“Hunts Point?”
“Sounds like that.”
“Where can I find Luis now?”
“They come back down at six, to unload the vans and pack up for tomorrow.”
Mexicans, the South Bronx. A crash pad somewhere.
“Do you know anything about a lighter?” he asked.
“Lighter?”
“A cigarette lighter.”
She thought for a moment, finishing her gio. “Oh, he had a silver one. With a say yun touh on it.”
“A skull?”
“Yes. A smiling skull.”
Airborne, thought Jack. He called for the check. He’d stop by the Fifth Precinct station house for the Saint Barnabas fax, then come back for Luis.
“Do you know if he had any other problems?” he asked.
“He got robbed. He was angry about it, that the restaurant wouldn’t help him.”
“Gambling problems?”
“He never mentioned anything. He didn’t seem like that kind of guy.” A pause. “Didn’t you say it was an accident?”
“I don’t know that.” A copspeak response.
The waiter came back and said to Jack, “Sorry, sir, it’s already paid.”
Jack started to protest.
“This place is my people,” Huong said. “So you have to give me face. You may treat me next time, okay? But it will be at a much more expensive restaurant.”
He had to grin at that, and accepted.
“Just find out what happened to him, Detective,” she said. “He was a good person, and I pray the gods will be merciful to him.” She put on her jacket, and they shook hands before she went back out into the bitter cold, to the cherries by the curb.
When he left Xe Lua, she was quickly selling fruit next to the van’s gas generators, steaming in the frozen afternoon.
Fifth
COMMANDING OFFICER MARINO was reportedly attending a promotions award ceremony at headquarters. His office was empty.
Jack climbed the creaky wood steps of the Fifth Precinct, found his faxes from Saint Barnabas in a bin by the detectives’ desks. The pictures of the assault victim, Dewey Lai, reminded him of some of the postmortem photos he’d developed at Ah Fook’s.
The gangbanger had the requisite bruises all over his body, expected in a typical beatdown. In the gang world, nobody was nobody unless they got in a kick or two and bragged about it later. But the pictures from the emergency-admit bay of the victim’s head and face were more telling. Both eyes were eggplants swollen shut-one more shut than the other. Bloody boot cuts to both sides of the head. On one side of his neck was a tattoo of the Chinese word for “dog,” gau. On the flip side, he had a number 7 carved into his fadestyle haircut, representing the seventh letter in the alphabet, G, for “Ghosts.” Another true believer.
There was a pair of bloated fat lips on top of a swollen jaw. All the injuries of the kind that it’d take more than ten days to heal.
They would have killed him if that was their intent, Jack thought. So why? Was it just another stupid gang-boy beef? Or had Singarette owed Fay Lo’s and wound up having to deal with Ghost muscle? Ex-blood brother Lucky, Ghost dailo, might have some answers to that, if he wasn’t lying in a coma.
But maybe dog tattoo boy would sing, if Jack could find him.
He started making phone calls again.
By the time he left the precinct, the sky was gray. The neon colors of the restaurant signs had come to life, but there were few people on the street. He noticed a familiar figure, a woman approaching Wong’s Wash n’ Dry across the way.
Alexandra, he realized happily.
He crossed the street, watching Alex through the shopwindow as she handed her ticket to the lady clerk. There was no one else in the shop.
He entered as the clerk disappeared behind a wall of dry-cleaning racks. Alex turned as he approached. She was pleasantly surprised.
“Heyyy,” she said, smiling.
“I saw you come in,” Jack said, touching her hand.
“I needed my red suit. For the legal-aid fund-raiser tonight.”
He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her, felt the softness of her body against his. He savored the floral scents in her hair, took an extra shaolin breath.
She gave him a quick kiss, wiping the color from his lips with her fingers.
They separated as the clerk reappeared with the red suit.
“Your tickee?” the clerk asked Jack.
“Ngo deih yat chai,” he answered. “We’re together.” He was pleased to see Alex smile at the remark.
Outside, Alex checked her watch and turned toward Mott Street. She threw a look back at Jack and mimed a phone call with her forefinger and pinkie. Jack smiled and gave her a thumbs-up.
The sky darkened after she turned the corner, and he looked toward Canal and Mulberry Streets. Where would Huong’s Mexican connection lead to? he wondered.
Mox-Say-Go
HUONG, WHO HAD apparently explained the situation to Luis, made the introduction as they were packing up the vans. Luis was short but looked strong, like a pit bull. Jack showed his badge, assured him in his schoolboy Spanish, “No problema. Soy policía de Nueva York. No es la inmigración.” His words seemed to relax Luis, showing he was cool-not INS, not immigration police.
“¿Qué quieres?” Luis asked, climbing into the big truck.
“I need to find where he lived,” Jack said.
“He stay with Ruben and Miguel.”
“Where?” Jack pressed as Huong watched them from the van.
“Climb in,” Luis said.
THE BIG TRUCK rolled north, with Jack riding shotgun, up to Hunts Point. Luis-Luis Enriquez-unloaded a few cases of melons to the sprawling night market, then drove them west into Mott Haven.
The place was an old building in a row of rundown tenements, a couple of blocks off the Bruckner Expressway. Jack wondered if it was one of Gooba Jai’s places. A chino-latino rent-a-bed hostel?
They went to a second-floor apartment where one of Sing’s keys fit the lock. The interior had been partitioned into smaller units, everyone sharing two little toilets and a kitchenette.
The small rooms could sleep up to three people, each on a folding cot. Luis spoke quietly to two men. They looked rugged, like they were used to hard work and long hours. Luis’s explanation of Sing’s demise sobered the men as Jack showed them the river photos.
“Ay Dios mío,” whispered Ruben. Miguel shook his head and frowned. With Luis’s labored English translation and Jack’s high-school Spanish, they coaxed Sing’s story out of the men.
They’d been co-workers, they explained, on the Sang Farm’s trucks, delivering produce like bok choy and Chinese cabbage, mushrooms, snow peas, green onions. They pointed to Sing’s cot. There was a piece of carry-on luggage underneath.
They’d known him about two months, as Chino more than as Sing, delivering to Chinese restaurants and markets in the Bronx. Chino was an added asset because he could speak Chinese, which sped up the deliveries.
Jack pulled out the carry-on, noticed there weren’t any closets anywhere in the room. In the carry-on was an extra set of clothes-a hoodie sweatshirt, jeans, socks, a pair of sneakers. Nothing valuable. In one of the inside pockets was a bus stop map and a ticket stub.
They liked working with Sing, the men continued. He always pulled his own weight and was generous with cigarettes and food. They liked Chinese food, and he always did the ordering for them.
In a sloppy scribble on the back of the bus map were the words “edge water.” No other identification, or anything, left behind. Jack pocketed the map and ticket stub as they gave him back the photos of Sing.