One of the listings was a luxury home in Edgewater, New Jersey: 88 Edgewater Lane.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “He’s not picking up. He may be in the field.” She sounded like she’d practiced the line.

“Could you try once more?” Jack asked, nodding his thank you as she tried the call again. He wondered if she was being loyal to her boss, Bossy Gee, and was just playing him, the chaai lo. He tried to recall Singarette’s notation on the New Jersey bus map.

She let her call continue for a full minute before announcing, “He’s still not picking up. Sorry.”

“Can you try his cell phone?”

She called, but after a few seconds said, “It’s going to voice mail.”

Jack extended his NYPD detective’s card to her.

“Please have him call me,” he said.

“Ho ahh.” She smiled. “Certainly.”

She buzzed him out, and as he stepped back through the heavy door, he felt like he’d beaten lockdown at Rikers.

She was still smiling at him as he turned away from the hallway camera and walked down the stairs to Pell Street.

OUTSIDE THE FIFTH Precinct on Elizabeth Alley, he looked for the undercover cars and found an old Chevy Impala, its NYPD parking placard visible on the dash.

The sergeant at the duty desk didn’t recognize him at first and continued reviewing the assignments on his roster as he gave Jack another once-over.

“The Chevy’s with Fields and Malone,” he said finally, tossing Jack the car keys. “They’re in court until the end of the shift.”

“I’ll have it back before then,” Jack promised. “Thanks.”

He ran the engine a few minutes, letting the Impala warm up before heading for the West Side Highway toward the George Washington Bridge. The GWB would take him across the Hudson into Fort Lee, New Jersey.

He didn’t know the area well but figured he could find Edgewater directly, since it was part of the same county.

On the Edge

HE KEPT THE frosted bathroom lights off. There was enough daylight from the vent windows, he felt.

The coolness of the marble floor curled around his ankles.

He ran the shiny brass faucet for a few seconds, catching a dim glimpse of himself in the mirror, before cupping the warm water in his hands and bringing it to his face. The rinse felt welcoming, purifying. Some of the splash left wet blotches on the sleeves of his blue Ascot Chang bathrobe.

He didn’t care.

His vision was blurred by the second and third rinse, and it took him a minute to refocus on the face in the mirror. Except for the puffiness under his eyes, he decided he didn’t look too bad for a man whose next milestone birthday would make him sixty years old, five cycles of the Chinese horoscope.

Nobody is guaranteed six cycles, he thought, especially considering all the trouble he’d had in recent years.

He smoothed the excess water from his hands into his hair, roughly combing it back with his fingers. He patted his face dry and left the towel by the side of the polished stone sink, remembering that he’d canceled the cleaning woman’s contract two weeks earlier because it didn’t matter anymore.

He’d decided to move out. The only question was where.

He padded quietly, in his soft Jimmy Choo slippers, through the silence in the big empty house, past the rare jade vases and the classical Chinese calligraphy framed and hanging on the pearly walls, down the thickly carpeted steps, and around to the modern walk-through kitchen, where he powered up the small TV on the counter, already set to the Chinese cable channel. Just to have some noise in the house. Made it feel like he wasn’t alone.

HE POURED HIMSELF a shot of XO and tried to remember which days they’d lined up for showing the house.

He was pleased to be using his own realty company, thereby cutting costs dramatically, and trusted the veteran agents to whom he’d given the exclusives to sell what was where he and his family had lived the last fifteen years of his life. A lot of history, good and bad.

The tri-level house had been silent since his father’s funeral, since his mother and wife returned to Hong Kong and Taiwan, respectively. Franky, his son, hadn’t been home in days, which wasn’t unusual.

“James” Jook Mun Gee, businessman and entrepreneur, knew he didn’t need the house anymore. What was once a social statement was now just a bad memory, where bad things had taken place, and where bad feelings still lingered in the air.

He downed the XO and poured another.

He considered his other places in Virginia and Pennsylvania. Not too far from New York City. Nice, two-family-type homes he could relocate to. Big enough for the extended family from overseas. But he knew Franky would never go.

He’d be alone most of the time.

In the end, he didn’t really want to leave New York City. Too many opportunities and, besides, his Hip Ching and Triad associations were all in the city.

He’d been considering condominiums in Sunset Park, the Brooklyn Chinatown, or on the outskirts of the Flushing, Queens, Chinatown. Places where he can blend in. He pulled a Cuban cigar from a crevice in an intricately carved ivory tusk, engraved with the legends of the Five Villages.

He fired up the cigar, no longer expecting a wife’s complaint about the smell.

The realty agents all carried air freshener, he knew.

Sell the house, he focused. He’d make an easy half-million profit in the sale anyway. Next, move to smaller digs. Allow for his estranged wife and his wayward son, Franky, but not let them limit him. A condo in Manhattan? The women would like that. Better values in Brooklyn? He knew Franky wouldn’t give a shit whatsoever.

Somewhere he could start anew?

He kept having the flashbacks.

He’d wanted to retreat to one of the other homes, but conditions were inappropriate. He’d alerted his agents in Brooklyn. Not far from Manhattan, with easy access.

He didn’t want to live in the house much longer.

And the flashbacks just made things worse.

THE IMPALA HELD its own on the highway, and Jack could see the GWB in the distance. He wondered about the old man, Bossy’s father, Gee Duck Hong, and what his life must have been like. As a younger man he would have been a prominent member of the bachelor generation in Chinatown—Jack’s father’s generation—when Chinese bachelors satisfied their needs with alcohol, opium, gambling, and prostitutes in an atmosphere of organized tong crime and racial discrimination. It was a time when Chinese hatchet men fought each other with meat cleavers and hammers on Doyers Street, and along Mott and Pell; men who had never before wielded a knife or tool in anger learned quickly from the gwai lo whites, vicious gangs like the Dead Rabbits, the Bowery Boys. This was Gee Duck Hong’s time. Pioneering times, and tribalism, for the Chinese in New York City. Wealthy merchants shunned the lowly laundrymen and street vendors as class struggle laid bare the conflicting internal politics of Chinatown, even as the community was fighting for its very life against municipal corruption and racism.

Pa’s history lesson faded in Jack’s brain as the old Chevy crossed the bridge and brought him into Fort Lee.

He drove through upscale bedroom communities with stately homes in the million-dollar range, surrounded by tall, hardy trees, natural vistas, a nearby lakefront. He cranked down the window and caught the rich scent of old money in the rush of cold air.

There was still some snow cover, not unusual at the higher elevation, with chunks of frozen slush shoveled to the curbside. He passed rows of bare hedges, graveled driveways, and finally found the street that led to the Edgewater station house. Soon enough, he came to a modern brick facility with multipurpose trailers forming a perimeter. There was plenty of open parking in a back lot, but Jack parked the Chevy as close as he could get to the main entrance.