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The Wind in my Heart 1
1New York City, 1991On my wayback from the one hour photo with a satchel full of sins, I stand on the corner and wait for the dragon to pass before crossing the street. It’s my third Chinese New Year in the office on Mott Street where, in spite of spotty work, I haven’t been evicted yet, and that dragon is still as impressive as the first time I saw it. Wild-eyed, with curling horns and fierce paper jaws, the silk body winds down the street atop poles held by red and yellow clad dancers. I cross, trot up the steps to my building, and enter the lobby, dripping confetti from my shoes and shoulders. It’s a three-story walk-up, my office on the third floor, and by the time I get to the second landing I can hear my phone jangling. That’s the sound of thunder in the desert. I quicken my step.My shoes squeak on the grimy tile floor as I make the turn at the head of the stairs. Dim sunlight filters in through a skylight dome the color of sour milk but doesn’t quite reach the end of
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 2
2The first murder happened on New Year’s Eve—Gregorian calendar, not Chinese. The police wrote it off as gang violence, but even they knew it was too grisly for gangs. At least that was the word around the deli counters and bars of Little Italy. In Chinatown, nobody talks about the gangs. Certainly not with white guys who smell like pork. The underground gambling parlors in my neighborhood are all run by rival Chinese gangs overseen by the tongs, semi-legitimate Benevolent Associations. Above these groups are the international triads, organized crime syndicates that rival the Italian mafia with deep roots in Chinese secret societies and Southeast Asian drug cartels.What any of that has to do with Tibetan monks is anybody’s guess. Most of my clients are Caucasian. I don’t know much about Asia, despite my business address, but I’m old enough to remember when Tibet still looked like a separate country on the Rand McNally globe, and I’m pretty sure the only white powder they have there
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 3
3I meet Sgt. Joe Navarro at our favorite watering hole later that night. Joe and I served together in Panama. We were thick as thieves with two other grunts in our battalion: Steve Griebling and Larry Yang. Operation Just Cause. General Powell loved the name because even our worst critics would have to say the words. Of course, it didn’t take long for those of us who’d been there to put a different spin on it. Why did we invade Panama? Just ‘cause we fuckin felt like it.Steve was among the twenty-three who didn’t come home. Larry and I opened the agency in Chinatown together, and Joe became a cop in the Fifth Precinct.The place is quiet, like usual. That’s what Joe likes about it—he never has to break up a pair of assholes trying to tango while he’s off duty. Two guys and a girl are shooting pool on red felt and a couple of regulars are watching the Rangers on TV when I pull up next to Joe at the bar. I order a couple of beers and shots even though he’s hardly touched the bee
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 4
4In the morning, I drag my broken desk down the stairs to the curb before meeting a client at a coffee shop. I tell her what she’ll see in the photos I took of her husband, if she wants to look at them. She only asks to see the one that shows his face the best so she can’t kid herself that it isn’t him. I am relieved by this show of good sense. Denial is probably the biggest cause of contested invoices in my line of work, but I also don’t need her crying all over the prints in the coffee shop where we conduct our business.With that done, I make a few inquiries among the neighborhood kids I’ve cultivated as informants. Whenever I have a few bucks to spare, I toss a Spider Man comic or a Playboy their way and get a good return on investment. Today, I ask them about Sammy Fong. They don’t know much except that he found the chopped up body of a dai lo, a gang big brother, and they want to tell me all about it in gory detail until I tell them I already know about that, like everybody el
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 5
5Back at my office, I pour myself a bourbon and set it down on the folding card table I’m using as a temporary desk. I need to slow down and think things through. Maybe it wasa suicide.My gut says no.I check my watch. I took the three blocks back to my office at a brisk walk and I’m not sure of exactly how much time has passed between the hanging and my discovery of the body. I reach for my glass and find myself picking up the phone instead. It’s just a hunch. I know it won’t prove anything. But before any more time can slip away, I’ve called the dharma center.An unfamiliar male voice answers: “Tashi delek!Diamond Path Dharma Center. How may I help you?”“Is Geshe Norbu available?”“He’s out on an errand. Would you like to leave a message?”I leave my name, then hang up and pull Gemma Ellison’s card from my wallet. I turn it over in my fingers and sip my drink, relaxing into the liquid heat and letting the impulse to keep making phone calls until I have some answ
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 6
6After Norbu leaves, I lock up the office and climb the stairs to the roof for a smoke. I can’t see squat from the top of my building, just graffiti on red brick in every direction with the skyscrapers in the gray drizzly distance, but I still like it up here better than down on the street when I need some nicotine to help me think. The car and truck exhaust is a little thinner up here, and maybe it’s my imagination but I think it makes the tobacco taste better.I stand on the gravely tar paper—not too close to the edge because I have a thing about heights—and by the time I’m on my second smoke, I’ve almost decided to drop the case. It’s getting way too hot and I’m only one day into it. I don’t need to piss off Joe and his buddies in blue any more than I already have. But something is niggling at me. I’m trying to figure out how to get at least one payment for legwork out of the monks before I bail, but when I think about telling Jigme Rinpoche that I can’t help him, there’s this re
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 7
7I hit abar near Columbus Park on my way home from the Dancing Crane. Not my usual, not my favorite. I’m one of three white guys in the place and the other two are already sloppy drunk. One of these clowns—short and sinewy with a tattoo of a four leaf clover poking out the sleeve of his white tee and a drooping eyelid that looks more like a birth defect than a sign of drunkenness—weaves into me on his way to the bathroom and nearly knocks me off my stool, sloshing whiskey and ice out of my glass before it can touch my lips for the first sip.I have time to register the clover and reflect that it’s not his lucky day before a familiar dark glee overtakes me. It’s like my mind just slipped from daylight into the Lincoln Tunnel, the echo of spinning tires off the tiles pulling me down through the pulsing lights into the dark place where nothing exists but this asshole’s face bouncing off the floor. I’m on top of him, pummeling him, shattering his cheekbone, ripping my knuckles raw
Last Updated : 2021-09-06The Wind in my Heart 8
8I grab the coffeeI’ve been craving and head to my office on foot. Chinatown is quiet today, still hung over from its New Year revels. I climb the ill-lit stairs with my ears pricked but find no ninja whores lurking in ambush today. Which doesn’t mean I’m lacking in female visitors; Gemma Ellison, the cute grad student from the teahouse, is waiting outside my door. My first thought is that she looks spooked, sweaty around the edges.“Ms. Ellison.”“Gemma, please.”“I’d say I’m pleased to see you, Gemma, but I get the feeling you’re not here to ask me out for another cup of tea.”“May I come in?”“Of course.” I unlock the office door and wave her through. She takes in the seedy but tidy environs, her eyes lingering on the card table serving as a desk.“You’ve caught me in the middle of some renovations,” I say.“No computer?” she asks.“Not in the budget. Maybe someday. Are you here for my services? If you need some kind of cyber spy, I’m afraid I’m not your man.”“Oh,
Last Updated : 2021-09-06
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The Wind in my Heart 18
18I’m less than a year into a life sentence at Great Meadow Correctional in Comstock, NY. Always thought I’d like to retire upstate someday, but for all I see of the outside, I may as well be in China. Paul Tien is back on the street, but Joe says the Fifth Precinct is keeping tabs on him. In October, the Dalai Lama’s visit to the Big Apple went off without a hitch, and things have settled down again for the monks of the Diamond Path Dharma Center. They have more time now for general meditation classes, hospital chaplaincy, and prison ministry visits.Far as I know, I’m the only Buddhist currently in residence. I took the refuge vows from Jigme Rinpoche the first time he visited me. Not monastic vows, not yet, just your garden variety vows to seek refuge in the three jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. But I already have a pretty monkish haircut, so who knows? I may get there. I’ve got time.For a while there, I thought my guru might be joining me full time. The police
The Wind in my Heart 17
17I was bornin the Year of the Ox.That’s my first thought when I wake up in the hospital again. The hospital where I was born. Mount Sinai. My next thought is that the confrontation with Paul Tien in the alley was a bad dream, that I’m still here from getting beaten by his goons; I never left.No. The room might look the same, but it’s different. Different wounds, too. And the first thought nags at me again before I can distract myself from it, like it’s been waiting by the bedside for me to wake up so it can poke my throbbing shoulder and whisper in my ear, demanding my attention.Your birthday is in January. Chinese New Year changes dates with the lunar cycle but it always comes later than the 14th. Often as late as February. You’re not a tiger, you’re an ox.Someone clears his throat. I turn my head to find Joe Navarro and Benny Chen staring at me.“Why?” Chen asks. Navarro doesn’t speak, but his eyes tell me everything. A soldier’s eyes, empty of anger and denial, of
The Wind in my Heart 16
16They won’t releaseme until the following day. The thought of the deductible makes my head hurt even more than the beating I took, but they want to monitor me for swelling of the brain. It’s the first time I’ve ever been afraid of my brain getting too big. Mostly I sleep and wish I could borrow another Walkman, but no opportunity presents for that. Maybe my luck has dried up, or I’ve pissed it all out on one of my unsteady trips to the bathroom.Eventually I put the cassette out of mind. Not like I can translate what’s on it, anyway. All I’ve got is a name and a vague memory of adjacent words I don’t understand.But after stewing over it for a while, I realize that’s not entirely true. I can count in Chinese, and I might have recognized a number. In fact, I’m pretty sure Paul Tien said the number er shi sanin the same sentence as Rinpoche’s name. Twenty-three.The date when Jigme Rinpoche is giving a public talk at the Union Square Theater. Saturday night.It’s somet
The Wind in my Heart 15
15As I regainconsciousness, my head wrapped tight in a bandage, my nose taped up and throbbing through the haze of pain medication dripping into my vein, I realize it’s my lucky day.Not because I’m still alive.Not because it could be worse.It’s because of the kid. He’s the first thing I see as I take in the room. I can’t see my roommate, don’t know what particular brand of suffering he or she is afflicted with because of the drawn curtain between our beds. I hear the murmur of conversation drifting through that curtain and see a middle-aged woman in slacks and a sweater standing at the edge of the curtain with her hand on a little girl’s shoulder, and the shadow of what might be a man beside the bed. But none of them catch my eye like the acne stricken adolescent boy hanging out by the door. He has headphones around his neck and a Walkman in his hand.Thankfully, it doesn’t hurt to turn my head. I look around my side of the room and spot my stained army jacket hanging on
The Wind in my Heart 14
14I’m still reeling when a young monk hands me an envelope stuffed with cash to cover my expenses and ushers me out the side door. I check for the undercover cop at the corner. When I don’t see him, I stuff the envelope into my jacket pocket and join the flow of pedestrians. Everything still looks a little brighter, more vibrant than usual, and one of the first things I see on the street is Jigme Rinpoche’s face again, smiling at me from a poster taped to an electrical box. Apparently he’s giving a public talk on mindfulness and compassion at the Union Square Theater on February 23rd. My step falters as I read the flyer, and for a moment I consider turning tail and marching back into the dharma center to ask him why he’s appearing in public when there might be assassins prowling around. But that’s Norbu’s alleged concern, not his.It’s only been a couple of days but enough has happened that I bet there might be something worth hearing on the cassette recorder I tucked behind the cei
The Wind in my Heart 13
13When I arrive at the dharma center on West 14th, there’s a plainclothes cop watching the entrance. Caucasian, buzz cut, I can just tell. And I don’t think he’s there waiting for a monk. It’s me they want to talk to and I haven’t been home or to the office. In my old jacket and lacking the trademark hat, I’m almost in disguise but there’s also nothing to hide my face so I duck into a corner store and buy a Yankees cap. There goes my lunch money. But with the bill pulled down, I’m able to blend in with the crowd on the street and slip up the garden path on the side of the building without getting collared.The side entrance puts me in the lobby with its high ceiling and art gallery atmosphere. I can see the cop on the street through the glass of the main entrance, the etched eternal knot superimposed over his restless form. At the front desk, where I expect to find Norbu manning the phone, I find a skinny young monk in glasses—one I haven’t seen before. I give him my name and tell h
The Wind in my Heart 12
12I wake up alone, morning light slanting through blinds, whispered words in Tibetan tumbling through my addled brain, and for a good half a minute I have no idea where I am. I’ve only seen this room by candlelight and it’s alien at first until my eyes find the deformed candle stumps, the ash trail of incense on a silver burner supporting the charred end of an exhausted stick, and the hilt of the phurbajutting out of its triangular base like a demonic birthday candle in a wedge of cake.The smell of coffee finds me, and I get out of bed, feeling grungy and sore, find my boxers on the floor and put them on before following the scent. I almost forego my tank undershirt, thinking I’ll hop in the shower soon, anyway, but it’s chilly now that I’m out from under the sheets, so I tug it on as I step into the living room.Gemma is in the kitchenette, washing a pan by the window. Another cold, gray day looms beyond her, backlighting her frizzy hair as she turns and smiles at me.I cl
The Wind in my Heart 11
11In the basement of my apartment building, I remove the buttons and zippers from my coat and pants before burning the clothes with my gloves in the furnace. It takes longer than I expected to reduce it all to ash, and all the while I worry I’m making a grave mistake. You can go to the cops about a body you found right up until you start destroying evidence. But having started down this path, I drop the buttons and zippers down a storm grate on my way to the bodega down the street for a bottle of ginger ale, a bag of ice, and a microwave dinner. The temperature plunged with the sun, and I’m shivering in my old Army jacket when I get back to the lobby with the grocery bag swinging from the raw bare hand that isn’t stuffed in a pocket. I’m gonna need new gloves.The phone rings while I’m eating and working on my second drink. I’m expecting it to be Joe Navarro calling from the lobby, but it’s not. It’s Gemma.“Miles? I hope you don’t mind me calling you at home. I got your number fro
The Wind in my Heart 10
10Detectives Navarro and Chen march me down the block to the park. My stomach is growling and I’d prefer it if we could do this over lunch, but I’m too broke and it sure doesn’t look like they’re buying. There’s some ham, mustard, and bread I can pick the mold off back in the mini fridge in my office, but for now I’m gonna have to go hungry just like all the methadone heads wandering the park. Well, at least I don’t have to worry about hurling my lunch over the side of a building this time. Remembering that stunt Chen pulled on me, my palms get sweaty, and for a few heady seconds I’m overcome by the impulse to lay my hands on his shoulders and push him into traffic. The urge is bright and hot, but it passes, and now we’re moving away from traffic, cutting left onto Union Square West.It doesn’t take long for the bumpy brick road to make my feet ache in these shoes, but glancing up at the rooftops, I revel in the sensation of connection to the ground. Navarro at my elbow, I fol
