Jade Woman

19

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THIS box is a prezzie, love,” I explained to Marilyn. “For the, er, large gentleman.

Please may I deliver them personally?”

I’d been kept waiting downstairs in the nightclub. Nothing as odious as a bar being Hoovered, is there. I’d watched the cleaners scrub and wash. God, they went at it. I now knew why.

Marilyn was interested, quick and smiley as ever. You wouldn’t have guessed that one of her men had been brutally extinguished, that she was an accomplice. For all I knew it happened ten times a week, a day. Even at this hour she was an hourglass in opalescent yellow, high collar and endearingly folded in silk. Mame had tried to wear a cheongsam and looked eccentric.

An hour later I was admitted to Fatty’s presence. He was being oiled on a vast wicker bed by two lovely lasses while I said my piece. I won’t go into details if you don’t mind.

Suffice it to say I was repulsive, fawning and servile, as I apologized for my stupidity. I groveled to be of service.

“You will be, stupid Lovejoy,” he squeaked. The girls’ patting hands sounded like clapper-boards.

“I mean still more, sir, if I may.”

“More?” Until now his eyes had been closed. Now one opened, a wary whale. “How more?”

“The American firm, sir. Brookers Gelman. They are big and famous. Your wonderful expertise makes money from them. Very admirable and clever.” The girls were on him, one treading his spine, the other massaging his pudgy shoulders.

“Yes. Clever.”

“So isn’t it unfair, sir, that you only make money from them when they visit Hong Kong?”

“Unfair?” More oil. The girl trod him slowly, toes pointed.

“Yes, sir. You should own them. Can I make a suggestion, sir… ?” For half a minute I spoke. Then my feet didn’t touch the ground.

“These floating restaurants are not the greatest in Cantonese cuisine, Lovejoy,” Ling Ling said. We were in Aberdeen’s well-nigh landlocked harbor on Hong Kong’s southern side.

“No?” I thought, her team killed Johny Chen.

“But they match our tourists’ notions of difference, culture. It’s the key to all profit.”

I hadn’t thought of that. Certainly the place was distinctive, an enormously tiered boat-house vessel wearing fantastic colored ornamentation, its open balconies overlooking the harbor. We were at a table alone. I was still dazed from the speed at which I’d been whisked out here by Fatty’s minions.

“Er, won’t we be overheard?” The restaurant was moored among junks and sampans so crammed you could hardly see any water. Steep hills rose on one side, a small city on the other. The whole harbor teemed. Cars snaked endlessly along the harbor road.

“No,” she said. That was that. She poured jasmine tea, a mission in elegance. I searched the table but she smiled a mute apology. “Milk, Lovejoy? Your Indian tea probably needs it. Our Chinese teas would drown.” I nodded to show I’d got the message. China is life’s ancient center; the rest of us are suburbia, barbarians even. Of course I was mesmerized, for perfection blinds. In the harbor below our balcony, a score of sampans jostled as tourists were ferried out simply to look at her. Faces gaped up in awe. I was in the presence of majesty.

“Tell me, Lovejoy. Did you enjoy our search?”

She meant the girl parade. “Er, gorgeous,” I said warily.

“But some more gorgeous than others, ne?”

“Yes. The ones picked out.”

“Some of those children were bought.” She laughed, concealing her mouth with her fan. “You are shocked, Lovejoy? One can buy—yes, buy— half a dozen beggar children in Bangkok, Thailand, for a hundred dollars.”

She was simply explaining. “I usually attend only the final screenings. We hold twenty such sessions a year here, over a hundred elsewhere—the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, almost worldwide.”

“To find the prettiest? Some were babies still.”

“Of every hundred chosen, perhaps one has the intelligence, aptitude, the innate skills.

Some come close. One girl who had every attribute of excellence once nearly became a jade woman—only for us to discover she was unable to sing.”

“What happened to her?”

“She is… an assistant, responsible for our Wan Chai bars, Lovejoy. She is rich and happy, but will never be jade.”

My mind went, she means Marilyn.

“But if she’s gorgeous and clever… ?”

“Didn’t your Shakespeare say it, Lovejoy? ‘The dram of bale doth all the noble goodness off and out to its own scandal’?” She frowned. “Though the quotation varies, ne?”

“Oh, aye.” Waiters kept those tall cylindrical steaming baskets of mini food coming.

Ling Ling saw my puzzlement at the constant bawling. “The fokis are calling down to the people what dishes we chose, Lovejoy. It happens in all Cantonese restaurants. We are so interested in food.” She made a signal and the pace of arrival immediately quickened, to my relief. Eight or so goons lurked almost out of sight in the ship restaurant’s interior. Marilyn and two other women were sipping tea at a small table.

“We make a meal out of any part of any animal, it is said.”

She saw me hesitate, swiftly deflected my attention with opinions on the weather, trade, fashion, finally settling on antiques.

“Your scheme is unusual, Lovejoy.” I was halfway through some dumpling thing. My chopsticks were barely up to it, but hunger’s a sharp driver.

“I thought he’d be mad.”

“Angry? No. Business is business, Lovejoy, and money is power. It is also beautiful.”

“Why has Hong Kong so many definite rules, Ling Ling?”

“That’s the visitor’s problem, Lovejoy.” She turned her lovely head a fraction as a small zephyr came and died. Admirers in the sampans below were calling up, a sea of faces and cameras and coolie hats, asking her to look down for photographs. She indicated the hundreds of small vessels wedged in the nearby creek. Over the years they had simply settled into the mud. Gangways crisscrossed the raggedy but static fleet. “You have learned that Hong Kong is no sanctuary for the distressed.”

“Aye. Free lessons in survival, love.”

Her smile lit the world. “All here is facade, appearance, masks, ‘face’ if you will. Reality is the skull beneath the grin.”

So they’d made me submit and come cap in hand with some bright idea. Finding me had cost one life, bringing me to heel a second.

“And you the heiress who rules the estate, like in Victorian novels.”

“Goodness gracious, no!” She laughed. “Forgive me, Lovejoy. I must accept your compliment—didn’t your Dryden say all heiresses are beautiful?— and Steerforth told you how rapidly a jade woman accumulates wealth. But as for ruling, that is an impossibility.” She sighed, probably sensing my feeling of inadequacy. This gang must have everywhere bugged. “We Chinese reduce so much to money. When I was tiny it snowed here. Can you believe it? Only on the very tips of our highest mountains. Within an hour people had roped it off and were charging a dollar a look, ten dollars a feel.”

Her lovely countenance showed she was flirting impishly with a witticism. “We Cantonese call the Japanese outer barbarians. But they would have written a haiku to the flakes, ne?”

Even feeling as bitter as I was and with my mouth full I smiled at that. In that unguarded moment I changed the course of the world’s history, for myself at any rate, by joking, “How much did you take?”

“Take, Lovejoy?” No alteration to her smile, but in the torpid heat I felt an inexplicable touch of winter.

“Before the snow melted. As a little girl.” My mind shrieked, mistake, you thick pillock!

“Did I infer that I was one who… ?”

“Er, sorry, love. My mistake. Good heavens!” I stared brightly at the table. It was covered in empty dishes. “I’ve scoffed everything and you’ve hardly eaten.”

“My apologies. You are still hungry. Incidentally, Lovejoy, this next dish has a ham base. Do you in East Anglia believe that your Suffolk hams with honey and mustard glaze are superior to the processed variety?”

“Er…” I gaped at her blankly. How the hell would I know that? Meat’s meat. I thought of quipping that I’d given up meat for Lent, but instead stayed mute, glad we were back to normal, with more dim sum arriving and waiters calling our score to assembled multitudes and Ling Ling a picture. But I knew she didn’t want to remember Hong Kong’s one snow scene. Just like me to put my bloody great foot in it, when I was maneuvering my way through murders.

“You have a scheme, Lovejoy,” she prompted.

I’d given up worrying how this lot communicated. I daresay even now our conversation was being beamed out. “Brokers Gelman should be owned, Ling Ling.”

“You suggest we buy them out, Lovejoy?”

“They wouldn’t agree and word would get around. International dealers would become suspicious. You’d need to avoid that.” The next load was shrimps in a kind of pale translucent envelope, hot as hell. I fell on them politely.

“Buy them, yet not buy them, Lovejoy?”

“There’s a way, love. It’s called shame. I’ll provide the scam. The Triad provides the materials.”

“Shame.” Her eyes sparkled with such inner excitement I almost had to look away. I sensed another sickening poetic quotation on the way and braced myself, but she outguessed me. “You mean blackmail?”

“Shame’s shame, love. Blackmail’s cruder, a mere technique.”

“What a marvelous philosophy, Lovejoy! Shame as a single determinant!” Her face clouded. “But do American businessmen respond to shame?”

“It’s everybody’s weakness, love. Even Queen Victoria was ashamed— once when she forgot herself and a camera caught her smiling.”

“Yet wasn’t the Queen Empress a superb if secret camera woman? Didn’t she buy all her children a Kodak camera from George Eastman’s shop along Clerkenwell Road?”

She laughed, doing the concertina bit with her fan. “What a treat, wandering incognito round Brighton taking snaps as she did when a princess!”

“Her photos are valuable now. A few come up occasionally…”

And we were off into antiques. She had a good, scholar’s knowledgeable attitude interlaced with a breathtaking head for finance. Paintings, porcelains, carpets, furniture, belle epoque dresses, Regency silver, clocks, stuffed animals, even the recent difficult switches in numismatics, medallions, the rarefied antiquarian area of prints—she had it all at her fingertips. That is to say, she had learned a hell of a lot. But after half an hour I was satisfied. Ling Ling was brilliant, a genius at everything. But she was no divvy.

That’s what this meeting was all about, one last go to see if the divvy gift could be grafted on. Her skill, the endless training was complete, but that was it. I mean, she told me things I’d never heard of. The real blammer was an incidental: “Amusing that Napoleon’s father wanted his young son to join your Royal Navy. Can you imagine Nelson, Wellington, and Napoleon all on the same side, Lovejoy?” I didn’t see the point of her remark. She added, “He didn’t. Therefore he was a disobedient son, Lovejoy.

Therefore the world hunted him down. And him Napoleon!”

“Disobedience isn’t linked to failure, love.”

“Who is to say? We Chinese have a different belief.”

Lesson umpteen. I wasn’t to be exempt from being hunted down if I reneged. I’d used up all my chances. I nodded acknowledgment, and she touched my hand. The deal was sealed. Opposed to a slick mind like hers I felt a dullard, futile as when you can’t find something in the kitchen though you know it’s grinning at you on the shelf. “So, Lovejoy. You will do it for us. Somehow obtain a majority-share capital of Brookers Gelman. We provide expenses. You devise the plan, seeing that our sorry efforts are unable to provide divvying skills.” Her smile was still endearing, even though it was probably the first time she had been found deficient in anything. I thought, that’s perfection. She read my mind, but for women that’s naught new.

“This skill you possess which I lack, Lovejoy. Does it give strength?”

“Like learning, you mean? No, love.”

“You often speak the truth.” A flat statement while she appraised me. I hadn’t thought of that—if divvying was teachable, I was a dead duck, like Johny Chen. To my relief she smiled. Safe. “Lovejoy. You are an innocent. We Cantonese are not too familiar with this attribute. To divvy: to divine, no? Among the Sisala people of north Ghana, their word for ‘divination’ is etymologically close to ‘discussion’… but I see I disinterest you, Lovejoy.” A wicked naughty girl grin here. “Perhaps I need to learn from you.”

To her mute inquiry, I nodded I was full. “Ta, Ling Ling. Good grub, eh? What were those flat sliced things?”

As she led the way in a regal exit we chatted amiably about food, about which she was of course omniscient. Marilyn and the woman attendants followed glamorously on, the eight goons giving ominous glances all around. The sampan lady was over the moon at being selected by a jade woman and deliberately took her time, bragging to admiring friends among the junks.

A funny thing happened, though, which I should have understood but didn’t, being thick. Most of the sampan ladies have, as well as black pajama suits and gold teeth, babies strapped piggyback and often one or two free-range. Our sampan had two tiny roamers, one of each. The little lad had a bell clonking over his head, somehow fixed round his waist on kind of a spring, and was tied to the improvised hooped sunshade.

The baby girl lacked these queer accessories, so crawled unhindered. Halfway across the narrow straits we wobbled in the wake of a decorated junk, its colored banners flying, gongs going and firecrackers exploding. The infants were captivated and rose to express delight. I grabbed the tiny girl just as she started falling over the side.

“Watch it, chuckie,” I told her. “I’m not dressed for swimming.” Her brother’s rope held him, so he wasn’t at risk. I stood and held her up to see the celebration. The junk looked new, perhaps putting to sea for the first time. Everybody was happy, the junk people, Ling Ling’s entourage in our three following sampans, our sampan lady, her two rapturous infants, even me for that moment.

But not Ling Ling.

“Isn’t it a whopper!” I turned and caught her gazing up at me. Christ, I thought, what have I done wrong now?

She recovered instantly. “A maiden voyage. Yes, Lovejoy. All Chinese dreams die of size.”

That was all it was, a perfect woman fleetingly disconcerted. If I weren’t so boneheaded I’d have spotted the obvious. I recovered my seat and played a game of church and steeple with the baby girl until we made the wharf and I returned to my new role in life, wondering what scheme I could invent to nick a giant American antiques firm, transfer it to the Hong Kong Triad, and come out of it alive.