Henry Chang - Red Jade

They landed without incident.

Jack cabbed Eddie back to lower Manhattan, feeling oddly enough that both of them were home . Jack could feel Eddie scheming even as he was turned over at the Tombs for detention. By the time he’d get a public defender he’d be at Rikers, with the rest of the New York City bad boys. Maybe he’d get Punitive Segregation, for his own good, which, ironically, was where Johnny Wong was being held.

By the time he’d completed the transfer of custody at the Tombs it was 9 PM, too late to find Ah Por. Snow flurries filled the air. Captain Marino wasn’t at the Fifth and Jack already felt jet-lagged. He was hungry, and considered calling Alex like he’d promised, but it was very late for dinner and he thought better of dragging her out in the snow and cold.

He’d been gone a week and really wanted to get back to Sunset Park, eat some Shanghai dumplings, shower, and sleep in his own bed. He went down to East Broadway and caught a Chinese see gay . The driver whizzed him across the Brooklyn Bridge with the window down a crack. He watched the night colors playing across the river, the thousands of sparkling lights dancing between the snowflakes, and imagined everything calling to him.

Welcome home .

Overnight flurries had left a sloppy inch of frozen snow on the ground, and Jack was glad to be wearing his Timberland boots and down jacket again. When he arrived at the 0-Five the captain was in a morning meeting. The door to his office was closed and the desk sarge groused, “It could be a while.”

Jack decided to get some hot tea and see if Billy Bow or Ah Por was around. He peered into the steamy window of the Tofu King and didn’t see Billy. Ah Por wasn’t on line for free congee at the Senior Citizen’s Center. He decided to give Alex a call.

She was busy preparing a case but they agreed to meet at the Golden Star later that night. Jack decided to visit Lucky at Downtown Hospital before coming back to see the captain.

In the captain’s office, Shelly Littman placed his silver Halliburton briefcase down at the short edge of Captain Marino’s desk. He leveled his blue shark eyes at ADA Bang Sing and announced, “I’ve had witnesses come forward lately who will swear that my client couldn’t have been at the scene, but that’s just more background. Now, it seems, Detective Yu has even less of a chance to make his case than before. If I have INTERPOL testify about the possible abduction of this woman, with witnesses , mind you, and the corroborating reports of Seattle PD, not to mention that Detective Yu shot and killed my legal assistant who was investigating this same woman suspect , there’ll be a ton of questions and a ton of doubt as to my client having been the lone shooter of Uncle Four.”

Captain Marino shifted uneasily in his seat behind the big desk, and ADA Sing twisted his mouth into a frown.

“You don’t have a case, Sing,” Littman continued. “I’ll tear your detective up on the stand. The jury will love it. Every conflicting statement that comes out of his mouth-and I don’t even have to mention the mess with Internal Affairs-allegations of corrupt behavior, etcetera-every word puts him deeper into the crapper. So here’s the deal: my client has already confessed to buying the gun and loading it. That’s all, guilty of stupidity . He cops to illegal possession of a handgun for time served. He’ll probably lose his chauffeur’s license, maybe his car.”

Littman smirked. Time served .

To the captain, it seemed like ADA Bang Sing flinched at the thought of being accused of wasting taxpayers’ money on a bad case. A politician’s awareness. Marino knew they’d have to advise Jack, and would need to temper the decision to fold against the good job he’d otherwise done in Seattle.

At Downtown Hospital, it was just another frigid and gloomy New York City morning, with the EMS techs bringing in the frostbitten or frozen-dead homeless and the elderly. New immigrants with ashen faces waited patiently in the ER.

Jack wore his badge and cut straight to the CCU curtained-off space that was Lucky’s room. The darkness of the morning had tricked Jack, and he half-expected to see the overnight nurse.

The life-support machine pumped rhythmically in Lucky’s space, background sound for the electronic ping of the electrodes measuring his heartbeats. His cheeks had hollowed, sunken. How many more weeks before he’d become skeletal? wondered Jack grimly. He doubted Lucky had had any kind of health insurance, so the On Yee, who sponsored the Ghosts, were probably paying for the machine. They must believe that Lucky knows something, Jack surmised, secrets valuable enough for them to keep him alive.

“How much longer can this go on?” he heard himself say. When would the On Yee determine that Lucky was no longer important?

The resident neurologist had warned Jack against great expectations. “Even if he comes to, he’ll likely have some brain damage.”

Would he have forgotten the Ghosts? Or their secrets and memories of their childhood in Chinatown? Jack remembered their younger days, dashing across the black-tarred rooftops to their hiding places, and their childish hopes. Jack wanted to tell Lucky that he’d caught the punk who’d put the.22 slug in his brain, and wished Lucky could have understood the stupidity of dying over some stolen watches.

Unsure of what he was hoping to get from the motionless body, Jack left Lucky and turned his thoughts back to the Fifth Precinct.

The office was open and the captain motioned Jack in before he could rap on the door.

“Welcome back, Jack,” Marino began. “I want you to know I’ve put you in for another commendation. The chief thinks you did a good job bringing Eddie Ng back, and the DA’s office thinks it’s a solid case.” He paused for effect. “You can put in for those days at regular pay but the department won’t pay for airfare, hotel, or anything else.”

Jack responded with a smile and a knowing nod as the captain handed him a fax sheet.

“This came in from Seattle headquarters, from a Detective Nicoll.”

The fax confirmed that the blood workup was a match, that the blood on the bionic hand matched the blood found on the abandoned boat near Harbor Island and also on the fragment of the broken jade bangle. The report also noted scorch marks across the palm and fingers where the red bangle was grasped.

Jack felt the urge to visit Ah Por.

“I need to see all that in a report,” indicated the captain. “It moves the case forward, no?”

Jack nodded. “Yes sir, let’s see what else comes up.”

But no missing females had floated up. And no one had claimed a missing hand. Could it be Paper Fan’s? Or one of the other thugs?

“By the way,” Marino advised, “ADA Sing’s coming in.”

It sounded vaguely like a warning.

A minute later there was a rap on the door frame and Bang Sing entered. Jack stood to one side of Marino’s desk and exchanged nods with the assistant district attorney.

Sing, with his Chow Yun-Fat good looks, measured his words carefully.

“I got some bad news, and then worse news,” he said. This seemed directed at Jack, who noticed Sing pausing to take a breath, like a candidate about to deliver his speech.

“Eddie Ng has retracted his confession,” Sing said. “He’s now claiming that you coerced him, by making promises and threats. He alleges that you told him you’d let him be the Seattle jailhouse bitch if he didn’t go along with the confession. That you’d let skinheads fuck him in the ass. He said that you were harder on him because he was Chinese.”