Dark Before Dawn
“Rise up! Yu! Yuh got bodies!”
It was the overnight sarge calling from the 0-Nine, the
Ninth Precinct, growling something about Manhattan South
detectives into his ear, barking out a location with two bodies
attached to it.
As soon as Jack Yu caught the address, he knew: Chinatown
again. He was going back to the place he’d left behind
when he moved to Brooklyn’s Sunset Park, just across the
river but a world away.
It always started with the rude awakening, the alarms
going off in his head, the angry clamor, and then the Chinatown
darkness snatching him off again, back into the
Fifth Precinct, back to unfinished business. . . .
He’d been dead asleep, dreaming he was still partying at
the After–Chinese New Year’s party that Billy Bow had
pulled together at Grampa’s, aka the Golden Star Bar and
Grill, a favorite Chinatown haunt. In this dream, Jack was
picturing himself feeding quarters into the big jukebox
setup, a rock tune with a deep bass pounding out, Hey son
where ya going with dat gun in ya hand? He’s gulping back a
beer, scoping out the revelers. Gonna shoot ma lady, she
cheat’in wit annuda man.
Jack spots Alexandra. Alex. Friend and confidante, wearing
a bright red Chinese jacket, the color of luck, glowing in
the darkness of the bar. She nods at him and jiggles her
smile to the backbeat, her long black hair shimmering in
the dim blue light. Gonna shoot her down, down to the ground,
wailing from the jukebox. He wants to pull Alex close, to
bring her heart to heart, to kiss her eyes lightly and find out
what she’s thinking. But suddenly there’s this clamor, from
the back of his head, accelerating to his frontal lobe, like a
thundering lion drum starting up, following the raucous
clash of brass cymbals and iron gongs, exploding suddenly
into jarring, blinding consciousness.
He reached toward the frantic pleas of the noise, the cell
phone’s cry, the alarm clock’s clang. The clock radio banged
out a steady beat. Jack looped the beaded chain over his
head; the gold detective’s badge tumbled, then its weight
held the chain taut. He’d moved to Brooklyn and changed
precincts after Pa’s death, but still he hadn’t escaped the old
neighborhood. He rolled his neck, popped the ligaments,
pulled on his clothes.
He patted down his thermal jacket for the plastic disposable
camera, and dropped his Colt Detective Special into a
pocket.
He took the stairs down and stepped into the freezing
wind, letting the cold rain pelt his face, pumping up his
adrenaline. He jogged down to Eighth Avenue in the desolate
darkness, and jumped into one of the Chinese see gay,
car service lined up along the street of all-night fast-food
soup shacks. He badged the driver, giving the address in
Cantonese while slipping him a folded ten-spot.
“Go,” Jack said, “Faai di, quick. I’m in a hurry.”
The driver made all the green lights and the short-cut
turns. He blazed the black car across the empty Brooklyn
Bridge and dropped Jack off at Doyers Street, off the Bowery
in the original heart of Chinatown.
The trip had taken twelve screeching minutes.
Seven Doyers was a four-story walk-up right on the bend
of the old Bloody Angle, where the tong hatchetmen of the
past battled and bled over turf and women, butcher-sharp
cleavers hidden under their quilted Chinese jackets.
Jack knew the street well; it was around the corner from
where he’d grown up, where his pa had passed away recently.
And around the corner from where his former blood
brother Tat “Lucky” Louie had met his fate: shot in the
head, he was now comatose at Downtown Hospital.
The Bloody Angle was a serpentine, twisting street that
was anchored on the Bowery end by a Chinese deli, two
small restaurants, and a post office branch. Where the street
cut to the right and dipped down, there was a stretch of
Chinese barbershops and beauty salons on both sides.
Doyers was a Ghost street and everyone knew it. The
Ghost Legion was the dominant local gang that terrorized
Chinatown, and Lucky had been their dailo, their leader.
Normally, Lucky would have been Jack’s source for information
about gangland politics, but his condition had ended
such cooperation.
Seven Doyers stood above a Vietnamese restaurant and
the Nom Hoy Tea Parlor on an empty street lined with the
closed, roll-down gates used overnight. The uniformed officer
standing outside was a solitary figure beneath the yellow
glow of the old pagoda-style streetlamp; a tall, baby-faced
Irish kid, a rookie. Jack wondered how he’d pulled the
overnight shift. Had he been desperate for overtime or had
he fucked up somehow; was this a reward or punishment?
Jack, letting his gold badge dangle, asked, “So who called
it in?”
“Dunno,” the rookie answered with a shrug, “Sarge just
told me to stay here and secure the scene. Wait for you. Yu?”
The kid grinned.
“Where’s the sarge at?” Jack asked, looking at the entrance.
“Dunno,” the rookie repeated. “He got a call from the
captain and he left.”
Jack didn’t see a squad car anywhere. His watch read 5:45
am. “Who was here when you arrived?”
“An old Chinaman,” he answered, pausing, allowing for a
reaction from Jack, who didn’t rise to the bait. Jack offered
instead the inscrutable yellow face.
“He said he was the father,” the rookie continued. “And
that there were two dead bodies inside.”
“So where’s he now?”
“Dunno. He left after the sarge left.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Who?”
“The old Chinese-American,” Jack said.
“Oh. Said he had to make a phone call. Or something.
Hard to understand his funky English.”
Jack shook his head disdainfully, scanning the empty
street. “Keep an eye out,” he advised.
“Ten-four,” the rookie responded, straightening up as
Jack entered the building.
Death Before Dishonor
The door at the top of the first flight of rickety stairs was
slightly ajar. Yellow Crime Scene tape crossed its frame.
Jack pulled the tape back and took a breath. He pushed
the door gently, stepping into the space illuminated by dim
fluorescent light. The old apartment was a typical Chinatown
walk-up: a big rectangular room, sparsely furnished,
with a kitchenette and a small bathroom against a long wall.
Worn linoleum covered the floor. The rest of the space was
open. A little table nestled in the corner to his left, a puffy
jacket draped over a chair.
The place looked neat; there were no signs of a struggle.
Even in the half-light, Jack saw them right away: two bodies,
holding hands but sprawled apart, on their backs, across
the width of a bed in the far corner. Their legs dangled off
the side of the bed. One man, one woman, Chinese, as far
as he could make out in the shadowy distance.
The woman still had her quilted coat on.
There was a lady’s handbag placed neatly against the foot
of the bed.
On the linoleum at the headboard end was a small clock
radio, crash-tilted at an angle to the floor, its digital display
frozen at 4:44 am.
As he stepped closer, he figured the dead couple to be in
their mid-thirties. He couldn’t find a pulse, but the bodies
were still warm to the touch. Rigor had not set in.
Dead less than two hours, Jack thought.
He pulled the plastic disposable camera from his jacket.
The man still had two fingers of his right hand on the butt
of a gun, a small black revolver, just at the end of his grasp,
dangling askew off the duvet cover. He was grimacing; dark
blood spread from the back of his head. In the firm grip of
his left fist was the woman’s right hand, their fingers laced, as
if he was taking her with him somewhere. There was blood on
the back of her right hand, blood on the comforter that had
come from inside her palm, and a small red hole in the center
of her forehead. Beneath that, a dark puddle had formed
in the turned-up collar of her coat. Her eyes were open, and
her lips slightly parted; she wore a look of disbelief.
In the space between the two bodies was a crumpled business
card. Protruding from the man’s shirt pocket was a
folded piece of notepaper.
Jack stepped back and snapped photographs from different
angles and distances, wide shots and close-ups fixing the
images in his mind before Crime Scene arrived.
At 4:44 am, the woman wasn’t going out, Jack thought.
She’d just come home. And he was waiting for her, his jacket
draped over the chair. No sign of forced entry. He’d had a
key. Or she’d let him in.
The layout of the bodies made it look like she’d sat down
at the edge of the bed, placed her handbag on the floor,
and then he’d shot her. She’d fallen straight back, nestled
neatly into the comforter. Dead on impact, a bullet in her
brain, the back of her head bleeding out, he concluded.
Sometime after, the man had seated himself,...
