The counterfeit identification business was underground traffic, and if she was betrayed, Uncle Four would surely punish her.
She pressed her fingers into the jade piece, her hand sweaty from the masseuse's artistry of pushing hands. Lake over water. Trapped. Abandoned, alone, nowhere to turn. Muscles loosening up. Sign of Sacrifice. Insight matures, resolves swells.
Help, she pleaded to herself.
Golo
Having dispatched the dailo to correct the gang boys wayward extortions at the far end of East Broadway, Colo Chuk, the oncefeared Hip Ching enforcer, returned to his one-bedroom walk-up on Pell, tossed his pack of 555s onto the bed, and undressed. In the mirror behind the door he saw a forty-nine-year-old man, sixfoot-two inches tall, bald except for the short hair graying at his temples. He looked like a waiter, an accountant, a clerk, certainly not like a Red Pole, enforcer rank, in the HungHuen Red Circle Triad.
He turned on the cable TV, kept the Chinese program low, just loud enough to add some noise to the empty space.
On the TV there was Hong Kong gunplay. He watched it from the corners of his eyes, and opened up the pack of cigarettes. He shook out an eighth of Chinese Number Three, a teak-brown powder in a glassine packet. The powder was flecked throughout with larger, rockier chunks. He pulled the foil from the cigarette pack, made a chute out of it and carefully extracted one of the tiny rocks between his fingers, handling it like bow buey, preciousness.
The little rock dropped onto the foil slide and he flicked his butane lighter under it. The grain gave off a vaporous trail that slowly made its way down the foil. Colo formed an "0" with his lips, following, inhaling the twisting, flowing trail of smoke. Shrinking as it went, the rock neared the end of the slide and he reversed it, until it was gone, all inside him. After a moment he said chasing the dragon so quietly it was almost like praying.
The Number Three was very uneven, lumpy, but better than ninety percent. Dark-skinned Hakkanese, fierce Hakka province drug runners, had told him the deal was three pounds, two kilos split in separate bricks, one-hundred-seventy-five thousand wholesale. A steal.
Uncle Four pledged a hundred thousand cash along with the warning, The price is too low but perhaps they are desperate for money. Doesn't sound like the Hakkas. They are trying to unload it for someone else, who has no distribution. Perhaps it is hijacked powder?
Golo had talked the Hakkas into accepting the balance in gold Panda coins and diamonds stolen out of TsimSha Cheui in Hong Kong by the Red Circle Triad and on consignment at the Sun Fung. At a discount, of course.
Fifty one-ounce Pandas. Two dozen diamonds, a carat each of excellent cut and clarity.
The Hakka can wash gold and diamonds better than anybody.
Golo saw it very clearly: the Triad fronting the gold and ice, Uncle Four squaring the cash end, the Number Three going to the Dragons inside the welfare projects.
He fired up a 555. Reaching under the sofa bed, he came up with a gray-metal box with a combination dial. He sat on the bed and opened it, sucking down the cigarette. What came out of the box was a big glass jar, and a Chinese pistol. When he removed the gun, the banner of the Hung Huen, unfurled red Chinese characters on black cloth across the linoleum floor. Slogans. Myths. From their original, long-ago resolve to restore the Ming dynasty, honor had given way to greed, power, and bloodlust.
Cleaning it now, the gun felt heavy to the touch. It was a Tokarev M213, a nine-millimeter Parabellum of Chinese military issue, copied from the Russians. It had a thirteen-shot magazine and black rubber grips with a red star inset. He ran an oilcloth over the forged steel and stared at the glass jar.
In the glass jar was a severed hand, the hand of a wing chunkung fu-style enforcer, tailing off into umbilicals of tendon and ligament, a shaft of bone protruding from the bloated and whitened flesh where the wrist ended and sure agony began.
Now, with the Number Three roiling his brain, he turned the jar slowly, held it up to the window's brightness. In the hard daylight, he could see with vivid clarity the details of the hand, its nails, fingerprints, fine lines, creases of the palm, calluses where the skin was thick, scarred and bunched around the knuckles, floating in the fluid formaldehyde from Wah San Funeral Home, rotating ever so slowly to accommodate his scrutiny.
Was it the heroin, or the memory of severing the hand that aroused such ferocious clarity, he wondered, putting out the cigarette. He muted the sound on the television. Leaning back on the bed, his head floated, and one of the blood oaths came back to him. I shall be billed by myriads of swords if I embezzle cash orproperties from my brethren.
He put down the glass jar, glanced at the TV screen, then dipped a bore brush in and out of the heavy metal gun barrel, stroked it. He pulled back the slide and heard it chik-cock in place, then blew at it and released the slide, the crack of metal snapping back the action. When he squeezed the trigger the hammer dropped, chopping down with a hard bock.
And then he closed his eyes and filled his head with visions of diamonds and gold.
Hope
Mona wore a short boucle jacket that was blacker than the lace bustier from Victoria's Secret underneath her open silk blouse, a modest black miniskirt, and suede Sesto Meucci pumps with chunky heels.
Johnny held the car door open for her and helped her in, her free hand holding the little flat Armani clutch that contained her makeup and keys. She squeezed his hand, and he closed the door after her.
They headed up the highway toward Yonkers Raceway to meet Uncle Four at the late races, the trotters. It was a half-hour drive up to White Plains, where Uncle Four hosted a delegation of Hip Chings from various cities along the East Coast, who had rented a slew of motel rooms across from the track.
"How are your business plans coming along?" she asked.
Johnny said he was still raising capital but was considering various schemes with some of the other drivers.
"I know people," she said, "who have money to invest." That caught his attention and he watched her in the rearview mirror as she lit up a cigarette. "Maybe you can get a partner, do better for yourself."
He listened.
"You don't want to drive me around forever, do you?" she asked.
She touched the back of his neck and he turned slightly and kissed her fingers, keeping his eyes on the highway. Reaching across to the dash, he turned on the cassette player and they sang Hong Kong love ballads together, like karaoke.
Then the cassette came to a sad song and she asked him to turn it off, casting them into an uneasy silence.
"I have need of a gun," she said suddenly, softly but clearly. "There are men who come around the building. They go through the garbage cans and sometimes chase me for money."
He never flinched. "What kind of gun?" he asked.
"A small gun, something I can carry in my bag."
The face of fat Tony Biondo, the only gzoai to Johnny knew, came into his mind.
"Money's no problem. I need something I can rely on."
Johnny nodded, mo mun tay, no problem.
"A gun with one of those things that keep it quiet." In the rearview, Mona saw his eyes go curious.
"If I need to use it," she added quickly, "the less attention the better."