Red Jade by Henry Chang Page A

artificial limb. He’d continued for a year until his control of hand and finger movements became so deft that he mastered eating with chopsticks and dealing a deck of cards. He could pluck a coin off the table.
    He could pull the trigger of a gun.
    Aaya , he sighed, finishing off the last of the cognac, letting his thoughts return to matters at hand. He was indifferent to the murder of Uncle Four; the Hip Ching leader had been arrogant and so had brought about his own demise with his whore. His foolishness, however, had cost the Red Circle a cache of gold Pandas and brilliant diamonds, the value of which, though small compared to the billions raked in by combined triad operations, had caused a loss of face. The Hakkanese drug couriers and their Chiu Chao financiers had leaked details of the rip-off.
    The Red Circle had lost face, and the whore had to pay.
    Death by a myriad of swords was too simple. They’d have to make an example of her, a warning to all others who thought they could steal from the Hung Huen brotherhood. They would videotape a gang rape of her, then pimp her off, before killing her, finally making a snuff film for the porno dogs to market, completing the revenge.
    The throbbing came back, a slow steady beat. Normally, he’d take a Vicodin and allow it to pass, but tonight he had special pleasures in mind, the kind he didn’t want diminished by medication. It was the one thing aging men still clung to. Desire. He closed his eyes and pictured the siu jeer , “young ladies,” who would soon arrive at his condo door, and ignored the pulsing forearm stump.

Noble Truths
    “Fuhgeddaboudit,” Captain Marino said. “There’s already a cap on overtime. Unless you have something solid, like extradition, or taking custody and bringing him back, the department’s not paying for a fishing trip to the West Coast.”
    No way. Not on the department’s dime.
    Jack left the captain’s office and exited the Chinatown station house. He turned west on Bayard, following the scent of death and the distant sounds of grief in his head. He walked inside Columbus Park until he came to the rundown asphalt ball fields, the hard-scrabble playground of his Chinatown youth. Across the way, he could see the black cars jockeying for position on the street of funeral parlors.
    The other merchants of death were known to be charitable toward the more tragic losses of life. The Chin brothers of Kingdom Caskets would discount the no-frills metal veneer boxes, and Peaceful Florist would charge wholesale for the floral wreaths. The headstone cutter might donate the engraving of the carved Chinese characters. The Family Associations would contribute toward the rest of the funeral expenses. A small group of black-clad mourners burned paper items in a tin bucket, offering up small colorful gifts for the afterlife: a lady’s slippers, a man’s tie.
    Jack smelled the odor of jasmine, incense drifting in the winter air as the black Town Cars and Continentals lined up behind the DeVille flower wagon filled with wreaths of carnations and mums.
    The Wah Fook Parlor had six death notices posted on their doors. May Lon Fong’s funeral was the next one. Outside the Wah Fook, eight Chinese musicians had assembled, all wearing full-length min-nop coats of brown silk with black fedoras, watching the mourners from behind dark sunglasses as they tuned their instruments: four Chinese suona horns, two mournful erhu , string violins, a bamboo folk drum, and a small harp.
    Jack hadn’t seen such a large funeral band before. They tuned up to a big symphonic sound as the procession began. Normally, Jack would have attended the wakes, paid his respects, but this murder-suicide was doubly tragic, and he decided to get his closure from a distance.
    Farther down the street, Harry Gong’s funeral continued behind the closed doors of the Wing Ching Parlor. The families had decided on separate funerals, unable to reconcile the memories of killer and victim.