The copy from the Daily News was translated into the Chinese language dailies, which also added sidebars about the crowning achievements in the revered leader's life: he raised money for the Chinatown Daycare Center, operated a fund for widows and orphans, organized food and clothing donations to the needy, the elderly, the infirm. He was a Chinese saint.
The Hip things posted a fifty-thousand-dollar reward for information.
Jack tossed through the newspapers, knew he had to go beyond the machinations of the press, find what wasn't being written, neighborhood gossip and speculation not fit for print. He wanted unsubstantiated chatter from old women, the words of whores, of shiftless men in smoky coffee shops. The backstreets led him toward White Street, where he flipped the business card, and called Vincent Chin.
Chinatown's oldest newspaper, the United National, was located on White Street, nestled down behind the Tombs Detention Facility and the Federal buildings across from the Men's Mission.
The paper operated out of a renovated storefront in a building that was once a warehouse, a five-story brickfaced structure with ornate iron columns framing fire-escapes that jagged across the front exposure.
The National had a staff of twenty that included pressmen, reporters, editors, photographers, and managers. Compared to the other major Chinese dailies, it couldn't claim the highest circulation, or the lowest newsstand price. In fact, the National was the only paper without a color section, the only Chinese newspaper that still typeset by hand the thousand Chinese characters it needed to go to print. They had special typewriters for the different fonts, other machines for headlines and captions.
The United National sold for forty cents a copy and appeared on the newsstands every day but Sunday.
The Nationalwas Chinatown's hometown paper.
It had been Pa's favorite, his only newspaper.