Chinatown Beat (13 page)

He crossed Division to Market Street, past the Service Center, saw loitering zombies waiting to cop their methadone fixes, trade WIC coupons, food stamps, prescriptions, and then infest Chinatown seeking opportunities to steal, maybe rape. Junkie time, Jack called it, when parents were out at work, children at school, old folks in the park or buying the evening's groceries. Any advantage. An open window, an unguarded hand truck, a car left idling, a dangling handbag, a briefcase unattended. Looking to get paid.

The low-life scum of NewYork City, thrown down here with the Chinese because no other community wanted them, and because the Chinese were too politically impotent to fight back.

He went east again on Market until he could see Chrystie Slip, closing his mind to the ugly politics of it all.

The AJA, pronounced Asia, was an activist organization that got its juice from young Asian lawyers doing pro bono time, financed by private donations and matching government grants.

They were operating out of a converted storefront down on Chrystie Slip, where the streets left Chinatown and entered Noho.

Jack drifted past the junkie parks and the auto-repair garages until he came to what was once a bodega, under a yellow sign that read ASIAN AMERICAN JUSTICE ADVOCACY.

When he entered he saw her.

Alexandra Lee-Chow. She was thirtysomething, dressed downtown and wore a diamond band on her wedding finger.

The receptionist stalled him at the front desk, and watching Alexandra now, across the room, Jack began to think how uneasy women with hyphenated names made him feel. Ambitious women. The ones who wanted the lab careers, the motherhood, the perfect marriage, strung tight and fully charged.

Lee-Chow. Taking her husband's name but refusing to give up her own, trying to impose the past upon the future. Or maybe it was a gender power thing that came with the white collar.

She reminded him of Maylee, the type she'd become.

"Alexandra Lee-Chow," she announced to him, with a look of skeptical appraisal. "How can I help you?"

"JackYu," he answered. "I'm following up the Golden Venture situation."

"Right, that's what you said on the phone."

Jack saw the impatience in her eyes, and he said, "Right, a murder occurred-"

"And I told you they're being detained in minimum-security facilities on the East coast."

On the rag, Jack was thinking, but bit down on his tongue when she said, "Chinese people float around on the ocean for four months, get beaten, raped, robbed, sometimes killed, just to come here for freedom and a better life. You got a problem with that?"

He let a second pass, leaned back, then let the polite look leave his eyes.

"Look, Mizz Chow," he said, watching her eyes narrow, "there're some bad nasty guys out there. Specialists. Kidnap for ransom, torture, gang rape, home invasion. They pop out eyeballs with ballpeen hammers, break ribs with baseball bats. They slice off fingers and ears. Horrible stuff. Ugly. Chinese, ourpeople. You got the picture?"

Her eyes dropped, a moment after her jaw. Quiet.

"I think some of the men from that ship are connected to a gang war that's dropping dead bodies on my desk." He spoke at the floor. "If I came at the wrong time, I apologize, but I don't have a lot of free time and obviously neither do you."

Her face softened and she took a step back.

Jack looked at her and said quietly, "Now, if we could start over on the right foot, I'll try to be brief."

"Okay," Alexandra said, taking a breath. "Go ahead, what are you looking for?"

"Men with military backgrounds, deserters from the People's Army."

"You have names, pictures?" She raised an eyebrow.

"I've got nothing but words on the wind."

She sighed. "Well, they're all in lockup, but it's minimum security so if they decide to run, I imagine they could do it."

Jack looked across her cluttered desk. "What is their status exactly?"

She sat down. "Right now they're in limbo until the court rules. Or if the President decides to alter immigration policy."

"When does this happen?" he asked, sitting down.

"Could be a week, could be a year. We've filed a class action on their behalf, seeking political asylum."

"You mean Tiananmen Square?"

"No. We're filing on grounds that they would be persecuted for resisting abortions and mandatory sterilization."

"Have you had any interviews? Are there any claims of religious or political persecution?"

"No interviews yet. They haven't given us a schedule."

Jack thought for a long moment and was aware of Alexandra watching him. Checking her wristwatch, she said, "Look, what difference does it make? Immigration's got them and it's going to be a federal problem. Let them sort it out. And no offense, but can't the precinct find better ways to utilize manpower?"

His reverie broken, Jack said, "Excuse me?"

"Cops," she said with professional disdain. "You've got gambling and prostitution all over Chinatown, and you're arresting street vendors and greengrocers."

"I'm working homicides, Mizz Chow," he protested, keeping the edge on his words.

"You know what I mean." She flipped open a file on her desk, pointed to cases on a legal docket.

"I've got fifty-year-old grandmothers and teenage refugees to bail out because they sold T-shirts and socks on the sidewalk. I've got a police brutality rap from a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, and a racism beef from a college student who argued a traffic ticket and got a busted head. I've got complaints across the board telling me how screwed up the system is."

Jack stared at her, wondering if she was mad at cops, or men, or if it was just him at the wrong time of the month.

"You think you make a difference?" she asked. "Tell me, why is it that you can't walk down the street in Little Italy, there are so many sidewalk cafes, but the Chinese guy with the fruit stand or the grandmother with the tray of socks rates a hundred-dollar summons and gets hauled away in handcuffs?"

Jack didn't know the answer to that. He said softly, "Zoning or health code, probably."

"Zoning, my ass." She leveled her gaze at him. "You know and I know, the laws aren't the same for everybody."

"I'm just doing my job," he said, tired of hearing it.

"Yes," she answered with quiet triumph. "We all have to do our jobs, don't we?" She paused for effect. "So what if a refugee woman gets kidnapped and sold as a sex slave? You turn a blind eye? Or do you make a difference?"

"I'm not working Vice, and besides you don't know how the Department works."

"I know it's not working for us, brother."

"Don't get righteous, sister, it's not becoming."

"It's becoming a waste of time. So, like I said, Immigration's got them and they haven't been very forthcoming with us. So, Detective, it's been real, and I know you've got to get back on the job."

Jack had nothing left so he extended his card to her, asked her to call with any new developments, a professional courtesy he'd appreciate. Alexandra Lee-Chow was checking her watch and punching up the telephone as he left her office.

Tuesday late afternoon was already as black as night. He didn't have Mona scheduled for a Tuesday pickup, but outside the China Plaza, Johnny rose out of the Continental in his black leather jacket and hustled Mona into the back seat. In the dim light, beneath her makeup, he didn't notice the blush on her cheek, under her right eye.

"I got it," he said, secretly proud of himself. "I pick it up tonight."

Mona blew him a small smile, counted out the handful of crisp new hundreds, fourteen of them, crinkling each one slightly so they wouldn't stick.

Johnny watched the focused energy in her eyes.

"Cheen say," he had told her, fourteen hundred, the Chinese words sounding vaguely like a thousand deaths. Four hundred more than Anthony "Bags" Biondo had told him the piece would cost.

Tony Biondo was a street level goodfella, a heroin dealer for the Campesi crew that still operated out of Little Italy. They were the wiseguy remnants of the big bust-up two-year war within the Scarponelli family. Johnny knew him from the Blossom Club, where Bags liked to pick up the Malaysian hostess girls, take them to the Italian side of Mulberry Street, where he enjoyed them until daylight shone on their shame.

Johnny had met him one rainy night while waiting outside the Blossom, graciously driving Bags and a hostess the six blocks across Canal. Bags gave Johnny a twenty-dollar tip. Afterwards, Johnny noticed a glassine bag of China white on the backseat. He kept it and the next time he saw Bags, returned it to him. This act of honesty impressed Bags, and he offered his help ifJohnny ever needed it.

That time had come.

Mona splayed the money evenly across the backseat. She gave Johnny a look and he knew he didn'twant to ask why-he simply agreed to run the errand, purchase the merchandise, pocketing four hundred in the exchange. Not bad for an hours' work.

But the silencer, that was the surprise. A gun with a silencer, she'd said, seemingly cool even though he'd felt her fear running just beneath the surface. In an odd way he was impressed that she was exerting some control over her life. His risk, getting stung by undercover dogs, became his unspoken contribution to their hak, illicit, relationship.

He couldn't say no, and when he scooped the money off the seat, she leaned in and kissed him on the soft part of his throat, gathered in the fleshiness with her lips, bit him. He gave her a long hard hug, then she exited the car and went back into the high-rise, never turning her head.

Johnny watched her go, striding faster than usual, into the elevator under the soft lights, the tidy compactness of her body forming a silhouette against the blank metallic enclosure. He watched until the elevator door snapped shut and swallowed her.

He felt the wheels hop off the curb as he drove into the horizon of dull streetlamps, thinking of Tony Bags.

And the gun with the silencer.

Johnny waited as Bags climbed into the black Lincoln, the side of the car kneeling under his hulky bulk. Bags patted Johnny on the shoulder with his hammy hand, said, "C'mon, let's see the dollars, liana." He flared up a cigarette, powered down the window.

The way Johnny unpeeled the Ben Franklins from the wad Mona had given him impressed the wiseguy. Bags's hand came out of his black coat and showed the piece. He opened his lips enough to let out smoke, working the cigarette over to one corner of his mouth, speaking through the other side.

"It's a Titan twenny-five caliber, six shots. Same type that Long Island Lolita bitch used. Less than a pound with the silencer. And I got you an extra magazine clip." He ran a fat finger over the ivory grips, the blue-metal finish, the knurledsteel silencer.

Johnny listened from the driver's seat, not that any of it made a difference to him, as long as it worked.

"Good up to fiteen, twenny feet." Bags grinned and pointed it in Johnny's direction a second, then aimed it out the open window and pulled the trigger.

Johnny heard the compressed suppressed explosion-pool.. at the same time the fluorescent sign shattered, exploded, leaving jagged plastic hanging above the Jade Takeout shop.

"It's clean right now, but it's probably got bodies on it, know what I'm sayin'?"

Johnny nodded.

"I no keepy," he said in his best English.

"You no /teepee, you got dat right," chortled Bags. He popped the clip and removed the bullets, handing the goods over to Johnny. He folded the cash into his pocket and said "pussy time" with a Cheshire cat grin.

"Remember," he said, climbing out of the car, "you use it, you lose it. You get caught, you don't know nothing. Capice?"

"No pobbum," Johnny answered, slipping the piece under his seat.

"No pobbum, man," he repeated, watching Bags grease down into the Blossom.

Forgiveness

Two nights went by without a word. Her cheek, which had swelled the first day, felt normal now, but the sting of it had gone far deeper than skin and muscle. On the third day Uncle Four appeared at her door, as Mona knew he would, with roses and cognac, and a diamond tennis bracelet. She allowed him a kiss on the cheek and a fleeting hug, watching him the way an alleycat watches a bulldog.

Uncle Four wasn't apologetic, instead acted as if nothing had happened.

"It was just a misunderstanding," he declared. "You know how it is with men, this business of bei meen, saving face."

Mona pouted when he slipped the glittering bracelet on her wrist. He declined to summon the radio car, so they hailed a yellow cab to a fancy seafood restaurant uptown, which had a view on the Hudson River nightscape. Then he took her windowshopping along Fifth Avenue, promising her the Chanel, the Gucci, the many exquisite things he would buy her.

Mona was cool and said she'd forgotten about the incident, and before midnight came she allowed him again to enter her bedroom in the darkness above Henry Street.

She lay beneath the silk sheets, quiet after he had mounted her unsuccessfully with his horny drunk erection, finally rolling his fat weight off of her. She was pretending to be asleep.

Uncle Four was at her makeup table now, drinking again and talking on the phone with the night light on. When he was drunk this way he rambled, his voice slurring, bragging about his deals. Golo, she supposed was on the other end.

Mona lay silent, motionless, listening. She heard about the diamonds, the big deal, something about washing money and Hakka powder.

"October eleventh," she heard, the day after the Double Ten celebration. A week away. Her eyes open in the dark now, she listened.

"The lawyer's office. Dew keuih lo mou hei, motherfuckers. No bodyguards. Who would dare anyway? At noon."