York in winter is ugly—monstrously so. The snow reduces to slush on contact, immediately shot through with the gray and black of the city’s soot and grime. Grease from the town’s million and one restaurant cooking vents combines with the salty, cold blasts of wind that screech in off the ocean to turn the dark ichor into a freezing, slippery mess that does nothing for the soul save hinder and depress. The vision of it grows especially bleak once the fine folk who live here finish decorating the heaping piles of cinder-rough slop with chicken bones, styrofoam cups, used tissues, diapers and condoms, pizza crusts, urine, bottles, cans, and every other scrap and tatter they don’t feel like bothering with any longer.
Looking out the window got me through another five minutes, but it wasn’t enough. I was bored. Straight through. Bored down to my ass and still upset with myself for being jerk enough to take such a boring job in the first place. Laughing at me, my memory replayed the meeting Lo and I had the day he came to see me about guarding his store.
“Mr. Jack Hagee, sir…?”
He asked everything as politely as he had my name. A fellow detective, Peter Wei, had given the old guy my address. To make a long story short, the street gangs were getting out of hand in Chinatown. The mayor’s office had released the story that they were all trying to raise cash to finance the making of Black Dreamer, a new synthetic opium that was flooding the city, funneled through the major oriental neighborhoods. To gather capital, they were planning to hit each other’s territories on the Chinese New Year, demanding as much revenue from each other’s pigeons as possible. As Lo told it:
“I no care about pay gang. You keep shop, you pay Tong. Always been. Always be. No one get rid of Wah Ching. Not for thousand year. That okay. But now, big trouble. Now, all gang fight. All kids go crazy. Want each other dead, take each other space. Now, gangs no can keep store safe. Store all my family have. I not lose it. No care about pay gang who rule when New Year come. Fine okay. No problem. But won’t pay loser and make winner mad.”
I ventured the mayor’s explanation about the drugs, but Lo wasn’t hearing it. He insisted the whole thing came down to territory and that it would all be over after New Year’s.
“Pay you thousand dollar. You stay all New Year’s. Keep bastard kids away from store. I pay good, you protect store. Make deal?”
I tried to tell him he was offering too much money, a lot more than double my daily fee, but he wasn’t hearing it. Peter Wei had said I was the best, and that was what he wanted. We argued back and forth for a while, and then I figured ‘what the hell,’ if the old man wanted beat out of his cash so bad, I was as available as the next guy. Shaking his hand, I told him:
“Okay, pal, I’m yours for New Year’s.”
“All New Years. Whole time. You no leave store. I pay good. You protect store all New Years.”
“Yeah; you got it. The whole thing. I won’t budge. When you want me there?”
“Tomorrow. New Year’s start tomorrow. Finish next Tuesday.”
I looked at him for a second as if I’d missed a beat, and then I remembered. The Chinese New Year is a ten-day celebration. Peter had told me that before. And I was willing to bet the old man knew I knew. For the first time since he’d walked into my office, I looked him over carefully. That was when I realized he was older than he looked, when I stared into his happy dark eyes and saw them waiting for me to catch on, saw them smile when I did.
“So,” he asked, “now you want to say something about deal?”
I bit at my lower lip, running things past in my mind. I had no jobs on the docket, but a thousand bucks for ten days of risking my life against who knew how many bands of highly efficient young murderers was not the best deal I’d ever made. There was plenty of dough in my bank account, but on the other hand, a lot of money there had come from Chinatown, and Chinatown referrals. Not that I’d miss them much. I’d reached the comfort zone where dirt jobs weren’t nearly as attractive as they’d been when I hadn’t known where my next burger was coming from.
The worst part, though, was that I’d known the difference between European and Chinese New Years before Lo had come through my door. A guy with scruples would’ve refused point blank to take so much money for one day’s work. The old man had maneuvered me into the position where it was up to me to call myself a cheat or a coward.
I asked him for his address instead.
And that was what brought me to closing time on day eight, looking out the window wishing I had something better to do than read the paper I was reaching for for the fiftieth time that day. So far I’d had no trouble, but the news was getting so boring I was beginning to wish for some.
I’d read the story of the court battle over “Tan Fran” twice. A white girl with a great tan, she’s gotten a job in a law office because everyone there had assumed she was Puerto Rican, and they needed someone good looking and Puerto Rican or Black or something to prove what good left-wing liberals they were now that it appeared a Democrat could end up as President on top of the one we had for governor.
At her first promotion, they found out she was white, and thus useless since they already had a few women around to prove they weren’t sexist. The result: she was fired. So she sued them. And on it’s dragged for two months.
I’d read the tale of the guy who spotted his ex-wife in a department store six times. I liked that one. Seeing her just drove the poor bug-fuck nuts; he killed her by breaking her head open with a bottle of ammonia, which he then emptied into the crack he’d made. Then he just sat back and smiled and watched her scream as her brains boiled up out of her skull.
He didn’t run away or resist arrest. He just smiled and watched, even after she was long dead, even after the cops cuffed him and took him away. Once they got him in the squad car, though, he suddenly came to life and slammed his head through one of the passenger windows, purposely tearing his throat open on the jagged edge left. Nice family entertainment, the Post.
I was rereading the latest exploit of the Outliner when I suddenly found myself rolling the newspaper back up, tight and solid. Looking around the store, I saw what my subconscious radar had spotted. Two youths, heavily bundled against the cold, had entered the store, looking at items their body language said they had no interest in whatsoever. Finally they walked over to Lo and began a high-powered sales pitch in Chinese. I walked over, too. One of them greeted me.
“Back off, qua’lo.”
“Why, boys? What’s the problem?”
“No problem white shit whore-licking maggot sucker. Go buy a vegetable. Get a big eggplant and take it home to sit on while you dream of my dick.”
The second youth gave the first a nudge and a whisper, probably a hint that most likely I wasn’t some daffy Good Samaritan.
“What’re you? Cop? You got some reason to fuck with us, shit bastard?”
“Yeah.” I slapped the talker across the face with the rolled up newspaper. “I do.” Another slap in the opposite direction. Hard. Cracking. “I work here.” Two more, one on each ear, sharp and stinging. “I’m the trash man, you see.” A reverse sent the hard end into his left eye. “I gather up all the useless crap and put it out in the street.”
A blunt end shove to the gut sent the talker flying, bouncing him off the counter behind him. A dozen or so cans fell on him, slowing his responses and adding to the confusion. Grabbing him by the hair,
