Year of the Dragon (21 page)

“You’re always under control, aren’t you?” said Carol, and the pain in her voice was so obvious that he looked at her sharply. “With you, everything is compartmentalized. You never go overboard in any one direction. You’re never late for appointments. You always fulfill all obligations.”

These words, as far as they went, were true, he believed, so that he felt a renewed belief in her love for him - if she had observed him that closely, she must love him.

“You have your neat little life where everything runs smoothly,” she said. “You have your perfect house, your perfect job, your perfect little wife.”

She caught her breath and muttered in what was almost a sob. “And meanwhile, I’m going begging here.”

He was stunned. It seemed the saddest line he had ever heard a woman speak.

“Carol, I do love you,” Powers said.

He could not leave her in this state, at least not as abruptly as he had planned. He would have to soothe her first, beginning with a single kiss.

But the kiss grew in length, and then in intensity, expanding as if to fill the principal void of his life, and at the same time Carol’s fingertips brushed against him almost beseechingly.

“Oh, Artie, make love to me. Please make love to me.

He thought he would do it, because Luang was in no real danger, but only thought he was. Luang did not need him. It was Carol who needed him. His obligation was to Carol, and so he could not go to Chinatown tonight, even if he wanted to, which now he did not. He wanted to be here on this bed with this woman.

She had begun to groan. She sounded as primitive as a cavewoman keening for the death of a child. Powers noted this because across the room a part of him stood watching these strange goings-on. It was that part that had always been able to see with absolute clarity even in the dark, to see through walls, to see for miles.

Why are you doing this, it asked him now. What is the compulsion? Is it simply a reaction to eleven years of frustration? What about Eleanor? What about Luang?

LUANG’S GAZE felt nailed to the green felt table, and his arms to his sides. His money rode for two more rounds because he was unable to focus on it. Amazingly, he won both times. His winnings were pushed toward him, over $200. He counted it again. What was he supposed to do with this money? Keep it? Did it belong to him or to the Police-Department? But he was too confused and frightened to decide. There were now three men staring at him. Koy and his henchman had been joined by a Chinese youth of about eighteen who had come down from upstairs. Small, mean-looking kid.

Luang put the money in his pocket, no doubt compounding his crime in Koy’s eyes: the winner would quit while ahead. And alive. And hope he could stay ahead. And alive. He pushed back from the table, pushed backwards through bodies which flowed forward around him, filling the space he had occupied even as he vacated it. He went out through the short hallway and up the steep stairs and out onto Mott Street. The night air tasted amazingly cool and fresh to him. He felt free, but wasn’t. He took a deep, clean breath. But Powers wasn’t there. Luang looked everywhere for him. He definitely wasn’t there.

Downstairs Koy had pointed with his chin. Nikki Han and the other youth, Billy Low, alias Go Low, began pushing their way out of the room.

Luang stood above the stairwell. There were still crowds of people on both sidewalks, crowds of cars in the street, though fewer of both categories than before. In a short time, a matter of minutes, all the tourists would be gone. There would be no one here but Chinese. Chinese custom would prevail. If a street altercation occurred the Chinese would veil their eyes. They would see nothing.

Again Luang’s eyes raked the crowds in all directions. Again Powers was not there. Where could he be, thought Luang anxiously.

Crossing to the shop window he had stared into earlier, he stared again, like a young girl returning to her mirror to be reassured. On the darker street the glass gave a better reflection than ever. Too much so. Only a few seconds passed before Han and Low, in the reflection, came up out of the stairwell and peered around. And found him.

Luang took another deep breath, but this time forgot to notice the taste of the air. As he started up Mott Street, he was trying to think out what to do. He was trying to stay ahead of them until he had decided.

Should he head straight for the station house on Elizabeth Street? It was only about three blocks away. He could walk straight into the station house, showing his shield to the cop at the door.

But it would blow the investigation. Powers would fire him, and rightly so. A white cop, he was certain, would not feel this afraid. Luang was only about three weeks into the six-month probationary period faced by every new patrolman and could be dismissed for almost any infraction. He had waited a long time to become a cop. It was the best-paying job he had ever had. He was Chinese. He could not realistically hope for something better. If he lost this job he would wind up in a sweatshop. He would wind up a waiter. He would wind up gambling away his paycheck every week like those poor slobs he had just left, because a big night at the tables was their only hope in a hopeless life. So he could not go to the station house, and if he happened to pass a foot cop on the sidewalk he could not identify himself and ask for help. He would have to get out of this on his own if he could, though he could not yet think how. He could not use his gun. That too would blow the investigation, and he would go to jail for it, unless they fired first. Two against one.

He turned right into Bayard Street. He passed a jade store, two restaurants, a narrow building that was a noodle factory. All were closed. Everything on Bayard Street looked closed. He squinted at the reflection in a shop window, watching the entrance to Bayard Street. Here came Han and Low - he did not know their names - swaggering along. They were about fifty yards behind him. They looked completely confident. They looked heavy with purpose, menacing.

He began to hurry. He came out onto the Bowery and looked across Confucius Square. The great thinker sat enthroned amid eight lanes of traffic, all pouring north past Chinatown without stopping. How could Confucius think in the midst of such bustle and noise? How could Luang think? Across the square was what looked like a Buddhist temple - if Luang couldn’t think, then perhaps he should pray. Of course it was not a temple at all but a bank, and prayers could not help him now.

Across the square also stood a public housing project inhabited almost exclusively by Chinese. Luang conceived the notion that if he could reach these buildings he would be safe. The first job was to cross to the other shore. He waited for the lull and then ran, sprinting into the closest building. There seemed to be several banks of elevators, several stairwells. Luang yanked open the door to the first stairwell he saw, and took the steps two at a time, heading for the roof. It was sixteen floors up. By the time he spilled out the door into the night air he was breathless and nearly exhausted.

Now what?

But he had thought it out no further than this. For a time he waited for them to come through the door after him. He had his gun pointed straight at the door. If they came through he would shoot them both down and take his chances on Powers, on going to jail. But nothing happened, and presently he went to the parapet and glanced down at the street.

There they both were, conferring on the sidewalk. They did not look up. Had they lost him inside the building? Were they waiting for reinforcements? He watched the street in quick peeks, ducking back after each one.

After about fifteen minutes he saw them run back across the square and into Bayard Street. When he had lost sight of them he sat down with his back against the parapet and his gun on his lap, waiting for his still pounding heart to slow down in his chest. He began to shiver from the residual fear, but at the same time a kind of smile came onto his face, born of hope.

He thought he would wait an hour on the roof to be safe, then leave.

After a while he fell asleep.

Powers felt none of Luang’s fear, none of Luang’s hope, only exultation and a kind of surging, overpowering faith. He believed in everything. Accompanied by Carol Cone, he approached as close to ecstasy as it is given man to get. His life became huge. He soared naked over the polar icecap, plunged into the warm waters of the Gulf. He could go anywhere, he could see God. He was stunned by the power of his love for this woman, who had made such rapture possible, who had given him this unending night. He would never let her go. He would build another room on the palace and install her there. Eleanor would understand.

So thinking, Powers too fell asleep.

THE MIDNIGHT-TO-EIGHT A.M. tour had not yet come off duty when Powers strode into his stationhouse. He was unshaven and looked haggard. His rumpled clothes looked as if they had lain in a pile all night. He stopped at the desk. “Any calls for me during the night? Nothing at all? You’re sure?”

The desk sergeant was sure. Powers went into his office, closed the door and phoned his wife, who came on the line sounding sleepy.

“What time is it? You didn’t come home.”

In theory cops worked midnight tours every third week. Their wives were used to sleeping alone. He said, “By the time I realized I wouldn’t get home, it was too late to call.” There was no need for an outright lie, “I was afraid I’d wake you.”

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Not much,” he said, which was true.

He shaved, changed to his uniform, then sat behind his desk with his face in his hands. The only woman he had ever slept all night with was Eleanor until now. He had awakened to find daylight streaming in the windows, and had jumped up and dressed. He left as quickly as possible, without even washing his face, refusing the coffee Carol wanted to make him. When she stood with him at the front door he gave her a quick kiss and quicker smile, for in fact he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

There were degrees of intimacy, he believed, and therefore degrees of infidelity. But to sleep all night with another woman seemed to him, at the moment, the ultimate betrayal.

At noon he met with Luang in the park in Brooklyn Heights. Women pushed baby carriages past their bench.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get there last night. How did it go? Any problems?”

Luang too had been awakened by daylight, and had found that his face and clothes were wet with dew. He felt stiff and sore as well. Putting his gun back in his pocket, he had gone down off the roof and home.

He said now, “No problems, Captain.” The investigation could well be blown, but Luang was afraid to admit it.

“What about Koy?”

“I was in there over an hour, Captain. He stood around sipping tea. He talked to a couple of people. That’s all he did.”

Powers’ lips tightened. Otherwise his expression did not change. A kid came by, throwing a yo-yo out in front of him. The string was too long, so that the yo-yo kept hitting the ground. Powers watched him. The kid seemed unable to understand why his trick didn’t work.

That’s me, Powers thought. I’m trying a trick too, and it isn’t coming off. How long before Koy recognized that he was being tailed, and complained to City Hall? Forget Koy. How long before Chief Duncan ordered an investigation of Powers’ use - or misuse - of Luang? At a time when the city was nearly bankrupt, when too few cops were on patrol in the streets, Luang represented a prodigious waste of police man-hours. Duncan didn’t believe in any Chinese Mafia, and would have Powers up on charges. If convicted, he would lose his command certainly and might even be dismissed from the department.

Luang too brooded. Doubtless Koy was too smart to order a cop killed, but he might order Luang killed, not knowing he was a cop. Most likely Koy suspected he worked for a rival gang or tong. Therefore his police officer status would not protect him.

Powers knew he should call off this unproductive tail at once.

Luang wished he would do it.

“How long before he makes you?” said Powers. “That’s what I’m worried about.”

Maybe I should tell him, Luang thought. But he was afraid he’d lose his job. “That’s what I’m worried about, too, Captain.”

They were like men imprisoned inside adjacent telephone booths; the wire between them had been cut. Meaningful communication had become impossible. Although they might continue to send visual signals across the void, these had all been misinterpreted so far.

“Stay with him a few more days,” said Powers, “and - and be careful.”

LUANG, following Koy’s Mercedes, saw it pull up in front of a store on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. There were two bodyguards in the front seat. Koy and Ting got out of the back seat and stood on the sidewalk. The Mercedes continued on, turned the corner, and Luang lost sight of it. After Koy and Ting had entered the store, he cruised on past. It was an Italian espresso bar. He could see Koy and Ting inside through the plate glass. The waiter had come over and was showing them to a table.

Pulling in beside a fire hydrant farther up the street, Luang slouched down in his seat, and he watched the doorway in his rearview mirror.

It was early morning. He had his memo book open on his lap, and as he wrote down all he had noted so far, he kept glancing from the memo book to the mirror and back again.

About five minutes passed before a black car pulled up in front of the same coffee house. The driver ran around to open the back door. Two Italian-looking men stepped out and glanced around. They looked as self-conscious as bridegrooms. They kept pulling their suit coats down over their hips. Leaving the car double-parked, they went into the coffee house. The driver stayed with the car. Luang licked his pencil and wrote in his notebook: 10 A.M., 167 Mulberry Street, Italian espresso house. Black car pulls up, New York plates HT1134. Two Italians. One about 45, the other about 55. The older one has head like a melon. Melon head very pale. Younger one thin-faced like a prune. Big nose. Tanned.

Luang closed the notebook, shoved it into the glove box and slouched so far down that only the top of his head showed above the back of the seat. He sat there waiting, eyes fixed on the mirror.

Inside the coffee house the two Chinese, having ordered tea, were already sipping it when the two Italian-Americans entered. The Chinese rose to their feet. Simultaneously, having recognized the two newcomers, the waiter had come out from behind the bar. He looked nervous, for the newcomers were important men in Little Italy. He was anxious to perform any service they might require of him. The result was five men standing together in a kind of embarrassed silence.

They stood around the tiny table. It was circular, small as a tray.

The older of the two Italians, whose name was Marco, turned to the waiter:
“Due cappuccini.”

The waiter bowed like a Chinese.
“Si, Signore,”
he said, backing away.

Marco said to Ting and Koy: “This is my brother-in-law, Mr. Casagrande.”

There was no shaking of hands, and no one sat down. Instead Ting and Koy glanced at each other, after which their eyes became veiled, as if blinds had been drawn. “We expected you to come alone,” said Ting.

Marco jerked his thumb toward Casagrande. “He was looking after my business while I was away.”

Still no one sat down. The men stared at each other. It was clear that a detail had to be settled before this meeting could begin.

Koy and Ting, eyes fixed on the Italians rather than on each other, began a conversation in Chinese. This annoyed Marco. As he saw it, the Chinese took him and his brother-in-law for dumb clucks who could not understand their language and who, furthermore, could converse in no secret language of their own. He turned to Casagrande. “Do you speak Italian?”

“I forgot it since I was a kid.”

So had Marco. As the Cantonese tones rose and fell, his mouth hardened angrily. He could not even return the insult. He had been bested.

The discussion between Ting and Koy ended. Casagrande, they had decided, constituted a security risk, and this meeting, therefore, could not take place.

“I’m sorry,” said Koy. “Mr. Casagrande is certainly most trustworthy. Nonetheless-”

A moment longer the four men, all still standing, stared at each other. Then Marco jerked his head toward the door. Casagrande nodded and went out into the street.

“I am sorry,” said Koy apologetically, “but it is a business in which one cannot be too careful.”

Marco gave a shrug. As the three men at last sat down at the small table, the waiter appeared with the two coffees on a tray. He began peering around for the missing customer.

“Put them both down on the table,” ordered Marco. “That’s right. Now beat it. Scram.”

“
Si, signore,”
said the waiter and he retreated behind the bar.

The three men, still staring at each other, ignored their cups. In the center of the table the fourth cup, belonging to no one, was ignored too.

“You’re looking well,” said Koy. “A bit pale, that’s all.”

Marco said, “Where I was, they didn’t give you too much opportunity to take the sun.”

“In any case,” said Koy, “We are glad to see you. We have been waiting for you for a number of years.”

“So who did you deal with while I was gone?”

“No one,” said Ting.

“You waited for me?”

“It seemed wisest,” said Koy.

Marco shook his head in a kind of grudging admiration. “You Chinamen are patient guys.”

Koy, who detested being called a Chinaman, frowned. “The river is patient,” he said coldly. It was as if he had resolved to teach this dolt some important truths. “The sky is patient. Man must live in harmony with nature. If one wishes to be certain, often one must wait. Would you require the same quantity of merchandise as in the past?”

“More. I lost a lot of time. If the price is right. If the quality is as high.”

Koy said: “The source is the same. Transshipment is still via Hong Kong. As for the price, that is what we are here to discuss. Once that and certain other points are agreed upon, then others can handle the details. We will not meet again. Much to our regret, of course.”

Out front Casagrande paced up and down smoking. From time to time they could see him as he passed in front of the plate glass.

Luang through his rearview mirror watched Casagrande also. Then Marco came out. After conversing briefly, the two men got into their black car and drove down the street toward Luang. As they passed him, he slouched so far down in his seat as to be virtually invisible. But as soon as they had turned the corner he again raised himself high enough to watch the espresso bar through the mirror, and presently Ting and Koy came out and stood waiting for their car. Either they had phoned for it, or else it was due at a certain time. Luang started his engine and waited. When the white Mercedes appeared in his mirror he pulled away from the curb and drove up to Houston Street, where he phoned Captain Powers from a street-corner phone booth.

Powers said that he would meet Luang at once at the Drug Enforcement Administration offices on West Fifty-seventh Street.

There, for over an hour, the two men paged through photograph albums of major drug traffickers, as brought to them by a DEA agent named Wilcoxon. Each album, once viewed, was added to the stack that stood on the edge of the desk. It was becoming a tall stack, floors of a building headed for the sky, each landing a staircase climbed to no avail. Powers was like a man trapped in the stairwell of this skyscraper. He kept running up flights but the doors were locked at each landing.

Luang, finishing with the final album, handed it to Powers. “No,” he said.

Powers hefted the latest thick sandwich. A moment ago it had represented hope to both of them, a prodigality of hope because it was the bulkiest yet, it could feed an army. Unfortunately it had proved to contain no nourishment at all.

“He meets two Italians in Little Italy,” Powers said. “It’s got to be drugs. It’s got to be a major guy.” He gestured toward the albums. “He’s got to be in there somewhere.”

But he wasn’t, meaning that Powers’ newest idea had failed as miserably as its predecessors. For all he knew, the Italian had been an undertaker just like Koy. Perhaps they had met only to discuss the price of coffins.

He stared at the stack of albums: another dead end.

“Come on, come on,” said Luang. “Bring out some more albums.” Luang, Powers had learned, was a man of incredible patience.

“There are no more albums,” said Wilcoxon. “That’s it.”

“He had a head like a melon,” persisted Luang. “That’s what I call him, melon-head. When I have to remember someone’s face, what I do is remember what his features remind me of. He’s got a nose like a cork, got ears like a cocker spaniel. Well this guy had a head like a melon. The guy who waited outside looked like a prune.”

“If you don’t have prune-face in your book,” said Powers, “that doesn’t surprise me. Maybe he’s new. Maybe he’s just muscle. But melon-head you should have. Koy is not going to meet with anybody but an important guy.”

“Any man active over any period of time,” said Wilcoxon, “is in those books. Maybe he hasn’t been active.”

It was a small inside room. No windows. Airless. Powers paced it. It was like pacing a cell. A prisoner locked in a cell was locked also inside his own skull, and could concentrate on nothing except breaking out. Powers knew this. Most prisoners, he had learned, yearned so hard to break out that the yearning became actual physical pain, and it was centered in their teeth. They began grinding their teeth, even in their sleep. Prisoners were men whose teeth hurt all the time.

“What did you say?” demanded Powers.

“He may not have been active recently,” said Wilcoxon.

“Maybe he just got out of jail,” said Powers.

Wilcoxon left the room. While he was gone Powers and Luang stared at each other, and Powers’ hopes were blazing once more. Hope, the great arsonist. Calm down, he warned himself. You’re just going to be disappointed all over again.

Reentering the office, Wilcoxon dropped a new album in front of Luang. “Here’s a book of guys we’ve put away. Maybe one of them got out recently.” His tone was apologetic. “We update these books every once in a while.” He was like a man confessing a sin common to everyone in the room, making it, therefore, not such a bad sin. They were all guilty of it. If the DEA had not updated its albums in months, perhaps years, this could not be helped, and probably the New York Police Department had done no better. Law enforcement stumbled along on too little money. For the most part accuracy and efficiency were dreams that could not be paid for, and so did not come true. As cases moved from one jurisdiction to another, the records attached to them did also, usually by hand. Time then passed, usually a great deal of time, until hardly anyone remembered the original case, much less the whereabouts of the paper it had generated. One could not update files if the paper got lost.

Luang, who had been turning pages, rapped a glass-sine-covered photo with his knuckles, and said calmly, “That’s melon-head!”

Powers jumped to peer over Luang’s shoulder. “Bruno Marco,” Luang read aloud. “It says here he was eligible for parole last January.”

“I guess he got paroled,” apologized Wilcoxon.

Powers said elatedly, “Koy and Ting meet Marco and-”

But Wilcoxon attempted to blanket what he evidently considered too much enthusiasm. “It’s a nice bit of information, Captain. Unfortunately, I don’t know what good it will do you. That’s probably the first and last meeting between those two people.”

Most cops were defeatist, Powers reflected. It grew up out of their vast cynicism. They were like players on a last-place team. They expected to lose. The world was a malignant place. Justice rarely triumphed.

It was amazing that cases ever got made at all.

Wilcoxon said, “The Chinese have the best source of supply. They got Southeast Asia tied up. Here in this country the Chinese import only. They have no distribution network. That’s the way it was the last time we were able to hook into them. The Italians are their distribution network. The Chinese bring in the stuff via Hong Kong and Amsterdam. They make their deal with the Mafia and they arrange for Chinese couriers to deliver into Little Italy. They send some Chinese seaman ashore with a load off a freighter. He gets to take the risk and they pay him maybe a hundred bucks. Once it’s ashore they pay some Chinese waiter another hundred bucks to carry it to the Italians. At some point the money changes hands. A lot of money. The Chinese dump it in there with all that cash from their gambling houses. There is no way you can trace it, no way you can find it. We catch a courier now and then. Big deal. There is no way you can catch a guy like Koy. He’s much too cute. He never goes near the junk himself and rarely ever meets with anybody. Today’s business deal with Marco - it fits. The Chinese deal only with Italians they have dealt with for a long time. If the Italian goes away, most likely they wait until he comes out.”

There was no way, Wilcoxon told them, and never had been, to infiltrate the Chinese end of the operation. Ten years ago the DEA had managed to make cases against a number of major Chinese dealers. They had done it by sending in undercover agents who posed as Mafia buyers. Three or four major Chinese importers had fallen for it, and were still in jail. But with the Chinese the same technique never worked a second time. Most criminals, and especially most drug dealers, were morons. A successful technique, once developed kept working. Law enforcement kept dropping the same guys over and over again in the same way. But not the Chinese, who never repeated mistakes. Since those few ten-year-old cases, the Chinese had sold exclusively, it was assumed, to Italians they knew and could trust, and although the drug agency had continued attempting to infiltrate, they had never been successful again. Operations against the Chinese drug lords were now at a standstill. Nobody could think of a way to get a case going.