They finished the Dos Equis before the fajitas and enchiladas.
Back at the Sea-Tac Courtyard, Jack fell asleep thinking about cerveza frio and the icy waters of Puget Sound.
Swept Away
The full moon hung above the harbor and calmed the currents of the winter night. The freezing waters of the bay had welcomed her, embracing her in its tides and icy backwash, swirling beneath the piers and past the submerged pilings.
She’d held her breath into the murky depth, shock surrendering to numbness even as she saw the dim light above at the surface. In the whirling commotion of jetsam and wreaths of kelp, she imagined sea nymphs and sirens with beckoning smiles.
The gripping currents pulled her toward a stretch of pilings as she began her ascent from the bottom’s darkness. No bot gwa, no fung shui, no red jade of luck. She kicked furiously, reaching upward with desperate arm strokes, clawing toward the surface, toward kwoon yum, her lungs ready to burst….
Dead Man Flying
Eddie was quiet the whole plane ride back from Sea-Tac to JFK. Except once when he used the toilet and once when he was allowed to stretch his legs, Eddie stayed cuffed at his waist, braced in the window seat in the back section of the plane, blocked in by Jack.
Here was a guy, Jack thought, who showed no remorse for what he’d done, a guy who was looking at long-term lockup, and yet thought somehow his life was going to be normal again.
Jack remembered Ah Por’s clues taken off Eddie’s juvenile poster. Yuh, she’d said, rain. And lo mok, which he’d thought meant Negro. Rain was a symbol of Seattle, as in Mona’s case, but lo mok here meant the surname Mok, or Mak, the same in written Chinese. Willie Mak, lo mok, was one of the killers at the Wah Mee Massacre, Seattle’s worst crime ever.
Ah Por had pointed him in the right direction, though, of course, Jack didn’t realize it at the time. He’d focused on the red star and monkey tattoos.
They landed without incident.
Jack cabbed Eddie back to lower Manhattan, feeling oddly enough that both of them were home. Jack could feel Eddie scheming even as he was turned over at the Tombs for detention. By the time he’d get a public defender he’d be at Rikers, with the rest of the New York City bad boys. Maybe he’d get Punitive Segregation, for his own good, which, ironically, was where Johnny Wong was being held.
By the time he’d completed the transfer of custody at the Tombs it was 9 PM, too late to find Ah Por. Snow flurries filled the air. Captain Marino wasn’t at the Fifth and Jack already felt jet-lagged. He was hungry, and considered calling Alex like he’d promised, but it was very late for dinner and he thought better of dragging her out in the snow and cold.
He’d been gone a week and really wanted to get back to Sunset Park, eat some Shanghai dumplings, shower, and sleep in his own bed. He went down to East Broadway and caught a Chinese see gay. The driver whizzed him across the Brooklyn Bridge with the window down a crack. He watched the night colors playing across the river, the thousands of sparkling lights dancing between the snowflakes, and imagined everything calling to him.
Welcome home.
Legal Blows
Overnight flurries had left a sloppy inch of frozen snow on the ground, and Jack was glad to be wearing his Timberland boots and down jacket again. When he arrived at the 0-Five the captain was in a morning meeting. The door to his office was closed and the desk sarge groused, “It could be a while.”
Jack decided to get some hot tea and see if Billy Bow or Ah Por was around. He peered into the steamy window of the Tofu King and didn’t see Billy. Ah Por wasn’t on line for free congee at the Senior Citizen’s Center. He decided to give Alex a call.
She was busy preparing a case but they agreed to meet at the Golden Star later that night. Jack decided to visit Lucky at Downtown Hospital before coming back to see the captain.
In the captain’s office, Shelly Littman placed his silver Halliburton briefcase down at the short edge of Captain Marino’s desk. He leveled his blue shark eyes at ADA Bang Sing and announced, “I’ve had witnesses come forward lately who will swear that my client couldn’t have been at the scene, but that’s just more background. Now, it seems, Detective Yu has even less of a chance to make his case than before. If I have INTERPOL testify about the possible abduction of this woman, with witnesses, mind you, and the corroborating reports of Seattle PD, not to mention that Detective Yu shot and killed my legal assistant who was investigating this same woman suspect, there’ll be a ton of questions and a ton of doubt as to my client having been the lone shooter of Uncle Four.”
Captain Marino shifted uneasily in his seat behind the big desk, and ADA Sing twisted his mouth into a frown.
“You don’t have a case, Sing,” Littman continued. “I’ll tear your detective up on the stand. The jury will love it. Every conflicting statement that comes out of his mouth-and I don’t even have to mention the mess with Internal Affairs-allegations of corrupt behavior, etcetera-every word puts him deeper into the crapper. So here’s the deaclass="underline" my client has already confessed to buying the gun and loading it. That’s all, guilty of stupidity. He cops to illegal possession of a handgun for time served. He’ll probably lose his chauffeur’s license, maybe his car.”
Littman smirked. Time served.
To the captain, it seemed like ADA Bang Sing flinched at the thought of being accused of wasting taxpayers’ money on a bad case. A politician’s awareness. Marino knew they’d have to advise Jack, and would need to temper the decision to fold against the good job he’d otherwise done in Seattle.
Lucky to Be Alive?
At Downtown Hospital, it was just another frigid and gloomy New York City morning, with the EMS techs bringing in the frostbitten or frozen-dead homeless and the elderly. New immigrants with ashen faces waited patiently in the ER.
Jack wore his badge and cut straight to the CCU curtained-off space that was Lucky’s room. The darkness of the morning had tricked Jack, and he half-expected to see the overnight nurse.
The life-support machine pumped rhythmically in Lucky’s space, background sound for the electronic ping of the electrodes measuring his heartbeats. His cheeks had hollowed, sunken. How many more weeks before he’d become skeletal? wondered Jack grimly. He doubted Lucky had had any kind of health insurance, so the On Yee, who sponsored the Ghosts, were probably paying for the machine. They must believe that Lucky knows something, Jack surmised, secrets valuable enough for them to keep him alive.
“How much longer can this go on?” he heard himself say. When would the On Yee determine that Lucky was no longer important?
The resident neurologist had warned Jack against great expectations. “Even if he comes to, he’ll likely have some brain damage.”
Would he have forgotten the Ghosts? Or their secrets and memories of their childhood in Chinatown? Jack remembered their younger days, dashing across the black-tarred rooftops to their hiding places, and their childish hopes. Jack wanted to tell Lucky that he’d caught the punk who’d put the.22 slug in his brain, and wished Lucky could have understood the stupidity of dying over some stolen watches.