Hot Poppies

by Reggie Nadelson

  On the way back to the hotel, I stopped in a sleazy bar for a nightcap. In the light of the green strobes, a naked, middle-aged couple writhed listlessly on stage while three elderly jazz musicians played “Danny Boy”. By the time I had had a third Scotch, I wondered what the hell I was doing there.

  I was running out of options.

  Go to Hong Kong, Sonny had said. Take this one on, see it through, find the money trail. Do it before more people die. What about the Fujianese? What about Fuzhou, I’d said, isn’t that where it starts, isn’t that where the snakeheads, the smugglers, are? Yes, he said. But the banks are in Hong Kong. And we can extradite in Hong Kong. We have a few more months, Artie.

  A few more months. Find the Debt Collector. I didn’t have a few days. I wanted something for Sonny Lippert so I could get the hell out of here and go home to Lily. I was beginning to grasp at straws.

  29

  The green Mercedes pulled up in front of the Regent the next afternoon. Dawn Tae got out. Her long slender legs were bare; she wore a pair of lavender Hush Puppies and she carried a little Vuitton shopping bag. I was in the Regent lobby, checking airline schedules with the concierge. I was getting antsy.

  Alice Wing was with Dawn and she said, “Would you like to come racing some time, Mr Cohen? We have lovely racing here,” she said. “I’ve got a couple of horses running on Wednesday night. It would be very nice indeed if you came.”

  “Oh please come, Artie. We’ll all be there,” Dawn said. “Say you’ll come to the races.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Wednesday. I’ll be there.”

  “That’s lovely.” Alice Wing smiled. “I’ll send round your badges. Give him the books, Dawn, and we’ll go.”

  “I’m going to stay for a drink, Alice. You’ll buy me a drink, won’t you, Artie?”

  Alice chimed in. “I’d rather you came home. Won’t you come to supper with us?” she said to me.

  “I’ll be OK, Alice. Honest. I’m sick of staying home. I’ll be fine with Artie, won’t I, darling?”

  It was almost dusk. Some rain had fallen, then stopped.

  “What books?”

  “It was an excuse. Can’t I have a drink, Artie darling? I’d like a drink.”

  “Sure.” I made for the bar.

  “Not in the bar. I might have to kill the piano player if we sit in here.” She had a point. He was playing “People” very loud. “What made you come to Hong Kong?” she asked. “You didn’t come for me. I asked you to come to Hong Kong but you didn’t. You dumped me.” Dawn smiled. “After you fucked me, that is.”

  I told her about Lily and the baby and I was surprised when she said, “Men are bastards. Where is your friend, then? Where is Lily?”

  “She went home.”

  “I see.”

  “I hear you’ve been telling people I’ve fired a gun at your chauffeur. Did you?”

  “No,” she said. I knew she was lying. “Of course I didn’t tell on you, Artie. You know I wouldn’t.”

  Dawn looked terrific, but she was even more brittle than before.

  “Let’s go to your room,” she said.

  “It’s not a great idea.”

  “But why not?” she teased. “We already did it. I’m not exactly a virgin where you’re concerned. You liked this skirt in New York. Didn’t you? You remember?” She took my hand and put it on the soft leather skirt. By then we were in the elevator.

  In my room, Dawn found the Scotch and poured some for herself. I got hold of her hand. “I saw you, Dawn. I saw you in the hostess club, didn’t I? It was you.”

  Dawn only laughed. “Do you want me to show you what I learned there, is that it? But I wasn’t really in a club like that, was I, Artie? Is it all an illusion?” She pulled some clothes out of her bag. “I’m going to change. Then I’ll take you out. Show you my town.”

  Dawn pulled off her skirt and sweater, then changed quickly into a short black dress and then slid her feet into high-heeled sandals. She tossed me a thin diamond necklace. “Fasten this for me, would you?” she said, turning her back to me. Dawn’s back was soft and hot.

  Briskly, she picked up a little satin bag with silver handles, and in front of my mirror, she inspected herself, touching herself, shifting her dress; I wanted to put my hands all over her. Instead, I tore a suit off a hanger and changed. In the mirror I saw the gold compact in Dawn’s hand. She held it out to me. It was full of white powder.

  “It’s only a little coke, Artie. Think of it as Heroin Lite, darling,” she said. “I never shoot up.”

  I shook my head. She put some delicately in her nostrils. “Lighten up, Artie. It’s only a pinch. Consider this evening wear.”

  Waiters in Mao jackets and women in evening clothes padded softly across the floor at the China Club. Fans twirled languidly on the ceiling.

  The club was in an old bank building in Central. As soon as we arrived, dozens of Dawn’s friends appeared and exchanged little air kisses with Dawn. “We missed you so much,” they all cried. “We missed you.”

  Silver spittoons, rosewood tables, lacy headrests on velvet armchairs, the whole place reeked of nostalgia. On one wall hung sepia photographs of men in pigtails and caps; from another, Mao and Michael Jackson beamed down from a large oil portrait. Sometimes I think all communism left behind was the misery, the corruption and the kitsch—Gorby toilet paper, busts of Lenin, Mao on watches and on walls.

  “Shall I order for us?” Dawn said later when we were seated in a carved wooden booth with red silk cushions. She picked up a pair of silver chopsticks, then turned them over in her slim fingers. “Did you know the silver turns if the food is poisoned? Don’t you think I’ve gone native, Artie?”

  We ate. Between courses, Dawn tripped away to the bathroom, the gold compact in her hand. All evening, people sidled up to her, pressed her flesh. “How are you? How is Peter?” After a while, when I looked at her eyes, her pupils were dilated. She was ripped.

  “Oh, darling, the party was a drag, but I’m off to Rome tomorrow,” said one woman and Dawn shot me a secret sardonic grin as the woman drifted away. In a cage, a mynah bird sang opera.

  Dawn looked at the bird. “Madame Butterfly,” she said.

  More food appeared, and more Bollinger.

  The men were suited and buffed and polite. The women were spectacular. Tough, velvety, seductive, these were top-of-the-line international babes and they looked like a billion bucks after taxes. As soon as they said hello, they were asking me where I lived, how much rent I paid, what kind of car I drove. They did it naturally, like asking if I preferred shrimp dumplings or pork. Money was like eating. It was not an embarrassment.

  “She’s the richest woman in Asia.” Dawn watched a small woman flit from one table to the next. “Worth billions, more than Alice Wing even. She built the business herself. I asked how much her new shopping mall will cost. ‘Two billion,’ she says. How does she intend financing it? She says, ‘Cash. Mostly cash.’ Two billion, Artie.

  “Hong Kong’s the richest refugee camp in the world. The parents or grandparents all ran away from China, from the communists. Money’s the only security, you can’t have enough, you’ve got to keep piling it up.” Dawn leaned her elbows on the table and played with her glass. Even when she was ironic about money, she purred.

  “You really love the stuff, don’t you?”

  “It’s better than being poor.” Clasping her gold compact again, she got up. I put my hand on hers.

  “That’s enough, Dawn. I saw the marks on your arms.”

  “I told you I don’t shoot up. Those weren’t needle tracks.”

  “What were they?”

  “Bruises.”

  “Sit down.”

  “They call us the Tai Tai.” Dawn sat, but she couldn’t stop talking. “The ladies who lunch. The dragon ladies, the iron butterflies. That’s me, Artie, an airhead who does lunch and gets her hair done every day and, at night, when her husband’s away, looks for some stray guy to screw.” She
reached for her glass. “Some of us, they call the Hong Kong belles de jour.

  “I loved it when I got here. The women were the stars, it was all ours, we could strut across the city. At night, the lights would flick on, I’d head for another ball or dinner or cocktail party and I’d think: showtime! ‘Must fly,’ someone was always saying. ‘Must pack.’ People came and went, weekends in Sydney, summers in the south of France, ski houses in Colorado—they’ve all got ski houses near Vail, you know—I had to move to Hong Kong to learn to ski! Asia was one big party, Manila, Bali, Indonesia, Tokyo. Pete was even OK with it when I went to work. It had become fashionable for women to work. And I made lots of money.”

  All the time, her face growing more and more animated, Dawn scanned the crowd: she was waiting for someone. Suddenly, she tossed her napkin down and we went out onto the terrace.

  It was a clear night. I leaned over the parapet and looked at Hong Kong. All that neon. All the lights. Hong Kong looked like it could burn itself up.

  In the dark, the women, pale skinned, in silky dresses, moved like butterflies. I looked at Dawn. She was leaning against the wall, one hand on her hip, a cigarette in the other. The wind blew her dark hair across her eyes. I swore to myself I wouldn’t touch her. For me, she was trouble, like a drug.

  More women spilled onto the terrace. One of them was Helen Wong. It was Helen Dawn had been waiting for and, in the corner of the terrace, the two leaned towards each other, whispering.

  Helen Wong was about thirty-five with a serious pretty face and a lucid, quiet manner. She drew me into their conversation.

  “I was telling Dawn to be careful,” said Helen. “You know what happened to me. I challenged some laws to do with the lack of rights for women and children. Certain men threatened to cut my tongue off, or rape me, and a lot of people applauded. People went on radio and said, ‘She needs to be raped, this sexless woman.’ Because I had had an American education, I thought I had certain rights. To speak up, for instance. Then some men came to my flat. They held my arms. They bashed all my teeth in. ‘You talk too much,’ they said.”

  “Help Artie, Helen. Whatever he needs, help him.” Dawn hurried to the ladies room, and Helen said to me, “Is she using?”

  “Yes.”

  “Help you how?”

  “I have a friend who tried to adopt a baby.”

  “In Hong Kong?”

  “China.”

  “I don’t think there’s much I can do. I haven’t any authority over there. Here either, for that matter. It wasn’t Lily Hanes, was it?”

  “How come everybody knows about one woman in a town of six million?”

  “It’s not six million, Artie. Can I call you that? This is a very small, very provincial society. It’s how it was when the British were top of the heap and how it still is. There’s not much culture. We all dine off the tiniest scandal or scrap of gossip. We pick it over like jackals.”

  Reaching into my jacket for cigarettes, I found the fax Sonny had finally sent. “Does this address mean anything to you at all?”

  Helen looked at it. “Yes, it does. Does this have to do with Dawn?”

  “No,” I said too quickly. “No, this is a case I’m working. Where is it, this place?”

  “It’s a village way out in the New Territories. A housing project. I know this one. I had some clients when I was practicing law. Illegals sometimes wash up there.”

  “You have some time tomorrow?”

  “I’ll arrange something, if I can. I’ll do what I can. But forget the baby. Miss Hanes’ baby.”

  “She’s already gone home.”

  “Good. Look, Mr Cohen. Artie. Take Dawn back to Alice’s before it gets any later. Take Dawn home if she’ll let you.”

  “It’s not easy.”

  “I know. And God knows, I sympathize. But I have some sympathy for her husband, too. Dawn behaves very badly. I wish you’d take her back to Alice Wing’s now. Better still, take her home to New York. Dawn Tae is in terrible trouble,” she said, and I was going to ask her what kind, what kind of trouble, when Dawn reappeared on the terrace.

  Naked, Dawn lay on my bed an hour later, drinking Champagne. “Nice,” she said, putting the iced bottle on her breasts. “Very nice.” Raising her head, she looked around the room. “What is it, four days since you’ve been here, Artie, darling? Five?”

  “You knew I was in Hong Kong all the time. You knew. All the time I was calling you, looking for you, you knew. What are you, Dawn? What’s happened to you?”

  “So I knew.”

  “Why didn’t you call me back?”

  “It’s hard. People listen in on cell-phones.”

  “That’s bullshit. You have drivers, you have errand boys.”

  “I thought if you were looking for me, you might find out something.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “Why not? I like games. I like it when you follow me,” she said. “It makes me hot. Can I have a bath?”

  “Sure.” I lit a cigarette and watched her get up.

  She saw me look, put her hands on her hips and giggled. “Come in the tub with me,” she said, but I let her go and when she was in the bathroom, the tub running, I looked through her bag.

  What was I looking for? I don’t know, but what I found was the gold box with cocaine in it, some credit cards and cash, and a pink enamel lipstick. It was the same shape as the lipstick that Babe Vanelli had carried, and when I twisted the tube, like Babe’s lipstick, a knife popped out.

  “Artie!”

  Half an hour later, we were up to our neck in bubbles and I couldn’t keep my hands off Dawn and I felt shitty about it, but not shitty enough to stop. Not scared enough, either, which was bad. Stupid.

  Guys all lie about how crappy they feel, how the low hum of guilt keeps them up nights; maybe it does. Like me, they’d put up with the low hum—or the high howl—in exchange for this.

  She ducked back under the water; I didn’t know Dawn could do stuff like that with her tongue. When she surfaced, hair streaming, she reached over the edge of the tub, retrieved a joint she’d put in an ashtray on a stool, then sucked up the pot with long delicate drags. It smelled very sweet. She passed it to me and I sucked some up, too.

  “Pete was lovely, at first, you know.” Dawn leaned back, arms behind her head. “He showed me around, he gave me all the money in the world for cars, clothes. We played games. Sometimes, we’d go out to dinners at Government House, I’d put my hand in the lap of some guy next to me, some ambassador, some cabinet minister from London, some princeling, and I’d look at Pete and he’d know what I was doing and he’d put his hand in some woman’s lap, and we’d get off on each other. It was so much fun.” For a while she lay dreamily in the tub smoking the pot, then slowly she climbed out and, still naked, started drying her hair.

  I scrambled out after her and grabbed one of the plush hotel robes. “So where is Pete?”

  “Who knows? Who cares? China. Taiwan. North Korea. Cuba. Making deals. AKs from Deng’s arms factory. New kinds of burgers. Sell. Buy. He’s the new China man, my husband. The new comprador class, they call it. Like the men who brought the opium once upon a time.”

  “What about the orphanage where I saw you?”

  She picked up a towel and wrapped herself in it. Her tone sharpened up. “It’s just a thing I do. I help out. Give some money. It’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Who are you so frightened of? Why are you holed up at Alice Wing’s?”

  “Stop interrogating me. I’m not afraid,” she said. “Peter doesn’t like me working is all.” She was lying and she knew I knew.

  “You ever hear of someone called the Debt Collector, Dawn? Is there an Eiffel Tower around here? Dawn?”

  “What is this, the third degree? You miss being a cop? You want some handcuffs, darling? Would you like that?” Dawn went into the bedroom and I follow
ed. Laughing now, she pushed me onto the bed. “Should I show you more of what I learned since I got here, Artie?”

  She took off the towel, stretched out on my bed on her back and wrapped her legs around me. “Like this, Artie, darling? Or you want me to put the leather skirt back on?”

  “What about the Eiffel Tower?” I said again, but she held me tighter and said, “Don’t be silly, darling, everyone knows the Eiffel Tower is in Paris.”

  She was like a drug. All I could think about was getting more. For a few hours after Dawn left, I slept badly, woke up, watched TV, slept again, then went downstairs to get my passport from the concierge. The visa wasn’t ready.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said. “It’s not back yet. It will be back tonight.”

  “I need it now. You said morning.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What if I have to get to China?”

  “I don’t think it would be wise to go without your passport. You have a special need to get there today?”

  Whatever answer I gave would be in a whispering gallery before long. “No. I’m just doing some sightseeing is all.”

  “Would you care to look at some brochures? Various packages for visiting the mainland.” He handed me a sheaf of slick tourist brochures; I handed him some money. His expression was polite.

  “So, you know anything about some Eiffel Tower?”

  “Yes, of course. You’d be talking about Shenzhen. The theme park. Small-scale replicas of all the great buildings of the world. It wouldn’t be of interest. It’s mostly for Chinese tourists, sir. If you want to go, however, you can take a train, if you don’t want a package tour or a private car. You would get off at Wo Lu and cross the border.”

  Pansy had said, “Look for the Eiffel Tower.” I had thought it was a hallucination. “The Eiffel Tower is in Paris,” Dawn had said.

  “Is that something everyone would know? About the Eiffel Tower? Locals, I mean.”

  “Probably they would, sir. Yes.”