“It’s in the hands of the prosecutors,” Jack said, “The punks basically turned on each other and implicated one another.”

Alex broke out cigarettes and they lit up together, their conversation bracketed by puffs.

“We got oral and written statements,” Jack continued, after touching glasses with Alex in a silent toast. “DNA matchups on all three,” Alex smiled sadly. “The murder weapons. Prints all over.” He was quiet a moment, his stare going long distance as he said, “The victim . . . he put up a helluva fight. Wasn’t enough. But he left sufficient evidence to hang them all.”

Alex put her hand over his, her eyes misting. She tapped her glass against his again, brought him back into the moment.

“What does your friend at Legal Aid think?” Jack asked.

“Defense,” she exhaled. “They may contend the original entry and search was illegal. No cause.”

He’d been following up a missing person . . . there had been the smell of marijuana at the door.

“Or they may request a change in venue. Say they can’t get a fair trial in Manhattan, because there are too many Chinese, Asians, in the jury pool. They may want a Bronx jury, or one from Brooklyn. A judge of color, who’s sensitive to minority defendants.”

Technicalities and racial politics hacking into the case . . .

“They can delay, file appeals, assert medical claims, demand more evidence.”

“This is going to take a while,” Jack said, finishing his sake.

“I get it.”

They shared the last of the big Sapporo over sunomono and seaweed salad.

Outside, the wind gusted up and rattled the big picture windows.

Jack paid the tab and they tapped glasses at the last swallow, with Alex saying “Happy New Year. To 1995.”

“Yeah, Happy New Year,” Jack answered with a forced smile.

They drained their glasses.

They caught a cab, and he dropped her off at Confucius Towers before going on to Sunset Park. They had traded cheek kisses and awkward looks afterward, finally shaking hands before she tiptoed through the snow and faded into the lobby of the high-rise.

Crossing the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn, Jack remembered the dead delivery boy. It didn’t feel like 1995 was going to be a happy new year.

Storm

The blizzard roared in overnight, an arctic juggernaut that blasted in from the northeast. Fifty mile gusts toppled tall trees onto rooftops and cars, ripping down power lines in the darkness. Half of Long Island and Staten Island were blacked out.

NYC Transit rolled out two thousand snow plows, hundreds of salt spreaders. Sanitation pressed its two thousand men into twelve-hour shifts against the blowing two-foot drifts.

The outer boroughs were flogged by the swirling whiteout.

The airports were snowbound, hundreds of flights cancelled, with thousands of travelers stranded at Kennedy, LaGuardia, and Newark.

Commuter transit from New Jersey and Conneticut came to a blinding halt.

The sub-zero overnight staggered to daylight, fifteen degrees. Wind-chill real feel was four degrees. The shrieking wind drove the thick flakes sideways. To augment Sanitation’s efforts, the city hired neighborhood kids to shovel the main streets. Still, the blizzard locked down the city: schools and businesses closed, disabled and abandoned vehicles made highways, bridges, and tunnels impassable. Frozen signals and switches crippled the subways and metropolitan railroads.

In Manhattan, coastal flooding closed the Westside Highway and the FDR Drive.

A broken water main on Delancey flooded the avenue and side streets, forming a half-mile slick of ice that further choked southbound traffic. In the Chinatown morning, shopkeepers chopped at the ice and shoveled pathways down the slippery streets, forming walls of slush-capped snow along the curb. Every so often a gap, a cutout in the wall, allowed for passage to the other side of the street. Fire hydrants were cleared; the Chinese were pragmatic to a fault.

Lunchtime was a trudging push of bundled bodies, hats and scarves wrapped around Chinese heads with watering eyes. Cars, trucks, and buses crept along, their exhaust trailing clouds of steam into the frozen air. Chinatown was digging itself out while the surrounding neighborhoods surrendered.

Death Do Us Part

They all stood around the couch in the front room, four distraught faces.

“Dailo found one of the watches here,” Koo Jai admitted grudgingly. “Long story. It was out, on the bed, and he snatched it.”

“Wha’ happen? How come?” was the best the dumbfounded Jung brothers could muster.

“It was your fault,” muttered Shorty. “You were careless.”

“How the fuck do I know he’s at the door?” bitched Koo Jai. “Fuckin’ nobody called me. I could’ve put the watch away. You messed up by bringing him. None of this would have happened.”

“Bullshit,” Shorty said evenly.

“Look, it don’t matter,” sneered Koo Jai. “He said he knew we were pulling jobs. Said he didn’t care. All he wanted was his cut. Said to bring everything we boosted.”

“Hah, everything gone. No way,” mumbled the Jungs.

“Dailo says we all gotta go.” Koo Jai was steadfast. “Meet down Bowery.”

“Where?” in a chorus.

“OTB. There’s a coffee shop next to the alley.”

“Why there?” befuddled Old Jung asked.

“Who the fuck knows? He wants a sit-down.”

“Deew!! Fucked!” moaned Young Jung.

“Just be prepared,” Koo Jai warned. “Keep your chins up, and your fuckin’ eyes open. Unless dailo asks you personally, I’ll do all the talking. If anything goes bad, we meet in Boston.” He nodded at the Jungs. “Call your cousins.”

They exited the flat, the Jung brothers jittery, as if they were going to a funeral.

Led by Koo Jai, they kept to the streets crossing Chatham Square; it was easier to walk through the dirty slush trails left by bus traffic. They came to the Bowery end of the square where access to the sidewalk was blocked by waist-high frozen drifts.

Koo Jai and Shorty were first to crunch their way through to the sidewalk, the larger Jungs behind them clumsily lumbering along in their wake.

Gusts of wind blew powdered snow off the street lamps and traffic lights.

The dailo ’s crew turned the corner of Mott onto Bowery, moving in a loose triangle with Lucky at the point. Lucky saw Koo Jai and Shorty a half-block away, thought of the nine large in cash in Koo’s pocket, imagining how he was going to drop some of it on some fine ass and pussy at Angelina’s. Peripherally, he noticed the Jung brothers plodding behind them through the snowbank. Clumsy bitches, he thought, continuing on toward OTB.

Old Jung slipped and fell to one knee, the sudden twist of his hip dislodging the pistol he carried in his waistband. The gun slid along the dirty ice but he was able to grab it and pull it back. A few steps ahead, Young Jung turned and cast an annoyed look at him.

Kongo saw Old Jung dropping to one knee. He grunted as Old Jung’s hand came up holding a pistol; it looked as if he’d pulled it out of the snow. Whipping open his trenchcoat, the Ecstasy pushing him, he went for the sawed-off shotgun dangling at his hip.

Koo Jai and Shorty both saw the dailo and his crew marching toward them. With their heartbeats spiking, they watched as Lucky drifted to one side. Behind him, the big Malaysian’s eyes were suddenly as large as don tots, egg tarts, as he drew the chopped shotgun.

Lefty saw Young Jung staring at Kongo, astonishment on his face, momentarily frozen. Each of them instinctively reached for his gun.

Lucky recoiled at the sound of the deafening blast from behind him, his gun hand automatically going inside his blazer. He glanced back to see Kongo loose another blast into the ringing air and Lefty aiming his Nine. When he swung his eyes back to Koo Jai, both he and Shorty were taking aim at him. One of the Jungs was rising up from the snow, emptying his pistol at them in a spraying arc.