Death Money (14 page)

“More like a CI, a confidential informant.”

“Oh yeah? Sounds like a
rat
. But don’t those guys get paid, somehow?”

“Yeah, you get paid in drinks here at Grampa’s. And a bonus round at Angelina’s, if things go right.”

Billy glared at Doggie Boy’s photo, staring it down like he was memorizing it.

“Okay, I’m in.” Billy smirked. “Twenty bucks up front.”

“What?”

“You expect me to walk around just peepin’ at people and not betting? Ain’t that a bit obvious?”

“Stretch it,” Jack said, giving Billy the twenty.

“I wasn’t planning on losing,” Billy said as he finished his beer.

J
ACK SAT IN
the front of the Wonton Dynasty, nursing his
gnow nom
noodles, across the street from the gambling basements on Mott. He was waiting for a call back from Billy,
CI gambling while on surveillance
.

Slurping the noodles, Jack had figured the Ghosts would still put Doggie Boy to work, earning his keep even though he was recovering. They’d have him working inside, out of sight, maybe watching the back door of one of the basements—number 55 or number 69—that the gang protected.

“Go to the back and ask for a cup of tea,” Jack had advised Billy. “The drinks are always in the back.”

Billy popped out of number 55 in fifteen minutes, shaking his head
no
when he spotted Jack in the noodle joint.

“No luck, boss,” Billy said over the cell phone. “Seen a few scumbags. But not
that
one.” He went down the block and disappeared into number 69.

Jack planned his next move as he waited.

Less than ten minutes later, Billy was back on the street, telling Jack over the cell phone, “Strike two, bro. They must’ve gotten this boy off the main drag.”

“Go to Mulberry Street,” Jack directed. “Number 79. The Video Palace is a front. Go out the back to the courtyard. They got keno and video poker there. Probably dealing cigarettes and weed, too.”

“Dime bags? How much should I buy?”

“Come on, Billy!”

“Only kiddin’, bro!”

“Just see if he’s there,” Jack groused.

“Okay, relax!” Billy snickered. “
Dewey lay
, right? If I see him, I’ll call you.”

Jack took a breath, recovered the Zen that Billy had drained out of him.

Let it go. Let it flow
.

H
E HEADED TOWARD
the Harmonious Garden, walking north on Baxter Way past cop cars, prisoner vans, and corrections personnel at the monolithic Tombs facility. He greeted some of the uniformed corrections van drivers whom he’d met while signing off prisoner transfers to Rikers Island. They slapped palms as Jack continued toward the Chinese restaurant at number 99.

The Harmonious Garden was a cramped fast-food joint
that had a back door leading to a cinder-block bunker slapped up in the courtyard between buildings. The hidden bunker also led to the rear exit of 79 Mulberry Street, so gamblers could secretly walk through the block without being seen on either street.

Jack knew the On Yee
tong
covered the little operation with pocket money and probably supplied the bootleg cigarettes and whatever alcohol and drugs they were peddling. He wasn’t surprised that the Ghosts ran the gambling joint under the noses of the Fifth Precinct, two blocks away, and the DOC, in the shadow of the Tombs.

The Chinese were still
invisible
to many of the uniformed, or
uninformed
, officers in the area, who mainly wanted to finish their shifts and not have to deal with the bewildering, insular Chinese community.

He ordered a quick
som bow faahn
plate, put his cell phone on the table, and kept a discreet eye on the back door.
Billy should be almost there
, he thought, sipping the hot cup of house tea the waiter had plopped down onto the plastic tabletop. He was wondering how he could get to Fay Lo without him lawyering up, when the back door swung open.

Jack watched as a gang member stepped through, wearing an oversized pair of knockoff Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses.
A short and scrawny guy
, thought Jack as the gangsta summoned a waiter and began placing orders. A punk ass with a
dailo
attitude.

The cell phone buzzed, and Jack saw Billy’s message:
SAW HIM. HE JUST LEFT OUT BACK
.

Thanks
, Jack thought sardonically,
timing is everything
. He turned his attention back to the junior gangbanger and now saw the Chinese word for “dog” tattooed on his neck.

Dropping a few dollars on the table, Jack pushed back and rose from his seat.

“Hey
gou jai
!” he called out. “Doggie Boy!” Like he was an old acquaintance.

Doggie Boy sized Jack up, sneered, and spat, “Who the fuck are you?”

Jack flapped open his jacket to flash the gold detective’s shield. “Let’s talk,
kai dai
.”

“Fuck you!” yelled Doggie Boy, suddenly darting out of the side door of the restaurant.

Jack sprinted after him, both of them zigzagging across Baxter Way. They were almost to the Tombs when Jack pounced and slam-tackled him into the side of a corrections van. The uniformed officers recognized Jack and prepared for backup response.

Jack twisted Doggie into an arm lock, forced him into the van.

“You make me chase you, punk
kai dai?
” Jack threw him against the wall of the van.

“What the fuck?” Doggie protested. “I didn’t do nothing!”

“Then why’d you run?” Jack said as he cuffed him to the prisoner’s railing.

“I got enough trouble
without
cops.”

Jack pulled a switchblade out of Doggie’s jacket. “Well, now you got
more
trouble coming,” Jack threatened.

“Fuck you! I didn’t—” Doggie cursed as Jack bitch-slapped him across the face, sending the fake D&G shades flying and revealing the bruises still evident around Doggie’s eyes.

“Owwww fuck!” Doggie howled.

Jack braced him against the prisoner bench and showed him the river photo of dead Sing.

“Oh shit!” Doggie cursed, shaking his head. “What the fuck is that?”

“He owed Fay Lo,” Jack said. “And you punk asses killed him when he couldn’t pay up!”

“What? No, man! You got that shit all wrong!”

“You suckered him and killed him!”

“No, man! Thass
crazy
! Who da fuck collects from a dead man?”

“Yeah, you were trying to make an example out of him.”

“Thass crazy, yo! Swear to God, we didn’t have nothing to do with killing him!”

“
Who
did then?”

“How the fuck should I know?”

“Look,
boy
. You keep boo-shitting me, and I don’t have the time to waste. We’re already here at the Tombs. See my brothers outside? They can process you quick, get you off to Rikers.”

“Naw, man. No way. I didn’t do nothing!”

“Yeah,
you
. And your Ghost punks.”

“No way!” Doggie continued protesting. “Thass crazy.”

“I’m going to charge you with promoting and protecting an illegal gambling enterprise,” Jack said, stone-faced. “And weapons possession for the stiletto. Then I’m going to bust the blockhouse and tell them
you
gave it up, and we had to arrest you just to make it look good. Gonna tell them you’re my snitch now, okay, bitch? How you think that’s going to play? And you probably got priors and probation and whatever other shit you got on your sheet that will put you on the express back to Rikers anyway. You know how the brothers there will welcome your tight little Chinese ass, right?”

Jack’s last sentence seemed to get Doggie Boy’s attention.

“But I didn’t do nothing,” he started to whine.

“Right. You caught a beating for nothing outside Fay Lo’s. I know who did it,” Jack bluffed. “But here’s your chance to tell your side—why they tuned you up.” Jack pointed to the uniformed guards on the street. “Or I turn you over to
them
.”

Jack paused, pushed open the van door, and turned to leave. “Last chance,” he offered, watching Doggie’s eyes glaze over for what seemed like forever.

“All right!” Doggie yelled bitterly before surrendering what the rival gang boys had beaten out of him.

“The guy was into Fay Lo for five K,” he began. “Mostly from card games. They knew he worked at one of Bossy Gee’s restaurants and knew he was mad at Bossy’s people.”

“Go on.”

“He delivered to Bossy’s house and knew the location. So Fay Lo washed the debt in exchange for the address.”

“Why Bossy’s address?”

“I don’t know.”

Kidnap, arson, robbery, or murder?
wondered Jack. “What’s the address?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t bullshit me, boy!” Jack barked. “Bossy’s boys tuned you up for something you didn’t know?”

“They wanted to know
how
we knew the address.”

“And you gave Sing up.”

Doggie nodded. “They wouldn’t stop beating me!”

“You got him killed,” said Jack.

“He got himself killed!”

“So what happened? You went to the house …”

“Not me! I don’t have the rank for that. Only the
dailos
.” He took a quick, hard breath. “Fuck! First I get beat by those Dragon faggots, now I get beat by the cops!”

“I
never
beat you, punk. You called me ‘fuck’ one time too many, that’s why you got slapped. You can’t take a bitch-slap, you better get the fuck out of the bad-boy business.”

“All bool-shit! That’s all I got,” Doggie said. “So charge me or let me call the lawyer. No fears!”

Bossy or his people—probably the Dragons, who were arch enemies of the Ghosts anyway—killed Sing as some kind of payback
, figured Jack.
But payback for what?
He stared down Doggie Boy, thinking,
Charge him now and arrest him for illegal gambling, but open a pool of worms on Chinatown organized crime and confidential informants. And attract an Internal Affairs investigation into possible police misconduct
.

Or play catch and release?
Throw Doggie back into the swamp. Pull him out whenever needed. A snitch. A born-to-be bitch. A fish.

Ghost
dailo
Lucky wasn’t any help anymore, thought Jack, but now he had another confidential informant to work on, a low-level, street-rank 49.
A say gou jai
, dead dog, in the Ghost Legion.

Jack decided to release him.

“It’s your lucky night, punk!” Jack uncuffed Doggie and booted him out of the van. “Your takeout should be ready now!” he called out, watching Doggie shuffle off back toward the Harmonious Garden.

A fish in a barrel
.

The Tombs guards allowed Jack the use of their internal directory, and the first call went as he expected: the night
operator at Edgewater PD informed him that shift detectives were out in the field, but if it was an
emergency
, she might be able to patch through a message.

Jack left his number, said he’d be in Edgewater in the morning.

He checked the time, figured it wasn’t too late to be calling Vincent Chin.

O. G.

T
HE MORNING BROUGHT
Jack back to the side streets behind the Tombs facility. He was looking for Vincent Chin, editor of the
United National
, Chinatown’s oldest Chinese-language newspaper. Vincent had assisted Jack on previous Chinatown cases by providing not only what was fit to print but also neighborhood gossip, street talk, and unsubstantiated chatter from old women and shiftless men in smoky coffee shops.

The
United National
was Chinatown’s
hometown
paper and had been Pa’s favorite.

Jack followed the streets leading into TriBeCa, the gentrified “triangle” of streets below the Canal Street thoroughfare. He’d brought along two containers of
nai cha
tea from Eddie’s.

The
National
was located in a renovated storefront on White Street across from the Men’s Mission and was the only Chinatown newspaper without a color section. The pressmen still typeset by hand the thousands of Chinese characters needed to go to print.

Vincent, who looked younger than his forty years, was in
the copy room reviewing what the pressmen had laid out when Jack walked in.

“In my office,” Vincent said. “I’ll be a few minutes.”

A
SMALL OFFICE
, but on the editorial desk along the wall, Vincent had laid out an array of Chinese news articles, arranged in a loose chronological order, featuring Bossy
Jook Mun
Gee and his family.

Jack couldn’t read all the Chinese words, but he scanned the accompanying photographs and could figure out what the story was about. Everything in black and white, Cantonese block characters like ideographs.

The first news article, in a “Profiles” piece, was a full-page historical perspective on three generations of a prominent family.

The Gees.

The Gees were an old-line Chinatown family, dating their presence in New York City to 1925, to the remnants of the
bachelor generation
. There was a posed studio photo of the
patriarch
, Gee Duck Hong, with floral accents and a Chinese landscape in the background.

Old man Gee started Dynasty Noodles, which became the largest Chinese pasta manufacturing company on the East Coast. Expanded the
gwai lo
taste for lo mein, chow mein, and wonton noodles. A Gum Shan, a mountain of noodles.

There was a photo of Bossy
Jook Mun
Gee, who’d been promoted to director at Dynasty Noodles, and in a separate photo with his young sons, Gary and Francis, attending local
gifted
schools.

Jack smiled.
Three generations of a successful, assimilated Chinese American family
.

“What the article doesn’t mention,” Vincent said, coming into the closet office, “is that the old man Gee Duck was in bed with the Hip Ching Association and had his greedy fingers big time in paper identities and illegal alcohol and untaxed cigarettes.”