“Dofu doy!” The man grinned back, putting the steamy cup aside. Tofu boy! he said, turning his gaze to include Jack.

“Ngo pong yew,” Billy introduced Jack. “He’s my friend.” It wasn’t a shake-hands moment, and both men nodded respectfully. Then Billy added, “Chaai lo, he’s a cop.”

The grin left the man’s face slowly as Jack flapped open his jacket and flashed his gold badge and, inadvertently, also the pistol butt sticking out of his waistband holster.

“And he has some questions,” Billy continued, “maybe you can help him with.”

“Of course,” the man answered, his mouth small now. “If I can …”

“Who answers the phone here?” Jack asked casually.

“Whoever sits here,” the man answered. “Sometimes the vice president, but mostly me. If I go to lunch or step away on other duties, then any member can answer and take a message. It’s usually about banquet arrangements or funerals. Or group trips to the cemeteries.”

Jack placed the plastic-bagged menu scrap on the desk. The man looked over the telephone numbers with the 888 prefixes diligently.

“Those numbers mean anything to you?” Jack asked.

“Not really, no.” There was caution in the man’s voice now.

“Not familiar numbers?”

“No.” He took a sip from the container of coffee.

“Lucky Dragon? Lucky Phoenix?” Jack continued, “Any of these sound familiar? How about China Village? Or Golden City?”

“They sound like Chinese restaurants,” the man offered.

Jack asked, “Any idea why your association’s telephone number is grouped with those restaurants’ numbers?”

“I have no idea.” But his face told a different story as the man began to back up, reconsidering a bigger involvement than he’d bargained for. He glanced at Billy, who remained intensely quiet during Jack’s interview. Billy, sitting in the catbird seat, offering no relief.

Jack pressed, “Can I speak with the vice president? Or the president?”

There was a pause as the man’s eyes left Billy and drifted back to the plastic baggie. He took another sip of coffee, enjoying it less now.

“The president and the vice president are overseas,” he said, almost confidentially. “But they wouldn’t be involved in the day-to-day operations anyway. The positions are only ceremonial. Unofficially, I’m the English secretary, but I don’t receive all the calls.”

“And you don’t log the calls?”

“Who keeps a record of calls, anyway, these days? Only the phone company. And that’s because they want to bill you.”

Jack placed the second baggie on the desk, showing the produce receipt from the body. “Does this look familiar?” he asked.

“No,” the man said firmly after only a glance. “It looks like fruit.”

Jack put the headshot of the deceased on the desk, next to the man’s container of coffee. “Ever see this man?” Jack quietly asked.

“No” was his answer, his eyes dancing but lingering longer this time. “Sorry.” The face of death had turned him off, clammed him up, and Billy exchanged looks with Jack. Billy was a face of disappointment, and Jack couldn’t mask his doubt.

“M’hou yisee, hah?” the man said regretfully. “Sorry that my answers are no help.” Clenched in his face, clearly, was his reluctance to say anything that in any way represented the voice of the association. He didn’t want to involve the group in any outside trouble. He didn’t want to go anywhere near the dead face in the photo, but the phone numbers seemed to make him hesitate before backing off.

The man looked at Billy for a long moment. Bee-lee boy was Bow Ying’s son, he knew, an upcoming young businessman and heir to the tofu throne, but in their little Chinatown world, Billy didn’t carry any more weight than that. It was only business after all, but bringing a cop around was an awkward surprise.

Jack offered one of his NYPD detective’s cards. “Please call me if anything occurs to you.”

The man nodded politely and accepted the card.

Billy bluntly broke the ice with an unrelated question: “So you have enough tofu for Chin’s wedding banquet?”

Frozen momentarily by the change in direction, the man answered, “I’ll call you.”

Jack thanked him, and they left the room, leaving him in peace with his morning coffee.

OUT ON MOTT Street it was starting to snow, with big flakes of white slowly covering the icy gray debris on the ground. Billy fired up a cigarette and took a long drag.

“Bullshit. What a waste of time.”

“Relax,” Billy said. “The man got uptight. Your badge, the gun, the dead man’s picture. Hey, it’s easier to just know nothing.”

Jack knew it as Chinese truth, centuries of perfecting this type of cooperation with the authorities, where no one ever implicates himself. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.

“He didn’t see you as Chinese, Jacky boy,” Billy continued. “The only thing yellow about you was your badge. That stinkin’ badge, my brother, sometimes opens doors, but sometimes closes them, too.”

They continued toward the Tofu King.

Billy concluded, “The man doesn’t trust what might happen to his words once they leave his mouth and slide into your cop’s ear. Ya dig?”

Jack frowned as he checked his watch. “Just let me know if you hear anything.” He left Billy at the tofu shop, made a left onto Bayard, and headed toward the Senior Citizens’ Center. The falling flakes, he knew, would drive the elderly indoors to the free hot congee breakfast provided by the center.

He hoped the old woman, Ah Por, would be there.

THE SENIOR CENTER occupied the first floor, including the old cafeteria, of what used to be Public School 23.

What was once an elementary-school lunchroom was now used to cook and serve meals to 300 elderly Chinese—hot congee in the winter, tofu dishes and melon soups in the summer, plates of rice with sides of Chinese greens, choy, and fruit.

A cup of tea was always available for the asking.

The temperature rose noticeably as Jack stepped into the lunchroom, a humid mass of gray heads, warming in their down-filled jackets and quilted meen ngaap vests. He could hear Chinese Wah Fow radio over the PA system, barely audible over the din of chattering voices and clashing metal from the kitchen area.

He looked toward Ah Por’s usual spot, near the big window facing the back courtyard. It was crowded there, and he couldn’t tell for sure with all the puffy, shapeless clothes, so he moved in for a closer look.

The sea of bodies fluidly parted for Jack, a young stranger, and rejoined in his wake. Jack could feel the looks of curiosity following him.

He found Ah Por alone at the end of one of the bench tables near the back exit. There was an empty bowl next to her, and she was watching an old Hong Kong movie playing on one of the overhead TV monitors.

Jack took a seat opposite her and caught her attention by touching the back of the veiny hand she’d rested on the table. “Ah Por,” he acknowledged quietly.

She stared at him curiously, smiling, as he bowed slightly.

“Ah doy,” she said, using his boyhood tag. Onset dementia, Jack thought, before she added, “You are your father’s son.” She hesitated a moment when Jack pressed the folded five-dollar bill into her hand.

“What now, this time?” she asked, a quiet sadness in her eyes.

He took out the plastic-bagged scraps of evidence first, slipped them onto the table in front of her.

“These numbers mean anything?” Jack asked.

“The plastic blocks my old fingers.”

Jack unzipped the baggies, allowed her to touch the damp scraps of paper with her fingertips. Her breathing got shallower as she lightly ran her fingers over the phone numbers, over the Chinese words on the produce receipt.

“The numbers are looking for money,” she said, “won cheen.” Won cheen also meant “looking for work,” Jack knew. Or it could mean “collecting on a debt.”