Henry Chang - Death Money

He went past the Burger King and Mickey D’s, tourist havens, past the electronics and odd-lot discount shops and surplus stores, almost to Church Street.

He was surprised.

Number 368 Canal Street was a newer Bank of America branch, a half-mile from the bank-crowded heart of Chinatown but very clear about its identity. A semicircular glass façade faced the street, like a moon gate. Inside, there were bright colors, Asian-friendly tones over a bamboo forest motif.

A flight of stairs led up to a wall of six teller stations, smiling Chinese girls behind bulletproof Plexiglas. A seating area, clean and mellow. A flight of stairs down to the safe-deposit vault. The assistant manager sat behind a desk and looked like a younger version of Bossy.

There weren’t any customers around.

Jack badged him, showed him Sing’s key, and asked, “Do you list Jun Wah Zhang as an account? This is a murder investigation.”

The assistant manager seemed unimpressed and spoke Cantonese with a Shanghainese accent. “Don’t you need a warrant or something for that?” he challenged.

“Sure, I can do that,” Jack said with a smile, “but that could take all night. In the meantime I’d have to post a uniformed officer here to make sure no one goes into any of the boxes. You’ll have to turn customers away. Tomorrow, too, if necessary.”

The man’s Adam’s apple bounced a couple of times.

“Think that’ll ruin your manager’s dinner, his whole evening?” Jack pressed.

The assistant manager wavered, swallowed hard. He reluctantly tapped up some names from his computer keyboard, frowned, and escorted Jack to a box in a wall of small slotted boxes. He matched Sing’s key to his master and opened the little cast-metal door. He slid the thin, metal safe-deposit box out and flipped open the lid.

Jack saw there were two photographs: an old snapshot of a family of three, in the faded colors of the 1970s, of young parents and an infant son, in a rural Chinese setting. The mother, in village dress, cradled the child in her arms, precious , smiling. The father, smiling cautiously, held a miner’s helmet in one hand, resting the other on his wife’s shoulder. The simple Chinese notations on the back read “Ma and Ba, 1971.” The other photo was more recent, a tourist snapshot at the Statue of Liberty. Singarette, with Lady Liberty looming in the background, beaming a jubilant smile at the camera. So happy to be in America! The photo looked like it had been taken in the fall, November maybe, judging by the clothes worn by park rangers in the background of the picture. A posed-tourist Polaroid in a cardboard frame.

There was a China passport and student visa banded together, which he’d purchased from the real Jun Wah back in Poon Yew village.

These were the items Sing had considered most valuable, enough to keep them safe: a photo of his real family and, ironically, the passport visa he’d bought for a new future in America.

Ah Por’s yellow witchery had paid off again.

Jack signed for the items, slipped them inside his jacket, and on the way out wondered if the victim’s file was the right place for what was left of Sing’s life. On Canal Street, the offices and commercial businesses had begun to shut down, workers anticipating the rush hour home.

Looking east, he decided to make one more visit before leaving Chinatown.

“WE TRIED TO call you,” the manager said as soon as he saw Jack enter the funeral parlor. “Two nights ago. He’s been interred already.” The manager paused. “At Saint Margaret’s. There’s another procession going out there in the morning. You can catch a ride out.”

Jack thanked him, went to Bowery, and caught a sai ba to Brooklyn.

When he got back to Sunset Park, he felt emotionally exhausted, with the various injuries barking at him now. He ordered gnow mei noodles at one of the soup shacks on Eighth Avenue, chased it with a pain pill, and wondered what Bossy or Solomon Schwartz had up his sleeves next.

SAINT MARGARET’S LAY above Astoria Boulevard on the edge of East Elmhurst, not far from LaGuardia Airport. Both destinations were familiar to Chinatown see gay drivers.

It was an old cemetery, not as big as Evergreen Hills or other cemeteries in Queens, and had only a small Chinese section, mainly from Chinese families that had moved into Elmhurst during the 1970s.

The elderly groundskeeper was accommodating to Jack’s badge, escorted him to the Chinese section. He saw a mash-up of Chinese surnames carved into the varied headstones protruding like crooked teeth from the hillside edge of the cemetery.

“Right there.” The groundskeeper pointed at a field next to the cemetery dump. There were no tombstones there, only small stone markers sunk into the uneven ground. A potter’s field . Upon closer inspection, Jack saw markers that were polished, brick-sized leftovers from some wholesale rock quarry.

Gradually, he found the Chinese character for “Chang”-

— engraved into flat gray stone. A respectful carving, considering it was a charity job . Tossed to one side was a small wooden slat that the cemetery used as a temporary grave marker. The slat had JUN WAH CHANG scrawled in black Chinese script.

Jack took the piece of wood and gouged out a shallow hole next to Sing’s stone marker. He’d put Sing’s family photo into a Ziploc bag and now placed it in his final resting place. Jack covered it over carefully and tamped down the ground with his hands.

He lit the three sticks of incense he’d gotten from the funeral driver and bowed three times. Rest in peace , he offered silently.

The sky seemed to brighten on the drive back to Chinatown.

He got the driver to let him off on Canal Street, across from the market vendors on Mulberry. He could see the colorful displays of fruit, the cherry stand, on the other side of the busy boulevard.

At the cherry stand, Huong was surprised to see him and knew it wasn’t a social visit.

“You’ve found justice for Sing?” she asked. Jack silently nodded yes as she took a breath, covered her mouth with her hand.

“He was a good man,” she said, shaking her head.

“He’s buried in Queens, under the name Chang,” Jack said. “Not much of a cemetery for Chinese. But anyway, I thought he’d want you to have this.” He handed her Sing’s Statue of Liberty photo.

There was sadness behind the happiness in her eyes as she stared at the photo. She took a calming breath, said, “This is the way I like to remember Sing. Smiling at the world.” She gave Jack a glance and a small smile.

“Thank you, Detective,” she said. “I can put this in my family’s temple. We can say prayers for him on all the holidays, and on his birthday.”

Which is Saint Patrick’s Day , Jack remembered, a few weeks away .

“And I still owe you a lunch,” he said.

“I haven’t forgotten.”

“Just let me know what place you like,” Jack added.

Huong smiled sadly and pocketed the photo as a group of tourists approached to buy cherries.

“I’ll let you know,” she answered as he backed away and turned with a wave goodbye.

Somehow he didn’t feel that date was going to happen, that they’d already come to the end of the chapter. He was almost to Bayard Street when his cell phone jangled. It was Sarge from the Fifth, a garbled connection from which Jack understood only the word “forensics.”

He was just two blocks west of the station house.

THE WORDS TRANSFIXED Jack as he read the fax copy of the forensics report.