Red Jade (8 page)

The
see gay
took him back to Brooklyn, to an all-night Chiu Chao soup shack on Eighth Avenue, where he quietly polished off a
siew-yeh
, a nightcap of beef noodles and tripe. Back at home, he felt exhausted but spent the night at his window, waiting for the light of dawn to break, watching the shades of blackness fade to a new morning.

Searching

When Mona first arrived in Seattle, she had scoured the listings in the
Wah bo
, overseas Chinese newspapers, settling for a basement rental from a Chinese couple in a two-family house that was formerly Filipino-owned, and was within walking distance of Chinatown.

Concerned about safety, the elderly pair had specified that they’d wanted a female tenant only.

Jing deng
, Mona thought. Destiny.

She had told them that her name was Mona, a name she had taken after the Mong-Ha Fortress in Macau, where she’d gone on a gambling junket long ago. She’d paid two months in advance without question, two thousand,
cash.
No paperwork requested or offered.

They were delighted when she said she’d hoped to stay the entire year.

They’d dedicated a slot on the mailbox for her name. There were Filipinos in the neighborhood but she didn’t encounter any other Chinese in the area, which suited her just fine. Less chance of acquiring nosy neighbors.

The street sign at the corner read
JAMES STREET
, the English spelling of which she’d remembered from growing up poor in British Hong Kong, near King James Road.

Thirteen blocks west brought her to the cloudy bay. She passed through a tourist area of restaurants and quaint shops, until the waterfront opened to tracks and piers, a juncture for trains and ferries, ships and buses heading north, or south. Seven blocks south brought her to Chinatown, where she could blend in even as she purchased essential daily items and groceries, and memorized the locations of businesses, post offices, and banks.

Bo bo lay
, she thought, step by step. Proceed with caution.

She’d learn the destinations of trains and ships soon enough.

The basement apartment was a large studio room that included a tiny shower and toilet. There was a closet and a wall shelf that served as a makeshift kitchenette, fitted with an electric hot plate, a rice cooker, and a toaster oven, all left behind by the former tenant, a
pinoy
seaman who’d skipped out on the rent. The old couple had recommended a Chinese locksmith, who’d changed the existing cylinder.

Mona had purchased new sheets and blankets for the full-size bed that came with the apartment. In Chinatown, she’d found ingredients for quick-fix meals, and had the Oriental Market deliver a hundred-pound sack of rice. It was more than she needed but would serve other purposes.

Her bed faced the door, in proper
fung shui
arrangement. Seated at the foot, she sprinkled some ginseng into the
Ti-Kuan Yin
, Iron Goddess, before sipping from the steaming cup of tea. Scanning the room she saw the small Buddha kitchen god, a mini orange tree and a potted jade plant, a statuette of the Goddess of Mercy, and various
bot gwa
, I Ching charms, facing northeast and fending off evil.

The apartment door was covered in red, the Chinese color of luck, like her new jade bangle, not expensive but lucky. The door was festooned with leftover Chinese New Year decorations she’d scooped up in Chinatown, crimson banners and gold posters proclaiming
chut yup ping on
, “exit and enter in peace,” and welcoming long life and prosperity. At the center of this red collage was a big fold-out lucky calendar from Kau Kau Restaurant, from which she frequently ordered takeout. Whenever she approached the door to leave the apartment, she believed she was heading into good fortune.

She’d found a Chinese hair salon seven blocks to the southeast, a left at
Wong Dai gaai
, King Street, another English spelling she’d remembered from King James Road. She’d also learned to avoid certain areas near Chinatown where
gwailo
, white devils,
joy mao
, alcoholics and addicts, aggressively panhandled. A couple had followed her for blocks through the dilapidated neighborhood of men’s missions and homeless shelters. She’d heard murmured growls of “China doll” and “Suzie Wong” as they wagged their slimy tongues obscenely at her. She didn’t understand the words but felt their angry sexual intent. Men were dogs, she’d remembered from Hong Kong, and these were strays and mutts.

Wong Dai gaai
was the way to and from Chinatown, she’d decided, past the small park where elderly Chinese folks in their quilted jackets congregated, played chess, and gossiped away the time.

The Way

In Chinatown, the young man at the
Wah chok wui
, Chinese “service center,” had reminded her of Johnny Wong. He had been too eager to assist her, overly inquisitive.

Fifty dollars to fill out the immigration forms.

She wasn’t looking to get a green card or Medicare.

Mona realized that she still had this effect on men, her beauty apparent even without makeup. The young clerk had spooked her, and she’d left the agency abruptly, but not before she’d discovered that she’d need a social security card, and non-driver’s license.

Other identification, like a passport, would follow from there.

She’d needed secrecy because, deep in her heart, she feared dead Uncle Four’s thugs would seek her out.

But soon her transformation would be complete.

She’d dumped the Manolo Blahniks and Jimmy Choos in New York, had left behind the Gucci and Chanel outfits, the thousand-dollar designer handbags, the Valentino Sunglass Collectione, the Dolce & Gabbana accessories: all gone.

The fancy restaurants, the racetracks, all the hideaway clubs in New York, in Chinatowns along the East Coast. All gone. Those were perks that had masked her punishment, she’d realized, seeing it now with vision she hadn’t possessed earlier; the abuse she’d suffered had led to freedom.

If I allow it to happen, she’d thought, then I deserve it …

Because all bad things must end.

As all good things must also end.

The balance of
yin
and
yang
, the way of the universe.

Changing one’s habits was like changing one’s appearance. No more designer-label lifestyle, she’d thought, they’d be looking for that. Obviously, avoid the nightlife. The night being
their
time,
their
underworld.

If they find me, she resolved, it will be in daylight.
Bok bok
gwong gwong.
All clear to see.

And I will not go quietly.

She remembered the letter-opener dagger in her jacket. Be prepared.

72 Hours

The bleak morning brought Jack back to the Ninth, where his vacation days were approved, where he accessed the precinct’s computer setup. He tapped into Seattle’s Bureau of Vital Statistics but didn’t find a birth certificate for Edward Ng. Or for Edward Eng. To Jack, this merely confirmed that Eddie hadn’t been born there but may have been relocated there as an infant.

There were twelve Edward Ngs listed on the school-system database but the ages were all wrong. None of them was in his mid-twenties now. Foreign immigrants and their immigrant offspring. Their addresses were spread across the span of the city.

Four of the Edwards had driver’s licenses but their DMV photos showed they were older men, and all were over five foot six. Too tall.

The Social Security databank yielded 148 Edward Ngs and Engs across the nation’s Chinese communities. All information requests had to be made in person.

Jack took a deep
shaolin
breath, then another, exhaling stress.

He tapped
SEATTLE CHINATOWN
into the keyboard.

The designation
INTERNATIONAL DISTRICT
appeared but took a long time to boot up. Jack rubbed his trigger fingers into his temples until the information came up. Compared to New York, Seattle was a small city, a couple of million people spread out across the great Northwest expanse. Chinatown was part of the International District, the I.D., a designation that Chinatown leaders didn’t like, seeing it as an infringement of Chinese culture and history there.

The Chinese had arrived in Seattle first, as miners and railroad coolies on the Northern Pacific, but then were driven out by racist hate.
American
hate. They’d created
two
bustling Chinatowns before fleeing to the East Coast, starting over in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and Chicago.

The Japanese followed as America turned against the Chinese, becoming the dominant minority group after Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Acts. They created Japantown.
Nihonmachi.
J-town thrived until World War II happened and America rounded up Japanese-Americans, forcing them into the internment camps.

The Filipinos, who were U.S. allies, founded Filipinotown.

The Vietnamese arrived after the lost war and cultivated the Little Saigon area.

Koreans and Indians added to the international Asian identity.

There were more than twelve thousand Chinese in Seattle, so it wasn’t going to be easy the way Billy Bow had joked, like “just pull up a chair” and wait for Eddie to walk by. But who knows? thought Jack. Shit happens.

Altogether, Seattle Asians totaled maybe fifty thousand people, crammed together in a district that mixed and muted all their cultures and true colors. More diversity, Jack realized, but less unity.

New York City, Jack knew, had more than fifty thousand residents in any one of its three Chinatowns. He pushed back from the computer and closed his eyes.

Alex came to mind and he pictured her on a plane somewhere over the Midwest. The CADS and the New York ORCA members, having booked their flights weeks in advance, had arranged for an early departure that would put them in Seattle around noon.

Jack was only able to get a last-minute flight that wasn’t scheduled to depart JFK until mid-afternoon. He envisioned early-evening traffic congestion, and rainy skies at Sea-Tac International.

0-Five

Jack hopped a downtown M103 bus to Chinatown. He didn’t see Captain Marino in the 0-Five, but proceeded to make copies of data from his open-case files, reviewing the information as it piled up. He pocketed one of the .22-caliber slugs that had been placed into the evidence file.

It was already afternoon when he caught the
sai ba
, minibus, on Market Street, its harried driver bouncing his passengers toward the Williamsburg Bridge, back to Sunset Park.

In his studio apartment, Jack changed into a black suit, over which he’d planned to wear an all-weather jacket. He tossed a permanent-press shirt and another dark suit into a backpack. He checked his Colt Special, and his badge. The kitchen garbage bag went into the hallway chute.

He made sure his studio’s windows were secured, locked, with the shades drawn. It wasn’t that he was planning a long trip but in Brooklyn, New York, it was better to be paranoid than sorry.

Knowing that the Chinese drivers were experts at skirting the traffic bottlenecks en route to JFK, he called one of the
see gay
radio cars from Eighth Avenue.

The flight was delayed.

Jack purchased a plastic disposable camera, and tried to work up a profile of Eddie while he waited. Eddie Ng, the
ma lo
, monkey;
bad monkey
. Shorty, the Red Star gang member as a juvenile, breaking-and-entering raps, the tattoos. What part had he played in the Ghosts shoot-out? What was the beef between him and the gang vic in Doyers alley, Koo Jai, a.k.a. Kid Koo?

Seattle was known for its great outdoors activities but Jack didn’t feel that Chinatown-wise Eddie was a sailing, kayaking, biking, and hiking kind of guy, especially in the raw weather patterns of the Northwest. Indoors, figured Jack, but probably not bowling, movies, anything like that. He’d want to go somewhere he could blend in, or be left alone. Something solitary. He didn’t figure to stray too far from Chinatown, risk losing his
invisibility.

He found a seat near the boarding gate and fought the urge to close his eyes and catch an hour’s worth of power nap.

Curious George the monkey came to mind….

Shorty

Watching the eight ball, near the side pocket, he knew it was an easy shot. He saw the nine ball next, at the other end of the table, almost against the short rail, two feet from either corner pocket. He casually blew blue chalk off the tip of the stick, put English on the cue-ball stroke, and pocketed the eight. He hadn’t put enough draw behind the spin, however. Shit, he cursed quietly.

He’d played it wrong and the white cue ball rolled to the middle of the table, leaving him a long stretch and a hard angle cut-shot to the corners. He’d have to slice the nine ball razor thin and then hope it didn’t graze too much rail and bounce.

He chalked up the stick again, scanning the run-down Filipino community center. Most of the kids had gone and it was quiet.

On his tiptoes he leaned full-length across the table and stroked the shot carefully, focused on the slice. He finally flicked his wrist and the white cue ball nipped the edge of the yellow nine, sending it along the rail into the corner pocket, the ball plopping into the worn leather netting that hung beneath the table.

Fuck yeah! he grinned,
dew chut!
Willie fuckin’ Mosconi.

He took a breath, saw the dark afternoon outside the center’s windows, snow threatened in the forecast. His grin turned into a frown as he checked his watch, considering playing one last rack of balls before calling his
amigos
.

Night Games

The sky was roiling darkness when Jack landed at Sea-Tac at almost 6
PM
.

He took an airport shuttle to the Courtyard and checked in. Seattle television news filled the lobby bar, live coverage of a double shooting in the Madrona Park district. Such shootings were routine in New York, thought Jack.

One of the victims was believed to be a city councilman’s son. There was a sense of urgency in the administration’s tone, and police officials looked grim.

His motel room was small and Jack was glad he had traveled light. He remembered that Alex had a series of workshops scheduled, then a dinner party. He tried calling her room via the front desk but there was no answer.

He washed his face and executed a few
shaolin
stretching exercises to take the stiffness from the long airplane ride out of his joints.

The concierge ordered up a car that took him to Seattle Police Headquarters in the West Precinct, which included Chinatown and the I.D., the International District.