High Stakes Read online

  George’s driver let me off. I transferred to my rental car. Given the uncertainty of what thug from what gang might be on my tail next, I was at least grateful that my beloved Corvette was sheltered in its Winthrop garage.

  I had barely started the car when my phone buzzed. I knew Bev Sheer would come through. Mr. D. was on the line, as requested, with Billy Coyne, who started with, “What do you need, kid? Make it short. I’m not your personal research staff, ya know.”

  “A hell of a lot of truth in that. On the other hand, Billy-Boy, I’m not yours either. When have you ever given me an ounce of information without getting a pound’s worth back? Am I right?”

  Actually, Mrs. Knight never raised a son dippy enough to say those words to the Deputy District Attorney—particularly when I needed to tap that source of highly privileged information. My actual words were, “I would never presume you were, Mr. Coyne. But something sizable is brewing here. If you’ll help me with one piece of it, I’ll put you ahead of the whole thing when I have it together.”

  “So what do you want, kid?”

  “The murder of Mr. Liu in Public Garden last night. You mentioned a tip on a suspect.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the status? Do you have an indictment?”

  There was a pause. “Lex, we’re on thin ice here. If that kid ever …”

  “Billy, for the love of God. Do I have to say this every time? Michael’s rock solid. You’ll come out ahead. Damn it! Speak!”

  He said it just above a whisper. “No. No indictment.”

  “Of Mickey Chan?”

  “Yeah, not yet.”

  “Are you going for one?”

  “Not if it were up to me. But Angela Lamb is the D.A. She calls the shots, God help us.”

  “Does that mean yes?”

  Another pause, then a quieter voice. “What do you think? This could get her some choice headlines. Mr. Liu was a major player in the Chinese community. I’m on my way to the grand jury room soon. Like I told you. We have an eyewitness. Of sorts.”

  Mr. D. cut in. “Give us the name, Billy. It’ll go no further.”

  “It damn well better not. This is for you, Lex. Ming Tan. She and her husband run a grocery store on Beach Street in Chinatown.”

  “Mr. Coyne, what do you mean, ‘of sorts’?”

  “That’s for you to find out, kid. Now you tell me. Do you represent this Mickey Chan?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  He laughed, cynically. “Lex, your boy’s giving that lawyer crap right back to me. You’re training him well. Is that all, kid? Or shall I just send all of our private files over by carrier pigeon?”

  “Thank you, Mr. Coyne. No need. But to show you fair’s fair, I’ll give you back two pieces of information. First, I’d bet my Red Sox tickets on the third base line that you’ll be indicting an innocent man.”

  “Spoken like a true defense counsel. What else?”

  “I met with the man I told you about, George, one of the big shots in the Romanian organization.”

  “Romanian mafia.”

  “As you say. Something’s brewing here that’s so big it could make the rest of this a sideshow. You have my word. When I have something solid, I’ll give it to you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HARRY AND I needed a secure base for operations in Chinatown. I was still holding a violin for which the tong had already paid a cool million dollars. My failure to deliver it, and soon, would not sit well with that organization. They would likely consider the infliction of substantial pain, followed by an untidy murder—both mine—a mere business transaction.

  What we needed specifically was a meeting place in Chinatown far under the eyes of the tong. Not an easy matter. The tong is like a giant spider’s web that blankets every shop, street, and alley of Chinatown. Its insatiable fingers reach deeply into the cash box of every restaurant, laundry, medicine shop, poultry shop—every business within its turf. Its constant threat of lethal violence at the hands of its youth gang squeezes total submission from every captive in its clutch.

  Evading the eyes of the spider would be a challenge. We needed an ally. Fortunately, we had one in Mr. Wan Leong. Our history with Mr. Leong went back some five years. It sprang from the fact that Mr. Leong was what had been known among Chinese immigrants in years past as a “paper son.”

  There had been a massive California immigration of Chinese laborers to work on the railroad until it was completed at Promontory Point on May 10, 1869. When the Civil War ended, the American economy took a dive. White workers visualized the diminishing spate of jobs going to the minimally paid Chinese laborers. The resulting intense hostility to the Chinese led to passage of the federal Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882. The acts banned immigration of any Chinese capable of taking jobs sought by white workers—virtually all Chinese immigrants. The ban lasted from 1882 through its repeal in 1943, when the bombing of Pearl Harbor shifted white hostility from the Chinese to the Japanese.

  The result of the ban was that the mass of male Chinese American citizens had no way of bringing wives to this country. That produced a particular scam called the “slot racket.” It became a highly profitable operation for the tongs in this country.

  The law permitted a Chinese American citizen to return to China and then reenter the United States. After the destruction of birth records in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, practically every Chinese male resident could falsely claim American citizenship by birth. If any of these Chinese males returning to the United States from a visit to China claimed that during his stay in China, he had married and sired children, those children were each given a “slot” for immigration into the United States as citizens. The slot was available until the child chose to use it years later.

  The racket run by the Chinese tongs was to send Chinese males claiming to be American citizens back to China for a time. On return, they would falsely claim to the Immigration and Naturalization Service—INS—that they had married and sired a specific number of children in China. They would be given a “slot” for immigration for each child. The tong would then sell these “slots” to residents of China desiring entry as citizens into the United States, which was known in China as Gim Sun—the Golden Mountain. The going price for a slot was $2,000 to $3,000 each.

  Since no birth certificates were being issued in China at that time, there was no way to prove that the person claiming the slot was not the child of the Chinese American citizen. Those people who entered the United States under the false claim of being the child of a Chinese American citizen were called “paper sons.”

  One disadvantage was that if the INS discovered that an immigrant was a “paper son,” deportation was automatic and swift. Since the tong knew which immigrants were “paper sons,” they held the threat of deportation over those inhabitants of Chinatown for the rest of their lives.

  Harry’s friend Mr. Leong was now in his eighties. He had come to this country in 1940 at the age of six as a “paper son.” He had supported his family on the income of a small live poultry shop on Tyler Street. Over the years, the tong had bled away most of the profits of his labors with the threat of disclosure to the INS. His business flourished, but Mr. Leong had raised his family in poverty.

  He and his wife had a daughter who in turn had a son, Adam. From the time of his birth, Adam was the center of Mr. Leong’s every thought, wish, and hope for the future. Adam became the focus of his entire existence.

  Adam was equally devoted to Mr. Leong. His success in his studies was motivated by his intense desire to please his grandfather. To his misfortune, Adam was also highly successful in his study of martial arts. He attracted the attention of the tong. When he was fourteen, the tong sank its talons into Adam. The tong demanded that Adam join and serve it as a member of its youth gang under the threat of reporting his grandfather to the INS for deportation. Mr. Leong would have willingly suffered deportation to free Adam from the spider’s grasp, but Adam could not live with his grandf
ather’s sacrifice.

  Mr. Leong had known Harry since Harry’s childhood in Chinatown. He had seen Harry drawn into the youth gang and successfully rebel against it for his own freedom.

  On one of Harry’s visits as a customer to the poultry shop, Mr. Leong had taken him into his back room. At the serious risk of misplacing his trust, he disclosed to Harry what the tong was holding over him and his grandson. He pleaded for help for the salvation of Adam.

  Harry called me. We took the problem behind closed doors to Mr. Devlin. Mr. D. came on board immediately. Mr. D.’s first thought was to take the issue of Mr. Leong’s actually acquiring citizenship to his law school classmate whose specialty was citizenship and naturalization. One phone call from Mr. D. got the ball rolling in that direction with the thought of removing the heel of the tong from Mr. Leong’s neck on that account.

  Harry and I agreed that that was half a solution. The other half would be in Harry’s and my bailiwick. It would also require immense courage on the part of this old man who had submitted to demeaning abuse by the tong for his entire adult life.

  Harry explained to Mr. Leong what we were suggesting. No one needed to explain to him the dangers at the hands of the tong. He sat quietly, looking down at his hands while Harry spoke in his native language. His expression never changed, but tears began to run down both cheeks. When Harry finished, I was afraid that we were asking too much of this gentle man.

  He sat quietly, silently, for a minute. When he looked up, he turned from one of us to the other. The expression on his face never changed, but there was something in his eyes that surprised me, shocked me. The tears were now flowing freely, but there seemed to be a turning back of his age. The beaten-down look of resignation had transformed into—what can I say—an almost youthful look of resolution.

  His words were in English for my benefit. “I will do it. Forgive an old man’s tears … You’ve given me hope. I have never known hope. I can’t thank you …”

  His head dropped into a low bow. Harry was the first, but I ignored my fear of offending his aged dignity in being a close second to take him into a three-person hug. I could feel in that embrace something that I can only call joyous emancipation.

  Now if we could just pull it off.

  * * *

  Within three days, the agent of the tong was at the poultry shop with his hand out for the weekly gouging of lomo—lucky money—paid to the tong to avoid a beating or worse. This time, there was no envelope ready. Harry and I were listening behind the curtain to the back room.

  Shock at the rebellion of the old man was instant in the volume and ferocity of the agent’s response. It was in Chinese, but I hardly needed Harry’s interpretation to gather the threats were of violence. Harry restrained my instinct to burst in to protect Mr. Leong from injury.

  Harry whispered, “Not yet. This gangster won’t do it himself. He’ll send one of the youth gang to rough him up.”

  As the volume and rage of the threats rose higher, the more they seemed to bounce off the impervious stand of the old man. The stronger the language, the more steel seemed to pour into his resolve. The only word I heard him utter was what Harry told me meant simply “No.”

  It ended with one last threat and a storming out of the shop. I asked Harry if this meant violence.

  He said, “Not yet. He said there would be a visitor, one of the tong big shots, to deal with him tomorrow. The rest of the words you don’t have to hear.”

  The next morning, Harry and I were back behind the curtain with Mr. Leong. We had gone over the plan for the third time, when the shop door was slammed open. I looked through a slit in the curtain. A pockmarked, obese Chinese man of around fifty strode in. He banged his fist on the counter.

  I asked Mr. Leong in a whisper if he was sure he was up to it. The tension must have shown in every corner of my face, but to my amazement, there was not a trace of it in his.

  He just nodded and walked calmly through the curtain. A blast of Chinese words erupted from the fat man like the flow of lava from Changbai Mountain. It had me clenching my teeth, but as I watched through the slit in the curtain, Mr. Leong’s expression never changed.

  Once the initial verbal onslaught expended itself with none of the expected effect, the visitor resorted to a more rational delivery. I figured that this was where the rubber met the road. This was where I needed Harry’s whispered simultaneous translation.

  “Old man, you’ve lost what little sense you had. You need to be reminded. Do you know who I am?”

  Mr. Leong kept his composure. “I know you. Everyone in Chinatown knows you. You are Mr. Tow. Mr. Tow An-Yan. Everyone in Chinatown fears your name.”

  “Yes, old man. And are you foolish enough not to fear my name?”

  I thought I detected the slightest trace of a smile in Mr. Leong’s voice, probably the first since childhood. “I am an old man, Mr. Tow. Older than my years because of the pain of your heel on my throat for much of my life. Perhaps I have become forgetful. What can you do to me more than a lifetime of suffering?”

  My eyes were glued through the slit in the curtain. The fat man had pushed his sweating face within a foot of Mr. Leong’s nose. “Then I shall remind you one last time, old man. You are a ‘paper son.’ You are an illegal alien. I make one phone call to the immigration. You will be taken out of your home. You will be shipped back to a China that never knew you. That hates you for leaving. You will die in a foreign land. You never see your grandson again. Ever!”

  “How can you do this?”

  “You watch. I snap my fingers, and you’re gone. I’ll take your shop. Your wife will have nothing.”

  I was forcing mental telepathy to get Mr. Leong to press it one more step. I held my breath when he spoke the words.

  “But what power do you have to do this to me?”

  “I have had power over you since we brought you into this country as an illegal immigrant. You know that well. You’ve paid us for it all these years. And you will go on paying.”

  Mr. Leong just dropped his head as if in resignation. “But please, my grandson …”

  “Your grandson belongs to us now. I’ll show you how much. If you refuse to pay, it will be your grandson I’ll send with orders to extract it in pain.”

  Mr. Leong looked up. I read a look of shock on his sad face. This was perhaps beyond what even he thought the tong could do to him.

  I looked at Harry. He was on fire. I could read it in his eyes. Not one moment more.

  Harry reached out and tore the curtain off the door. The rod clanged to the ground. The noise spun the fat man around in time to see Harry striding across the floor. The fat man froze. Harry grabbed his shirt in both fists. He walked him backwards across the floor and drove him against the wall hard enough to make his head bounce. The fat man just stared at Harry with his mouth open and his eyes flashing something between fire and fear.

  The fat man started to scream something in Chinese. Harry cut off the flow with another slam against the wall.

  Harry spoke in English with a deliberate calm that only accented the violence of his grasp.

  “Mr. Tow, is it? Mr. An-Yan Tow. Do I have your attention?”

  The fat man just stared into Harry’s eyes in silence. “You’re allowed one more word, and that word is ‘yes.’ Now again, do I have your attention?”

  Another bounce of his head against the wall produced a meek “Yes.”

  “Good. Then you will listen carefully. My friend here is a lawyer. He will now favor you with some legal advice.”

  I walked to a point where Mr. Tow could look at me while still being held against the wall.

  “Mr. Tow. I wish we had had this meeting many years ago, but we must live in the present. Isn’t that right?”

  The fat man was now staring at me with his mouth open. I tapped Harry on the shoulder. He made a move as if to give Mr. Tow one more slamming. Mr. Tow closed his mouth and nodded his agreement with my last statement.

  “Good. We
agree on that. Let’s move on.”

  I took a small electronic machine out of my pocket, one without which I never leave home. I hit a couple of buttons and the machine played back a recording of part of the conversation Mr. Tow had just had with Mr. Leong. I turned it off. I walked to within a foot or two of the fat man’s perspiration-soaked face.

  “Mr. Tow, as a former prosecutor, let me tell you what we have here. In one neat package we have you identifying yourself and confessing to more felonies than I could count on both hands. We could begin with blackmail and move on through extortion, conspiracy, theft, any number of others. Those alone would insure that you will never see the outside of a prison cell for the rest of your life. Am I going too fast here?”

  The fire in his eyes was now distilled into fear.

  “Am I, Mr. Tow? Are you taking this in?”

  I tapped Harry on the shoulder. Tow recognized the signal, and reacted with a shaky “Yes.”

  “Good. Then let’s get to the best part. You also admitted to conspiracy to violate the immigration laws of this country. No need to worry about any statute of limitations, because you are still a party to that conspiracy every day, every time you extort money from Mr. Leong. The wheels of criminal justice might move at a slow pace, but I’ll give you my word as a lawyer. If the Immigration people hear this recording, your feet will hardly touch the ground in being expelled from this country you have so dishonored. It will be a race between expelling and imprisoning your pathetic carcass.”

  I saw panic in his eyes. I pressed on.

  “And so, Mr. Tow, let me lay down a few rules for your future conduct. If you, or anyone remotely connected with that scum-pit of an organization—in which you say you are a big shot—touch, approach, speak to, threaten, intimidate, or harm in any conceivable way Mr. Leong or any member of his extended family, copies of this recording will fly to the district attorney, the United States attorney, and hear this particularly, the Immigration Service. Are we totally clear on every bit of that?”