Matson's Case No. 3: Matson Case Files, #3

By Pablo Zaragoza

New York Detectives Matson and Smith, assigned the Chinatown beat, soon find themselves in the midst of mutilations and murders, the nefarious deeds of Ti Chu Cum, leader of a Chinese Mafia-like organization bent on carving out control of NYC Chinatown.

 

With Inspector Han from Hong Kong, whose family had been murdered by the same man, the partners face increasing threats, forcing them to relocate their families out of state. The search for the ever-elusive Ti Chu Cum, the green-eyed black Chinese monster, takes the threesome on a wild roller coaster ride. A gripping story with surprise conclusions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pablo Zaragoza
• Release date: Jan 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393475712

Book preview

NYC Chinatown Under Siege

Pablo Zaragoza

To my loving grandmother

Justa Pastora Gonzalez Zaragoza

who was part-Chinese.

I miss her dearly.

Table of Contents

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY PABLO ZARAGOZA

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

Chief, you have a 2:00 in Chinatown, meeting with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce at Mei Li Wah, Stella piped over the intercom.

Thanks, Stella, but it’s still early. I haven’t digested my breakfast yet.

Chief, there’s nothing else on the schedule for you. Remember you’re to pick up your wife before going to the presentation.

Remind me why I’m going to this shindig in Chinatown.

They’re giving you their Man of the Year Award for your service to the Chinese community and your long dedication to stamping out corruption.

Oh. Who else will be there?

The mayor and several city commissioners.

I mean on the Chinese side, Stella. I know the mayor and the publicity hounds will be there looking for votes.

Peter Chew, the president, and several of members of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce; the press plus invited guests. They’ve closed the Mei Li Wah, the restaurant on Bayard Street, for the event.

Okay.

What’s wrong, Chief? You sound a little put out about going to get an honor. I thought you liked getting awards.

This one just brings up bad memories; that’s all, Stella. Old memories that creep up on me when I wish they would just go away.

Chief, you have a lot of old memories you wished never came up, but those memories make you who you are today: the best damn chief of police this city has ever had.

When you get closer to the end than the beginning, you have a lot of regrets, memories, and unsolved cases. It’s just the way life is, but thanks for the pep talk, Stella.

Remember to call and remind Sissy of the luncheon.

I clicked off the intercom and called Sissy at her office at New York University. She’d climbed up the ladder to chairmanship of the psychology department. Now instead of having long blonde hair that she used to have, she had a full head of silver locks. Her face had lines, because the years don’t pass for nothing; but her figure was the same hourglass as when I first met her. The breast surgery had been performed years ago, and now, past the five-year mark, the cancer had not returned. She had gotten implants which made her look like she did when she first came into my life.

She planned to step down at the university as soon as I gave her my date for retiring here. She was not about to be the only retired person in the family, sitting in front of the television, watching Drew Carey on the Price Is Right, eating Nathan’s hot dogs for lunch, and wasting all that education.

Sissy’s secretary answered the phone, Doctor Matson’s office, how can I help you?

This is the other Doctor Matson. Is my wife there?

I’ll put you through to her.

She transferred the call to Sissy, Yes?

This is the man you slept with last night, reminding you that we have a lunch date.

That’s right. I’d better cancel my afternoon. When will you pick me up?

It will be at about 1:00, and then we’ll drive to Mei Li Wah in Chinatown. Will you be alright?

Why shouldn’t I be? she asked. I was married to you when the war started down there.

That was a long time ago, lot of water under the bridge, lot of water.

I know you, Doctor Matson. Nothing leaves that noodle of yours; you forget nothing. You can tell me the time, date, and what was playing on the radio when Robert fell and broke his arm.

Robert, our son, fell in the backyard from the treehouse I had built for him, May 19, 1966, a Saturday, at 4:43 p.m. when Aunt Beatrice was listening to an oldies station: Nat King Cole singing Red Sails in the Sunset.

Sissy was right. My noodle didn’t get rid of anything; old memories were starting to creep into my conscience. I got up from my chair and went to the south wall of my office where I kept a collection of weapons I had collected over the years. In the middle of them was a cleaver. A small card next to it said: Murder scene. 1964. Chinatown. Unsolved. I knew who did it, but I couldn’t prove anything. I went back to my desk, and the veil of an old memory lifted.

CHAPTER ONE

It was 1964, the year when Kitty Genovese was murdered in Kew Gardens, a neighborhood in Queens, by Winston Moseley. Six days after he committed that murder, he was captured while robbing a house. That night at 2:00 a.m., he left the warmth of his bed in Ozone Park, Queens, and went hunting. He found Kitty alone in a parking lot and stabbed her on the street; thirty-eight people watched as she screamed while he plunged his knife into her again and again. As he later said, it felt so good to watch the life drain out of her. He became aroused; his penis became hard as if a beautiful woman’s tits were right in front of his face. He looked down at Kitty’s crumpled body for a moment. He wanted to jerk off but refrained from doing it in front of all those people.

He ran to his car and raced home. With his dick in his hand, he woke his wife and had sex with her. She would comment at her interview that it was the best sex she had ever had since they married. He confessed to two other murders and a string of robberies.

That March, I had just been assigned to Homicide as a new detective. Smith had been asked to interview the suspect, and I tagged along with him.

When Smith typed up his report, he pulled out a smoke, the Camel unfiltered kind which eventually would give him emphysema and early retirement. He lit up.

Well, partner, I guess you and I are joined at the hip.

It looks that way. I couldn’t have a better wing man than you, I responded.

We had worked as military police in Germany, Korea, and Japan before we got out of the armed services. He was discharged a whole four months before I got out. Austerbach had kept me around, wanting me to join an agency. He was going to be a part of the OSS which would become the CIA.

So, what’s the routine?

Well, we drew Chinatown this month, so we’re going to be idle. The Chinese keep to themselves and distrust outsiders, so we go down there once a week and roam around. That makes them feel like the city cares about them. We don’t go into their Chinese poker and mahjong parlors; even the vice boys don’t go in there. The tongs keep a lid on things down there, and we just step back unless it gets messy.

Tongs?

I’d known about the Yakuza or, as they liked calling themselves, the ninkyō dantai, the chivalrous organizations; they were everything but chivalrous: murder, extortion protection, prostitution, and drugs. Their influence was mostly in Japan, but I had seen reports that their fingers stretched out to America. I wanted to know about this Chinese equivalent.

They started out as a group to help Chinese immigrants with their problems, like finding housing, jobs, making sure that the outside world didn’t discriminate against them, Smith said. The actual term means gathering hall, and many of them were just that, a place where the Chinese could gather to play mahjong. Some of these tongs became associated with the triads, Chinese secret criminal organizations that are on the move since the communists have cracked down on them, and the British in Hong Kong don’t want them there, either.

Suǒyǐ wǒ xiǎng wǒ xūyào shuāyá wǒ de zhōngguó rén. (So, I guess I need to brush up on my Chinese.)

Now stop that horseshit that you can speak a bunch of languages and I can’t.

Just messing with you, Smith. If I can’t mess with you, who can I mess with?

That afternoon, I went to the chief medical examiner’s office for my orientation. Milton Helpern was still in office at the time; I knew him from the Nazi-related murder cases.

I walked into the autopsy room to the stench of feces, formaldehyde, and alcohol, and to its cold silence. Milton was at the end of the room, working on a body. He kept working on the cadaver as I approached him.

He finally looked up at me and said, Don’t just stand there. Suit up and put on a pair of gloves. I’m not going to lecture you on the importance of forensic science and the information gathered here to solve crimes.

Well, good afternoon to you, too, Milton.

Yes, yes, come on. I want to finish before 6:00. I have two other customers waiting in the wings.

I suited up. When I returned, he had already opened the chest cavity and was about to remove the heart. Without looking up from the open cavity, he asked. "What method of examination are you using?

Rokitansky method for which visceral examinations are done in-situ. Other methods of examination include Virchow, Gohn, and Letulle, but for forensic purposes, Rokitansky is the method of choice, I replied confidently.

Oh, you do like to show off, don’t you?

He examined the heart, dissecting away the fat around the coronary arteries. He had removed the fat from the anterior descending artery when he looked up and said, Touch here. What do you feel?

Hard as a rock.

What do you think we’ll find?

Atherosclerosis with possible occlusion.

He cut fat from the place that was hard, and, in small intervals, he sliced through the artery toward the place in the anterior descending coronary artery that was rock hard. As he approached it, the lumen of the artery became smaller and smaller until it became a pinpoint surrounded by yellow caking which was also hard. In the center of the pinpoint, a red clot had formed.

Now what do you think happened?

The clot cut off the blood supply to the heart muscle and resulted in infarction. Death of the heart muscle should have occurred.

If we section the muscle, what should we find? Helpern asked.

You may find nothing because it was too early for changes to be present visibly or yellow indicating an area of muscle death.

He serially sectioned the heart muscle. He exposed the muscle walls of the ventricles and the interventricular septum. There in the muscle was an irregular patch of yellow.

Mechanism of death, if you please? he asked me without looking up.

Myocardial hypoxia, secondary to acute occlusion of the anterior descending coronary artery.

Manner of death?

Natural.

Cause?

So far, acute myocardial infarction, secondary to atherosclerosis with 95 percent occlusion of the anterior descending coronary artery because we haven’t finished the examination.

What a waste of talent. I could get you into medical school tomorrow, and you’d be a better student than most of the idiots I have to deal with in pathology at NYU.

I like what I do, and there’s no way around it, Doc, I said.

Anyway, get the hell out of here. I need to finish this and go home.

See you soon.

Yes, I’m sure you’ll be down here giving me a hard time very soon, Detective Matson.

I had to stop at Forensics as part of my orientation, even though that was my first assignment in the department. Most of the boys were still there as I walked into the lab late that afternoon.

I went into the O’Neal’s office. He was on the phone, but he looked up at me and smiled. Laddie, what in God’s green earth are you doing here?

They said I needed to get an orientation in autopsy procedures and the workings of the Forensics lab.

Bunch of pencil-pushing idiots who don’t know a damn thing, just to check off boxes on a form.

I know, my friend, I know.

Place hasn’t changed much since you left. Still got a spot for you if you want to come back.

You never know.

How is Sissy?

You mean Doctor Matson? She’s fine. Started working at the state hospital as one of their clinical psychologists.

"How about you?

"I turned in my dissertation: Profiling: Its Uses in Modern Police Work. My mentor is reading it now. We’ll see what happens."

It will be fine, Laddie. It will be just fine. Now go home to your wife. I’m sure she wants to know how you fared on your first day as a detective. I’ll be checking off the boxes, so the pencil pushers will be satisfied.

I left the lab and headed home. We hadn’t moved out of the building where I used to be the super. Not many places wanted a mixed-race couple and their mulatto baby living next door. Here it wasn’t thought of twice, although some black folks felt uncomfortable seeing us, but me and Sissy stood strong. We had each other and Aunt Beatrice in the building to help us. We were still in the basement. The only thing new was the crib Robert slept in at the foot of our bed.

All of the old women in the building now cared for my son; they helped raise him and babysit when Sissy and I were on call, but mostly it was Aunt Beatrice, a small, thin, black woman who wore her hair in a bun. She had to have been in her sixties when my son came into our life.

My mother had left me on Beatrice’s doorstep, saying she’d be back but never returned. Later, I found out that her drug-dealing boyfriend had murdered her in a methamphetamine psychotic rage, but that was later. The only real mother I have ever known was Beatrice. I didn’t know if she was my real aunt or not. It really didn’t matter.

Robert had his mother’s eyes and a light coffee complexion from me. He was tall for his age. He didn’t push children around in his class, and he had my ability to see something once and keep it locked away in his mind.

I picked him up at Aunt Emma’s apartment where he stayed after school. Emma had helped Sissy get into college, and now when Aunt Beatrice couldn’t take care of him, she helped.

He ran to greet me, and I lifted him up in the air. He giggled and opened his small, muscular arms, tightly placing them around my neck. Papa, you home, you home.

I had not experienced this as a child, never knew my father. I was going to make sure my children knew me. Aunt Beatrice had always been there for me. She was getting on in years; her back was a little crooked, and her face a little wrinkled, but her smile and love was always there for me.

You’re hungry, detective, Emma said with such pride in her voice.

No, Mama. I’ll wait and have dinner with for Sissy.

She’s going to be late, something about multiple intakes that have to be accessed before they’re sent to the wards.

I understand. I will still wait for her, Mama.

Robert had his supper, but he needs someone to help him with his homework.

I knew he really didn’t need my help, but it was a way for me to be close with him. The nights were still too cold, and evening came too early for us to toss the football back and forth.

Sissy came in around 8:00 with snow on her coat and hat. Her nose was red as she came up to kiss me; I felt the cold on my cheek.Honey, how was your day, I asked.

A bear of a day. People coming into the hospital left and right. Seven or eight coming off alcohol or dopers needing to be admitted for a step-down procedure. Two schizophrenics, a dozen major depressions, and ten attempted suicides. I’ll be glad when I find out if I’ve been accepted in the postdoctoral program at Columbia.

It is never easy, honey. If it isn’t at Columbia, it will be somewhere else.

No, it has to be Columbia because we have to keep this family together. How about your first day as a detective, baby?

I had to do the rounds, but since I already knew those departments well, it was more of a formality. I sat in on the interrogation of Winston Moseley, the man who murdered Kitty Genovese in Queens.

What was he like?

He claimed he liked killing women because it was easy, and he alleged to have killed two more. He felt no remorse in killing Kitty, no motive, except she was available alone in the parking lot.

Clearly a psychopath. Have your had dinner, honey?

Aunt Beatrice made dinner for me and two boys, and then I helped our son with his homework.

Did he ask about me?

You know he did, and I told him his mother was helping the sick. Beatrice made a plate for you. It’s in the refrigerator.

She placed the rice, red beans, and beef stew from her plate into a frying pan and heated it up on the gas stove. I don’t know what we’d do without Beatrice. I told Sissy that Smith and I had drawn Chinatown and that it should be a quiet time.

Why is that, baby?

The Chinese have their own methods of dealing with troublemakers and don’t involve the police unless the problem spills out of Chinatown.

We had bought a little black and white television set and watched an episode of Gunsmoke, falling to sleep in each other’s arms. I woke up to the sign-off signal and carried Sissy to bed. I placed her on her side. When I kissed her cheek, she smiled.

CHAPTER TWO

When I got to the office, Smith told me to keep my coat on. We were going to make NYPD’s presence in Chinatown. We rode the train to Canal Street and walked into the thick of an Asian ocean of people. Most people hear chatter which all sounds this same; but for me, I hear distinct dialects: Gan Hui, Jim, and others.

Should I identify myself to the shop owners? I asked Smith.

They know who you are. Besides, some of them remember you from the last two times you were here.

The last major cases that had taken us to Chinatown involved the Chinese apothecary in the case of Peter Ivachnova, and the other time for that murderous Nazi woman, Irma Grese. There is something about this place that draws the underbelly of society. Maybe it’s because the Chinese are so