He missed the five, took a long swallow of beer. Didn't see Billy. He followed through the rest of the rack until the nine ball dropped, and Billy walked into the bar.

They took a booth in the back and ordered a round of boilermakers, huddled together in cigarette smoke.

"The boys in the shop," Billy said, "think the rapist comes from outside of Chinatown, outside the city, on his day off. Works in a restaurant or factory, upstate maybe, where there's no Chinese around. Takes the bus down to the city."

They gulped liquor and Jack listened.

"The guy probably has a rent-a-bed in the area."

"Fukienese?"

"Probably, but don't get me wrong. Most of them are hardworking people, like slaves. Until they pay back their passage, they have to live under the gun, know what I'm saying?" He ordered more shots.

"Farrakhan," he grimaced, "comes on the TV and calls them bloodsuckers. Colin Ferguson gets on the Long Island Railroad and blows away two Asian women and the Nation of Islam praises him."

The shots came and they touched glasses like it was a declaration of war.

"Black gangbangers loot and burn the Koreans out of L.A. and the cops, man, they cut and run. No one cares."

Jack shrugged. "It's different now. You get killed for looking at someone the wrong way. For stepping on someone's shoe. Dissing, they call it. The rapper's rap it and the movies blow it up bigger than life."

Billy tapped the rim of the beer glass.

"It's open season on Chinamen."

Jack watched him drain it, his eyes telling the truth. Chinesepeo- ple never enslaved Black people, never robbed or lynched them. The Black Rage angle had nothing to do with the Chinese, who suffered under the same weight of discrimination as the Blacks did. The Black-on-Yellow crime wave was blind racist hate, straight up and simple.

"You know how it works, Jack. White cop shoots a black kid, the niggers riot, loot the Asian merchants." He signaled for another shot.

"Ease up," Jack said. "We got time yet."

There was a sigh, a disdainful shake of the head from Billy before he spoke again.

"Yeah. The other thing you asked about. The muscle behind the snakehead human traffickers? Yo, the Fuk Ching are the young guns down East Broadway, but the Fuk Chow have a lot of older guys, in their thirties and forties. Most of them are exPeople's Army. They got military training. Thems the ones you've got to look out for. The young Chings got Tech-nines and Magnums, but the old grunts got Chinese Makarovs and AK 47s. Explosives, too, know what I'm saying? What happened in Fort Lee was strictly hothead stuff. Revenge. You ain't seen nothing yet. Wait till they really set up their numbers."

Jack shook his head, crushed his cigarette.

"A lotta shit," Billy said. "And you're eyebrow deep, pal. The badge that heavy on you?"

"I'm in a different position now, Billy."

"That badge don't make you any less a Chinaman, Jacky. Do what you got to do, but remember, you still just like me, like the rest of us. You don't have to go too far in NYC before someone reminds you who you are. We be Chinamen, Jack. You can't be happy till you accept what you are."

"I don't like boxing myself in like that."

"You kidding, right? You're a homeboy cop working Chinatown. You don't think you're boxed in?"

"I asked for the transfer back, Billy. The old man got sick. It was a hardship thing." Jack finished the beer. Billy shook his head.

"You know Chinatown well as me. Not for nothing, but you think the merchants are gonna stop giving it up because you came on the scene?"

"The merchants think it's easier to pay them off," Jack said.

"Nah, that's not it. They pay off because they know the cops can't protect them. Homeboy, you think you make a difference here?"

Jack didn't answer, but the waitress brought another round and when they toasted, Billy sprinkled whiskey onto the wooden floor.

"Your father was a standup guy, Jack. All the old-timers used to say so. He stood up for the laundrymen against the big laundromats. He challenged the City's labor taxes."

"That was a long time ago," Jack said, "and I wasn't around."

"They tried to make him out a commie, a troublemaker. But he had support in the community."

Jack remembered vague fragments as Billy went on.

"All that anti-American stuff he spoke, you never did believe it, did you?"

Jack finished his JB, shook his head slowly from side to side.

"I knew," Billy said. "You were proud to be American. That's why you joined the army. Not to get away from him, and Chinatown. Not because you hated what your father struggled for."

"Struggle," Jack agreed, "is a good word for it. There was a lotta years of that. Pa didn't understand. He thought I was nuts, or suicidal, or maybe I wanted to spite him by jumping out of airplanes."

"What happened with that?"

"I broke my ankle two weeks into Airborne out of Fort Ben- ning. I went into Computer-Tech after that, but a year later they decided Computers was overloaded and I volunteered out. Two years, I did."

There was a silence that brought the jukebox music back between them, until Billy rapped his knuckles against the wooden bar, and spoke like he was seeing a warm summer memory.

"Whatever happened to that foxy Chinese babe you used to hang with? The one used to live on Mulberry, with the crazy mother?"

It was just Billy's way of changing the conversation, Jack knew, but the question made bittersweet the grief he was already feeling, and though he didn't have a choice, feeling sad or mad, he decided he didn't want either, settling for more whiskey and oblivion instead. Zero feeling, he knew, was better than bad feeling, better than searching for answers that never came.

Still, the question caught him off guard. He remained silent, his eyes searching the dim blue-lit room for an answer to something he'd allowed himself to forget, something he'd felt long ago, when women seemed more important, and love was full of possibilities.

Maylee. At eighteen, his Chinatown beauty queen.

He hadn't thought of her in the eight years since college, before he'd dropped out, before the Tofu King, before the army, and the NYPD.

Maylee. His first love, and first heartbreak. It taught him to dull his expectations, to be cautious with the giving of his heart.

The memory was a rush. Three tenements apart, they'd made love every day that long summer after high school, before college, except for the days she cramped, and then he'd pamper her, head to foot. Their love ended when the fall semester began, bringing college boys with BMWs cruising the campuses like matriculated hustlers.

Maylee noticed. She'd long wanted out of the dilapidated tenement, away from summer streets that stank raw with spoiled seafood, rotten fruit, restaurant garbage, overrun by rats and vermin. She was ashamed of how they lived, embarrassed by poverty and the narrow-mindedness of her culture.

JackYu, the boy next door, was sweet, but he wasn't the way out.

Her mother wasn't crazy; just afraid. Afraid her daughter would join the street gangs. Afraid she'd drop out of school, take up with a gwuailo, a blue-eyed white devil. Afraid she'd get pregnant. Afraid she'd lose her Chineseness, forget her name, where she came from.

Afraid, afraid, afraid.

Afraid of all the things lofan-foreigner-white, and American that her daughter desired to be, until finally that mother's fear drove the daughter away, but not until she had broken Jack's heart and made him want to leave also.