Year of the Dragon (24 page)

The Quongs had the rear third of what had been a living room. Their “home” was sectioned off by a curtain that ran along a wire. It was the preferred space in the room because it had the window, and was not a passageway - there was no foot traffic going through. For these reasons they were quite proud of it. On the other hand, one had to walk through the other two sections to get in or out, to use the kitchen or bathroom. Both other sections were full, Luang had noted, arriving. He had smiled and bowed to about fifteen persons on the way through. He was neither surprised nor shocked that such accommodations existed in New York. As a child in Hong Kong, and in China before that, he and his parents had lived just this way themselves.

The Quongs had a narrow single bed, which he supposed the parents shared, and a pallet on the floor for the boy. There were two straight chairs. A square of plywood lay on top of the bed - this served as a table. There was also a hot plate and a teapot, the tea already steeping.

“Tea, Mr. Luang?” said the mother. She was surely twenty years younger than the father, but she looked worked out to Luang, all the moisture squeezed out of her flesh long ago.

He was offered one of the chairs. Mr. Quong, lord of his own home, took the other, and his wife stood. She had her arm around her son, and was beaming.

Luang sipped his tea out of a porcelain bowl that seemed brand-new to him, and expensive as well, and he surmised that the Quongs had bought it just that day, believing their everyday cups unworthy of tonight’s honored guest, the false guidance counselor, himself.

“He’s a good boy,” Mrs. Quong said, giving her son a squeeze. She grinned with pride - pride in her boy, pride that tonight she was entertaining such an exalted personage as Luang.

“Next year, he’ll be speaking English,” said the father. It was hard for Luang to concentrate because of the buzz of family conversations behind the curtain.

“More tea, Mr. Luang? Oh, I’m so relieved to think you’re taking an interest in my boy. He’s a good boy, but America is strange to him. I’ve been afraid he might get into trouble.”

“That can’t happen now,” said Mr. Quong. “He’s lucky and we’re lucky. I used to be a schoolteacher myself, did you know that?”

“I think I will have some more tea,” said Luang glumly. “It certainly is delicious tea. How do you make tea that good, anyway?”

By the time he went down into the street again it was nearly midnight, and he was so upset that he phoned Captain Powers at home, possibly waking him up - he didn’t care. Powers told him to come right over, and gave directions. And so he drove through the night to Powers’ house in a part of the city he had never entered before. It was at the opposite end of Manhattan island from Chinatown and to Luang, once he had seen it, it could have been the opposite end of the world. Powers’ house seemed to him huge, solid, gracious, incredibly luxurious - a brick mansion to Luang, to any Chinese - and when he had parked out front he sat some minutes in his car merely contemplating it.

Powers, wearing a bathrobe and slippers, half-glasses perched on top of his hair, let him in.

“Do you want a beer? Something to eat? You want a cup of tea? What’s the trouble?”

“I’ll never make it as a cop, Captain.”

Powers gave him a smile. “Of course you will. What’s bothering you?”

So Luang spoke of lies and deceit - of deceiving the Quong family, of betraying their trust. “Mr. Quong wanted to tell me all about being a schoolteacher in China. He wanted to know all about my job as schoolteacher in New York.”

Powers frowned. He had encountered Luang’s reaction before - it had been his own reaction too, as a young cop. “Don’t get soft on me, Luang.”

“These people are so poor, Captain, and so hopeful. And the kid seems a decent kid. They are all depending on me, and it makes me feel like a snake.”

“You’re not a snake. You’re a cop. You’re doing your job.”

As a young man - as a far younger man than Luang - Powers had confronted these same moral questions himself. He had concluded that there were just no answers. One had best not even look for them because the risk was too great. One risked becoming unable to function as a cop at all.

“The kid’s got a gun in the waistband of his pants,” muttered Luang glumly. “I could have arrested him for carrying. I didn’t. I think he wants me to know he’s got it. I think he wants me to ask him about it.”

Powers said, “What are you waiting for? Ask him.”

LATE THE next afternoon the school yard was crowded. There were skaters, Frisbee players. There were games going at both ends of the basketball court. Wooden bleachers rose up at one side of the court, between the court and the fence, and on the top row sat Luang with Quong.

“You’ve got a gun,” said Luang. “I’m not blind, you know. Who gave it to you, your new friends? Did they make you use it yet? Did you shoot anybody yet?”

Tears popped into the eyes of the boy. It was instantaneous. Luang was astonished. Absolutely instantaneous. One second the boy was dry-eyed, and the next second his eyeballs overflowed with tears. A moment after that he was sobbing. Turning toward Luang, he threw himself into his supposed guidance counselor’s arms. He wept copiously, wetly, the way a child weeps, and Luang embraced him, patting his head, murmuring: “There, there. It can’t be that bad.”

“It is, it is,” sobbed Quong, and Luang suspected that indeed it was.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” said Police Officer Luang.

It happened that Nikki Han and Go Low had entered the school yard through the Hester Street gate about five minutes before. It was getting on toward dusk, the bleachers were on the Baxter Street side, and the school yard was teeming with kids. It was possible that the two Flying Dragons would not have noticed Quong and Luang at all, had not their attention been caught by the boy’s racking sobs.

The noise of a child crying does not disturb other children. Children are people who have not learned to recognize most warning signals. They can sleep through alarm clocks. A police siren suggests excitement, not distress. Tears represent barked shins, not a cry for help. To them crying is as normal as pain, as normal as water - the one produces the other, though in minimal amounts only, like drops wrung out of a towel. There is no danger - no one is going to drown from it. In the case of Quong, a few kids threw glances toward the bleachers. But the glances glanced off.

But adults, having lived longer with fear, react instantly to any warning signal at all. Each one is a circuit-breaker. The mechanism will not function until the break is found and the gap bridged.

Nikki Han was twenty-five years old - old enough. Quong’s sobs barely carried across the school yard, but they triggered every bell in Han’s head.

Who was that kid and why was he crying?

“Look,” said Han sharply. “That’s the guy we followed.”

“He’s with Quong,” said Go Low. “What do you suppose it means? Do you think it means anything?” They were both American-born, and they spoke English to each other.

“That guy’s a cop,” said Han. “He’s gotta be.”

They backed out of the school yard, backed away while watching the bleachers carefully, making certain that their departure went as unnoticed as their arrival.

They were successful. Across the school yard Luang and Quong had their hands full with each other, for the boy’s dreadful revelations had begun to pour forth. And so neither looked up.

A hundred yards down the street from the school yard, Han and Low began to run.

MIDNIGHT. Again Luang stood on Powers’ doorstep. “Come in, Luang. What is it?”

Again Powers wore the homeliest of man’s uniforms, pajamas and bathrobe. Again his glasses sat on his hair. Different uniform from the one he wears in the daytime, thought Luang. Different man inside it too, probably. Powers’ bathrobe had become something he would recognize anywhere. He could identify it in court. It was as though he lived in this house, and Powers was his father - the notion was bizarre, but understandable: normally if you saw a man in his night clothes he was probably your father - someone you trusted totally, anyway.

“I just left the boy, Captain. I’ve been with him since three o’clock this afternoon. I just took him home. I couldn’t leave him till now.”

In Luang’s voice was a note of quiet desperation. Powers detected it. He led the way into the living room. “Sit down. Can I offer you anything?”

Luang was wearing his gray suit, but had left his suit coat in the car. His tie was undone and his collar open. He took a small revolver out of his pants pocket, and handed it over.

Powers hefted it, studied it. Guns to Powers were not question marks, but statements. They were like presidents, they spoke with the power of their office. One had best pay attention.

“He gave it to me, Captain. He wanted to get rid of it. He’s fifteen years old and absolutely horrified by what he’s done.” Luang looked and sounded drained. “He thinks I’m his guidance counselor. I’m supposed to tell him what to do next.”

“Thirty-two caliber. One of those executions-”

“Take it to ballistics, Captain. The bullet will match. He shot one of the Hsu brothers. Nikki Han made him do it. Han shot the other. Koy ordered it. In any case, Koy was there a few minutes before the executions took place.”

Powers began tapping the revolver against his palm. It was a cupping motion, aggressive, like making a snow ball, packing it down hard, preparing a projectile with which to inflict damage.

“Let’s go wake up the district attorney,” he decided.

Luang was surprised. District attorneys were elected officials. They were men of genuinely august rank, far higher than police captains. This one, in addition, had held the job through four straight elections. You couldn’t just wake him up. But Powers went to the phone and did so.

The district attorney lived in a town house on Riverside Drive overlooking the Hudson River - about fifteen minutes away at this time of night. They rode there in Luang’s Volkswagen, with Luang apologizing most of the way for the condition of his car.

The district attorney was waiting for them. As they climbed his front stoop he opened the door himself.

Another man in his bathrobe. Slippers with holes in them. Between slippers and bathrobe, red pajama legs. Luang was now totally confused. He was trying to relate the appearance of this man to the Chinese concepts of rank and face. A Chinese dignitary, even a minor functionary, would not have seen them at all at this hour. Or else he would have had them shown in by servants, would have made them wait, would have appeared only when decked out in all the finery of his office. Anything less was to lose face. The district attorney of New York County had not even bothered to comb his hair, which was rumpled from sleep. He showed them into his living room, and while Powers talked he padded about trying to stuff and ignite his pipe. He was neither friendly or unfriendly. He said nothing at all until Powers had concluded.

A full minute of silence ensued before he began to speak.

“You got enough to convict the kid on the homicide charge.” He said thoughtfully. “Maybe manslaughter, I don’t know. You got the murder weapon and you got a voluntary confession to a police officer. The kid was not under arrest, so the fact that there was no Miranda warning does not enter in. On Nikki Han, legally speaking, you’ve got nothing. Even if the kid testified against him, it’s the unsupported testimony of a co-conspirator. On Koy you’ve got even less. Your witness is the same co-conspirator, and he can’t even testify that Koy gave the orders in his presence.”

If this speech surprised Powers, it did not show. The district attorney puffed his pipe. He and Powers stared at each other through a cloud of smoke.

“A district attorney’s first job,” the DA told Luang in a kindly voice, “is to make the police bring in a legally sound case. I’m sorry to say that you don’t have one.”

“But we have enough for a wiretap order, don’t we?” asked Powers.

“On whom? The kid? You already got the kid cold.”

“On Koy. On his place of business, on his residence, and on the gambling den he runs.” Powers, as always when under stress, had begun to pace the room.

“You have no legal proof he runs the gambling den, and there are no phones in the gambling den proper, as I understand it. So that’s out.”

“On his residence and his place of business then,” said Powers stubbornly.

Luang saw that a negotiation was going on, and was surprised, though why? Everything else had to be negotiated every day. Why should law enforcement be different?

The district attorney said, “Legally it’s pretty shaky. Wiretap orders must be based on the continuing nature of the conspiracy, as you know, and the court might hold that these murders were isolated incidents in the past.”

“Come on, come on,” said Powers, “you can do better than that.”

“Also the law insists that, to be legally valid, a wiretap must be monitored, or you can’t keep it open. Do you have enough Chinese-speaking police officers to monitor this around the clock?”

Both men stared at Luang.

“No,” said Powers, “I guess I don’t.”

“Maybe,” Luang said resignedly, “I can find a Chinese restaurant to send me in food.” But he was not displeased. As a job, at least it sounded safe. It was better than tailing Koy through streets.

The district attorney said to Luang, “You understand that the law does not permit you to eavesdrop on general conversation. You have to keep switching the thing on and off.” He was giving Luang a kind of genial course of instruction, and explicit orders at the same time. “As soon as you’ve heard enough to indicate that a general conversation is taking place, you may no longer eavesdrop. You may eavesdrop only when discussion of criminal activity is taking place.” He turned back to Powers. “I’m sorry. I didn’t make the rules. But they’re getting stricter all the time. Make out your affidavit, Captain. Put down this police officer as the one who will monitor the wiretap. No one else may monitor it except for the person or persons specified in the affidavit. You know that of course.” He tapped his pipe bowl down into an ashtray, then sucked the pipe stem dry. It made a sound like a tea kettle whistling. “Will you inform the chief of detectives? Or shall I?”

Powers had stopped pacing. He looked pleased. He was going to get his wiretap order.

“Do we have to tell him?”

“We usually do.”

“May I ask you a favor?” said Powers. “Can we just not tell him for a few days?”

Luang’s glance went from face to face. This seemed an important point, but the significance eluded him.

“I don’t work for him,” said the district attorney.

“I don’t work for him either,” muttered Powers.

The district attorney gave a slight nod. “It makes no difference to me.”

“Thank you,” said Captain Powers.

A few minutes later Powers and Luang stood on the front stoop in the night. The door had slammed shut behind them. The light had gone out inside. The district attorney, presumably, had gone back to bed.

“We ought to pick the kid up before something happens to him,” said Luang. “Can I run you home, Captain?”

Powers was watching the traffic for a cruising taxi. “We can’t,” he said. “It would notify them that we know something. We have to leave him out there. Thanks for the offer, but it’s out of your way. You go home and get some rest. I’ll find a cab.

Because Luang had seen Powers two straight nights in bathrobe and slippers, he decided that a kind of tacit intimacy now existed between them, a tacit permission to question his commander’s decision. “If you ask me,” he said, “that’s taking terrible risks with that kid’s life. If they find out he’s talked to me, they’ll whack him out so quick.”

Powers shook his head. His attention was divided. He was still watching for a taxi. “The answer is no.”

Here came one, roof lights on, coming up the service road toward him. “Good night, Luang,” he said. He stepped out into the street, flagged it down, got in and was gone.

POWERS SPENT the next morning with an assistant district attorney named O’Hara, twenty-four years old, brand new in the law-enforcement business, writing out the copious affidavits that went with a wiretap application. Late in the afternoon O’Hara took all this paperwork before a friendly judge, one of only a handful considered friendly enough by the prosecutors to be approached for this purpose, the rest being self-styled civil libertarians. This judge signed the wiretap order, and O’Hara so notified Powers, who had returned to his precinct, by phone.

O’Hara also notified Telephone Company Security, whose men installed the wiretaps, running the intercepts, as requested by Powers, well outside of Chinatown into an office on the second floor of the Sixth Precinct station house in Greenwich Village. In this office Luang took up station at 9 A.M. the following morning. Powers waited with him until the first intercept was made, a call by Koy to a supplier of coffins. Both parties spoke in English and the call sounded, both to Luang and to Powers, entirely legitimate. It continued to sound legitimate as Luang cut back into it from time to time to make sure. The subject matter did not change, and after two minutes and thirty-three seconds the call ended.

As Powers left the station house many police eyes watched him go. The entire station house was already aware of Luang, Powers saw. Aware of the wiretaps too, and therefore brimming with questions for which there were as yet no answers available. Presently, Powers knew, some cop would manage to identify Luang and the situation would become clear to the entire complement of cops. There were no secrets in station houses. After that it was only a matter of time, perhaps days, perhaps hours, before news of Luang and of his wiretap - and of Powers behind it - leaked back to the chief of detectives. That is, Powers thought, I am already feeling the pressure of time. The wiretap order was for thirty days, but he had far less time than that, and he knew it.

Koy’s wife made five phone calls from home that morning, one of them lasting forty-two minutes. She spoke each time in English, always to women. She had not been identified in the wiretap application as part of the continuing criminal conspiracy. Luang had no right to eavesdrop on her conversations at all, and did not do so, except to cut in from time to time to make certain that the phone had not been taken by Koy. In addition, as he noted in his log, there were seven incoming and six outgoing calls from the funeral parlor. He could put a name to Chang’s voice. The embalmer spoke only Cantonese, and sounded like a moron. Since he was not listed in the affidavit either, Luang cut into his calls only briefly, making sure that the voice on the line stayed the same. Two other calls were made by one of the assistant funeral directors, and the rest were by Koy, who mostly spoke Cantonese. All of the local calls sounded innocent. But there were also two calls to Hong Kong, to different numbers each time, and these seemed more promising, principally because Koy had at once commenced speaking in a language Luang was able to identify, but could not understand: Hakka.

Luang spoke Cantonese and Shanghainese. He did not speak Hakka, one of the most difficult of the major Chinese dialects. Neither did any of the other six Chinese police officers, he knew. Not one of them even spoke Mandarin. New York, up till now, had been a Cantonese town, as far as Chinese-Americans were concerned. Mandarin was the official language of Red China, and also of Taiwan, and one heard more and more of it in the streets of Chinatown today. But Hakka was another story. The Hakkas had been the original indigenous people of China. They were forced out of their own country by invaders from the north about a thousand years ago, and moved to the south where they became known as the guest people. For the most part they hadn’t mixed with local residents then, and still didn’t. They had a reputation for trusting nobody but each other.

Traditionally they had been the adventurers, the seamen, the pirates, the criminals of China.

Luang realized that Koy was probably a Hakka.

In the afternoon Koy made more calls - the log showed six of them, two more to Hong Kong, two to Canada, one to London, one to Amsterdam, all in Hakka. The first came at 3 P.M. and the last at 4:30, at which time Luang phoned the Fifth Precinct. Powers rushed right over.

“Hakka?” he demanded. He had closed the door, closing the two of them into the small office. He had hung his uniform jacket over the back of a chair, and he was pacing. “Hakka?” he said again.

“The language of Chinese banditry for a thousand years,” said Luang. “As far as Koy is concerned, it fits in, doesn’t it?”

“That’s not the point, Luang,” said Powers. He looked and sounded extremely agitated. “That’s not the point.”