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      For Lucy White, Katy, and Michelle Lamothe.

      What kind of times are they

      When a talk about trees is almost a crime

      Because it implies silence about so many horrors?

      — Bertolt Brecht

      Prelude

      The day Pious Man Chan was anointed police chief he looked for a grave for Ray Tate.

      Pious Chan’s head was lumpy and pure bald and he had an angry mole under his right eye. A long, straight, black hair poked from the red mole. Chan thought of himself as a godfather Buddha who blended wisdom with ruthlessness in his dealings with his capos and consiglieres. As a young Chinese copper, Pious Chan had tried to assimilate, slowly working his way invisibly up the ranks, speaking softly and forgetting no slight or dig. He knew the name and rank of every Anglo fucker who’d ever called him a chink and sent him out for laundry and egg rolls.

      When the fat doughboy mayor was elected for a second term, the powerful Chinese Menu, who delivered up Chinatown votes like dim sum specials, urged him to look around for one of their puppets to shove his hand up into. He found Pious Chan toiling in obscurity far down in the ranks. Chan was the kind of cop the mayor liked: he carried his gun locked in his briefcase and left the briefcase locked in the trunk of his car. His bullets were rusted but his pencil was sharp. The doughboy pulled Chan up by his figurative pigtail, skipping several ranks, slapped a handful of fruit salad onto his shoulders, and arranged him behind the burled walnut desk.

      To the smiling nods of the benevolent Menu the doughboy began affixing strings to his dancing puppet right away. Pious Man Chan was prohibited from raiding anything in east Chinatown: no gambling clubs, no whorehouses, no boiler rooms, no sweatshops. Chinatown was packed with three things: cheap vice, cheap labour, and cheap votes. The doughboy also forbade arrests at left-wing demonstrations, wiretaps on city politicians, and investigations into unionized companies doing business with the city.

      With an eager grin that hid what Pi Chan thought was oriental deviousness, he let the mayor jerk him around like a spastic little Pinocchio. “That’s all, sir?”

      “Other than that, Pi,” the mayor told Chan in an anteroom after the police commission blessed him, “knock yourself out.”

      “What about the … ah … blacks?” Chan said timidly, navigating his way through the mayor’s funny tastes. “The box is up for refunding.”

      “The box? Box of what? The fuck?”

      “Black Organized Crime Squad. BOCS. They’re getting swamped by the Bik-Big shootings up in the projects.”

      “Fuck sakes, Pi. Give them some money but change the fucking name.” He frowned down on the chief. “Did I make a mistake, here? I could’ve got a broad or a Paki. Should I’ve ’a got a Paki broad in a sari up there, behind the desk, that understands how democracy works? I thought you Chinamen invented democracy.”

      “We invented gunpowder,” Pious Man Chan said softly, mentally chalking one up against the mayor.

      “Same thing.”

      “Umm.” Chan stared off for a moment, fingering the fine black strand growing from his mole. “Safe Neighborhoods Initiative Program. SNIP.”

      The doughboy nodded and flipped at his silver blond locks. “SNIP. Perfect.” He took a piece of paper from his inside suit pocket. “Let’s go down this, fast.” He glanced up. “Hey, Bik-Bigs, you said? Bik-Bigs? What’s that? A gang?”

      “B-K B-Gs. Black kids. Big guns.” Chan shrugged. “Bik-Bigs.”

      The mayor laughed. “The little cocksuckers. Clean them out, Pi. We don’t want another season of gunsmoke. Grab up some white guys too, while you’re at it, make it fair. I don’t want to see an ethnic chain gang tap dancing across the front page. You got any white guys committing crime?”

      “We got a joint task force on the go with the Feds and the Staties. They’re after speed cookers, labs. Couple of kids were killed by bad ecstasy so they go after the X-men too. Mostly white biker types, white trash down from the badlands.”

      “Perfect. Roll ’em all into one.” The mayor consulted his list. “You got anything on Dickie Price down at Works? He said he came out the other day and saw a couple of cars around his house, guys in them talking to the sun visors. Recognized one of the drivers from a bodyguard detail when that fucking cowboy president was in town.”

      Pious Man Chan nodded. “Price was scoped coming out of a mob gambling club over at Stateline two weeks ago, up in Prior. They didn’t know he was a ward heeler when they went after him.”

      The mayor chewed his mean pout. “Okay, I’ll choke Dickie off. You taking anyone down? You can drop the wops but you lose Price in all this, Pious. I mean it. Anything written down, unwrite it, but get me a copy, first. The guy who wrote it down, give him a soft landing. Dickie is one of the good guys. He likes unions, bums, and bicycle lanes.” He looked at his list. “Rest of this is shit. Except this guy, Tate.”

      “Ray Tate. The

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