Restaurant indeed. Fat Lady Lau’s was perhaps the greatest whorehouse in the world and Ringer led him to it, believing he was going over to the island for egg rolls and chop suey. The moment Cohen entered the double doors of Fat Lady Lau’s his life changed. His sexual imagination was ignited and a new door opened for Cohen.
He smiled to himself as he remembered that night. The living room was lit by pink candles, and Chinese minstrels played somewhere out of sight. The buffet! The buffet was a succulent miracle. Every imaginable delicacy was on that table. Caviar from Black Sea sturgeon, garlicky sparrow’s wings the way they do it in Canton, shark’s fin and mushroom soup spiced with Chinese vinegar, slices of Peking duck served on
And the women! Cohen was mesmerized. They were all revealed in that soft, flickering candlelight — tantalizing shadows and each one an individual, each dressed in her own manner, under the approving eye of Fat Lady.
One was wearing a naughty French nightgown, another a lacy thing with nothing under it, still another a black garter belt and corset, There was a tall Peruvian beauty wearing a high-necked Victorian blouse and not another stitch, a Nubian princess wearing a teddy as thin as air. There were women from every remote corner of the world. Eurasians and Japanese and Chinese and Thais and Egyptians and Greeks and French. There were Africans and Israelis. There was even an American Indian princess and a pair of Eskimo twins they called the Mucklucks, who always performed together in a mirrored room.
My rite of passage was a truly remarkable experience, thought Cohen with a smile.
Fat Lady Lau, who was anything but — as tall and slender as a French model, all high cheekbones and broad shoulders — was the one untouchable prize in a place where everything else was given away or for sale.
‘Why do they call her Fat Lady?’ Cohen asked.
Ringer replied, ‘Because this, my friend, is what fat city is all about.’
Her trained eyes immediately recognized Cohen as a virgin, and she chose a rare prize for him. She left the room and returned with Tiana. Cohen relished the memory — that tiny thing, shorter than Cohen, a mere child of sixteen, wrapped in a sarong, her hair combed in a tight little bun held in place by orchids and azaleas, with black bangs brushed down over her forehead. She smiled at Cohen, the softest smile he had ever seen, then she reached out and took his hand — and led him to paradise. She led him up to her room and Cohen could remember vividly every candlelit corner, the colors of the down pillows piled in one corner, the large old-fashioned tub with brass legs in the other, remembered her selecting each morsel of the delicacies set on a table and feeding it to him, mixing the tastes with such talent that simply eating was an aphrodisiac.
Then she slowly undressed him, massaging every muscle in his body before she reached up and removed the combs and flowers from her black hair and let it tumble down over her shoulders. Then she sat up, unwound the sarong and dropped it on the floor and stood there letting him admire her body before she led him to the tub, which was filled with mud so hot he could hardly bear it, then tantalizing him and then screwing him until he was close to insanity. Cohen’s blood thundered through his veins as he remembered it.
Cohen never left. Never went back to the boat, or any of the boats after that. His world became Hong Kong and that Victorian mansion in Wanchai, sampling, sampling, sampling, learning to speak of love in every language and making love in every marvelously deviate way imaginable.
And then Cohen discovered something else about himself, a side of his personality that had lain dormant for twenty-seven years. He discovered that at heart he was a born scoundrel to whom a scam was far more interesting than the market or dollar fluctuations or commodities. Cohen discovered smuggling, brokering illegal gold, outwitting the customs boats to bring contraband into the colony. He also learned that in the Crown Colony, information was as valuable as goods. He and Tiana became friends as well as lovers. She taught him Chinese, he taught her English. The Oriental life-style was like a magnet to him.
It was from the Chinese that Cohen first heard about the Tsu Fi, the Old Man Who Bites Like a Dragon. The Tsu Fi dallied with the taipans of the Central District through silken puppet strings, they said. No secrets were denied him. He was feared by the most powerful of the Western robber barons. To cross the Tsu Fi, they said, was to cross the gods. In Cohen’s mind, the Tsu Fi was the gatekeeper to the pantheon. Meeting him and sharing his secrets became Cohen’s obsession. But the Tsu Fi was difficult and did not trust
One night at Fat Lady Lau’s, Tiana opened the door to the pantheon.
A customer who came occasionally had confided that a rich woman had hired him to kill her husband. She knew few details except that the woman’s name was the same as a flower’s. Cohen checked
He checked with friends in the banking towers of Connaught Street and that night he asked Tiana to arrange an audience with the Tsu Fi.
‘But, Robert, he will not do business with
‘Tell him this
The plan was audacious, which was one of the reasons it had appealed to Cohen. But he knew business, that was one thing he knew very well. What a coup if this
