He scanned the dark cement box of a room, closed his eyes when they reached the bars across the front of the cell. He took a deep breath, and again thought about how his life had come to this.

During the first few days of chor gom, prison, he’d been mixed in with the hok gwai, black devils, and the loy sung, the lowlife Spanish. They’d mocked him by pulling back the corners of their eyes, taunting him, Egg roll! Bruce Lee!! Fock you ass, Jackie Chan! Ching chong! Some of them menaced him, sizing him up to rob him. A few sadists regarded him as fresh meat, stared him down with hard faces, the way long-term criminals devour new prisoners with their scowling, man-raping eyes.

Johnny had steeled himself mentally; he wouldn’t go down easily, would set an example.

Suddenly, he’d gotten transferred to the Central Punitive Segregation Unit, a maximum security single-cell jail. Protective custody. Protective? he’d wondered. From whom? Everyone, he’d realized. Now he was kept from the general population, confined to a six-by-nine-foot cement cage, with a wall bunk across from a metal toilet bowl.

And Shirley Kwan singing.

He remembered purchasing a radio car hookup from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. The overnight limo deal, jockeying the black Lincoln, had prospered, until he made a mistake. He’d broken one of his cardinal rules: never get involved with the paying customers

He’d been taken in by her beauty.

Smoldering anger and shame still flared up inside, but he knew it was his own fault. He’d been the greedy fish who’d taken the bait. He’d been socking away cash until he got mixed up with the client, the Fat Uncle’s lady, his alluring mistress, Mona. He’d been seduced by the tragedy of her story, her past and her present life of suffering. And, of course, by her sexual beauty, her sensual lovemaking.

The other night drivers had never caught on.

The instant that he entered her, never realizing he’d been sucked in, had led to his present state: imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. All his grand dreams—a take-out counter, a Wah Wah Bakery franchise, the coin Laundromat deal—gone. All gone. Eventually, he’d have to sell the Lincoln, and move on.

Now his life was in the hands of other men: a Hip Ching tong officer, and a fancy gwailo, Caucasian, lawyer. Johnny had gotten over his initial rush of hysteria, had resigned himself to his fate, trusting that the tong agent and the white lawyer would work successfully toward his release.

They’d wanted to find the victim’s mistress, the woman known only as Mona. Johnny had helped their Chinese artist draw a likeness of her, a pretty face pulled from the intimate memories he’d had of her. The artist had been forging copies of Rembrandt and Vermeer, and his rendering was far better than a mug shot. Johnny had revealed conversations he’d had with Mona, described her fashion sense, anything that might provide a clue.

Protective custody.

He didn’t understand how or why, until he’d met the two men in the interview cell. They had made all the arrangements somehow on the basis of some phone threats against him that had been called into the prison. So they’d had to move him, per regulations.

Now Johnny had a small semblance of the creature comforts of Chinatown. He’d survived these four months in the cinder-block cell because the two men had arranged for him to get twice-weekly rations of lo mein and chow faahn, fried rice, packs of Marlboros and oolong tea bags, Chinese newspapers and magazines. Most of all, he found comfort in the transistor radio with the special chip embedded that brought broadcasts from Chung Wah Chinese Broadcasting into the prison.

He knew when his care packages of supplies arrived by the smell of fried rice and egg rolls wafting over from the guards’ locker room. One of the black guards had given him a packet of extra batteries for the radio, and started calling him “Mister John.”

They’d assigned him a half hour each day alone in the exercise yard. He practiced some tai chi exercises, smoked cigarettes, puzzled over where Mona might have gone. He hoped the frigid wind of the yard was somehow touching her also.

After almost four months, Johnny realized that the Hip Chings weren’t going to muster up the million-dollar bail bond until they had a handle on the whereabouts of the mistress. Anything that came to mind, he’d let them know. Both men were always encouraging during their visits, insisting that the Hip Chings were determined that “justice be served.” With Johnny’s help, they’d certainly find her, and in turn, he would be set free.

“It’s only a matter of time,” the Chinese tong man always said. The way he put things, it was always when he’d be released, when they’d find the woman, when they could help him relocate and start anew.

Dangling hope like a three-section flail, an iron kung fu whip.

He dreaded the feeling that his life was in the hands of these two men. Still, he needed them as much as they needed him, if not more.

A marriage of necessity.

The Caucasian lawyer’s part was to manipulate the law during his incarceration. The tong yen, Chinese man, managed the Chinese side of things, helping to sublease Johnny’s black Lincoln out to the funeral drivers so the car would continue to make money even as he sat in prison.

They’d even paid his monthly rent on the apartment in Brooklyn’s Chinatown.

They’d wrapped their control around him like a closed fist.

His emotions came back around to anger. He was mad at himself for falling for Mona’s promises, her lies. His bravado, greed, and foolishness had brought him to this cinder-block cell, in this penal colony of hok gwai and loy sung.

Dew! Fuck! he cursed silently as he remembered how he’d helped her buy a gun off the streets, even loaded it for her. He’d left his prints on the spare clip while she’d sucked him, and suckered him.

Deadly thoughts pulsed inside his head, keeping him awake. Fatigue only brought back images of her glistening naked body against his, her pretty head twisting and bobbing over his groin, until finally black-out sleep swept over him and obliterated the bars of the prison cell.

“Yo, Mister John! Meeting time!”

The guard’s bark jerked Johnny into consciousness, brought him to sit up on his bunk, staring into the shiny white teeth grinning at him.

“Yo. Fried rice tomorrow?” the guard said.

Johnny nodded and smiled back, saying “Tomollo, okay.” He stood, massaging the back of his neck with stiff fingers, trying to press out the tension locked there.

The steel cell gate slid open with a bang and he followed the guard to the interview room. There was a disinfectant smell in the air as they went down the dimly lit corridor.

Law on Order

Johnny’s gwailo, Caucasian, lawyer, whom he knew as “Leemon,” wore a charcoal-gray suit and stared at him with blue shark eyes from behind the metallic briefcase he’d opened on the interview table.

Next to him sat brother Tsai Ming Hui, who looked as if he were in his late twenties like Johnny himself, and who, representing the Hip Ching Benevolent Association, was involved in his defense. Ah Tsai’s wire-frame eyeglasses and combed-back hair made him out to be a manager or administrator for his tong sponsors. What rank, Johnny could not determine.

They believed in his innocence but needed to find the missing woman.

He’d had no other recourse from his Rikers Island cell.

As always, they’d reassured him that they’d obtain his freedom, and assist him in relocating elsewhere. Like a witness protection program, he imagined.

The lawyer, “Lee-mon,” made announcements in gwailo English that Johnny couldn’t understand.

“I’ve filed another motion to reduce bail,” Sheldon Littman said, glancing at Tsai, “or to get you transferred to the federal lockup on Pearl Street. I feel they’re backing off murder one but we’re not accepting manslaughter, either.”