Death Money (5 page)

He hoped the old woman, Ah Por, would be there.

T
HE SENIOR CENTER
occupied the first floor, including the old cafeteria, of what used to be Public School 23.

What was once an elementary-school lunchroom was now used to cook and serve meals to 300 elderly Chinese—hot
congee
in the winter, tofu dishes and melon soups in the summer, plates of rice with sides of Chinese greens,
choy
, and fruit.

A cup of tea was always available for the asking.

The temperature rose noticeably as Jack stepped into the lunchroom, a humid mass of gray heads, warming in their down-filled jackets and quilted
meen ngaap
vests. He could hear Chinese Wah Fow radio over the PA system, barely audible over the din of chattering voices and clashing metal from the kitchen area.

He looked toward Ah Por’s usual spot, near the big window facing the back courtyard. It was crowded there, and he couldn’t tell for sure with all the puffy, shapeless clothes, so he moved in for a closer look.

The sea of bodies fluidly parted for Jack, a young stranger, and rejoined in his wake. Jack could feel the looks of curiosity following him.

He found Ah Por alone at the end of one of the bench tables near the back exit. There was an empty bowl next to her, and she was watching an old Hong Kong movie playing on one of the overhead TV monitors.

Jack took a seat opposite her and caught her attention by touching the back of the veiny hand she’d rested on the table. “Ah Por,” he acknowledged quietly.

She stared at him curiously, smiling, as he bowed slightly.

“Ah doy,” she said, using his boyhood tag.
Onset dementia
, Jack thought, before she added, “You
are
your father’s son.” She hesitated a moment when Jack pressed the folded five-dollar bill into her hand.

“What
now
, this time?” she asked, a quiet sadness in her eyes.

He took out the plastic-bagged scraps of evidence first, slipped them onto the table in front of her.

“These numbers mean anything?” Jack asked.

“The plastic blocks my old fingers.”

Jack unzipped the baggies, allowed her to touch the damp scraps of paper with her fingertips. Her breathing got shallower as she lightly ran her fingers over the phone numbers, over the Chinese words on the produce receipt.

“The numbers are looking for money,” she said,
“won cheen.” Won cheen
also meant “looking for work,” Jack knew. Or it could mean “collecting on a debt.”

“There is a
dai lo baan
,” she added, falling into a breathy exclaiming cadence.
A big boss?
wondered Jack.
Organized crime or Bruce Lee movies?
There was a pause, and Ah Por glanced up at the TV monitor, distracted.

He quickly slipped her another folded five, took the baggies back, and passed her the keys.

She took a couple of long breaths, feeling the cuts and edges of the different keys.

“There is a very small closet,” she began.
A locker, storage
, Jack thought.

“
Bo, see
,” she added.
Precious
and
a key?
Jack wondered.
A safe, or safe deposit?

“
Mo yung
,” she said as she flipped another key. “Useless.”
Its use had expired? A transient key, a changed lock cylinder?

She handed back the keys as Jack slipped her one of the snapshots of the deceased. A face reading. She held the photo with both hands, seeing the river-wet face with dripping hair falling back from it, caressing the image of the dead man with her thumbs, murmuring like she was comforting a grandchild
with a fever.
Don’t worry. It was all just a nightmare, this journey to the West
.

“What?” Jack wondered aloud.

“North,” she said. “He came from the north.”
Yeah, north Manhattan
, Jack remembered.
Maybe the Bronx? Or even farther north? The routes of human smugglers
.

“He’s always moving,” she continued.
Immigrants on the move? Like migrant workers?
he pondered.
Or moving, like on a bike? A deliveryman? A student with a part-time job?

Ah Por closed her eyes, switched to the Toishanese dialect, saying, “Money is the root of all evil.” She placed the snapshot gently on the table and pushed it back to Jack. He took a moment to absorb her last statement before giving her the five-dollar tip he had ready.
The root of all evil
.

She pocketed the five and smiled, dismissing Jack with a wave of her gnarled hand. She resumed watching the Hong Kong movie as if Jack had never been there. He knew it was a wrap, finished, gave her a small bow, and left the table.

He went back through the elderly crowd toward the front door, where the winter wind seeped in and reminded him of death in the cold and uncaring city.

O
UTSIDE, THE DAY
was still steel gray as the wind had blown itself out.

North
, Jack was thinking, Ah Por’s word.

He dropped down to the Brooklyn Bridge station and caught another subway northbound, with the South Bronx addresses rattling like dice in his head. He was seeing snake eyes, but what was clear to him: a dead Asian with forty-four cents in his pockets had put him on this 4 train to visit four Chinese restaurants, all situated in the confines of the
Forty-Fourth Precinct. He didn’t like the way the numbers lined up,
four
being the number that the Chinese hated the most,
say
in Cantonese, sounding phonetically like
death
. In this case, death times six.

He heard Ah Por’s words of yellow witchcraft in his head. Not that he was superstitious, just wary of what destiny might hold.

The train rattled, rumbled its way out of Manhattan.

The restaurant locations clustered around the subway lines, with the Lexington and the West Side lines pushing across the Harlem River to the mean ghetto streets of Highbridge, Tremont, Morrisania, where the immigrant Chinese restaurants served and delivered to the
gwai lo
devils at their own peril. Hard and bitter mining,
ngai phoo
, eking out a living in the gum shan, in the mountains of gold.

A bleak ghettoscape flashed by outside the train windows as the subway emerged aboveground.
Always moving
, he heard Ah Por saying inside his head.

Speak No Evil

B
ILLY LOOKED UP
from the steamy
foo jook
bean sticks as the English secretary entered the Tofu King.

“
Du mort yah?
” Billy asked, working his slang Toishanese. “What? Add something to the Chin order?”

The secretary glanced around, nodded toward a back room. “Let’s talk in your office,” he said.

“Sure,” Billy said, pulling off the sanitary plastic gloves. It was how they usually tallied their tofu orders. They went into the small makeshift office, and Billy closed the door.

“What’s up?” Billy asked, turning to see the man reaching into his coat. The motion froze Billy momentarily, made him think of his gun in the desk drawer. But what came out of the coat was a fresh pint bottle of Johnnie Walker Black, which he placed on the desk.

“About your
chaai lo
police friend,” the secretary started with a frown. Billy put two clean shot glasses on the desk, and they sat down.

“You weren’t much help.” Billy smiled disarmingly. The man snap-twisted off the cap and pushed the bottle toward Billy.

“Those restaurants belong to Jook Mun Gee,” the secretary began. “And I don’t want to go near
whatever
this is.”

“Jook Mun Gee?” Billy said, interest piqued.

“Correct.”

Billy poured two big shots from the small bottle.

“And I can’t involve the association,” the man continued.

Billy raised his glass, said, “I understand completely.”

They clinked, and each threw back a full swallow.

“Off the record,” Billy said as he refilled their glasses. “My cop friend.” He toasted. “He’ll appreciate the favor.”

Backtrack

J
ACK GOT OFF
at Mount Eden and decided to check out the two restaurants closer to the West Side lines, then work his way back farther west to the river, where the other two restaurants were. The takeouts’ addresses appeared to be at least six city blocks apart, as if they’d agreed to keep the spacing fair and even, not be too close so as to eat out of each other’s golden rice bowl.

The only people on the streets looked die-hard ghetto, sullen, but the two “Lucky” restaurants weren’t too far off the beaten track of burned-out tenements, graffitied, abandoned buildings, and vacant lots.

The first place, Lucky Dragon on West Tremont, was just a hole-in-the-wall fast-food takeout joint. The shop looked worn down, neglected, like it’d had a hard-luck history.
Hopeful immigrants looking for their piece of the American Dream
, thought Jack.

There were no customers, and Jack wondered if they’d just opened for the day.

He didn’t see a delivery bike anywhere, but inside it was a typical mom-and-pop takeout counter with no seating. You bought food like it was a ghetto liquor store: cash went into a teller’s slot, where a girl took your order and made change. The eggroll specials came out from behind the Plexiglas, boxed and bagged to go. No hanging around.

Protocols of the streets ruled, Jack knew, like the dealers on the corners.

Cop and go, yo. Don’t be lingering at this motherfucka …

No problema, hombre. Buy and blow
.

No troubles, man. Five-oh on the roll
.

Farther behind the Plexiglas was a fast-food kitchenette where a middle-aged Chinese husband-and-wife team was firing up the dark woks and preparing soups and side dishes for the lunch special rush.
Fried rice, eggroll, and a discount can of no-name soda: $2.99
. No delively.

Jack badged the cashier girl, who called out to the man at the wok, who turned and looked at Jack a long moment before waving him in. The girl pressed a buzzer until he went through a notch at the end of the counter.

“
Ni yao shen me?
” he asked Jack, working the oily ladle. “What do you want?”
Mandarin
, thought Jack,
but with a Fukienese accent
. The wife watched them, stirring a pot of simmering wonton broth as Jack showed the man the photo of the deceased.

“Know this person?” Jack asked in his clipped Mandarin. The man glanced at the snapshot, shook his head, and, without missing a beat swirling the ladle, answered,
“Wo bu zhidao,” I don’t know
, as Jack showed him the menu scrap with the phone numbers.

“
Bu zhidao
,” the man repeated as he seasoned the oil. Jack took a paper takeout menu from the counter, saw that it wasn’t a match.

“Wo tai mangle
.” The man shrugged apologetically.
I’m too busy, don’t know nothing
.

Was it the typical Chinese reluctance to get involved again?

The front door opened, and two homeless-looking
Boricuas
staggered in, jangling fistfuls of filthy coins. Jack felt he was wasting time and got a sympathetic look from the wife as she slid two eggrolls into the hot oil.

He thanked them on the way out, passed the men who smelled like rum and stale pot. When he looked back, the cashier girl was counting the greasy pile of coins in the slot, a horrified smile on her face.

T
HE
L
UCKY
P
HOENIX
was six blocks back through the gloom. Jack felt his luck needed to change and hoped the Phoenix would turn things around. Halfway there, he saw the neighborhood change ever so slightly; the streets seemed cleaner, and some of the Depression-era buildings had survived neglect and abuse.

The Lucky Phoenix had a larger storefront than Lucky Dragon, with two small square tables against one wall and a window counter where customers could snack standing up. No Plexiglas except where it partitioned off the kitchen area.

There was a bike locked to the window-gate rail.

Jack tried the cylindrical key on the lock but got no fit.

Inside were four customers eating, and a flurry of phone orders added to the brisk business scene. Jack took one of the paper menus from a wall rack and compared it with the evidence scrap.

A perfect match, printwise, of the menu format. Jack felt his luck changing but waited for a break before quietly badging the counterman. The man yelled into the partitioned kitchen, and a manager type came out, a harried-looking Chinese man with an order pad in his hand. He saw Jack’s badge and motioned him over to a rear door open to a back alley.

They stood there as Jack took out the photo while the man lit up a cigarette.

“Seen him before?” Jack asked in quiet Cantonese.

The manager took a long look over three drags on the butt.

“Resembles someone,” he said finally, “who came looking for work. But we had enough help. He was friendly. Name was
Zhang
, I think.”

Chang
in Cantonese, Jack knew, became
Zhang
with those coming out of China, but the written character for both names was the same in Chinese:

“When was this?” Jack asked.

“It was still warm then. September. Maybe October.”
Four months ago
, but at least he’d picked up the trail, thought Jack.

“Where’d he go after?”

“
Boo ji dao
,” the man said with a smile and a shrug.
I don’t know
with a Hong Kong accent.

Jack thanked him and followed the trail west into the Highbridge section. He looked around for a cab or bus but saw none and kept walking. The other two restaurants were close to University Avenue, almost a mile away.

He moved at a brisk pace through the cold.

The numbers are looking for money
, Ah Por had said. Jack now knew the deceased
Zhang
had been looking for work and was calling these restaurants.
But this was four months ago?