It wasn’t until the third call, to Saint Barnabas Hospital, that he got a hit. The staff had admitted an emergency case by the name Dewey Lai, an assault victim, ten nights earlier. Dew Lay again, their little joke, fuck you.
Jack requested that the hospital fax the pictures of the admittee, which it was required to take, to the main number at the Fifth Precinct. After all, he was already in the precinct.
He called Alexandra, feeling the bag of cherries in his pocket. But all he got was the answering machine and her cheery voice.
He shifted his thoughts back to the body in the river.
Engine
JACK WAITED FOR the woman in the red jacket at Xe Lua. The place had a bamboo feel and a fake little inside bridge you crossed over to get to the back, where Jack took one of the side tables.
He was hoping she’d spill something good and thought about ordering a for che touh, Vietnamese beef-broth rice noodles with sliced meat, one of his antidotes to the New York City winter.
He kept an eye on the front door, turning over the past hours in his head. In murder cases, cops usually worried about the first forty-eight hours because they feel the perpetrator will flee the area and the jurisdiction.
Because the identification was missing, and because of the way the body was dumped, Jack didn’t feel the time constraint. The killer wasn’t thinking about fleeing, he figured. The perp wasn’t sweating over having left evidence, over getting caught. He was counting on living in plain sight, like he regularly did. He’d just washed away the matter, sai jo keuih. Very devious of him, always thinking, one step ahead. Maybe the vic would sink and never surface. Or it’d take so long that they’d barely recognize him as human when he did rise up. Even if he did float up, they’d never know who he really was, invisible illegal immigrant.
Jack wasn’t surprised that the Ghosts protected Fay Lo’s.
But the Chinese beatdown raid? Did it have anything to do with anything other than the usual gang beef? Chinatown’s dominant gang had its fingers everywhere. But in the Bronx? Had the Chinese Cubans, the chino cubanos, built up alliances? Who knows? Was it all just about a gambling debt? The Ghosts were challenged by the Dragons everywhere they operated. Was someone trying to make an example of Singarette?
SHE WALKED IN, the red jacket glowing, exchanging greetings with the waitstaff, the cashier, obviously a regular here. She spotted Jack and demurely took a seat at his table, aware of the attention swinging her way. He half rose and poured her a cup of hot tea, addressing her politely.
“Dim yeung ching foo nei?” he asked. “How should I address you?”
“Just call me Huong,” she answered, a slight Vietnamese accent on her Hong Kong Cantonese now. Huong, remembered Jack, meant “rose” in Vietnamese. The color red again. She had a robust aura about her, a wholesome look. Mature fruit, but not old tofu.
Wasting no time, she ordered a bun cha gio, vegetarian vermicelli, to his hearty pho engine, for che touh.
“It’s freezing out,” Jack said, observing the half-empty restaurant. “Must be bad for business.”
“That’s how it is in February and March.”
“How did you know him?” Jack asked. “About the wake?”
“I saw the name in the free newspaper, that the wake was at Wah Fook. Very close by. Jun Zhang. I wasn’t sure it was him.”
He took a sip of tea. “How do you know him?”
“We were co-workers,” she answered, gung yau. “At a restaurant.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“What happened to him?”
“He drowned.” He spared her the details for the time being. It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“Sad,” she said. “How did it happen?”
“I was hoping you could help me with that,” Jack said. He leaned in over the table.
“You mean was he depressed or something?”
“Maybe.”
“He told me his name was Sing, and he was from Poon Yew village. Everyone called him Sing. He was a friendly guy.” She paused. “Everyone liked him.”
Not everyone, apparently, thought Jack. He knew sing meant “promotion” or “star” in Cantonese.
“What restaurant?” Jack followed.
“China Village,” she said distantly, like it was an unwelcome memory. “Up in the Bronxee. Not far from the subway.” Her words rang a bell in his head, fleshing out his victim now, small details slowly coming into focus.
“He made deliveries, takeout orders,” she continued. “Sometimes they made him take party deliveries to the boss’s house in New Jersey. He didn’t like that because he lost time traveling and was losing tip money.”
Always moving, Ah Por’s words, Jack remembered.
“He told me he was an orphan,” she said sadly. “His father was a miner who died when he was three. A mine collapsed. His mother died a year later. There was an earthquake, and they couldn’t find any relatives, so they put him in the orphanage.”
Jack shook his head in sympathy, encouraged her to continue.
“He said he worked in Vancouver, and Toronto, before he came to New York.”
From the north, again Ah Por’s words.
Their food arrived, and they continued talking through the hot-pot aromas of Southeast Asia, pho and gio.
“You mentioned that he saved you once,” Jack said. “How?”
“I went on a delivery,” she said. She took a breath. “There was no one else to go, and it was in the afternoon. It was already dark, but the address was close by, so they thought it would be okay.”
Jack nodded for her to continue.
“When I rode past a playground, some kids chased after me. Calling me names. I became afraid they wanted more than the food.” She sipped her tea. Three of them surrounded me. I stayed on the bike and dropped the delivery on the sidewalk.” She shuddered. “They started grabbing at my clothes, touching me.”
Jack felt rage rising from his heart to his knuckles.
“I felt so afraid,” she whispered. “That’s when Sing rode up and starting swinging his bicycle chain at them. Screaming like a wild man. They backed off like he was crazy, and we got away. I quit at the end of that week. But he saved me.”
Jack freshened up her cup with more hot tea.
“What a shame. He had a birthday coming up. He said he wanted to see the parade, then celebrate in Chinatown.”
“Parade?”
“He said his birthday was the same day as that Irish holiday. When they drink all day and have a big parade.”
“Saint Patrick’s Day?”
“Everyone wears green.”
“Right.”
“We were the same age,” she said with a sigh. “Twenty-four.”
Twenty-four, yee sup say, sounding like “easy to die” in Cantonese. Huong looked older than twenty-four, thought Jack, probably because she’d been weathered by the outdoor elements.
“Any idea where he lived?” Jack pressed.
“No.” She hesitated. “But mox-say-go might know.”
“Mox-say-go?” asked Jack. Mexican? He tried remembering what the China Village deliveryman had said.
“Luis, he works with Cao on the big truck. They supply us from the market.”
“He knows Sing?”
“They gave him a ride to Chinatown a few weeks ago. I only got a look at Sing when the truck was pulling out.”
“Where is this market?” Jack asked.
“The one in the Bronxee.”