Year of the Dragon (14 page)

PINNED TO the wall of Powers’ office, like a giant Chinese butterfly with wings outspread hung a map of the fifth precinct. As a wall decoration the butterfly failed, for it was dead and its tone was gray. It gave no hint of the color and vitality of the living organism that it represented, and that Powers would have to snare somehow and subdue.

In front of the map stood Powers and seven other officers, most of them sergeants. Powers had a pointer, with which he repeatedly tapped one wing or the other.

All eight men were in uniform. Like military commanders plotting a campaign, their first job was to study the terrain, and they were doing it. Next they should move up armament - tanks here, artillery there - and then troops, and they should attempt to achieve surprise. But their armament was useless - a handful of handguns which, in the normal course of events, they were not allowed even to draw or brandish, much less fire. As for surprise, the British redcoats of long ago were no more glaringly obvious, or alien to the community, than police blue.

“We can’t do anything about the sweatshops,” said Powers.

“We’re not allowed to crack down on the gambling halls. We can’t get at,” he hesitated, ”at the tongs.” He had almost called them what he believed them to be, crime syndicates. The leadership of the tongs and the Chinese Mafia were the same, he was convinced, but he was not even supposed to think this, much less say it aloud. “But we can suppress the youth gangs,” he continued. “We can save these restaurant owners and shopkeepers from being extorted.” He looked all around, and his subordinates stared back. He saw they did not believe him. They accorded him silence, not faith. “We can try, anyway,” he said, an admission of weakness he regretted as soon as the words came out, because the first adage of leadership was this: the leader must believe, or the led won’t.

The officers before him had worked this precinct for years. The only newcomer was himself. The police department was not the army, and most lower ranks, once assigned to a station house, worked there the rest of their careers; only commanders were rotated. “As I understand it, most gang members are known to us by sight,” Powers told them. “I want you to order your men to harass them. Every time they go into a store or restaurant to make a collection, I want a cop to go right in behind them. Stand right beside them. The cop will not understand Chinese. Legally speaking he won’t have witnessed a thing. But I want the police presence felt. I want these victims to believe we are with them, that we will remove the fear they have lived under for so long. If we can convince them of that, maybe we can begin to get them to testify.”

Again he looked from sergeant to sergeant. Again he listened to their silence. This was the best plan he had been able to think up, and he knew it wouldn’t work. He saw they knew it too. “I want to know exactly when and where collections take place. I want regular reports made and an intelligence file built up. If we can pinpoint the collections in advance, we can have a cop standing there every single time.” Every single time? There weren’t enough cops in the precinct for that, in the entire division. “If threats are observed, if force is used, I want an arrest made.”

This is crazy, he thought. Chinatown is in the grip of an octopus and I’m asking them to help me lop off the ends of a few tentacles. There are too many tentacles and each one can be replaced. What we ought to be doing is going after the creature’s head. Kill the head and the tentacles will die by themselves. We’re dealing with an organized criminal conspiracy and I’m not allowed even to say so, much less try to fight it. He thought of the PC and Duncan: arrest rate up, crime rate down. Okay, he thought.

“I want lots of arrests,” he said. “I don’t care whether they stand up in court or not.”

Their faces remained resolutely blank. What Powers was ordering was the same type of arrests that occurred whenever the mayor ordered a crackdown on prostitutes. The prisoners, whether prostitutes or Chinese gang youths, would be swept into court in front of a bored judge who was probably sixty, and an assistant district attorney, who was probably twenty-five. Both had much more political clout than any police captain. The judge - almost any judge - could be depended on to start screaming about “bullshit arrests that are stinking up my courtroom.” As for the young ADA, his only interest was to make a name for himself, to advance his career as fast as possible. He did not want his time taken up with arrests that would wash out, and he would denounce any police captain who caused this to happen. Neither the judge nor the ADA was likely to denounce the PC or the chief of patrol.

So the orders Powers had just given were risky in the way that climbing a mountain was risky. He was clinging to the mountain by a succession of small handholds, and the more he kept on, the more dangerous it became. Safety was down there, not up here, and the height got dizzying. Before long, one could no longer see the summit, or the ground either.

“I also want new foot posts,” he said. “I want a foot patrolman at every gambling hall twenty-four hours a day. I want the bosses to feel weight too. I want to see if we can’t hurt business enough to force the bosses to cooperate against the gangs. Any questions?”

No one answered. But Powers was a cop too, and believed he could read their thoughts. The principal police emotion was not love or hate, not boredom or fear. It was cynicism. Almost all these men, when they came into the department, had been idealistic young cops. They had soon changed. Much about people’s lives, they learned, could not be explained, and almost nothing could be improved. It was hardly worth trying. Their own superiors had long since given up trying and were content to issue dumb orders. The real world was already set. It was as smooth and hard as a globe plastered in concrete. One could not get a grip on it. The world they had hoped to change did not exist, no world comparable to it existed either, and as a result young cops were left with nothing to believe in at all. Loss of idealism was like having a tooth extracted. It was painful, it left a hole, and nothing would ever grow there again. By the time they became old cops, thirty-five years old or so, they were as sour as men of sixty.

Powers’ executive officer, a captain named Harris, said, “You want the gang members harassed. On what grounds?”

“Any grounds. Loitering, disturbing the peace, anything that comes to mind.”

“What about their civil rights?”

“Screw their civil rights,” snapped Powers. “Any other questions?” None were likely to be put to a captain in this mood. “No? Then that’s all. Move out.”

As stolid as men in pain they filed from this office. Cynicism was pain - the toothache kept recurring. In addition he had challenged them and challenge was pain too. They would obey his orders, and that was all. They had been wounded in action and were in no condition to do more. Was he in any better shape himself?

Powers took Lom’s list, and began working his way through it at the rate of one Chinese dignitary a day. Most of the meetings took place at 3:00 in the afternoon. He introduced himself and usually was offered tea. The meetings were formal, always polite, and afterwards his host invariably bowed him out the door. Usually he managed to leave his home phone number behind, saying that in the event of problems he should be phoned directly. But no one promised special cooperation, and no one ever called him at home. He learned very little. He was making himself known, not coming to know them.

Most of the rest of each day he walked the streets, looking into shops, shaking hands with owners, smiling a good deal.

In a cellar-level laundry one day he again encountered Nikki Han. He had come down the stairs from the sidewalk, and had introduced himself. He had launched into his pitch: the police were there to help.

The owner and his wife, bowing and smiling, appeared nervous, and they kept turning to glance at the clock above their heads. For Chinese, their behavior was almost rude, and they wore smiles that were much too brilliant. Powers realized they wanted him to finish his speech and be gone and, since there were no customers in the place, he did not know why. Then footsteps came down the staircase behind him - a customer, he supposed, without turning around. But the laundryman’s wife had recognized this “customer” at a glance. It was as if a mask had been ripped off her face. Underneath was terror. Her new expression was as ugly as a smear of blood. The transformation was as shocking as anything Powers had seen in Chinatown.

Spinning, the precinct commander stared at the figures in the doorway: Nikki Han and two others. The Chinese gang leader was wearing a tan polyester suit with bell-bottom trousers, clothes several years out of style. His confederates were similarly dressed. Italian gangsters, Powers thought irrelevantly, were far more mod, far more stylish. It seemed obvious that he had interrupted a scheduled extortion payment, and he glanced from the gang leader to the laundry-man, who was almost imperceptibly trembling. The laundryman had been caught talking to a cop. He would be accused of squealing to the cops, that much seemed clear, and the gang would wreak who knew what reprisals as a result.

Nikki Han said something in Chinese - probably that he would return later - and backed up the stairs to the street, as did his two friends, or bodyguards, or whatever they were.

The Chinese couple said nothing. Their lips moved but no sound came out. Powers allowed himself to be bowed out of their laundry. There was no way, given the magnitude of their fear, that he could convince them that he would try to help, try to prevent whatever was to happen to them. Up on the street he peered about for Nikki Han, but did not see him and, although he waited a few minutes, the gang leader did not return. Powers, with a precinct to run, could not stand idle above the laundry forever, and this made him recognize still another of the disadvantages under which he worked. The gangs could outwait him any time. They had nothing else to do except make collections. They could outwait a whole precinct of cops.

He began to attend meetings of the various Chinatown Associations, the first of them the Mott Street Merchants Association, forty to fifty Chinese adults sitting in the auditorium of P.S.63.

“We can put an end to protection payoffs,” said Powers from the stage. “But we need your cooperation. The law requires that you sign a complaint. The law requires that you testify in court.”

The people below him showed no reaction. They were like passengers aboard an airliner listening to instructions in the use of the emergency gear. What to do in the event of a catastrophe. But the idea was unthinkable. The entire subject was unthinkable. The listeners were not listening. They were only being silent.

“I know you are worried about wasting endless time in court,” Powers said. “That’s why I went to see the district attorney. He has agreed to appoint a special assistant district attorney to handle these cases as expeditiously as possible.”

He paused, wetting his lips, hoping for encouragement. But there was none. “I know you are worried about reprisals. For those of you who will come forward and sign complaints, I will assign foot patrolmen to protect your places of business as much as is humanly possible. We will do everything we can.” Below him no one moved. Not an expression changed. They stared at him as though he was a comedian sent to entertain them. His first jokes may have failed, but perhaps he had better ones up his sleeve. At any moment he might bring forth a joke that would make them chuckle.

Powers turned to one of the men who had introduced him. “I am afraid that a number of these people don’t understand English too well, Mr. Wang. Perhaps if you could translate my remarks into Chinese-”

There had been no reaction from Wang either. After staring a moment at Powers, he stepped to the edge of the stage and spoke three or four lines in Cantonese. There was still no reaction from the crowd. When he turned back to Powers he was smiling. “That does it,” he said in English.

Powers said, “Did you tell everything? It took me about twenty minutes, and you about twenty seconds.”

Wang nodded sagaciously. “Chinese is a very economical language, Captain,” he said. “I see,” said Powers.

He addressed the Lee Family Association in the reception hall of the group’s building on Mott Street. Tea and rice cakes were served, and Powers stood on the dais, the only white face and blue uniform in the room, the only one not named Lee, also.

He began to speak - by then he was half through a crash course in Cantonese at Berlitz.
“Joa san”
he said. Literally this meant good morning, although it was 8:00 at night. But there were no words in Cantonese for good afternoon or good evening, and
joa san
would do, particularly since it was not an easy phrase to speak, for Cantonese was a language of tones. The same word pronounced in nine different tones had nine different meanings.
Joa
went down in tone on the 0, and up on the
a,
and when he had spoken these words, after a kind of astonished moment of silence, the assembled Chinese began grinning and applauding.