Chinatown Beat (5 page)

"Not one of them will speak to a gwailo officer."

Sex Crimes Unit, Jack was thinking.

"I am hoping to convince them. To speak to you."

Jack took a breath, through his nose the way a boxer does when he's under pressure. "Come upstairs," he said.

In the empty room, Jack asked, "When did this happen?"

"This morning. About five hours ago."

There was a pause. Jack knew the victim should already have been examined, valuable time had been lost. He wasn't on the clock yet, but to see if this man's story was true, he was good to go.

Normally, a call would have come into the precinct and they would have processed it. Ms. Chin, the translator, would get involved if needed. Get the basic information from the complainant. A uniformed officer would be dispatched to the scene and determine the facts, report back to the sergeant. They would notify EMS, get the victim to a hospital, administer a rape kit test. The detectives of the Sex Crimes Unit would be called to respond, the experts, to determine the who's and why's. Ask the victim to identify photographs. Check local and state files for pedophile predators of the type involved. Track and locate. Surveillance if necessary. Bring suspects in for questioning. Draw up timelines to trace the crime back and forth. Check the prison population based on the perpetrator's profile. Post composite sketches of the suspect. Seek help from the local population. The news media, TV, radio, and newspapers, could help.

The uncle's eyes went distant as he continued. "The grandmother and the little girl. They had gone to the supermarket. It was around ten-thirty or eleven this morning. They were in the elevator, coming home."

Jack was seeing it clearly in his mind.

"There was a man inside, riding up with them. I think he followed them in. On their floor they started to get off. But the man pushed grandmother, Ah Por, down, and took the little girl to the roof."

The uncle's jaw clenched. He swallowed, took a breath.

"The mother and the grandmother found her on a landing, crying. Her underwear was missing. And she was bleeding.

The uncle's chest heaved, his hands clenched, his knuckles turned white.

"What did he look like?" Jack asked.

"The grandmother said he was cleancut, that he wasn't an older man, but not a kid either. Maybe twenty to thirty years old. Chinese, it's hard to tell sometimes."

"What else?"

"The mother is concerned the girl may be pregnant."

"Is the family there now?"

"I will take you to them." He showed Jack a Con Edison bill with an address on it.

Jack went to the photo file cabinet, pulled all the pictures of Asian men involved in sex crimes. There were seven photos in all, men of apparently different ages, but possible perps. Hard to tell with Asian men. He picked up the phone and tapped up Paddy.

"Sarge," he said, "it's a possible rape. I'm going to need the Sex Crimes Unit."

"Forget about it," Paddy answered, "there's reports of Hispanic men attacking women protestors along the parade route. Snatching them near the Penn Yards. Sex Crimes is all tied tip."

"I'm going with the man to the scene. I'll work up the information." He looked at the Con Ed bill. "It's 10 Catherine Slip. In the Smith Houses."

"I'll patch it along, but Sex Crimes won't be available until after the protest march."

Downstairs, Sergeant Paddy watchedJack and the man exit the stationhouse, both of them somber. Jack flashed him a hard look and shook his head as more uniformed officers trooped in.

The four to midnight shift was finally arriving.

Catherine Slip was six blocks off. Along the way, Jack stopped at Tong's Variety Toys and purchased a black-and-white panda bear, a prop he hoped would help put the victim at ease when he interviewed her.

The uncle appeared nervous, anxious, as they walked together.

"You're doing the right thing," Jack said. The uncle nodded, uncertainty in his eyes.

"Why?" Jack asked. "Why does the father dislike the police?"

The uncle shook his head, a look of disdain crossing his face.

"He was mugged by some loy sung, Spanish men. Over there somewhere. When the police came, he felt they did nothing. Another time, a policeman wrote him a traffic ticket. He couldn't speak enough English to argue. He felt he did nothing wrong. Just sitting in the car. It still cost him a hundred dollars."

They were approaching the fringe of the neighborhood.

The Smith Houses were brown brick buildings, each seventeen stories tall, a low-income housing development located in the bowels of the Lower East Side. They had been part of the post-war boom in public housing construction, stacking poor families, black, Latino, white, in isolated areas, families that lived off Welfare programs, generations growing up on WIC coupons, and food stamps. Subsistance on assistance.

Twelve buildings hunkered down next to the East River, by the Brooklyn Bridge and the South Street exit ramp of the FDR, beginning just a block away from the city's police headquarters.

Jack remembered schooldays, when he and Wing Lee came by the community center gymnasium, looking to play basketball, fearfully avoiding the black men who drank from quart bottles of Colt.45, pitched quarters against the gym wall, and rolled dice when they weren't selling bags of marijuana, coke, maybe heroin. Pa had told Jack not to go down there, to the jingfu Iangovernment housing projects-where every Chinese resident had been mugged at one time or another. One day that last summer, a group of black kids stole his basketball, and tore his Knicks T-shirt. He never went back. Fond memories.

Now, they were passing the white sign with red letters that read " Welcome to the Alfred E. Smith Houses."

Ten Catherine Slip was beyond the gymnasium, on the way to the East River. Long-haul trucks and black cars lay low under the ramp of the FDR. The main entrance to the building was along a deserted stretch of sidewalk, cracked and dropping down toward the river.

They stepped into the stench of junkie vomit, passing graffiticovered walls. NWA, the rap group Niggers With Attitude, in big block marker. To the elevator. Niggaz 4eva.

Apartment 16 was located in the crook of the long corridor. The uncle knocked. There was the sound of the peephole sliding open behind the two-way glass. A moment, then the uncle said, "It's me."

The door opened into a small living room. A kitchenette, and bedrooms beyond. Plastic slipcovers on the couch and chairs. Aluminum foil on the wall above the oven and range. The smells of horn yee, salty fish and steamed rice.

The father was fortyish but gray already and thinning. The mother was red-eyed; she kept her left hand over her mouth. Jack could almost hear the heaviness of her breath. The grandmother peeping out from one of the bedrooms. The girl was inside.

" I'm loYu," Jack announced quietly, giving his surname, and family association by inference. He showed his badge to the father, looked to the uncle, then to the mother.

" I understand your daughter may have been injured?"

The mother gasped behind her hand. The uncle braced his sister.

"For your daughter's sake," Jack half-pleaded, "she needs medical attention. Also, the physical evidence will help us catch this animal…"

The father gave him a skeptical look. " The police have never been any help. They pick on us Chinese. I can get help my own way."

Jack took a step closer and said, "Sir, your daughter may be pregnant. This is our first concern." The mother averted her eyes atJack's glance.

"Please help us," continued Jack. "This beast is out there, running free. He may yet attack another Chinese girl. You can help us put an end to this."

The father's mouth formed a sneer but he remained silent.

"No one else will know. The victim's identity will be kept confidential."

The victim. Victim. The word resonating in Jack's head. The mother began to cry, sobbing softly. Jack took a breath through his nose. The father was slowly relenting, realizing the limits of his options, Jack felt. He huddled with his wife, comforting her.

The uncle led Jack to the near bedroom. The lights were dim, and the grandmother was stroking the girl's back, the two of them seated on the bottom bed of the double-decker. The little girl looked away, distant.

Jack beckoned the grandmother to the hallway light and showed her the photographs from the perp file.

"Was it any of these men?" he asked.

She took maybe two minutes to view the seven photos.

"None of these," she said. "He was lean, with short hair. Like you."

"How tall?"

"About your height. Shorter, but not by much." Five-foot-nine, Jack noted.

"Eyeglassses?"

"No."

"Did you notice any scars? "

"No."

"A mustache?"

"No. He looked like a regular young man."

"Is there anything you remember clearly about him?"

She paused for a moment, looking toward his feet. "He had on thick black shoes. They were dirty. Like he worked in a gung chong, a factory, or a chaan gwoon, a restaurant."

As Jack jotted down the information, the girl appeared at the edge of the door, round sad eyes peering up at him. He smiled, taking the panda from his jacket.

"Hi," he said softly to her, showing her his gold badge. "I'm a policeman, and I brought a friend for you." He gave her the panda. The girl accepted it, looking down at the floor. Jack knelt, his eyes at her level.

"I'm going to punish the bad man who hurt you. But I'm going to need your help."

The girl hugged the bear. Through the bedroom window, Jack could see the afternoon darkening, the overcast day running toward its end.

"I'm going to take a walk with ah por-grandma. Sook-sookuncle-will stay with you. When I come back I'm going to ask you some questions, okay?"

"Okay," the girl answered, her voice barely audible.

Speaks English, Jack noted as he turned toward the front door.

They took the stinking elevator up, then the hallway stairs, climbing the steps up to the landing, the old woman leading the way.

Grandmother pointed to where the girl had sat, bleeding, on the cement floor. She had feared her granddaughter was dead. In the waning light of the afternoon, Jack could see no visible clues, no articles of evidence left behind anywhere, only the stillness of the cinderblock enclosure. Crime Scene Unit. They might have the resources and the equipment to take it further. Sex Crimes Unit, maybe. Break out the bloodlights, and all that high-tech gear… But there was nothing here.

They were walking back down the graffiti-tagged stairwell, Jack keeping an eye out for evidence, when his radio blared. It was Sarge Paddy's voice over the static.

"SCU's down by you. They need to know what apartment."

"Sixteen," Jack barked, "apartment sixteen."

They stepped over the puddles of urine, past hypodermic needles and empty beer cans, until they reached their landing.

SCU came out of the elevator just as they approached the apart ment, two white female undercover detectives, one more mannish than the other. Jack introduced himself, gave one his detective's card and handed over all the information he'd jotted down. The one with the short spiky haircut looked over the sheet of paper and complimented Jack on his thoroughness. Jack explained that he hadn't interviewed the victim yet, but believed the girl spoke English.

"We'll take it from here then," the taller one said. "Thanks for your help."

"Sounds like the same perp from the case in the 0-Six," the other added. "Another Chinese girl, about the same age. But this was in the projects on the West Side. The Varick Houses, near the Holland Tunnel."

"Can you get me some composite sketches?"Jack asked, showing interest. "Also a picture of the victim?"

"Be in your mailbox at the 0-Five," said the taller one. "First thing tomorrow."

"Thanks." Jack nodded. "I'll see what I can squeeze out of the neighborhood."

"That's a bet," she said, breaking a smile.

All together, they entered the apartment.

The father stepped forward, away from the mother who remained near the small kitchenette, and stood squarely in front of the white gwai por, women detectives.

"Don't be nervous," Jack warned him in a loud enough voice to command him to back off. "These are policewomen. Detectives. They will help take your daughter to the hospital. They will spare you the paperwork."

The father watched Jack silently.

"Sometimes women understand women better," Jack added. The father took a breath and silently gave in, stepping back as the female detectives followed the grandmother to the far bedroom.

"Go with them," he said to the girl's mother.

Jack stood with the uncle and the father, the three men quiet in the kitchen area. Jack could see the detectives working the girl in the bedroom, reassuring her. He saw the panda's legs swinging, shifting in the girl's embrace.

In five minutes they'll have her enroute to Downtown Hospital or Gou- veneur General. Administer a rape kit. CaptureDNA. One of the SCU would process the crime scene, double-check with a flashlight, and again in daylight.

The girl hugged the panda as she left with the tall detective, throwing Jack a sorrowful look, on her small face a sad and fearful smile. The mother went along.

Alone with the uncle at the door, Jack said, "I'll need a photograph of your niece." The uncle gave him one from his wallet, a school picture with a sky-blue background.

"Her father is talking about going to the elders of his village association," the uncle said, "to get something going."

Jack knew what he meant, that they'd do their own investigation. He gave the uncle a Detective's Endowment Association card. "Call me if you hear anything," Jack said, before he entered the elevator. The orange glow of the sunset was barely above the horizon of the West Side as he walked back toward the stationhouse and the Fury. He felt a growl in his stomach, and for a second considered taking his meal break, but he had no appetite. Instead, the knot that was clenching in his gut reminded him how vicious the world was to the innocents who could not defend themselves. How does a cop get help from a community that has no faith in officers of the law?"