Death Money (4 page)

The association was a proud one and was generous with its
donations. Centrally located on Mott Street, the organization was a quiet but effective swing vote in community politics.

The Gees weren’t big in New York City like they were in Houston, but to Jack’s knowledge the organization never got caught in any scandals or gambling and drug dealing probes. They always stayed under the radar and quietly bought up real estate properties on the Chinatown periphery.

The street door to the association was locked.

Jack pressed the door buttons and waited a minute. Tried it again, waited. There was still no answer, and Jack headed south for the Tofu King when his cell phone sounded.

“What the fuck?” Billy cracked. “You didn’t get enough
bean
for one morning?”

“Ha, funny,” Jack countered. “Where are you at?”

“Where else?” Billy snapped. “In the shop, twenty-five to life.”

“Meet me at Eddie’s,” Jack said. Eddie’s Coffee Shop was on the same block as Ah Fook’s 30-Minute Photo.

“Why,
wassup
?”

“I’ll fill you in,” Jack answered, “but I got a body.” He hung up before Billy could ask,
What’s it got to do with me?

J
ACK GAVE
A
H
Fook Jr. the brown bag of Eddie’s
jai fear
, black coffee, and a pair of baked
cha siew baos
, his promised breakfast. Plus a twenty to cover the envelope of photos lying on the counter.

Pictures of the dead.

Jack said, “Say hello to the old man, Fook Senior.”

Junior munched on one of the
baos
and grunted his acknowledgment as Jack left.

Outside the photo shop, Jack narrowed his eyes at the
shrill wind knifing through the quiet street and went back down the block toward Eddie’s.

Yum Ga Fear

E
DDIE’S WAS A
hole-in-the-wall coffee shop, frequented by locals and members of the Suey Duck Village Association, which owned the building and was Eddie’s landlord.

You rarely saw white people,
lo fan
tourists, in there. Unless they were lost, looking for Edie’s Shanghai Soupy Buns, which was on Mulberry, not Mott.

The big plastic Hong Kong–style sign above the storefront façade read
EDDIE’S
in big letters and
COFFEE SHOP
in a smaller case.
Cantonese dim sum
. The curved leg of the letter
h
in the word
SHOP
had broken off, and, having never been repaired, the sign now advertised
EDDIE’S COFFEE SLOP
.

It didn’t seem to matter. The customers who kept the place hopping didn’t read English and came for the steamed dumplings; for the box lunches of
lop cheung
, Chinese sausage, and
hom don
, salted egg, for the southern Chinese comfort food they craved.

Inside, Eddie’s was just a short diner counter with five stools and a couple of surly waitresses serving the two booths and the four small tables in the back. The baked snacks and main menu orders came out of a dumbwaiter elevator from the basement, where the kitchen ducted out into the back alley, or from the second floor, where they kept two ovens baking
cha siew bao
, braids of raisin bread, and
don tot
, egg custards, sold wholesale to the Filipino and Indonesian mall
vendors. Local snack shops snapped up the late-afternoon leftovers.

In the middle, behind the counter, the steam cabinets and twin toaster ovens kept everything hot and moist.

The place was crowded with Chinese men, but Jack picked out Billy right away, seated at one of the small tables in the back. The shop’s radio blared out Chinese news of the morning as a waitress brought Billy a pot of tea. Jack came to the table and sat down.

“I ordered some
baos
,” Billy said. “You can get whatever.”

Jack leaned in across the Formica tabletop, said suspiciously, “I tried calling you earlier, but you weren’t in the shop. Nobody knew where—”

“Where
I
was?” Billy asked. “Whaddya, the Chinatown Nazi? I had a construction project, okay?”

“Yeah?” Jack challenged. “Construction, huh?
You?
At eight thirty?”

“Yeah, I was having my pipes cleaned, okay?”

They both laughed before Jack said, “No, seriously, Billy, I got a dead body, and I need to know who and why.”

“Well, finding out’s the
fun
part, ain’t it?” A pause before Billy finished, “And you get
paid
for this?”

The waitress brought the
baos
, departed as they warmed up over the cups of hot tea, both men quiet a moment.

“So we fished this body out of the Harlem River,” Jack began.

“Nobody I know, I hope,” said Billy. “There was no ID, no driver’s license, green card, nothing.”

“So he’s a John Doe?”

“He was Asian,” Jack added.

“Okay, a John
Cho
?” Billy chuckled. “A John
Ho
?”

Not funny
, Jack said with his eyes.

“Okay,” Billy said. “Let’s get this again. This dead guy? What’s he got to do with me?”

Jack showed him the baggie with the takeout-scrap list of numbers.

“He carried a list of business numbers, and one of them was yours.”

“
Mine
?” Billy sounded truly shocked.

“Actually for the Tofu King.”

“What? He died from eating bad tofu?” Billy stiffened.

“Come on, Billy …”

“What?” Billy repeated. “Anyone can have the shop’s number! They walk in, grab a business card. We run an ad in the Chinese press,
Mon Bo
and
Sai Gai
. We got flyers we’re handing out.” He shook his head. “What the fuck kinda clue is that anyway?”

“You can’t think of why he’d have the shop’s number?”

“He wanted to buy some tofu?” Billy shrugged.

Jack paused, took a breath, drained the tea with a frown.

“Anybody can call, place an order,” muttered Billy defensively.

“This doesn’t feel like a takeout order,” Jack said, cold as stone.

“I don’t allow personal calls. But maybe there’s an emergency, who knows? Someone looking for a relative. Or a job. Who knows? What, I gotta monitor phone calls now?”

Jack showed Billy one of the headshots hot out of Ah Fook’s.

“You ever seen this guy?” Jack asked.

“Never,” Billy answered with certainty. “Too bad, but homeboy looks at peace.”

“The second number on that scrap menu belongs to the Gee Association. Maybe he was a member or an associate?”

Billy checked the wall clock. “The association? Those
jooks
ain’t there before eleven, man. They make up for it by opening early on weekends, when more seniors need services.” He chomped down his
bao
. “We got five minutes.”

“‘We’?”

“I know the super there. They call him the English secretary, but he does some of the janitorial work. And the Gees order a lot of bean from me.”

Jack slipped a five under the teapot and finished his
bao
. Steam poured out of the counter cabinets, fogging up the room. He knew Billy’d be good for something.

Gee Whiz

T
HEY CAME TO
the street door on Mott, and Billy pulled it open without hesitation. He held it for Jack, who stepped inside, quietly impressed. They went up to the second floor, where two of the front apartments had been converted to an office and an open area that the association could use for meetings, meals, and mah-jongg games. Simple bench seating lined the two long walls. There were two racks of metal chairs and a line of card tables folded against the back wall. A few old black-and-white photos of the Gees’ village in China, including a group shot of the revered founding Gee elders, hung across the top of the main walls.

There was an altar table in the far corner, near a back window.

The man behind the desk in the office area looked to be in his fifties, mostly bald except for a few long strands of hair, which he had combed over across the top of his head. His attention was on the lid of the container of Chinese coffee on the desk, opening it without causing a spill.

He was surprised to look up and see Billy.

“Ah Gee
doy
!” Billy grinned, patting him across the shoulder.
Gee boy!
in his best Toishanese drawl.

“
Dofu doy
!” The man grinned back, putting the steamy cup aside.
Tofu boy
! he said, turning his gaze to include Jack.

“
Ngo pong yew
,” Billy introduced Jack. “He’s my friend.” It wasn’t a shake-hands moment, and both men nodded respectfully. Then Billy added, “
Chaai lo
, he’s a cop.”

The grin left the man’s face slowly as Jack flapped open his jacket and flashed his gold badge and, inadvertently, also the pistol butt sticking out of his waistband holster.

“And he has some questions,” Billy continued, “maybe you can help him with.”

“Of course,” the man answered, his mouth small now. “
If
I can …”

“Who answers the phone here?” Jack asked casually.

“Whoever sits here,” the man answered. “Sometimes the vice president, but mostly me. If I go to lunch or step away on other duties, then any member can answer and take a message. It’s usually about banquet arrangements or funerals. Or group trips to the cemeteries.”

Jack placed the plastic-bagged menu scrap on the desk. The man looked over the telephone numbers with the 888 prefixes diligently.

“Those numbers mean anything to you?” Jack asked.

“Not really, no.” There was caution in the man’s voice now.

“Not familiar numbers?”

“No.” He took a sip from the container of coffee.

“Lucky Dragon? Lucky Phoenix?” Jack continued, “Any of these sound familiar? How about China Village? Or Golden City?”

“They sound like Chinese restaurants,” the man offered.

Jack asked, “Any idea why your association’s telephone number is grouped with those restaurants’ numbers?”

“I have no idea.” But his face told a different story as the man began to back up, reconsidering a bigger involvement than he’d bargained for. He glanced at Billy, who remained intensely quiet during Jack’s interview. Billy, sitting in the catbird seat, offering no relief.

Jack pressed, “Can I speak with the vice president? Or the president?”

There was a pause as the man’s eyes left Billy and drifted back to the plastic baggie. He took another sip of coffee, enjoying it less now.

“The president and the vice president are overseas,” he said, almost confidentially. “But they wouldn’t be involved in the day-to-day operations anyway. The positions are only ceremonial. Unofficially, I’m the English secretary, but I don’t receive all the calls.”

“And you don’t log the calls?”

“Who keeps a record of calls, anyway, these days? Only the phone company. And that’s because they want to bill you.”

Jack placed the second baggie on the desk, showing the produce receipt from the body. “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

“No,” the man said firmly after only a glance. “It looks like fruit.”

Jack put the headshot of the deceased on the desk, next to the man’s container of coffee. “Ever see this man?” Jack quietly asked.

“No” was his answer, his eyes dancing but lingering longer this time. “Sorry.” The face of death had turned him off, clammed him up, and Billy exchanged looks with Jack. Billy was a face of disappointment, and Jack couldn’t mask his doubt.

“
M’hou yisee
, hah?” the man said regretfully. “Sorry that my answers are no help.” Clenched in his face, clearly, was his reluctance to say anything that in any way represented the voice of the association. He didn’t want to involve the group in any outside trouble. He didn’t want to go anywhere near the dead face in the photo, but the phone numbers seemed to make him hesitate before backing off.

The man looked at Billy for a long moment.
Bee-lee
boy was Bow Ying’s son, he knew, an upcoming young businessman and heir to the tofu throne, but in their little Chinatown world, Billy didn’t carry any more weight than that. It was only business after all, but bringing a cop around was an awkward surprise.

Jack offered one of his NYPD detective’s cards. “Please call me if anything occurs to you.”

The man nodded politely and accepted the card.

Billy bluntly broke the ice with an unrelated question: “So you have enough tofu for Chin’s wedding banquet?”

Frozen momentarily by the change in direction, the man answered, “I’ll call you.”

Jack thanked him, and they left the room, leaving him in peace with his morning coffee.

O
UT ON
M
OTT
Street it was starting to snow, with big flakes of white slowly covering the icy gray debris on the ground. Billy fired up a cigarette and took a long drag.

“Bullshit. What a waste of time.”

“Relax,” Billy said. “The man got uptight. Your badge, the gun, the dead man’s picture. Hey, it’s easier to just know nothing.”

Jack knew it as Chinese truth, centuries of perfecting this type of
cooperation
with the authorities, where no one ever implicates himself.
See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil
.

“He didn’t see you as
Chinese
, Jacky boy,” Billy continued. “The only thing yellow about you was your badge. That stinkin’ badge, my brother, sometimes opens doors, but sometimes closes them, too.”

They continued toward the Tofu King.

Billy concluded, “The man doesn’t trust what might happen to his words once they leave his mouth and slide into your cop’s ear. Ya dig?”

Jack frowned as he checked his watch. “Just let me know if you hear anything.” He left Billy at the tofu shop, made a left onto Bayard, and headed toward the Senior Citizens’ Center. The falling flakes, he knew, would drive the elderly indoors to the free hot congee breakfast provided by the center.