And there Phyllis Surton and I made slow happy love, for twenty percent over base rate. Like I say, women are odd. She could have saved the gelt and bought a new dress. Gray, natch.
During the owl hours I took the finished canvas and taxied to the studio. There I unscrewed enough ventilation paneling to conceal my duplicate Song Ping, did it up and cracked a bottle in celebration. If the Triad knew I’d done a twindle they’d kill me. Even though, done so slapdash, it had all the faults the meticulous studio version hadn’t. I was so pleased with myself I almost raised my glass to toast the hidden cameras.
34
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THE day the sky fell down, the South China Morning Post started by frightening me to death. I rushed back to the stall and shakily got a copy. And there she was, Janie, smiling from the middle of the front page. Mr. Markham, international merchant broker, whose firm co-sponsored entrants in the Macao motor and motorcycle races, was seen here arriving at Kai Tak Airport. Mrs. Markham was expected to do the honors and start a big event in three days’ time. I was so shaken I skulked into a taxi and zoomed out of Central District.
Go to Little Hong Kong—“Aberdeen” to most—where the harbor road runs between a steepish hillside and the vast motionless fleet of sampans locked in sediment. On the landward pavement open-air barbers work away under canvas awnings. I’d just been finished, hot towels and all, paid the man (watch out—it’s twice the price at festivals) and followed the team of dragon-boaters to see the launching.
All year the local dragon boat hangs on a wall by the barbers, until the famous races, when the water villages pick their strongest paddlers, most garish team colors, and argue nonstop about which offerings to which gods will bring most luck on race day. I’ll bet you’ve never seen a boat so long and thin. A zillion spectators gathered to exclaim in admiration. I’d a hundred dollars on the nose.
Dragon boats can’t go without a noisy drummer and exploding firecrackers and gong music encouraging any passing spirit to lend a metaphysical hand. I watched the team’s paddles making splendid flurry as the craft moved off. The crew, two abreast, generated more spray than forward motion but I was optimistic. I’d got three to one after spying on the Wan Chai boat.
“Don’t back them, Lovejoy. They’re to come in sixth.”
“Wotcher, Titch. They’ll do it, you see.” He’d positioned himself by a junk builder’s slipway. “No message for me about a certain lady, you idle sod?”
“She’s not in Hong Kong anymore. She’s gone to USA.”
A bad day getting worse. I looked away. “She okay?”
“They say so.”
“Thanks, Titch.” I pulled out money to pay him. “Any further news, let me know, eh?” I stared back at the scudding dragon boat, the jerky files of paddles. “It isn’t that I miss her, Titch. I mean, a bird’s only a bird, but…”
He trundled off among the pedestrians. A street market began a few yards away, his natural habitat. I shrugged about Marilyn. Good luck, love, glad you’re out of it. Here’s likely to worsen. I’d make sure of that.
A taxi driver fetched an urgent message long before my team had rowed the distance.
Steerforth, seven-thirty, cruise liner at the Ocean Terminal. “Clients BG,” he’d scribbled.
I was so anxious trying to pump the driver for information about odds on the New Territories’ dragon boats that we’d reached Kennedy Town before the penny dropped.
Brookers Gelman. Lulu back in town?
Leung and Ong were waiting for me when I emerged from the Treble Gold Bathorama.
I hurt Leung’s feelings by spurning his proffered sunflower seeds. The venue was a building I’d never seen before. “Major Money Hotel,” Ong translated the neon entrance sign. I wondered if these blokes ever got tired. I couldn’t imagine them resting, doing anything other than marshaling cars, signaling their hoodlums to go there, do that, phone ahead. I admired them.
Inside was plush, shady cool. I was conducted to a conference room by a pretty hostess. Chairs were arranged in an oval, oddly no table or papers. A conference was already in progress. Dr. Chao in his traditional garb, Ling Ling blinding me in yellow with heart-stealing pale jade earrings older than the world, two of her women fashioneers, Sim, Fatty wheezing away, Ramone, Sun Sen, and about a dozen others, Chinese men in dark suits arranged like a jury. Another score or so, diverse nationalities, sat facing them. All were new to me. Leung, Ong, and sundry fokis stood by doors. Amahs fetched drinks to tiny individual stands by each chair. My chirpiness left the instant I sat because they were speaking in English and nobody stopped talking. Previously, they’d used Cantonese. I felt my knees tremble. The Triad was in session.
“We’ve the emerald problem solved,” a dapper South American titch was saying.
From Ling Ling: “Does any official Colombian government contractor obtain more than thirty percent of the excavated emeralds? It would be troublesome to buy them out.”
“Not for two years, Little Sister. In diamonds, which lost four-fifths of their value in a five-year downturn, we’ve seen a strong recovery sustained since 1987.”
“Excellent,” Dr. Chao said. “Now, aeroplane components?”
A surprisingly matronly European lady, Italian my guess, quickly summarizing the state of play in holding airlines and air forces to ransom over spare parts. She spoke with determination, a schoolmarm threatening detention.
“A seven percent increment,” she said, adding quickly as the listeners stirred unhappily,
“but we predict an annual nineteen points next year. National labor difficulties—”
“Thank you.” Dr. Chao wanted no details. “Medical?”
An Oxford-accented Cantonese told us precisely how new outbreaks of meningitis in the Middle East had helped enormously in cornering markets in certain antibiotics, how fake chemotherapeutics and vaccines had improved
