by Mike Coony
It was while we were pulling one of these grab and gruel jobs that I first met Uncle Sui. Me and Nico fucked-up and grabbed one of Uncle’s acquaintances, a smart gambler who’d deposited his hefty winnings in the bank’s night safe. Intending to persuade the lucky winner to part with his winnings, we weren’t back in the apartment ten minutes before the door crashed in on top of us. Six fucking enormous Chinese guys rushed in, pinned us to the floor and stuck knives at our throats before tying our hands behind our backs.
The big winner started screaming bloody murder at me and Nico, but the head Chinese guy pushed him into an armchair and told him to shut the fuck up in English. Then the head guy made a call on his cell and talked to someone in Cantonese. By the time he finished the call they’d pulled pillowcases over our heads.
Four goons lifted me and Nico to our feet, shoved us out of the apartment into the elevator, and then tossed us into the backseat of a car. It kind of reminded me of the old days, except this time we were the ones getting pushed around. Two of the Chinese guys squeezed into the back seat of the car, one on each side of us, and we drove for say ten minutes.
We were pulled out of the car – none too gently either. Even with the stinking pillowcase over my head I could smell the sea before they pushed us up a swaying gangway. About five minutes later the pillowcases were yanked off our heads, and we saw that we were standing on the deck of a huge Chinese junk.
They practically threw us down a short flight of steep stairs and along a passageway. Then they shoved us into a cabin with two bunks, a small sink and a porthole. I remember saying to Nico, ‘We’re gonna be fish food.’ Right away Nico was checking out the fourteen inch brass porthole and a piece of heavy pipe under the sink. He was looking for a way out, or a weapon, or maybe both. But we weren’t left alone long enough for it to matter.
The head guy from the apartment stepped into the cabin with a scimitar in his hand and told us to turn away from him. He cut the ropes tying our wrists and gestured with his blade for us to follow him along the passageway. At the far end he stopped and tapped respectfully on a door with the hilt of his sword, then he waited a moment before carefully opening the door.
Something was going on – something I’d been around before. It was like the time Uncle Angelo took me to the Bronx and we sat and waited outside the big double-door entrance of an office building. Uncle Angelo’s driver told me that the man inside was a capo, and that he expected respect. That time, I never got inside the door because I was left in the car with the driver. This time, we followed the big dude with the sword into a huge stateroom decorated in all black Oriental furniture, with gold dragons on the walls and silk carpets on the floor.
An elderly man drinking tea from a bone china cup signalled to me and Nico to sit in two hard chairs in front of his desk. The guy who’d brought us to the room bowed towards the old man and stood beside the door, with his head bent low and the sword held across his belly. I got the message – the old guy is someone special.
“I am sure you are trying to guess who I am, why I sent for you, and what is going to happen to you….Yes?” The old man answered his own questions before we got a chance to talk. “There is no need for you to speculate, I will tell you. I am Mister Sui Wong-Li, and I have the honour of holding the position of 489 Mountain Master of the Sun Yat Sun Triad in Macau, and also in Hong Kong. We have been monitoring your activities for some time, and although you made a small error tonight by seizing a man known to me, fortunately for you, we are not related by blood. Therefore, your disrespect may be overlooked. Nevertheless, I have decided that the time is now right to reveal our plans for you. There will be a temporary relationship between you two gweilos and the Sun Yat Sun. You will continue to find the foolish gamblers. But we shall seize them, hold them, and extract their winnings…and anything else we can get. The proceeds will be divided this way…fifteen per cent for each of you, and the balance to the Sun Yat Sun. Agreed? Before you answer, I will describe the alternative outcome. But first, let us take some fresh air on deck.”
We were walked back along the passageway, up the stairs and out on to a deck lit only by the outrigger lights at the prow of the junk. The sea was swelling, and I noticed that we were at least five miles from land.
Uncle Sui stood stock-still on the rolling deck and yelled against the wind. “The alternative for you is a long swim to shore! You will give me your answer now! If it is anything other than a simple yes, your clothes will be stripped from your bodies and you will both be flung into the sea! What is your answer?!”
Nico can be a hothead, so before he could open his mouth I yelled, “Yes!”
The junk lurched in the water and spun in the direction of the distant lights on shore. Seeing those lights was as sweet a moment as I can remember. I carefully edged my way across the pitching deck and looked over the side, down at the dark water below. A chill ran up my spine when I realised how close we’d come to drowning.
The arrangement with Uncle Sui – or I should say the Sun Yat Sun Triad – is still going good. We’ve expanded our search for victims to other casinos, private gambling dens that accept foreigners, and the greyhound tracks.
When I came up with our next scam I brought Uncle Sui on board from the get-go, before he included himself anyway. That’s the way it works…we realised.
Nico had some guys I didn’t know over from the States and Canada. He’d picked these Wasps up on his travels – they weren’t connected, just straight business dudes. Playing the good host, Nico took them to a live after hours sex show above two Chinese restaurants. These sleazy shows are straight from the backstreets of Bangkok, or the Makati area of Manila. The highlight is junkie girls pulling strings of razor blades from their pussies, or squeezing out darts to pop balloons.
The next morning, Nico told me that there were fat cats from Hong Kong in the audience at the sex show. And then it hit me – these pillars of the community wouldn’t take too kindly to their pictures appearing in newspaper articles about illegal, sleazy sex shows.
First chance I got, I spelled out to Uncle Sui what I was thinking. He nodded like always, but this time he grinned too…I thought he was going to hug me. But no, I got un leggero schiaffo sul viso – congratulazioni as Uncle Angelo calls it, or a gentle slap on the face – congratulations. I was kind of surprised. Uncle Sui had never shown any emotion to me before, and certainly nothing so physical.
It was simple enough for Uncle Sui to slip one of his men into the shows, as a waiter or something, with a hidden camera. The audience are sitting ducks for blackmail, especially the ones with daughters at private schools in Europe, Australia or America. But with a quick flash of the incriminating photographs, our pillars of the community are reaching for their wallets. Occasionally we have to show the subjects their photographs, but make no demands for money. I guess Uncle Sui has other plans for these gentlemen voyeurs.
Anyway, Nico likes working his security job at the Lisbon. And I work on developing more hustles on the side…that I hope Uncle Sui doesn’t know about.
The Russian cruise liners began visiting Macau just a few months ago. They bring customers looking for fake passports, and I can get those from a source in Sicily. The Russians pay with perfectly forged US dollars they pick up on their stopover in Iran. These counterfeit bills are printed on presses that the US Treasury donated to the deposed shah.
I usually charge forty-five thousand US in genuine currency for an American, British, Italian, New Zealand or Irish passport and driver’s license. This earns me an extra five thousand dollars on every deal – a little extra I keep for myself. But the Russians give me two hundred thousand forged dollars, and I sell them on at twenty-five per cent of face value, so I make a little more when I take forged dollars.
———
I recently met Earl while I was eating breakfast up here on the veranda of the Pousada de São Tiago. He was sitting at the end of the stone balcony with a bad view of the sea and no sunshine. I saw him orderin
g his breakfast, and when his waitress went to the kitchen he started waving at me to get my attention.
“You mind if I sit at your table? You got a better view over there, and there ain’t no sun here,” he yelled across at me.
“Yeah, sure,” I yelled back. I don’t usually encourage company, but there was something OK about this oversized guy, with his loud plaid golf pants, Ping polo shirt and big Cartier Tank watch. Maybe his accent tipped the scales in his favour.
He came over to my table and slid into the seat across from me. “You want something to eat or drink?” he asked in his Brooklyn accent.
“I’ll take coffee,” I said. I thought maybe I should know him, but what the hell, Brooklyn’s a big place.
When Earl’s breakfast arrived I saw that he’d ordered every damn thing on the menu except the sardines. Fighting to control her giggles, the waitress pulled another table over to fit all the food. Then she piled on bowls of chowder, chow fan, noodles, prawns, fish-head soup, lobster claws, plates of toast and buns, and pots of tea and coffee.
“I didn’t know what to choose. What did you have buddy?”
“Nothing you have there. Me, I just go for one dish, but you enjoy…it all looks good.”
I’d never seen a Cartier Tank watch as big as the one on this guy’s wrist. “Shit man, that lump of gold must’ve set you back a big wad.”
“It wasn’t cheap, but what can I tell you? It was a reward, a reward I gave myself. Me and this Latino guy, we got some serious dough outa those Texan Savings and Loans citizens…on the strength of a lotta hot air. So I thought, what the hell! I shouldn’t be talking so much. We’ve just met, but fuck it. We’re in Macau, right! What do I gotta lose? I take it you’re not a fed though. You don’t look like any fed I ever met, and I’ve met plenty…Treasury, FBI, even the Secret Service one time. Fuck them. I like making money. And I like talking about making money. And I ain’t done yet, making or talking money! That OK with you my friend?”
“Yeah, that’s OK with me….I should introduce myself. I’m Gerry, Gerry Gant.”
“Earl, Earl Connolly. Good to meet you Gerry.”
Earl didn’t waste any time in getting down to his favourite subject. I got so engrossed in his ideas for making money that the time flew by, and my usual thirty minute breakfast stretched to an hour. The ideas he has make my scams look puny – this guy knows how to make real money. He’s talking the sort of dough I used to see passing through Uncle Angelo’s hands.
Considering my family background – close-knit New York Sicilian if you get my drift – I naturally live on suspicion autopilot, and thoughts of IRS or FBI entrapment sprang into my head. I decided right then and there that I’d arrange a little insurance. So Nico made sure to get Earl laid by Inga the gymnast – a newly arrived six foot Russian hooker from Saint Petersburg – just in case. Now I have a few erotic photographs on file, a little blackmail insurance. Why not? After all, we’re in the business, aye!
Life is good. So good that I can’t help thinking how having to babysit Finn Flynn might screw things up for me. I hope Uncle Sui isn’t thinking of letting the Mick in on our nice little extracurricular earners.
It’s not that I don’t have the spare time to babysit. I work the ports and the casinos every night, and the dog track twice a week, so I have plenty of time. But there’s something about any guy who can sit with strangers at a meal and watch them ignore their food but still eat his. He’s not intimidated, that’s for sure. I can’t use my insurance plan with this Finn guy…no, not with the Irishman. I guess I won’t ask if he’s related to those little green leprechauns with pots o’ gold they got over there.
To be fair, I don’t even know the guy yet, and I suppose I’m kind of looking forward to getting to know him. He doesn’t say a whole lot, and that’s good, I like that. He’s not from a privileged background – I figured that out when he cleaned his plate at the Mandarin Oriental’s Man Wah restaurant. He’s not greedy though, and he’s got manners.
Maybe it’s no big deal if Uncle Sui wants me to babysit the giant Irishman with the crazy name. I guess it won’t be any skin off my teeth showing Finn Flynn the ropes around here. And if that’s what Uncle Sui wants – like always – that’s what Uncle Sui gets.
But I sure wouldn’t mind knowing the connection. How is it that a Triad boss gets the illustrious job of finding a babysitter for an Irish giant?
9
HONG KONG
I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. I had a shower, put on my monogrammed Mandarin Oriental bathrobe and walked into the sitting-room.
Mister Ling’s prepared a breakfast tray. It’s resting on a trestle table he set up near the balcony.
“I made both coffee and tea, Mister Flynn, as I don’t know which you prefer. I will squeeze the oranges now…I already know you enjoy fresh juice. There are smoked bacon rashers, Wiltshire sausages and black and white pudding from Harrods of Knightsbridge in the pantry, and a selection of cereals from Fortnum and Mason if you prefer. The eggs are from the Roman Catholic Trappist Monastery on Lantau Island, as is the milk, sir,” he informed me.
“Thank you Mister Ling…tea, scrambled eggs, and three rashers of bacon please. Oh yes, and two slices of toast with Kerrygold butter if you have it.” The way I’m behaving, you’d never think I’d spent the last few months under canvas, smelling of camels and goats, and smearing God only knows what on lumps of flat bread. Now, here I am telling a butler to get me Kerrygold butter!
“I’ll send to the kitchen for the butter, if you don’t mind waiting five minutes, sir.”
Feeling quite the English toff, I took my glass of orange juice out to the balcony and waited for my Kerrygold to arrive. It feels like an early spring day back home, maybe a bit clammier. I peered down on Statue Square and spotted two Hong Kong Telephone kiosks alongside each other.
I ate my breakfast, dressed and headed down to Statue Square. Hong Kong is seven hours ahead of England; it’s eleven a.m. here, so it’s four o’clock in the morning there. Mac should be in bed in the safe house he went to after our Spanish get-together with the two Asians. This particular safe house is in Sussex Gardens, Bayswater, London W2 – within walking distance of Hyde Park and the busy shopping thoroughfare of Oxford Street.
Mac answered after two rings. “By Jaysus you’d better be good looking or someone important ta be ringing at this unholy hour….Oh, is it yourself? Hang on until I get some fresh coffee on the go, right!” I can hear muffled words in the background. “Get your knickers on, there’s a good girl. And stick on coffee. The kitchen’s through there.” Obviously, Mac has some new girl with him – unfamiliar with the surroundings and his phone manner.
“I hear you’ve been put on a diet Finny boy…plenty of fish, fruit and vegetables, and those funny spidery yokes. What’s that ya call them? Noodles, that’s it. Oodles of noodles,” laughed Mac.
“No way Mac…a sausage and mash man me, always was. You should know that. I couldn’t ask for better. Not sure about your man, the top fellah. Inscrutable, yeah, that’s the word for him. Met a limp-wristed gofer and a wooden plank…he’s to babysit me. Could be one of our own, we’ll see. Do me a favour Mac, check if the Ice Maiden’s back in her nest. I’ll send a note to Kemptown in a day or two. Will you have someone collect it?”
“I’ll do that meself. I won’t go inta it now, but I’ve a bitta bad and bitta good news for ya. It’ll be in the note I send back ta ya. Take it handy now, ya hear.…Slán!”
Now, that will give the MI6 listening post in Cheltenham, England something to think about. Giving an Irish farewell is our way of sticking two fingers up to the security services who spend their days and nights checking for key words in millions of telephone conversations between Irish men and women. Mac and myself make it so easy to identify us that we reckon they’ll not bother themselves too much trying to unravel our deliberately mundane conversations. For example, could they work out that Mac just warned me that the Gardaí have requeste
d help from the RUC, and that they may already know I’m in Asia, if not Hong Kong? I don’t think so. They haven’t managed to work anything out in all the years we’ve been using our amadán code.
My Ice Maiden should be back from America by now, and I hope the Swedish police aren’t knocking on her door. Jaysus, I won’t forget the day I explained to Anna that amadán is the Irish Gaelic word for idiot. She loves the sound of the word, and she uses it all the time. When anyone was a bit slow bringing our coffee or serving a sandwich, anything at all, she’d say amadán in her singsong Swedish accent. Thank Christ there weren’t too many Irish speakers loitering around the residential district of Helsingborg.
I decided to wander around for a while, to get my bearings in Central Hong Kong. I crossed over Statue Square, walked down Des Voeux Road to Queensway, turned towards Harcourt House and passed the Bull and Bear Pub. Then I made my way across – according to the Lancashire couple I bumped into – the world’s shortest suspension bridge. It overlooks HMS Tamar, the headquarters of British Navy and Military Intelligence in Hong Kong.
I followed the waterfront as far as Queen’s Pier. I bought an ice cream and watched wooden junks and glossy-white, multi-decked cruisers collect their privileged passengers. This is done in full view of haggard old women crushing discarded soft drink cans – with their bare feet – and dropping them into black plastic sacks.
Walking a little farther along the waterfront, I came to the Star Ferry pier. There are gaunt Chinese men in dirty singlet vests lounging on rickshaws, demanding money from anyone trying to take their photographs. I can see that it’s an easier way to make money than pulling fat tourists around the traffic-jammed Hong Kong streets…or flattening drink cans to sell to a recycling plant.
These sights send a clear message about life in Hong Kong – do something, anything, to make money…or starve. There’s no social welfare safety net here.