CHAPTER 36


"We are going to a gong sifong," Mei Ling said.

It was early evening. We were in Hawk's Jaguar, in Boston, parked on Harrison Ave down back of the Tufts Medical Center, mid Chinatown, outside of a large red brick city housing project.

"Chinese lady has a rent-controlled apartment, and she has turned it into a place for bachelors. It is, of course, illegal," Mei Ling said.

"I'm shocked," I said.

"My cousin lives here with nine other men. Everyone else here is a waiter, they have gone to work. I have promised him you will not tell anyone."

"Promise," I said.

"Any good takeout around here, Mei Ling?" Vinnie said.

"I don't know," she said.

"I have never come here to eat."

"Place on the corner looks all right," Vinnie said.

"Chicken with cashews?"

Hawk nodded. He looked at Mei Ling. She smiled.

"We be here, Missy," he said.

Mei Ling nodded and got out with me. Vinnie got out too, and we headed toward the Bo Shin restaurant on the corner of Kneeland. We went into the apartment building. The gong sifong was on the third floor. There was no elevator.

"Many Chinese men who come here cannot afford to bring their wives," Mei Ling said, as we walked up the stairs, "especially the illegal ones."

"Your cousin illegal?"

"Yes, sir. They come here, live as cheaply as they can, pay off the smugglers, send money home, and save up to open a business and bring their family."

The building had all the usual public housing charm. No expense had been spared on cinder block and linoleum and wire mesh over the ceiling fixtures. We knocked on a blank door with no number, and a slight Chinese man in a white shirt and black pants opened the door and smiled at us and bowed. Mei Ling spoke to him in Chinese.

"My cousin's name is Liang," Mei Ling said to me.

Liang bowed again and put his hand out.

"How do you do?" he said.

I shook his hand. He backed away from the door and gestured us in. For a minute I was disoriented. The entry door led almost at once to a blank plywood wall. A hallway ran right and left, parallel to the outside corridor, punctuated with plywood doors, padlocked shut. The only light came from the bare bulb in a wall sconce at the far end. Liang led us along the plywood hallway to the last door and into his room. It was so narrow I could have touched both walls with my fingertips. It was maybe seven feet long and was filled almost entirely with a pair of bunk beds, one above the other. There were two suitcases under the bed, and several shirts and pants on hangers flat against the wall. Light came from one of those portable construction lights with spring clamps attached to the head frame of the bunks. I had seen better-looking graves.

"How much you pay for this?" I said.

Liang looked at Mei Ling. She translated. He answered. "Liang pays one hundred dollars a month," she said.

"So does the other man." She nodded at the top bunk.

"And there's four other cubicles like this?" I said.

Mei Ling translated. Liang nodded.

"Rent-controlled, the place costs the landlord maybe two, two fifty a month," I said more to myself than to Mei Ling. There were no surprises here for Mei Ling.

"Gives her seven fifty, eight hundred a month profit."

Liang spoke to Mei Ling.

"He wants to show us the rest," Mei Ling said and we followed him along the hall to the kitchen. There was an ancient gas refrigerator in there, and a gas stove, and a darkly stained porcelain sink.

The faucet dripped into the sink. The refrigerator didn't work. The stove did, but there was no evidence that anyone used it. Past the kitchen was a toilet with no seat, and a shower stall with no curtain.

"He got a job?" I said to Mei Ling.

"Yes. He sells fruits and vegetables," she said.

"From a stand. He could afford to live better, but he doesn't choose to. He chooses to save his money."

She spoke to Liang. He answered with a lot of animation.

"He earned $31,000 last year, and saved $25,000. He pays no taxes. He has already paid off the smuggling fee. Next year he says he will bring his wife from China."

"Ask him how he got here," I said.

Mei Ling talked. Liang looked at me covertly as she spoke. He answered her. She shook her head. Spoke again. Liang nodded and spoke for several minutes.

"Liang is from Fujian Province," Mei Ling said.

"He saw the local official, who arranges such things. He sent Liang to Hong Kong, and then to Bangkok. From Bangkok, Liang flew to Nicaragua. He went in a truck to Vera Cruz, Mexico, and went on a boat to the United States."

"Where'd he land?" I said.

"Liang was brought ashore in a small boat at night in Port City.

He stayed there for a week and then came to Boston. The trip took him three months."

We were standing in the dismal kitchen, with the steady drip of the leaky faucet the only sound other than our voices. Several cockroaches scuttled across the one countertop and disappeared behind the stove. I looked at Liang. He smiled politely.

"Three months," I said.

"Some it takes much longer," Mei Ling said.

"They have to stop each place and work. Some have to smuggle narcotics, or go back and smuggle others in to pay for their passage. If there are women, they often have to be prostitutes to pay."

"Does he know the name of the man in Port City in charge of the smuggling?"

She spoke to Liang. Liang shook his head.

"He says he doesn't," Mei Ling said.

"You believe him?"

"I don't know," Mei Ling said.

"But I know he will not tell you."

"Lonnie Wu?" I said.

Liang looked blank.

"Of course it is," I said.

"We all know it. But even if Liang would tell me it was, he wouldn't say so in court."

"Yes, sir," Mei Ling said.

"That is true."

I looked around me.

"This was originally a studio apartment," I said.

"Now ten men live here."

"Yes, sir."

I shook my head. I wanted to say something about how this wasn't the way it should be. But I knew too much and had lived too long to start talking now about "should."

"Send me your huddled masses," I said.

"Yearning to breathe free."

Загрузка...