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  Bill and I took seats on padded folding chairs. I saw Mary Kee and Chris Chiang, both in black trousers, polished black crepe-soled shoes, and leather jackets, standing against the rear wall with a Black man who was also dressed as they were. I had to smile at the sight of them. Undercover cops can disappear inside their disguises, but plainclothes cops can be spotted a mile away. The comings and goings at the funeral of a major gangster of any ethnic group are irresistible to the NYPD. I wondered who the Black man was.

  The chairs were starting to fill when a stir in the crowd made me turn to the door. Grandfather Gao, erect and elegant in a beautifully tailored black suit and open overcoat, had just come in, accompanied by two other senior members of the Three Brothers tong. Some of the faces of the men in the crowd hardened; these must have been Li Min Jin members. But this was their leader’s funeral. They disliked the Three Brothers representatives out of loyalty and custom, but the insult if they hadn’t come would have been much worse.

  I looked around to see if I could spot soldiers from the other tongs. A chubby older man with his hands folded over his belly looked familiar. So did a bald fellow whose sharp, darting glances were emphasized by his wire-rimmed glasses. A tall man, a little younger than those two, making him not yet sixty, was seated near the front. He didn’t look familiar, but the aura of barely concealed threat emanating from him was the same as theirs. One or two more also caught my eye. I wondered if I was being observant, or just paranoid.

  Grandfather Gao and his companions greeted the Wu sisters, bowed to Big Brother Choi, lit and placed their incense, burned their hell notes, and sat.

  The receiving line continued. I looked around again, this time to see who of the Chinatown who’s-who was here.

  “Uh-oh,” Bill muttered to me. “The jig is up.”

  I turned to see the Wu sisters’ hands being pressed by a dignified middle-aged woman in a dark business suit and a pillbox hat. Beside her was my brother Tim.

  “How did you know?” I said. “That’s exactly how I always feel when I see him where I don’t expect him. Like he caught me up to something. Probably because he was always tattling on me when we were kids.”

  “Probably because you were always up to something. So what’s he doing here?”

  At that moment Tim, reaching for incense from the undertaker, caught my eye. I smiled. He frowned. What else was new? He and his companion walked to the urns.

  “The woman he’s with,” I said to Bill. “Adele Fong. From an old Chinatown family. Executive director of the Chinatown Heritage Society. Tim’s the treasurer. I guess resisting development makes strange bedfellows.”

  “Tim and Adele Fong?”

  “Tim, Adele Fong, and Big Brother Choi.”

  Luckily all the chairs near us were taken. Adele Fong and Tim found seats a few rows ahead and across the aisle. Tim gave me another frown, I gave him another smile, and he turned and faced forward.

  While the Buddhist monks were beginning to line up around the coffin to start the ceremony, the door opened again. Jackson Ting slipped in and took a seat in the back.

  Faces hardened at Ting’s entrance, too, more than just those of the Li Min Jin men. He and his Phoenix Towers project weren’t popular around here. Ting calmly crossed his legs, set his handsome face in an attitude of respectful reverence, and sat waiting for the ceremony to begin. He seemed completely relaxed; in fact he radiated the kind of unperturbed composure that read as confidence but not arrogance. It was a smart move, I thought, to show up here. Paying respects at the funeral of an elder, a powerful community leader, crook or not, adversary or not, showed an appreciation of protocol and correctness that might soften some hearts.

  The next hour was filled with chanting and gongs, prayers and eulogies, bowing and incense. Finally everyone stood. The coffin was closed. Eight hard-faced men hefted it onto their shoulders, slow-walked it from the chapel, and slid it into the waiting hearse. As the funeral band tuned up, the mourners filed out to the sidewalk. Mary, Chris, and the Black cop slipped out first, to stand across the street by the park. Chris used a small camera to snap photos of the action, sometimes directed by the Black guy.

  People once again lined up to press the hands of the Wu sisters and receive from one or the other of them a small red envelope containing coins. The generosity of a red-envelope gift from the family would cancel out any ill luck accruing to the mourners from proximity to the dead. Bill and I went up also, shook hands, murmured condolences, and accepted our red envelopes. We moved down the sidewalk and watched people pay their respects. Among them were my brother Tim and Adele Fong. Adele spoke to Nat while Tim took Mel’s hand in both of his and spoke earnestly, which was his only mode besides sarcastically.

  “Check out your brother,” Bill said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear he was hitting on Mel Wu.”

  “Say what?” I watched the two speak. “No, he’s probably just trying to figure out if the same law book wrote their dialogue.”

  Tim finally dropped Mel’s hand, turned, and then, speaking of ill luck, came striding toward us, pocketing his red envelope. He closed in and demanded, “What are you doing here?” Without waiting for my answer, he rounded on Bill. “Are these gangsters clients of yours?”

  “Big Brother Choi was an important member of the Chinatown community,” I said before the absurdity of that question got Bill into a whole “who me?” thing with Tim. “I’m running a community-based business. I thought it was only right to pay my respects.”

  “ ‘Community-based business.’ You’re ambulance chasing, you mean. Really, Lyd, it’s not a good look for you to be trolling for clients among the bottom-feeders.”

  I said, “Nice metaphor, bro. Also, you’re here. Is hanging with the bottom-feeders a good look for new partners at Harriman McGill?”

  He huffed. He actually huffed. “I’m here representing the Chinatown Heritage Society. The partners at Harriman recognize and applaud my community involvement. They appreciate the value of maintaining historic communities and the architectural resources that sustain them.”

  Not for the first time, I wondered how my practical mother and my easygoing father had produced this stiff.

  “I’m here,” he said importantly, “because the Society, and in fact all of Chinatown, owe a debt to Choi Meng.”

  I lifted one eyebrow. Bill thinks it’s funny when I do that. “Big Brother Choi was a CHS donor?”

  “No. Not money. But whatever his reason, our goals aligned when he refused to sell the Li Min Jin building to Jackson Ting.”

  Our goals aligned. Honestly. “He’s here, by the way.”

  “Ting? He is?” Tim looked around, spotted Jackson Ting farther up the sidewalk talking to some businessmen, and might have muttered “ass-kisser,” or maybe my own thought just spoke itself. He faced me again, turning his back as though Ting would notice. Or care. “Adele wanted to attend to pay the Society’s respects and asked me to come with her. I was busy, but of course I agreed. I didn’t want her to have to come alone.”

  “You’re a fine fellow, Tim Chin. Hello, Mrs. Fong. Good to see you.”

  “Good morning, Lydia.” Adele Fong had finished her sidewalk conversation with the Wu sisters and located her funeral date. She smiled. “And you must be Mr. Smith, Lydia’s business partner. Tim’s told me about you.”

  “Only the good things, I hope,” Bill replied, though he and I both knew the chances of that were small. “I’m pleased to meet you. I understand your Society does a lot of good work in the community.”

  “Oh, it’s hardly my Society,” Adele Fong said graciously. “We’re fortunate to have a hard-working board”—she nodded at Tim—“and many enthusiastic volunteers. Excuse me, but Tim, I need to get back. If you’re planning to go along to the cemetery I can—”

  “No, no, I have to get to the office. I’ll drop you on the way. Lydia, Bill.” Tim nodded and took Adele Fong’s elbow, and they turned and walked away.

  I grinned as I watc
hed them. “I think you get points for saying nice things to someone Tim obviously likes to impress.”

  “Enough to move the needle on his opinion of me?” Bill asked.

  “Don’t get greedy.”

  “I suppose,” Bill said, “that this wouldn’t have been the appropriate time for Mel to drop the bombshell to Tim and Mrs. Fong that the Society might find itself owning the Li Min Jin building.”

  “No, it wouldn’t have, and besides that, if she’d told him, you can be sure he’d have told me he had a big secret that he couldn’t tell me.”

  Bill lit a cigarette. Some of the mourners began to enter the waiting cars. The rest remained on the sidewalk, talking and smoking. I saw Jackson Ting go up to Mel Wu, take her hand, offer his condolences. Crossing paths again. Natalie and her family, meanwhile, ignored Ting and climbed into the limo behind the hearse. Ting glanced at them, then walked away. Mel joined them in the car.

  She’d arranged a Wah Wing Sang car for me and Bill. Behind the five funeral home cars, a line of private cars waited around the corner. Engines revved, the funeral band struck up, and the procession took off.

  We wound slowly through the streets of Chinatown, the band walking ahead, its loud music scaring away any evil spirits that skulked at the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Though if some of the stories about Big Brother Choi’s younger days were true, there weren’t a lot of evil spirits that would have the nerve to threaten his ghost or his mourners. People on the sidewalks stopped and watched the procession inch past. Pedestrians jaywalking—a Chinatown sport—scurried out of the way.

  Once Big Brother Choi had been reminded of what the neighborhood looked like, so that he’d be able to find it when he returned on those days of the year when the dead visit the living, the funeral procession headed over the Manhattan Bridge, but not before one final pass by the Li Min Jin building.

  “Look,” said Bill as we turned onto Bayard. I followed his pointing finger.

  Jackson Ting stood on the corner where Phoenix Towers would go, hands in pockets, watching the procession roll by.

  6

  The drive to the Cypress Hills Cemetery on the border of Brooklyn and Queens took half an hour at funeral procession pace. As we rolled along the BQE Bill looked over at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m okay. I guess I haven’t been in a funeral procession since my father died. It’s kind of weird.”

  “Is he in one of the cemeteries out this way?”

  “No, in New Jersey. We all go out there on Qing Ming and sweep his grave.”

  Bill took my hand and squeezed it but didn’t say anything else. We sat like that for the rest of the ride.

  A stout middle-aged White woman in sensible shoes waited at the main building just inside the Cypress Hills gates. The procession stopped for her to climb into the hearse to guide the driver to Choi Meng’s final resting place.

  “It’s huge,” I said to Bill as we wound through the wooded grounds. Midday sun lit up the colors of the autumn leaves. “This cemetery.”

  “One of New York’s oldest. Jackie Robinson’s here. And Mae West.”

  “No kidding? Well, so are all of Chinatown’s premier tong soldiers.”

  “Really?”

  “I looked it up. See where we’re going, up on the hill? All Chinese headstones. Not all tong-related, of course, but each of the tongs has a section.”

  “And all the stones face the same way, a few degrees off the grid. Feng shui?”

  “You better believe it. No one wants to spend eternity looking in the wrong direction.”

  The hearse wound up a steep hill and stopped. The line of cars behind it halted too. Bill and I got out and made our way with everyone else to an open gravesite near the hilltop.

  “Your people really pack ’em in,” Bill said, looking around.

  “We don’t need as much space to spread out as you do. A lot of times we unbury the body after a few years, clean the bones, and rebury them in an urn. That’s what we did for my dad. We can fit more of us into a plot that way. You can spend eternity with your family.”

  “To each his own. Though Big Brother Choi seems to have a little extra space.”

  “He was the boss.”

  “But not the first boss. This tong’s been around for a century or so, no? Where are the other bosses?”

  “The boss before Choi Meng—that’s probably him, there, also at the top. But it used to be if you died abroad your relatives would ship you back to China, if they could afford it,” I told him. “To the ancestral village. That pretty much ended after the revolution, but before that everyone with money did it. The other bosses must have gone home.”

  We reached Choi Meng’s gravesite. Mr. Chang, Ironman, Scrooge, and the sharp-faced woman were there already, having traveled in the funeral home car behind the Wu family. As the cars parked and emptied, an impressive crowd of formidable men gathered, some with their wives, a few with their adolescent or grown sons. No daughters. Grandfather Gao, I saw, hadn’t come, and the men I’d fingered as from other tongs had stayed away, too. Apparently the funeral rites were one thing, the burial rites another.

  Choi Meng’s spot was certainly primo, high up with a spectacular view over the cemetery’s rolling hills and the rooftops of Brooklyn. I was surprised to find a double gravestone of gray granite, carved with Chinese characters. Having just died, Choi Meng had a traditional wooden plaque stuck into the ground at the head of his grave; the carving on his half of the stone would be done later. But on the other half of the stone I read that this was the final resting place of Ni Mei-Mei, beloved wife of Choi Meng. Her dates were 1954 to 1990. A small enamel plaque with her photo was mounted on the stone.

  “I didn’t know he’d ever been married,” I said to Bill. “Look how young she was.”

  “She’s been gone a long time.”

  “And he stayed single.”

  The head pallbearer opened the back of the hearse. “Turn around,” I said. “It’s bad luck to view the body while it’s being put in the ground.”

  With everyone else, we waited with our backs to the grave until the undertaker announced that Choi Meng was at rest. We turned again. The Buddhist priest chanted some prayers; the Wu sisters, along with Natalie’s husband, Paul, and their son, Matthew, threw handfuls of dirt into the grave; there was another prayer; and it was done.

  Mourners stepped up to the grave to tell Choi Meng silently whatever they wanted him to know on his final journey. The crowd thinned as people got into their cars, some to head back to Chinatown for the reception, some to go home. Once everyone but those in the funeral home cars had gone, Mel Wu walked to the limo she’d come in and retrieved a bouquet of white carnations. I thought she’d put them by her uncle’s grave, but she went on past it, to a set of graves around the other side of the hill. Mr. Chang, as though he’d expected this, walked with her. So did the woman soldier, Ironman, and Scrooge. I glanced at Bill, and we went also.

  Near the top of the hill on that side stood another double headstone. Staying back a discreet distance, I read the names and dates. “Long Lo,” I told Bill. “And his wife. He was head of the Ma Tou.”

  “The Horsehead tong, that the Li Min Jin absorbed?”

  “This must be their section.”

  Mel Wu set her flowers in a bronze vase fastened to the headstone. She and the others bowed three times. They stood quietly side by side. A breeze stirred the leaves.

  “Thank you,” Chang said in English. “For remembering.”

  “We always brought flowers here when we came with Uncle Meng to visit Aunt Mei-Mei’s grave. I wouldn’t have felt right being here and not doing this. They must have been great friends.”

  “They were important to each other.”

  Mel smiled at me and Bill as she turned to walk back to the limo. Chang gave us the once-over, but his expression didn’t change. The woman soldier openly assessed us. Scrooge and Ironman both pointedly ignored us. We
reached the cars, where Natalie and her family waited, baby Emily asleep on her father’s shoulder. I gave a final glance at Choi Meng’s grave as we got in the cars and headed back to Chinatown.

  7

  When my phone rang Wednesday morning Bill and I were ready, sitting in the cool, yellow-leafed sunshine in Columbus Park. Bill was drinking coffee, I was drinking milk tea, and we were both watching the men play xiangqi and the women play gin. Why the games in Chinatown parks break along gender lines is a question no one has ever been able to answer to my satisfaction, but it’s undeniably true. My personal theory is that the women are way more cutthroat than the men, and card games move faster than board games.

  The call was the one we’d been waiting for, from Mel Wu. “I just left the lawyer’s office. I should be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “We’ll be waiting.”

  We gave it another ten minutes, sorted our recycling, and went to stand on the corner by the park. Mel appeared not two minutes after we got there, stepping out of a town car. She wore a dark green pantsuit that looked like cashmere to me, an ivory silk shirt, and green-and-white wingtips. “A woman who doesn’t wear heels,” I said as I greeted her. “Warms my heart.”

  “I was a gymnast in high school. Ruined my feet for anything but flats.”

  We walked along Bayard and stopped at the door of the Li Min Jin building. Mel knocked politely on it, although she’d told us the leather portfolio in her shoulder bag held copies of the will and the deed and a set of keys to the apartment, all provided to her by Big Brother Choi’s attorney.

  The door was opened by a broad, beefy guy. Behind him, the woman who had stood at the foot of Big Brother Choi’s coffin eyed us, then told him in Cantonese everything was fine. Beefy stepped back. The woman, today dressed in a gray pantsuit and white shirt, gave Mel a chilly nod. Mel returned one exactly the same. I got the sense she was fine-tuning her friendliness level to what she received, and I wondered if that was a lawyer thing. Tim didn’t do it; he was just pompous to everyone.