Only Child

Shop. Caught The Heartbeats’ “Crazy for You” from the top. Street-corner perfect.

That was another thing I’d missed about New York—radio stations where Dion was a first name.

I drove past Mama’s, slow and careful. The white-dragon tapestry was in the window, barely visible behind smeared-streaked glass that had collected more fingerprints than a crime lab. All clear. If the dragon had been red, I would have kept on going. And if it had been blue, I’d have known exactly what the problem was.

Mama’s a patriot. Same as we all are. The country we’re loyal to is the only one we vote in. And it’s never much bigger than wherever we stand.

I parked the Plymouth in the alley without a second thought. Pulling out the ashtray toggles an on/off switch wired into the distributor; if it’s not in the right position, the engine will crank but never catch.

And for that one spot, I had even better security. The driver’s door was now a replica of the alley wall—a white square against the dull-gray primer, with Max the Silent’s chop in gem-cut black inside. You’d think this would blow the whole anonymous deal, but you see quasi-Chinese ideograms on everything today, from clothes to skin. They usually don’t mean anything, but people who read comics for the ancient wisdom think they look cool.

There’s a tattoo artist Mama knows in a basement off Mott Street. He always has a vast display of the symbols for customer viewing. They pick the one they like, and Hop Sing or Wo Fat or whatever he feels like calling himself that day makes up a story about what it stands for: Truth, Justice, Integrity, Honor, Power, whatever. Mama says there are hundreds of different symbols for “sucker” in Chinese, and this guy knows them all.

The men on the door did their job, like always. But they hadn’t bothered with the threat displays since that first time.

Mama was at the front, by her register, staying close to the only altar she truly worshipped at. And making sure any stray customers who wandered in got the message that they didn’t want to eat there. She and the tureen of soup arrived at my booth at the same time.

“Damn! This is extra good tonight, Mama. You put something different in it?”

“Always something different,” she said. “Not good last time?”

“No,” I said, laboring. “It was superb the last time. It is never less than superb. This time, it was even superior to your usual standard, that’s all.”

“Huh! So—want more, yes?”

The soup was so hot it burned my mouth. My big mouth.

I was deep into my meal of braised beef and bok choy when Mama dropped it on me. “While you...gone, people still call, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Not like, all right, okay. Okay, like, you understand, okay?”

“Okay.”

Her eyes were black olives. I took the double-barreled scrutiny; looked back, blandly.

“Sometime, people owe money, want to pay. Sometime, want time to pay, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Sometime,” she went on, ignoring me, “want work done, okay?”

“Yeah. What did you tell them?”

“Mr. Burke not here, okay? You call back, okay?” she parroted in her best Chinese-laundry voice.

“You had a long time to be saying that.”

“So sorry,” she said, in the same voice. “You maybe try again, okay?”

“I get it. But most of the people I deal with, they’d want whatever they wanted right then.”

“Too bad, so sad,” Mama said, her voice a perfect imitation of her granddaughter Flower. “Oh well.”

“So, after a while, the whispers die down. And people stop calling. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“New people, stop call. Old people, not same. You understand?”

I nodded to tell her I did. Sure. Made perfect sense. My name had been in the street a long time. Someone coming up on it for the first time, if they needed what I was known for, they’d give a call, take a shot. If they kept getting sloughed by Mama, they’d give it up, go elsewhere. But old customers, they’d keep trying.

Like old enemies.

“Sometime, big job,” Mama said.

I nodded again, not questioning how she could tell all that from a few words whispered into a pay phone— Mama could smell a dollar bill in a slaughterhouse.

“So! Big job, old customer, get different story, okay?”

“What story?”

“Story like I tell you before, okay? Burke not here. Long time. Not in country. Special thing. But somebody else do job.”

“Who’d you send them to?” I asked, frankly curious.

“No, no. Not send away. Tell to wait. Can’t wait? So, okay, I not know anything about Burke business. But now job come in, you do; like say before, okay?”

“You mean, be my own...brother, or whatever?”

“Not look so much like you,” she talked through what I was saying. A train on tracks, rolling. “Little bit, maybe. But same voice. Just like talk to Burke, talk to brother.”

“All that for what, Mama?”

“Money,” she said, black eyes glowing like a Geiger counter near a rich vein. “Big, big money.”

“The snakeheads?”

“Not now,” she said. “Snakeheads all the time come. This business, come only once, okay?”

Three nights after my meeting with Mama, I nudged the Plymouth through the still-thick Manhattan traffic, taking my time. This was a quicker contact than I’d expected. When Mama told me who was playing, I’d been sure they’d use foot soldiers to screen me before going face-to-face.

The upper roadway of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge took me past the luxo highrises on my right as I crossed the river, into another country.

I found the adult-video store wedged into a concrete triangle under the bridge extension on the other side, just before where Queens Boulevard starts its long run through the borough. The store’s back was crammed up against a no-star hotel. A long-abandoned gas station made up the third leg of the triangle.

They’d told me I could leave my car at the gas station, but I didn’t like that option much. I turned left, up Skillman Avenue, and motored along, watchful. When I saw the white rag dangling from the door handle of an old brown Buick sedan, I flicked the lever into neutral and blipped the throttle.

It was as if the Plymouth’s deep-chested snarl had knocked on the Buick’s door. I caught a brief glimpse of Asian faces, at least four of them. I pulled up a few lengths, made a U-turn, and waited as the Buick maneuvered out of its spot. Soon as it left, I parallel-parked into the space they’d vacated. I settled in carefully, cranking the wheel full-lock to make sure I could blast straight out if it came to that. I wasn’t worried about the decrepit station wagon parked in front of me—it would stay there until the boys in the Chinatown war wagon came back to collect it sometime tomorrow.

I still had a forty-five-minute cushion, so I did a last-minute check to make sure I had everything I needed for the meet. Which was nothing.

Then I took a walk. Up Skillman to Thirty-sixth Street, then a right to Queens Boulevard, across from the old Aviation High School. I glanced at my watch. Still early. I strolled back down toward the triangle, relaxed.

And thinking about Mama. “It don’t take no crystal ball, son,” the Prof had concluded. “Mama don’t want the whole pot. She must have got word, her one chip ain’t making this trip.”

Maybe. And maybe all the money this meet promised made it worth her while to wait.

At least I was done with trekking out to Long Island all the damn time.

The porno shop was fortified as if some sleazy alchemist inside had turned gash into