Red Jade by Henry Chang Read Free Book Online Page A

through the top of his mouth, tumbled, and blew his brains out of the top left side of his head. He had GSR on his right hand, the gun hand. Also, some GSR stippling on his face and mouth area. Consistent with the murder-suicide scenario.
    They’d likely match Harry’s fingerprints to the gun and the shell casings.
    The ME listed the manner of death as DOMESTIC DISPUTE : estranged husband shoots ex-wife, then self, in double tragedy. Two children left behind.
    Jack began to feel the weight of the early morning: fourteen hours on the job, the emotional drag of the case.
    He really needed a drink.
    He could see the Chinatown darkness outside the captain’s windows as he placed the reports on the desk in Marino’s empty office. The day shift had already given way to the night shift when Jack left the station house.
    In his old neighborhood, he thought of all the different places he could go for Chinese fast food, but the familiar places now felt empty, unwelcoming, and the lonely winter night finally drove him back to Brooklyn, leaving him staring into a Sunset Park back street of all-night Chinese takeout joints.

Waiting for Buddha
    Johnny Wong reached over to a tray in the corner and angled the antenna of the little transistor radio, keeping the Chinese music low-key, a Shirley Kwan Hong Kong pop ballad. He swiveled the antenna until the static cleared, then leaned back on his bunk.
    He scanned the dark cement box of a room, closed his eyes when they reached the bars across the front of the cell. He took a deep breath, and again thought about how his life had come to this.
    During the first few days of chor gom , prison, he’d been mixed in with the hok gwai , black devils, and the loy sung , the lowlife Spanish. They’d mocked him by pulling back the corners of their eyes, taunting him, Egg roll! Bruce Lee!! Fock you ass, Jackie Chan! Ching chong! Some of them menaced him, sizing him up to rob him. A few sadists regarded him as fresh meat, stared him down with hard faces, the way long-term criminals devour new prisoners with their scowling, man-raping eyes.
    Johnny had steeled himself mentally; he wouldn’t go down easily, would set an example.
    Suddenly, he’d gotten transferred to the Central Punitive Segregation Unit, a maximum security single-cell jail. Protective custody. Protective? he’d wondered. From whom? Everyone, he’d realized. Now he was kept from the general population, confined to a six-by-nine-foot cement cage, with a wall bunk across from a metal toilet bowl.
    And Shirley Kwan singing.
    He remembered purchasing a radio car hookup from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. The overnight limo deal, jockeying the black Lincoln, had prospered, until he made a mistake. He’d broken one of his cardinal rules: never get involved with the paying customers
    He’d been taken in by her beauty.
    Smoldering anger and shame still flared up inside, but he knew it was his own fault. He’d been the greedy fish who’d taken the bait. He’d been socking away cash until he got mixed up with the client, the Fat Uncle’s lady, his alluring mistress, Mona. He’d been seduced by the tragedy of her story, her past and her present life of suffering. And, of course, by her sexual beauty, her sensual lovemaking.
    The other night drivers had never caught on.
    The instant that he entered her, never realizing he’d been sucked in, had led to his present state: imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. All his grand dreams—a take-out counter, a Wah Wah Bakery franchise, the coin Laundromat deal—gone. All gone. Eventually, he’d have to sell the Lincoln, and move on.
    Now his life was in the hands of other men: a Hip Ching tong officer, and a fancy gwailo , Caucasian, lawyer. Johnny had gotten over his initial rush of hysteria, had resigned himself to his fate, trusting that the tong agent and the white lawyer would work successfully toward his release.
    They’d wanted to find the victim’s mistress, the woman known