Death Money (20 page)

He ran Mak Mon Gaw for priors or warrants, but the man had no criminal history. The way the name was romanized indicated he was from Hong Kong, or China, originally. Jack reconsidered him as a
person of interest
and was about to access the Immigration Department’s database when his cell phone buzzed.

The female dispatcher’s voice asked, “What’s your
twenty
, Detective Yu?”

“Fifth Precinct,” he answered. “Computer room.”

“Stand by,” she instructed.

He was puzzled by the call, proceeded to print out the information he’d accessed. He was folding the copies into his pocket when footsteps thumped up to the second floor, coming in his direction.

Two hulky shadows appeared in the doorway. Their faces looked familiar, and no introductions were necessary.
Internal Affairs
. Hogan and DiMizzio, big white cops with neat haircuts and eyes like steel rivets. They’d investigated Jack previously, after the murder of Uncle Four in Chinatown.

Jack had been wondering
when
it would come, the IA inquiries, popping open the case like a poison pus pimple, with their innuendoes, their boldfaced lies, the tough-cop-and-honest-cop routines. It hadn’t taken long this time, less than two days after he’d picked up Bossy’s trail. A day after interviewing him in his office.

It was clear Bossy was sending a message, saying
who he was
by siccing the IA cops on him.

They stepped into the room with the same contemptuous attitudes on their faces.

But it didn’t surprise Jack this time, and the pressure only confirmed that he was pushing in the right direction.

Hogan kicked it off. “Up to old tricks, huh, Yu?
Harassment?
”

“Setting up a
shakedown
, huh?” DiMizzio taunted. Jack shook his head, didn’t dignify the insults with a response.

“Detective Yu,” Hogan said, “can you explain why you were in the South Bronx on Thursday night, February fifteenth?”

“Where you encountered a plainclothes detail from the Four-One?” DiMizzio said.

It was the same quick questioning, eye-swiveling routine, meant to keep the subject off balance. It didn’t faze Jack this time.

“I was
off duty
,” Jack said. “Me and a friend went for a drive. We took the east side, the FDR, to the Bronx. We were crossing over for the West Side Highway back to Manhattan when we ran into the plainclothes guys.”

The answer seemed to satisfy them; if they’d had more, they’d play it out. But Jack knew they were working him, just warming up.

“Why did you interview James Gee?” asked Hogan.

“Normal course of investigation,” answered Jack. “Just due diligence.”

“And questioning his son?” asked DiMizzio.

“The guy had priors.” Jack shrugged. “He was a natural suspect.”

“Enough for you to visit his house in New Jersey?”

“Normal course of investigation,” repeated Jack.

“So what led you to Mr. Gee’s doorstep?” Hogan asked.

Jack gave them an abbreviated account of his investigation. He couldn’t tell them about Ah Por’s yellow witchcraft, the assistance from his incipient alcoholic Chinatown pal Billy Bow, nor about the illegal Chinese gambling and drug-dealing places he’d visited or the criminal element he’d been around.

“That’s
it?
” DiMizzio cracked.

“So,” Hogan added, “you’re going by the words of disgruntled co-workers, illegal wetbacks, some gossip from old men, and the convenient bullshit from an ex-con Chinatown gangbanger trying to save his own ass?”

“Yeah, if that’s how you want to put it,” Jack said with a mock grin.

“Mr. Gee gives you an alibi,” DiMizzio said with a frown, “but you choose to ignore that.”

“The man practically offered me a bribe,” Jack said, “a security job. Is that what he promised you for dogging me off the case?”

“You got something against rich people?” DiMizzio asked.

“
You
wouldn’t. That’s because you get off on catching cops, not criminals.”

“What’s with the smart mouth, Yu?” snapped Hogan.

“Just taking a page from IA,” Jack said. “It fits the
tone
of your question, right?”

“Yeah, well, we’ll be watching you,
smart ass
,” said DiMizzio.

“Look,” Hogan said, “just stay the fuck away from James Gee, got it?”

Jack bit his tongue and cursed silently as the two IA bulls turned and stomped out. He waited until their footsteps receded before following the trail back to Pell Street.

Golden City

B
OSSY WATCHED FROM
the backseat of the Town Car as Mon Gor loaded a case of Remy from the Golden City basement into the trunk. Bossy hadn’t told Mon Gor about the visit from the Chinese cop. What the Triad had advised him held true for Mon Gor also:
the less he knew, the better
. The
chaai lo
would drop the case soon anyway, he thought. Bossy leaned back and recollected what he knew about his longtime driver, who’d driven him to and from all the places of his overnight debauchery: whorehouses like Chao’s, Fat Lily’s, and Booty’s, where he liked his young, dark-skinned
see yow gay
, soy sauce pussy.

Mon Gor was rangy, almost as tall as Bossy himself. He’d arrived in Chinatown in the 1970s and, as an accommodation to the Hok Nam Moon Triad, Duck Hong hired him as a truck driver for the noodle company. He was around twenty years old then, around forty now.

All the trips to the racetracks—Aqueduct, Belmont, Roosevelt, and Yonkers
.

All the bars and clubs, like Lucy Jung’s, Grampa’s, Yooks, Wisemen, Macao, China Chalet, or the Chinese Quarter. All driven to by Mon Gor
.

All the hot sheets joints and happy-ending massage parlors on the outskirts of Chinatown
.

His father, Duck Hong, had told Bossy that Mon Gor was once one of the top kung fu students in Hong Kong, a
wing chun
man. There were stories about his heroics in Chinatown bar brawls. Soon after, he became Duck Hong’s personal driver, also reluctantly driving the Gee women to
facials and massages, to mah-jongg games and
yum cha
. Driving his son Francis
wherever
until he happily got his own license at the age of seventeen.

Now the women were gone, and so was his father. And Francis had his own car, the obnoxious red one.

Now it was just him and Mon Gor. Bossy and driver.

M
ON
G
OR HEADED
back to the kitchen entrance for another box. Provisions for the condo Bossy’d agreed to try out, on the edge of Sunset Park. A two-week
free trial
run, fully furnished. The two weeks allowed him to scout the rest of waterfront Brooklyn, near the East River bridges. Extra time to consider other condominium developments, funded by Triad money behind barely legit front corporations.

He was relieved not to go back to Edgewater. And happy to be so close to Manhattan.

Mon Gor waited by the doorway for one of the
da jop
from the kitchen. His friends and associates had twisted his name Mak Mon Gaw into
Mon Gor
, a nickname, which in Cantonese sounded like “night brother.”

Because he usually worked at night, driving the denizens of the dark hours
.

Nobody ever saw him in daylight, except Bossy and occasionally the family. It was like he was invisible in daylight, this barroom avenger, who was rumored to be a Triad man himself. He’d supposedly intervened in three near fights in the Hip Ching gambling basements, resulting beneficially to the Pell Street
tong
.

But in daylight he was invisible.

M
ON
G
OR TOOK
a box from the puzzled kitchen worker and came back to the car trunk. A big box of roast duck and
for yook
and
see yow gay. Fast food
snacks would suffice until he had a chance to check out the takeout counters in Sunset Park Chinatown. Bossy straightened as Mon Gor slammed the trunk shut.

“
Gau dim
,” Mon Gor said in his slang Cantonese, “all done.” It was the same answer he’d given the Triad elders when asked if he’d
washed
the first matter, of the traitorous deliveryman.
All done
.

Snow flurries began falling from the slate Bronx sky.

“
Gau dim
,” Mon Gor repeated almost to himself as he slid behind the wheel and glanced at the rearview mirror.

“Good,” Bossy said. “Now drop me off in Brooklyn and you’re done.”

“
Mo mun tay
, Boss
ee
,” Mon Gor answered. “No problem.” He fired up the engine and pulled the car away from the curb, turning for the FDR drive south.

Sunset Park and then home to Pell Street
.

Mo mun tay
at all.

Mak the Knife

T
HE SNOWFLAKES GOT
thick and heavy, and Jack left a trail of dark footprints in the thin layer of white that covered the way back to Pell Street.

Number 8 Pell, Mak Mon Gaw’s address, was an old four-story, redbrick building that dominated the north corner of Pell and Bowery. The storefronts along Pell included a Chinatown gift shop, a China travel agency, and a Buddhist
temple, but on the Bowery side the building was anchored by Bamboo Garden restaurant, a Chinese grocery store, and a small bakery.

In big block letters, the word
ORIENTAL
was still visible, high up on the faded green façade that overlooked the boulevard.

Jack noticed there were two sets of fire escapes on the Pell Street side, but just one set above the Bowery side, which led him to believe the main exit for the building’s tenants was number 8.

He went through the unlocked street door, a bad habit from an earlier time when Chinatown people didn’t bother to lock their front doors, when crime was almost nonexistent.

Times had changed
.

Jack looked at the mailboxes. Unlike some of the older Chinatown tenements where the tenants all had their own scattering of mismatched metal boxes screwed into the wall, number 8 Pell had an old but standard split panel of metal mailboxes, recessed into the wall. The mail carrier keyed open the top panel, folded it down, and inserted the mail. Then he relocked it.

Each individual mailbox was vented so the tenants could see if they’d had mail delivered. There were three vertical rows of six mailboxes each, meaning there were eighteen apartments in the building.

These mailboxes meant that the building had been renovated over the decades and now had more new families than the old flow of transient single men. A few of the tenants’ names had been neatly typed and inserted into the little slot at the top of each mailbox.
Newer tenants
, figured Jack.
Some of the tags had been whited-out, with the new tenant’s name in black marker staking a claim over it.
A newcomer
tagging over another immigrant’s story.

Most of the mailbox name tags were old, meaning the tenants had lived here a long time, over generations of the same family, the apartment passed down. The name Jack was looking for, Mak Mon Gaw, was one of the old ones. It was just a crude lettering,
MAK/GAW
, that barely fit into the name slot.

MAK/GAW
handwritten on yellowed paper, not touched in twenty years.

There wasn’t any mail in his box.

Jack looked down at the baseboards, the floor, any tiles that might seem loose. He scanned the areas around both door frames, ran his fingers along the edges. He didn’t find the spare key that top-floor tenants sometimes secreted downstairs just in case they got locked out.
Men
, whipped at having to call
lo por
, and having their wifeys come down four flights to chide them before letting them back into the building.

It didn’t matter to Jack.

Chinatown was smaller then, he remembered, and he and his teenage pals had explored all the Chinatown rooftops, traveling across the heights the way immigrants did in the previous century.
Across the rooftops
. The rooftops ran evenly on both sides of the street until halfway down the block, near Doyer, where they butted up against taller buildings on the Bloody Angle. Still, someone could run across the rooftops on Pell and descend, emerging on Bayard or Bowery or Doyers or Mott. It was how the Hip Chings had defended their turf so well through the decades.

But only the people
who had to
went up and down.

Jack knew the rooftops here and how the apartments were situated. Mostly straight railroad flats and a mix of L-shaped, one-bedroom setups. People who
really had money
combined two apartments into one and occupied the entire floor.

Rent control ruled, but
fong day
, or key money, a
codicil
, gave landlords a cash trump card.

Along the way, Chinatown learned to play by its own insular set of rules.

T
HE STREET WAS
a fresh layer of white.
See gay
drivers would keep their cars indoors during off-hours, saving themselves the trouble of scraping off eight inches of snow and ice before the next job, especially if they were working a wedding or driving out to a freezing Chinese burial at one of the cemeteries in Brooklyn or Queens.

There were only two indoor commercial parking garages in Chinatown. One was Municipal Parking, which was five blocks away on Pearl Street. A lot of local folks parked there. The other was more expensive, the Rickshaw Garage, which was just around the corner, a block and a half from Pell.

Jack decided to try Rickshaw first.
Keep the car close to home. Always good to go, ready to roll
.

A
T
R
ICKSHAW
, J
ACK
badged the garage manager, telling him a lie about investigating a stolen-car ring and requesting a list of long-term customers. He didn’t want his real inquiries leaking out in case an attendant had a cozy relationship with a driver.