“Bugged,” I repeated to Max with a nod. As soon as I had realized the message was from Lucky, I’d understood why we were supposed to be silent. “I really doubt it, Max, since it’s not as if you’re a ‘known associate,’ and OCCB’s resources probably aren’t so endless they can spy on everyone who knows Lucky. But I guess that being so cautious is one of the reasons he’s never gone to prison.” Then I asked our chauffeur, “Is Lucky really your uncle?”
John returned his attention to traffic as things started moving again. “No, we just call him that. My brother and I. I’ve known Lucky all my life. His uncle—a real one—and my grandfather were business partners, and ever since they died, the business has belonged to Lucky and my dad. But he’ll explain all that to you.”
I wondered what sort of business we were talking about. Underworld stuff? I didn’t think Lucky would get me and Max mixed up in Gambello business. Not in the current circumstances. And John seemed like a respectable guy, not a third-generation hoodlum. Then again, what did I know about Chinese criminals? I’d seen gangbangers stalking the streets of Chinatown occasionally, when I was there shopping and eating (prices are good in Chinatown, so I go there often), and they looked just like thugs of any other ethnicity. But for all I knew, maybe Chinatown associates at Lucky’s level of business all came across like John—who gave the impression of being a courteous, well-spoken professional with nice manners. One who slowed down when the traffic light changed from green to yellow, I noted, rather than speeding through it.
“So, John, whose funeral are we going to?” I asked, opening a container of dumplings. “Is there sauce with this?”
“Huh? Oh, um, there should be,” said John. “I’m taking you to Benny Yee’s funeral. Well, his visitation.”
“A Chinese funeral?” Max said with concern. “I don’t think we’re properly dressed for that.”
“How should we be dressed?” I asked.
“In white,” said Max. “It’s the color of mourning.”
“I’m not mourning the departed,” I pointed out. “We never even met.” I was wearing dark brown slacks, black boots with low heels, and a nice sweater in forest green, which I thought ought to be acceptable garb for a stranger paying her respects at a visitation on a miserable winter night like this.
“Don’t worry, Dr. Zadok,” said John. “People in Chinatown mostly dress just like you and Miss Diamond would for a funeral. A lot of the old ways don’t survive long in the New World. Or in the twenty-first century.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” Max murmured thoughtfully, “I should have realized. The last time I was at a Chinese funeral was in China, and it was a long time ago.”
Knowing Max as I did, I realized that “long time” could easily mean a hundred years or so.
“And, actually, I’m not supposed to take you straight to Benny’s send-off,” said John. “Uncle Lucky wants to see you first. Which means meeting in private. I guess you already know, he can’t be seen in public. And Benny Yee’s wake is pretty public. Lots of people will be paying their respects.”
“I gather Mr. Yee is an influential man?” said Max, clinging to his seat as we skidded a little when turning onto Canal Street.
“Was, you mean,” I said, deciding not to open the sauce I’d found, since the ride wasn’t that smooth. I bit into a juicy dumpling and sighed.
“He was a Chinatown businessman,” said John. “And a pretty prominent member of the Five Brothers tong.”
“Ah-hah!” I said, perceiving the connection with Lucky. “A tong. That’s like the Mafia, right? Only Chinese.”
“Well, not really. I mean, yes, there’s a certain aspect of—”
“Perhaps you should keep both hands on the wheel,” Max said anxiously to John, who had lifted his right hand for a moment to waggle it ambiguously in response to my question.
“We’ll be there soon, Dr. Zadok,” John said soothingly, returning his full attention to the road.
So was John a tong member? Or was he simply, like me and Max, a normal person inadvertently connected to some underworld figures? (Well, “normal” in the sense of not being professional criminals.)
Traffic was heavy here, as it usually was, as well as perilous. On Canal Street, Chinatown’s main east-west artery, a two-way thoroughfare that was crowded with impatient drivers and daredevil cabbies, pedestrians were crossing the street against the lights, wading through moving cars, and stepping off the curb without warning. But despite Max’s obvious anxiety and occasional little gasps of alarm, John was handling this big vehicle well in the tight traffic, and he was alert in his reactions to the human obstacle course. So I thought we had a good chance of reaching our destination without mowing down a reckless pedestrian.
I heard panting in my ear and felt Nelli’s breath on my neck as she peered over my shoulder, from her commodious spot in the back of the hearse, to examine the steamed dumplings. Rather than argue about it, I gave her one, being careful not to let her accidentally take a finger with it.
“But that’s the only one you’re getting,” I said firmly.
As always, Chinatown was an explosion of light, color, bustle, life, and chaos. Even in this rotten weather, outdoor vendors lined Canal Street. The merchants, huddled deep in their coats and hooded parkas, were eagerly waving down pedestrians on the crowded sidewalks, urging them to stop, shop, and buy. We drove slowly past restaurants with duck carcasses hanging in the windows, their crispy skin burnished reddish-bronze by flavorful sauce and slow roasting. Chinese women carrying shopping bags bartered with fish vendors whose fresh-caught wares lay on piles of ice and glistened under the bright electric lights. A profusion of red, yellow, white, and green signs and billboards displayed Chinese calligraphy. The Chinese characters on all the stores and shops were followed, almost as an afterthought, by brief English translations: Happy Family Chinese Bakery; Shanghai Gourmet Restaurant; Glamorous Clothes; Kosher Dim Sum (food being a bond between Chinese and Jews); Herbal Remedies; Tea Imports.
When we stopped at another traffic light, John pointed to a nearby building with golden pagoda-like flourishes around the doorway. “Speaking of tongs, as we were . . . Have a look at the Chinese characters above the window there, Miss Diamond.”
“Call me, Esther.”
“Esther,” he repeated with a nod. “See the third character there? The one that looks sort of like a stick-figure man wearing a big straw hat?”
I peered at it. “Yes.”
“Ah,” said Max with a nod. “The symbol for tong.”
“You read Chinese?” I asked Max, not that surprised. I had heard him speak it once, and I knew he read English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and German.
“Oh, no,” he said, shaking his head briskly to disclaim any such accomplishment. “I only know a few dozen common Chinese characters. You’d have to be familiar with several thousand to read the language competently.”
I’m no linguist, but I knew that in contrast to the phonetic way that Western writing had developed over the millennia, with each alphabetical symbol representing a sound, Chinese writing had arisen from ideograms and pictographs. I nodded in response to what Max had said, adding, “Because every word in the language has its own unique symbol, right?” I’d learned my ABCs when I was a small child, which is where literacy starts in our language. Kids in China don’t have it nearly so easy. If you memorized twenty-six symbols in Chinese, you’d only know twenty-six words, rather than knowing all the symbols used to write your whole language.
“And a lot of the characters are easy to confuse with each other, too.” John added ruefully, “I’m a good student, but my father finally gave up hoping I’d ever learn to read Chinese.”