Henry Chang - Chinatown Beat

Although the Ghosts operated under the banner of the On Yee, the biggest, wealthiest, and most prestigious Chinatown tong, Lucky realized he had to navigate with great care the treacherous alliances with old-timers like Uncle Four, who controlled the Hip Chings. He knew the Legion had to be wary of new and formidable foes from Mainland China, Southeast Asia, and Taiwan.

He knew that when the politics shifted in Hong Kong's secret societies, the triads, the shit usually slammed into the fan on Mott Street.

The On Yee was a businessmen's Benevolent Association, the Number One high roller in America, a coast-to-coast secret society no workingman was able to join. They sneered at the ship jumpers, the waiters and dishwashers, the laundrymen, who joined the rival Hip Chings. In Chinatown, no business could open without paying deem heunqyau, bribes, to the On Yee membership.

Lucky knew their leadership was younger and more liberal, willing to take chances by working with Italians, and other to fan. He had seen elder leaders come and go, and less senior members disappear outright. On Yee membership was what he wanted, but only on his terms.

He saw the spiraling barber stripe down the street. He was almost there.

Over the years, he had developed a lumbering gait like a bear, trying to accommodate his bulk, resulting in an awkward strutting bop. He thought it was like a cool pimp roll, throwing his weight around.

He thought it intimidated his enemies.

The dirty brick building at 94 Elizabeth was a whorehouse disguised as a barbershop at street level, a mahjong club on the second floor, a massage joint on the third.

The barbershop had a backroom behind a red curtain, for that extra trim, or blow job. They played high-stakes mahjong on two, where Fat Lily Wong usually keptwatch over the premises. She was the eldest daughter of a Hip Ching officer.

The third floor had a sauna, two sofa beds, a set of massage gurneys on wheels, and four cubicles with covered mattresses. There was a condom machine on the wall.

Lucky went past the spinning candycane barber pole, pressed the bell, waited while Fat Lily checked him out via the surveillance camera. After a moment he was buzzed in.

Normally there were five girls working upstairs, Malaysians and Vietnamese. On Friday nights and weekends they added a crew of Korean girls, so they totaled a dozen in all, upstairs and downstairs. These girls serviced over three hundred men a week.

Lucky liked to rotate girls; sometimes he came here twice a week. He didn't care about the hundred a bang for the nasty sex, figured it was all part of the same dirty money circling around his life. It was like a perk, he thought, for the tension he had to deal with.

She told Lucky her name was Leena. She was a dusty-colored Malay girl with large brown nipples that cried out to be sucked. Lucky ran his tongue over the areolas in a circular motion, making tiny bites on the nipples as he went, sucking, bringing her body jerking up off the bed, her hands holding his head to her breasts, moaning now. Her body quivered on the cool sheets, her arms pulling him down into her, clutching at his lower back, floating over his buttocks, all the while moaning as he thrust in and out of her hot wetness.

He raised her legs into the air, held them by the ankles, spread them open into a V and rode his hardness into her, the wet slap of his groin against her bottom bringing sharp, loud groans, then pleading whispers.

When it got hotter, he turned her over, entered her from above. She wailed as Lucky pounded against her buttocks, begging now. He loved loving her He slipped his member out, brushed its slick hard head around her velvet lips, slipped it back inside. She gasped and he thrust hard and long, then softly, gently. He put his tongue inside her, licked around her hard little button, plunged himself back in. She just kept coming, convulsive spasms fighting for breath, coming even as he exploded, then shivering soft whispers, pleading, full of want and fulfillment.

Later he cradled her like a baby, nibbled on her ear. She turned over and took his spent member in her hand, caressing it, nestling her head into his throat, licking it.

They were two players, playing each other.

"I love you," he whispered, checking his Rolex.

"Sure," she agreed, "sure you do," giving him face.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he whispered, his tongue in her ear.

"Sure," she said, "I'll be waiting."

His hands went over her breast one last time.

She flicked up a cigarette and watched him making ready to go. When he finished dressing, he placed the crisp Ben Franklin on the bed next to her, kissed her on the head, and left the musty cool of the little room.

Confucius Towers was a forty-five-story crescent-shaped brick complex.

Uncle Four took the express elevator to apartment H, twenty stories above the heart of Chinatown. He heard the clatter of ivory tiles as he approached his door. No surprise there.

His wife, Tam tai, former Taiwanese starlet now longtime mahjong wife was holding court at the squared Wong fa lee antique table, surrounded by a much younger gaggle of siew lai lai, ladies of leisure, chatting her up over cocktails and seafood-sieve madumplings that were displayed on matching pearl-studded mahogany folding trays.

The wispy romance of Hong Kong pop music floated off a compact disk and spread throughout the spacious living room, around the carved Ming armoire, past the set of zitan-wood Imperial chairs, a ballad just loud enough so they never heard Uncle Four enter, closing the door with a pickpocket's touch. He stood behind the lacquered rosewood and inlaid jade screen that set off the foyer and pictured them.

Wife, almost fifty, her hair dyed blacker than fot choy, moss threads, and teased perfect above curved eyebrows redrawn daily. Pancake on the crow's feet at the corners of eyes blinking out from heavy shadow and liner, leaving the red gash of her mouth at a restless angle. She wore gold on one wrist, jade on the other; an aging actress in her sunset performance on the Chinatown stage.

Too much perfume, he could smell it from the door, streaming from the four women at the table. They were talking at each other in choppy, patterned phrases.

Loo je, sister Loo, was married to the treasurer of the Hip Ching, giving her the unofficial rank of daai ga je, elder sister, in their entourage. She wore clothes from The Limited, and spoke in a mannish style.

"Business has been good," she said. "Should be bigger bonuses this year."

Mak mui, her cousin, who was engaged to a senior Black Dragon, cooed, "Wonderful, another gold bracelet for me."

Shirley, which they pronounced, surly, was the oldest. "Sisters," she said, "life is good. Jade and diamonds for everyone. A toast!"

The women clinked glasses and drank, settled back into their game, slapping the mahjong tiles back and forth across the table.

Silly women, thought Uncle Four behind the screen. When he married the second time, it had appeared to be a fortunate match. Using Tam tai's connections in the Taiwanese film industry, he'd established a chain of Chinese videotape rental outlets that stretched from the Chinatowns in San Francisco to New York, from Toronto to Florida.

They had no children.

He had a teenaged daughter from his first marriage and had wanted nothing more to do with children after that. This had suited Tani tai fine. At the time they married she was already in her late-thirties, and he knew, secretly, that she was barren. He gave her a share of the video business and the skim money from the Ting Lee Beauty Salon, in which he was also a partner. She made the collections personally, every week on Monday.

Now, a decade after exchanging vows and toasts, they lived separate lives in the same apartment. Separate bedrooms, separate schedules, and separate vices. The only values left to share were money and jewelry, and never enough of either.