Red Jade Read Online Free PDF Page A

distance.
    “That’s how bitches are,” Billy complained. “They fuck around when they think they can get over.”
    Billy, the bitter divorcé, was protective of his heart, but was a weekly regular at Angelina Chao’s pussy palace, where only matters of his cock were involved.
    “Why?” Billy asked. “Somebody kill somebody with their sorry-ass singing?”
    “Nah.” Jack laughed. “I just need some background for the paperwork.”
    Billy lit up a cigarette. “This kid, Jing Zhang, moonlights down there, after slopping beans here.”
    “I might need to speak to him,” said Jack.
    “Too early. He’s probably splitting some young Fukienese flower right about now.” He checked his beat-up Swatch watch. “Come back after ten.”
    “Thanks,” Jack offered as they pounded fists.
    “Later.”
    Jack left the Tofu King, swinging his little red plastic bag of Chinese desserts, and went toward Division Street, a freezing winter wind tunnel. He lowered his head to the steady, relentless wind, until he passed beneath the Manhattan Bridge onto Allen, leading out past the Chrystie Street park where the local needleheads once ruled, sharing shots and hatching up their junkie schemes of the day.
    The Loisaida side streets blended into NoHo, until he came to a big yellow banner over a storefront that used to be a bodega. The yellow banner proclaimed ASIAN AMERICAN JUSTICE ADVOCACY , or AJA, pronounced Asia.
    AJA had begun as a grassroots activist organization staffed by young lawyers and law students fighting for positive change, paying back the community with pro bono time. The gritty feeling of the neighborhood made him wonder if Alexandra had visited the pistol range he’d suggested. He’d helped her to get a pistol permit when she’d been spooked by phone threats the AJA had received for aiding runaways smuggled in by the snakeheads. Alex had purchased a .22-caliber revolver, a Smith & Wesson Ladysmith.
    Pausing at the door, Jack viewed the storefront operation that was a jumble of used office furniture and donated equipment. It was too easy to see inside, and because of AJA’s proximity to the avenues of Alphabet City, there were groups of homeless men loitering nearby who appeared sinister and threatening.
    There was no one at the reception desk. He saw Alex through the small pane of glass in the wood door. She was in her late twenties but could still pass for an undergrad. She was sitting and watching some news footage on the little color TV by her desk.
    Alex saw Jack enter, nodded, and resumed watching the TV. He knew it was a tape when she rewound the images back across the screen before turning off the set. Jack remembered that the same crime scenes and follow-up footage had been shown by the media extensively during the week.
    Four days earlier there’d been a shooting in Queens: an officer had responded to a call and encountered a teenager playing with a pellet gun. In the ensuing struggle, the teenager was shot in the back of the head and died.
    The Chinese teenager was an honor student and the officer was a second-year rookie. The case had taken an abrupt turn when the report from the Medical Examiner’s office concluded that the path of the fatal police bullet didn’t support the NYPD claim that it was an accidental shooting.
    Internal Affairs was all over the scenario now, as was the Queens DA’s office.
    The media was having a field day with it.
    “The funeral’s today,” Alex said quietly, “but one of the uncles is screaming ‘wrongful death.’”
    Jack knew that to mean a lawsuit was imminent but remained quiet because he’d seen the controversy coming. Wrongful police actions made him feel awkward, but he knew it was inevitable; on a force of thirty thousand men and women, there was bound to be some unfortunate incidents. It wasn’t the first time Alex had taken the Chinese side against the NYPD, and although she didn’t direct any of her contempt for bad cops toward Jack personally, he