Red Jade by Henry Chang Page B

Their hands rigidly clasped together at the end of life, they were now bound for different cemeteries.
    The Chinese band began playing their dirge as the pallbearers brought May Lon’s casket out, stepping in cadence toward the black Cadillac DeVille with her black-and-white photograph braced atop. A small crowd murmured their sadness in the frozen morning air as her family and relatives followed the casket. Suddenly, a harrowing cry burst from the group as May Lon’s mother ran past the pallbearers loading the DeVille and threw herself across the coffin. “Aayaaa!!” she screamed, the veins in her neck standing out as she beat her chest and tore at her hair. Other relatives rushed in, lifting her away from the coffin. She fell to the pavement, kicking, pounding the asphalt with her heels, on the edge of madness in her despair.
    May Lon’s father stood speechless, ready to collapse.
    They carried the mother into the lead Lincoln Town Car as the other funeral drivers pulled up along the curb, loading up the family and gently moving the procession along. The band played louder as the dark DeVille led the way toward Canal Street. The six-car procession then turned left toward the Holland Tunnel, bound for the Chinese cemetery at Sacred Oaks in New Jersey.
    Jack took a few deep shaolin breaths through his nose, allowing the sadness to ease. Farther down the block, the doors of the Wing Ching swung open. With no band, no mournful dirge, the pallbearers shouldered Harry Gong’s casket as three Lincolns and a black minivan pulled up along the street.
    The father wore a grim frown, carrying a smoking baton of mustard-colored incense. He narrowed his eyes as he followed the body of his only son, as if searching in a dark distant realm. Everyone loaded in quickly, quietly, eager to bring the deceased to the serenity of his final resting place. The large stick of incense poked out of the window of the first car as the Town Car led the way.
    The procession turned east on Bayard, south on Mott, and paused near the Wong Sing Restaurant on Pell, where the day shift bowed their heads, then proceeded to the Bowery, where it held up Lower East Side traffic, pausing for eight seconds at the Nom San Bok Hoy Benevolent Association, before rolling onward.
    The black caravan made its way through the icy daylight and took the Williamsburg Bridge on the way to the Chinese section of Heaven’s Pavilion Cemetery.
    The funerals had cast a pall over Jack’s mood and he exited the park to get away from the street of mourning, unsure whether any closure had come for him.

Golden Star
    Feeling hungry and thirsty, Jack sat in the last booth in Grampa’s, watching the television above the bar while waiting for his order of onion-smothered steak. He took a long pull from his bottle of Heineken and considered jetting out to Seattle for a long weekend, subtracting a few NYPD vacation days. He’d hang out with Alex, there to receive her ORCA award. He could touch base with Seattle PD and check the layout of Seattle’s Chinatown and the International District area.
    The television displayed a press conference featuring the new Italian-American mayor, who was pitching the idea of banning fireworks in Chinatown, especially Chinese New Year celebrations. The mayor was citing fire safety concerns. It hadn’t been a concern for a hundred and twenty-five years, thought Jack, but suddenly, it was a problem. All the Chinese knew that it was the mayor covering his ass after resolving to go after the mob at the Fulton Fish Market, and the Mafia’s defiant display of July Fourth fireworks in Brooklyn and Staten Island’s Italian enclaves.
    With contempt, Jack took another swallow of beer. No firewoiks for the paisans , no Chinese New Year celebration for the Chinks. Non-Chinese citizens didn’t realize the banning of fireworks in Chinatown would allow evil spirits to creep back in, into the Lower East Side and all of New York City as well.
    Jack wondered if