Jade Woman

33

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THE advertising campaign has begun, Lovejoy.” Ling Ling made my breathing funny, even seated on phony plastic grass. The faint downward draft from my studio’s ceiling panels showed that the filtered-air system was working. Her ribbons stirred.

“Successfully?”

“An amazing response. You are to be congratulated.”

She had been astonished that the painting still had so far to go. I’d explained about the Impressionists’ techniques, the necessity for building up the scene, Monet’s methods.

“But didn’t Sisley create alla prima, all in a day?” she suggested innocently. “You might have done better basing on, say, his Bateaux sur la Seine than Monet’s Summer, the Meadow. It would be already finished.”

Aye, lady, but this way I ruin Sim’s and Fatty’s proud life-style. I grunted in annoyance and she fell silent. Dangerous ground, with her cleverness. I mean she hadn’t seen the canvas before, yet instantly recognized the scene as a Chinese rendering of Monet’s great 1874 work. And how the hell did she know I admired Sisley’s Boats so much? The studio must be bugged stiff. Naturally I could argue reasons: 1874 fitted in with the mythical Song Ping’s movements, Sisley’s Bateaux was 1877, a year too late for the Second Impressionist Exhibition, all that. But I didn’t want her guessing what I was up to.

As the day wore on I felt calmer. Maybe it was her influence. I started talking about faking methods. I had arranged enough trial canvases round the place to be convincing.

She chipped in with her bit, even amusing me with little jokes about Renoir’s women and the weird threesome Monet made with that banker’s wife. She had fascinating views on jealousy.

That night I was relieved—if that’s the word—of my gigolo job, if that’s the word.

Steerforth seemed glad.

No Marilyn that day. No news from Titch.

Nor the next.

This, incidentally, was the day Algernon, still driving Macao mad with his racing engines, became one of the thousand collectors clamoring for details about the forthcoming auction. He had seen the newspapers, and tried to pass himself off as Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. I was briefly interrogated by Dr. Chao, released after an uncomfortable hour with Fatty. I’d throttle Algernon if ever I met the silly sod again.

Nor that week. By then I was working like a maniac on the painting. Ten days after Ling Ling became my model we had a showdown. I came off worse as usual, but none of it was my fault.

It was the day of a Cantonese lantern festival.

Several times I’d called at the temple in the Mologai district after work, leaving messages galore with the incense lady for Titch. Nil. No Marilyn. No Titch, though twice I could have sworn seeing him among the crowds.

The painting sickened me. I was worn out, edgy. I’m always like this during finishing stages. I’d left a note at the Flower Drummer asking Ling Ling to present herself for modeling about midday, and had driven myself. It would be the last day. After this it would mostly need leaving alone, apart from the framing.

“I’ll need photographers along tomorrow,” I told Ling Ling, who arranged herself perfectly, needless to say. “Transparencies and prints, big as they like. No flashguns.”

“Very well, Lovejoy. Is it now completed?”

“Signature tonight, not in Chinese. I’ll romanize it”

She seemed quiet, reserved almost. “You are glad?”

“Eh? Oh, yes.” Glad? After a mere handful of deaths, a degrading existence, bought for a handful of groats by any woman fancying a night on Hong Kong’s tiles, serf to murderers, given a virtual life sentence? Glad? I was frigging ecstatic.

That last painting day I did wonders. The scene was complete, the distant trees showing in the heat haze, the Chinese women on the grass in European garb of the 1870s, a distant picnic, hills faint and bluish, the pure color dragged perfectly, the sky just right. I was knackered. We broke about six. I told her thanks, that she could take a look.

She didn’t. Instead, I got a gaze like a wash in sleet.

“Lovejoy. You used Marilyn.”

“Used? Well, it just happened,” I said. “Stuck in here all day with a lovely woman. It wasn’t her fault.” Even as I spoke I thought, hang on, Lovejoy. No good taking the blame. “It wasn’t mine either.”

“You did not take the same advantage of me, Lovejoy.”

“Course not. I’m not daft.”

“Could you explain? You spoke to Marilyn of love as a duty, a perfection, a transcendental grace.”

I went red. “Well, love. I lay a finger on you, somebody cuts it off, ne? This place—

every place—is wired for sound and video. I know I’m followed, bugged, traced, intercepted. Also, you are a million dollars a second to ask over for flower arranging, and I’ve got bugger-all except my share-out from Steerforth.” I fished a handful of crumpled notes from a pocket. “That’s it.”

She eyed the money. I sat and swigged a glass of water. “Love, I’m scared to death every hour God sends. Sim knifing Del Goodman. Johny Chen. That poor old addict.

Course I’d give almost anything, love. It’s been murder just working here, with you like a dream…” I swallowed, shrugged. “But the likes of you aren’t for dross like me. You’re perfect, a genius, superb. I’m rubbish. A nerk with a knack.” My grin felt feeble. “Maybe I’ll risk it in another existence, eh?”

“Yet you loved Marilyn without a moment’s thought. And the gwailo tourist women for a hundred dollars—”

“Here, nark it,” I said, indignant. “Two hundred.”

“Apologies,” she said witheringly. There was an awkward hiatus. I tried tact, like a fool.

“You’ll be going up the hill this evening?” This seemed to me the favorite local pastime on festival days, lanterns and nosh on some peak.

“To honor my ancestors, Lovejoy?” She rose, removed her ribboned hat with that headshake they do. “You know my reasons for not so doing. Have you learned so little of our Chinese customs that you still haven’t realized?

Burying a child alive on the whim of the gods is one of our twenty-four filial pieties.”

“The fact your parents—”

She rounded savagely on me. “Have you ever been abandoned, Lovejoy? Terrified?

Alone?” Anything less than perfection was a risk, a return to childhood destitution. I felt pity. Me, the ultimate duck egg, sorry for the most exquisite creature on legs. She saw it in my face and turned aside. “You won’t leave alive, Lovejoy. In a matter of days you must reconcile yourself to life servitude here.”

And that was it. Death or a life sentence for Lovejoy Antiques, for doing the greatest piece of fakery I’d ever clapped eyes on. Perks, of course, but without freedom they’re nothing.

“One more thing, Lovejoy. Resume your duties with Steerforth as soon as the framing’s completed.” Her tone told me that was about all I was good for. I opened the changing-room door for her.

Twenty minutes later, the outer door closed with a slam. Fine time to make an enemy of the boss.

The day Surton’s manuscript-exhibition stuff was finally ready, I went early to take receipt of it in Kowloon. Naturally I codded the old scholar along: of course it would be carefully conserved and such like. He was leaving the colony for London the same day—

all arranged by some London travel agent I’d never heard of—and eagerly tottered off, whereupon I handed his work over to a group of Dr. Chao’s fokis. They would weather the lot—diaries, manuscripts, printed catalogs, everything.

“Look, Leung,” I said as he dropped me off at grubby old Chungking Mansions in Nathan Road. “I’m removing Dr. Surton’s notes tonight. To the studio. Security, see.

You want to examine them?”

He grinned, shook his head. With Surton gone, so were all risks. I waved him off and bought an artist’s large plastic carrying case.

Then I zoomed round to number 4 Felix Villas on Mount Davis to put the final touches to the duplicate painting in the Surtons’ roof room. And got caught red-handed.

“It’s pretty, Lovejoy.”

Engrossed, I hadn’t heard her come in. I was running with sweat, struggling to finish the duplicate in sync with the studio one. No time to turn the neffie thing. I shrugged, beckoned her to see it closer, trying to pass it off. “Another dud trial, Phyllis.”

Siesta hour for the rest of the world, two to three. Couldn’t she sleep, for God’s sake?

“I’m hopeless,” I said. “Incidentally, Stephen get off all right?” He’d be airborne by now, planning his London conferences. They were fronts, arranged with a let’s-pretend firm set up by the Triad, poor bloke.

“Yes.” She watched me clean a brush. “Lovejoy? You remember saying once that… you, well, wanted …?” She ran out of steamy euphemisms.

“Yes.” I gave her my sincerely sad smile. Anything to stop her wondering what I was doing.

She seemed out of breath. “And I said how I’d always…”

“I remember.”

“Well, I want to.” She spoke directly, her voice harsh. “Now, Lovejoy. I have the money.”

“Money?” I was baffled. She tried to take hold of my hand, made it the fourth diffident go. “Look, love…”

“I have to pay, Lovejoy,” she said fiercely. “Don’t you see?”

Bewildered, I followed her to the long bedroom with the veranda overlooking the exquisite Lamma Channel. 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.