The C.J. Henderson MEGAPACK ®. C.J. Henderson

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СКАЧАТЬ pin wheels. Nothing, though, in the first nine days of that Chinatown New Year’s could have prepared anyone for the tenth. Tiny, bright colored bombs went off constantly in every street and alley. Rattling strings of explosions peppered the din—two, three hundred at a shot. The air hung dark with burning gunpowder, new plumes rising from every corner to further choke those in the frozen streets. Explosives dropped out of windows and off of roofs; missiles flew upward, lit the sky, and then dropped back to earth.

      The perfect time for a mob of punks to stalk the neighborhood and empty machine guns at each other and the rest of society if ever I saw one.

      Lo and I opened the store at the regular time, not wanting to encourage the gang to perhaps torch the whole building just to get at us. Most every other place around was closed for the holiday, which sent Lo’s business through the roof. While we worked, the old man told me the story behind the ten day tradition.

      When the farmers in China celebrated the coming of a new year, since they couldn’t really do any work in at that time of year anyway, they just got in the habit of partying longer and longer. The traditional length is actually fifteen days, which was easy to pull off two thousand years ago; just shut the country down for two weeks and let everyone get shitfaced. Not possible in our enlightened age, of course. Thank heaven for the legion of bloodless, leeching old ladies who run this nation. Without them to protect us from ourselves, God only knows what kind of fun we might have.

      Anyway, normally the biggest night of the festival is New Year’s Eve, just as it is for us. This year, though, the mayor’s office planned events throughout the city to show how in touch he is with the minorities. Unfortunately, the boob’s people got everything backwards, not realizing the ten days of Chinese New Year’s worked like the twelve days of Christmas, with the biggest day of the holiday first. And, of course, they got all of their media coverage lined up before anyone could straighten them out. So, doing the only thing the fearless leader of a city hall can do, he had the police street the news that people who celebrated on the tenth day instead of the first could expect no tickets for illegal fireworks, or broken arms, but that those trying to celebrate before then could expect major hassles. He even arranged for the side streets to be blocked off—no traffic to interfere with the festivities.

      Which explained why on what should have been a business-as-usual day the streets were raining explosives, and most of the stores were closed, their owners trapped between their fear of the gangs and the mayor’s indifferent stupidity. Welcome to New York.

      Lo’s business, of course, was the best it’d been in ten years. That brought half the family in to help. At lunchtime, Mrs. Lo and the youngest granddaughter brought down two trays of large bowls filled with noodles and pork, as well as fishballs, fried rice, shrimp toast, and tea with cakes, cookies, some mixed pastries and a large platter of orange slices—just to keep us all from starving before dinner, you see. While everyone else was eating, Lo’s youngest came over to me.

      “Mr. Hagee, sir?”

      “Yeah, Git’jing; what’s up?”

      “Will things be bad today?”

      “They could be,” I admitted. Telling the truth to their offspring seemed to be a routine matter with the Los. Besides, this was one of those kids to whom you just couldn’t lie. At least, I couldn’t.

      “What makes you ask?”

      “So far you have been very lucky. But we can’t ask you to use up all your luck for us. So I have brought you this.”

      She handed me a chain with what looked like an ivory dragon on the end of it. Closer inspection showed it was actually one large dragon with eight smaller ones crawling all about it. I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be playing or fighting.

      “Thank you,” I told her. “Is this supposed to bring good luck?”

      “Nine dragons in the home always means good fortune. Every home needs nine dragons in it somewhere to bring good luck. They don’t need to be the same, or in the same place, or anything like that. You just have to have nine of them in your home somewhere for the luck.”

      “But I’m not in my home,” I joked with her.

      Quite seriously, she told me, “You do not have a home.”

      “Sure I do,” I replied. “I live in Brooklyn, in Bensonhurst.”

      “No. You may eat and sleep there,” she let me know, “but it is not your home. Your home is still within you—you have not yet begun to bring it out. That is why you can carry your dragons with you—because you have only a place to stay, not a real home.”

      That said, she smiled politely and then ran back to her grandmother when the old woman started to collect up the dishes. I wanted to argue with her, but didn’t see the point. She was right. I lived in a barren apartment that I kept clean by keeping it empty. Half the time I slept on the couch in my office instead of going home. If it wasn’t for Elba, the girl from downstairs who takes care of my dog, the poor mutt would’ve probably starved to death by now.

      The thing that made me wonder was how Git’jing could tell all that just by looking at me. After all, everyone hates being obvious. Figuring it wasn’t worth the questioning, however, I slid the chain over my neck and hung my dragons inside my shirt. I feel luckier already, I told myself. Besides, the way things looked I was willing to take any advantage I could get my hands on.

      The morning paper had given an update on the situation in Chinatown, one so wrong I wondered how it could’ve been printed, even in the Post. Not that the other New York rags were ever any more accurate; the Post might be the most flamboyant of the main quartet of papers keeping the city ‘informed,’ but it has no monopoly on inaccurate reporting—not by a long shot.

      Luckily, for all the news that mattered to me that day, I had other resources. In Chinatown, as in all real neighborhoods, not fancified motel parks for the rich like Sutton Place or Park Avenue, the vocal grapevine is as strong today as it was in the first grove of trees that ever knew human congregation. Sadly, it was not carrying good news.

      Despite the message the Time Lords’d delivered the day before, the word on the street was that they were bluffing. They were still in dispute with the Angry Ghosts and Mother’s Blood Flowing over three prime real estate areas, one of which was Lo’s block of Mott St. They had given the same message to a number of stores looking to see what the popular reaction was. Most everyone else locked their doors to see who got picked to be made an example of; you can guess who got picked.

      I thought about calling in help, but decided against it. When the gang showed, another gang waiting for them wasn’t going to slow them down. They’d picked Lo and me to teach a lesson to, so we were the ones who were going to get it. Face demanded it, which meant there was little hope of stopping it merely with force.

      Actually, I couldn’t imagine how much muscle it would take to back down the Time Lords. I’d been able to send the first two packing because they hadn’t expected me. The next bunch had only been sent to deliver a message. But this time…this time was for all the marbles and they would move forward no matter what.

      As we waited, Lo told me:

      “No worry. I know this first day talk to you. What else to do? Take chance they no burn store, kill me, wife, children? Hope not to be a dead man? Crawl on floor, beg for mercy from animals who kill just for chance to laugh? No thank you bullshit very much not. Standing better way to die than kneeling.

      “What you think?”

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