Four slender shadows separated from a loading bay and came about us. I shoved the old bloke in a panic, drawing breath to scream at him to run. Two hard bodies slammed and left me winded. Thuds sounded in a torrent, with one or two sickening cracks. It wasn’t me they were murdering. I was hunched over, trying to recover breath.
Footsteps pattered, a splash, a distant wail of police.
“What the hell?” I said with the first usable oxygen.
“Do jeah.” Thanks. Sim was accepting a cigarette. In the glimpse by his cigarette light I counted us. Total six: four goons, Sim, me. No scarecrow addict.
“Don’t worry, Lovejoy. Those police are only heading to the alarm call at the premises.”
“But—”
Hands took hold and I was walked towards the traffic noise. We emerged at the corner of a hectic dazzling street market. The whole world seemed out shopping. It couldn’t have been half past nine. I was bewildered. The four goons vanished into the crowd.
“Nothing else you wanted, was there, Lovejoy?” And, as I stood speechless, Sim gave me a pleasant nod. “Night, then.”
It must have been about three or four hours later. I realized that I’d somehow ambled into the dangerous Mologai on Hong Kong side. All I remember was stopping at a street hawker’s bikestall for a tin of drink somewhere by Nathan Road and drinking an ale at a Chatham Road booth near the railway station, near the China Emporium.
The rest is a blank. At least, I wish it were. Dazed horror is nearer the truth. The poor old addict’s grin as I’d helped him out of the sampan. His thanks. I’d retched my drink onto the curb before I’d gone a few yards. Nobody gave a glance—only another wassailing tourist rollicking between bars, spewing his way from one bar girl to another.
One thing: If Sim could knife Del Goodman with impunity, how come he’d not topped the old addict himself? And he’d shakily needed a fag to recover after the killing. So had he really done for Del that hungry day?
The temple was in darkness. Few cars took the contoured Hollywood Road at this late hour. Most tore along the posher Queen’s Road West down below among the all-night neons. I sat on the curb. A few matelots came up Ladder Street with their bar girls, brawling and reeling. I heard a couple of ugly scuffles in the night, but stayed where I was. A door or two slammed the silence back in place. The distant harbor pulsed and hummed.
“Hello. You want business, friend?”
Careful how you answer, Lovejoy. Folk die when you express preferences. I’d only to open my mouth and Hong Kong slew somebody at random. Well, not quite at random—
I picked the poor sods out with unerring accuracy. Hole-in-one Lovejoy.
“No, thanks, love” seemed safe enough. The girl was young, gaudy in the gloaming.
But the Cantonese women all seemed sixteen until they reached forty, when they stepped overnight into their crinkled eighties. Other women do it in slow stages.
She went on by, heels tapping. Silence.
They’d beaten the old bloke to death, ditched him in the harbor. His description of course would be handed to the police—a robber trying to nick the priceless Song Ping.
No chance of an investigation. What was one addict among a million?
A faint whirring noise caught my attention. An electric truck? A milk float?—except local Chinese don’t drink milk. It was punctuated by a regular tapping, whir, whir. A child, spinning a lazy top? Hardly.
“Hiyer, Titch.” He trundled to a stop by jamming one of his sticks between his wheels, real skill.
“Good evening. I received your message, Lovejoy.”
“Aye. Sorry I’m late.” I’d written that I’d drop by the temple about six the previous evening.
“Please don’t apologize. How on earth can a penniless leper help a gwailo, Lovejoy?”
“You know everything, Titch. We… barbarians, is that the translation?… we know naught here.” I eyed him, on his level. “I need an ally. There’s a lady, Cantonese, gone missing. Marilyn Shiu-Won Wong.”
“The one forever at the Flower Drummer? Who had old-fashioned clothes made to take to your new flat near Cleverly Street?”
“That’s her.” I wondered if the Triad knew of this sophisticated street trailer—or if they already had a team of them watching and spying everywhere.
“I could look about for her, I suppose.”
“Ta. I’d pay well, if you could find out where she is. But say nothing to anyone else.”
Pause. “Two hundred dollars?”
“Three.” As I nodded, he indicated the temple across the road. “Give an offering to Kuan Ti—he’s very strong. He was mortal once. Since his death he has been promoted several times, for doing good to China.”
“Really works, eh?” I glanced curiously at the temple.
“Indeed, Lovejoy. He was executed in 220 b.c. A grateful China made him a duke about thirteen centuries later. Then he was made a prince, finally a full emperor in 1594 a.d.
Help should be rewarded, ne?” He paused, tilting his misshapen head. “You don’t laugh, Lovejoy.”
“I’m losing the knack. What’s he god of?”
“War. Money. And antique dealers, as it happens.”
He left suddenly, skittering away. I rose and dusted myself off.
“Hey, Titch,” I called. “How much do I offer the god?”
“That’s the problem, Lovejoy,” the darkness called back. “But guess right.”
There was a lot to think of on the return to Steerforth’s place. By the time I reached there I’d worked out how to bubble Sim and Fatty at one go.
As it turned out, it all had to be modified because Ling Ling herself arrived at the studio to model for me.
33
« ^ »
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.