Year of the Dragon (50 page)

BOOK: Year of the Dragon

10.18Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Read Book Download Book

ads

“Walk,” Koy said again.

Powers said, “I don’t leave without that,” and pointed his chin at it.

“A policeman has many wives, hasn’t he? And his gun is one of them. Take it. Put it back where it belongs - slowly.”

Grasping the 38. around the cylinder, Powers thrust it down into its holster. “I’ll give you thirty minutes,” he said, and turned and started for the door.

Marching away he feared he had guessed wrong, that Koy would shoot him in the back. His shoulder muscles were tensed up against the impact of bullets no muscles could stop. What does one man ever know with certainty about another? His scalp crawled, as if trying to clench muscles under his hair that did not exist. He wanted to run but did not do so. He felt Koy’s gun track him all the way across the loft to the door.

No bullets came.

As he reached the alcove and stepped out of dim light into total darkness, he believed he had won, and he yanked his gun out and stood for a moment feeling silent triumph and the aftermath of terror at the same time. I couldn’t get him for crimes against humanity, he told himself, so I got him for crimes against love. Then he started down the staircase. At the bottom he bumped into Luang. Their guns collided, then their bodies, and both nearly went down. It was a miracle they hadn’t shot each other.

“What-” said Luang.

But Powers was glancing around. He would need witnesses - he was trying to think it out as clearly as possible - and he stepped clear of the pile of doors and signaled out toward the street with his flashlight.

Kelly came running up, gun out and ready, a new problem.

Cops were always eager to start shooting and this was partly fear, partly a desire to prove themselves to other cops. Powers had been on a stakeout once where one cop, overwrought, had opened fire at the wall of a building. In an instant every other cop in the squad was firing too, and it did not stop until most of them had emptied their guns. He had heard of similar cases, and he could not afford that here, because when this was over there was going to be a stink and, in addition to witnesses it was absolutely essential to turn in three unfired police guns.

“Put those guns away.”

“What’s happening?” said Kelly.

“We wait.”

“Wait for what?”

Powers tilted his watch until the dial gleamed. Upstairs Koy must be leafing through the warrants, making certain. I gave him thirty minutes, Powers thought. Why thirty minutes? A number plucked out of the air. Too much time? Too little?

Koy was right in one respect. If he pulled that trigger on himself there would be a hundred detectives here investigating this thing. Powers wished he had brought more witnesses. I’ve handled this all wrong, he told himself. The orthodox way is always best because if it fails you cannot be criticized. Always follow correct procedure, he had been taught at the Police Academy, but his whole career had been marked by a desire to shake up this department he loved so much, to make it start thinking again, the last word in egomania no doubt, which explained why he was still a captain after eleven years, and would remain one after tonight probably, regardless of what occurred here next. Would they even let him keep Chinatown? He did not really think so. He agreed with Koy. Tonight was the end of the road for himself and Koy both.

“
We both know who it’s for, don’t we Koy?”

He had destroyed himself and another, and for what? To clean up, temporarily, one corner of a dirty room that would soon be dirty again.

“
Make up your mind.”

He had usurped the role of the God in whom he did not believe, had passed sentence, and had signed a man’s death warrant, something no federal judge had done this year.

“
You’re under arrest, Koy.”

The explosion seemed the loudest Powers had ever heard, though he was expecting it. With Kelly and Luang behind him he rushed up the stairs, but as he came through the door into the loft he lunged sideways and dropped to one knee, fearing at the last moment an ambush, gun clenched in both hands and pointing.

“Get down,” he shouted to the men behind him, though an ambush was not really among Koy’s options, he believed.

For a few seconds all three knelt in silence. But there would be no ambush tonight, and Powers stood up and walked slowly forward, his gun now hanging beside his leg. Although an American would have preferred to go out in a holocaust, probably, Koy was not American and had not done so. An American’s culture taught him that to fight was proper, that a man must fight every day of his life, must never give up, that otherwise there is no point to life at all.

But Koy had come from a different place, and had chosen a different way. We are all prisoners of what formed us, Powers thought, and he stood over the body.

Koy, having turned his gun on himself, had blown off the top of his head. He had crashed over backwards to the floor.

Both briefcases were open. The warrants were spread out on the table.

Powers was aware that Kelly and Luang now flanked him. All three stared down at Koy, with Luang and Kelly shifting their attention from time to time to the briefcase full of money on the table, and then to the face of their shaken commander.

“He was nothing but a scumbag,” Powers said, and he gazed down not on evil, as he had thought and hoped, but on a man who had died.

NOON. The Chinatown pagoda of the Nam Soong Tong.

One by one the old men took their places in the boardroom. Upright in sand in their urns joss sticks already smoldered, having been lit previously by servants. Tendrils of incense drifted upwards past the porcelain face of Tien Hau, queen of heaven and goddess of the sea, on her throne on the dais, and the air the old men breathed was heavy and sweet with the pungent smoke.

The last to arrive was the elder Mr. Hong, who tottered in on the arm of his man. Mr. Ting, at the head of the table, waited. When the valet had arranged his employer in the chair and gone out, Ting called the meeting to order.

This was the second meeting at which he had presided since the lamentable events of the previous week. At the first he had agreed to resume his post as mayor of Chinatown, and also to conduct inquiries of great moment to all of them, and his purpose now was to report back.

The departure from this world of the esteemed Mr. Koy, Ting began, although in harmony with honorable tradition that extended far back into antiquity, had nonetheless occurred at a most unfortunate time for all of them, leaving as it did most of their investments unprotected. These investments fell generally into two categories, those within Chinatown, and those in distant corners of the world. He had thought it best, Ting said, to safeguard their Chinatown interests first, insofar as he could. The circumstances of Mr. Koy’s demise being still unclear, he had conducted certain interviews, most importantly with the police.

Preceded by a discreet knock, a waiter entered and poured tea into the lacquered bowls.

The police, Ting said when the waiter had gone out, assured him that present policies would be maintained, unless events of an extraordinary nature - an upsurge in youth violence, for instance - forced headquarters to make a change.

Thus their gambling dens seemed, for the time being, safe. However, the police seemed to be demanding in exchange that normal Chinatown violence and extortions be kept within certain bounds.

Old Mr. Lau, raising his cup to his lips in trembling brown hands, asked where Ting’s information had come from. Was it trustworthy?

He had had two long meetings, Ting said, with the precinct commander, who had always proved reliable in the past. “He was commander here before,” Ting reminded them, “Captain Gibson, the officer on the horse.”

Mr. Lau nodded in satisfaction, and Ting went on to their overseas investments. These had seemed in real jeopardy. The Italians, claiming they had never taken delivery, were refusing to pay in full for the first shipment of merchandise. It apparently had never been offloaded and was still at sea somewhere in the Caribbean. And there had been no other shipments since. But Ting had now managed to contact former Sergeant Hung in Amsterdam. Hung had offered not only to act in their interests in this and related matters, but also to move his base of operations to New York, and Ting recommended to the board that both offers be accepted. Obviously, to invite Hung to New York would mean increased profits for Hung; but it would guarantee increased profits for themselves too. The gangs were useful, but must be controlled, and only a man of Hung’s relative youth and vigor could manage this. The esteemed Mr. Koy, though he had disappointed them in the end, had been correct on that score. Hung, Ting said, seemed a more austere man than Koy, and thus would succeed where Koy had failed.

About a week later Hung arrived at JFK International Airport via KLM. He was met by Ting and a small delegation from the tong, and led out to a long black limousine for the ride into the city. Some months then passed before the ceremony of the red envelopes was again observed, and former Sergeant Hung became mayor of Chinatown.

COPYRIGHT