Free Year of the Dragon by Robert Daley

through the barrier; first it had to be reduced to insubstantiality through burning. But Chinese mourners, however traditional and superstitious about death, are by no means sentimental about it. Real money is not needed; play money will do, and Koy furnished stacks of it to be burned in urns in front of each casket. The queues therefore moved past slowly, each viewer bowing three times to each corpse, then pausing to light up money, and the smoke from the money rose to mingle with smoke from the joss and with perfume from the masses of flowers, and the nostrils of all present were assaulted by an abundance of powerful and conflicting odors. At last Koy gave the signal for the caskets to be closed. The lids clapped shut, the corpses had seen their last of this world. The pallbearers hefted the boxes, and the procession went out the door and started past crowds that filled both sidewalks. Koy, who wore a white suit, was in the lead, followed by other businessmen in white, and he stepped forward with exaggerated slowness while Chinese instruments, particularly cymbals, played a tinny dirge behind him. Along the curbs stood policemen in blue uniforms, and far ahead the precinct commander, Captain Gibson, sat on his horse, the better to observe the curious burial customs of the heathen Chinese. As for the Chinese multitudes, many of whom fell in behind the coffins, they saw the scene as much more than a funeral. To them Koy was the equivalent of a general at the head of an advancing army. He was like an emperor leading a nation, and the nation was themselves. A new dynasty had come to power, and their fears were thousands of years old - that their sons would be conscripted for some dirty job or other, and that their taxes would be increased.
    Ahead was Canal Street, the frontier between Chinatown and Little Italy, where Koy’s hearses already waited.
    Across Canal, a short distance inside alien country, stood a candy store belonging to a medium-level Mafioso named Carniglia. Although he actually did sell candy, comic books and such from time to time, Carniglia’s real business was guns. The organization to which he belonged regularly hijacked trucks carrying arms shipments, often with the connivance of insiders at the factories, and after each successful hijacking Carniglia was allotted his share of goods to dispose of. He was well placed. In the gun business, a candy store counted as an ideal front, the best imaginable. Teenaged boys were always hanging around candy stores. The candy attracted them first and they stayed to buy guns. The cops didn’t even notice. To them boys and candy went together. Because Carniglia was not in business to get arrested and do time, teenaged boys constituted by far the major part of his clientele - he never sold guns to adults he did not know, in case the adult turned out to be an undercover cop. By selling only to teenagers, such risks were eliminated entirely. His potential adult market, therefore, was small, whereas his teenage market was limitless. There were new teenage customers every year. Carniglia and a few others like him armed all the New York youth gangs. Carniglia did not care what happened to the guns he sold. He considered himself a businessman. It was simply none of his affair.
    Lately a whole new market had opened up for him - the Chinese. All Carniglia’s life the Chinamen had been there south of Canal Street. The Chinese youth had been passive. Suddenly they were not only buying guns but using them. Carniglia read the papers. He knew how to count corpses. Every time he read about a dead Chinaman, it made him laugh. He had no use for the Chinks. They talked garbage, and they ate garbage. Worse, they had now invaded Little Italy. They were flooding across Canal Street. Recently the stores to either side of Carniglia had both been taken over by Chinese. The yellow flood would submerge his entire neighborhood, Carniglia saw, and although he hated this, it was good for business.