Power was shifting. On his turf, the main strongholds of Chinatown, Fat Lily’s massage joint, and Number Seventeen card house, had both been raided in the same week. The cops had come from outside the precinct, in blue windbreakers, under the direction of some unknown Major-Case task force. Someone was feeding them information, directing gwailo white cops toward Ghost Legion operations. Could be the Fuks, or maybe double-dealing by one of the other tongs. And his informants in the Fifth Precinct were all gone now. Lucky thought instantly of Jack Yu, Jacky Boy, the Chinese cop, the hero cop, his Chinatown homeboy from back in the day. Then he slowly shook his head, with a smile that mixed disdain and annoyance. Jacky Boy’s not in the Fifth, anymore; gone fishing somewhere else in cop world.
Lucky saw other ominous signs on the horizon. The incoming mayor was a law-and-order guy, an ex-DA who’d already stated publicly that he was going to crack down on organized crime. In the past that had meant the Mafia, Sicilian guys, but now included the Russian mafiya, the Mexicans, the city’s drug gangs, and the Chinese tongs as well.
Lucky knew to go with the flow, to roll with the blow, but he’d have to be nimble, and make the secret deals that would protect and expand his empire. He’d work out whisper deals with pro-China groups, and even with gangbangers like the Fuk Chings. The Red Circle triad, which partnered with the On Yee and had historical underworld connections to that tong, couldn’t be trusted. They were masters of the double-cross. Keep it all close to the vest, he figured, because if the other Ghost factions found out, they might think he was selling them out, getting ready to bail.
One thing was clear: it was all over for the On Yee. Their ties were mostly with Hong Kong and Taiwan. China itself was a whole different ballgame and the Fukienese already had tight connections with corrupt mainland government officials and were rumored to have deserters from the People’s Liberation Army on their payroll.
The television news program segued from Fukienese protest to Thanksgiving pageantry. Seeing the Macy’s Parade roll across the screen reminded Lucky of his father, Thanksgiving Day being the birthday of the old abusive drunk whom he hadn’t seen in five years, the last time being a chance encounter on a Flushing Chinatown street when the sad loser shamelessly asked for a handout. The fuckin’ bum, thought Lucky, the reason why his mother had run out on them before his teenage years. He wondered if the son of a bitch was still alive, then decided he didn’t care.
Disgusted, he punched off the TV.
When Lucky appraised himself in the mirror he still saw a street warrior, but too much Chinatown fast food, beer, and brandy had turned his gut to flab, made him appear bearlike and lumbering.
He checked his Oyster Rolex. It was 9 PM. He glanced toward the darkness of the November night outside his Bayard Street condominium. The wind gusted and banged against the windows. It was freezing outside and he knew most of the Ghost Legion streetboys would be wearing their dark down-filled jackets, puffy enough to hide their guns. He himself, as dailo, would only wear the black leather blazer, which made him appear oblivious to the cold, more macho than the others.
Condensation formed at the bottom of the metal window frame, and the spoon-sized thermometer outside the glass read nine degrees. It was almost time to cruise through his rounds, to check on his empire.
Outside the window the streets of the Bowery were empty. At the street corner six flights below, the traffic light, swaying and swinging at the end of the long metal arm that hung over the intersection, was frozen on red. A bus proceeded cautiously through the intersection, rolling north along the Bowery. There was not one person on the frigid streets beneath the dim yellow street lamps.
He could see the Manhattan Bridge, in the darkness looking like a black ribbon suspended from two parallel strands of pearls, arching across the East River toward the Brooklyn waterfront, the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
Two car-horn blasts from directly below broke his reverie. A black car pulled smoothly up to the curb, its white headlights momentarily lighting up the front of the Rickshaw Brother’s garage. He pictured Lefty behind the wheel, all spiky haircut and gel, with Kongo, the big dark Malay, riding shotgun by his side. The headlights went to black and the Buick sat like a water bug squatting beside the curb.
Lucky crushed the burnt marijuana roach into a glass dish. He lifted the leather blazer off the recliner, and felt its heft as he slipped it on. Normally, he would not carry the Smith amp;Wesson, but tonight, going out to the Chinatown fringe at East Broadway, he followed his instincts, and assured himself he was not being paranoid. Better strapped than sorry. He turned off the lights and the TV and closed the red door of his condo, took the stairs down, and felt the weight of the pistol in his jacket pocket. Thinking about Fukienese East Broadway, and about how easily power could shift, he went down toward the dark Chinatown street, and the black Buick at the curb.
Black Car, Black Night
The black Buick was a 1988 Riviera, a beefed-up muscle car straight out of Detroit, a wide-body chassis fitted with a thick set of Pirelli tires, and dark-tinted windows. The Riviera had 44,000 miles on it when the Ghosts took it as payment from a gambler who’d lost it in a fan-tan game down one of the basements. Its finish was fading but underneath the hood, a 3600 V6 engine was still capable of churning out a catlike acceleration. The wide tires made it a perfect car for narrow Chinatown streets with corners that were tight and uneven. With Lefty driving, the black car rolled low to the ground and bit into the curves even at a high speed. The car had four-wheel independent suspension and traction control. It sprinted from zero to sixty in six seconds and it could cruise at eighty, and still have enough horsepower for passing in heavy traffic. In the inner city the car was good to go for getaways and drive-bys. It could leap into a sprint and cornered better than the Firebirds and Camaros. Nothing the cops drove could touch it, their standard Dodge cars, running on the cheap gas of a tightfisted city budget, were too weak.
Lucky had had steel diamond-plate sheets inserted into the door panels, courtesy of Chin Ho Auto Body Repair, in exchange for not making the monthly “contribution” payment. Lefty’s cousin Hom Mo, the mechanic at Victor’s Fix-Rite garage, kept the engine purring and made sure the oil was fresh.
It was nine after nine when Lucky slid into the backseat of the Riviera.
Lefty fired up the headlights and urged the car away from the curb. They took the backstreets out to Centre Street, then rolled north toward Walker. Lucky never said a word, watching the night go by behind the shadowy mass of Kongo. Lefty knew the first stop was always at Willie Eyeballs, to pick up cash and cigarettes. Willie Wong had eyeballs that bulged, a condition that made him look like a bugged-out horny lecher. An On Yee henchman, he ran a warehouse on Walker Street that stored a thousand cartons of counterfeit cigarettes. Fake Marlboros and Camels, made in China, became part of the flood of untaxed cigarettes into the city that occurred after state taxes went up. The fakes were half the price, and the real butts from out of state were even cheaper. One container load of fakes, fifty thousand cartons, arrived on the docks every month, and two truckloads of tax-frees from down south arrived every other day. The operation sucked in a hundred thousand a week.