8
DANNY LEE TOOK the stairs two at a time, three flights up. He paused at the top, let his heartrate settle. Then he walked along the corridor, counting off the doors in the dim light, until he reached 406. The number the boy’s parents had given him.
A good boy, Mrs Woo had said. But he’d changed lately. Stopped talking, become sullen and quiet. His respect for them gone.
Danny knew the story. He’d heard it plenty of times before.
The door rattled along with the bass notes from inside, hip-hop music rumbling within. Must drive the neighbors crazy, he thought. Not that the neighbors would complain.
He made a fist, hammered the door, and waited. No answer. He hammered the door again. Still no answer. Once more with his fist, and a couple of kicks to get the point across.
Now the door opened a few inches, revealing the face of a young man Danny vaguely recognized. One of Harry Chin’s boys.
‘What the fuck?’ the young man said. ‘You want to lose your hand, just knock one more time, motherf—’
The sole of Danny’s shoe hit the door hard, sending the Chin boy staggering back. He barely kept himself from falling, cursing as his hand grabbed at the wall.
Danny stepped inside, surveyed the room. Half a dozen young men, counting the Chin boy, all staring back at him. Five of them sat on a couch and a pair of armchairs surrounding a coffee table laden with loose marijuana and rolled joints, a bag of coke, a few lines on the table’s glass top. Another bag of crystal meth, though it didn’t appear that any of them had partaken yet.
The Chin boy had the wide-eyed look, the flaring nostrils and the sheen of sweat on his forehead that said he’d had at least a line or two of coke. But Danny didn’t care about him. His only concern was Johnny Woo, the youngest of the boys, who sat in the middle of the couch. A faint wisp of hair on his upper lip, pimples across his nose and forehead. A child, really.
‘Johnny, come with me,’ Danny said.
Johnny said nothing.
Danny heard a snick-click at his left ear. He turned his head, saw the Chin boy and the .38 in his hand, cocked and ready.
‘Get the fuck out of here,’ the Chin boy said, ‘before I take your head off.’
Danny said nothing.
‘Yo, man,’ one of the other young men said. ‘That’s Danny Doe Jai.’
The Chin boy turned to his friend. ‘Danny who?’
A child, Danny reminded himself, nothing more. So easy. He simply reached up and grabbed the boy’s wrist, pushed it away, twisted, squeezed. The pistol dropped to the floor, a heavy clunk, and the boy fell to his knees. He squealed, and Danny squeezed harder. Felt bones grind beneath the flesh.
Danny turned to the young man on the couch. ‘Don’t call me that.’
The young man dropped his gaze, mumbled, ‘Sorry, Lee-sook.’
The boys all nodded, called him uncle, showed the respect he was due. Danny returned his attention to the Chin boy.
‘Any reason why I shouldn’t break your goddamn arm?’ he asked.
The boy whined. Danny twisted a little more, squeezed a little harder.
‘I asked you a question,’ he said.
The boy opened and closed his mouth, said, ‘Sorry … Lee … sook.’
Danny let go, and the boy collapsed onto the floor, hugging his wrist to his chest.
Johnny Woo picked at his nails, didn’t look up.
‘Come on,’ Danny said. ‘Your parents are waiting for you.’
Johnny lit a joint, took a long hit, and said, ‘Fuck you.’
The other young men winced. One of them nudged Johnny’s elbow, said, ‘Just go, man. Do what Lee-sook says.’
‘Fuck you, I ain’t going nowhere. You nod your head and call him uncle all you want, go ahead and be a pussy. He don’t scare me.’
‘Listen to your friends,’ Danny said. ‘Let’s go.’
Johnny took another hit, exhaled a long plume of smoke, and looked Danny in the eye. ‘Fuck. You.’
Danny reached down, grabbed a leg of the coffee table, threw it aside, scattering green flakes and white powder. It crashed into the wall, shattering the glass. The other boys dived out of the way as Danny stepped forward and slapped the joint from Johnny’s mouth. He put a hand at either side of the kid’s throat, hoisted him up by his neck. Johnny gave one strangled croak as Danny dragged him across the room, then threw him against the wall. He slapped the boy again, rocking his head on his shoulders, bringing tears to his eyes.
‘You a tough guy now?’ Danny asked.
Slapped him again, his hand powering through, even as Johnny tried to shield himself.
‘You a gangbanger?’
Slap.
‘You ready to take me on?’
Slap.
‘Go on.’
Slap.
‘Go on and try, boy, if you’re such a big man.’
Johnny slid down the wall, his hands over his head. ‘Stop, stop! I’m sorry! Stop!’
Danny reached down, lifted Johnny up by his collar. ‘Get the fuck out of here.’
As Johnny stumbled out through the door, Danny kicked him once in the ass, almost knocking him off his feet. He gave the other boys one last hard look. None of them returned it, suddenly more interested in their shoes or their fingernails. He followed Johnny out, closed the door behind him. Johnny looked back to him, a child now, seeking instruction.
Danny pointed at the stairs and said, ‘Go.’
The air was damp and cold out on Jackson Street, a breeze blowing straight in off San Francisco Bay. Danny pulled his jacket tight around him. He pushed Johnny between the shoulder blades, told him to keep walking. The boy wore nothing but a short-sleeved 49ers shirt, and Danny could almost see the goosebumps on his skin.
They passed a beauty salon, lit up bright in the darkness, the sound of chattering women from inside. A seafood market, the ripe smell of fish and salt. It was relatively quiet here compared to the hubbub and the glare of Grant Avenue, where the sidewalks were perpetually crammed with Chinatown tourists. Less chance of the boy running and losing himself in the crowds.
Johnny looked back over his shoulder. ‘Hey, why they call you Danny Doe Jai?’
‘Shut up and keep walking,’ Danny said.
The boy looked back again. ‘Doe Jai. Knife Boy. You don’t get a name like that for nothing.’
‘Your mom told me you were a smart kid,’ Danny said. ‘Prove her right and shut your mouth.’
‘Come on, man, just tell—’
Danny grabbed Johnny’s shoulder, spun him around, threw him against the shutters of a closed-down catering wholesaler. The metal rattled and boomed. Danny grabbed the boy’s throat in his right hand, squeezed his windpipe tight.
Two young couples, Chinatown tourists, skipped out of the way, understanding this was none of their business.
Danny brought his nose to the boy’s, their eyes two inches apart.
‘Ask me again,’ he said. ‘Just ask me one more time and I’ll show you why they call me Knife Boy.’
The boy blinked and Danny eased off the pressure on his throat.
‘What?’ Danny asked. ‘You not interested anymore?’
‘No, Lee-sook,’ the boy croaked.
‘Good.’ Danny let him go, gave him another kick in the pants. ‘Now move your stupid ass.’
A thirty-minute walk – Johnny pouting and dragging his heels, Danny nudging his back – took them to the Woo house over in the Richmond. Mrs Woo answered the door, gasped, then called back into the house for her husband in Cantonese.
‘It’s Lee-gor! He’s brought Johnny home.’
Mr Woo came to the door, nodded respectfully at Danny, gave his son a withering look. The boy said nothing as he slipped past his father into the hall where his mother waited. Mrs Woo tried to embrace him, but he shrugged her off and disappeared into the house.
‘Thank you, Lee-gor,’ she said, nodding, her eyes wet. ‘Thank you so much.’
She elbowed Mr Woo’s flank, and he took his wallet from his pants. Two hundred-dollar bills. He took Danny’s wrist with his left hand, nodded again, pressed the money into the palm with his right. Danny’s pride might have told him to hand the two hundred dollars back, but his rational mind remembered the rent was due. He slipped the money into his pocket and gave a nod of thanks.
‘Keep an eye on him,’ he said. ‘He’s probably too embarrassed to go back to that apartment, but you never know. Don’t go too hard on him. Don’t give him a reason to leave again.’
‘We won’t,’ Mrs Woo said. She turned to her husband, gave him a hard stare. ‘Will we?’
Mr Woo looked at the ground.
‘We don’t want trouble,’ Mr Woo said. ‘The Tong, will they …?’
He couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Danny said.
Less than an hour later, he found Pork Belly sitting on a corner stool at the Golden Sun bar, an upstairs drinking hole in a back alley off of Stockton Street. The kind of alley the tourists hurried past, not looking too closely at the men who lingered there.
Pork Belly’s stomach sagged between his thighs, his shirt gaping between the buttons, showing the white undershirt beneath. A sheen of perspiration permanently glossed his forehead, and he kept a handkerchief on him at all times, should his brow be in need of mopping. Rumor was that Pork Belly’s grandmother, impressed by his appetite and girth, had given him the nickname as a child – Kow Yook, in her tongue – and it had stuck. He nursed a dark rum and sipped at a beer as he watched a college basketball game on the TV over the bar. Danny knew the rum was for show, that Pork Belly would make that glass last all night long, contenting himself with a mild beer buzz.
Used to be different. There was a time Freddie ‘Pork Belly’ Chang would have swallowed a whole bottle of rum and barely felt a thing. Not anymore. Not since three years ago when he had hit a young homeless man with his car, down among the warehouses and waste ground at the tip of Hunter’s Point. He had sat in the car for a half hour, the drunk still heavy on him, before he called Danny. And Danny had helped him deal with it, even though it had sickened him to his very core. Because Pork Belly was a brother of the Tong, and you don’t say no to a brother.
The only condition Danny had attached to his assistance was that Pork Belly kick the booze. And he had done so, more or less, with Danny’s help. Since that time, as far as he knew, Pork Belly had stayed close to sober, so Danny could live with what he’d helped his old friend hide away. And from time to time, he could call on the big man for a favor.
Like now.
‘Hey, Danny Doe Jai,’ Pork Belly said as Danny approached along the nearly empty bar. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘Coffee, decaf,’ Danny said. He hadn’t touched alcohol in years either, not even beer, and it was too late in the evening for caffeine. Sleep was difficult enough without it. He took the stool next to Pork Belly’s, nodded his thanks to the barman who set a cup in front of him, and poured from a glass pot.
‘How you been?’ Pork Belly asked.
‘Okay. You?’
‘Meh.’ Pork Belly wavered his hand and shrugged. ‘My knees are no good. They hurt like a motherfucker, sometimes. Goddamn arthritis, the doctor tells me. Says I gotta lose weight, take the pressure off my joints.’
‘Be good for your heart too,’ Danny said.
‘Listen to him, Doctor Danny.’
‘Swimming.’
Pork Belly turned his head toward him. ‘What?’
‘Swimming’s good for arthritis. You get a good workout, but it’s easy on your joints.’
Pork Belly’s gut jiggled. ‘Get the fuck out of here. Swimming? You see me at the lido in Speedos and one of them little rubber skullcaps?’
‘Why not? Get you an inflatable ring, maybe some armbands.’
‘Yeah, I go in the water, some motherfucker come at me with a goddamn harpoon gun.’
Danny smiled around a mouthful of stale coffee, then swallowed. The TV switched to the ten o’clock news, the pomp of music over the titles.
‘I guess you know why I’m here,’ Danny said.
Pork Belly nodded. ‘Yeah, I got a call. Been expecting you.’
‘The Woos are good people,’ Danny said. ‘Mrs Woo knew my mother years ago. Johnny, her boy, he’s no gangbanger. He’s a good kid. Used to be, anyway. He was doing all right at school. He would’ve graduated next year; he still might, if he can make up his grades. Maybe have a shot at college.’
The mirth left Pork Belly’s face, the eyes deadened. ‘You should have come to me first.’
‘And what would you have done?’
‘Maybe nothing,’ Pork Belly said. ‘Maybe something. But that was my choice to make. Not yours. You bypass me, you make me look like a bitch in front of all my boys. I ain’t called the Dragon Head yet. When I do, he’s gonna tell me to smash your kneecaps, maybe take a couple of fingers. What do I say to him?’
As Danny opened his mouth to speak, a movement on the TV screen distracted him. Fuzzy CCTV footage: a jail cell, a cop standing at one side, a woman sitting on a bunk at the other. Then the woman threw herself at the cop, knocked him to the ground, clawing and punching the big man.
‘You talk him out of it,’ Danny said, turning his attention back to Pork Belly. ‘Tell him Johnny Woo was too soft for the life, he’d have been more trouble than he was worth, that I did you a fav—’
Two words from the television stopped him. Missing children, the newsreader said. He looked back to the screen.
‘I’ll try,’ Pork Belly said. ‘I don’t know if he’ll accept it, but I’ll try, just because I love you like a brother. But you pull that shit again …’
The news ticker along the bottom of the screen read: ‘Woman left New York days ago with her children, but local sheriff found no children in the car when it was stopped for a minor traffic offense.’
The same image again: the woman throwing herself at the cop.
Cut to the anchor, a serious expression on her face. ‘State police and FBI agents are traveling to the small town of Silver Water, Arizona, to question the as-yet-unnamed woman about the whereabouts of her two children. More on this story as it unfolds.’
Pork Belly said something, but Danny didn’t hear. His gaze remained on the television, even though the anchor had moved on to some other story. A woman traveling alone with her children, then she’s picked up by a cop, and the children are gone.
Chills ran across Danny’s skin. His heart raced, his lungs working hard.
No, he thought, shaking his head. You’ve been wrong before. Probably wrong this time too.
Pork Belly’s hand gripped his arm. ‘What’s up, man?’
Danny’s head snapped around to him, staring, as his mind tumbled.
‘Shit, man, you’re creeping me out.’
Danny climbed down from the stool. ‘I gotta go. We good?’
Pork Belly shrugged. ‘Yeah, we good.’
‘Thank you, dailo,’ Danny said, putting a hand on Pork Belly’s shoulder, squeezing. Then he walked out of the bar, onto the street, without looking back. His phone in his hand before his feet hit the sidewalk, his thumb picking out the search letters, looking for more on this woman in Arizona and her missing children.
As the screen filled with a list of results, he wondered if the woman had a husband. A husband whose world was being blown apart right now, just as Danny’s had been five years ago.