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?’
As Danny opened his mouth to speak, a movement on the TV screen distracted him. Fuzzy CCTV footage: a jail cell, a cop standing at one side, a woman sitting on a bunk at the other. Then the woman threw herself at the cop, knocked him to the ground, clawing and punching the big man.
‘You talk him out of it,’ Danny said, turning his attention back to Pork Belly. ‘Tell him Johnny Woo was too soft for the life, he’d have been more trouble than he was worth, that I did you a fav—’
Two words from the television stopped him. Missing children, the newsreader said. He looked back to the screen.
‘I’ll try,’ Pork Belly said. ‘I don’t know if he’ll accept it, but I’ll try, just because I love you like a brother. But you pull that shit again …’
The news ticker along the bottom of the screen read: ‘Woman left New York days ago with her children, but local sheriff found no children in the car when it was stopped for a minor traffic offense.’
The same image again: the woman throwing herself at the cop.
Cut to the anchor, a serious expression on her face. ‘State police and FBI agents are traveling to the small town of Silver Water, Arizona, to question the as-yet-unnamed woman about the whereabouts of her two children. More on this story as it unfolds.’
Pork Belly said something, but Danny didn’t hear. His gaze remained on the television, even though the anchor had moved on to some other story. A woman traveling alone with her children, then she’s picked up by a cop, and the children are gone.
Chills ran across Danny’s skin. His heart raced, his lungs working hard.
No, he thought, shaking his head. You’ve been wrong before. Probably wrong this time too.
Pork Belly’s hand gripped his arm. ‘What’s up, man?’
Danny’s head snapped around to him, staring, as his mind tumbled.
‘Shit, man, you’re creeping me out.’
Danny climbed down from the stool. ‘I gotta go. We good?’
Pork Belly shrugged. ‘Yeah, we good.’
‘Thank you, dailo,’ Danny said, putting a hand on Pork Belly’s shoulder, squeezing. Then he walked out of the bar, onto the street, without looking back. His phone in his hand before his feet hit the sidewalk, his thumb picking out the search letters, looking for more on this woman in Arizona and her missing children.
As the screen filled with a list of results, he wondered if the woman had a husband. A husband whose world was being blown apart right now, just as Danny’s had been five years ago.
9
SEAN SAT ON the floor, his back to the wall, knees up to his chin. A blanket wrapped tight around his shoulders. Louise lay on the mattress in the center of the room, her eyelids rising and falling in a sleepy rhythm, a candy wrapper still in her hand. The deputy had left them a bag of candy bars, a few bags of potato chips, along with a case of water bottles. She said she’d be back later with some sandwiches. Sean didn’t think she was coming back at all.
Cold in the basement, the air damp in his lungs. A smell of mold and moss and rotten leaves. Both the floor and the walls were lined with wooden boards, the packed earth visible between the slats. Sean wondered how it didn’t all cave in on them, bury him and his sister alive.