Henry Chang - Death Money

Jack slid out of the Chevy, quietly closing the driver’s door. He walked slowly toward Half-Ass thinking, Brace him quick, watch his hands, and keep at arm’s reach .

The man looked back into Half-Ass like he was checking on his takeout. Jack started crossing over and saw that the man quickly took notice of him. A look of recognition? As Jack got closer, the man started to back away toward Half-Ass, toward the building hallway where Jack had gotten slugged. He resembled the driver’s license photo of Mak Mon Gaw .

Jack didn’t want him running into the gambling basement and immediately flapped open his jacket, flashing his badge.

“Hey dailo !” Jack called. “What’s the rush, brother?” The man didn’t answer, continued to back into the building entrance.

Jack reached for the man’s shoulder only to have his hand deftly brushed aside, the man oddly smiling as he turned and dashed into the building. To Jack’s surprise, he didn’t head to the courtyard for the gambling basement but instead sprinted up the first flight of stairs leading to the upper floors. Jack sprinted after him, almost one flight behind. He braced himself with both hands as he dashed through the narrow landing, toward the next flight of uneven wood steps.

Two huffing flights up the stairway, Jack could see the man’s heels, their footsteps thundering up the rickety stairs. His heart hammering as he continued the chase up.

He can escape to Doyers or Bowery, using the roof stairs or fire escapes going down .

The man made it to the roof door, charged through it with a grunt. The door swung back, slamming. Jack paused when he got to it, took quick warrior breaths, and drew the Colt.

He lowered his shoulder at the door, thinking, He couldn’t have gotten more than a few yards out .

He barged onto the roof in a combat stance, sweeping a 360-degree arc with the Colt, wary of anything behind him.

The roof door slammed shut again, blocking out the dim light that came from the stairwell.

There was nothing but the darkness.

Two stories above the streetlamps. A cloudless sky, the only light from the full moon above. In the distance, condo lights from high-up picture windows of Confucius Towers, winking down at the Chinatown rooftops.

It was dead quiet except for the blood beating in his ears. Doyers to his right. Bowery to his left. He has to be around here somewhere . In his crouching advance, Jack scanned the inky roofscape as his eyes adjusted to the dark. A tangle of TV antennas, black, blocky skylights and stairwell sheds, rows of restaurant exhaust ducts, boiler-room chimneys, and scattered piles of construction debris everywhere.

Every step he took was black pitch beneath broken sheets of ice and snow. Everything looked like menacing shadows. There were too many places to hide, to duck behind. Chinatown rooftops were a good place to ambush a vic. Dark, isolated, quiet. No civilians to witness the crime.

He hadn’t called it in, wasn’t expecting backup cops. But he knew he didn’t want to end his career on a frozen Chinatown rooftop.

Ahead of him was the front roof edge, forty feet above Pell. He could see faint illumination from the streetlamps below.

Low walls that separated the rooftops ran on either side of him.

He took a few stealthy steps forward, changed his position, did another 360 sweep with the gun. Look for the fire-escape landings .

He heard a thud to his left, like something got knocked over. He found his balance and leaned in that direction. Footsteps would have given more , he thought. But if someone tossed something as a decoy, a misdirection …

He stepped to his left, glanced again over his shoulder as he moved forward. He caught a glimpse of something metallic in the moonlight and instinctively threw up a bow arm block. He felt the sting of cold steel as it sliced through his sleeve and bit into the bone of his elbow.

He fell backward onto the ice, his elbow taking the brunt of it. The swing of his gun hand smacked the Colt against a frozen hump and sent it clattering across the icy blackness. He could feel the blood gushing out of his arm and kicked upward at the attacking shadow, scuttling on his back, backward toward his Colt.

The attacker slashed at his legs, following with a series of lightning hoof kicks and dragon stamps, trying to stomp Jack off the roof, into oblivion. Sending heel kicks at his groin. The kicks came so fast and furious it felt like Jack was fending off two attackers.

Jack countered with a series of upward kicks and knee blocks, absorbing the attack with his legs. He looked back for the Colt, saw it gleaming on the snowy ice a body’s length away.

The man tried a few squatting stabs that Jack blocked with his hands. The knife caught the flap of Jack’s jacket and ripped it open. Still on his back, Jack continued to kick upward with leg blocks, trying to take out the attacker’s knees. He forced his body backward, desperately trying to reach the gun.

He could see the knife in the moonlight, held high in the man’s left hand. As he dove for the gun, the man leaped over him, positioning himself to bring the knife down.

Rolling over as he palmed the Colt, Jack squeezed off a blind shot over his shoulder. The blast froze the man as Jack straightened, jamming off another wild round as he rose on one knee.

The knife trembled in the man’s hand.

Jack leveled the Colt on him and cocked the hammer. “Drop the knife!” he yelled. “ Drop it or join your ancestors!”

The man waggled the knife. He had a long face with a clenched jaw, and his eyes looked demonic in the moonlight.

Jack blasted a round into the icy patch of roof between the man’s legs, splattering snow over his feet.

“You feelin’ me, kai dai? ” Jack said with a snarl. He could feel the blood oozing down his left arm, warm and slick-sticky now. He cocked the hammer again.

The man wavered for another second, thought better of it, and finally dropped the knife.

“On your knees!” Jack ordered. “On the ground!”

The man slowly complied. Jack pushed a foot into his back and forced him prone, held the Colt on his neck as he cuffed him with his blood-wet hand. He reached over for the man’s knife and dropped it into his jacket pocket.

Jack yanked him back up by the elbows and marched him back down the creaky stairs. He perp-walked him up Bowery, toward the station house. Running on adrenaline now, he hoped he wouldn’t bleed out on the short two-block march to Elizabeth Alley.

“Gaw, right?” Jack challenged. “You slugged me the other night, didn’t you?”

The man spat at the sidewalk, but his eyes were scanning the street as he stumbled along. He swiveled his head to check behind him, and Jack grabbed him by the collar.

“You’re good when your target’s not expecting it, huh?” Jack said, pushing him along. The man never responded, kept a frozen frown on his face as they turned from Bayard onto Elizabeth Alley, to the Fifth Precinct.

“You killed Zhang with a single stab because he wasn’t expecting it. You coward bastard.” Jack marched him past the duty desk and shoved him into the holding cage. He now belonged to the desk sergeant.

While the sergeant processed him, Jack carefully placed the bloody knife in a plastic baggie. He gave it to the sergeant, along with the DMV copy of Gaw’s driver’s license.

EMS arrived and tended to Jack’s wounds, trundling him into an ambulance as they rolled him back to Downtown Medical. Jack knew they’d stitch him up, give him a few shots to kill the pain. He wanted to pass out but knew he couldn’t, not before getting Gaw’s prints and making a few phone calls.