He checked his watch again.

“Tell you what,” he said. “ Why don’t you drop by Grampa’s later?”

He thought he heard “You bet” before she hung up.

Golden Star

The Golden Star Bar and Grill on East Broadway was known to the locals as Grampa’s, a revered Chinatown jukebox joint frequented by a Lower East Side clientele of Chinese, Puerto Ricans, blacks, and whites. It was three steps down to a big room with an oval-shaped bar, and even in the dim blue neon light, Jack could make out Billy seated at the end of the long glossy counter. He was watching two Latinas shooting a rack on the pool table in the back.

Jack took a barstool next to him.

“Hey hey,” greeted Billy. “Wassup?”

“You tell me,” answered Jack. “What’s the buzz?”

“Just a coupla the Fuk slop boys talking,” Billy said, signaling the bartender for a beer for Jack. As he waited, Jack remembered Vincent Chin, editor of the Chinese language newspaper, the United National. He had assisted Jack in the past. Jack knew Billy’s words would be neighborhood lowdown, in contrast to Vincent’s professional view.

They tapped beer bottles and Billy swiveled on the barstool, put his back to the two ladies at the pool table and leaned toward Jack. “In the slop room,” he said quietly, “I overheard the Fuk boys talking about the big shootout under the bridge. The crap didn’t start there, and probably won’t be the end of it. A coupla weeks ago, some Fuk Ching gangbangers threw a beat down on a few casino bus drivers who weren’t knuckling under. What happened the other night, the young guns chased a Fuk Chow crew chief down Henry, through the backstreets near the bridge. They shot him as he ran. Six times, both legs and arms.”

“They let him live,” Jack said, knowing now why the shooting never made the blotter as a homicide.

“It was a warning.” Billy continued, “The young Chings felt they were being squeezed out of the tour-bus game, like a new deal was coming down. The older Fuk Chow guys didn’t like the attention the young guns were attracting.”

“Well, too late now.” Jack smirked. “The shit’s hit the fan. Whatever the shady bus deal was, there’s a spotlight on it now, and they can’t be happy about that.”

“That’s a bet,” said Billy. “And about Jeff’s office getting robbed out there? The slop boyz claim that the Ching crews ain’t into burglaries. They don’t want stuff they gotta resell. They only want cash money, gold and silver. Easy money, jacking home invasions, kidnap, strong-arm. They threaten the victims to keep them quiet. The victims don’t really want to pull in the cops, get deported. It’s a win-win deal for the bad boyz.”

Jack remembered Ah Por’s bad, monkey vision, and kept silent. He knew that a third of cases went unresolved, and if Jeff’s family members were really robbing him, would he want it made public? To bring the family shame?

Cold Case came to his mind.

“Guess it’s just another mystery,” Billy said, turning his attention back to the Latinas, one of whom sank the eight ball, and was squealing gleefully, her breasts jiggling.

“Rack,” she said to the other woman.

“Rack is right,” agreed Billy, admiring her cleavage, and earning a smile from her.

Jack saw Alexandra come through the front door and slide into one of the booths. He patted Billy on his shoulder. “Catch you later,” Jack said, gliding off the barstool. He left Billy at the bar watching the Dominican ladies work a new rack, two beers still on ice. For him, the night was still young and full of possibilities.

He slipped into the booth next to Alex, ordering another beer as the waitress brought her a cloudy martini. Alex torched up a cigarette, took a French diva’s drag.

“Go for broke?” Jack teased. “Every man for himself?”

“Sure, no prisoners tonight.” She grinned.

“When did you start drinking those?” Jack asked. He remembered the morning she’d been escorted into the Fifth Precinct by one of the female uniforms, holding back on a D&D only because Alexandra had dropped his name. The drunk and disorderly had turned out more disorderly than drunk, with Alex still fuming after she’d tossed her cheating ex-husband’s Italian suits out of their eighteenth-floor condo at Confucius Towers.

The husband was angry, but not about to press charges.

Jack had gotten it straight with the woman cop, thanked her for backing off the D&D, for giving him face, cop to cop. He’d given Alex a stern talking to about the evils of alcohol, before releasing her.

Alex blew out a stream of smoke through the O of her lips, smiling. “You think work’s driving me to drink?”

“I think it’s driving you nuts.” He smiled, reluctant to judge her when his own fist was wrapped around a drink.

“How’s the little girl?” Jack asked, strangely feeling a sense of duty.

“Chloe’s with her father this weekend,” she said with a frown. They were quiet a moment, looking to lose the subject. They clinked glasses.

Alex sipped, watching Jack draw back a big gulp.

“After you left the other day,” she said, “a girl came in. She was about nineteen. The snakeheads brought her over and she was paying off the passage. The owner of her sweatshop absconded with the money, the place closed, and she was out of work. Couldn’t make the payments.” Alex worked the martini down. “They tried to make a whore out of her,” she said quietly. “She refused and got a beating. Now we have her in our women’s shelter. She’s afraid they’ll find her, and she’s desperate for a job.”

Jack put a gentle hand on Alex’s shoulder. “You can’t save everyone, Alex.”

“ For the ones that fall in my lap, I know I can make a difference.”

“And I know you will.” They touched glasses again.

“To the struggle,” she said, irony in her voice. She sounded bitter, and after a slow, lingering sip, she said, “So here’s my question. What can be done, in terms of law enforcement, to stop these snakeheads?”

Jack narrowed his eyes. “Hasn’t she gone to the precinct?”

“She’s too afraid.”

“Get an Order of Protection.”

“That’s a joke.” She exhaled a menthol puff sideways.

“Set up a sting? Agree to pay up and catch them when they show up to collect.”

“Come on, Jack. She’s even more afraid of that.”

“Then get her to relocate. Start over somewhere else, preferably far away. You can’t always deal with the snakeheads using courts and cops.”

“How then?”

“It’s an underworld thing. You get a rival group to go against them.”

“What happens?”

“Whatever it is, gets settled. Money. Face. Whatever.”

“So the scum take care of their own?”

“Something like that.”

He watched her work the drink down, a frown returning to her lips.

“Look, just call the precinct,” Jack advised. “If you see anything funny, like men loitering on the block, maybe they’ll roll a car by.”

“We filed three police brutality cases with the Civilian Complaint Review Board last year. You think that’ll happen?”

“And if you got pepper spray, anything like that, don’t be afraid to use it.”

“Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t think I’m just being paranoid, do you?”

“No, but are you?”

She drained the glass, signaled the waitress for a refill.

“We take on difficult cases,” she said distantly. “It’s not like we haven’t received threats before.”

“So what’s different here? ”

“I don’t know. It feels a little more personal. I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“Well, you have to be careful. Be alert, know who’s around you. It’s still New York City, lady.”

Jack remembered that she was already under stress from her legal work on the Ninety-Nine Cents shooting incident.

“What’s gonna happen with the Ping woman’s lawsuits?” he asked.