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The Wind in my Heart 17
17I was bornin the Year of the Ox.That’s my first thought when I wake up in the hospital again. The hospital where I was born. Mount Sinai. My next thought is that the confrontation with Paul Tien in the alley was a bad dream, that I’m still here from getting beaten by his goons; I never left.No. The room might look the same, but it’s different. Different wounds, too. And the first thought nags at me again before I can distract myself from it, like it’s been waiting by the bedside for me to wake up so it can poke my throbbing shoulder and whisper in my ear, demanding my attention.Your birthday is in January. Chinese New Year changes dates with the lunar cycle but it always comes later than the 14th. Often as late as February. You’re not a tiger, you’re an ox.Someone clears his throat. I turn my head to find Joe Navarro and Benny Chen staring at me.“Why?” Chen asks. Navarro doesn’t speak, but his eyes tell me everything. A soldier’s eyes, empty of anger and denial, of
The Wind in my Heart 18
18I’m less than a year into a life sentence at Great Meadow Correctional in Comstock, NY. Always thought I’d like to retire upstate someday, but for all I see of the outside, I may as well be in China. Paul Tien is back on the street, but Joe says the Fifth Precinct is keeping tabs on him. In October, the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Big Apple went off without a hitch, and things have settled down again for the monks of the Diamond Path Dharma Center. They have more time now for general meditation classes, hospital chaplaincy, and prison ministry visits.Far as I know, I’m the only Buddhist currently in residence. I took the refuge vows from Jigme Rinpoche the first time he visited me. Not monastic vows, not yet, just your garden variety vows to seek refuge in the three jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. But I already have a pretty monkish haircut, so who knows? I may get there. I’ve got time.For a while there, I thought my guru might be joining me full time. The police
The Wind in my Heart 1
1New York City, 1991On my wayback from the one hour photo with a satchel full of sins, I stand on the corner and wait for the dragon to pass before crossing the street. It’s my third Chinese New Year in the office on Mott Street where, in spite of spotty work, I haven’t been evicted yet, and that dragon is still as impressive as the first time I saw it. Wild-eyed, with curling horns and fierce paper jaws, the silk body winds down the street atop poles held by red and yellow clad dancers. I cross, trot up the steps to my building, and enter the lobby, dripping confetti from my shoes and shoulders. It’s a three-story walk-up, my office on the third floor, and by the time I get to the second landing I can hear my phone jangling. That’s the sound of thunder in the desert. I quicken my step.My shoes squeak on the grimy tile floor as I make the turn at the head of the stairs. Dim sunlight filters in through a skylight dome the color of sour milk but doesn’t quite reach the end of
The Wind in my Heart 2
2The first murder happened on New Year’s Eve—Gregorian calendar, not Chinese. The police wrote it off as gang violence, but even they knew it was too grisly for gangs. At least that was the word around the deli counters and bars of Little Italy. In Chinatown, nobody talks about the gangs. Certainly not with white guys who smell like pork. The underground gambling parlors in my neighborhood are all run by rival Chinese gangs overseen by the tongs, semi-legitimate Benevolent Associations. Above these groups are the international triads, organized crime syndicates that rival the Italian mafia with deep roots in Chinese secret societies and Southeast Asian drug cartels.What any of that has to do with Tibetan monks is anybody’s guess. Most of my clients are Caucasian. I don’t know much about Asia, despite my business address, but I’m old enough to remember when Tibet still looked like a separate country on the Rand McNally globe, and I’m pretty sure the only white powder they have there
The Wind in my Heart 3
3I meet Sgt. Joe Navarro at our favorite watering hole later that night. Joe and I served together in Panama. We were thick as thieves with two other grunts in our battalion: Steve Griebling and Larry Yang. Operation Just Cause. General Powell loved the name because even our worst critics would have to say the words. Of course, it didn’t take long for those of us who’d been there to put a different spin on it. Why did we invade Panama? Just ‘cause we fuckin felt like it.Steve was among the twenty-three who didn’t come home. Larry and I opened the agency in Chinatown together, and Joe became a cop in the Fifth Precinct.The place is quiet, like usual. That’s what Joe likes about it—he never has to break up a pair of assholes trying to tango while he’s off duty. Two guys and a girl are shooting pool on red felt and a couple of regulars are watching the Rangers on TV when I pull up next to Joe at the bar. I order a couple of beers and shots even though he’s hardly touched the bee
The Wind in my Heart 4
4In the morning, I drag my broken desk down the stairs to the curb before meeting a client at a coffee shop. I tell her what she’ll see in the photos I took of her husband, if she wants to look at them. She only asks to see the one that shows his face the best so she can’t kid herself that it isn’t him. I am relieved by this show of good sense. Denial is probably the biggest cause of contested invoices in my line of work, but I also don’t need her crying all over the prints in the coffee shop where we conduct our business.With that done, I make a few inquiries among the neighborhood kids I’ve cultivated as informants. Whenever I have a few bucks to spare, I toss a Spider Man comic or a Playboy their way and get a good return on investment. Today, I ask them about Sammy Fong. They don’t know much except that he found the chopped up body of a dai lo, a gang big brother, and they want to tell me all about it in gory detail until I tell them I already know about that, like everybody el
The Wind in my Heart 5
5Back at my office, I pour myself a bourbon and set it down on the folding card table I’m using as a temporary desk. I need to slow down and think things through. Maybe it wasa suicide.My gut says no.I check my watch. I took the three blocks back to my office at a brisk walk and I’m not sure of exactly how much time has passed between the hanging and my discovery of the body. I reach for my glass and find myself picking up the phone instead. It’s just a hunch. I know it won’t prove anything. But before any more time can slip away, I’ve called the dharma center.An unfamiliar male voice answers: “Tashi delek!Diamond Path Dharma Center. How may I help you?”“Is Geshe Norbu available?”“He’s out on an errand. Would you like to leave a message?”I leave my name, then hang up and pull Gemma Ellison’s card from my wallet. I turn it over in my fingers and sip my drink, relaxing into the liquid heat and letting the impulse to keep making phone calls until I have some answ
The Wind in my Heart 6
6After Norbu leaves, I lock up the office and climb the stairs to the roof for a smoke. I can’t see squat from the top of my building, just graffiti on red brick in every direction with the skyscrapers in the gray drizzly distance, but I still like it up here better than down on the street when I need some nicotine to help me think. The car and truck exhaust is a little thinner up here, and maybe it’s my imagination but I think it makes the tobacco taste better.I stand on the gravely tar paper—not too close to the edge because I have a thing about heights—and by the time I’m on my second smoke, I’ve almost decided to drop the case. It’s getting way too hot and I’m only one day into it. I don’t need to piss off Joe and his buddies in blue any more than I already have. But something is niggling at me. I’m trying to figure out how to get at least one payment for legwork out of the monks before I bail, but when I think about telling Jigme Rinpoche that I can’t help him, there’s this re
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