Year of the Dragon (20 page)

“The bodyguard, or whoever’s with him, carries the stuff he buys,” said Luang.

He bought water chestnuts and bamboo shoots, and he went down into Mott Street cellars and bought bean sprouts that grew there overnight in the dark. He bought the grayish-black fungus known as cloud ears, and lotus leaves and tiger-lily buds, also known as golden needles, which the Chinese savored for their pleasant musty taste. He liked abalone, sea slugs and crabs, and he favored roasted duck from a butcher shop at the corner of Mott and Canal, where the already cooked ducks hung by hooks in the shop window, making Luang’s mouth water when he looked at them. He hadn’t tasted such duck in many years, he told Powers; they were simply not on sale in the neighborhood where he lived.

“Another beer, Captain?”

“No thank you. I’ve got another appointment in a few minutes a bit further uptown. I’ve got to be going.”

The next day Luang tailed Koy to City Hall. After Koy had gone inside, Luang ran up the steps and showed his shield to the cop on security duty at the door.

“I’m on the job,” said Luang. “Where did the Chinese guy go that just came in here?”

The cop stared down at where Luang’s shield had been, but it was already gone. Vanished. It was back in Luang’s pocket. Probably the cop was not sure he had even seen it.

Luang waited while the cop decided whether or not to answer. The cop was acting, Luang thought, just like that goddamn doorman.

“He’s in with the mayor,” said the cop.

“Don’t burn me,” pleaded Luang. The cop, frowning, stared out at the city over the top of Luang’s head.

That night Luang reported to Powers in a Chock full o’ Nuts coffee shop on Madison Avenue at Fifty-second Street, Luang having just seen Koy home. They sat on adjacent stools sipping coffee, watching each other in the mirror.

“Still nothing suspicious?” asked Powers. It was more statement than question. He was beginning to give up hope.

“He was an hour in with the mayor. Is that suspicious?”

Not suspicious, Powers thought, dangerous. He said: “The tong is a big contributor to the mayor’s re-election campaign.” Chinese political clout in New York was based on money, not votes - they didn’t have many votes. The tong gave the money and Koy was the tong. An hour with the mayor - my God! Such a man, if he got wind of this tail, could ruin Powers with one phone call.

They sipped their coffees in silence. “If I could just focus in on something, Captain. If I just knew what I was looking for.” Luang sent a pleading glance towards Powers.

But Powers decided he could not tell him.

There was a clock in this place too, and Powers kept watching it for the same reason as the last time. He was also trying to think out what to do. Continue the unproductive tail? Expand the area of the search? But that would be to increase his risks and he was already in too deep. And what about the risks to Luang’s career, to Luang’s life? There was only one obvious area to expand the search into, the riskiest of all.

But what other choice did Powers have?

“The next time he goes into his gambling place, go in after him.”

Luang said nothing.

“Watch how he acts,” said Powers. A note of urgency had crept into his voice. He tried to separate it out but couldn’t. It was like trying to push unwanted sauce to the edge of the plate with chopsticks - wrong tool for the job. The sauce leaked back. Situations imposed their own laws, obeyed their own laws, not his. “Gamble a little if you have to. If you lose money, I’ll pay you back out of my own pocket.” He was still trying to control his voice.

“It’s not a crime for him to be in there, or to gamble himself. The crime is running the place, and for that you need evidence that he signs checks, pays the bills, handles the house percentage, that he is part of the continuing conspiracy to violate the gambling laws.”

Powers was afraid Luang would simply refuse him. If he did, then what? “In the past, people like Koy were too wary to be observed doing any of those things. But we haven’t raided those places in so long that maybe he’s become careless. If you observe any hard violations, we can go to the DA, maybe get a wiretap order.” It was an idea, anyway, though a bad one. Normally applications for wiretaps had to be approved by the chief of detectives first.

Without looking at his commanding officer, Luang said quietly, “The chief of detectives-”

“You work for me, not the chief of detectives,” Powers interjected. “Let me worry about the chief of detectives.” He raised his hand to attract the waitress.

“May I have the check, please.”

At the curb they stood beside Powers’ Mustang, which was parked in a bus stop. There was no pressing need to move it. No cop was going to hang a summons on it because his police plate showed through the windshield. He watched a bus come to a halt in the middle of the street. The people waded out there and waited patiently to board it.

“It’s settled then,” said Powers. His voice sounded harder than he intended, but at least he heard no quaver. “Tonight’s Monday,” he said. “Think he’ll go there tonight?”

In the Chinatown gambling dens Monday was the busiest night of the week. If Koy wanted to count his money, it was the night to be there. On Mondays some of Chinatown’s three hundred restaurants were closed. Waiters and kitchen personnel crowded around the tables all day gambling their week’s wages. Their numbers were augmented by Chinese from the suburbs, for nearly all restaurants were closed Mondays there, and the gambling dens sent out buses to collect them and bring them into Chinatown. They were let out at the door to whatever gambling den had hired the bus. They too had been gambling all day.

“He’s gone there every Monday night so far,” said Powers.

Luang said nothing.

“He goes there about 10 P.M., doesn’t he?” said Powers.

“I don’t like to go down there without a backup,” muttered Luang.

Powers knew what this meant. He looked at Luang, who studied the pavement.

“You’re not on the Fifth Precinct roster,” Powers told him, and the accursed urgency was back in his voice again. “There’s no way I can arrange a backup on this short notice.”

Luang’s eyes rose, though only as far as Powers’ chest. “How about yourself, Captain?”

All he wanted, Powers knew, was for his commander to share his risk - political risk and physical risk both. Since this was not an unreasonable request, it made Powers angry.

“I can’t,” he said. “I have an appointment I can’t get out of.”

Luang said nothing.

“Look,” said Powers, “I’ll try to get away from my appointment early. I’ll try to be there by ten. But if I’m not there, go in with him anyway. Okay?”

Luang shrugged. “Okay, Captain.”

Powers watched him trudge off toward the subway. When he was out of sight the precinct commander climbed pensively into his car.

A FEW minutes later he pulled up outside Broadcast Center, turned the ignition off and, while waiting, brooded. Why was he sending Luang into that gambling den? he asked himself. And why was he waiting here for Carol Cone? The risks were insane. He was not a gambler. He had always hated gambling. He and his wife had been to Las Vegas. Eleanor had loved placing bets. It made her excited just to think about it, and when she had occasionally won she was ecstatic. He himself had enjoyed watching the action, watching the people, but he had never bet a nickel - nor been tempted to.

So what was he doing now? He had half of his life savings bet on one table, and half on another, and he couldn’t even watch both tables at the same time.

Carol jumped into the car beside him. When she leaned over to kiss him, he gave her his cheek. There were too many people coming out of that building who might know him, too many people going by along the sidewalk. He did not want to be seen with her in a compromising position. He did not want to be seen with her at all.

“How are you?” she said. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you. How are you?”

Immediately he felt ashamed. As her arms came around him he gave in to it. I am lost, he thought, and kissed her, and for as long as the kiss lasted did not care who might be watching.

He started the car. “Where are we going?” she asked, almost purring with contentment.

“I’ll drive you home. I don’t have much time. I have to get back to Chinatown.”

“Okay. I’ll make supper for us.” As always, she sounded eager to go anywhere he wanted to take her. “Just so long as I have some of you tonight. I know I can’t have all. Just give me some of you and I’ll be happy.”

In her kitchen, she stirred eggs in a bowl.

She was wearing a wraparound plaid skirt in dark colors and a brown blouse with a high white collar. The skirt was fastened in front by a huge safety pin and came down low over her boots. He watched her at the stove. As she worked she talked with animation of her job, of her life, of her daughter - who was home from college for a few days, by the way, and might walk in at any moment.

“You’ll get a chance to meet her.”

Powers did not want to be seen with Carol even by her daughter. Nor did he want the daughter to meet him in his current role, the role of philandering husband. He didn’t want to be there when the daughter came in, yet couldn’t say so and couldn’t run.

“Don’t look so glum,” said Carol from the stove. She was laughing at him. “She knows I bring men home. She won’t bite you.”

This woman seemed able to read his thoughts, and once again Powers was amazed.

She prepared quite a nice mushroom omelet which they shared at the little table in the breakfast nook. They also shared a bottle of wine.

“What we have is not just sex, is it,” said Carol. “I mean, lots of times we haven’t made love at all.”

“Two or three times, anyway,” said Powers with a smile.

It was as if they had been married many years already. In marriage the best times were always like this, the quiet times. They were just finishing up, he had just speared the last mushroom and popped it into his mouth, when the back door opened and in walked the daughter.

“Hi. I’m Nancy.”

She looked him over briefly, then turned to her mother. She had come home to take a shower. She had a date in a few minutes. Had her sweater come back from the laundry?

The mother was full of questions which the daughter answered in an excited way, while Powers appraised her.

A pleasant-faced girl.

Shorter, not nearly as good-looking as her mother. A part of Carol’s body that now had existence on its own.

To Powers the girl represented a complicating, disturbing intrusion into a situation that was already too complicated, into emotions that were already too disturbed; and his principal reaction to her was one he was not particularly proud of. Like most cops he had come to see truth in different terms than ordinary people. Truth was not really truth anymore. It was certainly not an absolute. There were many kinds of truth, and the only kind’ that counted, unfortunately, was the kind that could hurt you. To hurt you it had to stand up in court. In a certain sense Powers’ affair with Carol had not become real to him until this moment - until the daughter turned up. Carol’s testimony would be inconclusive, because she was a co-conspirator. But the daughter, to Powers, was a corroborating witness. If she testified to his conduct – misconduct - in court, the jury would believe her, and he would be convicted.

The girl came down again, having bathed and changed. “Very glad to have met you,” she said. “I’ll take my car,” she told her mother, and went out. The door slammed behind her.

“What car did you buy her?” asked Powers, “a Rolls Royce?”

“Just a little Alfa Romeo sports car,” said Carol, taking his hand. “She had to have something, and I could afford it. Please don’t be hostile to me.”

They carried the dishes to the sink, and as Carol stacked them in the dishwasher she spoke of her daughter. The car had been a present for the girl’s eighteenth birthday. There had been another present also, a box of birth-control pills, together with a prescription so they could be renewed.

“She hadn’t made love with her boyfriend up to that time,” said Carol. “I wanted her to be able to, if she wanted to.” She turned to Powers and said brightly, “They’ve since made love three times. She’s told me all about how it was.”

Powers, with dishes in his hand, put them down on the counter top.

“Are you shocked?”

He did not know how he felt. Was her love for her daughter incestuous? Was she reliving her own earliest sexual experiences through the girl? Or was she, perhaps, facing the modern world more realistically than he, preparing her child for the multitude of choices she would have to make, any one of which could destroy her? He could not say. He had never before known a woman without a husband, and he did not have daughters.

“I may have been a lousy wife,” said Carol, “but I’m a good mother. I’m very close to my kid. We tell each other everything. She knows all about you, for instance.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” said Powers.

Carol closed the dishwasher door. If only all of life’s unpleasantness could be closed off like that, thought Powers. When you open the door again, all unpleasantness is gone. Life sparkles like a set of dishes.

What a pity he couldn’t do that with Chinatown. He thought of Luang, and glanced at the clock over the stove.

Carol, having washed her hands at the sink, was drying them on a dish towel. When she spoke it was in the matter-of-fact tone a wife might use, addressing her husband at the end of a busy day.

“Do you want to go to bed?”

THE SHOP window was dark. Behind the glass, porcelain gods and goddesses crouched in shadow, too many of them, as if heaven itself was overcrowded - as any Chinese heaven must be, Luang thought, overcrowded with divinities, overcrowded with Chinese. He had been standing at the window thirty minutes when at last, reflected off the glass, he saw the white Mercedes pull up in front of the entrance to the gambling den across the street. He saw Koy get out. The car and bodyguards continued on. Koy stood a moment, eyeballing both sidewalks. Luang did not turn around.

Apparently satisfied, Koy stepped over to the stairwell. Luang watched his reflected legs, torso and head disappear below the level of the sidewalk. Now he would rap several times on the steel door, Luang imagined. Now he was admitted. Now the door clanged shut behind him.

By then it was nearly 10:30. Koy was later than usual. Any special reason? Luang had no way of knowing. He peered around for Captain Powers, but did not see him, and so crossed to the opposite sidewalk where he stood above the stairwell, waiting for him a bit longer. The stairwell was like a mouth. It was like a dragon’s gullet. It could swallow him up permanently, or incinerate him where he stood with sudden fire. He did not want to stand even this close to it, much less go down there.

Koy, meanwhile, had passed through the gambling room and climbed the staircase beyond, up past the restaurant that occupied the building’s ground floor. The restaurant was owned by someone else. The floor above belonged to Koy, and was the nerve center of his gambling operation. His bookkeeper, he saw, was at work in the rear office. Next came a room in which his stickmen and pit bosses relaxed between tours - they worked one hour on, one hour off, because a great deal of money was involved and absolute concentration was essential. He looked in on them briefly: six men sipping tea and jabbering in Cantonese. Seeing him, they sprang to their feet. He nodded, and continued on.

The front room, which overlooked Mott Street, was a dormitory and security lookout. Since the basement gambling tables were busy twenty-four hours a day, so was this room, which was occupied by never less than six armed teenagers belonging to the Flying Dragons gang - Luang’s dragon imagery was more apt than he realized.

Nikki Han, Koy saw, was on duty tonight. The other youths, most of whom were unknown to him, were recent arrivals from Hong Kong. Han was monitoring a bank of closed-circuit television screens - this modern dragon had multiple eyes as well as arms. The screens showed Mott Street in both directions, plus the stairwell and entrance to the den, the back courtyard, and the interior of the gambling room itself.

One glance into this room was enough to make Koy angry, principally because Nikki was monitoring all five screens by himself. The others only lounged on the beds, playing cards or reading comic books. Furthermore there were guns lying in plain view on tables: wobbly revolvers, automatics flat as books. They were as common - and as conspicuous - as ashtrays.

Koy began shouting in Chinese. He wanted the guns out of sight. He wanted the beds made, the room cleaned up and he wanted at least two other boys, at least three people at once, watching those screens.

All six boys sprang to their feet and began doing as ordered, while Koy studied the screens over Nikki’s shoulder. He had not intended to study them, but something had caught his attention. It was as if it had snagged his clothing as he walked past.

“Who is that?” demanded Koy.

On the screen he watched Luang peering up and down the street.

“A customer,” said Han. “Looks like he’s waiting for somebody.”

Luang disappeared from that screen but reappeared on another as he descended the gullet and approached the door. The screen gave a three-quarters closeup of his face.

“I’ve seen him someplace,” said Koy. “I’ve seen him too much someplace. Find out who he is.” Could he be working for Ting? Koy thought.

Striding back the way he had come, Koy went into the office to talk to his bookkeeper, while Han, behind him, continued down the stairs and into the gambling room.

Luang, still outside, had decided he would wait no longer for Captain Powers, and had rapped on the steel door. Powers would certainly be along soon. He didn’t really need him now anyway. The need would come later, if at all, when he left the gambling den. If somebody followed him out of there he would need Powers plenty.

The small inset window looked to be made of reinforced glass. In it a face appeared. Like a television close-up, the face filled the entire screen, cheekbone to cheekbone, lips to eyebrows. Perhaps now it would begin to read the news.

Or breathe fire.

The lookout looked Luang over, but the door swung back quickly. The police officer had passed his first test. His Chinese face was his passport. Since he was not one of the millions of white demons who also inhabited this city and whose barbarian ways were unfathomable, he could be trusted. He was one of them. He could enter.

After passing along a short, dim hallway, he came in to a basement room packed with Asian men. It was like entering a furnace. The dragon’s fire, and also its bad breath, were manufactured here. The only open spaces were the four gambling tables, and they were covered with money. They were like parks surrounded by trees. Men leaned over them three and four deep. The din was terrific. So was the smoke, the heat, the odor. Across the room Luang perceived joss sticks smoldering in front of a shrine. Along another wall he noticed hot teapots on hot plates. Long neon light fixtures were affixed to the low ceiling. They showed so much hanging smoke - tobacco smoke, incense, steam from tea - that Luang could barely see, much less breathe. But most of the heat was body heat. The strongest odor was the odor of unwashed Chinese men. Too many of them were crowded into too small a space. They were preponderantly low-income workers living in crowded tenements where it was not always possible to bathe, and now, as they gambled, most sweated nervously as well.

Luang trudged forward into the crush of bodies, into the smoke, into the miasma of odors. It was suffocating. He couldn’t breathe. He had the notion that he must fan his arms. Unless he created space for air to collect around his face, he would suffocate.

The noise was oppressive too. He detected voices speaking Korean, Japanese, and at least four of the eight major Chinese languages, voices continually crying out in elation or disgust. Because of the tonal qualities of the languages, the voices were high pitched, the noise approaching a kind of sustained shriek.

The gambling tables were eight-by-four planks of plywood on trestles with green cloths clamped down over them. The game at one of the tables was thirteen-card poker. The racket there was compounded by the clack of chips, the rustle of money, and the roll of dice. This, Luang saw, was the small-money table, for the game was complicated and slow. According to the ideograph that hung over the table, the minimum bet was a dollar a hand, and the maximum, $100. Most of the gamblers appeared to be waiters and sweatshop employees, or else early losers. Their object seemed to be to amass a big enough stake to move on to one of the other three tables where the game was fantan, and the maximum bet was $200. The fantan players, Luang saw, were betting both cash money and chips, and it took him a few minutes to work out the value of the chips. The red chips, he concluded, were worth $10, the red plaques $100.

Stacked chest-to-back around all three fantan tables, men pushed and jostled as they thrust themselves forward to make bets, and Luang did likewise, until the edge of the table pressed against his abdomen and he was at last in position to watch both the game and the room. Unfortunately he was also in plain view of Nikki Han, whom he had never seen before, and who now watched him carefully, studying what he did with his money and also what he did with his eyes.

Fantan was a simple game. Luang had played it since childhood, though never for stakes like this. A handful of buttons out of a bowl went down onto the table, and was immediately covered by a second bowl. Bets were made on one of four numbers, after which the buttons were raked away four at a time until four or fewer were left - the winning number - and immediately after that most of the money and chips and plaques were raked away also. Pit bosses paid off winners from bills folded in half between their fingers, holding back each time the house’s ten percent cut.

Luang began to bet carefully, pushing forward one-dollar chips, hoping to be taken for the type of gambler, if there was such a type, who started slowly so as to test for omens. Meanwhile, his eyes roamed the room, searching for faces he knew, searching for Koy. The undertaker descended the stairs about twenty minutes later, moving through the haze, smiling, sometimes pausing to bow or to shake hands. Luang watched him closely. He appeared to take no notice of the action at the tables. He did speak quietly to the pit bosses for a few minutes, apparently asking questions, apparently quite satisfied by the answers. But he did not ask to see the books the pit boss was keeping. He did not touch money or chips. There was no indication that he owned or ran the place. Nothing a jury would believe. Luang’s observations were insufficient and he knew it. There goes any chance of getting a wiretap order, he thought.

Moving to the hot plate, Koy helped himself to a cup of tea, and stood sipping it. Nikki Han came over and spoke in Koy’s ear, while the undertaker surveyed the room, apparently idly. As Koy’s eyes neared him, Luang studied his bet, but when he looked up from the table again he found Koy and Han both staring at him. At once the police officer dropped his gaze a second time. Did they continue to stare at him? Had Koy found his face too familiar? Would he now take action of some kind? Luang was badly shaken. His eyes felt like rubber balls - he had slammed them down hard onto the table top and they wanted to bounce back up again and give him some information. He craved answers that his eyes might supply, that they wanted to supply. The difficult thing was to restrain them, to smother their resilience, to hold them down.

Luang knew he was in trouble. He wondered how soon he could leave - should leave. The important thing to Luang was to wait long enough for Captain Powers to get there. Powers must be given ample time to take up his station outside. Like the gamblers around him, Luang too had now begun to sweat. He wanted Powers on hand when he came up the stairs onto Mott Street. Powers would be able to size up the situation at a glance, whatever Koy and his henchmen might decide to do. With Powers there he would be safe.

But Powers lay on a dark bed amid tangled sheets in a house twenty-five miles away. Carol Cone had one leg swung over him. Her hand on his abdomen had begun dragging its fingers through his curls, combing them out.

“I’ve been completely faithful to you since the day I met you, do you know that?” she said.

His fondness for her was so great it made him drowsy. It was like being in a warm shower, and he did not want to get out, not ever. Though she lay on his arm, he was contentedly stroking that part of her back and hip that he could reach.

“So have you been faithful to me?” she asked after a pause.

What was he supposed to say to this? She knew very well that he slept every night in the same bed with his wife of twenty-three years. What could she realistically imagine went on between them?

“No, Carol.”

“You haven’t?”

“No, Carol.”

Was she disappointed? Jealous? Or only searching for facts. What other reply could she have been hoping for?

Fumbling for his watch on the bedside table, he turned it this way and that, striving to read it.

The watch hands were whips that lashed out at him. They stung him, and he sat up. “I have to go,” he said. He was shocked to see how late it was. “We have a case going in Chinatown. An important one.”

“What case?”

“Well,” he said, “just a case.”

He realized he would have told Eleanor. Although Carol was slightly damp with sweat from her exertions, as he was, and had lain half stuck to him on the rumpled bed, still he couldn’t tell her. Was it because she was a journalist? Or simply because she was a woman used to getting what she wanted? Even during moments of greatest intimacy, when her moans sounded like a great ship leaving its berth, even then he tended to see her principally as a threat. She could hurt him if she wanted to. She seemed not so much a woman in the act of love, as a real or potential adversary, and however much he might think himself in love with her, still he didn’t quite trust her.

She took his watch from his fingers, sought its luminosity in her turn. “I don’t believe in any case in Chinatown. Not at this hour. It’s too late.”

“Please, Carol.”

She lay sulky and unmoving on the bed. “You just want to get home to your wife.”

This irritated him. He reached down beside the bed and began to gather his clothes. He needed a shower - the first important job was to rinse the scent of lovemaking, Carol’s scent, off his body - then he’d drive to Chinatown. At this hour he ought to make it in under thirty minutes. Though he did not really believe Luang needed him, he had promised to be there.