The dingy fluorescent light that spilled out of the OTB cast morbid shadows all around as the black car rolled to a smooth stop at the curb. Behind the dark windows, Lucky recognized Sai Go pacing around inside the vestibule, as he’d been instructed to do.

Lefty flashed the headlights twice, keeping the horn silent.

They watched Sai Go come out of the OTB, then Lefty killed the lights. Sai Go stepped carefully along the frozen street, looking the car over as he went. The back window powered down, and he saw the dailo’s eyes.

“Get in,” said Lucky.

There was plenty of room for Sai Go as he slid onto the cushioned backseat. He handed over an envelope, saying, “Six thousand eight hundred.”

“And I know I don’t have to count this, right?” Lucky glanced at him sideways.

“Only if you like,” Sai Go said quietly.

Lucky counted a thousand out of the envelope and slipped the bills onto the backseat next to Sai Go.

“That’s yours,” Lucky said. “For Koo Jai. The matter is closed.”

“Thank you, dailo.”

“We don’t need to speak of it again.”

“Understood.” Sai Go exited the car, saying “Thank you” again as the Riviera pulled away to make the green light. Standing by the curb in the wind, his frosty breath curling out, he pressed the extra thousand in his pocket, squeezed the wad into a roll.

The black car skirted a turn around the Square and headed uptown.

Sai Go turned and walked away from the OTB, thinking about the odds at the dog tracks, and the warm Florida sun. The group had planned an early start, and he was already feeling tired, hunched up against the gusts that grabbed at each trudging step home.

From the rearview mirror, Lucky saw Sai Go move off the Square, and turned his thoughts to Koo Jai, the wiseass, but he decided to keep to himself the knowledge of paying the little brother’s debt. For now anyway. Lucky realized the possibility that Koo Jai was the real culprit behind the rip-offs, but Skinny Chin had gone to Hong Kong and wasn’t due back until after Christmas. Kid Koo ain’t going nowhere, figured Lucky. It’d keep until Skinny got back.

Lefty urged the car back toward Mott, checking his watch, and marking the time.

Hovel and Home

The building at 98 East Broadway was a dilapidated four-story red-brick tenement near Mechanics Alley, beneath the roar-and-rumble racket of the subway trains, trucks, and mini-buses banging across the Manhattan Bridge. The building had a Chinese convenience store in a step-down basement and a cosmetics chain store six steps up the side stairs. On the sidewalk an old Chinese woman, wrapped in a shabby down coat, sat behind a folding table that dangled socks and thermal underwear, plastic sandals, ball caps, and batteries.

The back of Number 98 had a fire escape leading from the fourth floor down to a sliding metal ladder that dropped into a tiny yard closed off by an eight-foot-high fence. On the other side of the fence was a parking lot and a small shed where the broccoli vendor stashed his hundred daily cases.

The old apartments were railroad flats, long and narrow, running from the front to the back of the building, two apartments per floor. What had once been a communal bathroom in the hallway had been converted to two closet-size bathrooms, one for each apartment. Each had a tiny window that vented out back, to the parking lot.

In tenement flat number two, Koo Jai stood by the window, naked in the dim daylight, looking through the window blinds to the icy streets below. The afternoon was overcast and static with mist that promised to turn to snow.

On East Broadway and Market, four Fukienese youths stood together, one with gel-spiked hair flanked by two others in black leather jackets, their hands tucked into their pockets against the cold. Koo Jai couldn’t see their eyes behind their flashy black sunglasses, but he felt they were up to no good. The fourth youth stood to one side, a rangy, solid-looking kid who kept his right hand inside the slash pocket of his black trench coat. He was slowly rocking from side to side, in a tai chi kind of way, his eyes peering over the edge of sunglasses, sucking in every movement in the intersection.

Fucking Fuks, thought Koo Jai. The cold of the front room felt good against his overheated skin. He remembered why he’d left the thick heat of the back room, and reached down beneath the window. He pulled up a short piece of baseboard, extracted a plastic-wrapped bundle, then slipped the board back in place.

When he peered through the blinds again, the four Fuks were gone and he wondered which of the Chinatown shopping malls they were going to hang out in.

Up to no fuckin’ good, he knew.

For a moment, he scanned the small dark room. There was the bulk of the faded black leather couch, a convertible number that had to be ten years old, one of the surviving pieces of furniture from when the apartment had been the Stars’ clubhouse, where the gang partied and brought their girlfriends for sex. This was when their brotherhood controlled these streets, before their leader Tiki, and three senior brothers, mysteriously disappeared, before the Ghosts rolled in with a hundred men and took over.

There was a cheap folding table in one corner and an array of mismatched shelf units and clothes cabinets stretching the length of the long wall leading to the back bedroom. Three metal chairs were folded, leaning against the table, in case he had visitors.

For a long time now, except for Shorty coming by occasionally to smoke a joint and down a beer, he never had visitors, and the place had become his apartment, drug den, love nest, whatever. The Jung brothers, Old Jung and Young Jung, were too lazy to climb even the one flight of stairs, and since he didn’t have a television set, they were even less inclined to drop by and hang out. Just as well, he thought, no interruptions when he brought his girls up, and less chance of any of the gang stumbling upon his stash of the loot they divvied up. He used the spot behind the baseboard at the window. Another spot was under the floorboards, beneath one of the full-length wall mirrors he’d got from Job Lot, the other one mounted in the back room, strategically placed so that he could see himself with the parade of women he brought to his bed.

He unwrapped the plastic bundle and admired the dozen watches inside. Six Rados, four Cartiers, and two Rolexes. Twenty-five gees worth of fine timepieces and he’d taken the best for himself. Shorty’d gotten a Rolex and a half dozen Movados, as had each of the Jung brothers. He removed one of the Rados, a gold woman’s piece that had a modern metallic bracelet and a square black face with diamond baguettes arranged on all four sides.

He held one of the Rolexes, ran his thumb along the watchband, across the face, caressing, feeling its mechanical splendor. He heard again the words of the dailo still ringing in his ears: If there’s another rip-off, it’s gonna be on you.

Warnings from the dailo, whom he never saw except when he came to collect cash or to complain, this end of East Broadway being too far from the lucrative streets around Mott and Bayard, Canal and Pell, for social visits, were not too impressive. The next job’s gonna fall on me? Yeah, right. Fuck that. The next job’s gonna be by me, more likely. Imagine that shit, he groused mentally, drove here from Mott Street? To chew my ass?

Fuck that, fuck that, fuck that, kept banging on his ear.

Taking a deep breath, he calmed himself.

He kept the Rado, but bundled away the rest of the watches under the floorboards beneath the Job Lot wall mirror. When he eyed his reflection, he liked what he saw and paused in the shadows to admire his own nakedness. Almost five-foot ten, he had a body like Bruce Lee, but on steroids, and a face that could have starred in movies in Hong Kong. Handsome in a cool way. A lover and a fighter. It was because of all the women in his life, he smirked into the mirror. What facial hair he had amounted to a faint mustache and goatee, which he trimmed regularly because he knew the ladies liked it. And the ladies: Mimi at the New Wave Salon, who permed his hair, and shaped it according to pictures in Hong Kong movie-star magazines. Joanna, his dentist, who’d given him a winning smile. Angela, the seamstress who fixed his jackets, and who’d made it clear she wanted to get into his pants. Dana, the masseuse, who pampered his muscles, including the long one that hung loose beneath his stomach. Kitty, at the bank, who gave him the crisp new bills he liked. On and on. Women were taken in by his good looks, his dynamic energy, and his quick tongue. Some of the women would later appreciate his quick tongue in more earthy ways.