Jack nodded knowingly, and let him continue.

“Chief wants the press off his ass.” He gave Jack a look that was more a request than a command.

Jack knew what high profile meant. Shootings and gang violence always brought out the TONG WAR headlines in the Post and the News. The Chinese media, acutely aware that bad news would scare off the tourist-trade, the lifeblood of the community, would criticize the police for allowing the gang-bangers to run amok in the first place.

“Get me something, Jack,” Marino said quietly.

Jack, almost feeling sorry for him, said, “Okay, Cap’n. I’ll keep you posted.”

Hernandez and Donelly gave him the cold shoulder on the way out, but Jack crunched his way back through the snow, following the blood trail in his head, to OTB where the uniform squad watched over the evidence.

Pieces of Death

The guns stacked up as a small arsenal: pricey Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter automatics for Lucky’s Ghosts, cheaper Spanish-made Taurus pistols for the others.

Lucky had carried the 5906, a ten-shot customized hybrid with an aluminum alloy frame and a cockless hammer. It was light to the draw and compact, easy to conceal. Tat, with his cool expensive gun, which he hadn’t had the chance to fire.

The EMS techs at Downtown Medical had advised Jack that Tat had slipped into a coma and was on life support.

The Ghost with the spikey gel hair had packed a 910 featuring an ambidextrous hammer drop. According to the ME’s report, gunshot residue was found on his left hand. The gun was also a ten-shot piece, that he could carry half-cocked, ready for action in his quick-draw Combat holster. Dependable, and deadly. He’d emptied the clip, died reaching for the second magazine.

The big Malaysian had an eight-shot 3913 with a thick rubber grip for his large hand. A soldier’s gun. The solid pistol never cleared his back pocket. Instead, his big piece of bad news was the double-barreled sawed-off shotgun, a twelve-gauge featherweight Japanese Winchester. He’d chopped down the stock and barrel, cutting it short so he could carry it beneath his coat. A nasty piece of work, sure to take fighters down.

He’d gotten off both barrels.

The other vics in the face-off told the other part of the story. All had soldier guns. The one in the alley died with a Taurus 938 in his hand. He’d emptied the ten-shot clip of the .380 automatic, an inexpensive import. Great bang for the buck. The bangs hadn’t saved him from getting shot in the back.

Of the two stocky vics who looked related, one also had a Taurus, a PT11 racking ten shots. Cheap but reliable. He’d fired eight shots, leaving two in the magazine.

The other one had brandished a Ruger Redhawk, a .357 Magnum that weighed two pounds, a heavy carry. It was a thunderous six-shot revolver, and it’s report alone would freeze all the action.

He’d emptied the cannon.

The odd piece was found on the old man in the alley: an outdated Italian model, Trident Vigilante. A snub-nose .32-caliber revolver that chambered six Smith & Wesson cartridges. Super light, less than a pound. A belly gun with a light kick. Good for close combat. But why? An old man dying of cancer?

He’d carried it in his jacket pocket without a holster.

His final moment had brought his hand to the gun.

Where was the connection?

Personal Effects

Jack made out the reports for the six corpses lying in the morgue’s chilled slabs.

Lucky’s wheelman, the gel-haired Ghost, whose street name was Lefty, had carried in his jacket a set of keys in a black key-case, a pair of knock-off Fendi sunglasses, and a small spray tube of breath freshener. There was a plastic baggie with a dozen little red pills, and a murky snapshot of an Asian girl giving head. He had forty-four dollars, an unlucky Chinese number for him, thought Jack. In his jeans they’d found a cell phone, and a driver’s license with a DOB dated 1970, and the name Cham Yat Lee. The license had a bogus Mott Street address. Number 17A, Jack knew, was an On Yee gambling basement.

The large Malaysian was identified by his Indonesian NRIC National Registry card as Bat Boon Kong, twenty-six years old. In his coat he’d had a pack of bootleg Marlboros and a Zippo lighter featuring a grinning skull and crossbones. He carried a hundred eighty-six dollars, and a roll of quarters. Was he looking to pack a hard-knuckled punch, or was it just coins for the parking meters? There was a pair of fake Oakley sunglasses and a business card for Oriental Massage Bodywork. A set of keys attached to a jade-stone dragon. From his pants they’d taken a bloody cell phone, identical to the one found on Cham Yat. Kong had worn a heavy gold bar-link chain around his thick neck, dangling a fat jade lucky Buddha against his massive chest, but there was no ho toy, good fortune, at the end of his story.

The other two dead Ghosts outside OTB shared more than a passing resemblance; they shared the same surname, Jung, and birthdate, in 1971. They were twins, but not identical. Close enough, thought Jack.

According to their driver’s licenses, one was named James, one Joseph.

Jimmy and Joey Jung. The Jung brothers. They’d both worn black stone foo dogs around their necks, and between them they had fifty-one dollars and change. They had lived in the same apartment in the Rutgers Housing Projects out past Pike, near the river.

Jack remembered hanging out there with Tat and Wing during their teenage summer nights that now seemed so long ago.

Each brother had a matching set of keys, and identical blackface ladies’ Rado wristwatches in their pants pockets.

Macho guys with women’s watches?

The two watches were stamped with sequential serial numbers.

Of the two bodies in the alley, Jack wrote up the bullet-riddled vic first. His driver’s license gave his name, Koo Kit Leng, and address, 98 East Broadway. Easy enough to check out; Jack knew those streets well.

Koo was twenty-six years old.

In Koo’s jacket Jack had found a set of keys on an OTB promo key ring, and a cracked pair of imitation Ferragamo sunglasses. There was a pack of Kools with a disposable Bic lighter rubber-banded to it, and a roll of breath mints. In his jacket’s inside pocket were business cards from a Tong Yen dry-goods store in Boston’s Chinatown, and from KK’s Karaoke club on Allen Street, with the name Tina and a phone number scrawled across the back of the card.

He’d worn a silver chain with a shiny letter K charm attached.

Jack remembered the two single-dollar bills protruding from Koo’s ripped pants pocket, and the trail of coins scattered in the snow of the alley.

He had no other money or valuables on him.

Robbery or double cross, figured Jack.

The last body in the alley was the big mystery.

The old man, Fong Sai Go, had carried a plastic wallet that contained some business cards: lawyer, social security, hair salon, and a gold-plated Chinese talisman card. There was also a Health Clinic notecard with his home address and a chemotherapy schedule that indicated he was a fifty-nine-year-old cancer patient. Terminal.

He’d carried keys and a cell phone in his left coat pocket, a multicolored ink pen in the right. There was a Foxwoods Casino promotional card, in Chinese, in his shirt pocket. He was wearing a jade-stone gourd-shaped charm around his neck, and had exactly eight hundred eighty-eight dollars in his right coat pocket.

A dying old man spending down his luck? wondered Jack.