Ten o’clock, at the Flower Drummer Emporium.
It seemed nothing more than a factory for plastic flowers situated off Nathan Road down from Boundary Street. The day had not quite steamed up so I felt quite perky. Or was I becoming acclimatized? The traffic was streaming in pandemonium and people were milling but I was fast learning to ignore the contumely and concentrate on essentials.
The factory doorway at least gave me shelter from the sun. A watch seller on a bicycle stood among the street hawkers, so I was relieved to check that I was on time even if the other bloke wasn’t. Slouched against the doorjamb, I inspected the scene and started teaching myself: Here in this busy street, what were the real essentials?
The background was noise—of cars, light lorries, taxis, engines, clattering barrows.
Nothing much there. Okay, tick off noise. The people were mostly of course Chinese, moving with that casually loose walk, talking. They varied: slim smart youngsters looking bound for business school, bulbous elderly women in black pajama suits, thin old men in high-necked Eastern suits, the singlet-and-shorts brigade of peddlers already hard at it along the curbs. Nothing there, either. Or was there?
Across the way I’d glimpsed a patch of pavement for a second through the traffic. Many pavements are covered like cloisters with rectangular pillars. The far side was like that.
I kept looking, wondering what had caught my attention. A few minutes later I heard a hawker shouting. He was a trinket man, everything the world could possibly need on his bicycle parked against a pillar opposite. As the traffic chugged and nudged, I moved slightly.
A stubby shape trundled across my field of view, two miniature poles thrusting at the ground, the whir of skate wheels inaudible. Only there for a second before a lorry’s green canvas hood came between, but I knew it was my leper Titch being ballocked.
Probably ruining the hawker’s trade, discouraging customers.
The statistical odds against seeing somebody twice in a couple of days in Hong Kong must be a lot less than elsewhere. How many encounters did this make now, three? But I might have been mistaken. Steerforth had said the poor blokes were quite common.
Yet, if Hong Kong’s population was four million, with, say, a million tourists at any one time, and its surface area was—
“Lovejoy. Come.” Leung and Ong, plus three subordinate nerks, but all the bloody same.
“Right, lads. Morning.” I refused Leung’s offer of a handful of sunflower seeds. He seemed to live on the damned things.
Would you credit it, but we only went next door.
Outwardly the place resembled a restaurant, its facade stilled and shuttered in a slice of that blinding sunlight. It was actually an oppidum, an armed encampment. We were admitted in what can only be called a threatening manner. The dark interior hummed air to coolness. Women moved, tidying and cleaning. Bar mirrors reflected what they could manage. A stage was just visible, silent and empty. Is there anything sadder? A honky-tonk, perhaps down on its luck.
Stairs, a series of screens, curtains, a swinging door and the sudden ice-cold bliss of a softly lit room. My goons left me there just inside the doorway. I didn’t care. The cool was delicious, the stillness unbelievably soothing. It was a tranquil island in Hong Kong’s electric activity.
“Do come in, Lovejoy.”
Even the voice was tranquil. Ling Ling was sitting in a carved rosewood chair. Two men were with her, but her kingfisher-blue cheongsam made her brilliant and I couldn’t look anywhere else. She was lovely, lovelier, perfect. More, she was in her natural habitat and in command. A woman stood behind her chair, partly in shadow.
Awkwardly I edged forward. The elegant room had been appointed by somebody who knew. Not a single color or item of furniture jarred. All was harmony. Screens, carvings, ivories, the angles the furniture made with the decor, the wall tapestries. Beautiful and tasteful but semi-modern grot. I felt a familiar clang deep within and looked to the left.
An antique calling me? But there was nothing notable, really, except some wall plants that should have been out playing. Odd, that. I’m not usually that wrong.
“Sit down,” a voice squeaked.
One bloke was Sim, standing and fidgeting. He looked nervous to the point of agitation.
You can smell fear. For once I wasn’t terrified on my own. The man who had spoken was honestly the fattest man I’d ever seen in my life. He belonged in a fairground. His flesh overhung the vast rosewood armchair so much that his knees were splayed to keep him vertical. His face was a moon with symmetrical craters. Even sitting motionless he wheezed. I began trying to work out a crazy sum: If an average man is eleven stone, which is 154 pounds weight, and he could make nearly three averages, then he weighed 462 pounds. No, couldn’t be, surely to God, but he was so enormous…
I sat, vowing to start slimming the minute I regained my independence, and tried not to gawk at Ling Ling.
“You are Lovejoy?” Wheeze, wheeze. His voice was a distant reed pipe. No wonder, all that fat.
“Yes.” A silence. “How do you do,” I offered shakily.
Fatty ignored this. “You know antiques.”
“Well, yes, in a way.”
“Tell.” Even that took a prolonged inhalation.
“Eh?” I swallowed, lost. Suddenly my hands were clammy, the room not so cool after all. Was Fatty going to go berserk because I’d told Steerforth the truth about a few fakes, fingered a genuine article here and there? “Look, ah, sir,” I got out, my voice whining with panic. “I didn’t realize there was some antiques scam on, honest. If you’ve lost on some deal, I’ll try to—”
“You are in no danger, Lovejoy,” Ling Ling said in her mellifluous voice. “It’s simply a matter of explaining your skill.”
She meant the divvy bit. “Right.” I wiped my brow with my sleeve. “Er, well. Antiques are special. At least, I think so. They, er…” I tried to clear my throat, couldn’t much. “I feel, well, different, like. With a proper antique. See?”
Silence. Fatty’s bulbous hands pudged into fists like a tire advert. I coughed, tried again. “Most of the things around nowadays aren’t…” I glanced about her room and changed my tack. “I like old. It’s better than new.”
Silence. My oratory skill winning no prizes. Fatty, slogging from wheeze to wheeze, suddenly turned and spoke at length to Sim. The nerk began to answer in jerky monosyllables of agreement. He was being interrogated quite nastily, his story under test. He nodded in a frenzy of agreement. He even made a throwing-away gesture, me at the ferry concourse chucking the phony porcelains into the harbor. Silence, but not peace, descended. Fatty glanced at Ling Ling. She inclined her head, spoke to the standing woman behind her, who answered briefly.
“Please be undeceived, Lovejoy.” I could have listened to Ling Ling all day, watched her a lifetime. “You are safe with us. But do not dissemble. We have video film of you at the antiques viewing. We have tape of your conversation.”
Dissemble? “Look, miss. Honest. I didn’t realize I was trespassing on your —
somebody’s—scam. I’ll go and tell them it was all a mistake…” The image of Dr. Chao swam into ken and stopped me. Were we all pals together? How many armies were in this particular war? Unless I was careful I might fall foul of them all. I chucked the towel in, distraught. “I’ll do whatever you say.”
Ling Ling smiled at my face. “Be frank, Lovejoy. Remember, we here believe that all is capitalism.”
“If you say.” But I’ve never yet managed to pin down an ist or an ism. Once you start asking what the hell it really means it’s suddenly all Scotch mistism.
“Please do not be afraid,” she said. Snow White full of compassion. I must look like I felt, shivering in abject surrender. Easy for her, perfect beauty and power combined.