Family Business Read online

  With a heavy heart, the author dedicates this book to

  Warren Liebold

  Fay Chew Matsuda

  Larry Pontillo

  and

  Parnell Hall, who is cruising home on a full boat with all the awards

  1

  The news swept back and forth through Chinatown all afternoon: Big Brother Choi was dead.

  I heard it early, though not in Chinatown. Mary Kee and I were sitting in Washington Square Park in the late-day fall sunshine, drinking mango tea and watching a magic show by the fountain. To the music of a nearby string band a red-rouged young Black man pulled coins from the ears of giggling children. When Mary’s phone sang “I Fought the Law,” she sighed.

  I said, “Don’t answer.”

  “Girlfriend, you don’t mean that. That’s Chris’s ring.” She slipped the phone out.

  “Oh! Answer.”

  Chris Chiang is a detective third grade at the Fifth Precinct, in the center of Chinatown. Mary’s a detective second grade. Since Chris made detective, they’d been partnered. Cops’ days off aren’t sacrosanct to top brass, but they are to other cops. If Chris was calling Mary on her day off, something big must have happened.

  Mary leaned forward, curling around the phone to make a sound shield. “Hi… Yeah… No problem. What’s up?… Wow. When? How?… Okay, well, that’s good… Yeah, it still could be for sure… Okay, thanks, Chris.”

  “So?” I said as she clicked off. The magician gave a little girl a marker so she could write her name on a ping-pong ball.

  “No immediate crisis.”

  The magician put the ping-pong ball in a hat, turned the hat over, and shook. When nothing fell out he mugged a big puzzled look at the crowd.

  “But a later-on crisis?”

  “Chris was just giving me a heads-up. Big Brother Choi died.”

  “Wow. What happened?”

  “Massive heart attack. Not to worry, there.”

  I hadn’t really been worried. It wasn’t likely Big Brother Choi had been rubbed out by a rival tong leader and a Chinatown tong war was about to start. Those ham-handed days were largely gone.

  But Mary’s “there” implied something else, and I knew what it was, the reason Chris Chiang had called. A seismic shudder was about to move through the streets we’d grown up on.

  Our high school physics prof had told us that nature abhors a vacuum.

  So does power.

  The magician, who’d been rubbing his chin in thought, brightened. He tiptoed over to a boy in a baseball cap, pointed to get the crowd staring that way, and lifted the cap. The ping-pong ball with the girl’s name on it was perched on the boy’s head.

  * * *

  Doing errands in Chinatown in the late afternoon, I heard the news again and again. Older merchants looked over their shoulders and whispered it to customers; middle-aged ladies in the park set their lips and nodded knowingly; young punks pulled on their cigarettes and sneered that it was about time.

  My mother, when I got home, asked me if I’d heard the news.

  I was tempted to yawn and say, “Oh, you mean about Big Brother Choi? Yeah, hours ago,” just to mess with her, but she was clearly bursting, so I said, “What news?”

  “Your brother has been promoted.”

  Oh. Clutch-stomping gear change.

  “Which brother?” I asked automatically. I have four older brothers. When my mother speaks of one of her children to another, she rarely says who she means. We’re just supposed to know. I’ve always thought that was a little unfair because when she’s talking about me to them, they don’t have to think very hard. This time, though, my question was just a reflex. I’d already worked it out.

  Of my brothers, one—Andrew—is a freelance photographer, so if it was him, he’d promoted himself. The other three are an organic chemistry professor, an ER doctor, and a lawyer. Ted’s full professorship is a tenured, endowed chair, so there’s not very far up for him to go. Elliott loves working the ER so much that I don’t think he’d leave it even if they offered to make him head of the hospital. And Tim is my mother’s favorite. So I had a suspicion, but I asked anyway.

  “Tien-Hua, of course.”

  Right. Tim.

  “He made partner? Ma, that’s wonderful.”

  Tim and I haven’t always gotten along. Until I was born he was the baby, so there’s an understandable resentment there; also, he’s a stodgy judgmental know-it-all wet blanket and has been since we were kids.

  Still, he was young to make partner at his white-shoe law firm, and Asian, and this was something he’d wanted badly. At giant corporate firms like Harriman McGill it’s up or out. Tim was in mergers and acquisitions, and he liked the work, probably because it was as boring as he was. A new job in another top firm would be hard to come by if he was passed over for promotion at Harriman. No wonder Ma was beaming.

  “I’ll call him,” I said. “After I put the groceries away.”

  “Yes, I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear your congratulations. Also, in case you don’t know this yet, Big Brother Choi is dead.”

  2

  So who is this guy?” Bill Smith, my partner, brought me a mug of jasmine green from the tea stash I keep at his place. I’d had dinner with my mother—chicken chow fun—and headed out to Bill’s Tribeca apartment. I’d said I had to work late. That was the “don’t tell” part. My mother did the “don’t ask.” I’m positive she knows about the change in my relationship with Bill, but I don’t think she’s quite ready to hear it out loud. In some situations, timing is everything.

  “Who?” I asked. “My brother Tim?” I mean, I had to mess with someone.

  “No, funny person, the other brother, Big Brother Choi. I know which one Tim is. He’s the one who dislikes me most.”

  “He’s actually the only one who still dislikes you at all. Ted and Elliott have moved on to ‘you know, he’s okay,’ and Andrew thinks you’re great.”

  “A wondrous family is Chin. I think Gertrude Stein wrote that. I like Andrew, too. Now. Big Brother Choi?”

  “Chinatown OG. Sent here from Hong Kong in the late eighties specifically to take over the New York branch of the Li Min Jin tong. Li Min Jin, ‘Upright People Will Advance.’ What’s so funny?”

  “I’m picturing the opposite. An army of lounging soldiers.”

  I’d have snorted, but that’s my mother’s signature response, and I’m trying to avoid it. “The Li Min Jin was a mess when he got here. The Hong Kong leadership sent him because the New York leader was weak and the members were all double-crossing and backstabbing each other.”

  “Literally?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a tong. In Choi’s day he was a terror. He whipped the tong into shape and got to work. The Li Min Jin was smaller than some of the other tongs, but Choi was big on encroaching on other guys’ territories, which really isn’t done. There was always pushback, which meant violence. It’s kind of surprising no one bumped him off back then. They might’ve, except in the nineties he made some kind of alliance with one of the other small tongs, which also isn’t done. The Ma Tou—the Horsehead tong.”

  “Why isn’t it done?”

  “Because tongs are sworn brotherhoods. Like family. You may not be crazy about your family”—Bill isn’t, about his—“but you don’t have two at once.”

  “Unless you get married. That’s the traditional way powerful families make alliances.”

  “True. But the tongs generally don’t allow women soldiers, so there’s no one to marry.”

  “Missing a good bet. If I had an army, I’d have you in it.”

  “I’d have to see the perks before I enlisted.”

  “They’re numerous and varied. So if it isn’t done, why did they do it?”

&n
bsp; “Why Choi did it is obvious—it gave him power. Almost doubled his territory. Within a year or so the head of the Ma Tou—a guy named Long Lo—released his soldiers from their oaths and faded away. The soldiers who wanted to joined the Li Min Jin. The real question was always what was in it for Long Lo.”

  “Maybe he just wanted to retire.”

  “He was still relatively young. I guess he might’ve seen the writing on the wall. Over time the tongs have lost a lot of power, and the gangs they ran. Gang kids grow up. They go straight or to prison. Not that Chinatown doesn’t still have corruption, self-dealing, and general evil. But now it’s more like everywhere else.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Small-time crime’s still all over the place—illegal gambling, people getting mugged, merchants cheating customers—but the big-ticket stuff has gotten more… abstract. Cerebral. White collar. And more integrated with the rest of the city. Your corruption is now our corruption.”

  “The melting pot, a beautiful thing.”

  I sipped my tea. “Though to give him his due, speaking of integrated corruption, Big Brother Choi popped up on the right side of an issue a few months ago. You know the proposal for the corner of Bayard and Mott? Phoenix Towers? Twenty stories, mixed middle-income and luxury housing, which by the time it’s built I guarantee you will have morphed into all luxury? ‘Unanticipated construction costs, Mr. Mayor. We need this variance to make our investment back, and New York really better think about keeping us developers happy or we’ll take our construction jobs and by the way our campaign contributions elsewhere.’ With community facilities on the ground floor as the lipstick on the pig?”

  Bill grinned. “I do declare, your speech has gotten more colorful since we went down south.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I suggested, though I suspected he was right. “Anyway, the holdout property for Phoenix Towers is the Li Min Jin building. Second one in on Bayard, with the curved roof eaves? They actually imported the tiles for those from China, in the late 1800s. Phoenix Towers can’t proceed without that property. It’s smack in the middle of the parcel the developer’s trying to put together. He’s got commitments on the rest, but each one’s contingent on his getting all the others, or the deals are off. Tim says that’s fairly common in real estate.”

  “You talked to Tim about this project?”

  “He just made partner, so I called to congratulate him. While we were on the phone we talked about Big Brother Choi, like everyone else in Chinatown is doing. Tim’s treasurer of the Chinatown Heritage Society, so he’s been following the Phoenix Towers project pretty closely. I asked what he thought would happen with it now.”

  “Holy cow, you asked Tim a question? You must have really wanted to know.”

  “I had my mansplaining filters set to industrial strength. But yeah, I did want to know. He said it probably depends on who rises to the top of the tong. It was Big Brother Choi who was absolutely refusing to sell. Apparently, though, there’s another faction.”

  “It was Choi’s decision to make? The tong’s building?”

  “Probably not, in a legal sense, but no one went up against him.”

  “And now they might.”

  “If they do, they’d better do it soon. Tim’s very put out at the timing of Choi’s death.”

  “So’s Choi, I bet. What’s Tim’s problem?”

  “Where do you want me to start? But about this, he says there’s some kind of deadline on all the commitments at the end of this month. Owners can pull out, and a couple of them already said they would if the developer hasn’t put the parcel together, because they don’t want their real estate tied up forever in a pipe dream.”

  “Are we thinking then that Choi may have been helped along that lonesome road?”

  “I’m sure a lot of people are, but Mary says no. On the contrary, the pathologist at the autopsy apparently wondered how anyone with arteries like that lived as long as he did. So the developer may get a chance to buy the building after all. Which Tim is taking very personally.”

  “Poor Tim. But listen, I have to ask. Keeping that development from happening is the good guy side? Isn’t the developer Chinese American?”

  I lowered my tea. “This is you playing devil’s advocate, right? That’s obnoxious, you know. Of course it’s the good guy side. Jackson Ting may have Chinese parents, but when did that ever stop anyone from being a greedy SOB? He climbed up on his charm and other people’s money from his dad’s half-dozen middle-class apartment buildings in Queens to much bigger projects in Manhattan. Now he’s out to prove he can play with the big kids. If he has to trash Chinatown to prove it, well, you can’t stop progress.”

  “That’s what’ll happen if Phoenix Towers gets built?”

  “Come on. Twenty stories on the narrowest streets in New York? That whole gentrification thing? Hipsters and new Google hires moving in? Pardon my language, but, white people?” I resettled in my chair and glared at him. “Every time you do that, you raise my blood pressure.”

  “The realities of sociology and politics in Chinatown are not as clear to outsiders as to you. I rely upon you for guidance.”

  I sighed. “Sometimes you’re such an ass.”

  “No argument. So, assuming everything you just said is correct—which obviously there’s no question it is, since it’s you—what was a Chinatown OG doing on the good guy side?”

  I glared a little more, then relaxed. “No one’s sure, actually. The cynics think he was just holding out for a better offer from Ting, squeezing him as the deadline got near. I don’t think that’s it, though. I think Choi was a crook, but he was Chinatown’s crook. And a part of Chinatown was his. He saw Phoenix Towers as a threat to his domain, and he wasn’t going to let it happen.”

  “And that’s why his death is a big deal?”

  “Part of why.”

  “What’s the other part?”

  I was about to explain about the protection rackets, the gambling dens, all the old-time criminal small businesses Big Brother Choi and the Li Min Jin had been running that might seem attractive now for a little strong-arm takeover action, plus, of course, the succession fight in the tong itself. But as I opened my mouth, my phone rang. I checked the screen. “I think we might be going to find out,” I said. “It’s Grandfather Gao.”

  3

  The next morning promptly at eight Bill and I presented ourselves at Grandfather Gao’s door.

  “I’m sorry to bring you out so early.” Grandfather Gao, who wasn’t really my grandfather, admitted us to his herb shop, which to me was much more than an herb shop.

  My father died when I was thirteen. I took it hard, boiling with rage I didn’t know what to do with. My mother started sending me to the old herbalist to pick up this or that, many more remedies and tonics than we’d ever needed before. Although my fury at the world made me resent being my mother’s errand girl, going to the herb shop was an errand I never minded. Before Grandfather Gao started to grind the required herbs with his mortar and pestle, he’d put the kettle on. Once he’d made the medicinal mixture and folded it in white paper tied with red string, we’d sit in the dim, incense-sweet shop and drink tea together as though I, the angry fatherless thirteen-year-old baby of my family, were an honored customer. He’d ask about school; he’d ask about my brothers; he’d ask what I thought of this or that. He himself often spoke in nature metaphors I didn’t understand, but I knew he was wise, and he was interested in what I had to say, and that was enough.

  Grandfather Gao had also been then, and was still, a senior advisor to the San Ge Xiongdi—the Three Brothers—tong.

  “It’s not that early, Grandfather,” I said. For me that was true. Bill had grumbled all through his coffee, something about civilized hours. I’d ignored him.

  “I’m so happy to see you, Chin Ling Wan-Ju,” said Grandfather Gao. “Also you, Mr. Smith.”

  “Always an honor, Mr. Gao.”

  Grandfather Gao, who had seemed old to me when I was thirteen,
was ancient now, but still unstooped and agile. He locked the door behind us—the shop opened at ten, the reason he’d asked us to come early—and led us past the counters with their jars and bowls, the cabinets behind them stacked high with drawers full of flowers and leaves and stems. The aromas of the wares blended with the sweet smoke of the incense on the shelf in front of the figure of Guan Yu, guardian of commerce. In the sitting area, the teapot was already in the center of the low lion-footed table. A woman sat in one of the elaborately carved rosewood chairs.

  “Please,” said Grandfather Gao. “Honor me by joining us.” He spoke in English, I assumed for Bill’s benefit. “Chin Ling Wan-Ju, Mr. Bill Smith, allow me to present Wu Mao-Li.”

  The woman gave a smile and a brief nod of the head. She looked a little older than I, maybe mid-thirties. Even though she was sitting, I could tell she was tall. She had high cheekbones and an elegant oval face. Her glossy black hair was styled in a trendy but short low-maintenance cut. She wore brown slacks, a pale brown sweater, flat ankle boots, and a confident air. Around her neck a jade circle, a bi, hung from a gold chain. I wear one myself, though mine’s smaller. So do all my brothers. It’s a common baby gift among Chinese people. Jade’s said to offer protection. My father started saving up for mine when they realized my mother was pregnant. It took him until my second birthday, so the family story goes, to pay it off.

  Grandfather Gao, with a smile, offered me a pillow to put behind me on the rosewood chair, as he had when I was young and the chair much too big for me. I accepted it; the chair was still big. He poured tea.

  “I trust your family is well?” Grandfather Gao said to me. He knew better than to ask after Bill’s family.

  “Yes, thank you, Grandfather. Everyone’s fine.” I sipped my tea; a scented green, very subtle. “Tien-Hua has just been made a partner in his firm.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. Please send him my congratulations.”

  “I will. Your children and grandchildren are also well?”

  “Yes, they are. Thank you for asking.”