Fifty one-ounce Pandas. Two dozen diamonds, a carat each of excellent cut and clarity.

The Hakka can wash gold and diamonds better than anybody.

Golo saw it very clearly: the Triad fronting the gold and ice, Uncle Four squaring the cash end, the Number Three going to the Dragons inside the welfare projects.

He fired up a 555. Reaching under the sofa bed, he came up with a gray-metal box with a combination dial. He sat on the bed and opened it, sucking down the cigarette. What came out of the box was a big glass jar, and a Chinese pistol. When he removed the gun, the banner of the Hung Huen, unfurled red Chinese characters on black cloth across the linoleum floor. Slogans. Myths. From their original, long-ago resolve to restore the Ming dynasty, honor had given way to greed, power, and bloodlust.

Cleaning it now, the gun felt heavy to the touch. It was a Tokarev M213, a nine-millimeter Parabellum of Chinese military issue, copied from the Russians. It had a thirteen-shot magazine and black rubber grips with a red star inset. He ran an oilcloth over the forged steel and stared at the glass jar.

In the glass jar was a severed hand, the hand of a wing chunkung fu-style enforcer, tailing off into umbilicals of tendon and ligament, a shaft of bone protruding from the bloated and whitened flesh where the wrist ended and sure agony began.

Now, with the Number Three roiling his brain, he turned the jar slowly, held it up to the window's brightness. In the hard daylight, he could see with vivid clarity the details of the hand, its nails, fingerprints, fine lines, creases of the palm, calluses where the skin was thick, scarred and bunched around the knuckles, floating in the fluid formaldehyde from Wah San Funeral Home, rotating ever so slowly to accommodate his scrutiny.

Was it the heroin, or the memory of severing the hand that aroused such ferocious clarity, he wondered, putting out the cigarette. He muted the sound on the television. Leaning back on the bed, his head floated, and one of the blood oaths came back to him. I shall be billed by myriads of swords if I embezzle cash orproperties from my brethren.

He put down the glass jar, glanced at the TV screen, then dipped a bore brush in and out of the heavy metal gun barrel, stroked it. He pulled back the slide and heard it chik-cock in place, then blew at it and released the slide, the crack of metal snapping back the action. When he squeezed the trigger the hammer dropped, chopping down with a hard bock.

And then he closed his eyes and filled his head with visions of diamonds and gold.

Hope

Mona wore a short boucle jacket that was blacker than the lace bustier from Victoria's Secret underneath her open silk blouse, a modest black miniskirt, and suede Sesto Meucci pumps with chunky heels.

Johnny held the car door open for her and helped her in, her free hand holding the little flat Armani clutch that contained her makeup and keys. She squeezed his hand, and he closed the door after her.

They headed up the highway toward Yonkers Raceway to meet Uncle Four at the late races, the trotters. It was a half-hour drive up to White Plains, where Uncle Four hosted a delegation of Hip Chings from various cities along the East Coast, who had rented a slew of motel rooms across from the track.

"How are your business plans coming along?" she asked.

Johnny said he was still raising capital but was considering various schemes with some of the other drivers.

"I know people," she said, "who have money to invest." That caught his attention and he watched her in the rearview mirror as she lit up a cigarette. "Maybe you can get a partner, do better for yourself."

He listened.

"You don't want to drive me around forever, do you?" she asked.

She touched the back of his neck and he turned slightly and kissed her fingers, keeping his eyes on the highway. Reaching across to the dash, he turned on the cassette player and they sang Hong Kong love ballads together, like karaoke.

Then the cassette came to a sad song and she asked him to turn it off, casting them into an uneasy silence.

"I have need of a gun," she said suddenly, softly but clearly. "There are men who come around the building. They go through the garbage cans and sometimes chase me for money."

He never flinched. "What kind of gun?" he asked.

"A small gun, something I can carry in my bag."

The face of fat Tony Biondo, the only gzoai to Johnny knew, came into his mind.

"Money's no problem. I need something I can rely on."

Johnny nodded, mo mun tay, no problem.

"A gun with one of those things that keep it quiet." In the rearview, Mona saw his eyes go curious.

"If I need to use it," she added quickly, "the less attention the better."

Their eyes locked a moment.

"Immigration," she said quietly.

Johnny understood, said he'd see what was available, get her a price.

"I knew I could trust you," Mona said with a sad smile.

They arrived atYonkers and she went to Uncle Four's side. Like a pet cat, Johnny thought, a black cat crossing his path. The members of the delegation came out of Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, and Washington, and they all brought whores, or shared whores.

The whores were all colors and tried to pass themselves off as "models" and "escorts."

Johnny left them and went down to the other end of the track. He had two more hours to dust, didn't want to watch Mona, and the wad he'd won at Belmont was scorching his pockets.

He copped a racing form, and looked for more angles to play, to take his mind off of Mona.

Past And Present

The last thing he had heard was the radio.

Then it became the first thing he heard, tinny music chasing him through the night back to Chinatown with Billy's folded cardboard boxes, ready to pack up Pa's stuff.

Jack wolfed down forkfuls of rice and cheng dao from a gravy of ground beef and bits of fried-egg yellow that clung to the side of the splayed takeout container. He scanned Pa's apartment and took inventory more with his heart than with his eyes.

When he was full he went to the black knapsack and took out one of the disposable InstaFlash cameras. He set the black gourdshaped bottle down on Pa's table, thumbed open the cap and poured a big splash into a beer glass and took a swallow. The maotai was 150-proof rice liquor, more fiery than the Johnny Black he was used to, and left a bitter aftertaste following the scorch down his throat. Damn, he cursed on an incendiary breath, screwing his eyes tight. Moving about the dim apartment, he flashed off the thirty-six shots of the throwaway.

He took another swallow so he could begin to forget the way things looked.

Cans and bottles he placed together, along with dried goods and herbal medicines, in a box for the Old Age Center, to go along with the television, the kitchen appliances.

Pa's old clothes lay neatly stacked on his bed, bound for the Salvation Army instead of the Senior Citizens, since none of the old Chinamen would wear the clothes of the deceased.

The furniture, books, and household artifacts would be split between the Women's Shelter, and the Chinatown History Project.

He poured another splash.

In the last box he placed the things he needed to keep: citizenship papers, a bank account held in trust under his name containing five thousand dollars. A steamship ticket forty years old, Ma's passage to America. A copy of his own birth certificate, St. Vincent's Hospital, 1965.

Behind the dusty kwan kung, God of War figurine, with the urn of burnt-out incense, he found two more photographs, so evenly layered with dust that he knew they hadn't been touched in many years. In one he wore a crewcut and a paratrooper's uniform, no smile on his face. The other was a graduation picture taken at the Police Academy, a blue peaked cap over his eyes.