Henry Chang: Red Jade

“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.

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.