No wonder there were only a couple of dozen. “But?”
“But she’ll cost you a fortune by the hour plus a lump fee.”
“A Japanese geisha?” I’d vaguely heard of those.
“Twice removed, Lovejoy.” He chucked back his drink. The bottle was on the table now.
“Once because of money; a jade woman is a millionairess by her eighteenth birthday.
And once because of the crime.”
“Whose crime?”
“You must understand.” He wasn’t sad, not really. Just being thoughtful. “When I say anything, I do mean any thing. Sex, extortion, prostitution, kidnapping, drugs, it’s a way of life. Here you can’t tell where normal life ends and crime begins. They’re interlinked.”
“She controls all those goings-on?”
“Not herself. She’s a Triad’s primary asset. Think of a Mafia clan, only more powerful.
The Triads own businesses, fleets, airlines, investment companies, do anything they bloody well want.”
Not the time to ask why Sim had stabbed poor old Del and left me to face the music.
“Do they control jobs in Hong Kong?”
“And protection rackets, smuggling. The police are supposedly the best in the world, but they have their own corruption.”
He took another swig. The maudlin stage. Was this the time? Lead in slowly.
“Didn’t you have to get the, er, Triad’s approval when you promised me a job?”
He snuffled a laugh. The glass clinked and the bottle glugged empty. “Me? You know how people describe Hong Kong? As a wart on the Pearl River’s arse. And me? I’m not even a flea on that wart, Lovejoy. You’re less. We are dispensable. I’m tolerated because I’m the littlest flea. I’ll never make a takeover bid of anything. I’m safe, causing no ripples on my particular puddle. Remember that, Lovejoy, and you’ll stay alive.”
“You’ve a nice place here,” I said, straight out of a 1940s tec movie. “Why do you need me?”
“Fighters go in pairs in flak,” he said, rousing himself with difficulty. “I need an oppo who can sus antiques while that fucking great liner’s in. Like you did with that bloody-awful jade thing you spotted in the market. Twenty percent do you?”
“Thirty,” I said, reflexly thinking, of what? Indeed, for what?
“Greedy rotten bastard,” he said. His eyes were closing in slumber. “But I’m boss for each couple, got that?”
“All right.” Couple? I shrugged mentally.
He waved an arm. “Doss on the settee. Out tennish tomorrow. To the bathhouse.”
“Can’t I shower here?” Maybe the water was off or something.
He struggled up and blundered towards his bedroom. “Course you can.”
The door slammed on his muttering. I took my coffee and went to the window. I watched the crowds below, the galaxy of lights, for an hour or more. Leaning out I could just see a patch of the harbor’s slinky blackness, with small riding lights crystallized about the fleet of junks half a mile off.
Liner? Antiques on a cruise ship? Or something to do with Goodman’s looming sale?
This possible chance of antiques altered things. Tomorrow to Macao to sponge off Algernon, as I’d planned? Or phone Janie to cable me money to get the hell out to somewhere else? Or stay and hide here with the obscure James Steerforth? When in doubt go to earth, even if it’s with a wino. I was sure I’d heard that name somewhere before…
I creaked to the sofa, where I slept like a log.
9
« ^ »
BATHHOUSE day. Me and Steerforth breakfasted differently—me on toast and tea, him on air and water. He looked like death. I’d washed my clothes in the early dawn. They’d dried hung outside the window in an instant, probably why hanging washing out on upstairs poles was the local tradition. I’d showered—much rather bathe any day—and felt quite fit. I’d slept with my money in my sock.
Traffic herds were already snarling as we walked twenty yards along the street, tennish.
The air was cooler. All this is not to suggest tranquillity. A stroll in Hong Kong is a furnace of people, peddlers, everybody haggling.
“Here, Lovejoy.” Steerforth was coughing steadily on his fourth cigarette of the day. “In you go. See you about one.”
“Three hours?” A bath only takes five minutes. “Where’re you off?”
“Another bathhouse down the road. Be back at the flat.”
The price was marked on the window. An actual glass front, opaque designs in red. I nodded uneasily. “Look. Is this some local custom? Only…”
“It’s the only way to acclimatize, Lovejoy.”
Well, as we were partners of a kind, I’d play along. In and out in a few minutes, then a stroll. I was in for a shock.
Not boasting or anything, but I’m pretty clean. Okay, I admit my clothes are off-the-peg. My jacket was a gift
