Jack had followed Mona’s words, her phone tips to him, to California. But when he arrested Johnny Wong for the murder, Johnny, in turn, had pointed the finger at Mona, Fat Uncle’s mistress.
Now Johnny was in a cell in Rikers, still claiming he had been framed.
Jack remembered chasing a woman, thirty yards distant, a gun in her hand, desperately pulling a rolling carry-all behind her. She’d escaped from that San Francisco rooftop and disappeared.
Jack knew he’d have to testify to that. So far, none of the Wanteds they’d put out on her had come back, but they had Johnny and the murder weapon, with his prints on it. Sooner or later, the case was going to have its day in court.
Jack recalled the picture of Hong Kong songstress Shirley Yip, torn from Star! Entertainment, a Chinese magazine. It was the closest likeness they had of Mona; according to Lucky she was a dead ringer for the celebrity.
Toward the end of his tour in the Fifth, Jack had bumped up against his boyhood friend Tat “Lucky” Louie, who’d tried to recruit him into the ranks of dirty cops on the On Yee tong’s payroll. Lucky would have known about the Golden Galaxy, a karaoke dive that was operating on his turf. But Lucky was only being kept alive now by a respirator at Downtown CCU; he’d been caught in a gangland shoot-out between disgruntled Ghost Legion factions. The shoot-out had left seven bodies outside Chinatown OTB, and a possible shooter in flight.
Lucky’s luck had run out.
Then there was Alex. Alexandra Lee-Chow, Chinatown activista lawyer. Pretty and hard-nosed, but with a soft heart. She was going through a bitter yuppie divorce. And she was drifting in and out of alcoholic self-medication, just like he was.
Since they’d known one another, Jack had steered her past a drunk and disorderly charge, and she’d helped him with his Chinatown cases. During bouts of grief and misery, they’d commiserated and become drinking buddies.
Two budding alcoholics working their way up.
Jack noted that he could use Alex’s connections in the Administration for Children’s Services for the newly orphaned children, as well as Victim’s Services. In addition, there was faith-based support for young victims left parentless. The man and his wife were dead, but their children had to be cared for.
The karaoke photo of the woman reminded him vaguely of Mona. She was like a chameleon. From the little popgun she’d squeezed off firecracker shots at him as he chased her across that rooftop.
Then she was gone. “In the wind.” He wondered how far she had flown.
The trilling of his cell phone broke his reverie. The number on the readout was one he didn’t recognize.
“Detective Yu?” The voice spoke Toishanese, the old Chinatown dialect.
“Yes, who’s this?”
“I am the father.” The words froze Jack. “Of the dead man.”
“You were here earlier,” said Jack.
“Yes, I found the”-a hesitation-“Say see, the bodies …”
“Sir, I need to speak with you,” Jack said in dialect.
“We can meet with you. About half an hour.”
“We?” Jack asked.
“Myself,” the voice answered, “and the father of the dead woman.”
Jack checked his watch. It was 6:18 AM, dark still, but dawn around the edges. He heard the sounds of Crime Scene arriving outside on the quiet street, the voice of the rookie uniformed cop.
“Where?” Jack asked, rechecking his watch.
He left CSU to their work and canvassed the adjacent apartments. The neighbors had heard nothing. No arguments, yelling, sounds of struggle. In the middle of the night, som gong boon yeh, they’d been dead asleep.
An old couple in the apartment above heard a bang, but couldn’t agree whether there had been one or two. They’d thought it was the street door slamming or the noise of the overnight garbage trucks. Or maybe some lon jaai, prankster kids, blasting firecrackers.
He left the building as dawn broke over Chinatown, made a left on Bowery, and headed north toward Canal.
The Nom San Bok Hoy Association was located on the Bowery, north of Hester, past the block of Chinese jewelry stores and the Music Palace Chinese Theater, where the gangboy shoot-outs in the audience were becoming a bigger thrill than the Hong Kong shoot-’em-ups on the big screen.
The Music Palace was becoming obsolete, due to a lively Chinese videotape rental market. Chinese-language entertainment in the comfort of a living room beat a musty, seedy theater hemmed in by perverts, lowlifes, and gangsters. Lucky’s Ghosts had fought with both the Dragons and the Yings over this turf.
Why risk your life for a movie? The Nom San Bok Hoy got its name from landmarks in the villages of the clans who’d emigrated. In their province of the south of China, there were two mountains, one in the north and one in the south. Jack’s ancestors traced their lineage to the village of the south mountain, nom san. An adjacent village had been located at the north river, bok hoy. The villagers got along well and had historically formed alliances. When they arrived in New York’s Chinatown, they organized a club, an association for family members and affiliates of their clans. Jack’s father had arrived with the third or fourth generation of landed Chinese, a junior member of a small group.
As an association, the Nom San wasn’t a big deal, nothing like the Lee Association, or the merchants groups; it had only a couple of hundred members. Jack remembered the Nom San’s annual banquets at Port Arthur, a big old-world Chinese restaurant where the kids could play hide-and-seek behind the ornate carved wood panels and banquettes, the tables, and the countertops inlaid with mother of pearl. Chinatown restaurants were now all slick shiny glass and chrome, reflecting the Hong Kong influence, thought Jack. He remembered visiting the association as a child, when Pa, unable to find a babysitter, had brought him along to meetings.
The Nom San building was a five-story walk-up with a rusty redbrick front. Twin flagpoles flew the red, white, and blue banners of both the United States and the Republic of China. Recently, they had rented out the top floor, and had moved the association’s meeting hall down to the second floor, above the Fung Wang Restaurant, so that the elders wouldn’t have to climb the five flights of stairs to attend a meeting. Outside, there was a red plastic sign, framed in a metallic gold, with shiny yellow letters spelling out the association’s name: NOM SAN BOK HOY BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION. Jack pressed the dusty button at the wire-grated glass door. He was buzzed in immediately, and while ascending the steps, he felt as if they’d been waiting, anticipating his arrival.
6:55 AM
At the top of the stairs, he was buzzed in again as he reached for the handle of a gray metal door. Inside was a long open room with bench seating against the side walls. They were sitting at a dark wood table at the far end: two old men he didn’t recognize, hunched over, staring into the mahogany surface over clasped hands, as if they were praying. Behind them, against the short back wall, was an old range top, a steaming pot of tea, and a slop sink setup typical of Chinatown in Pa’s day. There were racks of folding chairs and tables. A tiny bathroom in the right corner was squeezed in next to a fire-escape exit. Along both long walls, hung on coat pegs above the benches, were folded tray tables. Members had always been welcome to sit and eat their takeout, hop jaai faahn, box meals. Displayed higher up on the walls were ancestral plaques and old black-and-white portraits of the village forefathers.
Everything looked flat and sickly under the two rows of fluorescent ceiling lights. The men were both sixtyish, balding. As Jack approached, they raised their frowning faces to him. Their baggy winter clothes and their choked-back grief made them look similar, like relatives, joined by tragedy.