blurring dull buzz-saw sound as it descended toward land.
He drove down the sloping streets south to the Forties, to Sunset Park, the newest Chinatown and his new neighborhood. He had moved out here a year ago, only the second place he could call his own, the first being the Chinatown railroad flat he had shared with Wing Lee that teenage summer before his friend was murdered.
Once a Scandinavian community called Finntown, Sunset Park had become largely Latino, but in the 1990s, the Chinese garment industry had followed low rents out of Manhattan, settled into old warehouses and factories here, blazing the way for the thirty thousand Malaysians and Fukienese who came afterward. Their food shops ran along the main streets, bringing to South Brooklyn the aroma of the Asian hot pot.
Jack took a studio apartment in a renovated red-brick condominium building. It had a view of the harbor and the Bush Terminal docks and, ten minutes across the river, it felt like another world, light-years from the Chinatown he'd grown up in.
He liked the sight of the ships, the freighters that glided across the water, nestled into their docks by the tugs bumping alongside. The way the sunsets played over the harbor was like new medicine, soothing, long overdue.
Now, however, there was nothing but darkness spreading across the overcast horizon.
He poured a Johnny Black into a tumbler and chased it with beer, felt an easy peacefulness settling over him as he scanned the studio.
Even now, a year after he'd moved in, he still kept things to a minimum, mostly portable, transient, disposable items, his life in flux. The spirit of his father, the sojourner, was still in his blood. He leaned back in the recliner, taking a visual inventory of the room.
There was the convertible sofa bed, a Trinitron TV on a plastic Parsons table, and a halogen floor lamp. At the end of the table was a compact digital clock/radio/stereo CD/tape player, and on the windowsill sat a miniature orange tree.
Across from the kitchenette stood a black folding table bearing stacks of Newsweek, Guns amp; Ammo, and a disconnected beeper he'd bought so Pa could call him, but he never had. There were a few books: Wing Chun, the deadly art of thrusting fingers, and Choy Li Fut Kung Fu. Beneath all that was a bar stool; a pair of dusty Rollerblades rested against the baseboard.
He had a Mr. Coffee, a wok, a twenty-five-pound sack of rice in a Tupperware barrel.
The only thing on the walls was a poster he'd gotten from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Japanese one with the wave crashing.
In the bank, he had the eight thousand dollars he'd saved. He had no outstanding payments or mortgage debt, his financial life was balanced on a cop's salary. His was a workingman's life, so much like Pa's, a slave to his paycheck, never knowing the luxurious lifestyle of the people he was duty bound to serve and protect.
His thoughts flashed wide and scattered, his mind adrift, anchorless. He ate takeout from Eighth Avenue, reloaded the black knapsack, felt he needed to finish something so he finished the Johnny Walker and fell out, puzzling over the old family photographs with the radio on.
The Easy Score
The Yee Bot was a Fuk Ching gambling-spot setup in a tenement storefront, one of many in a long row of walk-up tenements fading to the far end of the street. Lucky knew this end of East Broadway, knew it was the Chinese frontier, where they had pushed into areas traditionally Jewish, now mixed with spics and niggers and squashed up against the East River into the Projects.
He knew the tenements connected along their backyards, like a spine running between them, some of the passageways blocked up or gated. He had broken into some of these apartments when he was younger, terrorized the neighborhood until one day he entered a place he thought was Chinese but was actually Puerto Rican and almost got shot dead. He stayed clear of that end of East Broadway until he hooked up with the Ghosts,
He drove down the sloping streets south to the Forties, to Sunset Park, the newest Chinatown and his new neighborhood. He had moved out here a year ago, only the second place he could call his own, the first being the Chinatown railroad flat he had shared with Wing Lee that teenage summer before his friend was murdered.
Once a Scandinavian community called Finntown, Sunset Park had become largely Latino, but in the 1990s, the Chinese garment industry had followed low rents out of Manhattan, settled into old warehouses and factories here, blazing the way for the thirty thousand Malaysians and Fukienese who came afterward. Their food shops ran along the main streets, bringing to South Brooklyn the aroma of the Asian hot pot.
Jack took a studio apartment in a renovated red-brick condominium building. It had a view of the harbor and the Bush Terminal docks and, ten minutes across the river, it felt like another world, light-years from the Chinatown he'd grown up in.
He liked the sight of the ships, the freighters that glided across the water, nestled into their docks by the tugs bumping alongside. The way the sunsets played over the harbor was like new medicine, soothing, long overdue.
Now, however, there was nothing but darkness spreading across the overcast horizon.
He poured a Johnny Black into a tumbler and chased it with beer, felt an easy peacefulness settling over him as he scanned the studio.
Even now, a year after he'd moved in, he still kept things to a minimum, mostly portable, transient, disposable items, his life in flux. The spirit of his father, the sojourner, was still in his blood. He leaned back in the recliner, taking a visual inventory of the room.
There was the convertible sofa bed, a Trinitron TV on a plastic Parsons table, and a halogen floor lamp. At the end of the table was a compact digital clock/radio/stereo CD/tape player, and on the windowsill sat a miniature orange tree.
Across from the kitchenette stood a black folding table bearing stacks of Newsweek, Guns amp; Ammo, and a disconnected beeper he'd bought so Pa could call him, but he never had. There were a few books: Wing Chun, the deadly art of thrusting fingers, and Choy Li Fut Kung Fu. Beneath all that was a bar stool; a pair of dusty Rollerblades rested against the baseboard.
He had a Mr. Coffee, a wok, a twenty-five-pound sack of rice in a Tupperware barrel.
The only thing on the walls was a poster he'd gotten from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Japanese one with the wave crashing.
In the bank, he had the eight thousand dollars he'd saved. He had no outstanding payments or mortgage debt, his financial life was balanced on a cop's salary. His was a workingman's life, so much like Pa's, a slave to his paycheck, never knowing the luxurious lifestyle of the people he was duty bound to serve and protect.
His thoughts flashed wide and scattered, his mind adrift, anchorless. He ate takeout from Eighth Avenue, reloaded the black knapsack, felt he needed to finish something so he finished the Johnny Walker and fell out, puzzling over the old family photographs with the radio on.
The Easy Score
The Yee Bot was a Fuk Ching gambling-spot setup in a tenement storefront, one of many in a long row of walk-up tenements fading to the far end of the street. Lucky knew this end of East Broadway, knew it was the Chinese frontier, where they had pushed into areas traditionally Jewish, now mixed with spics and niggers and squashed up against the East River into the Projects.
He knew the tenements connected along their backyards, like a spine running between them, some of the passageways blocked up or gated. He had broken into some of these apartments when he was younger, terrorized the neighborhood until one day he entered a place he thought was Chinese but was actually Puerto Rican and almost got shot dead. He stayed clear of that end of East Broadway until he hooked up with the Ghosts,
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