Death Money by Henry Chang

help.” He worked his cigarette almost to the end. The Gee Association , Jack suspected, knew more than it was telling.
    “What happened with the robberies?”
    “You mean the police? Sing didn’t go. Said it was useless. A waste of time. He’d only lose another day’s pay.”
    “So he didn’t report it?”
    The man shook his head no as he finished his cigarette. “I don’t think so.” He answered Jack’s frown, saying, “I got robbed once. At knifepoint. Three guys against me, on a bike. The bosses didn’t help, but I reported it.”
    “And what happened?” Jack asked.
    “I went into the station and looked at photographs. But it happened at night. It was dark. They all wore hoodies, and they all looked about the same. I remembered the knives more than the faces, and I couldn’t pick out anyone for sure.”
    “It’s good that you reported it,” Jack advised. “At least the cops know about it, could look out for crime like that.”
    The man didn’t look convinced, changed the subject. “I lost two hundred dollars,” he said bitterly.
    Jack redirected the talk. “Where did he live, this brother, Singarette?”
    “ Mox-say-go ,” he said, grinning. “He was joking that he was living with Mexicans.”
    “Mexicans?” Bronx immigrants from Mexico?
    “Maybe one of Gooba Jai’s places.”
    Gooba Jai was Chino-Cubano , one of the later waves of Chinese-Cuban immigrants who found their Spanish-speaking way to the South Bronx and bought blighted buildings in decaying neighborhoods, properties no one else wanted. Those derelict, rent-controlled tenements were set up as rent-a-bed deals for Chinese and Latino workers or visitors to the Bronx.
    “I don’t know any addresses,” he said.
    “Did he have any other problems?” Jack pressed. “Girlfriend? School?”
    “No. But he mentioned a gambling situation, had to do with him getting robbed. Like he was trying to win back what he’d lost.”
    “Gambling?” challenged Jack. “Up here? Where?”
    “Don’t know, but everyone talks about Fay Lo’s.”
    “ Fay Lo ?” Fat boy. “Where?”
    Jack got the don’t know shrug again, just as the China Village manager that Jack had spotted earlier came out of the front door and peered into the alley.
    “ DEW NA MA GA HEI! “ he cursed in Toishanese as he spotted the deliveryman. Motherfucker! Your deliveries are getting cold!
    Jack handed the man his detective’s card as he started moving his bike toward the front. He gave Jack a departing nod.
    “Call me if you think of anything else,” Jack called out after him.
    The manager cast a quick look in Jack’s direction and was momentarily puzzled. Then he shivered in the cold and ran back inside the China Village. Jack imagined him to be as glib as the manager of the Golden City, tactful, expeditious, but not very helpful. They volunteered nothing and spoke like they’d been pre-lawyered up.
    Jack couldn’t recall much else on the Chinese-Cubans in the Bronx, but he felt like he’d struck a vein. He was pondering Mexicano Chino-Cubano crash pads and Fay Lo’s gambling operations when his cell phone jumped around in his jacket pocket.
    He tapped up a number he didn’t recognize, but the phone voice belonged to Sergeant Cohen from the Three-Two.
    “The report’s in,” he advised. “Report to the morgue, ASAP.”
    O N THE WAY downtown, Jack tried to put together what he’d gathered. The dead man was a deliveryman/waiter/student named Chang, who’d been robbed and had a gambling problem. He’d been angry, maybe depressed. Maybesuicidal. The jumper/floater scenario was unreeling in his head.
    He arrived at Manhattan’s West Side before he knew it.

Steel Cold Dead
    H E STOOD IN the cold, stainless-steel stillness of the room, its wall of metal doors housing the dead, the after-world rendition of a Fukienese rent-a-bed. A female morgue assistant handed him the certificate of death. She said, “Dr. Jacobson will be right back,” before walking