He was watching his youth flash by, viewing it like a camcorder tape, the pictures harsh, unforgiving. Suddenly, Chinese cursing from somewhere, a sound he’s heard before. Pa’s voice.

Jack felt his body quake uncontrollably. The images flashed in his brain like sparks from a live wire. Japanese soldiers charging forward, samurai swords raised, hacking at Chinese babies, lunging at Chinese women with their bayonets, raping them. The flag with the red Rising Sun fluttering violently in the gale. Butchery. A thousand Chinese heads bouncing and rolling down a blood-slicked slope. And he is sliding, falling.

But this is Pa’s nightmare.

There is nonstop screaming and yelling, Say yup poon jai! Pa cursing, Jap bastards! Jack is at Pa’s side then, punching away at the bayonets and swords, until he bolts upright on the couch, nearly kicking over the boom-box radio, slowly realizing that it’s his own voice barking into the shadowy dark of the small room.

He sat up for a while, caught his breath, and after downing another shot of Johnnie Walker Black, gradually fell back to sleep.

The final dream was short, a twisted vision of Tat, a Chinatown gangster in a black leather trench. Tat “Lucky” Louie, offering him a big bag of money which he didn’t accept. Tat, who’d become an ugly liability.

The sound of wind chimes.

Tat has a nine-millimeter strapped to his hip, with sneering street punks spread out behind him. Jack sees his gold police shield dangling from a 007 knife.

He’s reaching to block the blade, to retrieve his shield, when darkness finally puts him down for the count.

Dog Eat Dog

Lucky gave the nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson a quick wipe along his shirt sleeve, slipped the clip back in, and chambered a hollow-point round. He flicked down the safety with his thumb and put the spare clip into the side pocket of his black leather blazer, which was draped over the recliner. His attention locked onto the television where Fukienese Chinese demonstrators marched across the big color screen, yelling and carrying signs as they surrounded One Police Plaza.

Lucky sucked back the last of the sensimilla joint, held the smoke a moment, hissed it all out. Then he closed his eyes and thought about face, and the future. As dailo—boss—of the powerful Ghost Legion gang, he knew that without face, there was no future. He knew intuitively that changes were occurring in his piece of the underworld, especially since the murder of Chinatown’s Hip Ching tong godfather, Uncle Four. For the younger Hip Chings, the subsequent death of Golo, Uncle Four’s dreaded enforcer, signaled a movement in the ranks. Ambitious heads hinted that the old leadership was ineffectual, and that the organization should be looking toward China-based alliances with outside forces like the triad Hung Huen, the Red Circle, alliances with triad paramilitary connections in the south of China. These alliances would bring them AK-47s and grenades. But with a hundred thousand Fukienese on the other side of East Broadway, Lucky felt this might not be a good thing. It might upset the balance of power.

On the TV, the five thousand Fukienese demonstrators were screaming for justice, protesting the shooting death of a Fukienese woman by a gang of teenaged thugs.

A trio of black and Latino teenagers had shot and killed a Chinese woman in a botched robbery of a 99-cent store.

Lucky thumbed down the volume and slipped the Smith &Wesson into a large gun pocket that Ah Wong the tailor had sewn inside his leather jacket. The newcomers to Chinatown, the Fukienese, were trying to gain control, to take over from the established tongs, the On Yee and the Hip Ching. Everyone was looking toward China now and the Fukienese—the Fuk Chings—were leading the way.

The earlier wave of immigrants had come from Canton, now known as Guangzhou, and had spoken Cantonese, as did their brethren from Hong Kong. They couldn’t understand the dialect of the recent Fukienese arrivals, who formed their own gangs—the Fuk Chow and Fuk Ching—that respected no one. They recruited only from the desperate dregs of their community.

Power was shifting. On his turf, the main strongholds of Chinatown, Fat Lily’s massage joint, and Number Seventeen card house, had both been raided in the same week. The cops had come from outside the precinct, in blue windbreakers, under the direction of some unknown Major-Case task force. Someone was feeding them information, directing gwailo white cops toward Ghost Legion operations. Could be the Fuks, or maybe double-dealing by one of the other tongs. And his informants in the Fifth Precinct were all gone now. Lucky thought instantly of Jack Yu, Jacky Boy, the Chinese cop, the hero cop, his Chinatown homeboy from back in the day. Then he slowly shook his head, with a smile that mixed disdain and annoyance. Jacky Boy’s not in the Fifth, anymore; gone fishing somewhere else in cop world.

Lucky saw other ominous signs on the horizon. The incoming mayor was a law-and-order guy, an ex-DA who’d already stated publicly that he was going to crack down on organized crime. In the past that had meant the Mafia, Sicilian guys, but now included the Russian mafiya, the Mexicans, the city’s drug gangs, and the Chinese tongs as well.

Lucky knew to go with the flow, to roll with the blow, but he’d have to be nimble, and make the secret deals that would protect and expand his empire. He’d work out whisper deals with pro-China groups, and even with gangbangers like the Fuk Chings. The Red Circle triad, which partnered with the On Yee and had historical underworld connections to that tong, couldn’t be trusted. They were masters of the double-cross. Keep it all close to the vest, he figured, because if the other Ghost factions found out, they might think he was selling them out, getting ready to bail.

One thing was clear: it was all over for the On Yee. Their ties were mostly with Hong Kong and Taiwan. China itself was a whole different ballgame and the Fukienese already had tight connections with corrupt mainland government officials and were rumored to have deserters from the People’s Liberation Army on their payroll.

The television news program segued from Fukienese protest to Thanksgiving pageantry. Seeing the Macy’s Parade roll across the screen reminded Lucky of his father, Thanksgiving Day being the birthday of the old abusive drunk whom he hadn’t seen in five years, the last time being a chance encounter on a Flushing Chinatown street when the sad loser shamelessly asked for a handout. The fuckin’ bum, thought Lucky, the reason why his mother had run out on them before his teenage years. He wondered if the son of a bitch was still alive, then decided he didn’t care.

Disgusted, he punched off the TV.

When Lucky appraised himself in the mirror he still saw a street warrior, but too much Chinatown fast food, beer, and brandy had turned his gut to flab, made him appear bearlike and lumbering.

He checked his Oyster Rolex. It was 9 PM. He glanced toward the darkness of the November night outside his Bayard Street condominium. The wind gusted and banged against the windows. It was freezing outside and he knew most of the Ghost Legion streetboys would be wearing their dark down-filled jackets, puffy enough to hide their guns. He himself, as dailo, would only wear the black leather blazer, which made him appear oblivious to the cold, more macho than the others.

Condensation formed at the bottom of the metal window frame, and the spoon-sized thermometer outside the glass read nine degrees. It was almost time to cruise through his rounds, to check on his empire.

Outside the window the streets of the Bowery were empty. At the street corner six flights below, the traffic light, swaying and swinging at the end of the long metal arm that hung over the intersection, was frozen on red. A bus proceeded cautiously through the intersection, rolling north along the Bowery. There was not one person on the frigid streets beneath the dim yellow street lamps.