I was stupefied. I didn’t know whether to clout him or just walk off. But where to? I’d done the starvation hit. “You’re off your frigging head, Steerforth.”
“Lovejoy.” We halted in the press, him grimly serious. “Hong Kong’s pretty. But it’s a fatal attraction.” As he spoke he seemed suddenly haggard. “It’s beauty, exhilaration, all of that. But it feeds on carnage, crime, deals so savage they make playgrounds of other cultures. I’ve seen it happen a thousand times, Lovejoy. You visitors come, Hong Kong’s the loveliest show on earth. Beneath, it’s vicious.”
Understanding drifted into my thick skull. He meant the jade woman. I was suddenly tired by the noise, too many complications. Life’s a battle, yes, but every minute, every single second, to the limit? Time I was off. There was still the Macao ferry. I hauled out Lorna’s money and gave him a rough split. Sundry people saw and exclaimed a long loud “Waaaaiiii!” in delight without breaking step.
“Don’t do it, Lovejoy.” He seemed so sad. “I need a partner with a gimmick. And you need my help.”
“Help? From you?” I was turning to go when a vast black saloon pulled up at the curb.
It nosed aside hawkers, bicycles, people. A fruit peddler’s packing-case stall went over.
Two men got out, suited, lank-haired, tidy. God, so tidy. The boss, a large iron man with a dumpy little pal, looked at me. My heart sank. These were very, very hard men.
“Lovejoy. In, please.” His consonants were almost elided.
“In?” I said foolishly. I glanced back at Steerforth in mute appeal. He only stood there in the light cast from the blinding jewelry shops, engulfed in sorrow.
“Can’t help you now, Lovejoy,” he said. The big man gave a fractional jerk of his head and Steerforth quickly stepped away. Three paces and he was gone.
“Er, listen, lads,” I began, optimistically relying on patter.
The leader said, “In.”
The car’s interior was icy with air-conditioning. I dragged on cold breath like an addict.
One thing, if this kidnap was a ransom job, they were on a loser.
Cars don’t go fast in Hong Kong. They try—how they try—and make a racket, but it’s useless. Despite the jerky crawl and not knowing where or what, I guessed a great deal about my captors during the journey. They were in the know about me. They belonged to an organization, gulp. And they had strict orders, which they were following to the letter. All this I knew when we passed the Digga Dig’s flashing sign. Under the impulse of a twinge of daft nostalgia I drew breath to speak, but the shorter bloke said a few Cantonese monosyllables to his mate and laughed. I stayed silent.
We drove for about twenty minutes, then crossed on the vehicular ferry to Central District. Nearer to the Macao terminus? For a second or two I peered hopefully about but we stayed in the car. During the entire short crossing, one of the goons simply stared at my face. I understood. I wasn’t to try anything. I tried asking where we were going but was head-shaken to silence. After that I simply watched the evening stir on the pavements, vaguely hoping to spot the way back. The flashing shop neons petered out, and we glided more smoothly in darkness torn here and there by tall lights. Villas, houses, garden walls, even trees, ornamental bushes. No police here, no chance of a quick sprint down the road home.
The gateway was beautiful, walls splayed aside for a huge pair of ornamental gates.
The high walls trailed blossomy fronds. Lanterns glowed. A notice in Chinese and English on burnished brass seemed to be telling the world pretty frankly that this was the residence of one Dr. Chao, MD. I stepped out before a marbled porch, soft lights, and flower perfumes. A fountain played in the walled garden. It looked murderously rich. Instantly the hot night drenched me to a sweaty sag, Hong Kong’s favorite trick.
My guardians pointed to the marble steps.
A small precise lady admitted me into coolth. She wore baggy black trousers and an overlap white tunic and flapped ahead of me to the biggest lounge I’d ever seen.
“You like our view, Lovejoy?”
An elderly man was standing beside the vast window. In fact it was more of a missing wall opening to a veranda. He beckoned me forward. He wore the Chinese man’s long cassocky cheongsam, high neck. Thin, bald, bespectacled, smoking a cigarette.
A smudge of distant midnight hills over a sheen of water, and the city below, reflecting a trillion minute glimmers. We seemed to be hovering in a marble airship over some giant fluorescent shoal. I got his point. Views mean wealth, not beauty.
“Hong Kong’s name is actually fairly recent.” He spoke in a cultured accent a million classes superior to my miserable speech. “It means Fragrant Harbor. A contradiction nowadays, I’m afraid. Harbor, yes. But fragrant…”He smiled, his thin features tautening into a cadaver’s. “Queen Victoria was furious when Captain Elliot took Hong Kong into her empire. She said it would never be a center of trade! The poor hero was punished—
made ambassador to Texas. A cruel joke, ne?”
“It’s exquisite,” I said. His fingers were the sort you sometimes find on ultra-moneyed people, long, slender, and satinskinned, hands that nocturnal slaves beaver to restore.
Watching the lights out in the dark, I suddenly shivered. Such beauty had nearly done for me.
“Cold?” Chao said.
“No. An angel walking on my grave.”
The old man seemed to blanch. “Angel? Grave?”
“A saying. When you tremble for naught. Like ghosts, y’know?” I smiled affably, but Chao stood frozen.
“Ghosts? You see ghosts, Lovejoy?”
“No,” I said, narked. “Just my joke.”
“Joke?” He took a step. I detected a faint quivering of his long robe. “These things are not for joking, Lovejoy.
