Death Money (25 page)

“
All
right,” Jack reinforced the change in mood, buying
Billy another round.
Better drunk than sorry
. He could always get someone at Grampa’s to take Billy home if necessary.

By the third boilermaker, Jack began to put together what Ah Por’s witchy words actually meant. The
rat
could be a reference to the Year of the Rat, the coming year in the Chinese horoscope.
Ten months away. Ah Por meant Bossy won’t see the next year?
If so, according to her words, it’d be true that Bossy’s fortune was nothing more than
death money. He’d never be able to spend it fast enough
. The largesse would be left to whom? His Taiwanese wife? His gangster-wannabe son?

Maybe justice traveled in a slower circle, pondered Jack.

He watched Billy take his scotch to the pool table in the back, where a vampy white girl was waiting to hustle a willing fish like him.

Ruben was the first to leave, followed by Johnson. As the party wound down, Jack stopped keeping track of who left. By 1
A.M
. the pace had slowed to a drunken slog. He didn’t see Billy anywhere and signed his running tab before leaving Grampa’s.

He was home by 2
A.M.
, noting the time display on the clock radio before collapsing onto his bed.

Backup

J
ACK AWOKE TO
a brilliant morning, shaking off the lingering haze from the night’s boilermakers. He knew the sky was brilliant by the bright light knifing in at the edges of his shaded windows. He turned on the TV, surfed the channels until he came to local news, an item featuring the Lantern
Festival in Chinatown.
Chinese schoolchildren parading with lanterns around Chinatown
.

He muted the sound, reached for his cell phone, which was vibrating on the nightstand.

There were two messages that he’d missed during the noisy scene at Grampa’s. The first one was from a Ninth Precinct number, an NYPD shrink named May McMann, about rescheduling an appointment.

The second message was from a number he didn’t know, but he recognized Alexandra’s voice right away.

“Heyyy, let’s meet at Tsunami, at four
P.M.
”
Curt, to the point
. He hadn’t seen her in more than a week.

When he tried to call the number back, all he got was disconnect.

He powered the audio back, watched as candlelit Chinese lanterns floated down Mott Street followed by a marching band from the Chinese school. Many businesses hung lanterns above their doors, inviting luck for the new year.

Then he thought about Sing.
Singarette
, who would have turned twenty-four this year.
Yee say
, the numbers whispered, twenty-four sounding like
easy to die
in Cantonese.

The images of Sing, from the river to the grave, tumbled in his brain. He didn’t think anyone would visit Sing at Saint Margaret’s, but he knew that cherry lady Huong would offer prayers and memorials at the Buddhist temple.

He won’t be forgotten
.

On the TV screen, the Chinatown religious and civic groups marched along, joined by a contingent of Chinese auxiliary police officers.

He got up and looked at his stitches in the mirror, the
jagged lines scabbing over now. He’d lose the stitches in a few days, he knew.

Not in a celebratory mood, he turned off the TV and lay back down on the bed. He couldn’t reconcile the mixed feelings in his head. Though he was happy that he’d caught Sing’s killer, the arrest felt hollow. Mak Mon Gaw might yet get justice, but for other crimes.
And Bossy’d gotten away scot-free, at least for now
. According to Ah Por, Bossy wasn’t going to make it to the next lunar New Year.
We’ll see
, thought Jack.

He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the chatter inside his head. He imagined the patchy ground of the potter’s field at Saint Margaret’s and the mourning sounds of an
erhu
far off in the distance.

Come Back

T
SUNAMI WAS A
sushi joint, located where the Lower East Side melted into the East Village, walking distance from Alex’s AJA storefront. They had a sushi bar where the fish snacks circulated around on a conveyor belt. You could order cold soba or hot udon or kushiyaki on the side.

He and Alex had celebrated there a couple of times before.

He pictured Alex’s pretty face. It’d been a week since he’d seen her, almost two weeks since they last made love. Coming straight out of Brooklyn by
see gay
, he hadn’t had the chance to stop in Chinatown to get her something sweet from Mott Street.

He was considering where to sit, bar or booth, when she walked in.

Alex gave him a peck on the cheek and ushered him into one of the empty booths, sliding in behind him.
She looks great
, he thought,
something edgy around her eyes
.

She ordered two large bottles of filtered sake as they settled in, a body distance between them that allowed them to look directly into each other’s eyes. Clearly happy to see each other.

They toasted a shot of the little sake cups, each catching a breath. Then the words poured out of her mouth, through the lips he remembered kissing tenderly. What she said stunned him, hit him harder than a lead sap, harder than a hundred-pound sack of rice.

“We have to back it up,” she said, locking his eyes. “Not see each other. For a while at least.”

He was speechless, wanted to protest, but knew to let her tell it.

“The son of a bitch,” she said with a frown. He knew she meant her soon-to-be ex-husband. “He somehow got a copy of a security tape from Confucius Towers.”

“No,” Jack said quietly, now understanding the edge he’d seen in her eyes when she walked in. She was the bearer of bad news.

“
Yes
. It shows you and me in the elevator, going up.”

“No,” he repeated, clenching his fists and taking a steadying breath through his nose.

“Yes. And it shows
you
,” she continued, “going back down
alone
.”

Before dawn
, remembered Jack, the last time they’d made love. He downed his cup of sake, poured another. Her words made him feel awful, killed his appetite for sushi.

“He’s threatening to use the tape against me in the
custody fight. Paint me as an unfaithful wife and unfit mother.” He felt helpless and guilty, didn’t know whether to apologize or add to her anger.

Jack’s fist tightened around the sake bottle as he poured her another cup. She drained it before continuing.

“I’m threatening a lawsuit against Confucius Towers and Tower Security,” she added. “But I don’t know if that’ll work.”

“Everyone suffers,” Jack said with a frown. “Especially the kid.” The divorce demands had driven a wedge between them.
Should they have waited before giving in to their needs? She
, a lawyer, should have known better.
He
certainly knew better. Billy had warned him countless times.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” he offered.

“It’s nobody’s fault, Jack. He’s just an evil bastard.”

He reached across and took her fingers in his, caressed them as he tried to comfort her. He wanted to hold her, tell her it was going to be all right, but knew she’d passed there already.
She was trying to get ready for a fight she didn’t feel was going to go her way
. They eyed each other with apprehension and sorrow.

“What can I do to help?” he asked.

She pulled her fingers away, poured herself a refill.

“The best thing you can do is to stay away from him in every way,” she said. “The last thing I need is you stalking him, anything
crazy
like that.” Her words cut through him, made him feel helpless to help her—this woman with whom he’d started to feel there could be a future—made him wish Lucky wasn’t in a coma and could arrange the dirty work.

Jack shook his head as she contemplated the little sake cup, before throwing it back.

“And we can’t be seen together,” she said quietly.
That’s why she chose Tsunami
, Jack realized,
it was out of the way, outside Chinatown. They’d have to lay low
.

He didn’t want to lose her. He cared more about her than anything else in his life, certainly more than anything in his cop life.

She leaned in and kissed him.

“It’s over, Jack,” she said, sliding out of the booth, her hand holding him back from following her. “For now.” She hesitated a moment, adding, “I’ve changed my cell phone number. But you know where to find me.” She meant at AJA, Jack knew.

She brushed a final stroke on his cheek and left the sushi joint.

He thought he saw tears welling in her eyes. He stayed back like she’d asked, watching her through the restaurant window with the big crashing wave overlay. She’d make her own way back to Chinatown and Confucius Towers, he knew, as she climbed into a cab. The passenger window rolled down, and the kiss she blew him almost broke his heart.

He had to trust what she was doing, that it was the right thing. For both of them.

He ordered another sake, drained the previous one. The rice wine smoothed the way for the pain in his stitches and bruises to mix now with the ache in his heart.

He hated the feeling of helplessness, unable to affect the consequences of what amounted to falling in love. Alex.
Alexandra. Falling in love?

He worked the sake down, and with the afternoon light fading outside, he fired up a cigarette and deeply hoped, against his glowing cynicism, that there’d be more chapters to their story.

Acknowledgments

KOWTOWING THANKS TO Bronwen Hruska at Soho Press, for letting me rejoin the pack, and to my editor Mark Doten, whose insight has made for a better book. A big shout-out to the entire Soho crew for their multitalented ways.

Much love to my NYC Chinatown
hingdaai
, my posse brothers, for always taking my back. To Doris Chong, as always, for the inspiration. To my agents Dana Adkins and Debbie Phillips, who continue to champion my stories. To Hong Hom, for helping me probe the cultural depths. To Jackie McCaffrey, for her vision and loyalty. To Andrew Chang and Patrick Lee, for the tech support. To Mimi, Bobo, and Fanny, for keeping my head straight. To Diana Koo for her generous support. To Charles V. Johnston III and David Beaudry, for the
chi
.

And last but most of all, gratitude to Lucas Koo and Shemy Ayon, for hanging tough and always keeping the faith.