Death Avenue

An excerpt from

BEFORE

Before DNA testing or GPS tracking. Before social networks or social distancing. Before mobile phones or personal computers. Before television networks or broadcast radio. Before the FBI or the FDIC. Before the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Tower.

Telephones are anchored by wires. Movies cannot talk. Baseball is the soul of America, but railroads are the engine. Gambling is illegal, but betting is commonplace. Liquor is considered evil, but saloons are everywhere. Jim Crow laws have driven blacks out of the South and into the Northeast. The Chinese Exclusion Act has turned Chinese Americans into second-class Americans. A ham sandwich will cost you two nickels. A porterhouse steak is two dollars.

It is Wednesday, October 1, 1919. There’s a dead man in the middle of Tenth Avenue. It’s 2:00 a.m.

PART 1

THE STIFF

The body is cold, male, and Chinese. His eyes are completely black from a brain hemorrhage, and his mouth is half-open.

The dead man wears a longpao—what Americans call a mandarin robe. The crest of the New York Oriental Club is stitched onto the left side of his chest. The long tail of the jacket is in shreds. It clearly got caught in the gears of the train, dragged him under, then left him dead on the downtown tracks of Tenth Avenue.

Eddie stands over the body. He takes a deep breath and catches the sweet scent of baking Oreos from the Nabisco building one block downtown. The last shift ended at 10:00 p.m., but the scent remains. Eddie takes the stiff under the armpits and half carries, half drags him to the curb, then lets the body settle.

A drunk with a puffy red face stumbles by. “Grave robber. You can’t—”

Eddie snaps his head around and glares at the drunk.

In the lamplight, the three scars on Eddie’s left cheek are plainly visible.

The drunk is startled. He shuts his mouth and shuffles into the darkness.

The engine of a Brockway truck rattles from the shadows. The truck had been built for the Great War, but the war ended before the truck was shipped to Europe, so the company now leases them out. “Milch Kosher Dairy Delivery” is painted in white on the green side panels. The truck brakes in front of Eddie and the stiff. Eddie takes a bundle of burlap out of the passenger seat. He rolls the stiff in the burlap, then lifts the bundle into the back of the truck.

Eddie climbs in alongside it. The stiff is starting to smell now. Eddie slaps the side panel twice. The brakes grunt. The engine rattles. The truck pulls away.

Chinatown is a kind of tourist park for whites, but a kind of purgatory for the Chinese. Being born Chinese in America is to have citizenship but without the respect of a citizen. It marks you as a perpetual foreigner. The Chinese Exclusion Act keeps American-born Chinese from voting, demands all Chinese register with the government, and restricts the number of Chinese coming into America.

The act is especially difficult for Chinese women. Chinese national may come in to America as laborers, but most Chinese women don’t fit the act’s definition of “laborer,” so few Chinese women can enter America. For each Chinese woman in America, there are more than a hundred Chinese men. And if a Chinese man marries a woman who isn’t Chinese, then that woman loses her rights as a citizen.

And if a Chinese man has a child with a non-Chinese woman, then that child is a nobody. A mixed child is a mongrel child, a disgrace. The American equivalent of a Roman age infamia.

Most Chinese manage to run legit businesses and lead decent lives. But when being Chinese is practically illegal, it’s not a surprise that some of the business in Chinatown is also illegal. Opium dens next to grocery stores. Gambling in the basement with a restaurant on the second floor. The logic is pretty simple: if you can get deported for running a laundry and get deported for selling opium? Well, there’s more money in opium.

The whites who visit Chinatown are also mostly men. Men looking for a gambling joint. Men looking for an opium fix. Men looking for an exotic meal. Eddie notices a white man with a homburg hat and a pencil mustache. He’s a businessman through and through. On either side of the man are two other men, who are little smaller than an army tank. Eddie and the man look each other in the eye. They pass each other and keep walking.

It’s easy to get confused by the geography of Chinatown if you don’t live there. But Eddie walks the streets with confidence. He makes the turn to Pell Street and then the right to Doyers Street. The Bright Light Lutheran Mission for Girls occupies 8 Doyers Street. It is a school and safe haven for Chinatown’s rarest treasure—American born Chinese girls. Across the street is 13 Doyers Street, a wide three-story structure with big windows and clean white curtains that might remind you of a Paris bistro. Painted on the front door in Chinese and English: “The Tea Garden.”

Eddie opens and passes through the front door. White-and-black tile covers the floor. The tin ceiling is painted white. It’s a leftover from when this was a German beer garden. Wood tables and chairs are laid out on the floor with a wood counter at the back. The men in the lace drop their voices at the sight of Eddie.

Some are cautious. Some believe he is an outsider. Others vaguely recognize him. Chinese men dressed in coolie outfits with their hair braided in long queues are mixed with men in American clothes. A group of young men wear dark suits with gold hatbands and matching gold ties. Another group wear similar suits but red hatbands with red ties.

One of the older men in the place leaves almost immediately. Lezu, a prim Chinese woman, sits at the register. Her husband is behind the counter and goes by the name Andrew.

Eddie pulls off his coat and moves to the counter and says, “Hello, Andrew.”

A cold sweat washes over Andrew. His eyes dart between Eddie and his wife. His mouth goes dry. He

nervously says, “Who, um…who…who are you?”

Eddie, “You know my name.”

Pulp magazine stories always seem to feature tough guys, sharp women, and fistfights. There’s a kind of Chinese opera that has the same sort of stories. It’s called jianghu.

Jianghu stories usually end up in some rough spot where vengeance and passion end in violence and blood‐shed. Two tough guys—or tough broads—end up at some secluded teahouse in China. They let the violence simmer, drink tea, then fight.

The Tea Garden had the feel of a jianghu place. The feel that at any moment a lifetime of anger, jealousy, and vengeance could erupt in violence. Andrew says to Eddie, “You should go.”

Eddie pulls out the envelope that had been in the dead man’s notebook. “I’m trying to find out who this belongs to.”

Lezu says, “You have to go.”

Eddie says, “The letter is addressed here, but you collect mail for a lot of people.”

Andrew pleads, “Go now, before it gets bad.”

Eddie continues, “I found this letter on the body of a dead man. I just want to know who it belonged to.”

The front door opens.

Eddie doesn’t look back.

Andrew and Lezu see the man, and the blood drains from Andrew’s face.

Clock steps through the front door and lets it swing shut. Clock’s face is a chiseled and handsome V. His shoes click on the tile floor as he crosses the room. The other men begin whispering to each other in Chinese. Clock is wearing a navy suit and hat with a gold satin tie and a matching hatband. The outfit marks him as a member of the Pell Street Prosperity House. He approaches the counter and then stands to Eddie’s left.

Clock looks to Andrew. “Gunpowder tea.”

Eddie says, “I’ll have the same.”

Andrew looks at Clock as if to ask for permission.

Clock nods.

Andrew moves to get the tea.

Lezu leaves the register and goes out through the front door.

Andrew sets tea down in front of both men and steps back. He doesn’t want to hear anything the men say to each other.

Clock says, “What happened to your face?”

Eddie says, “I cut myself shaving.”

Clock, “Still a wise guy.”

Eddie, “Better than being a dumbass.”

Clock, “Heard you went to fight the lofan’s war.”

Eddie says sarcastically, “No, I just went for the view.”

Clock returns the sarcasm, “Did it make a man out of you? Or did you just clean up everyone else’s shit?”

Eddie, “And you stayed in Chinatown. Neighborhood prince…of course, you have no place else to go.”

Clock snorts. “Well, you can go. So go.”

Eddie, “I have questions.”

Clock, “No answers here.”

Eddie, “I’m looking for the name of the man this envelope was sent to.”

Clock, “Walk, now, or you won’t be able to walk later.”

Eddie takes a long sip of his tea, then sets the cup on the saucer. “Well…we’ve had our tea.”

Eddie and Clock step back from the counter. Tables and chairs are cleared. Men form a loose circle. Eddie and Clock remove their hats and jackets, then move to the center. The two men instinctively rise to the balls of their feet. They sidestep in a circle, feeling the floor beneath them. There’s a slippery spot near the counter. Both men take note in their minds.

They square up. Clock is taller, leaner. Eddie is thicker with broad shoulders. They step closer. Inches from each other. They cross wrists. The smell of sweat and violence rises in their nostrils.

Clock grabs Eddie’s lead arm and snaps his right fist at Eddie’s jaw.

Eddie turns his head and twists out of the grip and skips away.

They square off again and cross wrists.

Eddie slaps Clock’s blocking arm up and snaps his right into Clock’s ribs.

But Clock twists, and Eddie’s punch hits mostly air.

The two men dance away.

Eddie loads up his rear leg, ready to pounce.

The door opens.

Everything stops.

Lezu has returned. She holds the door open, and an old Chinese man enters. He lays a gentle hand on Clock’s

shoulder. The old man then gently caresses the scarred cheek of Eddie’s face.

The old man smiles and quietly says, “My boys.”