You’re with a medical conference?— she’ll discuss the latest drug therapies in your special disease. She’ll arrange a flawless banquet for touring World Master Chefs. She’ll do and be anything, from fashion parades to coping with visiting royalty. She is never, ever wrong. She is priceless.”
No wonder there were only a couple of dozen. “But?”
“But she’ll cost you a fortune by the hour plus a lump fee.”
“A Japanese geisha?” I’d vaguely heard of those.
“Twice removed, Lovejoy.” He chucked back his drink. The bottle was on the table now.
“Once because of money; a jade woman is a millionairess by her eighteenth birthday.
And once because of the crime.”
“Whose crime?”
“You must understand.” He wasn’t sad, not really. Just being thoughtful. “When I say anything, I do mean any thing. Sex, extortion, prostitution, kidnapping, drugs, it’s a way of life. Here you can’t tell where normal life ends and crime begins. They’re interlinked.”
“She controls all those goings-on?”
“Not herself. She’s a Triad’s primary asset. Think of a Mafia clan, only more powerful.
The Triads own businesses, fleets, airlines, investment companies, do anything they bloody well want.”
Not the time to ask why Sim had stabbed poor old Del and left me to face the music.
“Do they control jobs in Hong Kong?”
“And protection rackets, smuggling. The police are supposedly the best in the world, but they have their own corruption.”
He took another swig. The maudlin stage. Was this the time? Lead in slowly.
“Didn’t you have to get the, er, Triad’s approval when you promised me a job?”
He snuffled a laugh. The glass clinked and the bottle glugged empty. “Me? You know how people describe Hong Kong? As a wart on the Pearl River’s arse. And me? I’m not even a flea on that wart, Lovejoy. You’re less. We are dispensable. I’m tolerated because I’m the littlest flea. I’ll never make a takeover bid of anything. I’m safe, causing no ripples on my particular puddle. Remember that, Lovejoy, and you’ll stay alive.”
“You’ve a nice place here,” I said, straight out of a 1940s tec movie. “Why do you need me?”
“Fighters go in pairs in flak,” he said, rousing himself with difficulty. “I need an oppo who can sus antiques while that fucking great liner’s in. Like you did with that bloody-awful jade thing you spotted in the market. Twenty percent do you?”
“Thirty,” I said, reflexly thinking, of what? Indeed, for what?
“Greedy rotten bastard,” he said. His eyes were closing in slumber. “But I’m boss for each couple, got that?”
“All right.” Couple? I shrugged mentally.
He waved an arm. “Doss on the settee. Out tennish tomorrow. To the bathhouse.”
“Can’t I shower here?” Maybe the water was off or something.
He struggled up and blundered towards his bedroom. “Course you can.”
The door slammed on his muttering. I took my coffee and went to the window. I watched the crowds below, the galaxy of lights, for an hour or more. Leaning out I could just see a patch of the harbor’s slinky blackness, with small riding lights crystallized about the fleet of junks half a mile off.
Liner? Antiques on a cruise ship? Or something to do with Goodman’s looming sale?
This possible chance of antiques altered things. Tomorrow to Macao to sponge off Algernon, as I’d planned? Or phone Janie to cable me money to get the hell out to somewhere else? Or stay and hide here with the obscure James Steerforth? When in doubt go to earth, even if it’s with a wino. I was sure I’d heard that name somewhere before…
I creaked to the sofa, where I slept like a log.
9
« ^ »
BATHHOUSE day. Me and Steerforth breakfasted differently—me on toast and tea, him on air and water. He looked like death. I’d washed my clothes in the early dawn. They’d dried hung outside the window in an instant, probably why hanging washing out on upstairs poles was the local tradition. I’d showered—much rather bathe any day—and felt quite fit. I’d slept with my money in my sock.
Traffic herds were already snarling as we walked twenty yards along the street, tennish.
The air was cooler. All this is not to suggest tranquillity. A stroll in Hong Kong is a furnace of people, peddlers, everybody haggling.
“Here, Lovejoy.” Steerforth was coughing steadily on his fourth cigarette of the day. “In you go. See you about one.”
“Three hours?” A bath only takes five minutes. “Where’re you off?”
“Another bathhouse down the road. Be back at the flat.”
The price was marked on the window. An actual glass front, opaque designs in red. I nodded uneasily. “Look. Is this some local custom? Only…”
“It’s the only way to acclimatize, Lovejoy.”
Well, as we were partners of a kind, I’d play along. In and out in a few minutes, then a stroll. I was in for a shock.
Not boasting or anything, but I’m pretty clean. Okay, I admit my clothes are off-the-peg. My jacket was a gift from Janie. And most of my gear’s from birds who, hooked on appearances, get a rush of blood to their fashionable little heads about shirts, shoes, and that. They start tarting me up till I feel a right daffodil. I once had this bird who was obsessed with suits, which, as far as I’m concerned, are a waste of space. God, she was an epidemic. She bought me so many gabardines and worsteds I had to start giving the damned things to jumble sales. Typical. There’s something very wasteful in their nature. Anyhow, the point I’m making is I’m clean in spite of not being your true-life Carnaby Streeter. Bath every morning and I never let my jacket get so far gone that it pongs of armpit. Any bird will tell you that. My only critic is—was—Lydia, who forever complains I never get my bed organized. But who does? Ever seen a bed yet that stays tidy under stress?
A little bloke in trousers and a singlet held the bead curtain aside, docking his cigarette, as I entered all unaware I was in for ultimate shame. Hong Kong was about to give me a lesson: How to survive women washing you for two hundred minutes and come out smiling.
“Mister.” The lackadaisical bloke had a head of lank hair, nothing on his feet. He made me empty my pockets into a cashbox. Its key was tied round my wrist, like a hospital tag.
“Change,” he commanded with a gold-toothed grin, shoving me through some curtains.
I undressed, reflecting that so far the little leper was the only Chinese I’d noticed without a faceful of gold or platinum, though I hadn’t yet seen him laugh.
A hesitation occurred about then, because here I was naked as a grape and no towel or…
The curtain was switched aside. A pair of girls reached in and yanked me out. They were talking Cantonese, not even bothering to look. I went red, tried to stand with my hands strategically crossed. They wore white silk knickers and nothing else. “Listen,” I began, but they tugged me down the corridor and into a mausoleum place with a big stone table covered by matting. Chrome containers steamed on the walls. A couple of sparse chairs, a table with a mound of white towels. I’d seen friendlier kitchens.
“Look, miss.” I backed away. “I only came in for a bath. Hang on—”
Not a blind bit of notice. Talking animatedly, they flipped me onto the stone plinth. It didn’t hurt but their swiftness filched my breath. A hose pipe sloshed me wet, then they slung blobs of foamy soap over, laughing. It was a hectic business. One each side, they started lathering me, their breasts bobbing and ponytailed hair becoming soap-flecked as they whaled in. “Er, please,” I tried helplessly, soap everywhere. I tried to do it for them but they stopped that quite reflexly and slapped and rubbed on. Effortlessly they flipped me on my side, lathering away. I felt like a haddock. Another girl slipped in to join the team. She walked with that quick waggle that women somehow convert into a smooth gliding motion, carrying plastic buckets on a wooden yoke. I tried gasping apologies, asking to leave, but she started ferrying pails of water from the steamers, different heats, sloshing them over me between soapings. I moaned under the force of it. She really chucked the stuff like you do onto a car. They talked loudly, ignored me. It was all happening.