extortion money, the amount is generally in some multiple of 36 for the 36 oaths, or 108 for the original 108 Shaolin monks. This ‘secret society’ mystique is effective. It not only instills fear in the community, but it forges these delinquents into a disciplined gang.
“The way it works, each tong usually has its own youth gang as an affiliate of the tong. For example, one tong in New York had the Ghost Shadows. Another tong had the Flying Dragons. You don’t want to mess with either one.”
I pulled into a parking lot close to the Washington Street end of Beach Street. I liked the park-and-lock policy. Just in case we came out of that brothel at a dead run, ten steps ahead of thirty-six teenagers with hatchets, I didn’t want to wait for an attendant to fetch the car from the bowels of some garage.
We sat in the car for a minute. I wanted to get the plan straight before we walked into the neighborhood.
“So how do we do it, Harry?”
He turned slightly toward me and realized he was still better off looking straight ahead.
“There are a lot of little low-stakes gambling dens in Chinatown. They’re like family businesses. But the tong always runs one major high-stakes gambling den. It’s a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation. It’s like a giant bank for very serious gambling, drug deals, whatever. There’s a lot of money floating around inside. That’s where the tong is most vulnerable. That’s why a major function of the youth gang is guarding the den. I think I know where it is.”
“How?”
“I read the signals. Young, tough kids around the building. There’s usually just one slip of paper somewhere on the outside with two Chinese characters meaning ‘in action.’ I think I saw it.”
“Where?”
“The building down the block from the no-name coffee shop.”
“All right, suppose you’re right. How do you use it?”
“We use the weapon of choice in Chinatown.”
“Which is?”
“Fear. That’s what gives the tong control over the community. Maybe it’ll give us some control over the tong. First we reach the Dragon Lady. Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute, Harry. Are you going to threaten to go to the police?”
“Hardly. The police are useless. Once in a while they’ll raid a gambling den to appear to be doing something. They arrest some of the old people the den keeps around. The judge’ll fine them a hundred dollars, and it’s on with the show. I don’t know what it’s like here in Boston, but the tong usually has some of the police tied up.”
“So if they’re not afraid of the police, what?”
“The tong has a rival. The Dai Huen Jai. The Big Circle Boys. They’re a bunch of loose-knit bands of criminals from around the southern provincial capital of Canton. In Hong Kong, that area’s called the “Big Circle” because that’s what it looks like on a map.
“These babies are tough. They run about twenty to forty years old, and they’re seasoned fighters. Most of them are out of the Chinese military or are former members of the top-gun Red Guard. A lot of them are wanted criminals in China.
“Their organization smuggles them out of China into Canada, then to the United States. They’re brought in specifically to commit crimes, usually robbery of everything from jewelry stores to gambling dens. When things get hot, they’re smuggled somewhere else. They’re violent enough to be feared even by the tongs.”
“And exactly how are you going to use this?”
“Follow this inscrutable Chinese and learn.”
He opened the door, but I couldn’t let one question hang. I grabbed his elbow.
“One question, Harry. How do you know all this? I mean the oaths and all that.”
I think he wanted to be out of the car before I asked the question. I could see his lips tighten.
“What’s the difference?”
It came out harsher than he’d intended. He saw my expression and softened his.
“Sometime I’ll tell you, Mike. I will. This isn’t the time. We’ve got business.”
I nodded.
He was out of the car with both feet on the sidewalk in around sixty seconds flat. I said a prayer that “the plan” did not call for blistering speed. I followed him, but not without grabbing and donning my Henry Osterwald hat from the back seat.
18
The wind out of the east was whipping twenty-one-degree air salted with snow particles into our faces. In spite of it, I could feel the beading of perspiration on my forehead and upper lip.
We moved down Beach Street from the opposite direction of the no-name coffee shop. I was about four paces behind Harry in case they recognized us together. There was no trouble keeping up.
I had no idea what kind of watch the youth gang would keep on a brothel at nine-thirty in the morning. There was hardly anyone in sight on the street.
The only activity we saw was in the poultry shop that we passed on our right. Ancient wooden cages along the walls held a dusty, feathery collection of live chickens and ducks. Three old Chinese women seemed to be singing the morning gossip to each other while they waited their turn. A fourth watched a rail-thin clerk of somewhere between twenty and forty years grab the quacking duck she pointed to out of the cage and lock one wing behind the other. They were as oblivious to us as I prayed the rest of the local citizenry might be.
When we reached the door of the brothel, I felt the same grappling sensation in the stomach that I had two nights before. Harry neither speeded up nor slowed down as he turned right and pushed open the door. I checked the street one last time. No one.
I scuttled in and closed the door. I was a step behind Harry as we crossed through that mangy hallway to the stairs. The only light was still what fought its way through a century of grime on the door glass, but as far as I could see, there was no one inside. My observation was confirmed by the fact that no one had killed us. Yet.
We climbed. I’ve heard steps creak, but these roared. I’m sure it was magnified in my mind, but every step was like jumping on the tail of another cat.
Harry stopped a step from the top. I was crowding him from behind, squinting to squeeze every bit of information out of the pitiful rays of light that made it to the top of the stairs.
There were two doors. I couldn’t remember which one we used two nights before. I remembered the story, “The Lady or the Tiger,” and thought of the clear possibility of finding “two tigers, no lady.”
I whispered, “Which door?”
Harry turned to make what I suppose was a guess, but instead drove an elbow into my chest so hard I had to grab for what I hoped was a rail to keep from taking the stairs backwards. He was recoiling from a blast of daylight that hit him with surprise harder than he hit me. The first door had swung open. From the gasp of the figure that stood framed in the door, Harry and I had thrown as much of a shock as we received.
From the bulk of the black shadow, I had instant fear that we were dealing with the sumo hulk we’d run into there before. Then I saw the edges of the shadow billowing and showing light. The silhouette under the billowing was massive, but not gargantuan.
A flood of hot Chinese poured like staccato little fireworks out of whoever it was we were looking at. Whatever it meant didn’t slow Harry in the slightest. He was a pace behind the figure that was attempting to disappear behind the door. He kicked back the door and grabbed the elbow of the Dragon Lady who had been our effusive hostess of two nights previous. Once he had her stopped, he leaned back to let the wave of pain he must have unleashed in his ribs subside. I was inside with the door shut by the time the hot lava began pouring out of her mouth again.
In a tight sheath, she had been merely obese. In a free-flowing robe, she expanded to fill the material.
Harry bellowed, “ Silence! ”
Not “Quiet,” or “Could you hold it down?” or even “Stifle it.” Just plain “Silence!” I thought I had warped into
