Chinatown Beat (4 page)

"Sorry," he repeated, bowed three times, planted the incense, and touched his fingers to the graceful cuts in the gray stone.

Sorry you never struck it rich.

Sorry I never struck it rich.

He moved the tin bucket over and torched various packages of death money for gambling in the house of the dead.

Sorry no big house in the South of China.

Sorry no farm with fish, and rice paddies.

Sorry no bones to return to Kwangtungprovince.

He fed the shopping bag of gold-colored paper taels into the fiery heap in the bucket. He stirred the flames with a branch, produced three packs of firecrackers.

Sorry we never had a car.

Sorry I didn't become a doctor or lawyer.

He tossed the fireworks into the flames, stepped back as the staccato explosions rocked the silent cemetery.

Sony about moving out on you.

He tilted the flask and took another long hard hit. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Big Uncle

As was his custom on Saturday mornings, Wah Yee Tom left the office of the Hip Ching Labor and Benevolent Association, met Colo Clink, the enforcer, and went down the block to the joy Luck dim sum parlor where he held court for one hour at the large round table by the back wall.

During this hour, Wah Yee Tom dispensed charitable favors to members of the Association and their families, and mediated problems that arose within the ranks.

Wah Yee Tom, a.k.a. Uncle Four, was advisor for life to the Hip Ching tong, the number two tong in America, a bi-coastal organization with thousands of members, a multi-million-dollar bankroll, and an aging conservative leadership. The tong was the American offspring of the international Triads, Chinese secret societies whose roots reached back to warlords and dynasties preceding China's birth as a nation. The numerous Triads had supporters and agents in every Chinese community in the world.

A waiter brought Uncle Four's usual pot of guk bo cha, poured two cups and withdrew. Golo escorted some people into the restaurant and seated them by the takeout counter in the front. Then he went back to the round table, sat, and the two men sipped tea together before Uncle Four spoke.

"What do we have?" he asked quietly.

"A widow," Golo answered. "Needs money."

Uncle Four's eyes shifted to the disparate group at the front as Golo continued. "A member with a complaint, and a young guy who came off the ship that crashed the other night."

"Put him last," said Uncle Four.

The first matter at hand was a request for help from an elderly widow whose husband had been a longtime member before his death. The wrinkled old woman with gnarled hands had been beaten and her apartment had been ransacked by a gang of Puerto Rican beat girls during a push-in robbery in the housing projects. She was terrified and wanted to return to China to die but had no money, the say loy sung neu, nasty Latina girls, having taken everything.

Uncle Four spoke quietly to Golo, who rose and escorted the old woman to the door. He gave her a handful of hundred-dollar bills from a wad in his pocket, whispered in her ear, and patted her reassuringly across the shoulder. She nodded her head, almost kowtowing, before leaving the restaurant.

Golo returned to the table.

"She agrees," he said, "to provide us with the address and the keys to her apartment, along with the canceled rent checks and telephone bills of the year previous."

Uncle Four nodded, sipping thoughtfully from his cup of tea, thinking that he would instruct Golo to dispatch several Dragons to take over the apartment. It would become an additional stash- or safe-house, and the gang could distribute their Number Three bah fun, heroin, from there, to the low lifes and the animals.

The second person to entreat Uncle Four's help was pale for a Chinese; there was a sickly, pasty tone to his face. He wore a cheap jacket and tie over jeans and his black shoes were scuffed, slanted along the heels with wear. He wrung his hands and looked about nervously.

Golo brought him to the table, where he respectfully introduced himself as a new member who owned a small takeout counter down near Essex Street, at the edge of East Broadway. He'd paid his dues and posted the Hip Ching membership placard, but was still being shaken down by three rival crews, one of them being Dragons-a crew of young guns.

They'd threatened him and taken fifty dollars from his register.

Uncle Four knew the territory, a no-man's land picked over by rival gangs, the Fuk Chings, the Tong On. It was half a mile away from Pell and Division Streets, the heart of Dragon turf.

It was more difficult to manage the fringes of the empire, he thought, things were more desperate out there on the edge, the Fukienese refusing to respect truce and territory.

He gave the man a hundred dollars and assured him the problem would be gau dim, taken care of.

The man thanked him profusely and never took his eyes off Golo until he was out of the restaurant. Colo checked his watch, signaled the next young man over.

He was a skinny Fukienese with a scared look, and Golo conversed with him in Mandarin, calmed him, gave him a cigarette. He talked and Colo translated.

"His name is Li Jon. He walked off the highway, found a payphone. He called the number they gave him in China. When they called back, he gave them the words on the street signs. Half an hour later a black car picked him up and dropped him in Chinatown. He's been walking around town since."

Uncle Four blew the steam gently around the rim of the thick porcelain cup. "What about the ones who drowned?" lie asked the Fukienese.

The man took a breath. His eyes went distant.

"It was the ocean, the darkness. We're not used to it, you see." He shivered, continuing, "We're from the South of China, the water is always warm. When we dropped in, the water was so icy my muscles were in shock. I stroked and kicked but went nowhere. I was afraid my bones would freeze and snap and I'd sink and drown. People were screaming. Less than a hundred yards to land, I could see it. It was hard to breathe. My hands were chopping at the waves. I thought my heart would explode. I started to swallow saltwater."

His eyes came back.

"Then a wave caught me and suddenly there was a short walkway of land, where it rose up under the water. I caught my breath and saw the beach again. There was more screaming far behind me, near the ship. More people drowning. Another minute I was ashore, changing my clothes. I found a phone, made the call. I'm here. They said the Big Uncle would have work for me."

Uncle Four lowered his teacup to the table, leveled a hard look at the Fuk Chou man.

"Young man, you have come a long way, and you owe a lot of money. Remember well the terror of the ocean if you ever consider reneging on your debt. Your punishment will be a hundred times worse. You cannot hide. We will find you. Or America will swallow you up. Your family back in the village, all are at risk for you. So work hard. Don't mix with the gwai to. Repay your debt, then seek your fortune. Every man has a chance here. Do not fumble away your golden opportunity."

"Eternal thanks, Big Uncle," the young man said quietly.

Uncle Four nodded at Golo, who escorted the man out, dictating directions into his ear.

The restaurant began to fill for yum cha and Uncle Four took his tea to the big glass window and watched pedestrians passing along the shadowy narrow street. His thoughts drifted back a half-century, to when he had arrived in New York City as a Toishanese child. He'd grown up in a time when Chinese men faced off in back alleys with hatchets and cleavers. A time when the storied tongs had a death grip on the old sojourners.

More than forty years had passed since that night in the dusty room down in Mongkok, on the Kowloon side, with the ancestral scrolls and the flags of the mythical heroes on the wall, with twenty other dog recruits, where he drank the blood of a man and fowl mixed with wine, and swore on his life the Thirty-Six Oaths of secrecy and loyalty to his Triad blood brothers.

Now the Red Circle Triad had expanded outside of Communist mainland China, remaining a powerful force in Hong Kong, but spreading to Singapore, Amsterdam, Canada, and South America.

He remembered hand signals, instinctively ran his fingers along his forearm in an X, then hands, pitching fingers across his palm. Two fingers, three, five, dragon's head and tail. He grinned at the foolishness of his youth.

Uncle Four was not pleased about the way things had changed. The tongs were depicted as thuggish, evil organizations. The newer waves of immigrants didn't give respect to them. And every time business was transacted, there were the lawyers, the brokers, the city officials, the bank regulators. The paperwork, the documentation. He preferred things under the table. Quiet. Secretive.

Forty years ago, the Hip Chings had welcomed his return as a hero, never mentioning the jail time he'd served for what the white officials called tax evasion and labor racketeering. The tong had rewarded him a full share of the Chinese Numbers route he helped create before his incarceration. They had supported his family in China, where his first wife died, where elderly relatives were sustained into old age.

Uncle Four had taken the numbers proceeds from the hundred membership storefront operations and invested in the bak fun and in gambling basements from Pell Street to Division Street. Ten percent of the gross from gambling was paid back to the tong, blood cash that funded the benevolent work of the Association.

When the Feds investigated him, he dispersed his holdings and retired from the Association, becoming its advisor for life.

He sipped the tea thinking, There is no respect anymore.

Long shadows jagged along the street. He blew steam off the tea cup as the plastic wall-clock chimed, then waved goodbye to Golo who was already on the street, lighting up his trademark 555. Uncle Four knew it was too early in the day for the gang boys, so Golo would probably wait until the afternoon races at OTB before taking up the matter with the daai gor-big brother-in charge. No big deal. He would make them see the foolishness of their young minds. The punks were attracting attention toward the Hip Ching and it was bad for business.

It wasn't like in Hong Kong, where he could thrash the little dogs inside the Triad assembly hall. Here, the Chinese gangs had their own membership of undisciplined teenaged hotheads, including many who didn't speak or read Chinese, controlled supposedly by their "elder brothers," the dailo.

Uncle Four shook his head disdainfully.

They had even had to translate the Thirty-Six Oaths into English, which came out to only twelve oaths, to simplify the ritual, as the street boys were incapable of memorizing thirty-six consecutive ideas.

Of the Twelve Oaths, even the most lethal sounded blunt, almost businesslike, in English reading: I will obey the tong, and if I do not, I will die under the condition of being shot; the secret of the Association must be kept and if I do not do this I will be stabbed a thousand times; and if the tong comes into difficulty and I do not come to its aid, I will die by the electric shock, or be burned by fire.

Uncle Four finished his tea, and stared out over his world with the same disappointment he was feeling toward the young gangsters. No discipline these days, he thought, as he left the Joy Luck, heading toward Confucius Towers, completely ignoring the shortness of his shadow that preceded him down the pavement.

Sex/crimes

He was an hour early for the four to midnight shift but he didn't want to leave the leftover incense and hell money in the Fury. Bad luck. Better to stash them in his locker.

Alone in the squad room, he felt abandoned somehow. It wasn't until he punched up the TV that he realized why there was the absence of uniformed officers. On screen was an overhead aerial helicopter view of protestors coming across the Brooklyn Bridge, the National Organization of Women, NOW, and a coalition of anti-war and anti-poverty protesters bearing the banners of gay and lesbian rights activists and workers' rights groups, were marching, more than a hundred thousand strong. Their route snaked past Chinatown to Seventh Avenue, then north to a rally at Madison Square Garden. The march siphoned off NYPD manpower from every precinct in Manhattan, leaving the 0-5 precinct understaffed. The TV commentator spoke of their "left liberal agenda" directed at the Bush Republican administration. They were, he said, united for peace and justice.

Jack tossed the incense into his locker and was closing it when the desk phone jangled.

It was Paddy, the desk sergeant, downstairs.

"There's a man down here," he said, "who needs to speak to a Chinese."

"Where's the translator?" Jack asked.

"Chin's out on meal, and Wong took a personal day."

"Coming down," Jack said as he hung up the phone.

Sergeant Paddy, behind the desk, loomed over the man, who was watching Jack approach. He was Chinese, forty-something, dressed like he might be an office worker, shift manager, something like that.

"How can I help you?" Jack asked, his Cantonese sharp.

The man responded in Toishanese, the tongue of laundrymen and waiters.

"I would like to report that there has been a rape," he said guardedly. "But there are conditions…"Jack's eyes narrowed-"that I need your help with."

Jack waited, then said, "Okay, what do you need?"

Paddy jerked his head toward the rear of the room. Jack walked the man slowly to the benches by the back stairs. After he was seated, the man said, "My niece was raped. She is ten years old. Her grandmother is beside herself-"

"Slow down," Jack said quietly, his Toishanese all slang now.

"Her father does not like the police. He does not want to report it. My sister, the mother, feels the shame of it will harm the girl further."

Jack was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.