New York City, 1919.
Eddie Rum is a Chinese American veteran passing for white under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Survival depends on staying invisible. Asking questions is dangerous. But when Eddie stumbles across a body on the notorious Death Avenue, he can’t walk away.
As Eddie searches for the dead man’s identity, he moves through the city's jazz clubs, gambling houses, private enforcers, backroom deals, and selective justice. Each answer pulls him deeper into a web of violence, greed, and lies — and closer to exposing his past. In a city that punishes the wrong people for knowing too much, being discovered can be fatal.
Written in the hardboiled tradition of classic noir, Death Avenue is a historical crime novel about hidden identity, moral compromise, and the cost of belonging in a world built to exclude you.
For readers of gritty historical fiction and crime novels with depth, tension, and consequence.
New York City, 1919.
Eddie Rum is a Chinese American veteran passing for white under the Chinese Exclusion Act. Survival depends on staying invisible. Asking questions is dangerous. But when Eddie stumbles across a body on the notorious Death Avenue, he can’t walk away.
As Eddie searches for the dead man’s identity, he moves through the city's jazz clubs, gambling houses, private enforcers, backroom deals, and selective justice. Each answer pulls him deeper into a web of violence, greed, and lies — and closer to exposing his past. In a city that punishes the wrong people for knowing too much, being discovered can be fatal.
Written in the hardboiled tradition of classic noir, Death Avenue is a historical crime novel about hidden identity, moral compromise, and the cost of belonging in a world built to exclude you.
For readers of gritty historical fiction and crime novels with depth, tension, and consequence.
BEFORE
Before DNA testing or GPS tracking. Before social networks or social distancing. Before mobile phones or personal computers. Before television networks or broadcast radio. Before the FBI or the FDIC. Before the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Tower.
Telephones are anchored by wires. Movies cannot talk. Baseball is the soul of America, but railroads are the engine. Gambling is illegal, but betting is commonplace. Liquor is considered evil, but saloons are everywhere. Jim Crow laws have driven blacks out of the South and into the Northeast. The Chinese Exclusion Act has turned Chinese Americans into second-class Americans. A ham sandwich will cost you two nickels. A porterhouse steak is two dollars.
It is Wednesday, October 1, 1919. There’s a dead man in the middle of Tenth Avenue. It’s 2:00 a.m.
THE STIFF
#1
The body is cold, male, and Chinese. His eyes are completely black from a brain hemorrhage, and his mouth is half-open.
The dead man wears a longpao—what Americans call a mandarin robe. The crest of the New York Oriental Club is stitched onto the left side of his chest. The long tail of the jacket is in shreds. It clearly got caught in the gears of the train, dragged him under, then left him dead on the downtown tracks of Tenth Avenue.
Eddie stands over the body. He takes a deep breath and catches the sweet scent of baking Oreos from the Nabisco building one block downtown. The last shift ended at 10:00 p.m., but the scent remains. Eddie takes the stiff under the armpits and half carries, half drags him to the curb, then lets the body settle.
A drunk with a puffy red face stumbles by. “Grave robber. You can’t—”
Eddie snaps his head around and glares at the drunk.
In the lamplight, the three scars on Eddie’s left cheek are plainly visible.
The drunk is startled. He shuts his mouth and shuffles into the darkness.
The engine of a Brockway truck rattles from the shadows. The truck had been built for the Great War, but the war ended before the truck was shipped to Europe, so the company now leases them out. “Milch Kosher Dairy Delivery” is painted in white on the green side panels. The truck brakes in front of Eddie and the stiff. Eddie takes a bundle of burlap out of the passenger seat. He rolls the stiff in the burlap, then lifts the bundle into the back of the truck.
Eddie climbs in alongside it. The stiff is starting to smell now. Eddie slaps the side panel twice. The brakes grunt. The engine rattles. The truck pulls away.
#2
Half an hour before picking up the body, Eddie is in Tremont’s—the saloon, not the Democratic Club. The saloon smells of sour beer and burnt tobacco. Little Jim Tremont, that’s the oldest son, is behind the stick. Peter, the youngest son, is playing “In My Merry Oldsmobile” on an out-of-tune piano.
The place is half-filled with men and only men. Men looking for a drink. Men looking for work. Men looking to hide. These men are going to have to find someplace else to go when the Volstead Act becomes the law in January, and anything with more than 0.5 percent alcohol can’t be sold. But right now, they’re all thick in the head and happily numb.
Eddie is mostly sober, nursing a double rum and trying to read a pulp magazine with a sinister-looking Chinese guy on the cover.
“They pray to devils,” says Sour Bill.
“Come again,” says Eddie.
Sour Bill is one of those drunks who is thirty but looks twice that age.
Sour Bill says, “I been inside a chop suey place. Over the pots they cook in, there was the statue of a devil.”
Eddie, “Is that right?”
Sour Bill, “They had the devil and like a…a…a painting of an old man. An old Chinese man.”
Eddie doesn’t look away from the magazine, just says, “Maybe it was a family altar.”
Sour Bill pauses but doesn’t do much thinking. “It looked like the devil.”
Eddie doesn’t argue.
Then Sour Bill says, “You got a dime for a beer.”
Eddie, “I’m kinda tight, Bill.”
Bill laughs. “I’m trying to get tight.”
Eddie asks, “Don’t you ever drink water, Bill?”
Bill says, “Nah. Fish fuck in that stuff.”
Big Walt Vickers walks in, strides to the bar, and orders a double whiskey. He’s about six-two or six-three with hands the size of oven mitts and a voice to match. His job is riding a horse ahead of the Central Rail on Tenth Avenue and making sure everyone stays clear of the slow-moving train. He says, “Eddie.” Then louder, “Eddie. Eddie Rum.”
Eddie turns to him.
Walt keeps talking. “There’s a stiff over on Tenth and Seventeenth. Can you clean him up?”
Sour Bill jumps in. “I can do it.”
Walt, “You can’t even clean yourself, Bill.”
Eddie says, “Fifty.”
Big Walt comes back with, “Forty.”
Eddie shakes his head. He ain’t gonna take any less.
Sour Bill repeats, “I can do it.”
Big Walt orders another double. He pays Little Jim, then peels off five sawbucks. He slides the money down the bar to Eddie. Walt says, “Get him off the tracks before the Butchers’ Local,” meaning before the 3:00 a.m. stock train that brings in the cows, hogs, and chickens from Chicago.
Eddie nods. He takes the money and buys a shoulder of bourbon from Little Jim and leaves a dime for Sour Bill.
#3
By 1919, the Central Railroad spreads from Canada to Mexico, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the rails, the Central carries billions of dollars’ worth of cattle and coal, sugar and salt, and whatever else America buys and sells to the four corners of the earth. All of it flows into Manhattan, where it’s delivered to the docks of the city.
The Central line runs along the Hudson River side of Manhattan. For most of the distance from the northern tip of Manhattan, the rail runs along the riverside beneath the sheer cliffs of the island. Between Seventy-Second and Sixtieth Streets, there is a large flat area where the Central holds extra cars, a roundhouse for engines, and a few spur tracks to make repairs.
But at Fifty-Sixth Street, Manhattan begins to settle, and the train runs at street level down Eleventh Avenue. The tracks run beside cars and trucks, horses and carts, men, women, and children. The tracks switch to Tenth Avenue at Thirty-Second Street and continue as Tenth Avenue merges into West Street, where the bulk of shipping companies have their docks. It finally terminates at St. John’s Park on Hudson Street.
At street level the train rarely gets faster than ten miles an hour, but it is still massive and powerful. The simple fact is that if you tangle with a freight train—even a slow one—you will lose. Maybe you lose an arm or a leg, but more than likely you lose your life. The Central Railroad claims two or three people a week on its street-level course.
But the trains don’t stop.
The trains never stop. Because thousands of jobs, millions of customers, and billions of dollars can’t be held up for some dead guy.
Besides, more people in this city die from suicide, or murder, or the simple things like drunkenness or childbirth. And sometimes friends and families might take a moment to grieve for their loved ones. But the trains keep running, saloons keep pouring liquor, bread and milk get delivered at dawn, the stock exchange rings its bell at ten in the morning, and the newspapers keep printing tabloids and broadsheets. And the city never sleeps.
#4
The Brockway truck covers the distance from the west side to the east side of Manhattan. The truck rolls through the open gate on the south side of Bellevue Hospital and grinds to a halt on gravel. Eddie jumps out and bangs his fist on the double wood doors. Above the doors is a painted sign that reads, “City Morgue Service Entrance.”
From behind the door a muffled voice says, “City Morgue, you can’t check in unless you check out.”
The door opens, and Chase Harper is standing on the inside.
Eddie, “Whaddya hear? Whaddya say?”
Chase, “Eddie.”
Eddie, “Got a customer for you.”
Chase, “He or she?”
Eddie, “He.”
Chase is tall and lean and has a thin mustache. He sort of looks like the Broadway idol John Barrymore—if John Barrymore had brown African skin. Chase and Eddie met in France during the Great War. Chase served in the 396th Infantry, but now, he’s the night man at the morgue.
Chase helps Eddie unload the body from the truck. The two men carry the body down the hall and into the body room. They are being chased by Poseidon, the morgue’s resident cat, who is chiefly responsible for the capture of mice. Poseidon is well known for killing mice or even rats and then prancing around the halls of the morgue with the dead rodent in her mouth.
The body room has two other customers. A man and a woman, both old, pale, and naked, and waiting for the doctor to examine them before they get put in the ice chest. Ice-cold water slowly rolls over the bodies and drains through grooves in the cold slabs of porcelain. If anyone cares about who they are, they’ll be picked up by a funeral home to be buried. If they are part of the city’s forgotten, they will be taken to a mass grave on Hart Island.
On a dry slab, Chase and Eddie unroll the body out of the burlap.
Chase asks, “Is he from Death Avenue?”
Eddie nods. “That’s right. Tenth Avenue and Seventeenth Street.”
Chase, “Chinese? Haven’t had a Chinese customer in a while.”
Eddie, “He worked at the Oriental Club.”
Chase, “You know him?”
Eddie, “No. He’s wearing a servant’s jacket from the club.”
Chase, “You been to this place?”
Eddie, “No. I just…I know about it.”
Eddie unbuttons and opens the mandarin jacket.
A notebook tumbles out of the jacket’s interior pocket. The notebook hits the floor with a smack that echoes like crazy in the tiled room. Poseidon pounces on the notebook. She protects her new prize with her thick body. Eddie’s fingertips gently rub behind her ears, under her chin. Poseidon rolls to her back and releases her prize to Eddie.
Eddie picks up the notebook. Stray papers and envelopes are stuffed between the covers of the notebook. It’s all held together by a red ribbon tied in a simple knot. Eddie undoes the ribbon. The writing on the pages is in Chinese. Eddie recognizes some of it, but most of it is meaningless. There are betting slips, lots of slips from lots of bookies. All of it written in a combination of cryptic English and math. Each slip is stamped with the bookies’ unique mark—a rabbit, or a heart, or a dog, or a train engine. There’s an envelope. On the envelope a typed address: 13 Doyers Street.
Eddie’s mouth goes dry and his teeth go numb with memories. Eddie quickly closes the notebook and ties the ribbon.
Chase, “You all right?”
Eddie lies without hesitation, “I’m good.”
Eddie pockets the notebook.
Chase, “Any ID in there?”
Eddie, “Nothing.”
Memories come to Eddie. He holds them back. But over the rotting smell of the stiff, Eddie can recognize the scent of steaming black tea and wood ear mushrooms. Eddie reaches in his coat pocket and hands Chase the shoulder of bourbon. “For the coroner.”
Chase, “He’ll appreciate it.”
Eddie gives Chase a five-dollar bill. “For you.”
Chase, “I appreciate that.”
Eddie, “How long can you keep him?”
Chase, “If no one claims him, three days here. Then he’s off to Hart Island.”
Eddie turns to leave. Chase walks with him. Poseidon follows both men.
In the hall, Chase says, “Wanna meet the Jolt?”
Eddie, “The Jolt?”
Chase nods with a smile.
Eddie, “Jolt Jackson?”
Chase, “One and only. He has this joint. House party he has on Thursday nights.”
Poseidon suddenly stops. Reverses. Runs down the hall. Eddie and Chase watch her turn into an adjacent hall.
Chase, “I almost feel bad for the mouse.”
Eddie, “Where is this party?”
Chase, “Lenox and One Forty-Two.”
Eddie, “Thursday?”
Chase, “Starting at nine. Bring your driver, David. Boy looks like he needs to get out.”
#5
The truck rolls and bounces across town on streets built for horses and carts. Eddie is in the passenger seat of the cab this time. David Milch is driving. Milch is seventeen, light-brown hair, and a face that will remain boyish until he’s dead.
Eddie pulls a five from his pocket, stuffs it in the chest pocket of David’s work jacket.
David says, “Thanks.”
Eddie says, “You’re invited to a party.”
David, “What party?”
Eddie, “Chase says there’s a party on Thursday and the guy throwin’ the party is Jolt Jackson.”
David, “The former champ?”
Eddie, “Yep.”
Jolt Jackson had held the colored heavyweight boxing title. He became the world heavyweight champ in 1908, and he remained the undisputed heavyweight champ until 1916.
David whispers slowly to himself, “The Jolt.” His mind races with the idea of shaking hands with a man that he had only scene in newsreel footage at the picture show with his brother Jeremy. But David’s family emphasized education. It was an extension of their Jewish faith, and David is a still student at City College.
David shakes his head. “No. No, I can’t.”
Eddie, “Why not?”
David, “My father.”
Eddie, “Tell your father that you’re going to a party. Like a City College party.”
David, “I can’t tell him that.”
Eddie, “Why not? You’re a student there. You’re there three days a week.”
David, “I can’t lie to my father.”
Eddie, “Everyone lies about something.”
David, “No they don’t.”
Eddie, “The only people who don’t lie are the people who live their lies.”
Eddie unconsciously scratches at the scars on his cheek. The truck bounces hard over the trolley tracks.
David asks, “Who was he?”
Eddie, “What?”
David is always uncomfortable around the dead bodies that Eddie collects. He says, “The, um…the dead guy. Who was he?”
Eddie, “Some poor sap on the wrong side of lucky.”
David is surprised by Eddie’s curt answer.
David, “Did he, um…did he have a name?”
Eddie, “I’m sure he had a name, but he had no ID.”
David, “You gonna look for his family? Relatives?”
Eddie doesn’t answer.
David, “You did it last week? That poor Russian guy. You found his brother. Got him a proper burial, instead of a grave on Hart Island.”
Eddie, “The police should take care of it.”
David, “That ain’t what the police do.”
That was true. If the police were inclined to look for the family of dead people with no ID, they might hire private investigators. But that was an expensive option for just one dead man.
David, “It’s good that you look for the families. It’s a mitzvah.”
Eddie, “A what?”
David, “A mitzvah. Like a good deed. Like when you brought my brother’s army tags home. It meant a lot to my parents. It meant my parents could say Kaddish. Pray for his soul.”
The day after the armistice in Europe had been declared, small firefights were still breaking out. Eddie got his Red Cross truck stuck in the mud not far from the Marne. He got out of the truck with a couple of wood planks to fit under the wheels and give the tires some grip. As he squatted to place the wood, he noticed a rifle butt that seemed to be growing out of the ground among the trees. Eddie stood and ran, but he found no one who was wounded or dead. There was just the rifle. The barrel of the Springfield bolt action was buried in the ground. Laced through the trigger guard of the rifle was a pair of US Army tags. Stamped into the metal were the words “Jeremy Milch, Pvt.” with a star of David.
When Eddie returned to New York, he returned with knowledge of Jeremy’s home address. He gave the tags back to the family. The mother cried. The father prayed. Jeremy’s brother, David, went out and cleaned the family’s new truck.
The truck suddenly stalls. It does that sometimes. David cuts the engine, pulls the choke, then turns the engine over. It shakes and rumbles, then rolls.
Eddie says sarcastically, “Good thing the war ended before this truck arrived.”
David asks, “What was it like?”
Eddie, “I wasn’t fighting.”
David lets out a small growl of frustration. “You never talk about it.”
Eddie, “I don’t know any more about your brother, David. I’ve told you and your mom and dad everything.”
David, “All right. But what about you? What happened to you?”
Eddie, “It doesn’t matter.”
David timidly pushes. “It has to matter a little.”
Eddie, “It’s all in the past.”
David, “You’ve only returned to New York in May. It wasn’t that long ago…I hear these stories about guys who came back from France, and they can’t sleep. Or that man in Newark, the former soldier, who started shooting at people from the roof of his house—”
Eddie cuts him off. “David!” Eddie gathers himself and then calmly says, “David, you’re young. You haven’t lived long enough to realize that there’s a difference between learning from the past and living in the past. No one should live in the past. Most of the time when I talk about the war, I’m only reliving it, and the lessons get lost in the details.”
#6
David parks the truck on Nineteenth Street. David returns to his parent’s home farther east on NineteenthStreet. Eddie walks uptown under the Ninth Avenue elevated. He passes Tremont’s Saloon. It’s closed, but Sour Bill and three others are sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the saloon. Eddie walks a few more blocks, then turns and climbs the three steps of 402 West Twenty-Fifth Street. The awning over the entrance reads: “A St. Joseph’s Arms.”
The St. Joseph’s Arms are a string of rooming houses in the city that are owned and operated by the Episcopal diocese. Like the YMCA, it offers inexpensive rooms to young single men of good moral character. Right now, good moral character means not drinking—and paying cash.
There’s a big front desk in the center of the lobby. Mounted on the front desk is the shield of the Episcopal Church. The guy behind the desk says, “It’s very late, Eddie,” which is true. “Have you been drinking?”
Eddie, “No,” which of course is not true.
The guy lays a key on the front desk. The key is attached to a bronze medallion with the room number impressed on it. Eddie takes the elevator to the fourth floor and does his best to stay quiet while letting himself into room 412.
The room is bigger than a postage stamp, but just barely. It’s just big enough for a steel-frame bed, a small desk, a chair, and a trunk where Eddie keeps his clothes. The bathroom is down the hall, but Eddie has no interest in taking a bath. He locks his door. He strips to his underwear and leaves his clothes on top of the closed trunk.
Eddie pushes the lower button in the panel beside the door. The ceiling light snaps off. But the light from the street reaches up through the window and stretches across the ceiling. Eddie lies in bed staring at the unique patterns of light and shadow on his ceiling. His eyes grow heavy and close.
In the darkness, he can feel the dead man’s notebook tug at his soul. The envelope with the address of 13 Doyers Street works its way into Eddie’s memory. The smells of his childhood gather: garlic and ginger, chopped green onions and crushed peppercorns, dried mushroom and freshly brewed black tea.
#7
THE NEW YORK CHRONICLE
Early Edition
Wednesday, October 1, 1919
Two Cents
THE LEDE
* Cloudy, fair, temperatures between 55 and 68. Chance of rain.
* Attorney General Palmer continues to pursue immigrant anarchist.
* Brooklyn bank goes bankrupt. Patrons lose savings.
* Bomb defused by police outside the door at NY’s Federal Reserve Bank.
* World Series begins in Cincinnati. Chicago is favored to win the new
best-of-nine format. Game time 3 PM Central/4 PM Local.
#8
It’s about ten minutes before sunrise, and Battery Park is dark except for the ferries listing in the piers. From the park, the silhouettes of ferry crews can be seen prepping their boats to haul passengers to and from New Jersey, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Liberty Island, and Ellis Island. A few early commuters’ pace along the cobblestone paths.
Warren Dunphy sits on a bench beneath an elm and waits. In about twenty minutes, he will take a ferry out to Ellis Island, where he works as an inspector for the US Bureau of Immigration. He reaches into his jacket pocket, takes out a small flask, and drinks a swallow of brandy. Dunphy never drinks a lot, but he drinks often, and he starts early. For a US civil servant, Dunphy is clean and friendly. The constant brandy helps keep him that way.
A well-dressed man with a newspaper sits on the bench beside Dunphy. This man has a lean, athletic build. A gold tie is neatly knotted around his collar, and a gold band is wrapped around the crown of his snap-brim hat. The brim of his hat and the early-morning darkness obscure the handsome Chinese features of his face. He lays a folded copy of the Chronicle on the bench between Dunphy and himself.
Dunphy knows this man. His legal name is Zhong but everybody calls him Clock.
Dunphy smiles and offers a quiet but chipper, “Good morning.”
Clock responds, “How do you stay so happy so early in the morning?”
Dunphy, “Healthy living and a good night’s sleep. How ’bout you?”
Clock, “I haven’t gone to sleep.”
Dunphy picks up the paper.
Dunphy, “Do you have any names to give me?”
Clock, “Not this week. You have anything to tell me?”
Dunphy shakes his head. “Not much. The attorney general’s office is going after anarchists. But there were no Chinese names on the list I was given.”
Clock, “Let me know if you hear anything. I’ll see you next Wednesday.”
Dunphy nods and Clock leaves.
Neatly placed between pages 8 and 9 of the Chronicle is a twenty-dollar bill. Dunphy slips the twenty into the inside pocket of his jacket, right beside his flask. He is always careful to keep the money from Clock in a separate pocket from where he keeps his wallet. His wallet is in his pants pocket and contains only the money he earns from his job, which is $15.80 a week.
#9
Eddie is a night owl by nature. Even as a child he found it hard to wake up before noon.
By the time he reaches the lobby of the St. Joseph Arms, he is dressed, and the clock says it’s half past one. A slender, fair-haired young man named Jonas is working behind the front desk.
Eddie, “Jonas. Can I pay up?”
Eddie puts down seven dollars. It pays for another week in his postage stamp room. Jonas takes the money and makes a notation of the payment.
Eddie walks east on Twenty-Third Street. The street is packed. It’s always packed in the afternoon. Like the rest of the city, the street is a crowded chaos of men and women, boys and girls, hats and coats, stores selling phonographs or cigars, pushcarts hawking fruits and vegetables, newsstands with the latest papers, magazines, and pulps. Everything fighting for attention.
At Sixth Avenue, Eddie takes the stairs up to the elevated train. He gets a ticket for a nickel and takes the downtown train.
From the elevated train, the city appears to be grounded in yesterday and on the edge of tomorrow. Houses made of wood and plaster. Buildings made of brick and steel. Carts and horses. Cars and trucks. Steam-powered trains run in and out of the city. Electric trains move people throughout the city. All the promises made in 1900 are on the verge of reality in 1919.
Eddie exits at the Grand Street station. On the sidewalk, he crosses to Mott Street and heads south. Sounds of Sicilian mixed with a little bit of Yiddish and some American echo off the sidewalks. A hawker in front of Robinson’s men’s store gets right up on Eddie and speaks rapidly. “That’s a nice suit you wearing, but you can do better, brother. I can put you in a new quality suit today. Eight dollars. Just eight dollars.”
Eddie crosses Canal Street. Voices change. Sicilian, Italian, is replaced by Toisan, Chinese. The scent of tea replaces the smell of coffee. Chinese men and a few whites jostle for space on the narrow streets of Chinatown.
#10
Chinatown is a kind of tourist park for whites, but a kind of purgatory for the Chinese. Being born Chinese in America is to have citizenship but without the respect of a citizen. It marks you as a perpetual foreigner. The Chinese Exclusion Act keeps American-born Chinese from voting, demands all Chinese register with the government, and restricts the number of Chinese coming into America.
The act is especially difficult for Chinese women. Chinese national may come in to America as laborers, but most Chinese women don’t fit the act’s definition of “laborer,” so few Chinese women can enter America. For each Chinese woman in America, there are more than a hundred Chinese men. And if a Chinese man marries a woman who isn’t Chinese, then that woman loses her rights as a citizen.
And if a Chinese man has a child with a non-Chinese woman, then that child is a nobody. A mixed child is a mongrel child, a disgrace. The American equivalent of a Roman age infamia.
Most Chinese manage to run legit businesses and lead decent lives. But when being Chinese is practically illegal, it’s not a surprise that some of the business in Chinatown is also illegal. Opium dens next to grocery stores. Gambling in the basement with a restaurant on the second floor. The logic is pretty simple: if you can get deported for running a laundry and get deported for selling opium? Well, there’s more money in opium.
The whites who visit Chinatown are also mostly men. Men looking for a gambling joint. Men looking for an opium fix. Men looking for an exotic meal. Eddie notices a white man with a homburg hat and a pencil mustache. He’s a businessman through and through. On either side of the man are two other men, who are little smaller than an army tank. Eddie and the man look each other in the eye. They pass each other and keep walking.
It’s easy to get confused by the geography of Chinatown if you don’t live there. But Eddie walks the streets with confidence. He makes the turn to Pell Street and then the right to Doyers Street.
The Bright Light Lutheran Mission for Girls occupies 8 Doyers Street. It is a school and safe haven for Chinatown’s rarest treasure—American born Chinese girls. Across the street is 13 Doyers Street, a wide three-story structure with big windows and clean white curtains that might remind you of a Paris bistro. Painted on the front door in Chinese and English: “The Tea Garden.”
Eddie opens and passes through the front door. White-and-black tile covers the floor. The tin ceiling is painted white. It’s a leftover from when this was a German beer garden. Wood tables and chairs are laid out on the floor with a wood counter at the back.
The men in the place drop their voices at the sight of Eddie. Some are cautious. Some believe he is an outsider. Others vaguely recognize him. Chinese men dressed in coolie outfits with their hair braided in long queues are mixed with men in American clothes. A group of young men wear dark suits with gold hatbands and matching gold ties. Another group wear similar suits but red hatbands with red ties.
One of the older men in the place leaves almost immediately.
Lezu, a prim Chinese woman, sits at the register. Her husband is behind the counter and goes by the name Andrew.
Eddie pulls off his coat and moves to the counter and says, “Hello, Andrew.”
A cold sweat washes over Andrew. His eyes dart between Eddie and his wife. His mouth goes dry. He nervously says, “Who, um…who…who are you?”
Eddie, “You know my name.”
#11
Pulp magazine stories always seem to feature tough guys, sharp women, and fistfights. There’s a kind of Chinese opera that has the same sort of stories. It’s called jianghu.
Jianghu stories usually end up in some rough spot where vengeance and passion end in violence and bloodshed. Two tough guys—or tough broads—end up at some secluded teahouse in China. They let the violence simmer, drink tea, then fight.
The Tea Garden had the feel of a jianghu place. The feel that at any moment a lifetime of anger, jealousy, and vengeance could erupt in violence.
Andrew says to Eddie, “You should go.”
Eddie pulls out the envelope that had been in the dead man’s notebook. “I’m trying to find out who this belongs to.”
Lezu says, “You have to go.”
Eddie says, “The letter is addressed here, but you collect mail for a lot of people.”
Andrew pleads, “Go now, before it gets bad.”
Eddie continues, “I found this letter on the body of a dead man. I just want to know who it belonged to.”
The front door opens.
Eddie doesn’t look back.
Andrew and Lezu see the man, and the blood drains from Andrew’s face.
Clock steps through the front door and lets it swing shut. Clock’s face is a chiseled and handsome V. His shoes click on the tile floor as he crosses the room. The other men begin whispering to each other in Chinese. Clock is wearing a navy suit and hat with a gold satin tie and a matching hatband. The outfit marks him as a member of the Pell Street Prosperity House. He approaches the counter and then stands to Eddie’s left.
Clock looks to Andrew. “Gunpowder tea.”
Eddie says, “I’ll have the same.”
Andrew looks at Clock as if to ask for permission.
Clock nods.
Andrew moves to get the tea.
Lezu leaves the register and goes out through the front door.
Andrew sets tea down in front of both men and steps back. He doesn’t want to hear anything the men say to each other.
Clock says, “What happened to your face?”
Eddie says, “I cut myself shaving.”
Clock, “Still a wise guy.”
Eddie, “Better than being a dumbass.”
Clock, “Heard you went to fight the lofan’s war.”
Eddie says sarcastically, “No, I just went for the view.”
Clock returns the sarcasm, “Did it make a man out of you? Or did you just clean up everyone else’s shit?”
Eddie, “And you stayed in Chinatown. Neighborhood prince…of course, you have no place else to go.”
Clock snorts. “Well, you can go. So go.”
Eddie, “I have questions.”
Clock, “No answers here.”
Eddie, “I’m looking for the name of the man this envelope was sent to.”
Clock, “Walk, now, or you won’t be able to walk later.”
Eddie takes a long sip of his tea, then sets the cup on the saucer. “Well…we’ve had our tea.”
Eddie and Clock step back from the counter. Tables and chairs are cleared. Men form a loose circle. Eddie and Clock remove their hats and jackets, then move to the center. The two men instinctively rise to the balls of their feet. They sidestep in a circle, feeling the floor beneath them. There’s a slippery spot near the counter. Both men take note in their minds.
They square up. Clock is taller, leaner. Eddie is thicker with broad shoulders. They step closer. Inches from each other. They cross wrists. The smell of sweat and violence rises in their nostrils.
Clock grabs Eddie’s lead arm and snaps his right fist at Eddie’s jaw.
Eddie turns his head and twists out of the grip and skips away.
They square off again and cross wrists.
Eddie slaps Clock’s blocking arm up and snaps his right into Clock’s ribs.
But Clock twists, and Eddie’s punch hits mostly air.
The two men dance away.
Eddie loads up his rear leg, ready to pounce.
The door opens.
Everything stops.
Lezu has returned. She holds the door open, and an old Chinese man enters. He lays a gentle hand on Clock’s shoulder. The old man then gently caresses the scarred cheek of Eddie’s face.
The old man smiles and quietly says, “My boys.”
Death Avenue is the first novel in author J.I. Jung’s noir crime fiction series featuring Eddie Rum, a young half-Chinese, half-Caucasian man just returned to the city after his service in war-torn France. Trying to get on his feet, Eddie Rum works at odd jobs for the local Democratic Party precinct boss as well as cleaning up for the Central Railroad, whose tracks that run through the city get blocked by debris, goods, or the bodies of people who failed to move out of the way of an oncoming train. It is one such failure that draws Eddie into the machinations of powerful local crime bosses, including his estranged father and twin brother, who run the Pell Street House tong in Chinatown. As Eddie wants to know who was responsible for the death of Ah Fay, a theatrical performer and comedian, he approaches them after years of no contact for information. His father, Fuunwong, is unexpectedly intent on gaining possession of a small notebook and the betting slips it contained that Ah Fay had on his body when Eddie found him, and he isn’t the only one who’ll apparently go to great lengths to get their hands on it.
What a fantastic book! Eddie is a conflicted young man, damaged by his childhood and his experiences in the war, yet still compassionate and determined to do the right thing, as he tries to figure out his life and future. While his brother, Clock, physically resembled their father, Eddie took after their white mother, and he was deeply affected by his father’s decision to send him to live with his mother’s people as a child, as the danger of the Chinese Exclusion Act gained steam. Eddie’s yearning to be an equal son to his father and Clock’s belief that their father favored his white son over him were heartbreaking to watch, especially as Fuunwong is portrayed as manipulative and untrustworthy, using both sons only as a means to money and power. Eddie also suffers from occasional olfactory flashbacks to the war; however, these instances often herald the presence of imminent danger.
The setting is vivid and moody, with precise descriptions, historic locations and events, authentic-sounding dialogue, and character names such as Nails, Specs, or Ninth Street Mike that clearly build a vibrant picture of New York City just after World War I. While I often felt like I was watching this story unfold in living black and white, I also felt I was right in the scene, at times.
As the first book in a series, the author accomplishes much of the heavy lifting in establishing the world in which his stories will unfold and in populating it with a mix of historical and fictional characters. There are a lot of characters to keep straight and a couple of storylines to juggle. But the writing is clear, easy to read, and immersive, and the clever, complex plot comes together very nicely as the disparate storylines gradually converge. The imaginative character names certainly helped keep the story local, grounded, and free of confusion. The resolution of the storylines is great, and I didn’t figure out who was responsible for Ah Fay’s murder until it was revealed.
I recommend DEATH AVENUE to readers of historical mysteries, thrillers, and crime fiction, especially fans of a noirish style.