On a small table to one side, there was an urn. An inexpensive one you could find in any of the Chinatown curio shops. Dark glazed ceramic, featuring bronze mountains and green scenery of leaves and trees. Colors of the earth. Big enough to hold all the remains of what was once a man.
No picture.
Nothing but a Chinese name in black ink on a white scrap of paper. A name that wasn’t even really his, a name he’d purchased.
“What can you tell me about him?” Jack asked.
“The association paid for the urn, the for jong cremation, and the burial in their field at the cemetery.”
“It’s empty now?” Jack asked, looking at the urn. Fire interred.
“Yes. When we receive the ashes we’ll repack them in the urn. Then it goes out for burial with the next procession.”
“That’s it?”
“As far as we know.” The manager shrugged.
The urn was set on the side in a dark room because Jun was an orphan, and though there’d be an obituary posted quickly in the Sing Tow Journal, no one really expected anyone to come.
The manager dimmed the lights and left Jack sitting on a solitary folding chair near the back wall.
Jack thought he’d visit Ah Por next for more clues, since he was only two blocks from the Seniors’ Center. He figured he’d also check South Bronx hospitals for recent Asian victims of assault.
He was looking toward the closed casket, hoping it was empty, when he caught her out of the corner of his eye: a woman in a cherry-red down jacket coming into the room, stopping, and looking toward the urn. She hadn’t noticed him in the dim light by the back wall.
She’d surprised him, not only because he didn’t expect anyone to come-except maybe Billy’s friend from the Gee Association-but because no Chinese ever wore red to a wake. So it must have been a surprise to her, too. She couldn’t have expected to come here.
She looked to be in her late twenties, short hair, a rugged red windburn on her cheeks. A sad face now as she approached the urn table. From the bottom shelf of the table she grabbed a stack of paper, death money, lit it, and dropped it, flaming, into a blackened brass bucket. A bribe to the gods for mercy in the next world. She plucked three sticks of incense and lit them, bowed three times before the urn, and stuck the incense sticks into a cup there. She shook her head, whispered a few quiet words.
Before Jack could move, she rushed out.
She was already out the front door when Jack stepped from the room. He zipped up his jacket and went out to Mulberry Street after her.
He followed her north toward Canal Street, keeping a half-block behind so as not to spook her. Stepping quickly, she wore a black turtleneck sweater under the bright jacket that meant she was still celebrating the Chinese New Year.
Almost to Canal, he saw her slip into the driver’s side of one of the Ford vans parked along the street, the vans carrying the cardboard crates of fruits for the day’s sidewalk market.
Jack stopped, waited at a distance. The simple rub-on letters on the van’s front doors identified them as Chong Vihn Produce, a warehouse address in Brooklyn. Vietnamese Chinese.
He considered the two new Vietnamese noodle joints on the street, knew the Viets all supported one another’s businesses.
The curbside market vendors on the Mulberry-Canal corner were the only ones open for business in the bitter cold and slushy mess. They’d shoveled off the curb, stacked out the crates on folding tables, and took turns warming up in the vans.
Jack knew the sidewalk merchants supported the local restaurants in exchange for use of the toilet facilities whenever needed.
A street community, Jack knew.
Business was brisk considering the light traffic on the streets. He figured a couple of tour buses must have rolled in, visitors to the fabled neighborhoods of Lower Manhattan. He was about to move to where he could get another view when the young woman in the red jacket stepped out of the van and took over one of the fruit stands from an older woman, who then retreated into the van.
The stands offered melons, pineapples, strawberries and grapes, cherries-fruits from the global season kept fresh in the New York City cold.
She’d relieved the cherry stand, her red jacket the perfect pitch for the cherries she started to bag for grab-and-go customers. Chinatown people snapped them up as tasty treats for the extended families, and tourists grabbed them for quick snacks.
Jack took a deep breath and exhaled into his hands. He wondered what her connection was to the orphan Yao Sing Chang, deliveryman, who was soon to be a pile of ashes in a Chinese urn.
He went toward the stand thinking he’d start the conversation by buying a bag of cherries, that, if he got the chance, he’d bring to Alex’s office.
“One bag, please,” he said with a small smile, handing her the dollar bills and watching her face.
She barely noticed him as she bagged the cherries and took his money.
“I saw you at the Wah Fook,” Jack said quietly, not sure if she’d understand his English. He was ready to say it in Chinese when she glanced at him, saying, “Chaai loh ah? You’re a cop?” in Cantonese.
He was gauging her face, flashing her his badge as he answered, “Yes.” She’d made him right away, immigrants seeing with sharper eyes, especially if they might be illegal.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” Jack answered.
“Another day”-she sighed-“another struggle.”
“What?” Jack asked, hearing, Biggie Smalls? Rap?
“He had a tough time here,” she said. “But he saved me once.”
“How did you know him?” asked Jack, trying to hold her eyes.
She continued to bag the loose cherries. A group of Scandinavian tourists appeared and bought up all her bags.
“I can’t talk now,” she said, her cheeks darkening as she started bagging cherries again.
“When’s better?” Jack asked, handing her his NYPD detective’s card.
“I usually break for lunch at two,” she answered.
He scanned the street. It wasn’t the Mulberry Street he remembered, dotted now with overseas enterprises, distributorships, wholesalers’ storefronts, a few restaurants.
“Xe Lua,” he suggested, Vietnamese. “On your break?”
She looked down the street at Xe Lua’s banner, a familiar flag.
“Okay,” she said as other customers rushed by.
He doubled back toward the Seniors’ Center, wondering if she’d actually show up, feeling her eyes on his back.
Old and Wise
HE FOUND AH Por quickly this time, in the same location as before, by the big back window near the exit door to the courtyard. She was watching one of the TV monitors when he sat and touched her hand. It took a moment for her to recognize Jack, the young image of his father.
He nodded and smiled, gave her Singarette’s fake Rolex. And a folded Lincoln.
She looked at the knockoff, ran a thumb over it.
“Canal Street,” she said, handing it back.
Sure, Jack thought, Canal for knockoffs.
He handed her the Yonkers racing program.
“Som lok bat,” she counted, “three, six, eight.”
The program was unmarked, but she’d picked their three winning numbers.
What does it mean? wondered Jack as Ah Por dismissed him and went back to the TV monitor. He thanked her and left the beehive of age and wisdom.
Eddie
HE WENT BACK to Mott Street, to Eddie’s, where he took one of the small tables in the back and made calls over the noise of the Chinese News radio station.