Hang in there, he thought, it’s just the medication. He felt the need for some cold night air, and slowly made his way toward the shivering bodies at the front vestibule.

On the Edge

Out at the end of East Broadway, past the lumberyard and the old synagogue, where it crossed Essex Street, stood the 1-6-8 Bar, formerly called the Mickey Rose, a one-time Irish whiskey joint that was supposedly affiliated with the Campisi crew from the Knickerbocker Houses. It was two blocks from the Rutgers Projects, and a block east of Saint Teresa’s Church, more than a half mile from Mott Street.

The big white fluorescent sign above the bar was the only light around the dark deserted intersection. The design on the sign spelled out BAR with the numbers one, six, and eight crowding a cocktail glass tilted at an angle.

Inside, the room was long and narrow, dimly lit by a row of blue lights suspended from the ceiling. There was a twenty-foot wooden bar counter on the left, with a dozen bar stools, and a few small tables in the back. On the right side were red plastic booths that ran toward a pool table in the rear.

The customers had changed through the years, and were now mostly people from the housing projects, the Seward Park area, and Chinese gangbangers working the Chinatown fringe. Whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Chinese mixing tenuously together.

It was almost midnight and the only noise came from the crew of Ghosts drinking in the back area by the pool table.

Koo Jai, or Kid Koo, sat in the last booth and took a swig from his Heineken bottle, watching the homey Jung twins and Shorty Ng chase a rack of nine-ball around the table. He was reminiscing about the time back in the old days, when these streets belonged to the Red Stars, long before the Ghost Legion took over, and way before the waves of Fukienese snakeheads that had followed. Now the Fuks, fucks, as he called them, were buying up property on the Chinatown frontier, and were running their own rackets, like the mahjong room on Henry Street that in better days would have coughed up a piece of the action to the Stars. Now, everyone who paid protection out here paid to the old Chinatown Cantonese, or to the new Fukienese snakehead organizations. And the Dragons were also claiming disputed territory.

Shorty bopped to the far end of the table, tapping the butt end of his cue stick against the wood floor, sizing up the game-winning shot. Considerably shorter than five feet, he’d need to get on his toes, stretching long across the table, to hit the nine ball right, and not scratch.

An awkward shot no matter.

One of the Jungs cleared his phlegmy throat.

Shorty missed the nine ball, left it as an easy kiss in the corner, a hanger.

The Jungs snickered, snorted.

“Dew gow keuih!” Shorty cursed “Fuckin’ ball shit,” slapping his palm against the side rail.

Koo Jai smirked, took another swallow of the beer.

“Fuck,” Shorty said again, jerking his head as he circled away from the table. Koo Jai threw him a disapproving shake of the head, thinking, Shorty, the smallest guy in the gang, but with the biggest attitude. Superstitious guy. Wouldn’t pull a job on a rainy day, or on any date that had a four in it. Refused to enter a place if it were on the fourth floor, or fourteenth, and so on. Afraid of death, which sounded like four in Chinese.

Young Jung pocketed the nine ball hanger, a toothy grin across his face. He sauntered off as Shorty reluctantly stooped to rack up a new game.

Koo Jai closed his eyes a few seconds and suddenly felt a gust of cold wind, looking up to see the dark bulk of Kongo by the open door at the front of the bar. He was even more surprised to see the dailo Lucky step through the door, coming toward the pool table.

The banter around the table went quiet.

Outside, a car’s horn beeped once. He saw headlight shadows against the door wall flashing to black.

In the next instant, Lucky was in front of him.

“Yo, what the fuck, man?” Lucky said in a steely voice. “I paged you almost an hour ago.”

Koo Jai lowered his head slightly, said sheepishly, “Sorry, Boss, the battery must’ve died.”

“Your fuckin’ brain must’ve died.” Lucky took the Smith &Wesson out for emphasis, laid it on the rail of the pool table. “What the fuck is going on out here?”

Koo Jai knew this wasn’t a social visit, but he seemed genuinely puzzled, trading glances with Shorty and the Jung brothers in the sudden hush. Lucky sneered, turning his hard face toward Koo Jai.

“How come you got nobody on the street? Do you know what’s going on out there?” Lucky paused a moment for effect. “KJ, you’re the senior brother. Tell me what’s going on?” He let his fingers drift over the pistol, waited.

“We’re out here watching out for the neighborhood,” Koo Jai said evenly, “like we been doing, making sure the hok-kwee and the loy sung don’t fuck over the Chinese.”

Lucky picked up the gun and said, “You’re doing all that by being here in this bar? You’re really keeping an eye on things, right? And now you’re only pretending to be drinking and shooting pool, right?”

“Check the streets,” Koo Jai said quickly to Shorty and the Jungs.

“Hell, it’s freezing out there!” groused Shorty as they went toward the front door.

“We were out earlier,” explained Koo Jai. “And the streets were empty. It’s too fuckin’ cold. We only came in to warm up.”

Lucky went behind Koo Jai and stood there with the gun.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “someone’s ripping off company business out here, and it’s fuckin’ bad for our business, ’cause it makes us look bad. I want your guys on the street, their eyes peeping for hijacks, their ears open.”

Koo Jai nodded in agreement with the dailo, but also said, “It’s hard to understand the Fuks. When they talk, it sounds like they’re spitting or shitting.”

“Whatever,” Lucky warned, facing Koo now. “You better get a grip on out here. Because I’m telling you, boy, if there’s another rip-off, it’s gonna be on you.”

“Okay, Boss,” said Koo Jai quietly, trying to save face. “But I have a question.”

Lucky nodded at him. “Speak.”

Koo Jai’s voice was firmer now. “You know we’re out here dealing with the junkie hok-kwees, the niggers, and the PRs, and now, not only do we have to watch out for the Dragons, we got those fuckin’ Fuk Ching assholes picking at us, too.”

Lucky’s eyes narrowed, “What about it?”

“Tell me again,” Koo Jai asked, keeping a tone of respect in his voice, “why we’re holding back, why we don’t just sot fuckin’ crush them all?”

“Everyone was told to cool it. There are some arrangements being worked on, upstairs, with the old men.”

Koo Jai understood that to mean the tongs were dealing. He knew better than to question the dailo, or the uncles. “Yeah,” he said quietly, “but the Fuks spit on Shorty, and Dragons pissed all over Jung’s car.”

Lucky raised the pistol past Koo Jai’s eye level.

“Don’t worry about them. When the time’s right, we’ll clean it all up.” Lucky put the pistol back into his gun pocket, clenched his jaw, and checked his Rolex. “Right now, I wanna know who’s pulling off these jobs.”

“Okay, Boss,” Koo Jai said as Lucky headed for the door, with Kongo taking his back.

“Sure thing,” he said to himself, as he watched the Mott Street dailo exit the seedy East Broadway bar.

Night Without End

When Jack woke again, it was pitch black in the studio apartment, the only light a faint glow of digital numbers on the face of the boom-box radio. It was after 10 PM.

He decided to get dressed, walked down to Eighth Avenue, and wolfed down some Shanghai dumplings with hot sauce at one of the all-night soup shacks. When he was done, it was eleven-thirty and he got into the first Chinese radio car lined up on the street outside, quickly rolling toward the Brooklyn Bridge.