Lunchtime was a trudging push of bundled bodies, hats and scarves wrapped around Chinese heads with watering eyes. Cars, trucks, and buses crept along, their exhaust trailing clouds of steam into the frozen air. Chinatown was digging itself out while the surrounding neighborhoods surrendered.
Death Do Us Part
They all stood around the couch in the front room, four distraught faces.
“Dailo found one of the watches here,” Koo Jai admitted grudgingly. “Long story. It was out, on the bed, and he snatched it.”
“Wha’ happen? How come?” was the best the dumbfounded Jung brothers could muster.
“It was your fault,” muttered Shorty. “You were careless.”
“How the fuck do I know he’s at the door?” bitched Koo Jai. “Fuckin’ nobody called me. I could’ve put the watch away. You messed up by bringing him. None of this would have happened.”
“Bullshit,” Shorty said evenly.
“Look, it don’t matter,” sneered Koo Jai. “He said he knew we were pulling jobs. Said he didn’t care. All he wanted was his cut. Said to bring everything we boosted.”
“Hah, everything gone. No way,” mumbled the Jungs.
“Dailo says we all gotta go.” Koo Jai was steadfast. “Meet down Bowery.”
“Where?” in a chorus.
“OTB. There’s a coffee shop next to the alley.”
“Why there?” befuddled Old Jung asked.
“Who the fuck knows? He wants a sit-down.”
“Deew!! Fucked!” moaned Young Jung.
“Just be prepared,” Koo Jai warned. “Keep your chins up, and your fuckin’ eyes open. Unless dailo asks you personally, I’ll do all the talking. If anything goes bad, we meet in Boston.” He nodded at the Jungs. “Call your cousins.”
They exited the flat, the Jung brothers jittery, as if they were going to a funeral.
Led by Koo Jai, they kept to the streets crossing Chatham Square; it was easier to walk through the dirty slush trails left by bus traffic. They came to the Bowery end of the square where access to the sidewalk was blocked by waist-high frozen drifts.
Koo Jai and Shorty were first to crunch their way through to the sidewalk, the larger Jungs behind them clumsily lumbering along in their wake.
Gusts of wind blew powdered snow off the street lamps and traffic lights.
The dailo ’s crew turned the corner of Mott onto Bowery, moving in a loose triangle with Lucky at the point. Lucky saw Koo Jai and Shorty a half-block away, thought of the nine large in cash in Koo’s pocket, imagining how he was going to drop some of it on some fine ass and pussy at Angelina’s. Peripherally, he noticed the Jung brothers plodding behind them through the snowbank. Clumsy bitches, he thought, continuing on toward OTB.
Old Jung slipped and fell to one knee, the sudden twist of his hip dislodging the pistol he carried in his waistband. The gun slid along the dirty ice but he was able to grab it and pull it back. A few steps ahead, Young Jung turned and cast an annoyed look at him.
Kongo saw Old Jung dropping to one knee. He grunted as Old Jung’s hand came up holding a pistol; it looked as if he’d pulled it out of the snow. Whipping open his trenchcoat, the Ecstasy pushing him, he went for the sawed-off shotgun dangling at his hip.
Koo Jai and Shorty both saw the dailo and his crew marching toward them. With their heartbeats spiking, they watched as Lucky drifted to one side. Behind him, the big Malaysian’s eyes were suddenly as large as don tots, egg tarts, as he drew the chopped shotgun.
Lefty saw Young Jung staring at Kongo, astonishment on his face, momentarily frozen. Each of them instinctively reached for his gun.
Lucky recoiled at the sound of the deafening blast from behind him, his gun hand automatically going inside his blazer. He glanced back to see Kongo loose another blast into the ringing air and Lefty aiming his Nine. When he swung his eyes back to Koo Jai, both he and Shorty were taking aim at him. One of the Jungs was rising up from the snow, emptying his pistol at them in a spraying arc.
Lucky drew a gun from his inside pocket as Lefty fired mechanically, methodically, ahead.
Kongo dropped the sawed-off, drew his pistol, and tried to aim at Koo Jai, but the dailo’s back blocked his shot. He saw the short guy, the little guy, jamming off little firecracker shots at them.
Lucky felt the impact like a punch in the head, his body staggering backward. Suddenly, hot metal was tearing into him, twisting through him. Fuck! he heard himself yell, as his thoughts ceased.
Painkiller
Sai Go had crossed Doyers, was halfway down the alley shortcut when he heard the barrage of fireworks up ahead, somewhere on the Bowery. Probably some fools celebrating the Year of the Pig much too early. Two thunderous booms had made him recoil, the shock waves, he was sure, from China-made M-80s.
He kept his eyes on the icy furrows as he took the shortcut again.
Suddenly he saw Koo Jai, gun in hand, dashing at him, running through the alley like a madman, followed by a short kid who was equally bug-eyed.
Sai Go’s breath caught in his throat as he flattened himself against the wall, his gun hand sliding down to his coat pocket. Koo Jai raced by just as Sai Go got his fingers around the Vigilante.
Sai Go watched the short kid pass him, and was drawing the gun from his pocket when he heard the first shot. He felt an explosion inside his chest, sucking the breath out of him.
Several more gunshots rang out.
Then there was only abrupt silence, and the whiteness of the snow in the alley, drifting gently all around him.
O-Nine
Having covered for others during the holidays, Jack had returned to the day shift, feeling the bustle of the tour’s activity juicing him through the storm’s chaos into the afternoon hours. Outside the stationhouse, Sanitation part-timers cleared away the snow so the police vehicles could park. Jack took a late lunch, chowing down on a sandwich and chowder from Kim’s Produce. In the last hour of his shift, the phone rang. An urgent voice from Manhattan South put Jack on edge.
“We got a hot shoot, in Chinatown. Multiple vics, near the OTB. See the CO of the 0-Five.”
OTB? The Fifth Precinct?
The 0-Five, Chinatown, was pulling him back, back into the gutter.
Off — Track — Bleeding
Jack badged a southbound M103 at St. Mark’s, scanning the distant stretch of the Bowery, seeing in his mind where it turned into Chatham Square, before becoming Park Row. He got to the scene in less than ten minutes, the bus driver skipping the stops after Delancey, until Jack pointed at the green facade of OTB.
From the bus he could see EMS techs in the drifts, lifting someone dressed in a black leather blazer and steel-toe boots. The way Tat dressed, he thought. When he got closer he realized it was Tat, bleeding from a head wound. The tech was palm-pumping Tat’s chest as they snap-slid his gurney into the ambulance. Slush sprayed up from the spinning wheels, leaving a trail behind the lights and sirens speeding south toward Downtown Emergency.
Jack surveyed the bloody scene as the uniforms kept back the crowd that had gathered. Two more patrol cars arrived, blocking off the crime scene from traffic.
There was an odd symmetry to how the bodies lay: two on one side of OTB, two on the other, about fifteen, maybe twenty, feet apart. He started taking pictures with the throwaway plastic camera he always carried, locking in fresh images while waiting for Crime Scene to arrive. The big Malaysian on his back, a pair of startled eyes, was bleeding out under the sheet. The punk with the gel haircut, spread akimbo on a hump of snow, next to a mailbox, was Lucky boy’s wheelman, the one who drove the black car. Looked like he had a chest wound. A fatal one.