factory. They parked in the loading dock, out of the rain, and Chang and Wu painted over the letters spelling the name of the church. After the white paint dried, Chang, a lifelong calligrapher, expertly drew the words “The Home Store” on the side in a typeface similar to that in the flyer he’d taken.
Yes, the trick had worked and, unstopped by security officers and the guard at the tollbooth, they now sailed out of the tunnel into the streets of Manhattan. William had studied the map carefully as they had waited in line at the toll and knew generally where they should go to get to Chinatown. The one-way streets caused a bit of confusion but soon he oriented himself and found the highway he sought.
Through dense rush-hour traffic, further slowed by the intermittent rain and patches of fog, they drove along a river whose shade perfectly matched the ocean they had just survived.
The gray land, Chang reflected. Not highways of gold and a city of diamonds, as the unfortunate Captain Sen had promised.
As Chang looked around at the streets and buildings he wondered what now awaited them.
In theory he still owed the Ghost a great deal of money. The going rate for smuggling someone from China to the United States was about U.S.$50,000. Since Chang was a dissident and desperate to leave he expected that the Ghost’s agent in Fuzhou would charge him a premium. Yet he’d been surprised to find that the Ghost’s fee was only $80,000 for his entire family, his father included. Chang had raided his meager savings and had borrowed the rest from friends and relatives to make up the ten percent down payment.
In his contract with the Ghost, Chang had agreed that he, Mei-Mei and William—and Chang’s youngest son when he was old enough—would give money to the Ghost’s debt collectors monthly until the remainder of the fee was paid off. Many immigrants worked directly for the snakehead who’d smuggled them into the country—the men generally in Chinatown restaurants, the women in garment factories—and lived in safehouses provided by them for a stiff fee. But Chang didn’t trust snakeheads, especially the Ghost. There were too many rumors of immigrants being beaten and raped and kept prisoner in rat-infested safehouses. So he had made his own arrangements for a job for him and William and had located an apartment in New York through the brother of a friend back in China.
Sam Chang had always intended to pay his obligation. But now, with the sinking of the Fuzhou Dragon and the Ghost’s attempts to murder them, the contract was void and they were out from under the crushing debt—if, of course, they could stay alive long enough for the Ghost and his bangshou s to be captured or killed by the police or toflee back to China, and this meant going to ground as soon as possible.
William drove expertly through the traffic. (Where had he learned that? The family didn’t even own a car.) Sam Chang looked back at the others in the van. They were disheveled and stank of seawater. Wu’s wife, Yong-Ping, was in a bad way. Her eyes were closed and she shivered, sweat covering her face. Her arm was shattered from their collision with the rocks and the wound was still bleeding through an impromptu bandage. Wu’s pretty teenage daughter, Chin-Mei, seemed unhurt but was clearly frightened. Her brother, Lang, was the same age as Chang’s youngest son, and the two boys, with nearly identical bowl-shaped haircuts, sat close to each other, staring out the window and whispering.
Elderly Chang Jiechi sat motionless in the back of the van with his legs crossed and arms at his sides, thin white hair slicked back, saying nothing but observing all through eyes half covered by drooping lids. The old man’s skin seemed more jaundiced than when they’d left Fuzhou over two weeks ago but perhaps that was just Chang’s imagination. In any case, he’d decided that the first thing he’d do after they were settled in their apartment was get the
Yes, the trick had worked and, unstopped by security officers and the guard at the tollbooth, they now sailed out of the tunnel into the streets of Manhattan. William had studied the map carefully as they had waited in line at the toll and knew generally where they should go to get to Chinatown. The one-way streets caused a bit of confusion but soon he oriented himself and found the highway he sought.
Through dense rush-hour traffic, further slowed by the intermittent rain and patches of fog, they drove along a river whose shade perfectly matched the ocean they had just survived.
The gray land, Chang reflected. Not highways of gold and a city of diamonds, as the unfortunate Captain Sen had promised.
As Chang looked around at the streets and buildings he wondered what now awaited them.
In theory he still owed the Ghost a great deal of money. The going rate for smuggling someone from China to the United States was about U.S.$50,000. Since Chang was a dissident and desperate to leave he expected that the Ghost’s agent in Fuzhou would charge him a premium. Yet he’d been surprised to find that the Ghost’s fee was only $80,000 for his entire family, his father included. Chang had raided his meager savings and had borrowed the rest from friends and relatives to make up the ten percent down payment.
In his contract with the Ghost, Chang had agreed that he, Mei-Mei and William—and Chang’s youngest son when he was old enough—would give money to the Ghost’s debt collectors monthly until the remainder of the fee was paid off. Many immigrants worked directly for the snakehead who’d smuggled them into the country—the men generally in Chinatown restaurants, the women in garment factories—and lived in safehouses provided by them for a stiff fee. But Chang didn’t trust snakeheads, especially the Ghost. There were too many rumors of immigrants being beaten and raped and kept prisoner in rat-infested safehouses. So he had made his own arrangements for a job for him and William and had located an apartment in New York through the brother of a friend back in China.
Sam Chang had always intended to pay his obligation. But now, with the sinking of the Fuzhou Dragon and the Ghost’s attempts to murder them, the contract was void and they were out from under the crushing debt—if, of course, they could stay alive long enough for the Ghost and his bangshou s to be captured or killed by the police or toflee back to China, and this meant going to ground as soon as possible.
William drove expertly through the traffic. (Where had he learned that? The family didn’t even own a car.) Sam Chang looked back at the others in the van. They were disheveled and stank of seawater. Wu’s wife, Yong-Ping, was in a bad way. Her eyes were closed and she shivered, sweat covering her face. Her arm was shattered from their collision with the rocks and the wound was still bleeding through an impromptu bandage. Wu’s pretty teenage daughter, Chin-Mei, seemed unhurt but was clearly frightened. Her brother, Lang, was the same age as Chang’s youngest son, and the two boys, with nearly identical bowl-shaped haircuts, sat close to each other, staring out the window and whispering.
Elderly Chang Jiechi sat motionless in the back of the van with his legs crossed and arms at his sides, thin white hair slicked back, saying nothing but observing all through eyes half covered by drooping lids. The old man’s skin seemed more jaundiced than when they’d left Fuzhou over two weeks ago but perhaps that was just Chang’s imagination. In any case, he’d decided that the first thing he’d do after they were settled in their apartment was get the
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