Jade Woman

37

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THE first I knew was my doorway darkening as Leung stepped in. No fans or air-conditioning in my friendly little house, so I always left it open.

“Get your things, Lovejoy,” Ong said somewhere out in the noon glare. He sounded full of ominous grins. I had two towels, one change of clothes, an electric razor with dud batteries, the jacket I’d arrived in. How did one dress to be hanged? Shooting would be it, though.

“The servants’ll bring my trunks,” I said, and walked with them on jelly legs.

Tai O ignored me. The old ferry women didn’t look. The coffin maker bent aside in sudden preoccupation. Yet only a week ago he’d promised to make a set of model Chinese river craft based on Worcester’s book, and I’d age them to sell to antique collectors. If anyone chanced to make inquiries here, I’d never existed. My last wobbly march was down to the waterfront and into a sampan.

The two-masted yacht was a white monster, oddly flat on the blue water. Sundry sailors did nimble things to the rigging as I climbed the steps. A structure like a dumbwaiter whirred vertically up the yacht’s tall side, stores or something. On deck, nobody looked.

I was already dead.

“Good day, Lovejoy.” Dr. Chao was in a stateroom—that what they’re called? A posh place with windows and a bar and elegant furniture, after miles of sleek carpeted corridors. He seemed happy, like all successful killers. “Tea?”

“Ta.” I sat. Amahs served, withdrew. Jasmine tea.

“You are not curious about the auction, Lovejoy?”

Three attempts later I managed to say, “How’d it go?”

“Very well, thank you. We decided to pay a price equivalent of sixteen thousand two hundred gold ounces.” About seven million, current. “Implication?”

“Brookers Gelman will jump at a merger. And, seeing that the Big Two auction houses get a third of their income from Impressionists these days, you’re in a position maybe to buy one out. Try Christie’s.”

“Would that be wise, Lovejoy?”

Oddly, I felt impatient. He should be getting on with the business of sentencing me to death.

“Well, if you want a cheaper deal, buy out a score of provincial auctioneers —they’re mostly struggling. You’ll put the fear of God into Bonhams, Phillips, and the rest. Maybe they’ll ask a merger too. You dictate the terms.”

He sipped his bowl of tea, cut the cackle with a faint gesture. “One thing troubles me, Lovejoy. Your Song Ping scheme went like a dream. But are you trustworthy?”

Here it came. I wished I’d not been so impatient. “You ordered me—”

“To do one, Lovejoy.” My hand quivered. I put my tea down. It was in a tiny blue-and-white porcelain stem cup, its horizontal stem grooves and spreading foot typical of the Yuan Dynasty, 1300-1350 a.d. or so. Its everted rim and three-clawed dragon decoration moved me almost to tears, except I had me to weep over now. “But you did two.” I said nothing. He put his tea down also. “It was found behind the panels of your studio. No wonder you had to work so hard, at the end.”

“Yes.” That took two whole breaths.

“Why?” His slender hands spread expressively. “Were you not well treated?”

When in doubt, use silence. I tried it until my nerve broke. “Yes.”

“So money matters so much to you that you would make a duplicate Song Ping, hide it, hope to gain by selling it later?”

“It was my one chance.” I tried to sound convincing. “Money is antiques.”

He seemed to listen as if to distant voices, then sighed. “One curiosity, though. It was an atrocious fake, Lovejoy. Fittingly, it has been destroyed. As you will now have to be, Lovejoy. A last request?” He didn’t want to offend any gods tuned in to my last agony.

I rose, amazed I could do it. “Ling Ling, please.”

He came to see me out. “Ling Ling? You mean… ?”

“Yes, please. Her.” I faced him. “You wouldn’t want me to be an annoyed ghost, ne?”

After all, at least one or two of them felt superstitious about me. Their mistake, but I’d naught else.

He stood his ground, judging me, but it took nerve. He nodded seriously. “Very well. I’ll see if it can be arranged. Good-bye, Lovejoy.”

The only so-long I knew in Cantonese means see-you-again. “So long,” I said.

The yacht sailed within twenty minutes. I was confined to a cabin, forbidden to shave or change. I could see the story—expat Lovejoy, Westerner on the run, would be found dead months from now in some remote bay. There would be no evidence.

Funny how things affect you. Sitting on the edge of a bunk I dozed, imagined a helicopter’s sibilant beat, dreamed I was back in my thatched cottage on a chill November morning.

And awoke sweating with Ong beckoning from the cabin doorway, saying, “It’s time, Lovejoy.”

The yacht anchored in a bay. A few islands were visible to seaward. Mountains rose steeply from a beautiful but narrow sandy beach. All was still and hot as hell as I climbed down into the dinghy. A sailor rowed us ashore. Ong and Leung plus two other goons accompanied me.

The sand was gritty, not soft. It felt machine made and shone like powdered rock. I went a few paces and asked what happened now. “I’ve never done this before, see.”

“Siu Jeah.” Ong pointed along the beach. Little Sister? Ling Ling was sitting in a shade recess where the rock face dived into the bay’s crescent. A frilled parasol protected her from reflected sun. She was a picture straight out of the Song Ping painting I had done.

I made it, the sand’s heat striking up through my shoes.

“Hello.” I stood like a lemon. She looked up, said nothing. “Look, love. I’m sorry. I only said it in desperation. I didn’t think they’d make you come and, well.”

“You are declining, Lovejoy?”

“Christ,” I said, then realized I’d better watch my language, the position I was in.

“Heavens, of course I want to… It’s just that, you being a jade and me only…” I flapped my hands.

She offered me an elaborate goblet of cold white wine. It was about 1680, Netherlands-made in the Venetian fashion with octagonal bowl, façon de Venise. I sat with her on the carpet. The faded tangerine color, its rice-grain pattern with the five medallions, the ivory, blue, and yellow, put it about Ch’ien Lung. She smiled. “Yes, Lovejoy. I too doubt the inclusion of yellow. But who can challenge the wisdom of ancestors?”

She was delectable, decorating the carpet with grace in her silk cheongsam. I felt a slob, and knew I looked it.

A board clattered not far off, cups on a tray. I recognized Ong’s voice. Rattle, shuffle.

Mah-jongg in progress. An amah laughed. Assistants and murderers waiting in the wings.

For a second I had a mad idea of spinning it out with clever conversation, making a run for it, but gave up. Ling Ling was probably a black belt, whatever. And whatever I could plan, they’d planned light-years before.

“Your health,” I said. The wine was luscious.

“And yours, Lovejoy.” I watched her mouth lower to the frosty glass and her lips open to the cold white wine.

So in the broad day, beneath a parasol shade, sheltered by mountains that curved down to the aching blueness of the South China Sea, with my killers laughing close by, Ling Ling and I made smiles. Greed, I learned, is the only appetite that never fails—all others weaken with satiation.

Last rites. Perfect last rites. And I’m not being blasphemous. More things in this life are sacraments than we suppose.

Most women natter after love. Ling Ling is the only one I’ve ever known who knew better. It must have been an hour later that I surfaced, seeing my face-marks on her breast. The clatter and slap of mah-jongg, Hong Kong’s sound, meant the game was still on. I yawned, buried back close to her.

“Was that the best, Lovejoy?” she asked. I could hear the smile in her as she added,

“No. I know your answer: the next.” I thought, how’d she know that?

The yacht gave a single hoot then, constricting my throat. She rose from the carpet as an old amah came to enfold her in a dressing gown. I pulled myself together and stepped a yard to look at the bay. The white vessel was standing in close to us, less than a hundred yards off. The seabed must shelve steeply, as in Repulse Bay. It was moving slowly, crewmen motionless and ready for anchoring.

“Lovejoy.” Leung came beside me, cracking sunflower seeds.

The end, then. On a beach, knackered from love and worry, not a friend in sight. I went, stood amongst Leung’s four goons watching the yacht, eighty, sixty, finally stopping with a rattle and splash less than forty yards from the cliff. Dr. Chao was first to come ashore. Then, separately from round the blind side, Sun Sen, Fatty, and Steerforth—surprise, surprise, a dinghy rowed by two sailors. I realized the enemy quartet were as out of their depth in all this rurality as I was. The difference was they were going to do for me, not vice versa. We formed two small groups. Ling Ling vanished with her woman into the nearby greenery.

The trouble was, Steerforth looked in a worse state than me. Neat as ever, but lacking in confidence. Two of us?

A sailor stood behind Dr. Chao shielding him with a sunshade. Another shaded Fatty, making ancient emperors of them. Chao ascetic, thin; Fatty enormous, wheezing. They stood formally, generals talking war.

“Lovejoy has been devious,” Dr. Chao announced gravely. “He made an extra copy of the Song Ping. What sentence?”

“Execute,” Fatty shrilled. “We no need him now.”

“Very well.” Dr. Chao gave an order. Leung beckoned me. Ong followed with Steerforth.

Forty paces into the vegetation, and boulders hid us from the beach.

“I’m sorry about this, Lovejoy.” Steerforth, fine-weather faithful, gestured for Leung to move away. I stood by a boulder. “Want to turn round?”

They say you scream and pee yourself. It’s not true. You want to but you can’t. You can’t do a thing.

“You’re the one who stabbed Del Goodman, Steerforth. I should have known. Sim can’t bear violence.” That from the godown when they’d killed the old addict.

“Yes.” He shrugged. “An asset like a divvy—I just couldn’t lose the chance of trading you to the Triad. It’s made my future, Lovejoy.” And brought him closer to Ling Ling.

Ah, true love.

“Noticed anything, James?” I indicated my plight.

“Promotion costs casualties.” He even shrugged, which was big of him.

“You didn’t pass on the message I gave you?”

“Not until…”

“Until you dropped in at my studio to nick the extra painting.” I’d already guessed.

“Even though you knew it was the price of saving Marilyn? Is she another casualty?”

He moved an arm a fraction and a knife slipped into his hand. I really wished I could do that. “No more talk, Lovejoy.”

He stepped at me. Leung shot him. He seemed to give a shudder as if clouted. Blood came from his mouth as Leung shot him a second time. I heard myself going “Argh, argh,” in fright at the deafening gunfire, backing away from the appalling sight of Steerforth, handsome elegant Steerforth, scrabbling wide-eyed on hands and knees in blooded sand.

Ong touched my arm. I leapt, screeched in terror. He only stood there, grinning.

“Come,” he said. I followed, warily eyeing Leung in case it was a ruse. As if he’d need one.

The beach was empty, except for a huge mound where Fatty had once stood. The mound was him. Blood was welling beneath a sheet of flies on his face. A dinghy was already approaching the yacht, Dr. Chao incongruous beneath a sunshade in the stern while sailors rowed. Sun Sen and a matelot waited by the second boat.

“Excuse me a sec.” I retched and retched until my vision blurred and I fell down.

“Hurry, Lovejoy. Boat leaving.” Leung shed sunflower husks. Ong climbed aboard.

Me too? “What about this frigging carnage?”

“Enemies, bam-bam.” They were only waste.

We got into the dinghy and were rowed to the yacht. By the time I had stopped trembling we were rounding into Lamma Channel. Dr. Chao invited me to tea with Ling Ling “and a special friend” in the dining cabin. I declined.