He imagined it as a weapon, the sling its holster.

Touch

Already five years old, the bionic hand was an ultralite model, a myoelectric prosthesis with articulate fingers, an opposable thumb, a rotating wrist. It was powered by batteries inside the fake limb. Sensors there detected when the arm muscles contracted, then converted the body’s electrical signal into electric power. This powered the motor controlling the hand and wrist, its skeletal frame made of thermoplastics and titanium for extreme flexibility. The frame was covered with a skin of silicone that was resistant to heat and flame, and custom colored to match the patient’s skin pigmentation. The hand and fingers were sculpted with fingernails, knuckles, and creases. At a glance, it was indistinguishable from a real hand.

It cost eighty thousand dollars in Hong Kong and the triad had paid without question.

Removing it from his arm reminded him of the rehabilitation course at the Kowloon Clinic, where he’d trained to use his new artificial limb. He’d continued for a year until his control of hand and finger movements became so deft that he could eat with chopsticks, and deal a deck of cards. He could pluck a coin off the table.

He could pull the trigger of a gun.

Aaya, he sighed, remembering the first of the Thirty-Six Strategies of the society, cross the ocean without letting the sky know. Of course, he was here to oversee the tour buses and the credit cards, but—known only to himself and the dragonhead, leader of the triad—there was the matter of the missing diamonds and gold Panda coins in the wake of the Uncle Four murder, not to mention a hundred thousand in Hip Ching cash stolen from the foolish old man by his vengeful mistress. Uncle Four had been en route to a meeting with Hakka heroin dealers before he was murdered. His mistress had disappeared.This was not something they could suffer quietly, even though much of what was missing was swag. Before returning to Hong Kong, he knew he’d have to look into the situation. He took a Vicodin pill, washing it down with the last of the liquor. After a minute he lay down and let go of the progressions in his head. The room went black and he dreamed he was flying, watching the landforms below, marking his way back to the fragrant harbor of Hong Kong.

Crime No Holiday

Pearl Harbor memorials had reminded Jack of Pa’s Japanese nightmares.

Then the nights had run together and suddenly it was late December. Senior detectives had pulled holiday time, so he’d been reassigned to cover the four to midnight.

Christmas Eve.

It didn’t matter much to Jack. He didn’t have family plans or commitments like most of the other detectives.

Coming out of the Tofu King with his steaming quart of dao jeung, bean milk, Jack headed toward the Bowery, thinking about hooking up with Billy for a few holiday drinks after his shift. There wasn’t a bus in sight, so he decided to walk north through Chinatown, hoping to catch a cab somewhere along the way back to the 0-9.

Many of the restaurants and stores hung gaily-colored strands of Christmas-tree lights in their windows, not out of tradition but as eye candy to attract the tourist dollar. Those businesses that were heavily supported by neighborhood Chinese—the coffee shops, bakeries, barbershops, and grocery stores—didn’t bother to decorate, knowing that the real decorating time would come during the Chinese New Year, when the brilliant reds and golds of luck and prosperity would appear everywhere.

Farther out on Fukienese East Broadway it felt even less like Christmas, no trace of religion or pretense of tradition there. On some of those streets it didn’t seem like New York, or even America.

Like somewhere in a foreign port.

Only the American-born Chinese, derisively referred to by “real” Chinese as jook-sings, the empty pieces of bamboo, had absorbed enough of the American Christmas tradition to put up Christmas trees in their homes, to exchange holiday cards and gifts. Jack remembered that Pa had refused to allow a tree into their tenement flat, saying it was a fire hazard, the apartment was too small, and the pine needles would make an unholy mess.

Jack went past Eldridge, where the discount greengrocer’s makeshift marketplace bumped up against the coach buses at the curb, everyone hustling to make a buck. Everybody watching everybody else. At Delancey, he finally caught a packed northbound M 103 bus, and rode it the ten blocks into the Ninth Precinct. The dao jeung had chilled, but he knew he could nuke it in the stationhouse’s microwave.

He got off on Fifth and went east into the black afternoon.

Xmas Eve

The news on the radio in the squad room was predicting snow and traffic delays. When Jack reviewed the blotter, he saw there was a rash of shoplifting incidents, and credit-card fraud. Blacks and Latinos boosting their gift lists. Chinese names on bogus credit cards. Merry Christmas, he thought sardonically, by any means necessary.

He sipped the dao jeung he’d zapped in the microwave.

Happy holidays all, as he scrolled down the listings, an unending litany of petty larcenies.

Six hours into the shift, the foot of snow outside resulted in squad cars and scooters parked at odd angles. From the window by the restrooms, Jack could see how quickly the thick flurries were falling, heavily enough so that he could barely make out the colors of traffic lights and street signs at the intersection. A nasty night to be out.

A call came in from the cold. He could hear the beating of the wind against the caller’s mouthpiece when he flipped open his cell phone, a dull, broken static accompanying rushing noise.

“Sarge told me to call you . . .” P.O. Wong was saying, something about a takeout, missing persons, and just before the call went dead, deliveryman.

Jack hit redial, got nothing.

It took him by surprise. Not that the call came on his cell phone, or that it was P.O. Wong, but because it was the late shift and Wong worked the eight to four, days. He figured Wong to be homefree, enjoying the holiday evening, by now.

Jack finished the last of the warm bean milk.

Then the desk phone rang, a call transferred from the front by the officer on duty.

P.O. Wong again. “I’m calling from a bodega on Seventh . . .”

“Much better,” Jack answered.

“Here’s the deal,” Wong continued. “I just finished a twelve-hour pull. Sarge says there’s no more holiday OT, so I’m on my own time here.”

“Okay. So?”

“So nine-one-one caught some frantic calls from a Chinese speaker, they think. Had problems with the language. The other portables on the job caught two domestic beefs, one by the park, the other in the yuppie condos by Lafayette. Sarge is tied up with some D&D’s from the college bars. It’s a mess.”

“And it’s Christmas Eve to boot,” Jack added, not surprised that people got drunk, or that domestic disputes boiled over especially during the holidays, proving how frail and screwed-up people were, fighting over such seemingly small and insignificant crap.

“Right,” continued Wong, “so the frantic calls are coming from the New Golden Chinatown over on Tenth, that’s One-Nine-Nine East Tenth. When I called, the woman said her son went out on deliveries and hasn’t returned. She’s crying because he’s long overdue. That was before my cell died.”

There was a pause, something Spanish in the background, chino-chino, maricon, then laughter.

“The house wants to treat it like a Missing Persons,” Wong continued. “That means waiting to see if he shows up because of whatever reason. But the mother’s freaking out.”