On the street outside Half-Ass, he could see two Dragons peering into the storefronts, moving along.

The answers, Jack had a hunch, were here, on this street, in the Hip Ching gambling den behind Half-Ass, at Bossy’s realty office, and in other locations in Bossy’s underworld. But not now, Jack knew, not in daylight. He’d return after dark, he decided, when Chinatown nightlife controlled the streets.

He watched as Franky Noodles waved to the counterman on the way out, suddenly in a hurry to get back to his red Camaro.

Fish in a barrel, Jack mused as he exited Half-Ass.

HALF-ASS WAS A twenty-four-hour greasy spoon, home to Pell Street regulars and Chinatown truck drivers dropping in for a quick yeen gnow or hom gnow faahn meal deal.

After sunset, most Chinatown families were home for the evening, surrendering the day to family dinner, Hong Kong videotapes, Chinese TV variety shows.

Families cooked their own rice in an electric pot and prepared a wok full of hot stir-fried vegetables, later adding in fast-food sides of sook sik cha siew roast pork, for yook, see yow gai, soy-sauce chicken, from takeout joints like Half-Ass.

Later at night, the local denizens who frequented Half-Ass weren’t so family oriented: Chinese gamblers from the basements, voracious johns from Fat Lily’s or Chao’s cat-houses, see gay drivers, cabbies, Black Dragon gang kids, made members of the Hip Ching tong, and their cronies.

All the seedy, shady creatures of the night, their dirty playtime until dawn.

JACK RETURNED TO Chinatown at midnight, made his way to the corner of Mott and Pell. The area was deserted except for an occasional passerby and what looked like a few gang kids at the far end of the short street.

All the office windows in the corner building were dark, but he noticed the black bulk of a radio car parked outside 36 Pell. There was no driver in the see gay, which made Jack wonder if this could be Bossy’s car. He pulled out a pen and jotted the license number on his wrist anyway.

Farther up the block he could see a few people outside Half-Ass, shuffling and stamping their feet against the cold. They’d probably been gambling in the basement that extended beneath Half-Ass and had come up for air, maybe a change of luck.

Jack knew to go through the doorway adjacent to Half-Ass, into the courtyard behind, and down the short flight of concrete steps to the basement. Sometimes the kitchen da jop gathered outside the back exit of Half-Ass, taking their smoke breaks in the courtyard, tempted themselves by the card games, the flow of gamblers, and the large sums of cash money exchanging hands under their feet.

Jack kept his head down. Half-Ass was half full, its windows foggy as he went past, through the grimy corridor into the cement courtyard.

He stepped down into the basement. He nodded and grunted at an old man seated on a metal folding chair near the door, and that seemed enough to let him slide into the mix. The basement was crowded, and he lit one of Billy’s Marlboros before feigning interest behind one of the chut jeung card games while covertly scanning the room. The usual assortment of restaurant workers off the late shift and gang kids, other losers returning from Atlantic City or Foxwoods with their last-ditch bets.

Mostly men smoking up a cloud of cigarette haze, matching expletives in Toishanese and Cantonese across the half-dozen rectangular tables. Only traditional poker games here—chut jeung, sup som jeun—seven-card and thirteen-card poker. No dew hei pussy mah-jongg games here. Women played mah-jongg.

No Las Vegas–style nights here. No casino games, just a notorious Chinatown Chinese poker joint. The Ghosts were way ahead by comparison, much more innovative than the Hip Chings, offering blackjack and mini-baccarat for the ladies at their gambling joints.

Here on Pell Street, men bet a week’s pay or more on the number of buttons in a fan tan bowl, on a color or a favorite table. Now that’s manly! Legendary players have won restaurants, or lost them. Their houses, their cars, their passports, and Rolex watches.

The gambling basements swallowed everything.

At the rear of the floor, the gang kids who had any money left had pooled their dollars and were betting together, cussing as their collective bao slowly disappeared.

Jack didn’t see anyone his own height, mostly five-eight and under. Excluding the gang kids, nobody looked very suspicious, just another gathering of hard-luck stories, damaged people, and lonely lives.

He dropped ten bucks on top of one of the bet boxes drawn on the brown butcher paper covering the sup som jeung table. He lost that promptly, the dealer sweeping his money off the table with a grin.

He went to another table and peeled off a couple of Lincolns. He hadn’t noticed any obvious left-handers slapping down money or cards on any of the tables. Dropping a Lincoln onto one of the end boxes, he won ten bucks. Pure luck.

Occasionally he’d jerk his eyes up abruptly, flash scanning the tables to see if anyone was paying any particular attention to him. No one seemed to care.

Deciding to see if any persons of interest were up in Half-Ass, he headed back to the courtyard. He grunted toward the old man on the way out, who seemed pleased that he was leaving.

He crossed the cement courtyard, back into the grimy building corridor leading out to Pell, when the first blow came over his left shoulder. It struck him hard across the back of his head, sent him reeling forward into the wall of the narrow hall. Something metal.

The second and third blows came in rapid hits on his neck and shoulders as he threw up a blocking arm and fought for balance. A jackhammer knee drove him to the dirty linoleum floor.

He yelled and started to draw his Colt, his head spinning. Twisting away from the direction of the attack, he caught the flash of a man in dark clothes darting out to Pell Street.

He struggled to his feet, the Colt in hand now, trigger finger ready.

When he staggered out of the building the street was empty, the neon colors of the restaurant and bar signs swimming in his head. He took a few cold shaolin breaths, stabilizing, but it wasn’t until a few minutes later, when he’d regained his equilibrium, that he realized the black see gay was no longer parked in front of 36 Pell.

The cold night air had revived him a bit, and he went directly to Grampa’s, three blocks away.

In the blue darkness of one of the booths, the barmaid gave him half a bag of ice, which he used as cold compress to his head, shoulders, and neck. It was a warning, he knew. He’d been hit hard enough to stun but not to kill. Besides a few lumps, he couldn’t find any blood on himself. If they’d wanted him dead, they’d have snuffed him.

The ice dulled the pain, and Grampa himself sent a boilermaker over to his solitary booth. Jack dropped the shot glass into the beer mug, chugged half of it back. He could feel the alcohol flowing to his brain and cooling down the pain inside him.

The warning only strengthened his resolve. He knew he had to be close to something if they’d felt the need to attack him. And they didn’t care if he was a cop.

He threw back the rest of the boilermaker, pulled out his cell phone, and called for a radio car back to Sunset Park. First thing in the morning, he determined, he’d run the license-plate number he’d scrawled on his wrist on the DMV and the Traffic Division databases.

Night Rider 2

ONE IN THE morning and he was restless, his last night in the Edgewater house. He poured some XO into a tumbler, gulped a hit, and took his last look around the dark kitchen, the curtained living room.