Rolling over as he palmed the Colt, Jack squeezed off a blind shot over his shoulder. The blast froze the man as Jack straightened, jamming off another wild round as he rose on one knee.
The knife trembled in the man’s hand.
Jack leveled the Colt on him and cocked the hammer. “Drop the knife!” he yelled. “Drop it or join your ancestors!”
The man waggled the knife. He had a long face with a clenched jaw, and his eyes looked demonic in the moonlight.
Jack blasted a round into the icy patch of roof between the man’s legs, splattering snow over his feet.
“You feelin’ me, kai dai?” Jack said with a snarl. He could feel the blood oozing down his left arm, warm and slick-sticky now. He cocked the hammer again.
The man wavered for another second, thought better of it, and finally dropped the knife.
“On your knees!” Jack ordered. “On the ground!”
The man slowly complied. Jack pushed a foot into his back and forced him prone, held the Colt on his neck as he cuffed him with his blood-wet hand. He reached over for the man’s knife and dropped it into his jacket pocket.
Jack yanked him back up by the elbows and marched him back down the creaky stairs. He perp-walked him up Bowery, toward the station house. Running on adrenaline now, he hoped he wouldn’t bleed out on the short two-block march to Elizabeth Alley.
“Gaw, right?” Jack challenged. “You slugged me the other night, didn’t you?”
The man spat at the sidewalk, but his eyes were scanning the street as he stumbled along. He swiveled his head to check behind him, and Jack grabbed him by the collar.
“You’re good when your target’s not expecting it, huh?” Jack said, pushing him along. The man never responded, kept a frozen frown on his face as they turned from Bayard onto Elizabeth Alley, to the Fifth Precinct.
“You killed Zhang with a single stab because he wasn’t expecting it. You coward bastard.” Jack marched him past the duty desk and shoved him into the holding cage. He now belonged to the desk sergeant.
While the sergeant processed him, Jack carefully placed the bloody knife in a plastic baggie. He gave it to the sergeant, along with the DMV copy of Gaw’s driver’s license.
EMS arrived and tended to Jack’s wounds, trundling him into an ambulance as they rolled him back to Downtown Medical. Jack knew they’d stitch him up, give him a few shots to kill the pain. He wanted to pass out but knew he couldn’t, not before getting Gaw’s prints and making a few phone calls.
He took a deep, fortifying breath, resisted the urge to close his eyes.
IT TOOK AN hour and a half to clean and sew him up and spike him, considered fast service and only because he was a cop. The twenty-two stitches on his left elbow and forearm, the bandaged shallower cuts on both knees and shins. He knew that by then Gaw would have been transferred to the Tombs, in detention and awaiting orders to be taken to Rikers.
He checked in on Lucky, still in a coma in the Critical Care ward at the other end of the building. His boyhood pal, Tat “Lucky” Louie, with IV tubes in his arms, a plastic respirator over his mouth. Lucky, wounded in a bloody shoot out that left most of his crew dead. Lucky, the sole survivor.
In the quiet room, he watched the slow rise and fall of Lucky’s chest, listening for the soft ping of the machine that kept him alive. That’s it, brother? This is how it ends for you? Another gangbanger bites the dust?
HE CAUGHT A ride with an EMS tech headed back to Chinatown on the evening meal run.
At the Fifth, the sarge handed Jack a copy of Gaw’s prints.
“He wanted a phone call,” the sarge said. “Had this lawyer’s card in his wallet.” The business card belonged to Solomon Schwartz. “But you know,” Sarge said with a grin, “the shoddy service around here, the phones ain’t working.”
“Thanks, Sarge.” Jack laughed weakly, heading back out to Bayard.
AT THE TOMBS, Jack asked the familiar officers for help.
“Anyone tries to bail him, lose the paperwork for a few hours. I’ll be back in the morning. This guy’s in deep, and we don’t want to chase him. Trust me. It’ll be good press, and I’ll make sure you won’t regret it.”
The Tombs officers allowed Jack to make phone calls, send fingerprint faxes and voice mail. When he finished, he took a cab to Sunset Park.
Back in his Brooklyn apartment, he stripped down carefully, avoiding the stitches. He remembered to set his clock alarm before exhaustion and the pain medication dropped him into oblivion.
Knowledge Is Power
IN DAYLIGHT, THE stitches looked uglier than the night before, and surface pain from the cuts on his legs pinched with every step.
He was still groggy when he arrived at the Tombs, the place already abuzz with the processing of the morning’s criminals. He badged his way to the clerk’s office in the back and found the faxes he was hoping for.
The first one was from the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, February 21, 1995:
RHKPF Headquarters Mongkok Station, Kowloon
PRINT Subject Wanted in HK for triple homicide in 1975.
DETAIN Subject indefinitely. Fax from Immigration and Naturalization Service to follow.
In small type at the bottom of the fax:
Thanks, Inspector Chow Yin Fat RHKPF
The second fax was more recent, from Interpol, shorthand for the International Criminal Police Organization.
PRINT Subject is Red Notice, wanted member of illegal Triad society, Hok Nam Moon. Absconded via Hong Kong 1975. Detain without fail. Immigration/Deportation to follow.
A Red Notice was Interpol’s highest level of alert, an arrest warrant that circulated worldwide.
If Gaw was a Triad true believer, he wasn’t going to flip on Bossy or the Triad or whoever put him up to Sing’s murder. Maybe he’ll take his chances with deportation.
As Jack was pondering it, another fax chugged through the machine. It was a reply to Jack from the New York City Bureau of Records, referring to Gaw’s Social Security number that he’d used on a license/DOT vehicle registration form. Following Jack’s inquiry, the holder of that assigned Social Security number was declared inactive, dead in 1974.
A hunch has paid off.
Somehow, Gaw had managed to assume another Chinese identity, a dead man. Whether the Triad or Duck Hong’s people had arranged the paper deal, Jack couldn’t know, but he realized now that Gaw had been hiding in plain sight for two decades.
And he probably wasn’t going to be cooperative.
JACK CROSSED OVER to the detention/holding side of the Tombs facility. There was a room with a small table where they brought Gaw to be interviewed.
“I know Gaw’s not your real name,” Jack started in street Cantonese.
Mak Mon Gor laughed quietly.
“I know you suckered Zhang with a bullshit abalone deal, then killed him,” Jack said. “But I think someone put you up to it. It was your boss, Jook Mun Gee, wasn’t it?”
“Dew nei louh mou,” Gaw cursed. “Fuck your mother.”
“I should have figured it earlier,” Jack said.
“I should have killed you earlier,” Gaw spat.
“What did Bossy offer you?” Jack challenged. “Money?”
“Dew nei louh mou.”
“You killed him in that little park.”
“Fock you, mathafocker.”
The door swung open, and an older man in a business suit entered the room. Gray hair, fiftyish. The man parked his expensive briefcase on the table.
“Interview’s over,” the man said. “I’m his lawyer.” He slid his business card onto the table. “Solomon Schwartz.”