Here and Gone(17)

‘It’s Lee-gor! He’s brought Johnny home.’

Mr Woo came to the door, nodded respectfully at Danny, gave his son a withering look. The boy said nothing as he slipped past his father into the hall where his mother waited. Mrs Woo tried to embrace him, but he shrugged her off and disappeared into the house.

‘Thank you, Lee-gor,’ she said, nodding, her eyes wet. ‘Thank you so much.’

She elbowed Mr Woo’s flank, and he took his wallet from his pants. Two hundred-dollar bills. He took Danny’s wrist with his left hand, nodded again, pressed the money into the palm with his right. Danny’s pride might have told him to hand the two hundred dollars back, but his rational mind remembered the rent was due. He slipped the money into his pocket and gave a nod of thanks.

‘Keep an eye on him,’ he said. ‘He’s probably too embarrassed to go back to that apartment, but you never know. Don’t go too hard on him. Don’t give him a reason to leave again.’

‘We won’t,’ Mrs Woo said. She turned to her husband, gave him a hard stare. ‘Will we?’

Mr Woo looked at the ground.

‘We don’t want trouble,’ Mr Woo said. ‘The Tong, will they …?’

He couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Danny said.

Less than an hour later, he found Pork Belly sitting on a corner stool at the Golden Sun bar, an upstairs drinking hole in a back alley off of Stockton Street. The kind of alley the tourists hurried past, not looking too closely at the men who lingered there.

Pork Belly’s stomach sagged between his thighs, his shirt gaping between the buttons, showing the white undershirt beneath. A sheen of perspiration permanently glossed his forehead, and he kept a handkerchief on him at all times, should his brow be in need of mopping. Rumor was that Pork Belly’s grandmother, impressed by his appetite and girth, had given him the nickname as a child – Kow Yook, in her tongue – and it had stuck. He nursed a dark rum and sipped at a beer as he watched a college basketball game on the TV over the bar. Danny knew the rum was for show, that Pork Belly would make that glass last all night long, contenting himself with a mild beer buzz.

Used to be different. There was a time Freddie ‘Pork Belly’ Chang would have swallowed a whole bottle of rum and barely felt a thing. Not anymore. Not since three years ago when he had hit a young homeless man with his car, down among the warehouses and waste ground at the tip of Hunter’s Point. He had sat in the car for a half hour, the drunk still heavy on him, before he called Danny. And Danny had helped him deal with it, even though it had sickened him to his very core. Because Pork Belly was a brother of the Tong, and you don’t say no to a brother.

The only condition Danny had attached to his assistance was that Pork Belly kick the booze. And he had done so, more or less, with Danny’s help. Since that time, as far as he knew, Pork Belly had stayed close to sober, so Danny could live with what he’d helped his old friend hide away. And from time to time, he could call on the big man for a favor.

Like now.

‘Hey, Danny Doe Jai,’ Pork Belly said as Danny approached along the nearly empty bar. ‘What’ll you have?’

‘Coffee, decaf,’ Danny said. He hadn’t touched alcohol in years either, not even beer, and it was too late in the evening for caffeine. Sleep was difficult enough without it. He took the stool next to Pork Belly’s, nodded his thanks to the barman who set a cup in front of him, and poured from a glass pot.

‘How you been?’ Pork Belly asked.

‘Okay. You?’

‘Meh.’ Pork Belly wavered his hand and shrugged. ‘My knees are no good. They hurt like a motherfucker, sometimes. Goddamn arthritis, the doctor tells me. Says I gotta lose weight, take the pressure off my joints.’

‘Be good for your heart too,’ Danny said.

‘Listen to him, Doctor Danny.’

‘Swimming.’

Pork Belly turned his head toward him. ‘What?’

‘Swimming’s good for arthritis. You get a good workout, but it’s easy on your joints.’

Pork Belly’s gut jiggled. ‘Get the fuck out of here. Swimming? You see me at the lido in Speedos and one of them little rubber skullcaps?’

‘Why not? Get you an inflatable ring, maybe some armbands.’

‘Yeah, I go in the water, some motherfucker come at me with a goddamn harpoon gun.’

Danny smiled around a mouthful of stale coffee, then swallowed. The TV switched to the ten o’clock news, the pomp of music over the titles.

‘I guess you know why I’m here,’ Danny said.

Pork Belly nodded. ‘Yeah, I got a call. Been expecting you.’

‘The Woos are good people,’ Danny said. ‘Mrs Woo knew my mother years ago. Johnny, her boy, he’s no gangbanger. He’s a good kid. Used to be, anyway. He was doing all right at school. He would’ve graduated next year; he still might, if he can make up his grades. Maybe have a shot at college.’

The mirth left Pork Belly’s face, the eyes deadened. ‘You should have come to me first.’

‘And what would you have done?’

‘Maybe nothing,’ Pork Belly said. ‘Maybe something. But that was my choice to make. Not yours. You bypass me, you make me look like a bitch in front of all my boys. I ain’t called the Dragon Head yet. When I do, he’s gonna tell me to smash your kneecaps, maybe take a couple of fingers. What do I say to him?’