Though it had a population of eighteen thousand, Dumont was practically a quaint village by northern New Jersey standards and one of the more modest communities in the generally expensive Bergen County. Dumont was a town of simple saltbox Cape Cods and center-hall Colonials on winding streets lined with mature maples and sycamores, the trees that shed their brown paper bark as well as their leaves. A bedroom community for New York City and Newark, Dumont was a poor cousin in comparison to its more elegant neighbors, towns like Cresskill, Demarest, Alpine and stately Englewood Cliffs, which bordered the Hudson River and was noted for its proud old mansions on expansive rolling lawns.
The residents of Dumont are an even mix of blue collar and middle-management white collar. However, there was one resident of this middle-class suburb who did not fit the local demographics: Liu Shifu.
Shifu was preoccupied as he drove the blue Camaro through the center of town later that afternoon. His brow was furrowed as he sailed up Washington Avenue and past St. Michael's Catholic School, then took the next left, heading for Sunset Street. The houses he swept past were as solid and respectable as the town itself, but over the years additions and modern flourishes had sprung up here and there like mushrooms: skylights, brick walkways, expanded decks, sun-rooms, central air-conditioning units—items that reflected spurts in the various owners' personal finances.
Turning onto Sunset Street, Shifu guided the blue Chevy into the driveway of number 169, a neat split-level with a cedar shake facade and a custom-made twenty-five-hundred-dollar carved mahogany door. He turned off the engine and sat there for a moment, chewing his bottom lip. He was sorting through the details, considering the possibilities, trying to figure out how Dominick Provenzano could fit into his plans.
The dog had started to bark as soon as the car pulled in. Lost in thought, Shifu blinked, finally noticing Cerberus's yelping. The big black Newfoundland was tied up in the backyard, waiting for someone to walk him.
Shifu let himself in through the front door and climbed the short flight of steps that led to the living room. His son, Neo, was stretched out on the sofa, headphones over his ears, a yellow Walkman by his side, holding a book up over his face.
Seventeen-years-old Neo was a good-looking kid with dark hair and a ruddy complexion. He was a smart kid, too. He liked to read, just like his mother. Victoria and Neo often read the same novels and discussed them late into the night at the kitchen table. But sometimes Shifu felt that his son was too smart, that the boy was smarter than he was. He had to admit to himself that at times he was even jealous of Neo's relationship with Victoria, particularly when they talked about the books they'd read. He had tried to read what they did, but the books just never held his attention. The only thing he ever read was the newspaper.
He looked down at his son, lost in his own world. "Neo."
The boy didn't answer. The Walkman was cranked up so loud Shifu could hear it on the other side of the room. Heavy metal. He couldn't wait for Neo's head banger phase to pass.
"Neo!" he repeated, raising his voice. ''Neo!'
The boy finally heard his father and turned down the music, though he left the headphones on.
"Hey, Dad. What's up?"
"Do me a favor, will ya?"
"Sure. What?"
"Take the dog for a walk."
"I thought you always liked to—"
"I gotta make some phone calls. Go ahead before he does it in the yard."
"Okay." Neo sat up and threw the paperback he was reading down on the coffee table. The Bourne Identity.
Shifu glanced down at the book as he moved on to the kitchen. Something smelled good in there.
"Daddy." Twenty-one-year-old Tiffany, his oldest child, got up from the kitchen table and threw her arms around her father. Tall and dark-haired like her brother, Tiffany kissed his cheek, and he gave her a squeeze.
Twenty-year-old Christen, the middle child, was standing at the counter, watching.
"Hi, Dad," she mumbled. Christen was fair and slender, like her mother. If only she smiled a little more.
"Since when did you guys learn to cook? Your mother thinks you two don't even know where the kitchen is."
Tiffany laughed. "C'mon, Dad. We're not that bad."
Christen went back to shredding lettuce for the salad. She kept her head down.
He went over to give her a hug, too, but the response wasn't the same as with Tiffany. Christen always held back with him, and there always seemed to be an awkward, uncomfortable undercurrent when they were together. Maybe it was him, or maybe it was the competition with Tiffany, who'd always been more demonstrative, more outgoing, more "Daddy's girl."
He suddenly thought of his own brother and sister. He had two siblings, and now he had three kids, both families the same size. Shifu frowned, angry that he'd even think there was any comparison. There was nothing similar about his family then and his family now.
"What's the matter? Daddy?" Tiffany asked.
"Nothing."
He was thinking about his kid brother, Liu Song. When he was a young man in his twenties, Song had thrown a twelve-year-old girl and her little black dog off a roof. The dog survived. Song was locked away in the nuthouse now, but Shifu was convinced that it was that awful upbringing in Chinatown that had ruined Song's mind. That was why Shifu had vowed to himself a long time ago that he would provide only the best for his own kids. He would never in a million years let his children go through anything like what he had gone through growing up in the projects. Never. And the only way to ensure it was with money.
When he was a kid, poverty had made his mother so bitter it turned her into a cancer, he thought. She destroyed everything she touched, out of spite. Whenever her children looked to her for encouragement, her nasty comments cut them down and humiliated them instead. Life had dealt her a rotten hand, so she wanted to ruin the game for everyone else. Eventually cancer—the real thing—destroyed her.
But as bad as his mother was, he knew his father was far worse. At least she made an effort to keep her family together. His father just came and went as he pleased, usually drunk, and always ready to beat Shifu, the eldest, just for the hell of it. The old man would disappear for a few years, then just about the time Shifu had finally forgotten about the bastard, he'd come drifting back in a drunken rage to cause a little more misery before he left again.
After many years of separation Shifu had gotten back in touch with his father. He'd thought maybe he could reconcile with the old man, that things could be different now that he was married and established and had a family of his own. But he was dead wrong. His father hadn't changed one bit. He was the same cold-hearted bastard he'd always been, and he didn't give a shit about his son or his son's family. The old man was fine as long as his son was buying him drinks at a bar, but one day, when Shifu stopped by at his father's apartment to see how he was doing, the old man wouldn't even answer the door. He told his son to go away and leave him alone.
Standing alone in that dimly lit hallway, Shifu felt the burn of humiliation. It wasn't worth trying to do something good if this was what you got for it.
There was a time when Liu Shifu had been well on his way to falling into the same bitter poverty trap as his parents. When he was still a teenager, he'd gotten some woman in the projects pregnant and ended up having to marry her. She was twenty-six, and he was just a kid. They didn't even live together, but he ended up having two sons by her. He wasn't even twenty yet, and he saw himself turning into his old man.
Thank God he'd met Victoria. She turned his life around. She showed him that life wasn't all shit, that there was a better way. When Victoria's mother paid for his divorce from his first wife and he married Victoria, he swore he would never go back to the kind of life he'd had in the projects. Never.
Shifu focused on his daughters, pleased with the way they had turned out. They were nothing like his mother or his first wife. They were fine young women with good taste and good looks and good educations. It was all thanks to Victoria. She'd taken care of all the child rearing.
"Where's your mother." he asked the girls.
Tiffany was assembling a lasagne, layering wide strips of curly-edged pasta, tomato sauce, slices of mozzarella cheese, and gobs of ricotta in a baking pan. "Mom's upstairs lying down. She's got a headache."
"Oh." He looked to Christen, but she was busy slicing a cucumber.
"Where's that boyfriend of yours. Christen. What's his name? Matt."
Christen shrugged but wouldn't look at him. "I dunno. He's home, I guess."
He looked at Tiffany, grinned, and winked. "Oh, yeah? Once he smells that lasagne, he'll be over here like a shot."
Christen sighed. She didn't like her father's cracks about Matt. He made it obvious that he didn't like her boyfriend. Ever since that night he caught them making out on her bed and screamed at them for over an hour straight.
Tiffany pursed her lips and tried not to laugh at her father's meddling, for her sister's sake.
Shifu reached around Christen, picked out a slice of bell pepper from the wooden salad bowl on the counter, and popped it into his mouth. "I'm gonna go check on your mother."
He went back through the living room, climbed a short flight of carpeted steps, and went to the master bedroom. The door was closed. He turned the knob without a sound and peeked in. Victoria was on her back in bed, one arm draped over her face. She was wearing designer jeans and a peach-coloured knit top. The satin pillow under her head was the one he'd brought back from Los Angeles.
''Shifu." she moaned, and lifted her arm.
"You all right?"
She nodded behind her arm. "It's just a headache." She raised one knee and curled her toes. At forty-six Victoria still had the kind of figure a fashion model could envy.
Shifu stepped into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. He felt her forehead. Her eyes looked more tired than usual.
"It's just a headache, Shifu."
"You take any aspirin?"
"I just took some. I'll be fine by dinner. I just need a little quiet. That's all."
Shifu nodded to himself. She had said she was fine that time he went to Switzerland. He wasn't there thirty-six hours when he got a call from Tiffany: "Mom's in the hospital. They don't know what's wrong." He got right back on a plane and rushed home to be with her.
He stood up from the bed. "You rest as long as you want. Okay? You can eat later." He started to go but then stopped and looked at the walls, narrowing his eyes and staring hard at them.
"This room needs another paint job," he said, more to himself than to his wife. "I can see the letters coming through."
Victoria looked up at him and sighed. ''Don't start with that again, Shifu. I keep telling you, it's your imagination."
"It's not my imagination. I can still see it."
"The painter used a special primer and three coats of paint to cover it. Believe me, you can't see it. It's your imagination."
He shook his head. He could still see it. The words he'd written on the walls in a moody rage one night when Victoria wouldn't listen to him, when that stupid telemarketing job was taking over her life, when she refused to quit after he told her she had to. Four-foot letters in black marker stretching across one wall and continuing onto the next, stopping abruptly at the wardrobe.
Victoria closed her eyes and draped her arm over her face again. "Let me rest for a little while longer. I'll be down for dinner."
He didn't answer. He left the bedroom and went down the hall to the bathroom. Opening the medicine cabinet, he scanned the shelves. The green plastic Excedrin bottle was on the top shelf. He shook out two aspirin, popped them into his mouth, and chewed. He didn't have a headache, but he often took aspirin to prevent headaches. He had a feeling he was due.
He left the bathroom and headed for his office downstairs, passing the huge, gilt-framed oil painting of a vase full of flowers that hung in the foyer. He shut the office door behind him and glanced at his desk. The red light on the telephone answering machine was blinking. He switched on the desk lamp and saw that he had one message. He pressed the play button.