Authors: Henry Chang
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Police Procedural, #ebook
Rain? Water Over Water?
Was Eddie Ng a
lo mok
, a
Negro
?
None of it made sense now but Jack’s experience was that all of it would tie in later, somehow.
He was about to step away from his desk when the old man entered the squad room. One of the uniforms pointed Mr. Fong, May Lon’s father, in Jack’s direction. Surprised to see him, Jack offered him a chair. The victim’s father sat and took a deep sighing breath.
“The families know now,” he explained, staring down at the worn linoleum floor. “I’ve come from the Wah Fook,” he said, shaking his head in quiet disbelief. “I made all the arrangements.”
“It’s a terrible thing,
ah bok
,” Jack said solemnly.
Old Fong glanced up at Jack, then again bowed his head toward the floor. Jack figured Fong had remembered things he’d wanted to say earlier, but he’d deferred to the presence of the shooter’s father,
lo
Gong; things he’d felt the Chinese detective would understand.
“She is …
was
a good daughter,” Fong said, “and a hard worker. Before she got married, she always had a job. Always made money, and bought things for the family.”
Jack nodded sympathetically. “She honored her parents.”
“Very much so.” Fong’s gaze bore through the floor. “And she was independent. Traveled all over.” He wrung his hands. “Then she got married.” His voice was tinged with regret.
Jack had heard the flipside already, a cynical scenario that again didn’t bode well for his own thoughts about marriage and family in this screwed-up modern age.
“May Lon didn’t like depending on her husband for money. She wasn’t used to the demands of young children, or being cooped up indoors all day. She’d felt isolated. Her husband was away at work most of the time. Her sadness grew deeper and darker. The pressure got to her. The clinic’s brochures explained it, but we never did find the right Chinese words for postpartum depression.”
Fong rubbed his temples, hunched his shoulders. “We never reported her
beng
, her illness. Everyone was afraid they would take away the children,” he said, drawing another deep breath. “Instead, she moved out. When she started working again, she seemed happy. She seemed happy when she visited the children.”
The karaoke job had been her salvation, but had brought only humiliation and anger to her husband. Ah Por had read their faces correctly: they were incompatible, like Fire and Water. Mix them together and you got tragedy.
“Husband said the
sai louh
, the little ones, needed their mother. We offered to watch the children full time,” Fong continued, “but husband was against it. Seniors,
lo yun ga
, should enjoy their golden years, he argued, not hassle with small children. What could we say to that?”
Jack could see the man’s eyes start to glisten, his grief rising to the surface, but the tears never flowed. He’d hide them inside until he got to family time, until after the funeral, after the burial. Then and thereafter, his tears would be eternal.
Fong rose from the chair and stared into the last of the afternoon light outside the squad-room window. His gaze finally came back to Jack, and with a nod of his head and a small wave of his hand, he said, “Thank you for your help. Your father was a good man, and raised a good son,” and turned away.
Jack watched him go down the stairs and out of the station house.
It was already dark when one of the uniforms from the evening shift dropped off the Medical Examiner’s report. Jack reviewed it along with the Crime Scene Unit’s.
The comparative reports confirmed the scenario Jack had envisioned: May Lon had arrived home, was surprised by Harry, was made to sit at the edge of the bed, and was shot shortly after. The Medical Examiner indicated COD, cause of death, as a GSW, a gunshot wound, through the frontal bone of the cranium, exiting via the back of the skull. CSU had found the twisted little slug behind the bed.
The kill shot was angled downward, indicating Harry must have been standing over her. Traces of gunshot residue, GSR, were found on her palm and on her face as well, which meant Harry was less than two feet away when he fired.
Was he talking to her? Pleading?
The wound in her right hand was a neat little round hole in her palm that extended through it, as if she’d thrown up the hand to ward off the bullet.
Did he show her the poem? Did he read it to her?
So the .22-caliber hi-vel slug had torn through her hand before blasting into her forehead and skull, then crashed around, ripping up cerebrum and cerebellum before exiting the middle back her head, slamming her into the hereafter.
The amount of blood that seeped into the comforter indicated she’d bled out over a short time, but the high-velocity gunshot wound to the head had probably killed her instantly. The ME listed approximate time of death—expiration—as 4:30 to 4:40
AM
.
The broken clock radio on the linoleum floor, stopped at 4:44
AM
. The shooter hadn’t waited long. The desperate, despondent note poem in his pocket. Not long before he ate the gun.
According to CSU, the shooter had lowered his mouth over the gun barrel, his head bowed as if in prayer, when he pulled the trigger. The bullet bored through the top of his mouth, tumbled, and blew his brains out of the top left side of his head. He had GSR on his right hand, the gun hand. Also, some GSR stippling on his face and mouth area. Consistent with the murder-suicide scenario.
They’d likely match Harry’s fingerprints to the gun and the shell casings.
The ME listed the manner of death as
DOMESTIC DISPUTE
: estranged husband shoots ex-wife, then self, in double tragedy. Two children left behind.
Jack began to feel the weight of the early morning: fourteen hours on the job, the emotional drag of the case.
He really needed a drink.
He could see the Chinatown darkness outside the captain’s windows as he placed the reports on the desk in Marino’s empty office. The day shift had already given way to the night shift when Jack left the station house.
In his old neighborhood, he thought of all the different places he could go for Chinese fast food, but the familiar places now felt empty, unwelcoming, and the lonely winter night finally drove him back to Brooklyn, leaving him staring into a Sunset Park back street of all-night Chinese takeout joints.
Johnny Wong reached over to a tray in the corner and angled the antenna of the little transistor radio, keeping the Chinese music low-key, a Shirley Kwan Hong Kong pop ballad. He swiveled the antenna until the static cleared, then leaned back on his bunk.
He scanned the dark cement box of a room, closed his eyes when they reached the bars across the front of the cell. He took a deep breath, and again thought about how his life had come to this.
During the first few days of
chor gom
, prison, he’d been mixed in with the
hok gwai
, black devils, and the
loy sung
, the lowlife Spanish. They’d mocked him by pulling back the corners of their eyes, taunting him,
Egg roll! Bruce Lee!! Fock
you ass, Jackie Chan! Ching chong!
Some of them menaced him, sizing him up to rob him. A few sadists regarded him as fresh meat, stared him down with hard faces, the way long-term criminals devour new prisoners with their scowling, man-raping eyes.
Johnny had steeled himself mentally; he wouldn’t go down easily, would set an example.
Suddenly, he’d gotten transferred to the Central Punitive Segregation Unit, a maximum security single-cell jail. Protective custody. Protective? he’d wondered. From whom? Everyone, he’d realized. Now he was kept from the general population, confined to a six-by-nine-foot cement cage, with a wall bunk across from a metal toilet bowl.
And Shirley Kwan singing.
He remembered purchasing a radio car hookup from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. The overnight limo deal, jockeying the black Lincoln, had prospered, until he made a mistake. He’d broken one of his cardinal rules:
never
get involved with the paying customers
He’d been taken in by her beauty.
Smoldering anger and shame still flared up inside, but he knew it was his own fault. He’d been the greedy fish who’d taken the bait. He’d been socking away cash until he got mixed up with the client, the Fat Uncle’s lady, his alluring mistress, Mona. He’d been seduced by the tragedy of her story, her past and her present life of suffering. And, of course, by her sexual beauty, her sensual lovemaking.
The other night drivers had never caught on.
The instant that he entered her, never realizing he’d been sucked in, had led to his present state: imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. All his grand dreams—a take-out counter, a Wah Wah Bakery franchise, the coin Laundromat deal—gone. All gone. Eventually, he’d have to sell the Lincoln, and move on.
Now his life was in the hands of other men: a Hip Ching tong officer, and a fancy
gwailo
, Caucasian, lawyer. Johnny had gotten over his initial rush of hysteria, had resigned himself to his fate, trusting that the tong agent and the white lawyer would work successfully toward his release.
They’d wanted to find the victim’s mistress, the woman known only as Mona. Johnny had helped their Chinese artist draw a likeness of her, a pretty face pulled from the intimate memories he’d had of her. The artist had been forging copies of Rembrandt and Vermeer, and his rendering was far better than a mug shot. Johnny had revealed conversations he’d had with Mona, described her fashion sense, anything that might provide a clue.
Protective custody.
He didn’t understand how or why, until he’d met the two men in the interview cell. They had made all the arrangements somehow on the basis of some phone threats against him that had been called into the prison. So they’d had to move him, per regulations.
Now Johnny had a small semblance of the creature comforts of Chinatown. He’d survived these four months in the cinder-block cell because the two men had arranged for him to get twice-weekly rations of
lo mein
and
chow faahn
, fried rice, packs of Marlboros and oolong tea bags, Chinese newspapers and magazines. Most of all, he found comfort in the transistor radio with the special chip embedded that brought broadcasts from Chung Wah Chinese Broadcasting into the prison.
He knew when his care packages of supplies arrived by the smell of fried rice and egg rolls wafting over from the guards’ locker room. One of the black guards had given him a packet of extra batteries for the radio, and started calling him “Mister John.”
They’d assigned him a half hour each day alone in the exercise yard. He practiced some tai chi exercises, smoked cigarettes, puzzled over where Mona might have gone. He hoped the frigid wind of the yard was somehow touching her also.
After almost four months, Johnny realized that the Hip Chings weren’t going to muster up the million-dollar bail bond until they had a handle on the whereabouts of the mistress. Anything that came to mind, he’d let them know. Both men were always encouraging during their visits, insisting that the Hip Chings were determined that “justice be served.” With Johnny’s help, they’d certainly find her, and in turn, he would be set free.
“It’s only a matter of time,” the Chinese tong man always said. The way he put things, it was always
when
he’d be released,
when
they’d find the woman,
when
they could help him relocate and start anew.
Dangling hope like a three-section flail, an iron kung fu whip.
He dreaded the feeling that his life was in the hands of these two men. Still, he needed them as much as they needed him, if not more.
A marriage of necessity.
The Caucasian lawyer’s part was to manipulate the law during his incarceration. The
tong yen
, Chinese man, managed the Chinese side of things, helping to sublease Johnny’s black Lincoln out to the funeral drivers so the car would continue to make money even as he sat in prison.
They’d even paid his monthly rent on the apartment in Brooklyn’s Chinatown.
They’d wrapped their control around him like a closed fist.
His emotions came back around to anger. He was mad at himself for falling for Mona’s promises, her lies. His bravado, greed, and foolishness had brought him to this cinder-block cell, in this penal colony of
hok gwai
and
loy sung
.
Dew!
Fuck! he cursed silently as he remembered how he’d helped her buy a gun off the streets, even loaded it for her. He’d left his prints on the spare clip while she’d sucked him, and suckered him.
Deadly thoughts pulsed inside his head, keeping him awake. Fatigue only brought back images of her glistening naked body against his, her pretty head twisting and bobbing over his groin, until finally black-out sleep swept over him and obliterated the bars of the prison cell.
“Yo, Mister John! Meeting time!”
The guard’s bark jerked Johnny into consciousness, brought him to sit up on his bunk, staring into the shiny white teeth grinning at him.
“Yo. Fried rice tomorrow?” the guard said.
Johnny nodded and smiled back, saying “
Tomollo
, okay.” He stood, massaging the back of his neck with stiff fingers, trying to press out the tension locked there.
The steel cell gate slid open with a bang and he followed the guard to the interview room. There was a disinfectant smell in the air as they went down the dimly lit corridor.
Johnny’s
gwailo
, Caucasian, lawyer, whom he knew as “Leemon,” wore a charcoal-gray suit and stared at him with blue shark eyes from behind the metallic briefcase he’d opened on the interview table.
Next to him sat brother Tsai Ming Hui, who looked as if he were in his late twenties like Johnny himself, and who, representing the Hip Ching Benevolent Association, was involved in his defense. Ah Tsai’s wire-frame eyeglasses and combed-back hair made him out to be a manager or administrator for his tong sponsors. What rank, Johnny could not determine.
They believed in his innocence but needed to find the missing woman.
He’d had no other recourse from his Rikers Island cell.
As always, they’d reassured him that they’d obtain his freedom, and assist him in relocating elsewhere. Like a witness protection program, he imagined.
The lawyer, “Lee-mon,” made announcements in
gwailo
English that Johnny couldn’t understand.
“I’ve filed another motion to reduce bail,” Sheldon Littman said, glancing at Tsai, “or to get you transferred to the federal lockup on Pearl Street. I feel they’re backing off murder one but we’re not accepting manslaughter, either.”
“We’re trying to get you to a better jail, near Chinatown,” translated Tsai. “Your lawyer feels that the prosecutors don’t have a case.” Tsai turned away from Littman, saying, “Also, about the bail: the association’s member’s restaurants proved to be unreliable as collateral. Too many silent partners.”
Johnny nodded, disappointed. He’d heard a similar claim during their last meeting.
“We’re canvassing the membership,” Tsai continued in a confidential tone. “For houses, family homes we can use toward the bond. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Johnny had also heard this before; different words, same meaning. He noticed Lee-mon observing Tsai
go
, curious about the long translation of his own brief statements.
Tsai turned to Littman, saying in his Hong Kong English, “Don’t be concerned. I am keeping his hope alive.” He smiled. “It is a
Chinese
thing.”
Littman narrowed his eyes at Johnny, cracked a crooked smile. Tsai, turning back to Johnny, continued, “Now, you said you remembered something.”
Johnny hesitated.
“Don’t worry,” Tsai reassured him, “he doesn’t understand Cantonese.”
Johnny took a breath. “I had a dream,” he began. “Maybe it means something”.
“Go ahead.”
“She had a lot of different jewelry, I remembered, but she always wore a jade charm. Hanging off her wrist. It was white and gray, with
pa kua
, Taoist, designs on it. Round, like a coin, a nickel.”
“Was she religious?” asked Tsai.
“I don’t think so. But I heard her praying once.”
“Praying?”
“Like chanting.”
“Buddhist?”
“Maybe. She did it low, almost whispering. And she stopped when she became aware of my presence.”
Tsai was silent. Buddhist, he thought, so it would be wise to check Chinatown temples.
Littman interjected, “Tell him what we’ll do to the Chinese cop on the stand, once he mentions the missing lady. The person of interest.”
Tsai didn’t let his annoyance show, but instead smiled quietly at the intrusion.
“Your lawyer,” he translated, “assures you the courts will rule in your favor.” He nodded at Littman, who seemed pleased.
The Chinese cop, Tsai remembered, the American-born Chinese, the
jook sing
, empty piece of bamboo. They would dredge up his tainted career, his Chinatown misadventures, and destroy his credibility.
“Time’s up!” yelled the prison guard, opening the door of the interview room with a bang.
Littman shook Johnny’s hand, saying, “No worries, be patient,” and watched as Johnny shuffled back toward his cinder-block cell.
Tsai stayed behind Littman and followed the guards out, thinking, Buddhist temples and Chinese jewelry stores.