Kongo gave the fake Marlboros to the house manager and stood to one side, overlooking the one active table of thirteen-card poker. There were no players at the fan-tan or paigow tables, and the dealers were smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, and watching Chinese cable television. Lefty took the Ecstasy pills over to Number Sixty-Six basement, where other Ghosts would package them into small plastic baggies before delivery to local karaoke joints and uptown discos and dance clubs.

Lucky dropped another hit of Ecstasy, and then chased it with a shot of Johnnie Black. He waited as the managers tallied their accounts. The players would show up soon enough so the basements would be jammed again, and he still wanted to place a hot bet with the Chinese bookie at the OTB, but the troubles out at East Broadway kept bouncing to the front of his mind and crowded out the images of blowjobs and bodacious bodies. Instead, he saw a crew of incompetent Ghosts, thought about Koo Jai—Kid Koo—and called his pager. Lefty came back with a suitcase of cash for the manager and turned it over to the house accountants. Then he swallowed an Ecstasy and stood next to Kongo by the door, watching the house take money off the card table.

Lucky watched them all, but he was feeling impatient, thinking about face, and the far end of East Broadway.

OTB

The Chinatown OTB branch was the highest performing betting parlor on the Lower East Side, grossing a hundred thousand a day, while serving the biggest volume of gamblers in the city. That volume did not include the large number of Chinese gamblers who placed their bets with the Chinese bookies working the streets outside the OTB.

The average Chinese gambler, who didn’t speak much English other than the name of the horse and maybe the track where the race would be held, preferred the services of the Chinese bookies. These bookies offered a 10-percent discount on bets of ten dollars or more, and unlike OTB, did not require that a W2-G tax form be completed, and a driver’s license and a social security card be provided for winnings above six hundred dollars.

No illegal Chinese, no prudent Chinese, was going to furnish that information, especially since many of the old-timers placed exotic bets that were more difficult to win, but which would generally pay out more than six hundred.

Fong Sai Go—fourth brother Fong—considered himself a bookmaker, johng ga, but in reality he was only a teng jai, a small sampan, in the vast ocean of illegal Chinese gambling. He was a small-time Chinatown bookie, sanctioned to work the main OTB by his village association cronies who owned the building from which the OTB operated. The other family associations went along, and the tongs didn’t make a fuss as long as they got their piece of the action.

Sai Go held the gold-plated metal card in his hand, running his thumbnail over the dragon and the Goddess of Mercy etchings, over the Chinese words on either side of this Buddhist talisman, a gold credit card–sized panel of metal featuring laser-etched phrases: cheut yop ping on, or “peace be with you,” and “a safe journey always.” He began to consider the irony of how the bot gwa, talisman, had failed him, when he noticed the front end of the betting floor filling up, the frigid cold outside driving indoors the throng of Chinese waiters and kitchen staff just come off the late shift.

Sai Go stood off to one side, where he had a good view of the wide-frame color television monitors showcasing holiday horse racing from Golden Gate, Los Alamitos, Delta Downs. The overseas action from Down Under—Sydney, Melbourne, Caulfield—would come later, but in Hong Kong, races from the Happy Valley track, and from the Sha Tin oval in China, were getting ready to be run.

He put away the talisman and saw that it was well after midnight. A few more gamblers came in and joined the noisy smelly mix of men in meen nop cotton-padded vests and down jackets shaded gray, brown, black—the somber tones of the working class. There was the faint burnt smell of dead cigarettes on the sticky linoleum covering the floor.

A crew of young Chinatown gangbangers came in, wearing black down coats and punky haircuts. Several wore black racing gloves with the fingers cut off. They fanned out through the betting parlor, and Sai Go instinctively brushed his hand back to feel for the box-cutter steel in his rear pocket. He felt better when he saw Lucky, the dailo, step into the room with another crew of Ghosts.

Lucky spotted him immediately, went in his direction. The crowd parted for the dark phalanx that escorted him, eight crazies and a big dark-skinned Malay.

Sai Go thought about the pad in his pocket as the crew came to the back of the house. He decided not to reach into his jacket as they circled him.

“I want a thousand on Ming Sing, to win,” said Lucky, “in the second race at Happy Valley.”

“Ming Sing,” Sai Go repeated, acknowledging the bet.

“Any action on that yet?” from Lucky.

“You’re the first,” Sai Go answered, waiting for his moment to change the subject.

Lucky had overheard one of the uncles explaining how the fix was in, and how Ming Sing, movie star, a three-year-old gelding from Australia, was an eight-to-one payout. Lucky didn’t catch the details but figured that the Hong Kong triads had probably kidnapped a family member or relative of a jockey, or trainer, and maybe paid off or coerced other jockeys to hold back or block out for the “fixed” winner.

Lucky didn’t stress any of that, or the big bet, win or lose. He was putting back into play the fifteen-hundred winnings he’d just taken out of the Mott Street basements.

Sai Go said, “You can catch it on the satellite channel . . .”

Lucky already knew that, but held his eyes on Sai Go while firing up a Marlboro.

“So what’s this problem you have? Lucky asked, exhaling smoke. “One of the boyz owes you money?” He could see that Sai Go was relieved, appreciative that the gang leader was addressing the situation.

“It’s that kid, he’s about your height. Leng jai, a good-looking kid. They call him Koo, or cool, something like that.”

Lucky was careful to downplay his own curiosity. “But how come you gave him that much play?” Lucky said, more an admonishment than a question.

“He bet a few times before this,” Sai Go countered. “And he always had money. A few thousand was no problem.”

Lucky blew out the cigarette smoke in a tight stream. “A few thousand walking-around cash, huh?”

“Correct,” answered Sai Go.

Both men were quiet a long moment. Sai Go spoke first.

“It’s just that he said he wasn’t going to pay me. In front of all the bettors. He didn’t give me any face to work with, and—”

“I’ll take care of it,” Lucky interrupted, “gau dim, done. You said a thousand, right?”

“Correct again, dailo,” said Sai Go, bowing slightly. Now he felt his blood pressure rising, tension starting to grab in his forehead.

Lucky jerked his head at the big Malay, flicked his Marlboro to the linoleum, and crushed it under his heel. The others made a path for him and they went back through the crowd.

Sai Go watched them leave as he penciled Lucky’s bet onto his pad of soluble tissue sheets. He could swallow the paper anytime and evidence of betting records would dissolve before reaching his stomach. There was a flash of dizziness and then he felt short of breath. It’s the medication, he thought, the gwailo white devil medicine that was supposed to cure even the worse of all diseases.

One of his cell phones blared a musical tune, and he readied his betting pad. It was Big Fat, calling in bets from the China Garden. In Sai Go’s peripheral view the ponies were thundering across the big color monitors. He was feeling lightheaded as he jotted down numbers next to the nickname Big Fat. He knew all his players by their nicknames. Pai Kwut was Spare Ribs. Gee Jai, Little Pig. All of them like that. The others would be calling in soon.