Year of the Dragon Read online

Chang had used the strongest painkiller known to man. He had injected almost pure heroin.

  He withdrew the spittle-soaked towels, wiped off their faces, and loosened both tourniquets. The younger brother’s wound was in the calf, a puncture. The bullet must have struck bone. In any case it had not exited. Seeing that the younger brother no longer bled at all, Chang released his tourniquet completely. Clearly the younger brother could wait, and the embalmer began to work on the older one. When he had unlaced and removed the gory shoe, and then what was left of the sock, he saw that part of the boy’s big toe remained, and he got out scissors and clipped it off, leaving the skin. The other four toes already were gone. With tweezers he probed for pieces of loose bone, removing several, being sure to leave himself additional skin to work with. Next he threaded a big curved needle such as embalmers use on cadavers, and with it began to sew up the foot, keeping up a stream of chatter in Cantonese dialect as he worked. He would have preferred a smaller needle and thinner thread, he said, but didn’t have any. This thread was as thick as fish line, he said, you could land a ts’ang fish with it, he could barely push it through the eye of the needle - called the needle’s nose in the Chinese idiom.

  Koy watched in silence. In the morning a ship would leave New York harbor bound for Hong Kong. The Hsu brothers were supposed to be on it as crewmen. They would miss their ship. Perhaps there would be another ship for them later, but Koy did not think so. Recovery would take too long. He knew he should decide about them tonight, but forbore doing so. The Hsu brothers were from his ancestral village also, and deserved to be accorded whatever small chance was left them. He would give them a week or two. He would decide then.

  The embalmer moved to the younger brother. “He’s got a bullet in there,” he noted. “If I cut it out he’ll bleed.”

  “Leave it in there,” Koy ordered.

  The embalmer began to sew the wound shut over the bullet. When he had finished he made splints out of wooden coat hangers and bound the boy’s broken wrist. The fingers looked broken also, but would heal by themselves, he decided. He stood up.

  “They’ll wake up in an hour or two,” he said. The Cho Kun had been talking quietly to Nikki Han, who at last looked calmer. “The package is in the kitchen,” Koy said now. “Your job is to keep them quiet.” No doubt the other gang members had been driven out of the apartment by the noise and suffering of the Hsu brothers. Presently they-would begin to drift in again. This was where they slept. They could not stay out forever.

  “I’ve set up a schedule of watches,” said Koy to Nikki Han. “I want someone on watch at all times. Have the needle ready. Every time they come to the surface, put them under again.”

  Together with the embalmer Koy left the apartment, being careful no one saw them come out. But outside in the night under the trees, his manner became almost jaunty. If the Hsus died, whether from an overdose or from shock, they could be disposed of. If they lived, then in a week or two Koy would make his decision. But basically he was pleased with them, because they had done their jobs well. They had made the future extremely attractive to Koy. When he got back to his office, though it was late, he would begin making calls, setting up the meeting for tomorrow during which, he believed, Ting would be deposed and Koy elected mayor of Chinatown in his place. To the rest of the city this might seem only a ceremonial title, but in Chinatown, if properly exploited, it carried real power and guaranteed immense wealth. A number of people had died tonight so that Koy should become mayor and be able, together with his partners and associates, to implement certain plans and investments, some of them worldwide in scope.

  The embalmer noted Koy’s change of mood but forbore mentioning it. Partly this was normal Chinese reticence. One did not invade that part of a man’s being where his spirit sunned itself. Mostly it was because Koy was Cho Kun. Lowly individuals did not question such exalted personages on any subject at all.

  “It’s a nice night,” said Koy in Cantonese. “The rain has stopped.”

  The embalmer agreed.

  The two Chinese gentlemen, one wearing smoked glasses, the other carrying a medical bag, walked two blocks to the parked hearse, got in and drove away.

  THE SILENT alarm clock awakened Powers, slants of sunlight that fell across the covers as heavy as lumber, as loud as noise. Gathering his clothes, keys and money, his shield and his gun, he slipped downstairs without awakening his wife and dressed in the kitchen. After measuring out coffee and plugging in the percolator, he put on a leather jacket, and went out to the corner for the papers. His shield in its leather wallet was in his back pocket. If he sat down he would sit on it. He sat on it every day of his life, noticing it only if it was not there. His gun was in his right-hand jacket pocket. He could not have gone out without it. He was not comfortable without his gun, would sooner have gone out wearing no underpants or no socks. Without it, even now at seven o’clock in the morning, he would have felt as awkward and off-balance as a man walking the streets wearing only one shoe. The gun’s weight was partly counterbalanced by the weight of his keys. He carried, usually dangling from a clip on his belt, a lot of keys: house, car, garage, desk, locker, handcuffs. He carried as many keys as a night watchman. He was a man used to a certain weight of metal around his middle.

  The newsstand was two blocks away outside a candy store. The dread with which he approached it proved justified. The papers were laid out on the stand and from ten feet away he could see his picture and the accompanying headline. He occupied the entire front page of the Daily News. On the front page of the Times, his picture was smaller. He put money down, tucked both papers under his arm, and walked thoughtfully home.

  The coffee was perking. Hanging his jacket over a chair, he poured two cups and, with the papers again under his arm, carried them upstairs to the bedroom. His wife was still asleep but he woke her. Kicking off his shoes, he sat down against the headboard. His wife in her nightgown sat against the headboard too. They sipped coffee and read the papers.

  “Let me see that one,” said Eleanor at last.

  He had finished it and was waiting his turn at the other. They exchanged papers.

  “They make you sound pretty heroic,” said Eleanor.

  “It wasn’t heroic.” She needed a new nightgown, he noted. This one was old and part of her left breast jutted through the tattered lace.

  “It sounds pretty dangerous too. You’ll get yourself killed one day. Then where will I be?”

  They had been over this ground before, and he had no desire to go over it again. “I’m not going to get killed.”

  “Oh no? You only chased them out onto the sidewalk. They had machine guns.” She frowned. “If you keep doing things like that you’ll get killed.”

  “Things like what?” In an attempt to lighten her mood he reached across and poked her breast back inside.

  “Like what?”

  She caught his hand. “Dangerous things. You’re forty-six years old.”

  “So are you.”

  “I don’t get into shootouts.”

  She was, he saw, seriously concerned. “Honey,” he said earnestly, “They weren’t thinking about me. They were running for a car. I wouldn’t have done it if it felt dangerous.”

  “The reporters thought differently, and I notice you didn’t try to change their minds. Let me read you what you told the reporters.”

  “You can’t change reporters’ minds. So I tried to low-key this thing. You can’t disclaim what other people take to be heroism. It only makes you sound more heroic.”

  She smiled. “Pompous too.”

  “Right. People hate you for doing an act they wouldn’t dare try, but they hate you for the pompousness even more.”

  “Cirillo and Duncan, you mean.”

  Eleanor turned back to the front page of the News where her husband’s face, life-size, stared up at her.

  Powers pointed. “This ear here - you can just see it - is Cirillo’s. This ear is Duncan’s.”

  “They’ve b
een cut out of the photo completely.”

  “Yeah. The real danger was not last night, it’s this morning. And it’s not bullets.” After a moment Powers added: “Last night’s television was not so bad. Television is on the air one minute, and a minute later it’s off. But newspapers hang around all day. They make people mad every time they look at them. This photo alone should guarantee me another ten years as a captain.”

  “You could always quit.”

  “Quit the department!” Powers’ voice had anguish in it, and the anguish was real. “But I love the department Quit a failure?”

  Leaning over, Eleanor gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I know.”

  Her breast had popped out again. “Hey,” he said, ogling it, “are you trying to seduce me, or would you prefer another cup of coffee?”

  She gave him a fond smile. “Coffee.”

  “In bed?”

  “I’ll go down with you.”

  They got up, Powers stepping into his shoes. Eleanor put on a dressing gown. “I’m glad I wasn’t there,” Eleanor said conversationally.

  “I’m glad you weren’t there also,” Powers said. But it made him remember Carol’s raincoat in the trunk of his car.

  At the stove Eleanor fixed her husband bacon and eggs. Their two sons were at college and the house that morning felt unnaturally empty to both of them. They had been married twenty-three years.

  She set the plate down in front of him. “It scares me, what you did last night. You scare me.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  As he spoke, the meeting that would change his life got under way at police headquarters.

  THE POLICE commissioner had reached his desk at 7 A.M., two hours in advance of normal, and the uniformed deputy inspector who was his chief secretary, and who normally worked the same hours as the PC, had handed him a sheaf of reports on Chinatown crime.

  “Chiefs Cirillo and Duncan are in the building as ordered,” said the secretary, who had been up all night finding and collating these reports, and who looked it.

  The PC had already started through the pile. He did not look up. “Have them wait outside. Is there coffee?”

  The deputy inspector said there was, and left the office to get it.

  The police commissioner was a careful, meticulous man. He had a full schedule of appointments today which this Chinatown business threatened to disrupt. His calendar might get backed up for the rest of the week. He intended to forestall this if he could by inventing and implementing a new Chinatown policy right now in the two hours left before the business day started. The. mayor could be expected to call soon, and he was worried about that too - he had best have a plan ready to divulge to the mayor. But chiefly he was worried about his appointments calendar. To the PC a calendar that did not run smoothly was the mark of a sloppy executive.

  The phone rang. It was the mayor already, and the PC had not yet reached the bottom of the Chinatown reports. He was not ready, and therefore was obliged to listen to a twenty-minute harangue. In the course of it the deputy inspector entered, and set down the cup and saucer. He had left the door ajar, through which the PC could see Cirillo and Duncan pacing and waiting.

  “Yes sir,” he said into the phone, and gave a curt nod of dismissal in the direction of the deputy inspector.

  Outside, the deputy inspector sat down at his desk. He was like a sentry on guard. He was like a court eunuch - he guarded the throne room. He had gold oak leaves on each shoulder.

  “He’s still on the phone with the mayor,” the secretary said apologetically.

  From the sofa opposite, the two waiting chiefs began to watch the miniature traffic lights over the PC’s door. The red light was lit, and remained lit, interminably it seemed. Finally it went out. After a moment the green light came on.

  The deputy inspector glanced up at it: “The PC will see you now.”

  Duncan and Cirillo went past him into the office. The PC, in shirtsleeves, looking grim, was seated behind his desk. He did not offer to shake hands, nor invite them to sit down. He was still going through the reports.

  Behind them the door opened again and the secretary showed in Deputy Commissioner Glazer, the department’s chief public affairs officer. “Good morning, good morning,” said Glazer cheerfully. “Sorry I’m late.”

  The PC at last looked up. “Anything to tell me?” he asked Cirillo.

  The chief of detectives said: “We have the perpetrators tentatively identified as members of the Wee Ching. That’s a Chinese youth gang. A new one, just starting up. That Golden Palace restaurant is supposedly a hangout for the Ghost Shadows. That’s supposedly the biggest youth gang in Chinatown. Supposedly five or six Ghost Shadows were at a table in the back. That’s the information we have at this time, Commissioner. We think that’s who the shooters were aiming at.

  “They didn’t kill any Ghost Shadows,” said the PC.

  He came around his desk and began pacing. “They killed three white tourists and two waiters.”

  Cirillo opted for black humor. “It’s a way of inducting five new Ghosts into their ranks.”

  “I don’t think that’s very funny.”

  Was this a reprimand of Cirillo? Duncan thought so and, though he kept his face blank, he was pleased. He said carefully, “Commissioner, you’ll notice the use of the word supposedly. We don’t really know.” Most previous police commissioners had been career cops, but this one, until three months ago, had been a prosecutor. Duncan didn’t really know him. He was a tall, skinny, baldish man, fifty-five years old. He was a lawyer, and to career cops lawyers were more dangerous than criminals. Duncan said carefully, “Even though we have a precinct-and two hundred cops in Chinatown, we’ve never been able to penetrate even the legal side of Chinese society, much less the illegal side.”

  The PC was pacing up and down. “What’s happened in this city?” he demanded. “The Chinese used to be the model minority. The commander of the Chinatown precinct had the softest job in the department. I go off to work for the Justice Department a few years, and I come back and there are Chinese corpses on every street corner.”

  “You’re right, Commissioner,” agreed Duncan.

  “And not just the street corners,” said Cirillo. “Say you find a parked car with bullet holes in the trunk and a stink coming out. You open it up. Nowadays it isn’t a Mafia guy in there, it’s a Chinaman. You can’t rely on tradition anymore.”

  Duncan waited for the PC’s reaction. When the PC smiled, Duncan did too.

  But the PC’s smile vanished, and he resumed pacing.

  “The Chinese are now the most trigger-happy citizens the city has ever known,” he said. “Two weeks ago there was a gunfight on Confucius Square in broad daylight. Three Chinese dead. The week before that they started shooting in Madison Square Garden during a basketball game. One Chinese dead and two wounded.”

  “You forgot one, Commissioner,” said Cirillo. He was grinning.

  The PC stared at him.

  “About a week before you took office, the head of the Chinese Merchants’ Association goes to the Pagoda Theater for some light entertainment. Somebody shoves a bicycle spoke through the back of his chair into his heart. He didn’t even pitch over. When the show ended they tried to wake him up. They thought he was asleep.” Cirillo waited a beat, then added grinning: “Since then business has really fallen off at the Pagoda, I hear.”

  This time the PC did not smile. “I was just on the phone twenty minutes with the mayor. He wanted to know what the hell was going on in Chinatown. I want to know the same thing.”

  Duncan said carefully, “With the new immigration laws, the population of Chinatown has quadrupled. As you can imagine, I’ve had to beef up my uniformed patrol forces there. We’ve got Hong Kong money and people taking over the New York tongs, taking over the Mott Street gambling dens. The youth gangs are Hong Kong kids, and they’re violent. Our intelligence is very poor. We can’t understand their language or read their newspapers, and we’ve got nothing to
infiltrate them with - we have only six Chinese cops in the entire department - all of them well known in Chinatown.”

  The PC rapped the desk with the back of his knuckles. “The mayor wants this Chinatown violence stopped. So do I.”

  Duncan, studying the PC carefully, said, “There’s not much we can do beyond what we are already doing.”

  Deputy Commissioner Glazer gave an unctuous smile. “What we have here,” he said, “is a public relations problem. Some cosmetic changes should do the trick.”

  There was a moment of heavy silence.

  “I intended today to appoint a special Chinatown major case squad,” said Cirillo. “We can say I will head the investigation personally. The newspapers usually go for that kind of thing. That might take some of the heat off.”

  “That’s not enough,” said the PC. “Not for the mayor, not for me. I want a new commander in the Chinatown precinct to start with.”

  “I brought along a list of five possibilities, sir,” said Duncan. He had come to this conference better prepared than Cirillo, and was pleased with himself, though no expression showed on his face.

  “Have you got a name on there that would make a headline?” asked Deputy Commissioner Glazer.

  The PC, after looking over the list, grabbed the Daily News on his desk. He slapped the back of his hand against Powers’ photo. “What about this guy?”

  The question was addressed to Chief of Patrol Duncan, who did not immediately answer.

  “The press would certainly be happy with him,” said Glazer.

  Duncan glanced at him. The deputy commissioner was another former prosecutor. Since technically he outranked Duncan, and since he had the PC’s ear, he had to be dealt with almost as carefully as the PC himself.

  Duncan, when he answered, spoke directly to the PC. “Not a good choice, Commissioner. Powers has been a captain I think ten or eleven years. A number of your predecessors have considered him for command of a precinct, but decided against it.

  “Why was that?” demanded the PC.

  Duncan had no intention of standing alone against the PC on this or any other subject, and he did not expect Cirillo to come to his aid. But his rival surprised him.