He’d carried it in his jacket pocket without a holster.
His final moment had brought his hand to the gun.
Where was the connection?
Personal Effects
Jack made out the reports for the six corpses lying in the morgue’s chilled slabs.
Lucky’s wheelman, the gel-haired Ghost, whose street name was Lefty, had carried in his jacket a set of keys in a black key-case, a pair of knock-off Fendi sunglasses, and a small spray tube of breath freshener. There was a plastic baggie with a dozen little red pills, and a murky snapshot of an Asian girl giving head. He had forty-four dollars, an unlucky Chinese number for him, thought Jack. In his jeans they’d found a cell phone, and a driver’s license with a DOB dated 1970, and the name Cham Yat Lee. The license had a bogus Mott Street address. Number 17A, Jack knew, was an On Yee gambling basement.
The large Malaysian was identified by his Indonesian NRIC National Registry card as Bat Boon Kong, twenty-six years old. In his coat he’d had a pack of bootleg Marlboros and a Zippo lighter featuring a grinning skull and crossbones. He carried a hundred eighty-six dollars, and a roll of quarters. Was he looking to pack a hard-knuckled punch, or was it just coins for the parking meters? There was a pair of fake Oakley sunglasses and a business card for Oriental Massage Bodywork. A set of keys attached to a jade-stone dragon. From his pants they’d taken a bloody cell phone, identical to the one found on Cham Yat. Kong had worn a heavy gold bar-link chain around his thick neck, dangling a fat jade lucky Buddha against his massive chest, but there was no ho toy, good fortune, at the end of his story.
The other two dead Ghosts outside OTB shared more than a passing resemblance; they shared the same surname, Jung, and birthdate, in 1971. They were twins, but not identical. Close enough, thought Jack.
According to their driver’s licenses, one was named James, one Joseph.
Jimmy and Joey Jung. The Jung brothers. They’d both worn black stone foo dogs around their necks, and between them they had fifty-one dollars and change. They had lived in the same apartment in the Rutgers Housing Projects out past Pike, near the river.
Jack remembered hanging out there with Tat and Wing during their teenage summer nights that now seemed so long ago.
Each brother had a matching set of keys, and identical blackface ladies’ Rado wristwatches in their pants pockets.
Macho guys with women’s watches?
The two watches were stamped with sequential serial numbers.
Of the two bodies in the alley, Jack wrote up the bullet-riddled vic first. His driver’s license gave his name, Koo Kit Leng, and address, 98 East Broadway. Easy enough to check out; Jack knew those streets well.
Koo was twenty-six years old.
In Koo’s jacket Jack had found a set of keys on an OTB promo key ring, and a cracked pair of imitation Ferragamo sunglasses. There was a pack of Kools with a disposable Bic lighter rubber-banded to it, and a roll of breath mints. In his jacket’s inside pocket were business cards from a Tong Yen dry-goods store in Boston’s Chinatown, and from KK’s Karaoke club on Allen Street, with the name Tina and a phone number scrawled across the back of the card.
He’d worn a silver chain with a shiny letter K charm attached.
Jack remembered the two single-dollar bills protruding from Koo’s ripped pants pocket, and the trail of coins scattered in the snow of the alley.
He had no other money or valuables on him.
Robbery or double cross, figured Jack.
The last body in the alley was the big mystery.
The old man, Fong Sai Go, had carried a plastic wallet that contained some business cards: lawyer, social security, hair salon, and a gold-plated Chinese talisman card. There was also a Health Clinic notecard with his home address and a chemotherapy schedule that indicated he was a fifty-nine-year-old cancer patient. Terminal.
He’d carried keys and a cell phone in his left coat pocket, a multicolored ink pen in the right. There was a Foxwoods Casino promotional card, in Chinese, in his shirt pocket. He was wearing a jade-stone gourd-shaped charm around his neck, and had exactly eight hundred eighty-eight dollars in his right coat pocket.
A dying old man spending down his luck? wondered Jack.
In his mind, Fong Sai Go wasn’t shaping up as a homicide, but because of the gun in his possession, Jack felt he needed to check out the old man’s Pell Street address, and also to speak to the lawyer on the business card.
Projects
The elderly woman who lived in the Rutgers Projects apartment appeared senile, or had Alzheimer’s, Jack couldn’t tell which. She managed to explain that the Jung brothers were her grandsons, and the food stamp card was hers. They’d done the shopping for her.
She couldn’t grasp the idea that her grandsons were dead. When would they be home? They were her caregivers.
Jack decided to get her some assistance through Alexandra’s contacts at Chinatown social services.
Hovel
Inside Koo’s place at 98 East Broadway, Jack walked through a run-down railroad apartment that someone had tossed. A couple of pieces of floorboard were out of place, and the stash spots were empty. Nothing in the apartment provided any real clues to how the body in the alley had come to that end. There were only a few pieces of old furniture and some cheap ornaments of a life on the edge.
The landlord hid behind a managing agency that admitted Koo was a longtime tenant.
They had no idea what business he was in, but the rent was paid regularly.
The managers were interviewing new tenants even as Jack left the agency.
Sampan
He found old Fong’s tenement walk-up on Pell, badged the super, and spoke to him in Toishanese, their common tongue. The swarthy man liked that Jack could speak the dialect and let him right into the apartment.
The place looked straightened up, neat. Nothing in the refrigerator. No garbage anywhere, cleaned the way someone would when leaving on an extended vacation. His vacation was to the next life?
The only thing Jack noted was a torn scrap of thin wrinkly paper on a VCR shelf. There were different Chinese nicknames and numbers written on the delicate paper. On a hunch, Jack licked his thumb and touched it to the scrap. When it melted, he grinned knowingly.
It was the kind of soluble paper that old-time bookmakers used.
Jack called the lawyer’s number on the card, but only got voice mail.
He headed back along Mott Street, meaning to stop by later at Downtown Medical to see if there’d been any change in Lucky’s condition.
Dailo’s Demise
They’d placed Tat’s clothes and possessions in a big black plastic garbage bag and slipped it under his bed by the respirator.
In a Gucci billfold, Lucky had carried an eight-hundred-dollar stack of crisp fifties, and two fresh condoms. Ribbed Trojans. Slotted into the inserts were two credit cards, and a driver’s license with another bogus address. Jack knew that number 29A Mott, was another one of the On Yee gambling basements. He was surprised that Lucky had used his real name Tat Louie on the credit cards.
There were three red pills in a little ziplock bag and a set of keys on a Cartier keychain. He’d worn an Oyster Rolex, Armani shades, and a thick gold-braided chain with a round medallion stamped with the Chinese word fook, or luck.