Henry Chang - Year of the Dog

Power struggle, mused Jack, or someone had a nasty beef to settle.

Out on the edge of the Ninth, the reports had arrived early. Toys “R” Us had held a 7 AM sale where two shoppers were arrested for bashing each other over a ten-dollar talking Spider-Man doll. At Kmart, a riot had broken out, with aggressive shoppers trampling each other to get to a fifty-dollar color TV.

For Giving, thanks. .

P.O.s and cars to the scene.

From Black Friday to the days before Christmas, businesses were marching from loss to profitability. Ads for sales and discounts lured shoppers into the stores and malls, feeding the frenzy of shopping that overwhelmed the moral and spiritual message of the holidays. The thought brought back to Jack one of Ma’s Buddhist sayings: To attain nothingness is true happiness. The saying flew in the face of capitalism and did not work well in this city, this country, this modern world of money and machines. A belief better left to monks on high mountain steppes, away from the din and roar of industrialized civilizations everywhere.

The way that things flowed, the tao, kept him on call, on edge, but even then the Chinatown things crowded back into his head. The killing of the Ping lady, which had provoked the Fukienese demonstrations, the burglaries, the gang crime and brazen gunplay, events outside his jurisdiction pecking at his sense of duty.

Old Chinese grandmothers get run over by trucks all the time on Canal Street. They walk too slowly and seem to believe no driver will dare run them down. They are at fault yet these are tragedies nonetheless.

Who really cares?

In a cop’s life, the more he touched upon tragedy, the more it rubbed off on him, became part of him. Too much tragedy drove some cops to eating their guns.

Trying to clear the black kharma from his mind, his thoughts came to Alexandra Lee, activista lawyer and friend. He remembered that he needed to thank her for her help in arranging his recent Hawaiian vacation. He decided to visit her NoHo office after the shift, but he’d go down to Chinatown first, drop by on Billy Bow, homeboy, at the tofu factory.

Approaching meal break, Jack ordered take-out sushi from Avenue B, a trendy joint where you could still get raw fish at 3 AM. Four blocks from the stationhouse, he considered the quick jog to Avenue B and back as exercise, movement of the blood.

The trendy sushi spot was still jamming at three in the morning, full of weekend club crawlers slinking out of dance palaces like Webster Hall and Limelight, the party crowd needing to tone down what remained of the Ecstasy rush with sake and raw fish.

U2 jams kicking off the DJ jukebox.

Jack was paying for his Nabeyaki Special, a soup-and-sushi combo, when he heard a commotion outside, on the street that had been deserted on his way in.

The patrons turned their heads.

The restaurant’s manager, a young Asian Pacific dude, who tried to look yakuza but who struck Jack as more NYU Business Management School, pushed his way out the door to check out the disturbance.

Pocketing his change, Jack went toward the door.

When he stepped out onto the street he saw a short white man by the curb, in a fatigue army coat, howling up at the streetlamps beneath the cold black night. His hot breath was a rush of steam in the frozen air. He kept his hands in the coat pockets.

EDP, Jack recognized, emotionally disturbed person.

The restaurant manager, deciding how to approach him, kept at a distance.

“Excuse me, man, excuse me,” the NYU yakuza pleaded.

The ED man looked to be in his twenties, homeless, snot dripping off his nose. Looked like a bugged-eyed Charlie Manson.

He continued yelling.

Jack was wondering if any of the neighbors had called 911 yet when the man took a step toward the sushi manager.

You had to be careful with EDPs, remembered Jack; there was no telling how they’d react.

State institutions had dumped thousands of them, and many of these walking timebombs had found their way to the city, which was unprepared to deal with them.

Jack flashed his gold badge, said authoritatively, “ Hey, pal, how’s about we get you into a warm shelter? Get you a hot bowl of soup? A bed?”

He imagined he heard sirens in the distance.

The disturbed man turned toward Jack, and smiled, slowly bringing his hands up to his face. He pulled back the outside corners of his eyes, making slanted chinky eyes. Then he laughed, a big howl.

“Ya Jap muddafukker!” he screamed at Jack. “You ain’t no cop! Ya sneaky cocksucker!” He spat at the Asian manager, who stepped away from Jack.

Okaay, realized Jack, disturbed, but not so disturbed that he couldn’t dredge up the racism in his soul. The words and curses drove the humanity and compassion out of Jack’s heart. He saw the man now as just another deranged skell, a danger to himself, if not others.

The skell dropped down into a kind of Kung Fu stance, making catlike Bruce Lee sounds.

Be cool, Jack thought, taking a step back. The skell’s mind might be screwed up, but that didn’t mean there was anything wrong with his body.

Suddenly the skell launched himself at Jack.

Instinctively, Jack twisted his hip and leaned back as the wild man’s foot whipped up, missing Jack but punting his sushi takeout into the street. The Manson clone’s right hand came out of the coat with something metallic, swinging down toward Jack in a wide arc.

Jack threw up a bow arm that blocked the attack, and stepped into him, hooking his foot, and throwing him off balance. Jack rocketed a stiff palm into his chest and the skell fell backward, into a dive. After he hit the sidewalk, Jack put a knee in his back and slammed his wrist, sending a box cutter skittering along the sidewalk. The fight went out of him when the cuffs went on. Crazy, but not stupid.

Jack caught his breath while the sushi manager profusely thanked him, the ying hung hero of the moment. Splattered along the gutter were the udon noodles and the hamachi.

Flashing lights from the patrol car less than a half-mile away.

Down the avenue, EMS rolling in.

They’d work out the chain of custody, and the EDP would wind up in Bellevue for psych observation. Homeless outreach services would follow. Eventually, he’d be put back on medication and released, another timebomb, back into the population.

There would be future victims.

By the time Jack got it all straightened out with the uniforms he’d lost his appetite, and made his way back to the station-house for the end of the overnight.

Sai Go fingered the switch, and stood in the dim yellow light. He noticed it was past 4 AM as he removed his wristwatch and laid it on the counter of the bathroom sink. When he looked in the mirror, he saw a haggard beat-up old man. He was only fifty-nine. Dead eyes that were sinking into the emaciated face. The gray-white crewcut hairs sprouting out, in need of a trim. The stubble spreading from his chin.

The little plastic bottles were in a line up behind the sliding mirror glass of the medicine cabinet. Although he was proud that he could usually read aloud in his broken English the colorful names assigned to the horses on the racing form, the words on the pill bottles were unfathomable.

Taxol.

They’d found a tumor in his lung. Nodule. Adenocarcinoma.

He was finding it hard to stay focused.

Vinorelbin.

One pill twice a day. One pill every two days.