Jing deng, Jack remembered, destiny.
The Harbor boat had blocked off the view from the Manhattan shore, shielding and securing the scene.
Jack checked his watch, made a mental note of the time: 8:49 A.M. There was a trace of salt in the wind, from far out where the river met the bay and then the Atlantic. He imagined the taste of salty seawater flowing off the sides of the Harbor boat as the sergeant rowed them forward. He noticed traffic sounds in the distance, from the shores of both north Manhattan and the South Bronx, highway traffic en route to another brutal winter day. He’d get the names and commands of the other cops later.
The river freeze seeped into Jack’s jacket as they angled for the stern of the waiting boat.
“We got a male body,” Sergeant Cohen offered, working the oars. “Maybe Asian.“ The word brought a cold pang of realization to Jack, knowing for certain now why he’d gotten the call.
“Snagged on a sunken tree,” the sergeant continued. “After the Harbor Unit arrived, the branches shifted in the water and the body got lifted a little.”
Jack nodded but was silent, taking a few shaolin breaths through his nose as they maneuvered around the bigger boat’s stern. He patted for the plastic disposable camera he had in his jacket pocket. There was nothing else floating, nothing remarkable in the water surrounding the scene.
As they came around, Jack saw that the dragging and twisting of the submerged tree trunk had raised the body almost even with the surface of the water, caught on dead branches against large, jagged chunks of river ice.
Closer now, and Jack saw that the body wore a black bubble jacket with a black hoodie underneath. Blue jeans. The puffy bubble jacket was saturated and resembled a life jacket. The distant traffic sounds faded to the more immediate setting where Jack could now hear his own heartbeat as he lifted the head and shoulders out of the water. Male. Asian. He was already blue in the face but looked freshly dead. Jack felt for a pulse, but the man was clearly cold-frozen stiff. As hard as the body was, Jack couldn’t make a guess on rigor mortis, but there were no obvious signs of trauma to the head or face and no blood, disjointed limbs, or other injuries as far as Jack could see. A jumper? The guy looked young but was probably in his midtwenties, Jack guessed. He fit the profile. Looked like a student, maybe. But up here in the Harlem River? Deliveryman was Jack’s next thought. Black hair cut short at the sides, longer on top. Chinatown style, but he didn’t look like a first-generation immigrant.
Jack took pictures and headshots with his free hand. Finally, he took wide shots of the scene before giving the Harbor Unit the nod to haul in the corpse.
THE BOAT COPS used the long hooks, pulled and grappled the stiff body onto a black rubber bag they had spread out on the deck. The man’s dark sweatshirt and jacket were waterlogged, soggy, and bunched from the handling.
The blond skipper had a trunk full of crime scene supplies on board and offered plenty of plastic bags to protect evidence.
The deceased, whom Jack suspected might be Chinese-meaning he could fall anywhere from Toishanese to Taiwanese, Cantonese to Shanghainese, or any of a dozen strains of ethnic Chinese-wore dark blue jeans and black Timberland-type boots and looked as generic as anybody in a Gap jeans ad. His jacket had been pulled up by the grappling hook, but just inside the cuff of the left sleeve was a fancy-looking wristwatch. Jack recognized it right away: a knockoff Rolex. A Canal Street copy that the Viet-Chinese moved thousands of every year.
Other than the wristwatch, no jewelry.
In his pants pockets, there were forty-four cents, a set of keys on a ring, a red plastic comb. There was a pack of Marlboros in his jacket, along with some soggy scraps of paper. One of the scraps looked like a Chinese receipt for fruit or produce, and the other was a torn piece of a Chinese takeout menu with Chinese numbers and words scribbled across the edges.
The ink on the scraps had started to run.
Jack took tight pictures of everything and then bagged the items, but also considered what wasn’t there. No wallet, no identification of any kind. No money to speak of, no cell phone, no jewelry. Maybe the knockoff Rolex had gotten pushed up inside the jacket sleeve and hadn’t been noticed. Except for the wristwatch, Jack suspected it could have been a robbery. The medical examiner would have something more later, Jack knew. A vic? Or a jumper? The body hadn’t seemed busted up at all, like it’d be if he’d dropped from a great height.
A call came over the sergeant’s radio, and they all looked toward Manhattan, where they could see the flashing lights of an EMS unit near the park seawall. The Harbor boat fired up its twin engines as the mate attached the rowboat to its towline.
The river wind gusted up again, and then all Jack could hear was the churning wake and the slapping bounce of the metal rowboat against the waves as they ferried the dead man back toward shore.
Jack scanned the horizon and saw they were past where the Metro-North trains crossed the river and headed north, through the Bronx, Yonkers, and Westchester, to upstate New York.
He wondered where the body had entered the river, but he felt certain it was north, in the vicinity of one of the four bridges spanning the Harlem River. Statistically, the most common drowning victims are males in their teens through their midtwenties. Most deceased carried ID or had left a goodbye letter behind. Some had already been reported as missing persons.
Of the annual suicide drownings in New York City, the group didn’t amount to more than a dozen or so heartbroken, overwhelmed people on the edge, or mentally ill, over-pressured students and folks caught in scandalous behavior. Unless there was a related catastrophic accident like a plane crash, it wasn’t a huge file.
The area bridges over the river now had guardrails and tall fencing along their walkways to deflect potential stunt leapers and suicides, after a spate of them in the 1980s.
The skimming metal sound from the towed rowboat began to slow as they approached the shore.
Smooth and Easy
EMS PLACED THE black body bag on a gurney and took it south to the morgue as a squad car drove Jack and the sergeant six blocks west to the Thirty-Second Precinct. The grittiness of Harlem rolled past until they got to 135th Street.
The Three-Two station house was modern looking, like it had recently gotten a facelift. Three-two, Jack remembered-som yee-propitious numbers that sounded like the Cantonese for “smooth and easy.” At least he was out of the cold, Jack thought, and could deal with the evidence more comfortably.
Sergeant Cohen commandeered a table away from the duty desk where they could review the morning’s events. He also provided coffee from the squad’s break room.
“Thanks,” Jack offered. “I’m also going to need the missing persons reports from the last two days.”
“Just the last two?”
“He didn’t look like he’d been in the water too long,” Jack said. “Let’s just see if his profile or picture turns up on the sheet.” He knew it was a long shot anyway, and the ME’s findings would be hours away.
“Got it,” the sergeant agreed, sounding like he’d almost had his fill of overtime. “It may take a little while because of the club fire.” Jack thanked him as he went off to the computer room with his coffee.