the apartment, throwing thick slatshadows across the floor, along the walls.

Family, he thought, this is how it ends.

He saw the Hennessy carton on top of the green vinyl upholstered chair, the only item of furniture still remaining. He crossed the empty room and took the mao-tai gourd out of the carton.

Sanitation had come for the mattress and the broken wooden chairs. The bed frame and boxspring were still good, and he had given them to the Old Age Center, along with the wok and the table lamp. The leftover clothes he'd taken to the Goodwill guys down on Houston near the Bowery. He'd given the rest of the books and magazines to the Chinatown History Project.

He took a deep drink, felt the heat as it went down. The super had taken out the garbage thatJack had piled into one corner. And that was that. The new family was moving in next week and they needed to get the place painted. Jack took the last hit from the gourd, surprised by its bittersweet taste, the sudden sticky ooze around the opening against his lips. He held the gourd upside down, watching as dark tarlike mud dripped out. He rubbed some of the sediment between his fingers, took a sniff. Opium, he realized instantly. No wonder he had had troubled memories, flashbacks with the photographs, been tormented by fragmented pieces of living left behind. Was it Pa's opium? Or had it been left on purpose for hinl? He'd never know, but wasn't sure that it mattered.

He set the gourd down.

Only the Hennessy carton was left. Fifty years of a man's life in a cardboard box. There were photographs, many of people Jack didn't recognize. Canceled bankbooks, a passport, eyeglasses, a flashlight. A black beaver fedora labeled Bianchi icappelli di qualita.

Jack was keeping all these, his memorabilia. There was the porcelain Kwan Gung, an idol before which Jack could burn incense, bow, offer greetings, feel sorrow, hope. He'd miss Pa. Miss all the old ways he'd finally come to understand and respect.

Deeper in the box, a Social Security card, and Ma's Death Certificate, twenty years old. He tested the flashlight. It still worked.

He took the Hennessy carton and carried it out of the apartment. He carried it down the five flights of stairs, thinking how light it was, this box holding fifty years of living.

He stepped out into the bright sun and squinted down Mott Street. He paused for a long moment, let his eyes sweep over the streets, the neighborhood he'd grown up in, and was now leaving, yet again. Having been born into it, he'd been too close, and hadn't been able to see it clearly. Now, at long last, he did. Chinatown symbolized a bygone era, when the old Chinese bachelors were hemmed in by racist hate, denied their families, forced into doing women's work, to clean, to cook. The hate was still around, but the Chinese, no longer hemmed in, were free now to find their place in America.

Jack saw it clearly now: why Pa came-for opportunity, for himself, but more important, for his descendants, why he'd stayed until the day he died. And why all the tattered shreds of China that remained had been so dear to him. He'd lost so much of it that he couldn't bear to see it disappear from the single most important part of himself he had left, his only son. Jack had mistaken it for narrow-mindedness, but realized now it had been love.

Chinatown was a paradox, a Chinese puzzle he'd never been able to figure out.

Perhaps it's true, he thought, that one can never go back home, but then it was also true that a part of oneself always remains there, memories always with us in our hearts and minds.

The wind came up, blowing through his reverie.

So long, Pa, he was thinking, as he shifted the box up to his shoulder. He took a last look and made his way down the narrow winding street.

It was early afternoon and the gambling basement was empty. Lucky went to the cheap card table by the rear wall and searched through the pile of newspapers stacked there. He was looking for news about Uncle Four's murder case, but found nothing except two tea-stained newspapers that were already weeks old. Lucky read the accounts in the Post and the Daily News and laughed. How The Chinese Cop Broke The Big Uncle Murder. And Love Triangle In Chinatown Murder. Jack, the hero cop.

Lucky toasted up some chiba and found an article in the New China Times: Officials of the On Yee Merchants Association decried the recent violence in the community and proposed that civic leaders, tong leaders, and social workers cooperate with Fifth Precinct officers in a new Community Liaison arrangement designed to alleviate tensions between the various groups. Lucky sucked in smoke, cracking a smile.

He had placed the blame for Gee Man's death on a renegade crew that had since been washed. In a generous gesture, he had called for a new peace between the Ghosts, the Dragons, and the Fuk Ching. Now he was the peacemaker. The new dealmaker on the block. The Merchants Association had nominated him to work with the police. The streets were profitable again. He went partners on a new gambling basement on Bayard Street.

He was looking forward to Christmas, when the next rush of gamblers would line his pockets. And when he hooked Jack and the other undercover dogs, he'd finally be truly untouchable.

Jack bought two packs of Red Rockets from the Lee Bao grocery, where fireworks were quietly available to the locals for ceremonial purposes. Now, thirty days after Pa's burial, Jack would be returning to the cemetery to set off the fireworks and to plant Flame Azalea bushes by his tombstone, Rhododendron calendulaceum, that would bloom full with red flowers in the spring.

The Lee Bao was on a small side street where Alexandra's grandparents had lived, and Jack thought about her as he made his way to the corner flower shop. He'd figured Alexandra wrong. Beneath her tough, pushy lawyer exterior, there was a woman who cared deeply for her people. He had called Alexandra about the handkerchief, and since her grandfather was buried at Evergreen, they had agreed to drive out there together that Sunday.

She brought the tins of roast pork and chicken, bolt tong go, and packed them into the backseat of the Fury, next to the azaleas.

They visited her grandfather's plot first, where he lay under a foot-long grave marker in the old bachelors' section of the cemetery. They completed the ritual silently and then headed toward his father's grave.

The leaves were falling from the trees, dappling the landscape with swatches of amber, brown, and yellow. The sky was a crisp cool blue, stark sunlight shining, illuminating the autumn day.

They came to Pa's headstone. The ground was cold and hard, and Jack had to force the folding shovel into the ground before he was able to turn enough dirt to plant the bushes.

They ran through the prescribed motions dutifully: Incense. Bowing. She braved the firecrackers.

They finished up with the bok tong go and the cha sieve and bundled the incense and papers back into the car.

They had dinner by the bar at Tsunami, sake and beer, with sushi that floated by on a chain of wooden boats, new-tech Japanese style. When the distraction passed, Jack said soberly, "It's official. I'm transferring out. Two weeks vacation, then I report to the Ninth Precinct, in the Alphabets."

"Won't you miss the old neighborhood?" she asked.

"I'm not going far," he answered. "I'll still come by to eat and shop, but at least I won't spend every day in Chinatown."

"Feel bad?"

"I wish things could have worked out better. With what I knew, who I knew, I thought I could make a difference. But everything I do gets compromised. Makes me feel like I'm losing something."

She touched his hand. "This is your home."