Chinatown Beat (3 page)

He powered down the window, kept the car headed north through Gramercy Park and Murray Hill, the wind buffeting his face, past the lights and shops of Midtown, the neighborhoods tonier now. He imagined the air was cleaner. Sutton Place. Beekman Place. The arriviste strongholds of the Upper East Side.

He drove through El Barrio, Spanish Harlem, the decay suddenly evident here, and crossed over above the Park at 110th, going west toward Morningside Heights and the enclave of Dominicans, a drug-dealing hub that connected New York, Connecticut, NewJersey. He paused on the Heights, long enough for another smoke, viewing the city spread out below him. The city was dying. One murder every three hours. One rape every hour and a half. One robbery every four minutes. An aggravated assault every six minutes. A motor vehicle theft every three minutes.

There was a new governor and the death penalty was coming home.

The city was dying. He saw it every time he drove through the old neighborhoods. Saw it in the blacked-out windows of abandoned graffitied tenements, in sinking potholed streets and garbagestrewn parks. He felt it every time he heard the sirens of the patrols, the ambulances, the fire trucks, day and night, relentless. He heard it in the voices of the homeless, crying, begging, threatening. Death. It touched him every time he smelled the sewage on the waterfront, the choking urine stench of the subways. Old neighborhoods that had survived the World Wars and Depression years but could not survive crack and heroin.

Dope, he figured. Dope and despair feeding the death of the darkening city.

Farther south he slashed across the blackness of Harlem, the Thirtieth Precinct sitting in the valley where the island went flat, rose, and fell again, until he came to the highway.

It was only then, cruising back down along the Harlem River Drive, that the feeling caught up to him. He didn't know if what he felt was guilt, filling his soul with sadness, breaking through the hardness in his heart, the price of growing tip an only child and without a mother's love. Perhaps, he thought, it was the finality of being alone, absolutely, without family now, after only a week, the Yu bloodline trapped, ending, with him. Perhaps, with Pa's passing, he was feeling his own mortality.

The lights across the river danced as he came south down the undulating highway, became misty as the tears flooded up behind his eyes. He blinked and the tears ran down the hotness of his cheeks, his breathing suddenly quick and heavy, a shuddering inside him.

He wiped a sleeve across his face, caught his breath as he turned on the dashboard radio, coming to the cutoff at Canal Street, the lights of Chinatown winking in the distance.

He twisted up the volume.

The rap anthem crashed out of the radio, violent and angry, and he mashed the pedal to the metal, the Fury screeching up Canal the same way he was beginning to feel.

The China Plaza was a modern elevator building, fifteen stories of beige and gray brick with lanai balconies, shoehorned in between turn-of-the-century Chinatown tenements and the foot of the Manhattan Bridge.

Apartment H was the only red door on the eighth floor, all the others painted a deep brown that suited the tan carpet and dark Taiwanese marble lining the corridor. Red was the color of luck, but behind the door the possessions of the old man were spread out to create the image of a private bordello.

The condo unit had a small living room with a closet bedroom stuck to it and a kitchenette squeezed into the corner. Positioned on the glass end tables and etagere shelves of the living room were assorted mini-pagodas, orange trees, dragon figurines and octagonal bot kwa, I Ching charms to fend off malevolent spirits and the breath of ill fortune. A small bowl of goldfish on a stand faced northeast, a red futon couch stood beneath the picture window, a double-happiness printed loveseat filled the remaining corner.

There was a smiling Buddha Kitchen God above the refrigerator, a lucky calendar behind the front door.

From the bedroom came the cadenced voice of Chinatown radio, the Wah Kite station reporting weather, time, news. A queensized bed filled the bedroom, covered with rose-colored sheets, the faint scent of Chanel on the pillows. Japanese Vogue, Rendezvous, Hong Kong movie star magazines had fallen from the edge of the bed to the floor. A statuette of Kuan Yin, Goddess of Mercy, stood on the windowsill, just above the mirrored dresser covered with jewel-box chinoiserie. Draped on top of a leather ottoman was an Hermes scarf, vividly printed with Buddhist pilgrims, prayer wheels, a stupa, the heavenly Elements of the Universe. Prayers floating in the wind.

Mona, in silky yellow lingerie, stirred beneath the sheets, awoke, roused herself from the bed, moved like a cat across the bedroom, past the kitchenette, then parted the sliding red curtains at the balcony which looked out over Henry Street, eight flights above the noise of bridge trucks and the Kwik-Park garage below. She poured a rice bowl of water into the small pots of jade and evergreen plants that faced to the northwest: good fungseui, harmony with Nature. She had hoped that the various talismans, and her prayers to the Goddess of Mercy, could change her fate.

But her worst demon entered anyway. Uncle Four had the key, owned the apartment, came through the front door.

When she looked out on the street, she could see ghetto detritus on the blackened rooftops below, discarded mattresses and dismembered plastic dolls, tattered laundry drying across telephone wires. In the alleyways lay the carcasses of gutted refrigerators, air conditioners.

Once she saw a black man on top of a woman, doggy style.

The billboard above the China Plaza read:

LUXURY CONDOMINIUMS VIEW OF RIVER, AND CHINATOWN.

It was early morning, a dead gray light. She brewed up a cup of Ti-Kuan Yin, Iron Goddess, spilled some ginseng into it, went over and sat in the red futon by the window. She closed her robe and stared ahead into the far distance, beyond the rooftops and the bridges, into the smog-colored sky.

Her fingers moved back and forth over a small jade charm clutched within her closed right hand, working it like a rosary. She contemplated freedom and death and the tao, the way of her life.

Jade Tao De Ching

The white jade octagon, a bot kwa, an I Ching talisman, was the size of a fat nickel. It nestled neatly in the soft of her palm, dangling from the flat gold Chanel bracelet on her wrist. She caressed it with the tip of her ring finger.

The jade was a translucent mutton-bone white, with a cool vitreous luster that in hard sunlight revealed tiny veins and serpentine, twisting fibers of a smoky-yellow hue. Not Shan, nor Chou, nor Ming dynasty. Quality jade, but not rare. Worthless compared to some of the pieces of jade Uncle Four had given her. But it had come from her mother, her only memento, and had touched three generations of the women of her family. It was her mother's soul.

On its flat sides, in bas-relief, were symbols of the Eight Trigrams. Yin and Yang together representing the Eight Elements of the Universe: Heaven, Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, Thunder, Mountain, Lake.

She dragged a red fingernail across one side. Water over thunder. Not propitious to advance, wait and seek help. In the center of the charm she felt the two embryonic snakes chasing each other's tail, forming the forever-changing symbol of the Yin Yang, harmony of the cosmic breath.

She was able to read each symbol, Braille-like, in a single passing of her finger. Then she'd stack the Trigrams in her mind, forming Hexagrams, prophecies, from the I Ching or Book of Changes. Her fingernail slid down. Heaven over Earth. Time of big loss, small gain. Untrustworthy people. Evil comes forth. She flipped the charm, felt for the reverse symbols on the back side.

She felt weary.

Thunder over Earth. Oppression, chaos drains the spirit. Auspicious to appoint helpers. Preparation for action.

Her gaze came back into the apartment, into the faint light. She thumbed the remote toward the cable television, refreshed the Iron Goddess tea with the rest of the vial of ginseng, and saw the words Black Cat take shape from the snow on the screen. Maggie Kahn starring as the Female Assassin. The legend of Fa Mulan came to mind. If the woman warrior could ride into battle against a warlord army, surely she, Mona, could find the resolve to secure freedom from and vengeance against one corrupt old man. She sipped the brew and thought about recruiting help.

She knew the type, a young man with a hustler's good looks, always on the move. Waiting for the right dai gajeer, big sister, to come along. She'd seen them plenty in TsimSha Cheui, working the disco circuit in the soo-ga momie pipeline. Uneducated youths working hard at pretending they were international playboys.

Despite the fact that she depended on them, Mona hated men, all men. They were mongrels, stray dogs, attack dogs, bloodhounds. Men wanted one thing only: her most precious part, her sex. They wanted to possess her for a short time, then discard her for someone younger. And there was always someone younger. Except for Johnny, the driver, who had asked for nothing and expected nothing, all the other men in her life had purchased her time, bought her body, played with her mind.

Nothing for nothing, that was the lesson she'd learned a lifetime ago, halfway around the world in Hong Kong, when at fourteen years of age, the Triads had forced her to sell her body to repay her father's gambling debts. When her mother found out, she cursed her husband, then immediately suffered a heart attack. Mona never forgot that extra week in the seedy brothel, on her back, to pay for the funeral.

Her mother's curse came true. In the end, they killed her father anyway, those evil men with snake tattoos and black hearts.

By the time Uncle Four came to Hong Kong, almost three years ago, Mona had been promoted to China City, the big nightclub on Kowloon where hundreds of siu jeer, young ladies, sold themselves while seeking overseas American Chinese with the promise of green cards. She and Uncle Four discovered they had roots in the same province in China, and that had served as convenient-enough excuse for her to follow him to New York City, overstay her visa, and disappear underground.

At first, all had gone well with this older man, at sixty, some thirty years her senior. Although he was married, Uncle Four provided her with the clean co-op apartment, food, fun money for clothes and personal expenses. In return she accompanied him only at night-twice, three times a week-a decoration on his arm that he liked to show off in the gambling houses and karaoke nightclubs.

All types of men ogled her wherever they went, raping her with their eyes as she passed, hungry-looking men who stared and didn't look away when she flashed her eyes at them. None of this went unnoticed by Uncle Four, but he gave big face to the club owners and didn't bring trouble to their places.

As time went by he accused Mona of looking back at some of the younger men, suspected her of harboring other desires, causing him big loss of face. This was unacceptable. He was, after all, an elder man of respect. Gradually he became abusive and violent, threatening her with deportation, even death, if she ever tried to leave him. As leader of the Hip Chings, who sponsored the Black Dragons, his people were everywhere and she feared she would never escape.

Ping denq, she cried secretly. It was destiny, her Fate.

Out on the edge of the neighborhood, the river wind blew chill into the somber Chinatown day, and swirled dust devils around the beastman who stood on the street corner, watching the working-class families entering the Housing Projects.

He saw the child, grade-school bag in her small hand, with the old woman, grandmother, he figured, withered, bent, useless. When they entered the project elevator, he followed them into the urine stench, watched as the grafittied door slid shut behind them. After the child tapped the seven button, he pressed number sixteen, lucky today. The old woman glanced at him only briefly, saw a clean-cut Chinese and was reassured. The little girl's long black hair hung down her back, her eyes reached just above the buckle of his belt.

They came to the seventh floor. The door slid back and the old woman pushed out past the swinging door to the hallway. In one motion, he grabbed the little girl, shoved the grandmother onto the linoleum, slammed the door.

The girl froze, her jaw slack with fear.

The elevator reached Eight, one of his hands cupped over her mouth, the other feeling for the switchblade in his pocket. At Fifteen, he took her into the stairwell, her eyes big, wet now, too afraid to cry. She was half-dragged, half-carried, up the stairs, her whimpering unheard over the echoing thunder of his footsteps, the feeble screams of grandma far below now.

On the roof landing he showed the knife but spoke calmly in a dialect of Chinese she barely understood.

Um sai pa, he said, eyes freezing her, don't be afraid. She nodded her answer at the point of the blade. Good, he murmured in English, tugging down her underpants. Seven, maybe eight years old, his eyes swallowed her. He put his fingers on her, like ice. Good, this country America, as he unbuckled his belt…

Bones

Jack nosed the Fury into Evergreen Hills cemetery, parked it behind a line of mausoleums, and went to the plot in the Chinese section.

The empty cemetery looked pastoral as a brief patch of sun spread over the clipped grass, throwing long shadows across the rows of tombstones. It was cooler now as Jack kicked away the twigs of the dying season, gravesweeping beneath his father's tombstone. He planted a bouquet of flowers, produced his flask and toasted mao-tai to Father and earth. Sorry, Pa, he thought.

He lit sticks of incense, took another slug from the flask, then poured out a small stream making a wet circle in the dirt. When his thoughts tumbled into speech, sorry was all he could say, not for anything in particular, but for the general torment of unfulfilled dreams.