"Chinatown Beat" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chang Henry)

Man-Devil

Out on the edge of the neighborhood, the river wind blew chill into the somber Chinatown day, and swirled dust devils around the beastman who stood on the street corner, watching the working-class families entering the Housing Projects.

He saw the child, grade-school bag in her small hand, with the old woman, grandmother, he figured, withered, bent, useless. When they entered the project elevator, he followed them into the urine stench, watched as the grafittied door slid shut behind them. After the child tapped the seven button, he pressed number sixteen, lucky today. The old woman glanced at him only briefly, saw a clean-cut Chinese and was reassured. The little girl's long black hair hung down her back, her eyes reached just above the buckle of his belt.

They came to the seventh floor. The door slid back and the old woman pushed out past the swinging door to the hallway. In one motion, he grabbed the little girl, shoved the grandmother onto the linoleum, slammed the door.

The girl froze, her jaw slack with fear.

The elevator reached Eight, one of his hands cupped over her mouth, the other feeling for the switchblade in his pocket. At Fifteen, he took her into the stairwell, her eyes big, wet now, too afraid to cry. She was half-dragged, half-carried, up the stairs, her whimpering unheard over the echoing thunder of his footsteps, the feeble screams of grandma far below now.

On the roof landing he showed the knife but spoke calmly in a dialect of Chinese she barely understood.

Um sai pa, he said, eyes freezing her, don't be afraid. She nodded her answer at the point of the blade. Good, he murmured in English, tugging down her underpants. Seven, maybe eight years old, his eyes swallowed her. He put his fingers on her, like ice. Good, this country America, as he unbuckled his belt…

Bones

Jack nosed the Fury into Evergreen Hills cemetery, parked it behind a line of mausoleums, and went to the plot in the Chinese section.

The empty cemetery looked pastoral as a brief patch of sun spread over the clipped grass, throwing long shadows across the rows of tombstones. It was cooler now as Jack kicked away the twigs of the dying season, gravesweeping beneath his father's tombstone. He planted a bouquet of flowers, produced his flask and toasted mao-tai to Father and earth. Sorry, Pa, he thought.

He lit sticks of incense, took another slug from the flask, then poured out a small stream making a wet circle in the dirt. When his thoughts tumbled into speech, sorry was all he could say, not for anything in particular, but for the general torment of unfulfilled dreams.

"Sorry," he repeated, bowed three times, planted the incense, and touched his fingers to the graceful cuts in the gray stone.

Sorry you never struck it rich.

Sorry I never struck it rich.

He moved the tin bucket over and torched various packages of death money for gambling in the house of the dead.

Sorry no big house in the South of China.

Sorry no farm with fish, and rice paddies.

Sorry no bones to return to Kwangtungprovince.

He fed the shopping bag of gold-colored paper taels into the fiery heap in the bucket. He stirred the flames with a branch, produced three packs of firecrackers.

Sorry we never had a car.

Sorry I didn't become a doctor or lawyer.

He tossed the fireworks into the flames, stepped back as the staccato explosions rocked the silent cemetery.

Sony about moving out on you.

He tilted the flask and took another long hard hit. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Big Uncle

As was his custom on Saturday mornings, Wah Yee Tom left the office of the Hip Ching Labor and Benevolent Association, met Colo Clink, the enforcer, and went down the block to the joy Luck dim sum parlor where he held court for one hour at the large round table by the back wall.

During this hour, Wah Yee Tom dispensed charitable favors to members of the Association and their families, and mediated problems that arose within the ranks.

Wah Yee Tom, a.k.a. Uncle Four, was advisor for life to the Hip Ching tong, the number two tong in America, a bi-coastal organization with thousands of members, a multi-million-dollar bankroll, and an aging conservative leadership. The tong was the American offspring of the international Triads, Chinese secret societies whose roots reached back to warlords and dynasties preceding China's birth as a nation. The numerous Triads had supporters and agents in every Chinese community in the world.

A waiter brought Uncle Four's usual pot of guk bo cha, poured two cups and withdrew. Golo escorted some people into the restaurant and seated them by the takeout counter in the front. Then he went back to the round table, sat, and the two men sipped tea together before Uncle Four spoke.

"What do we have?" he asked quietly.

"A widow," Golo answered. "Needs money."

Uncle Four's eyes shifted to the disparate group at the front as Golo continued. "A member with a complaint, and a young guy who came off the ship that crashed the other night."

"Put him last," said Uncle Four.

The first matter at hand was a request for help from an elderly widow whose husband had been a longtime member before his death. The wrinkled old woman with gnarled hands had been beaten and her apartment had been ransacked by a gang of Puerto Rican beat girls during a push-in robbery in the housing projects. She was terrified and wanted to return to China to die but had no money, the say loy sung neu, nasty Latina girls, having taken everything.

Uncle Four spoke quietly to Golo, who rose and escorted the old woman to the door. He gave her a handful of hundred-dollar bills from a wad in his pocket, whispered in her ear, and patted her reassuringly across the shoulder. She nodded her head, almost kowtowing, before leaving the restaurant.

Golo returned to the table.

"She agrees," he said, "to provide us with the address and the keys to her apartment, along with the canceled rent checks and telephone bills of the year previous."

Uncle Four nodded, sipping thoughtfully from his cup of tea, thinking that he would instruct Golo to dispatch several Dragons to take over the apartment. It would become an additional stash- or safe-house, and the gang could distribute their Number Three bah fun, heroin, from there, to the low lifes and the animals.

The second person to entreat Uncle Four's help was pale for a Chinese; there was a sickly, pasty tone to his face. He wore a cheap jacket and tie over jeans and his black shoes were scuffed, slanted along the heels with wear. He wrung his hands and looked about nervously.

Golo brought him to the table, where he respectfully introduced himself as a new member who owned a small takeout counter down near Essex Street, at the edge of East Broadway. He'd paid his dues and posted the Hip Ching membership placard, but was still being shaken down by three rival crews, one of them being Dragons-a crew of young guns.

They'd threatened him and taken fifty dollars from his register.

Uncle Four knew the territory, a no-man's land picked over by rival gangs, the Fuk Chings, the Tong On. It was half a mile away from Pell and Division Streets, the heart of Dragon turf.

It was more difficult to manage the fringes of the empire, he thought, things were more desperate out there on the edge, the Fukienese refusing to respect truce and territory.

He gave the man a hundred dollars and assured him the problem would be gau dim, taken care of.

The man thanked him profusely and never took his eyes off Golo until he was out of the restaurant. Colo checked his watch, signaled the next young man over.

He was a skinny Fukienese with a scared look, and Golo conversed with him in Mandarin, calmed him, gave him a cigarette. He talked and Colo translated.

"His name is Li Jon. He walked off the highway, found a payphone. He called the number they gave him in China. When they called back, he gave them the words on the street signs. Half an hour later a black car picked him up and dropped him in Chinatown. He's been walking around town since."

Uncle Four blew the steam gently around the rim of the thick porcelain cup. "What about the ones who drowned?" lie asked the Fukienese.

The man took a breath. His eyes went distant.

"It was the ocean, the darkness. We're not used to it, you see." He shivered, continuing, "We're from the South of China, the water is always warm. When we dropped in, the water was so icy my muscles were in shock. I stroked and kicked but went nowhere. I was afraid my bones would freeze and snap and I'd sink and drown. People were screaming. Less than a hundred yards to land, I could see it. It was hard to breathe. My hands were chopping at the waves. I thought my heart would explode. I started to swallow saltwater."

His eyes came back.

"Then a wave caught me and suddenly there was a short walkway of land, where it rose up under the water. I caught my breath and saw the beach again. There was more screaming far behind me, near the ship. More people drowning. Another minute I was ashore, changing my clothes. I found a phone, made the call. I'm here. They said the Big Uncle would have work for me."

Uncle Four lowered his teacup to the table, leveled a hard look at the Fuk Chou man.

"Young man, you have come a long way, and you owe a lot of money. Remember well the terror of the ocean if you ever consider reneging on your debt. Your punishment will be a hundred times worse. You cannot hide. We will find you. Or America will swallow you up. Your family back in the village, all are at risk for you. So work hard. Don't mix with the gwai to. Repay your debt, then seek your fortune. Every man has a chance here. Do not fumble away your golden opportunity."

"Eternal thanks, Big Uncle," the young man said quietly.

Uncle Four nodded at Golo, who escorted the man out, dictating directions into his ear.

The restaurant began to fill for yum cha and Uncle Four took his tea to the big glass window and watched pedestrians passing along the shadowy narrow street. His thoughts drifted back a half-century, to when he had arrived in New York City as a Toishanese child. He'd grown up in a time when Chinese men faced off in back alleys with hatchets and cleavers. A time when the storied tongs had a death grip on the old sojourners.

More than forty years had passed since that night in the dusty room down in Mongkok, on the Kowloon side, with the ancestral scrolls and the flags of the mythical heroes on the wall, with twenty other dog recruits, where he drank the blood of a man and fowl mixed with wine, and swore on his life the Thirty-Six Oaths of secrecy and loyalty to his Triad blood brothers.

Now the Red Circle Triad had expanded outside of Communist mainland China, remaining a powerful force in Hong Kong, but spreading to Singapore, Amsterdam, Canada, and South America.

He remembered hand signals, instinctively ran his fingers along his forearm in an X, then hands, pitching fingers across his palm. Two fingers, three, five, dragon's head and tail. He grinned at the foolishness of his youth.

Uncle Four was not pleased about the way things had changed. The tongs were depicted as thuggish, evil organizations. The newer waves of immigrants didn't give respect to them. And every time business was transacted, there were the lawyers, the brokers, the city officials, the bank regulators. The paperwork, the documentation. He preferred things under the table. Quiet. Secretive.

Forty years ago, the Hip Chings had welcomed his return as a hero, never mentioning the jail time he'd served for what the white officials called tax evasion and labor racketeering. The tong had rewarded him a full share of the Chinese Numbers route he helped create before his incarceration. They had supported his family in China, where his first wife died, where elderly relatives were sustained into old age.

Uncle Four had taken the numbers proceeds from the hundred membership storefront operations and invested in the bak fun and in gambling basements from Pell Street to Division Street. Ten percent of the gross from gambling was paid back to the tong, blood cash that funded the benevolent work of the Association.

When the Feds investigated him, he dispersed his holdings and retired from the Association, becoming its advisor for life.

He sipped the tea thinking, There is no respect anymore.

Long shadows jagged along the street. He blew steam off the tea cup as the plastic wall-clock chimed, then waved goodbye to Golo who was already on the street, lighting up his trademark 555. Uncle Four knew it was too early in the day for the gang boys, so Golo would probably wait until the afternoon races at OTB before taking up the matter with the daai gor-big brother-in charge. No big deal. He would make them see the foolishness of their young minds. The punks were attracting attention toward the Hip Ching and it was bad for business.

It wasn't like in Hong Kong, where he could thrash the little dogs inside the Triad assembly hall. Here, the Chinese gangs had their own membership of undisciplined teenaged hotheads, including many who didn't speak or read Chinese, controlled supposedly by their "elder brothers," the dailo.

Uncle Four shook his head disdainfully.

They had even had to translate the Thirty-Six Oaths into English, which came out to only twelve oaths, to simplify the ritual, as the street boys were incapable of memorizing thirty-six consecutive ideas.

Of the Twelve Oaths, even the most lethal sounded blunt, almost businesslike, in English reading: I will obey the tong, and if I do not, I will die under the condition of being shot; the secret of the Association must be kept and if I do not do this I will be stabbed a thousand times; and if the tong comes into difficulty and I do not come to its aid, I will die by the electric shock, or be burned by fire.

Uncle Four finished his tea, and stared out over his world with the same disappointment he was feeling toward the young gangsters. No discipline these days, he thought, as he left the Joy Luck, heading toward Confucius Towers, completely ignoring the shortness of his shadow that preceded him down the pavement.

Sex/crimes

He was an hour early for the four to midnight shift but he didn't want to leave the leftover incense and hell money in the Fury. Bad luck. Better to stash them in his locker.

Alone in the squad room, he felt abandoned somehow. It wasn't until he punched up the TV that he realized why there was the absence of uniformed officers. On screen was an overhead aerial helicopter view of protestors coming across the Brooklyn Bridge, the National Organization of Women, NOW, and a coalition of anti-war and anti-poverty protesters bearing the banners of gay and lesbian rights activists and workers' rights groups, were marching, more than a hundred thousand strong. Their route snaked past Chinatown to Seventh Avenue, then north to a rally at Madison Square Garden. The march siphoned off NYPD manpower from every precinct in Manhattan, leaving the 0-5 precinct understaffed. The TV commentator spoke of their "left liberal agenda" directed at the Bush Republican administration. They were, he said, united for peace and justice.

Jack tossed the incense into his locker and was closing it when the desk phone jangled.

It was Paddy, the desk sergeant, downstairs.

"There's a man down here," he said, "who needs to speak to a Chinese."

"Where's the translator?" Jack asked.

"Chin's out on meal, and Wong took a personal day."

"Coming down," Jack said as he hung up the phone.

Sergeant Paddy, behind the desk, loomed over the man, who was watching Jack approach. He was Chinese, forty-something, dressed like he might be an office worker, shift manager, something like that.

"How can I help you?" Jack asked, his Cantonese sharp.

The man responded in Toishanese, the tongue of laundrymen and waiters.

"I would like to report that there has been a rape," he said guardedly. "But there are conditions…"Jack's eyes narrowed-"that I need your help with."

Jack waited, then said, "Okay, what do you need?"

Paddy jerked his head toward the rear of the room. Jack walked the man slowly to the benches by the back stairs. After he was seated, the man said, "My niece was raped. She is ten years old. Her grandmother is beside herself-"

"Slow down," Jack said quietly, his Toishanese all slang now.

"Her father does not like the police. He does not want to report it. My sister, the mother, feels the shame of it will harm the girl further."

Jack was beginning to have a bad feeling about this.

"Not one of them will speak to a gwailo officer."

Sex Crimes Unit, Jack was thinking.

"I am hoping to convince them. To speak to you."

Jack took a breath, through his nose the way a boxer does when he's under pressure. "Come upstairs," he said.

In the empty room, Jack asked, "When did this happen?"

"This morning. About five hours ago."

There was a pause. Jack knew the victim should already have been examined, valuable time had been lost. He wasn't on the clock yet, but to see if this man's story was true, he was good to go.

Normally, a call would have come into the precinct and they would have processed it. Ms. Chin, the translator, would get involved if needed. Get the basic information from the complainant. A uniformed officer would be dispatched to the scene and determine the facts, report back to the sergeant. They would notify EMS, get the victim to a hospital, administer a rape kit test. The detectives of the Sex Crimes Unit would be called to respond, the experts, to determine the who's and why's. Ask the victim to identify photographs. Check local and state files for pedophile predators of the type involved. Track and locate. Surveillance if necessary. Bring suspects in for questioning. Draw up timelines to trace the crime back and forth. Check the prison population based on the perpetrator's profile. Post composite sketches of the suspect. Seek help from the local population. The news media, TV, radio, and newspapers, could help.

The uncle's eyes went distant as he continued. "The grandmother and the little girl. They had gone to the supermarket. It was around ten-thirty or eleven this morning. They were in the elevator, coming home."

Jack was seeing it clearly in his mind.

"There was a man inside, riding up with them. I think he followed them in. On their floor they started to get off. But the man pushed grandmother, Ah Por, down, and took the little girl to the roof."

The uncle's jaw clenched. He swallowed, took a breath.

"The mother and the grandmother found her on a landing, crying. Her underwear was missing. And she was bleeding.

The uncle's chest heaved, his hands clenched, his knuckles turned white.

"What did he look like?" Jack asked.

"The grandmother said he was cleancut, that he wasn't an older man, but not a kid either. Maybe twenty to thirty years old. Chinese, it's hard to tell sometimes."

"What else?"

"The mother is concerned the girl may be pregnant."

"Is the family there now?"

"I will take you to them." He showed Jack a Con Edison bill with an address on it.

Jack went to the photo file cabinet, pulled all the pictures of Asian men involved in sex crimes. There were seven photos in all, men of apparently different ages, but possible perps. Hard to tell with Asian men. He picked up the phone and tapped up Paddy.

"Sarge," he said, "it's a possible rape. I'm going to need the Sex Crimes Unit."

"Forget about it," Paddy answered, "there's reports of Hispanic men attacking women protestors along the parade route. Snatching them near the Penn Yards. Sex Crimes is all tied tip."

"I'm going with the man to the scene. I'll work up the information." He looked at the Con Ed bill. "It's 10 Catherine Slip. In the Smith Houses."

"I'll patch it along, but Sex Crimes won't be available until after the protest march."

Downstairs, Sergeant Paddy watchedJack and the man exit the stationhouse, both of them somber. Jack flashed him a hard look and shook his head as more uniformed officers trooped in.

The four to midnight shift was finally arriving.

Catherine Slip was six blocks off. Along the way, Jack stopped at Tong's Variety Toys and purchased a black-and-white panda bear, a prop he hoped would help put the victim at ease when he interviewed her.

The uncle appeared nervous, anxious, as they walked together.

"You're doing the right thing," Jack said. The uncle nodded, uncertainty in his eyes.

"Why?" Jack asked. "Why does the father dislike the police?"

The uncle shook his head, a look of disdain crossing his face.

"He was mugged by some loy sung, Spanish men. Over there somewhere. When the police came, he felt they did nothing. Another time, a policeman wrote him a traffic ticket. He couldn't speak enough English to argue. He felt he did nothing wrong. Just sitting in the car. It still cost him a hundred dollars."

They were approaching the fringe of the neighborhood.

The Smith Houses were brown brick buildings, each seventeen stories tall, a low-income housing development located in the bowels of the Lower East Side. They had been part of the post-war boom in public housing construction, stacking poor families, black, Latino, white, in isolated areas, families that lived off Welfare programs, generations growing up on WIC coupons, and food stamps. Subsistance on assistance.

Twelve buildings hunkered down next to the East River, by the Brooklyn Bridge and the South Street exit ramp of the FDR, beginning just a block away from the city's police headquarters.

Jack remembered schooldays, when he and Wing Lee came by the community center gymnasium, looking to play basketball, fearfully avoiding the black men who drank from quart bottles of Colt.45, pitched quarters against the gym wall, and rolled dice when they weren't selling bags of marijuana, coke, maybe heroin. Pa had told Jack not to go down there, to the jingfu Iangovernment housing projects-where every Chinese resident had been mugged at one time or another. One day that last summer, a group of black kids stole his basketball, and tore his Knicks T-shirt. He never went back. Fond memories.

Now, they were passing the white sign with red letters that read " Welcome to the Alfred E. Smith Houses."

Ten Catherine Slip was beyond the gymnasium, on the way to the East River. Long-haul trucks and black cars lay low under the ramp of the FDR. The main entrance to the building was along a deserted stretch of sidewalk, cracked and dropping down toward the river.

They stepped into the stench of junkie vomit, passing graffiticovered walls. NWA, the rap group Niggers With Attitude, in big block marker. To the elevator. Niggaz 4eva.

Apartment 16 was located in the crook of the long corridor. The uncle knocked. There was the sound of the peephole sliding open behind the two-way glass. A moment, then the uncle said, "It's me."

The door opened into a small living room. A kitchenette, and bedrooms beyond. Plastic slipcovers on the couch and chairs. Aluminum foil on the wall above the oven and range. The smells of horn yee, salty fish and steamed rice.

The father was fortyish but gray already and thinning. The mother was red-eyed; she kept her left hand over her mouth. Jack could almost hear the heaviness of her breath. The grandmother peeping out from one of the bedrooms. The girl was inside.

" I'm loYu," Jack announced quietly, giving his surname, and family association by inference. He showed his badge to the father, looked to the uncle, then to the mother.

" I understand your daughter may have been injured?"

The mother gasped behind her hand. The uncle braced his sister.

"For your daughter's sake," Jack half-pleaded, "she needs medical attention. Also, the physical evidence will help us catch this animal…"

The father gave him a skeptical look. " The police have never been any help. They pick on us Chinese. I can get help my own way."

Jack took a step closer and said, "Sir, your daughter may be pregnant. This is our first concern." The mother averted her eyes atJack's glance.

"Please help us," continued Jack. "This beast is out there, running free. He may yet attack another Chinese girl. You can help us put an end to this."

The father's mouth formed a sneer but he remained silent.

"No one else will know. The victim's identity will be kept confidential."

The victim. Victim. The word resonating in Jack's head. The mother began to cry, sobbing softly. Jack took a breath through his nose. The father was slowly relenting, realizing the limits of his options, Jack felt. He huddled with his wife, comforting her.

The uncle led Jack to the near bedroom. The lights were dim, and the grandmother was stroking the girl's back, the two of them seated on the bottom bed of the double-decker. The little girl looked away, distant.

Jack beckoned the grandmother to the hallway light and showed her the photographs from the perp file.

"Was it any of these men?" he asked.

She took maybe two minutes to view the seven photos.

"None of these," she said. "He was lean, with short hair. Like you."

"How tall?"

"About your height. Shorter, but not by much." Five-foot-nine, Jack noted.

"Eyeglassses?"

"No."

"Did you notice any scars? "

"No."

"A mustache?"

"No. He looked like a regular young man."

"Is there anything you remember clearly about him?"

She paused for a moment, looking toward his feet. "He had on thick black shoes. They were dirty. Like he worked in a gung chong, a factory, or a chaan gwoon, a restaurant."

As Jack jotted down the information, the girl appeared at the edge of the door, round sad eyes peering up at him. He smiled, taking the panda from his jacket.

"Hi," he said softly to her, showing her his gold badge. "I'm a policeman, and I brought a friend for you." He gave her the panda. The girl accepted it, looking down at the floor. Jack knelt, his eyes at her level.

"I'm going to punish the bad man who hurt you. But I'm going to need your help."

The girl hugged the bear. Through the bedroom window, Jack could see the afternoon darkening, the overcast day running toward its end.

"I'm going to take a walk with ah por-grandma. Sook-sookuncle-will stay with you. When I come back I'm going to ask you some questions, okay?"

"Okay," the girl answered, her voice barely audible.

Speaks English, Jack noted as he turned toward the front door.

They took the stinking elevator up, then the hallway stairs, climbing the steps up to the landing, the old woman leading the way.

Grandmother pointed to where the girl had sat, bleeding, on the cement floor. She had feared her granddaughter was dead. In the waning light of the afternoon, Jack could see no visible clues, no articles of evidence left behind anywhere, only the stillness of the cinderblock enclosure. Crime Scene Unit. They might have the resources and the equipment to take it further. Sex Crimes Unit, maybe. Break out the bloodlights, and all that high-tech gear… But there was nothing here.

They were walking back down the graffiti-tagged stairwell, Jack keeping an eye out for evidence, when his radio blared. It was Sarge Paddy's voice over the static.

"SCU's down by you. They need to know what apartment."

"Sixteen," Jack barked, "apartment sixteen."

They stepped over the puddles of urine, past hypodermic needles and empty beer cans, until they reached their landing.

SCU came out of the elevator just as they approached the apart ment, two white female undercover detectives, one more mannish than the other. Jack introduced himself, gave one his detective's card and handed over all the information he'd jotted down. The one with the short spiky haircut looked over the sheet of paper and complimented Jack on his thoroughness. Jack explained that he hadn't interviewed the victim yet, but believed the girl spoke English.

"We'll take it from here then," the taller one said. "Thanks for your help."

"Sounds like the same perp from the case in the 0-Six," the other added. "Another Chinese girl, about the same age. But this was in the projects on the West Side. The Varick Houses, near the Holland Tunnel."

"Can you get me some composite sketches?"Jack asked, showing interest. "Also a picture of the victim?"

"Be in your mailbox at the 0-Five," said the taller one. "First thing tomorrow."

"Thanks." Jack nodded. "I'll see what I can squeeze out of the neighborhood."

"That's a bet," she said, breaking a smile.

All together, they entered the apartment.

The father stepped forward, away from the mother who remained near the small kitchenette, and stood squarely in front of the white gwai por, women detectives.

"Don't be nervous," Jack warned him in a loud enough voice to command him to back off. "These are policewomen. Detectives. They will help take your daughter to the hospital. They will spare you the paperwork."

The father watched Jack silently.

"Sometimes women understand women better," Jack added. The father took a breath and silently gave in, stepping back as the female detectives followed the grandmother to the far bedroom.

"Go with them," he said to the girl's mother.

Jack stood with the uncle and the father, the three men quiet in the kitchen area. Jack could see the detectives working the girl in the bedroom, reassuring her. He saw the panda's legs swinging, shifting in the girl's embrace.

In five minutes they'll have her enroute to Downtown Hospital or Gou- veneur General. Administer a rape kit. CaptureDNA. One of the SCU would process the crime scene, double-check with a flashlight, and again in daylight.

The girl hugged the panda as she left with the tall detective, throwing Jack a sorrowful look, on her small face a sad and fearful smile. The mother went along.

Alone with the uncle at the door, Jack said, "I'll need a photograph of your niece." The uncle gave him one from his wallet, a school picture with a sky-blue background.

"Her father is talking about going to the elders of his village association," the uncle said, "to get something going."

Jack knew what he meant, that they'd do their own investigation. He gave the uncle a Detective's Endowment Association card. "Call me if you hear anything," Jack said, before he entered the elevator. The orange glow of the sunset was barely above the horizon of the West Side as he walked back toward the stationhouse and the Fury. He felt a growl in his stomach, and for a second considered taking his meal break, but he had no appetite. Instead, the knot that was clenching in his gut reminded him how vicious the world was to the innocents who could not defend themselves. How does a cop get help from a community that has no faith in officers of the law?"

He went past the groups of black gangsta toughs gathering in the projects, all do-rags and gold-capped teeth, and turned his thoughts to the colors of the neon lights blinking in Chinatown in the distance. In his heart, filled with hate, he was wishing he could put his hands on this cowardly unknown molester of children and slowly choke the life from him.