Chinatown Beat Read online

  She dragged a red fingernail across one side. Water over thunder. Not propitious to advance; wait and seek help. In the center of the charm she felt the two embryonic snakes chasing each other’s tail, forming the forever-changing symbol of the Yin-Yang, harmony of the cosmic breath.

  She was able to read each symbol, Braille-like, in a single passing of her finger. Then she’d stack the Trigrams in her mind, forming Hexagrams, prophecies, from the I Ching or Book of Changes. Her fingernail slid down. Heaven over Earth. Time of big loss, small gain. Untrustworthy people. Evil comes forth. She flipped the charm, felt for the reverse symbols on the back side.

  She felt weary.

  Thunder over Earth. Oppression, chaos drains the spirit. Auspicious to appoint helpers. Preparation for action.

  Her gaze came back into the apartment, into the faint light. She thumbed the remote toward the cable television, refreshed the Iron Goddess tea with the rest of the vial of ginseng, and saw the words Black Cat take shape from the snow on the screen. Maggie Kahn starring as the Female Assassin. The legend of Fa Mulan came to mind. If the woman warrior could ride into battle against a warlord army, surely she, Mona, could find the resolve to secure freedom from and vengeance against one corrupt old man. She sipped the brew and thought about recruiting help.

  Johnny Wong

  She knew the type, a young man with a hustler’s good looks, always on the move. Waiting for the right dai ga jeer, big sister, to come along. She’d seen them plenty in TsimSha Cheui, working the disco circuit in the soo-ga momie pipeline. Uneducated youths working hard at pretending they were international playboys.

  Despite the fact that she depended on them, Mona hated men, all men. They were mongrels, stray dogs, attack dogs, bloodhounds. Men wanted one thing only: her most precious part, her sex. They wanted to possess her for a short time, then discard her for someone younger. And there was always someone younger. Except for Johnny, the driver, who had asked for nothing and expected nothing, all the other men in her life had purchased her time, bought her body, played with her mind.

  Nothing for nothing, that was the lesson she’d learned a lifetime ago, halfway around the world in Hong Kong, when at fourteen years of age, the Triads had forced her to sell her body to repay her father’s gambling debts. When her mother found out, she cursed her husband, then immediately suffered a heart attack. Mona never forgot that extra week in the seedy brothel, on her back, to pay for the funeral.

  Her mother’s curse came true. In the end, they killed her father anyway, those evil men with snake tattoos and black hearts.

  By the time Uncle Four came to Hong Kong, almost three years ago, Mona had been promoted to China City, the big nightclub on Kowloon where hundreds of siu jeer, young ladies, sold themselves while seeking overseas American Chinese with the promise of green cards. She and Uncle Four discovered they had roots in the same province in China, and that had served as convenient-enough excuse for her to follow him to New York City, overstay her visa, and disappear underground.

  At first, all had gone well with this older man, at sixty, some thirty years her senior. Although he was married, Uncle Four provided her with the clean co-op apartment, food, fun money for clothes and personal expenses. In return she accompanied him only at night—twice, three times a week—a decoration on his arm that he liked to show off in the gambling houses and karaoke nightclubs.

  All types of men ogled her wherever they went, raping her with their eyes as she passed, hungry-looking men who stared and didn’t look away when she flashed her eyes at them. None of this went unnoticed by Uncle Four, but he gave big face to the club owners and didn’t bring trouble to their places.

  As time went by he accused Mona of looking back at some of the younger men, suspected her of harboring other desires, causing him big loss of face. This was unacceptable. He was, after all, an elder man of respect. Gradually he became abusive and violent, threatening her with deportation, even death, if she ever tried to leave him. As leader of the Hip Chings, who sponsored the Black Dragons, his people were everywhere and she feared she would never escape.

  Jing denq, she cried secretly. It was destiny, her Fate.

  Man-Devil

  Out on the edge of the neighborhood, the river wind blew chill into the somber Chinatown day, and swirled dust devils around the beastman who stood on the street corner, watching the working-class families entering the Housing Projects.

  He saw the child, grade-school bag in her small hand, with the old woman, grandmother, he figured, withered, bent, useless. When they entered the project elevator, he followed them into the urine stench, watched as the grafittied door slid shut behind them. After the child tapped the seven button, he pressed number sixteen, lucky today. The old woman glanced at him only briefly, saw a clean-cut Chinese and was reassured. The little girl’s long black hair hung down her back, her eyes reached just above the buckle of his belt.

  They came to the seventh floor. The door slid back and the old woman pushed out past the swinging door to the hallway. In one motion, he grabbed the little girl, shoved the grandmother onto the linoleum, slammed the door.

  The girl froze, her jaw slack with fear.

  The elevator reached Eight, one of his hands cupped over her mouth, the other feeling for the switchblade in his pocket. At Fifteen, he took her into the stairwell, her eyes big, wet now, too afraid to cry. She was half-dragged, half-carried, up the stairs, her whimpering unheard over the echoing thunder of his footsteps, the feeble screams of grandma far below now.

  On the roof landing he showed the knife but spoke calmly in a dialect of Chinese she barely understood.

  Um sai pa, he said, eyes freezing her, don’t be afraid. She nodded her answer at the point of the blade. Good, he murmured in English, tugging down her underpants. Seven, maybe eight years old, his eyes swallowed her. He put his fingers on her, like ice. Good, this country America, as he unbuckled his belt . . .

  Bones

  Jack nosed the Fury into Evergreen Hills cemetery, parked it behind a line of mausoleums, and went to the plot in the Chinese section.

  The empty cemetery looked pastoral as a brief patch of sun spread over the clipped grass, throwing long shadows across the rows of tombstones. It was cooler now as Jack kicked away the twigs of the dying season, gravesweeping beneath his father’s tombstone. He planted a bouquet of flowers, produced his flask and toasted mao-tai to Father and earth. Sorry, Pa, he thought.

  He lit sticks of incense, took another slug from the flask, then poured out a small stream making a wet circle in the dirt. When his thoughts tumbled into speech, sorry was all he could say, not for anything in particular, but for the general torment of unfulfilled dreams.

  “Sorry,” he repeated, bowed three times, planted the incense, and touched his fingers to the graceful cuts in the gray stone.

  Sorry you never struck it rich.

  Sorry I never struck it rich.

  He moved the tin bucket over and torched various packages of death money for gambling in the house of the dead.

  Sorry no big house in the South of China.

  Sorry no farm with fish, and rice paddies.

  Sorry no bones to return to Kwangtung province.

  He fed the shopping bag of gold-colored paper taels into the fiery heap in the bucket. He stirred the flames with a branch, produced three packs of firecrackers.

  Sorry we never had a car.

  Sorry I didn’t become a doctor or lawyer.

  He tossed the fireworks into the flames, stepped back as the staccato explosions rocked the silent cemetery.

  Sorry about moving out on you.

  He tilted the flask and took another long hard hit. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

  Big Uncle

  As was his custom on Saturday mornings, Wah Yee Tom left the office of the Hip Ching Labor and Benevolent Association, met Golo Chuk, the enforcer, and went down the block to the Joy Luck dim sum parlor where he held court for one hour at the large round table by the back wall.
/>   During this hour, Wah Yee Tom dispensed charitable favors to members of the Association and their families, and mediated problems that arose within the ranks.

  Wah Yee Tom, a.k.a. Uncle Four, was advisor for life to the Hip Ching tong, the number two tong in America, a bi-coastal organization with thousands of members, a multi-million-dollar bankroll, and an aging conservative leadership. The tong was the American offspring of the international Triads, Chinese secret societies whose roots reached back to warlords and dynasties preceding China’s birth as a nation. The numerous Triads had supporters and agents in every Chinese community in the world.

  A waiter brought Uncle Four’s usual pot of guk bo cha, poured two cups and withdrew. Golo escorted some people into the restaurant and seated them by the takeout counter in the front. Then he went back to the round table, sat, and the two men sipped tea together before Uncle Four spoke.

  “What do we have?” he asked quietly.

  “A widow,” Golo answered. “Needs money.”

  Uncle Four’s eyes shifted to the disparate group at the front as Golo continued. “A member with a complaint, and a young guy who came off the ship that crashed the other night.”

  “Put him last,” said Uncle Four.

  The first matter at hand was a request for help from an elderly widow whose husband had been a longtime member before his death. The wrinkled old woman with gnarled hands had been beaten and her apartment had been ransacked by a gang of Puerto Rican beat girls during a push-in robbery in the housing projects. She was terrified and wanted to return to China to die but had no money, the say loy sung neu, nasty Latina girls, having taken everything.

  Uncle Four spoke quietly to Golo, who rose and escorted the old woman to the door. He gave her a handful of hundred-dollar bills from a wad in his pocket, whispered in her ear, and patted her reassuringly across the shoulder. She nodded her head, almost kowtowing, before leaving the restaurant.

  Golo returned to the table.

  “She agrees,” he said, “to provide us with the address and the keys to her apartment, along with the canceled rent checks and telephone bills of the year previous.”

  Uncle Four nodded, sipping thoughtfully from his cup of tea, thinking that he would instruct Golo to dispatch several Dragons to take over the apartment. It would become an additional stash- or safe-house, and the gang could distribute their Number Three bak fun, heroin, from there, to the low lifes and the animals.

  The second person to entreat Uncle Four’s help was pale for a Chinese; there was a sickly, pasty tone to his face. He wore a cheap jacket and tie over jeans and his black shoes were scuffed, slanted along the heels with wear. He wrung his hands and looked about nervously.

  Golo brought him to the table, where he respectfully introduced himself as a new member who owned a small takeout counter down near Essex Street, at the edge of East Broadway. He’d paid his dues and posted the Hip Ching membership placard, but was still being shaken down by three rival crews, one of them being Dragons—a crew of young guns.

  They’d threatened him and taken fifty dollars from his register.

  Uncle Four knew the territory, a no-man’s land picked over by rival gangs, the Fuk Chings, the Tong On. It was half a mile away from Pell and Division Streets, the heart of Dragon turf.

  It was more difficult to manage the fringes of the empire, he thought, things were more desperate out there on the edge, the Fukienese refusing to respect truce and territory.

  He gave the man a hundred dollars and assured him the problem would be gau dim, taken care of.

  The man thanked him profusely and never took his eyes off Golo until he was out of the restaurant. Golo checked his watch, signaled the next young man over.

  He was a skinny Fukienese with a scared look, and Golo conversed with him in Mandarin, calmed him, gave him a cigarette. He talked and Golo translated.

  “His name is Li Jon. He walked off the highway, found a payphone. He called the number they gave him in China. When they called back, he gave them the words on the street signs. Half an hour later a black car picked him up and dropped him in Chinatown. He’s been walking around town since.”

  Uncle Four blew the steam gently around the rim of the thick porcelain cup. “What about the ones who drowned?” he asked the Fukienese.

  The man took a breath. His eyes went distant.

  “It was the ocean, the darkness. We’re not used to it, you see.” He shivered, continuing, “We’re from the South of China, the water is always warm. When we dropped in, the water was so icy my muscles were in shock. I stroked and kicked but went nowhere. I was afraid my bones would freeze and snap and I’d sink and drown. People were screaming. Less than a hundred yards to land, I could see it. It was hard to breathe. My hands were chopping at the waves. I thought my heart would explode. I started to swallow saltwater.”

  His eyes came back.

  “Then a wave caught me and suddenly there was a short walkway of land, where it rose up under the water. I caught my breath and saw the beach again. There was more screaming far behind me, near the ship. More people drowning. Another minute I was ashore, changing my clothes. I found a phone, made the call. I’m here. They said the Big Uncle would have work for me.”

  Uncle Four lowered his teacup to the table, leveled a hard look at the Fuk Chou man.

  “Young man, you have come a long way, and you owe a lot of money. Remember well the terror of the ocean if you ever consider reneging on your debt. Your punishment will be a hundred times worse. You cannot hide. We will find you. Or America will swallow you up. Your family back in the village, all are at risk for you. So work hard. Don’t mix with the gwai lo. Repay your debt, then seek your fortune. Every man has a chance here. Do not fumble away your golden opportunity.”

  “Eternal thanks, Big Uncle,” the young man said quietly.

  Uncle Four nodded at Golo, who escorted the man out, dictating directions into his ear.

  The restaurant began to fill for yum cha and Uncle Four took his tea to the big glass window and watched pedestrians passing along the shadowy narrow street. His thoughts drifted back a half-century, to when he had arrived in New York City as a Tois-hanese child. He’d grown up in a time when Chinese men faced off in back alleys with hatchets and cleavers. A time when the storied tongs had a death grip on the old sojourners.

  More than forty years had passed since that night in the dusty room down in Mongkok, on the Kowloon side, with the ancestral scrolls and the flags of the mythical heroes on the wall, with twenty other dog recruits, where he drank the blood of a man and fowl mixed with wine, and swore on his life the Thirty-Six Oaths of secrecy and loyalty to his Triad blood brothers.

  Now the Red Circle Triad had expanded outside of Communist mainland China, remaining a powerful force in Hong Kong, but spreading to Singapore, Amsterdam, Canada, and South America.

  He remembered hand signals, instinctively ran his fingers along his forearm in an X, then hands, pitching fingers across his palm. Two fingers, three, five, dragon’s head and tail. He grinned at the foolishness of his youth.

  Uncle Four was not pleased about the way things had changed. The tongs were depicted as thuggish, evil organizations. The newer waves of immigrants didn’t give respect to them. And every time business was transacted, there were the lawyers, the brokers, the city officials, the bank regulators. The paperwork, the documentation. He preferred things under the table. Quiet. Secretive.

  Forty years ago, the Hip Chings had welcomed his return as a hero, never mentioning the jail time he’d served for what the white officials called tax evasion and labor racketeering. The tong had rewarded him a full share of the Chinese Numbers route he helped create before his incarceration. They had supported his family in China, where his first wife died, where elderly relatives were sustained into old age.

  Uncle Four had taken the numbers proceeds from the hundred membership storefront operations and invested in the bak fun and in gambling basements from Pell Street to Division Street. T
en percent of the gross from gambling was paid back to the tong, blood cash that funded the benevolent work of the Association.

  When the Feds investigated him, he dispersed his holdings and retired from the Association, becoming its advisor for life.

  He sipped the tea thinking, There is no respect anymore.

  Long shadows jagged along the street. He blew steam off the tea cup as the plastic wall-clock chimed, then waved goodbye to Golo who was already on the street, lighting up his trademark 555. Uncle Four knew it was too early in the day for the gang boys, so Golo would probably wait until the afternoon races at OTB before taking up the matter with the daai gor—big brother—in charge. No big deal. He would make them see the foolishness of their young minds. The punks were attracting attention toward the Hip Ching and it was bad for business.

  It wasn’t like in Hong Kong, where he could thrash the little dogs inside the Triad assembly hall. Here, the Chinese gangs had their own membership of undisciplined teenaged hotheads, including many who didn’t speak or read Chinese, controlled supposedly by their “elder brothers,” the dailo.

  Uncle Four shook his head disdainfully.

  They had even had to translate the Thirty-Six Oaths into English, which came out to only twelve oaths, to simplify the ritual, as the street boys were incapable of memorizing thirty-six consecutive ideas.

  Of the Twelve Oaths, even the most lethal sounded blunt, almost businesslike, in English reading: I will obey the tong, and if I do not, I will die under the condition of being shot; the secret of the Association must be kept and if I do not do this I will be stabbed a thousand times; and if the tong comes into difficulty and I do not come to its aid, I will die by the electric shock, or be burned by fire.

  Uncle Four finished his tea, and stared out over his world with the same disappointment he was feeling toward the young gangsters. No discipline these days, he thought, as he left the Joy Luck, heading toward Confucius Towers, completely ignoring the shortness of his shadow that preceded him down the pavement.