The Blue Light Bar and Grill was quiet. Wednesday nights, at least in the early evening, were generally mellow. Wednesday was wrestling night at the Civic Auditorium, so the Blue Light clientele were mostly off-duty police officers. After the matches were over, however, the wrestlers and their friends flooded the place.
Between the police and the wrestlers, this was generally considered to be one of the safest bars in town. And even if, after a few rounds, the wrestlers would sometimes push the tables to the sides of the room and have impromptu matches for fun, it was only that: fun. The spirit of good fellowship permeated the place at all times.
Leimomi Sanchez, the resident chanteuse, had just taken the stage for her first set. Chan, a jazz fan, loved that Sanchez’s repertoire included a good number of standards. At times, when he closed his eyes while Sanchez sang, Chan could picture Billie Holiday.
The club owner, Rick Tamanaha, had bought Chan and Kelso their first round. When he’d delivered the drinks, Rick had patted both men on the shoulder. “You boys look like you’ve been through the wringer.”
Chan certainly felt that way. He sat nursing his Primo draft with his new roommate. Kelso drank only scotch.
“You know,” said Chan, “the only ‘older man’ I can think of off the top of my head would be Kang Yu. But he’s too old. And he’s in Korea now.”
“You sure his daughter is clean and clear on this, huh?” asked Kelso.
“Yes, Chin, I’ve come to believe that she has steered Yu Enterprises into legitimate business concerns. Her grandfather is pulling the strings from Korea in terms of his dirty business interests, and Gi wants nothing to do with them. His puppet syndicate heads are Richard Han and Woo-kyun ‘Tommy’ Choi, and neither one is ‘old’.”
“Say,” said Chin, “you don’t suppose that Richard Han is related to David Han, do you?”
“It’s possible, I guess, but he doesn’t fit the profile, either. Neither he nor Choi. They’d be my age, roughly, too young to have been assigning Wong jobs back in 1938.”
“But if David Han and Richard are related, there could be an older person in the mix. Richard’s dad, maybe.”
Chan sighed. “Ah man, I have a hard time believing that the Yu Clan, maybe billionaire criminals, would be playing around with such small stuff compared to their gambling, drug, and prostitution businesses. Sabotaging property for sums falling under the radar, as Mrs. Watson put it, just doesn’t seem like their style.”
“But if it were his father, say, then he might be working his own side of the street. Eh, if you want to make it as a criminal in this town, and you aren’t working with the Yus, you better not step on their toes.”
Chan nodded. “You know, Chin, you’ve convinced me. And I can picture Richard Han tiptoeing into my house and cracking me over the head. He’d never have the courage to come at me face-to-face, that’s for sure”
“Well, let’s hassle him tomorrow. If nothing else, visiting that asshole from time to time keeps him and his boys on their toes.”
This made Chan smile for the first time that night. If there was one thing that could make his day, it was bothering the Yu people any way he possibly could. If he had time on his hands after he retired, he’d imagined, he could volunteer to hang around outside their headquarters slapping tickets on all their illegally parked cars.
And even though he might never prove that they’d murdered his father, Chan still relished every rousting of their gang he could manage.
So it was decided. In the morning they’d look into the possibility that someone in Richard Han’s family, someone skirting the business interests of the Yu Clan, might be behind this operation.
Lanning Lee 