He started his second boilermaker. Payback is a bitch, like they say. The party was small thanks for those who’d helped on Sing’s case.
He’d invited Ruben, Miguel, and Luis-the tres amigos-sitting in the third booth. Cervezas all around, and smoking up a storm cloud. The three Mexican truckmen seemed to fit well with the Loisaida Boricua regulars at Grampa’s.
He leaned back and imagined the headline scoop he owed Vincent Chin and the United National: KILLER OF CHINESE DELIVERYMAN EXTRADITED TO HONG KONG FOR PAST CRIMES. They’d have to do dim sum sometime. Taking a gulp of the icy beer, he still marveled at Ah Por’s bank clue. More yellow Taoist witchcraft. He fired up a cigarette and considered how his stitches weren’t pulling so much anymore. The boilermakers were beginning to scatter his thoughts, and the jukebox thundered on.
The only one who seemed out of sorts was Billy Bow, who sat across from Jack in the corner booth. Billy scarfed down a baked clam and chased it with some Dewar’s.
“So it boils down to stinky tofu,” he said, wrinkling his nose. “One Chinaman with a paper name snuffs another Chinaman with a paper name, both here illegally mind you, and no one except you really gives a shit how they jacked the killer back to China? Man, that’s fucked up.”
Billy had a way of putting things, especially when he’d had a few drinks. His words held some truth, however. Gaw and Sing were two invisible men who no one paid much attention to. One eked out a living on the edges of the restaurant industry. His invisibility got him killed. The other was a Triad criminal hiding in plain sight for twenty years. He cultivated his invisibility, and it allowed him to kill.
If Gaw hadn’t killed Sing, their lives would have gone on, almost predictably, and no one would have even known they existed.
Jing deng, Jack mused, destiny. Always in control.
Billy took another slug of the Dewar’s, turned his cynicism toward the rest of the party.
“Too many niggas and spics here tonight,” he muttered.
“Billy, stop,” Jack said. “They all helped me during the case. Just like you did.”
“Yeah, but … I know, but …” He shook his head.
“So relax, all right?” Jack pleaded. “Have another drink.” Then he leaned in, spoke just loud enough to be heard, “And don’t be such a fucking hater, okay?”
Before Billy could protest, Jack gave him a brotherly pat across the shoulders.
“And remember,” Jack continued. “I owe you a date at Chao’s.”
Billy brightened immediately, the thought of pussy erasing the racist spike in his brain. “That’s right!” he remembered alcoholically.
“All right,” Jack reinforced the change in mood, buying Billy another round. Better drunk than sorry. He could always get someone at Grampa’s to take Billy home if necessary.
By the third boilermaker, Jack began to put together what Ah Por’s witchy words actually meant. The rat could be a reference to the Year of the Rat, the coming year in the Chinese horoscope. Ten months away. Ah Por meant Bossy won’t see the next year? If so, according to her words, it’d be true that Bossy’s fortune was nothing more than death money. He’d never be able to spend it fast enough. The largesse would be left to whom? His Taiwanese wife? His gangster-wannabe son?
Maybe justice traveled in a slower circle, pondered Jack.
He watched Billy take his scotch to the pool table in the back, where a vampy white girl was waiting to hustle a willing fish like him.
Ruben was the first to leave, followed by Johnson. As the party wound down, Jack stopped keeping track of who left. By 1 A.M. the pace had slowed to a drunken slog. He didn’t see Billy anywhere and signed his running tab before leaving Grampa’s.
He was home by 2 A.M., noting the time display on the clock radio before collapsing onto his bed.
Backup
Jack awoke to a brilliant morning, shaking off the lingering haze from the night’s boilermakers. He knew the sky was brilliant by the bright light knifing in at the edges of his shaded windows. He turned on the TV, surfed the channels until he came to local news, an item featuring the Lantern Festival in Chinatown. Chinese schoolchildren parading with lanterns around Chinatown.
He muted the sound, reached for his cell phone, which was vibrating on the nightstand.
There were two messages that he’d missed during the noisy scene at Grampa’s. The first one was from a Ninth Precinct number, an NYPD shrink named May McMann, about rescheduling an appointment.
The second message was from a number he didn’t know, but he recognized Alexandra’s voice right away.
“Heyyy, let’s meet at Tsunami, at four P.M.” Curt, to the point. He hadn’t seen her in more than a week.
When he tried to call the number back, all he got was disconnect.
He powered the audio back, watched as candlelit Chinese lanterns floated down Mott Street followed by a marching band from the Chinese school. Many businesses hung lanterns above their doors, inviting luck for the new year.
Then he thought about Sing. Singarette, who would have turned twenty-four this year. Yee say, the numbers whispered, twenty-four sounding like easy to die in Cantonese.
The images of Sing, from the river to the grave, tumbled in his brain. He didn’t think anyone would visit Sing at Saint Margaret’s, but he knew that cherry lady Huong would offer prayers and memorials at the Buddhist temple.
He won’t be forgotten.
On the TV screen, the Chinatown religious and civic groups marched along, joined by a contingent of Chinese auxiliary police officers.
He got up and looked at his stitches in the mirror, the jagged lines scabbing over now. He’d lose the stitches in a few days, he knew.
Not in a celebratory mood, he turned off the TV and lay back down on the bed. He couldn’t reconcile the mixed feelings in his head. Though he was happy that he’d caught Sing’s killer, the arrest felt hollow. Mak Mon Gaw might yet get justice, but for other crimes. And Bossy’d gotten away scot-free, at least for now. According to Ah Por, Bossy wasn’t going to make it to the next lunar New Year. We’ll see, thought Jack.
He closed his eyes and tried to quiet the chatter inside his head. He imagined the patchy ground of the potter’s field at Saint Margaret’s and the mourning sounds of an erhu far off in the distance.
Come Back
Tsunami was a sushi joint, located where the Lower East Side melted into the East Village, walking distance from Alex’s AJA storefront. They had a sushi bar where the fish snacks circulated around on a conveyor belt. You could order cold soba or hot udon or kushiyaki on the side.
He and Alex had celebrated there a couple of times before.
He pictured Alex’s pretty face. It’d been a week since he’d seen her, almost two weeks since they last made love. Coming straight out of Brooklyn by see gay, he hadn’t had the chance to stop in Chinatown to get her something sweet from Mott Street.
He was considering where to sit, bar or booth, when she walked in.
Alex gave him a peck on the cheek and ushered him into one of the empty booths, sliding in behind him. She looks great, he thought, something edgy around her eyes.