“You mean they don’t know what’s going on here?”
Kim shrugged. “Hell, Inspector, I don’t even know most of the time.”
We laughed. Neither of us thought it was funny.
2
My plane landed in Hong Kong around five o’clock on a muggy afternoon. I waited around in the airport for a couple of hours until the ferry left for Macau. We pulled up to the dock around eight at night; it was so humid that the raindrops were sweating. The immigration officer was bored, but not so bored that he didn’t look at every page in my passport. Then he did it again, this time flicking each page with a sharp click, letting me know he wasn’t fooled one little bit by all the travel that never happened. Finally, he stamped it wearily, unwilling to make an issue of what he knew could not be easily dismissed. He handed it back, never looking at me, as one might not look at a bag of garbage dropped at the front door.
When I gave the cabdriver the piece of paper with the hotel’s address, he studied it for a long time. “OK,” he said finally. He shouted into his phone, and I heard laughter from the other end. We drove down a wide street lined with casinos, neon signs dancing and shouting and making a mess of the night. Finally, we turned onto a quiet street, went another block, and then turned again. The hotel was a hole-in-the-wall between two dark buildings that looked abandoned. There was lettering over the entrance, “Hotel Nam Lo,” and a piece of poster board just inside the door with pictures of the rooms. They looked bleak. The front desk was up a flight of stairs that led to a lobby big enough for a person to turn around and go back downstairs to find another place. Kim had said I should be grateful that I had a hotel. He had never met the desk clerk. The clerk looked up and shouted at me in Cantonese. Years ago I learned that having to cope with too many tones in a language makes a person angry. Who wants to go through all that effort to say something that someone else can coast through in a monotone? I let him vent.
“Three nights!” he said at last, in Mandarin. Having to deal in only four tones seemed to calm him down. “You must really think you’re something. For everyone else, the rooms are for a shorter time. A couple of hours, but not you! Must be some pills you got.”
“Is there a problem with three days?”
“No problem, as long as you aren’t doing something weird. I don’t want police around.”
“OK by me.”
“Absolutely nothing with animals.”
“Nothing with hooves.”
He put on his glasses and gave me a hard look. “Pay in advance. Extra day for damages.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Might be. That’s why you pay in advance.”
The room was up another flight of stairs. It was exactly like the picture, small and grim. I edged in. There was space enough for a ratty chair and one lamp with a minibulb. The television didn’t work; the phone made gurgling sounds when I accidentally knocked it off the hook.
Thumping noises came through the wall from the room next to mine, but nothing that sounded like an emergency. I wasn’t tired; it wasn’t that late yet. I knew I’d strangle myself if I stayed in the room for another minute, so I went for a walk. One block to the right of the hotel were buildings with pulsating signs; the block to the left was deserted, empty, almost completely dead. A couple of jewelry shops were open, but the clerks were dozing with their heads on the counters.
Climbing the stairs back to my room, I passed a young girl coming down-short skirt, white mesh stockings. She had green eyes; even in the dim light of the stairwell you couldn’t have missed those eyes.
“Watch yourself,” I said in Russian. “It’s dark outside.”
“You speak Russian.” She paused on the step below mine and looked back up at me with her green eyes. She wasn’t more than twenty.
“I speak Russian,” I said. “Go home; go back to your family.”
“In five months,” she said. “Good night.”
It was simple, I thought as the stairway swallowed her. When you’re young, five months can solve everything.
3
The next day, as soon as I found the right person, I would be able to see what was bothering Kim. The problem was finding the right person. It was already warm by eight in the morning, with the promise of humidity breathing down my neck. Even so, the sky sparkled; the streets were noisy with buses and taxis and motorbikes. It felt like a different town from what I’d seen last night. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Everybody I asked was polite, but no, it was not possible for them to interact with me on an official basis without express approval of the proper authority. And who would that be? It was impossible to reveal without the authorization of that excellent person. At last, I was told that if I went to the post office in Senado Square and asked at window five, there would be a message waiting. The square was not far away; the clerk at window five produced the message as if passing messages were her main job. I was to call a certain phone number before noon. It was nearly 11:55, and there wasn’t a phone in the post office-a machine selling all manner of phone cards, yes, but an actual telephone? The clerk shrugged. I spotted four phones in the office behind her. No, she said, and closed her window, it was not possible for an unofficial person to use one of those official phones. Perhaps, I said, the clerk would be kind enough to point me in the general direction of a pay phone? She recited the directions: “Outside, turn right, go up the square-though it isn’t really a square,” she said, “more like a cardboard box that has collapsed at one end-past St. Dominic’s, which is yellow and not easy to miss, bear right, turn left at the ice-cream shop, and there, about twenty-five meters on the right, will be two phones. Only one of them works, unless, as sometimes happens, neither does.” She gave me a faraway smile. “One never knows.”
I trotted on the path she indicated and found what she promised. The phone on the left had a dial tone. I threw in all manner of coins and was connected to a male voice. It was 11:59.
“Ah, Inspector, I’ve been wondering if you had decided to go home.”
“The idea occurred to me.” I had no idea who I was talking to, which put me at a disadvantage, because the person on the other end seemed to know me. “We might have saved time if you had left this number at my hotel.”
“But we did; we did! The old man at the front desk didn’t give it to you?”
“He did not.”
“In that case, where did you get the number?”
“At the post office.”
“Indeed!”
“Perhaps we should meet, assuming you are the excellent person who can help me.”
“God helps those who help themselves, Inspector.” It was possible that Kim had told this man to expect me. Or Pang. Or even Zhao. The passport didn’t list my title, and for purposes of this trip I was a diamond salesman, which I had put down on the immigration card. “But I do what I can. It might be wise if we continued our conversation in my office.”
“And where would that be?”
“The location is not well known.”
“Perhaps you could tell me-quickly. I think I’m running out of coins.”
