A Lotus for Miss Quon

1

HE had come upon the diamonds one hot Sunday afternoon in January.

It had happened in this way: he had had a solitary lunch prepared by Dong Ham, his cook and served by Haum, his house-boy, and then he had gone up to his bedroom for a siesta. In spite of the air-conditioned coolness of the room, he had been unable to sleep. He had listened with growing irritation to the high-pitched chatter of his servants below, the discordant sound of someone’s distant radio playing Vietnamese music and the nerve shattering racket of passing motor cycles.

Usually, he was able to sleep in the afternoon in spite of the noise, but this afternoon he had found sleep impossible. He had reached for a cigarette, lit it and then resigned himself to the depression of his thoughts.

He had come to loathe Sundays in Saigon. When he had first arrived, he had found the social round amusing, but now it bored him. He was bored by the same faces, the same idiotic: small-talk, the same dreary scandals, and he had gradually withdrawn from the set who ate, drank, and danced together day in and night out.

During the week, he had his work to distract him. He worked for a shipping company - not a particularly interesting job, but the pay was good: a lot better than he could have hoped to have earned back home in San Francisco. He needed money for he had extravagant tastes: he drank more than was good for him, and also he was saddled with monthly payments to his ex-wife who had divorced him a few months before he had sailed to the Far East.

Now as he lay on the bed, feeling a trickle of sweat running down his massive chest, he thought bleakly that in three days’ time, he would have to send his wife yet another cheque. He had only 8,000 piastres in the bank. When she had been paid, he would have very little left to last him to the end of the month which was quite some time ahead. Well, it served him right, he thought. He had been reckless to have bought that picture. It had been quite an unnecessary extravagance, but all the same, he thought of it with great pleasure. He had come across it in a dealer’s shop in Duong Tu-Do, and it had immediately arrested his attention. It was an oil painting of a Vietnamese girl wearing the national dress of white silk trousers, a pale-blue sheath tunic and a conical straw hat. She was posed against a white wall over which climbed a rose-coloured bougainvillea. It was a set piece, but well painted, and the girl reminded him of Nhan. She had the same innocent expression; the same childish way of standing, even the same doll-like features. The girl in the painting could have been Nhan but for the fact he knew Nhan had never posed for an artist.

It was then that he remembered the picture was still unpacked and still had to be hung. He felt the urge to see how it looked on the wall in the downstairs room. Eager for an excuse to do something other than lying on his bed, he got up and walked barefooted down the stairs into the living-room.

Haum, his house-boy, was leisurely polishing the dining-room table. He looked up in startled surprise as Jaffe came into the room.

Haum was thirty-six years old. He was thin and small and his brown-skinned face had a pointed, foxy look. Although small and brittle-looking, he worked well and seemed able to undertake the heaviest tasks without appearing to tire.

“Get me a hammer, a good-sized nail and the steps,” Jaffe said. Then as Haum gaped at him as if he thought he had gone out of his mind, he went on, “I have bought a picture. I want to hang it on the wall.”

Haum’s face cleared. He smiled, revealing gold-capped teeth.

“At once, sir,” he said and went swiftly from the room.

Jaffe went over to where the painting stood against the wall, still in its paper and string. He stripped off the paper and stood the painting on the table and looked at it.

He was still regarding it with a half-smile when Haum came in with the step-ladder, a hammer, and a nail clenched in his teeth. He set the ladder against the empty wall where the picture was to hang, then moved curiously to Jaffe’s side to examine the picture.

Jaffe watched him as he looked at the picture. There was no change of expression, but he was aware that there was a disapproving atmosphere which was felt but not seen. He knew that Haum didn’t approve of him having a Vietnamese mistress and he knew too that Haum thought that by hanging this picture on the wall, Jaffe was deliberately rubbing Haum’s nose in the fact that he did have a Vietnamese mistress.

This was, of course, not so. Jaffe minded very much what his servants thought of him. He minded what anyone thought of him. He had always been careful about his relations with Nhan. It was important to him that neither she nor he should be the subject of gossip, but here in Saigon, it was impossible to keep anything quiet: particularly an association between a man and a woman.

With a rapidity that angered and amazed Jaffe, the news that he had met a Vietnamese taxi-dancer at the Paradise Club in Cholon, and had fallen in love with her and she came regularly to his house had spread throughout the Saigon European community in next to no time. This in spite of the fact that he had taken every precaution not to be exposed to gossip. Nhan came only after dark. She slipped into the house like a ghost. She invariably left before dawn, yet all the European residents knew what was going on and gossiped about it in that bored, sophisticated way they have in Saigon when discussing other people’s sexual adventures.

Although his two servants slept in a little building just across the courtyard that served both as a kitchen and their sleeping quarters, they too knew when Nhan visited him, but being Vietnamese, they were more intolerant and more critical than his European friends. They hinted silently by their attitude and expressions that he had lost face by taking a Vietnamese girl as a mistress instead of one of the many married or unmarried European women who were to be had for the asking.

Jaffe had met Nhan Lee Quon one evening at the Paradise Club in Cholon: a dimly-lit, noisy dance hall where unattached Europeans mixed with the Chinese and the Vietnamese in search of female company.

The Club was run by a fat, cheerful Chinese who called himself Blackie Lee. He ran the club at a considerable profit, and because of his big clientele, he was able to hire the prettiest and youngest Vietnamese and Chinese girls.

The girls could be hired for about 120 piastres an hour or roughly a dollar and a half of American money. Their job was to dance with you, to share your table and talk with you if you felt disinclined to dance, and generally keep you company. If you wished to develop the association, then you made your own arrangements with the girl. This was something Blackie Lee didn’t want to know about. The girls were hired by him from nine-thirty p.m. until midnight when restrictions imposed by the authorities forced all dancehalls and every form of night life to close down. So if you were in a hurry, you paid Blackie for the girl’s time, paid the doorman fifty piastres and left with the girl who either took you to her apartment or to a hotel for a sum you had agreed upon before leaving the club.

When Jaffe had first come to Saigon, he had felt the urgent need of female company. For the first two or three months, he had followed the recognized procedure and had slept with the numerous married European women who had nothing better to do than to exploit their somewhat tarnished sexual attractions, but he quickly found such associations led to complications, and he wanted, more than anything else, to lead an uncomplicated life.

A friend of his, Charles Mayhew, an old man who had lived for years in the Far East, had advised him to take a Vietnamese or a Chinese girl for a mistress.

“A man needs a woman in this climate,” he had said. “The trouble in this town is that the vast majority of European women have nothing to do. Their servants do everything for them. When a woman has nothing to do, she can get into mischief just as quickly as any man who has nothing to do. This is, of course, one of the evils of the East. Women who come out here find they have the whole day on their hands and those with the inclination, look around for an unattached man. They are the ones to beware of. If I had my time over again, I wouldn’t have anything to do with a European woman unless I intended to marry her. I would take a Vietnamese or a Chinese girl, and I advise you to do the same.”

Jaffe had shaken his head with a grimace.

“Not for me,” he said. “I don’t care for coloured women.”

Mayhew had laughed.

“I’ll tell you this: an Asian girl is far less complicated and demanding than a European girl. She is far less expensive and considerably more competent in bed. You must remember that Asian women have a tradition for pandering to the comfort and wishes of men, and that is important. You talk to Blackie Lee. He’ll find you someone. Not all his taxi girls are prostitutes, you know. He has quite a few who are very decent and hard-working. You talk to him. He’ll find you someone.”

“Thanks for the suggestion,” Jaffe said, “but not for me.”

Eventually, however, it was the boredom and the loneliness of the week-ends that finally drove Jaffe to the Paradise Club. He had been surprised by the friendly atmosphere of the place and equally surprised that the evening had passed so quickly. He had danced with a number of the girls and had found them amusing. He had spent some time drinking whisky with Blackie Lee and he had found the fat Chinese pleasant company. The evening didn’t cost him all that much either.

Jaffe began to go to the club regularly. It certainly solved the problem of what to do with himself in the evenings. A Month or Mater, Blackie Lee had casually suggested Jaffe should take a regular girl.

“There is a girl who could do with some help,” he had said. “She has a big family to support. I’ve talked to her, and she’s willing. It’s better to have regular girl. Do you want to meet her?”

“What’s this about a big family?” Jaffe had asked, frowning. “Do you mean she’s married with a string of kids?”

Blackie Lee had giggled.

“She isn’t married. She has a mother, three young brothers and an old uncle to support. I’ll send her over. If she suits you, tell her. I’ve fixed everything.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Jaffe had said, but he was interested. “Let’s see her anyway.”

It was while Jaffe was standing on the step ladder, carefully marking with a pencil the place where he was to drive the nail on which to hang the picture, that he recalled his first meeting with Nhan Lee Quon.

He had been sitting at a table well away from the noisy Philippine band. The dance floor was crowded. The lighting in the hall was so dim that it was impossible to distinguish the dancer’s features. It was impossible too to recognize anyone sitting within ten feet of you, and this obscurity gave him a sense of relaxation and isolation.

Nhan Lee Quon had appeared by his side, silently and unexpectedly. He had been looking down the aisle between the tables, hoping to catch sight of her before she reached his table, but she had approached him from behind.

She was wearing the Vietnam national costume. She had on white silk trousers over which was a rose-coloured tunic sheath of nylon. Her black glossy hair was parted in the centre of her small head and hung in soft waves to her shoulders. Her perfect skin was the colour of very old ivory. Her bridgeless nose, her lips, slightly thicker than the lips of a European woman, and her fine black eyes gave her a doll-like appearance. Her bone structure was so delicate that she reminded Jaffe of an intricate carving of ivory.

She smiled at him and he had never seen such strong white teeth.

His eyes moved curiously from her face to her throat encased in the high collar of her tunic and then down to the two mounds that thrust out the rose-pink sheath in a pathetic but defiant voluptuousness.

Jaffe had heard all about the deceptiveness of the Vietnam girl’s figure. Sam Wade who was something unimportant in the American Embassy had enlightened him when he had first come to Saigon.

“Look, fella,” Wade had said, “don’t let those curves kid you. These dolls are built like boys. They are as flat in front as they are behind. It was only when they saw Lollo and Bardot on the movies that they wised up to what they lacked. You take a walk through the market. You’ll see where they get those shapes. I reckon a set of falsies is the hottest sales project in this police ridden hell-hole of a city.”

“I am Nhan Lee Quon,” the girl had said as she sat down opposite Jaffe. She spoke excellent French. “You may call me Nhan.”

They stared for a long moment at each other, then Jaffe stubbed out his cigarette, aware of a sudden tingling excitement.

“I’m Steve Jaffe,” he said. “You may call me Steve.”

It had been as simple as that.

Jaffe reached down for the nail which Haum gave him. He positioned the point of the nail exactly on his pencil mark, then he accepted the hammer Haum handed up to him. He gave the head of the nail a sharp tap.

In this way, he found the diamonds.

2

Under the impact of the hammer against the head of the nail, a six-inch square segment of the wall collapsed in a flurry of plaster and dust, revealing a deep hole.

Jaffe, poised on the step-ladder, stared with consternation at the damage he had caused, then he said violently, “Oh, double hell!”

Haum, expressing himself in the Vietnamese manner of showing grief, laughed in a high cackle that infuriated Jaffe.

“Oh, shut up!” He exclaimed and put the hammer down on the top rung of the ladder. “Why goddam it, the wall’s made of paper!”

Then it occurred to him that the wall wasn’t made of paper but was at least the thickness of two feet, and the hole in the wall was a cunning hiding place: a hidden safe which probably had been there for a long time.

Cautiously, he dipped his hand into the dark opening. His fingers touched something. He lifted out a small leather bag, and as he did so, the rotten bottom of the bag disintegrated, and from it poured bright, sparkling objects that bounced on the parquet floor.

He recognized the tiny objects as diamonds. They made a disjointed pattern of fiery brilliance around the foot of the ladder. He stared down at their glittering magnificence. Although his knowledge of diamonds was no more than the average man’s, he knew these stones were worth an enormous sum of money. There seemed to be at least a hundred of them; the majority of them were the size of pea seeds. He felt his mouth turn dry and his heart begin to thump with excitement.

Squatting down on his haunches, Haum made a tutting sound with his tongue; a sound the Vietnamese make when they are excited. He picked up one of the diamonds and examined it.

Jaffe watched him.

There was a long pause, then Haum glanced up and the two men stared at each other. With some hesitancy because of Jaffe’s tenseness, Haum smiled, revealing his gold-capped teeth.

“These diamonds, sir,” he said, “belonged to General Nguyen Van Tho. The police have been searching for them for years.”

Very slowly, as if he were walking on egg shells, Jaffe climbed down from the ladder and squatted beside his servant.

Jaffe was an immensely powerfully-built man. He was over six feet tall. His shoulder span would have satisfied two averagely built Europeans. In his younger days, he had been a fanatical physical culture enthusiast. He had gone in for weight-lifting, football, boxing and wrestling. Even after a five year lay off, he was still in pretty good condition, and as he squatted down beside Haum, the physical difference between the two men was sharply contrasted. Beside Jaffe’s muscular bulk, the Vietnamese seemed like an undernourished pigmy.

Jaffe picked up one of the diamonds and rolled it between his fingers.

These stones, he thought, must be worth a million dollars - probably more. Talk about the Jaffe luck! I drive a goddam nail into a goddam wall and make a goddam fortune!

Haum said, “The general was a very rich man. It was known that he had bought diamonds. Then the bomb killed him. His Excellency will be very pleased the diamonds have been found.”

Jaffe felt his heart give a little kick against his ribs. He looked at Haum who was smiling happily at the diamond he was holding.

“What are you talking about?” Jaffe asked. He straightened up, towering above the squatting Vietnamese. “What general?”

“General Nguyen Van Tho,” Haum said. “He was in the pay of the French. He did much harm before the bomb killed him. He robbed the Army of much money and with the money he bought these diamonds. Before he could get away, the bomb went off.”

Jaffe moved over to the table and picking up a pack of cigarettes, he shook out a cigarette and lit it. He noticed his hand was unsteady.

“What makes you think these diamonds belong to the general?” he asked, thinking here was an immediate complication. He suddenly remembered that Haum was an ardent supporter of the present regime and that he had a photograph of President Ngo-Dinh-Diem hanging in the cook house. He remembered too that Haum went twice a week to attend a course in political science. He suddenly realized the significance of these facts. It was sheer bad luck that this little Vietnamese should have been in the room when Jaffe had found the diamonds.

He would have to handle this situation carefully, Jaffe thought, if he was going to keep the diamonds, and he had every intention of keeping them.

“Who else could they belong to?” Haum asked. He began to pick up the diamonds, collecting them in the palm of his hand. “This house was once owned by Mai Chang.”

Scarcely listening, Jaffe was thinking, the little swine is handling those stones as if they belong to him. If I’m not careful, he’ll march out of here and hand them to his precious President.

“Who is Mai Chang?” he asked and then his mind shifted to the problem of how to dispose of the diamonds. Certainly not in Vietnam. He would have to smuggle them into Hong Kong; he would have no difficulty in selling them there.

“She was the general’s woman,” Haum said con-temptuously.”When he died, she went to prison. This was her house. The general must have hidden these stones here for safety.”

“If the authorities knew the woman lived here, why didn’t they come and find the diamonds?” Jaffe asked.

“It was thought the diamonds had been stolen,” Haum said, reaching under a chair to pick up a stray diamond. “It was supposed the general had them on him when the bomb went off, and in the confusion, someone took them from his body.”

“What bomb?” Jaffe asked, merely to gain a little time. He was wondering how he could persuade Haum to keep quiet about the diamonds. He would have to be very tactful. He would have to give Haum a face-saving reason why he should hand the diamonds over to him and to persuade him to accept some of the proceeds. Jaffe couldn’t imagine Haum would refuse a sum of money if it were offered to him in a diplomatic way.

“It was while the general was trying to escape that someone threw a bomb at him,” Haum said. He stood up and stared at the diamonds glittering in his hand.

Jaffe moved to his desk and took out a white envelope from the paper rack. Casually, he approached Haum. Tut them in here,” he said, pinching open the envelope. Haum hesitated, then he poured the diamonds into the envelope. He made a tentative move to take the envelope from Jaffe, but Jaffe had already started to move away from him. Jaffe licked the flap of the envelope, then sealed it. He put the envelope in the hip pocket of his shorts.

A worried expression came over Haum’s brown face.

“It would be better, sir, to call the police,” he said. “They will want to see the wall. I will tell them how you found the diamonds. In this way, there will be no complications.”

Jaffe stubbed out his cigarette. He was feeling slightly more relaxed. At least he had got the diamonds away from Haum. That was a step in the right direction. He must now attempt to persuade Haum to keep his mouth shut.

“Don’t let’s be in too great a hurry about this,” he said, and moving over to an armchair, he sat down. “I don’t believe these diamonds did belong to the general. If I took the trouble to check on the various owners of this house, I’m sure I’d find the diamonds belonged to someone long dead and who lived here long before the general came here. It is more than possible that the general’s diamonds were stolen at the time of his death.”

Haum gazed at him; his face expressionless. Jaffe could see the little man wasn’t impressed by what he had said and he felt a wave of irritation run through him.

“That is for the police to decide, sir,” Haum said. “If the diamonds belong to the general, his Excellency will be very pleased to recover them, and you will be highly honoured.”

“Well, that’s nice to know,” Jaffe said sarcastically, “but it so happens I’m not interested in honours. Besides, the police will naturally claim they do belong to the general.” He attempted a stiff smile. “You know what policemen are like.”

He saw this was a mistake for Haum lost his worried expression and became suddenly hostile.

The diamonds, sir, belong to the State whether or not they once belonged to the general. It is not for anyone except the State to decide what to do with them.”

“That’s your opinion,” Jaffe said, his voice curt. “I could sell these diamonds. Naturally, I would give you a share. You could become a rich man, Haum.”

Well, there it is, he thought. Now the cards are on the table. What’s the little bastard going to do?

Haum stiffened. His black eyes opened to their widest extent.

“It would be against the regulations to sell the diamonds,” he said.

“The authorities won’t know about it,” Jaffe said. “I can sell the diamonds and I will give you a share.”

“I think it would be better to tell the police, sir,” Haum said stiffly.

“Don’t you want to become rich?” Jaffe felt the hopelessness of trying to corrupt this little man, but he wasn’t going to give up without a struggle. “You could have a house of your own and servants. You could marry that girl of yours who is always hanging around here. You could buy a car.”

Haum lifted his shoulders.

“The diamonds, sir, are not mine to sell, nor yours. They belong to the State.”

Well, that’s that, Jaffe thought. He felt a sudden vicious rage take hold of him. Here I have a million bucks in my pocket and because of this damn yellow monkey, the money’s going down the drain. There must be some way out of this jam. To give up a million dollars!

Haum said, “If you will excuse me, sir, it is my afternoon off. I have an appointment.”

It suddenly flashed into Jaffe’s mind that once Haum left the room, he would first tell Dong Ham, the cook, about the diamonds, then dash off to the police station and within ten minutes, the house would be full of trigger-happy policemen. He got quickly to his feet and stepped between Haum and the door leading to the courtyard.

“Now, wait a minute,” he said, “you’re going to keep your goddam mouth shut about this or I’ll skin you alive!”

He had no idea how menacing he looked when he was angry. His huge, towering figure, his hard, angry expression and the viciousness in his voice struck terror into Haum. The Vietnamese had now only one thought: to get out of the room and tell the police about the diamonds. He darted around the table, along the wall, putting the table between himself and Jaffe, and then made a wild dash for the door.

In spite of his size, Jaffe had perfect balance and his body, still hard in spite of his drinking and his lack of exercise, responded to his quick mind to a degree Haum hadn’t suspected.

As Haum’s sweating fingers closed over the door handle, Jaffe’s fingers closed over his shoulder and jerked him around. Haum was horrified by the strength of those fingers. It was as if his flesh was being squeezed in steel pincers. The agony of the grip made him cry out: a thin scream like that of a terrified rabbit. He tried to break free, struck feebly at Jaffe’s wrist, then opened his mouth to scream again.

Jaffe clamped his hand over Haum’s mouth, digging his fingers into the Vietnamese’s face, cutting off his scream. Haum writhed in the grip, trying to bite Jaffe’s hand while he kicked at Jaffe’s legs: his soft soled shoes making no impression on Jaffe’s hard muscles.

“Shut up!” Jaffe snarled and gave the Vietnamese a vicious shake.

He heard a faint dry sound like the snapping of a stick. Haum’s face suddenly became heavy in his fingers and seemed to come adrift from his thin neck. Jaffe saw his eyes roll back and felt his knees sag. He found he was holding the Vietnamese up by his face and that his legs were no longer supporting him.

In sudden panic, Jaffe released his grip and watched Haum slide down against the wall and spread out on the floor like a doll whose sawdust had leaked away.

He saw a trickle of bright-red blood coming from Haum’s half-open mouth. He knelt beside the Vietnamese and touched him cautiously.

“Hey… Haum! Hell! What’s the matter with you?”

Then with a shudder, he stood up.

The full force of his predicament struck him.

Haum was dead, and he had murdered him!