Minnie told the New Jersey lady that her husband would turn up and that she should come back in an hour to see if he had. She said, ‘That’s the best we can do. He’s probably gone into a bar for a drink.’
‘He had better not,’ Mrs Skilbeck said. She thought the place looked just like the precinct stations in New Jersey. She shook her head in pessimistic disgust and went out.
O’Yee decided he was not going to sit there and check his gun. He thought it was the sort of thing cops only did in old movies. He thought if he had forgotten to load the damn thing then he deserved to get shot and there was no point in checking it anyway. He said to Auden, ‘What’s the movie at the Peacock?’
‘What?’ Auden said. He was watching Minnie’s long legs. ‘That John Wayne film—the one where he’s got a machine gun that shoots thirty bullets a second. McQ or O Yez or something. I don’t remember. All the cops get killed in it.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ O’Yee said, and checked his gun.
‘Licensing Department.’ It was a Hong Kong university educated Chinese voice speaking English, ‘Night Duty Clerk.’
Feiffer was ringing from a leather goods and luggage shop. He cupped his hand around the mouthpiece of the telephone to keep his business private. ‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Feiffer of the Yellowthread Street Police Station.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Feiffer.’
‘Did you say you were the police?’
‘That’s right. I want some information about the location of a certain food stall somewhere between Cat Street and Beach Road, Hong Bay.’
‘Your voice sounds muffled.’
‘I’m ringing from a luggage shop. I don’t want them to hear.’
‘You said you were the police. Is this some sort of joke? Is that you, George?’
‘This is Detective Chief Inspector Harry Feiffer of the—’
‘I think I’d better ring the police station.’
‘I’m not ringing from the police station. I’m ringing from a luggage shop because it was the only phone I could find that wasn’t being used. I want some information.’
‘What sort of information?’
‘I want the exact location of a food stall in the Hong Bay area.’
‘I don’t know. Are you sure this isn’t—’
‘Are you the person to speak to?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘In that case the name of the stall is Chen and Wang. It’s a street food stall. It’s somewhere in the Cat Street area near the Bay. I’m in that area now, but half of the stalls are still closed and they don’t have their signs out.’
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s eight o’clock.’
‘Most of them don’t open until nine. I often go to a street stall for a meal myself, although I must say, not in the Hong Bay district. It isn’t safe.’
‘I’m trying to make it safe. I’m a policeman. Now can you just give me the information?’
‘I’m not sure about this. I’d better have your full name and rank. I’ll write it down.’ That would make it all right.
‘My full name is Harry Feiffer and I’m a Detective Chief Inspector at Yellowthread Street Police Station in the district of Hong Bay on Her Majesty’s Crown Colony of bloody Hong Kong and can I please have the information?’
‘How do you spell that?’
‘I-n-f-o-r—’
‘Feiffer.’
‘F-e-i-f-f-e-r-fullstop. I’m in a hurry.’
‘I assume this is a serious crime you’re investigating?’
‘None of your damn business. Have you got the information or not?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the voice said, ‘I’ve got the card index in front of me by a funny coincidence. I was just looking over an application for a new shoe stall and the girl made a mistake and brought me all the—’
‘Chen and Wang,’ Feiffer said. ‘Street stall, food, location of.’ The proprietor of the luggage shop kept glancing at him and blinking at the hand cupped over the mouthpiece. ‘He thinks I’m a kidnapper,’ Feiffer thought. The proprietor thought he was an extortionist.
‘Wait a minute,’ the Night Duty Clerk said.
Feiffer waited. He grinned reassuringly at the proprietor. The proprietor looked away.
‘No,’ the Night Duty Clerk said.
‘What do you mean, “no”?’
‘There isn’t any such stall. Are you sure you got the name right?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then no.’
‘Then no, what?’
‘Then, no, it doesn’t exist. You probably got the name wrong.’
‘I got the name right.’
There was a pause at the other end of the line. ‘Really? I thought we’d closed all the unlicensed stalls. I’ll put you on to our investigation section.’
‘I don’t want to talk to your—’
‘They’re policemen there too,’ the Night Duty Clerk said soothingly, ‘You can—’—he broke off—‘I’m astounded there’s still one in that area we missed. It is very serious. I’ll transfer you.’
Feiffer hung up. The luggage shop proprietor breathed a sigh of relief.
‘My mother,’ Feiffer said. The proprietor nodded and kept one eye on his cashbox. ‘Deaf,’ Feiffer said and tapped at his ear. The proprietor stared at the bulge Feiffer’s pistol made under his coat.
‘Policeman,’ Feiffer said and tapped at his coat bulge and that seemed the most unlikely tap of all.
Hong Kong itself is an island of some 30 square miles under British administration in the South China Sea facing the Kowloon and New Territories areas of continental China. Kowloon and the New Territories are also British administered, surrounded by the Communist Chinese province of Kwantung. The climate is generally sub-tropical with hot, humid summers and heavy rainfall. The population of Hong Kong and the surrounding areas at any one time, including tourists and visitors, is in excess of four millions. The New Territories are leased from the Chinese. The lease is due to expire in 1997 but the British nevertheless maintain a military presence along the border although, should they ever desire to terminate the lease early, the Communists, who supply all the Colony’s water, need only turn off the taps. Hong Bay is on the southern side of the island and the tourist brochures advise you not to go there after dark.
The woodcarvers used to be in Camphorwood Lane and the smaller goldsmiths used to be situated one after the other in the Jasmine Steps area and Goldsmiths’ Street used to be where you could find undertakers. The undertakers moved away to the Street of Undertakers and the larger goldsmiths moved into Goldsmiths’ Street. The woodcarvers then moved en masse into Wyang Street and evicted several hordes of tailors. The tailors moved into Hanford Road and evicted the ivory carvers. That left Camphorwood Street empty and several posses of ivory carvers premises-less. The smaller goldsmiths moved into Camphorwood Lane and the ivory carvers went around to the Jasmine Steps. The Jasmine Steps already had new tenants. The African governments decided no more elephants were going to be shot for ivory so the ivory carvers became small goldsmiths and moved into Camphorwood Lane with the smaller goldsmiths. So when the Mongolian decided to move his business to Camphorwood Lane he had plenty of customers to choose from.
The Mongolian went to the first small goldsmith’s at the west end of Camphorwood Lane off Canton Street (you are not expected to remember any of this) and asked to see the owner.
It was just after eight o’clock and he was the only customer. At Camphorwood Lane at that time of night there was probably only one customer in each of the thirty or forty smaller goldsmiths’ shops so things were very slow for Hong Bay. In Carrier’s or Tiffany’s it probably would have amounted to a riot.
The Mongolian was well over six feet three inches tall and he weighed in at two hundred and eighty-five pounds even with a shaved head and he wore three signet rings on his right hand and four on his left hand. Each of the rings was made out of brass and since they were not joined together
they were technically not brass knuckles, although Mr Yin, who owned the first smaller goldsmith’s shop, wasn’t so sure.
‘A hundred dollars,’ the Mongolian said and drew an Indian Gurkha kukri knife with an eleven-inch blade and a silver lion’s head pommel from under his shirt.
Mr Yin cocked his head to suggest he had not heard correctly so the Mongolian grabbed him by the wrist, laid his fingers flat on the glass display table, held the kukri a few inches above it and said again, ‘A hundred dollars.’
At twenty-five dollars a finger Mr Yin did not think the price exorbitant, and if he calculated it—he did, swiftly—at eight dollars fifty a joint, it was downright reasonable.
Mr Yin paid.
The Mongolian grunted and went next door.
Next door, Mr Kwan calculated it at thirty dollars a pint of blood and thought it was the bargain of the year.
In the shop next to that, Mr Ho, who had a mind quicker and more logical than either of his two previous colleagues, made the equation at twenty-five dollars for his mistress, two dollars fifty each for his two wives, fifteen for his aged father and five dollars for each of his eleven children and retrieved his hand considering himself a man of decision.
The Mongolian sheathed his kukri, said, ‘I’ll be back again,’ and watched Mr Ho nod happily. Mr Ho raised his other hand and even waved a little. Mr Ho’s assistant watched the Mongolian leave and then reached for the phone. It was a pleasure, Mr Ho thought, an absolute pleasure to be able to put two complete hands on the instrument to stop him.
His assistant said, ‘Police—’
Mr Ho looked horrified and waved his index finger at him again. He looked at the index finger and the other fingers surrounding it and thought they made a nice set.
‘He wouldn’t have done it,’ Mr Ho’s assistant said. His face said he thought Mr Ho weak, contemptible and cowardly. He was Mr Ho’s nephew whom Mr Ho hadn’t taken into his finger calculations anyway so Mr Ho fired him.
The Mongolian went next door and repeated his transaction with Mr Yin. By now, he was four hundred dollars the richer. He went next door to Alice’s Goldsmith’s and Jewellery and made his first mistake.
For those who take the Tourist Office’s advice and stay away from Hong Bay it will come as news to hear that there are bad ladies in the night area between Beach Road where it circles along the shantytown area and the Jasmine Steps where the ex-ivory carvers sit about complaining about Jomo Kenyatta and General Amin. There are also bad men who have a financial interest in the bad ladies, but they live high up on Hanford Hill in villas in the next district so they leave the administration of the bad ladies to older badder ladies like Hot Time Alice Ping and you hardly ever see the bad men.
Now Hot Time Alice Ping had been an older badder lady for some twenty years and in that time she had learned that human flesh is a fragile thing and liable to rust and deterioration and she had put some of her money into other things. One of them was Alice’s Goldsmith’s and Jewellery, and she was very happy about the steady, respectable profit it returned. And because she was happy the men on Hanford Hill who you hardly ever saw were happy, and because they were happy and you hardly ever saw them and they did their thuggery and killings somewhere else the Yellowthread Street police were generally happy.
So when the Mongolian, a freelance operator, decided that Alice, and in turn the men on the hill and in turn the police, could spare a hundred dollars every so often or wouldn’t object to their manager who made them a steady profit having his hand left on the glass counter while he went away to do something else like bleed to death, he set in motion a number of events which led to everyone being so sure he weighed in at two hundred and eighty-five pounds exactly even with his shaven head.
The Mortuary people are very precise about such things.
The first reaction the manager of Alice’s little enterprise had when the Mongolian suspended the kukri above his right tentacle was to smile knowingly at him and say, ‘Piss off.’
The Mongolian, feeling his winning streak might well desert him if he was to let this go unchallenged, hit him in the face with his left hand collection of brass rings.
‘A hundred dollars,’ the Mongolian said. He was not a man to be swayed from his purpose.
‘Big mistake,’ Alice’s manager said as best he could.
‘A hundred dollars,’ the Mongolian said, ‘O.K.’
‘You are making a big mistake,’ Alice’s manager said.
The Mongolian hadn’t realised that this was what he had meant. He had thought Alice’s manager had been apologising. He brought the kukri down on to the glass table, passing in midflight through Alice’s manager’s hand, and chopped off all his fingers.
‘Live round here,’ the Mongolian said before the look on the manager’s face changed to screaming. He tapped at his massive chest with his thumbnail, ‘Be back.’ He glanced at the mournful fingers on the glass display counter and went out.
Alice’s manager’s assistant rang first Hot Time Alice, who rang the men on the hill, who made a suggestion, and then he rang the hospital. He could not decide what the men on the hill, what Alice, and in that order, what the manager would expect him to do with the fingers so, being a cautious man who wanted to offend no one, he left them where the manager had left them, on the glass counter.
The Mongolian went next door, collected his hundred dollars without argument—the screaming coming from next door and the blood on the kukri helped the owner decide without undue fuss—and decided to take a break.
‘Mr—?’ Constable Cho asked politely. The man had been drinking and he kept belching fumes that made the Constable’s eyes water.
‘Skilbeck,’ the man slurred. Constable Cho wrote down Gilpeck. ‘Goddamned stupid—bitch has walked off.’ He belched.
Constable Cho wrote, ‘Missing person—’
‘Goddamn bitch,’ Mr Skilbeck said, ‘Motherfucken airline lost the motherfucken luggage and this son-of-a-damn-poor-bitch hasn’t got anywhere to stay until—’
‘Have you got money?’ Constable Cho asked. He thought—
‘Motherfucken Traveller’s Cheques,’ the man said ‘Got mother—’
‘Please don’t use language,’ Constable Cho said. ‘Your wife’s lost?’
‘Right.’
Constable Cho glanced back at the desks. Spencer and Auden had gone out to investigate another report from the rickshaw driver that he had been bashed. It was the same rickshaw driver every night. Feiffer and Sun were out with the murders in Cuttlefish Lane, and Constable Lee had gone round to the street water taps to leave a police sign saying the water was off and wouldn’t be turned on again until further notice. He didn’t count Minnie Oh because he thought it wasn’t a woman’s business and he thought the language would shock her. He didn’t have an overwhelming urge for Minnie Oh, but he didn’t want her to think he condoned swearing.
He said to the man, ‘Leave it an hour, Mr Gilpeck, and if your wife’s in this district she’ll come here.’
Mr Skilbeck belched, shrugged, and belched again, then went out.
Constable Cho wiped his eyes and thought he had handled that very well. He put the report in the Pending tray which, on principle, no one ever looked at.
‘Goddamned illiterate Chinese cop,’ Mr Skilbeck said in the street and belched again. He lurched off to find a bar.
He finally found one named Alice’s on the corner of Wanchai Street and Icehouse Street and went in.
Feiffer found a bar with a window looking out on Cat Street and waited for the food stalls to open for the night.
The manager’s office had a framed advertisement for a film called In Her Arms with Warner Baxter and Elissa Landi and Paul Cavanagh (in smaller type) and an Alfred Hitchcock movie called Suspicion.
Each time they kissed . . . the Warner Baxter movie warned, there was the thrill of love . . . THE THREAT OF MURDER! It had Sir Cedric Hardwicke in it and Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine.
The other one said, Ori
ental pride yields to Parisian kisses in a duel of male might and female charm . . . an exotic drama of love’s sublime cruelty. O’Yee thought, ‘My wife would like that one.’
‘Have you got your gun?’ the manager asked. He kept his voice low and craned forward eagerly like a rancher buying a fast-draw killer. In Billy the Kid, O’Yee thought, Starring Johnny Mack Brown, Wallace Beery and Lucille Powers, a King Vidor Production, a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer All Talking Picture.
‘I’m not a gunfighter,’ O’Yee said, ‘I represent law and order.’ High Noon starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly directed by Fred Zinnerman and a Stanley Kramer Production.
‘I don’t want to get robbed,’ the manager said. Howard Hawks’ Great Production Red River Greatest Spectacle Ever starring John Wayne and—
‘I’ve seen the film you’ve got on: McQ. All the cops get killed.’
‘You’ll be out in the cashier’s box and I expect you to stop me getting robbed,’ the manager said sourly. ‘You’ve got no right to get killed.’
O’Yee nodded. It felt less and less like a movie by the moment. He took his coat off and satisfied the manager’s eager stare that there was indeed a revolver under there, took his shoulder holster off and handed the gun to the manager. He was about to say, ‘Does that make you feel better?’ when the manager covered the gun with his silk pocket handkerchief and was gone, carrying the wrapped-up .38 out to the cashier’s box like an offering to an altar.
‘An exotic drama of—’ O’Yee read and went out to hold the ranch.
* * *
Feiffer looked at his watch. It was nine o’clock. People came drifting in groups from Hanford Road and Wyang Street towards the opening food stalls. A few family members sat themselves down in front of their father’s or husband’s or brother’s stalls to give the impression of a desirable rendezvous, but most of the drifters were on their evening meal break and knew their favourite stall or where they could get quick service or other woodcarvers or shoemakers or toy-assemblers might be found and they made for them. Or they did not own their own woodcarving, shoemaking or toy-assembly business, were employees and wanted to keep well away from other woodcarvers, shoemakers or toy-assemblers. The smell from the charcoal fires and the cooking meat and noodles and bamboo shoots rose with the grey smoke as the cooks set to work and the rice bowls and chopsticks were laid out on wooden counters. Feiffer ordered another beer from the bar owner and motioned him to bring it over.
Yellowthread Street Page 2