Lizzie again, a party-piece:
'Oh Mr Tiu, Ricardo was so lucky! Think who he had. Indocharter — me — everyone. There I was, working for this little airline — some dear Chinese people Daddy knew — and Ricardo like all the pilots was a shocking businessman — got into the most frightful debt' — with a wave of her hand she brought Jerry into the act — 'my God, he even tried to involve me in one of his schemes, can you imagine! — selling whisky, if you please — and suddenly my lovely, dotty Chinese friends decided they needed another charter pilot. They settled his debts, put him on a salary, they gave him an old banger to fly -'
Jerry now took the first of several irrevocable steps.
'When Ricardo went missing he wasn't flying an old banger, sport. He was flying a brand-new Beechcraft,' he corrected her deliberately. 'Indocharter never had a Beechcraft to their names. They haven't now. My editor's checked it right through, don't ask me how. Indocharter never hired one, never leased one, never crashed one.'
Tiu gave another jolly whoop of laughter.
Tiu is a very cool bishop, your Eminence, Craw had warned. Ran Monsignor Ko's San Francisco diocese with exemplary efficiency for five years and the worst the narcotics artists could hang on him was washing his Rolls-Royce on a saint's day.
'Hey Mr Wessby, maybe Liese stole them one!' Tiu cried, in his half-American accent. 'Maybe she go out nights steal aircraft from other airlines!'
'Mr Tiu, that's very naughty of you!' Lizzie declared.
'How you like that, horse-writer? How you like?'
The merriment at their table was by now so loud for three people that several heads turned to peer at them. Jerry saw them in the mirrors, where he half expected to spot Ko himself, with his crooked boat-people's walk, swaying toward them through the wicker doorway. Lizzie plunged wildly on.
'Oh it was a complete fairy tale! One moment Ric can scarcely eat — and owed all of us money, Charlie's savings, my allowance from Daddy — Ric practically ruined us all. Of course, everyone's money just naturally belonged to him — and the next thing we knew, Ric had work, he was in the clear, life was a ball again. All those other poor pilots grounded, and Ric and Charlie flying all over the place like -'
'Like blue-arsed flies,' Jerry suggested, at which Tiu was so doubled with hilarity that he was obliged to hold on to Jerry's shoulder to keep himself afloat — while Jerry had the uncomfortable feeling of being physically measured for the knife.
'Hey, listen, that pretty good! Blue-arse fly! I like that! You pretty funny fellow, horse-writer!'
It was at this point, under the pressure of Tiu's cheerful insults, that Jerry used very good footwork indeed. Afterwards, Craw said the best. He ignored Tiu entirely, and picked up that other name which Lizzie had let slip.
'Yeah, whatever happened to old Charlie by the way, Lizzie?' he said, not having the least idea who Charlie was. 'What became of him after Ric did his disappearing number? Don't tell me he went down with his ship as well?'
Once more she floated away on a fresh wave of narrative, and Tiu patently enjoyed everything he heard, chuckling and nodding while he ate.
He's here to find out the score, Jerry thought. He's much too sharp to put the brakes on Lizzie. It's me he's worried about, not her.
'Oh, Charlie's indestructible, completely immortal,' Lizzie declared, and once more selected Tiu as her foiclass="underline" 'Charlie Marshall, Mr Tiu,' she explained. 'Oh you should meet him, a fantastic half-Chinese, all skin and bones and opium and a completely brilliant pilot. His father's old Kuomintang, a terrific brigand and lives up in the Shans. His mother was some poor Corsican girl — you know how the Corsicans flocked into Indo-China — but really he is an utterly fantastic character. Do you know why he calls himself Marshall? His father wouldn't give him his own name. So what does Charlie do? Gives himself the highest rank in the army instead. My Dad's a general but I'm a marshal, he'd say. Isn't that cute? And far better than admiral, I mean.'
'Super,' Jerry agreed. 'Marvellous. Charlie's a prince.'
'Liese some pretty utterly fantastic character herself, Mr Wessby,' Tiu remarked handsomely, so on Jerry's insistence they drank to that — to her fantastic character.
'Hey what's all this Liese thing actually?' Jerry asked as he put down his glass. 'You're Lizzie. Who's this Liese? Mr Tiu, I don't know the lady. Why am I left out of the joke?'
Here Lizzie did definitely turn to Tiu for guidance, but Tiu had ordered himself some raw fish and was eating it rapidly and with total devotion.
'Some horse-writer ask pretty damn questions,' he remarked through a full mouth.
'New town, new leaf, new name,' Lizzie said finally, with an unconvincing smile. 'I wanted a change, so I chose a new name. Some girls get a new hair-do, I get a new name.'
'Got a new fellow to go with it?' Jerry asked.
She shook her head, eyes down, while Tiu let out a whoop of laughter.
'What's happened to this town, Mr Tiu?' Jerry demanded, instinctively covering for her. 'Chaps all gone blind or something? Crikey, I'd cross continents for her, wouldn't you? Whatever she calls herself, right?'
'Me I go from Kowloonside to Hong Kongside, no further!' said Tiu, hugely entertained by his own wit. 'Or maybe I stay Kowloonside and call her up, tell her come over see me one hour!'
At which Lizzie's eyes stayed down and Jerry thought it would be quite fun, on another occasion when they all had more time, to break Tiu's fat neck in several places.
Unfortunately, however, breaking Tiu's neck was not at present on Craw's shopping list.
The money, Craw had said. When the moment's right, open up one end of the goldseam and that's your grand finale.
So he started her off about Indocharter. Who were they, what was it like to work for them? She rose to it so fast he began to wonder whether she enjoyed this knife-edge existence more than he had realised.
'Oh it was a fabulous adventure, Jerry! You can't begin to imagine it, I assure you,' Ric's multinational accent again: 'Airline! Just the word is so absurd. I mean don't for a minute think of your bright new planes and your glamorous hostesses and champagne and caviar or anything like that at all. This was work. This was pioneering, which is what drew me in the first place. I could perfectly well have simply lived off Daddy, or my aunts, I mean mercifully I'm totally independent, but who can resist challenge? All we started out with was a couple of dreadful old DC3s literally stuck together with string and chewing gum. We even had to buy the safety certificate. Nobody would issue them. After that we flew literally anything. Hondas, vegetables, pigs — oh the boys had such a story about those poor pigs. They broke loose, Jerry. They came into the first class, even into the cabin, imagine!'
'Like passengers,' Tiu explained, with his mouth full. 'She fly first-class pigs, okay, Mr Wessby?'
'What routes?' Jerry asked when they had recovered from their laughter.
'You can see how he interrogates me, Mr Tiu? I never knew I was so glamorous! So mysterious!
We flew everywhere, Jerry. Bangkok, Cambodia sometimes. Battambang, Phnom Penh, Kampong Cham when it was open. Everywhere. Awful places.'
'And who were your customers? Traders, taxi jobs — who were the regulars?'
'Absolutely anyone we could get. Anyone who could pay. Preferably in advance, naturally.'
Pausing from his Kobe beef, Tiu felt inspired to offer social chitchat.
'Your father some big lord, okay, Mr Wessby?'
'More or less,' said Jerry.
'Lords some pretty rich fellows. Why you gotta be a horse-writer, okay?'