The Two Sisters of Borneo

by Ian Hamilton

  “Do the same,” Suen said to their driver.

  Ava hadn’t taken more than ten halting steps into the lobby before she saw May Ling hurrying across the floor. They hugged, Ava’s head pressed against her friend’s shoulder. “Don’t make me cry,” Ava said.

  “Why not? I am,” May said.

  The men stood around them uncomfortably.

  When the women finally separated, Ava said to Suen, “This is May Ling Wong.”

  He bowed his head.

  “May, Suen is going to leave some men here for as long as you need them.”

  “Is that really necessary?”

  “Until things settle.”

  “I guess there’s some sense in that,” May said, and then smiled at Sonny. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “Yes. I only wish the circumstances were different.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ll be glad to get her back on the plane to Hong Kong.”

  Wan and Yu were off to one side, Suen’s man standing next to them. “You wait here until Ah-Pei arrives,” Ava said to Wan. “When she does, have Sonny call my room, and you sit with her until we’re ready to talk to her.”

  “What should I say?”

  “Whatever you want that doesn’t include my name.”

  He nodded, without much conviction or enthusiasm.

  “Now I’m going to go to my room to shower and change.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” May asked.

  “No, thanks. I think I could use fifteen minutes by myself. Why don’t you wait in your room? I’ll call you the moment she arrives,” Ava said, and then remembered she didn’t have her room key.

  She was walking to the front desk when a sense of déjà vu enveloped her. She tried to place its source. And then the dream she’d had after they chloroformed her — the dream about her father — came rushing into her head. She reached the desk and smiled at the clerk. “Excuse me, my name is Ava Lee. I have a room here but no room key, and the bag containing my ID is upstairs,” she said, just as she had in the dream.

  “You’re Ms. Lee?”

  “I am.”

  “Do you want one key or two?” the desk clerk said.

  I guess this isn’t a dream, Ava thought. “One will be sufficient,” she said.

  The room was as she had left it, although it looked as if the orchid on her pillow had been replaced by a fresh one. She was completely naked under the black silk jacket and pants. As grateful as she was that Auntie Lin had cleaned her up, she felt almost nauseated at the idea of someone — anyone — washing her body while she was unconscious. Then there was Kang and his greasy hands. She shivered. This isn’t the time to think about what has been and what might have been, she told herself.

  She undressed and then removed the bandage around her knee. There was slight swelling on both sides. She pressed the kneecap and felt nothing. The back was a mess: a rainbow of black, blue, and yellow interspersed with broken blood vessels.

  She climbed into the shower, turned the water pressure as high as it would go, and set the temperature close to scalding. As the water battered her, she imagined it removing every trace of Auntie Lin and Kang. She turned her body away from the water, letting it pour over the back of her knee.

  She towelled herself off and then put on some ointment she had in her own case and wrapped the knee with a fresh bandage. Auntie Lin was probably right about the extent of the damage, but that didn’t stop it from hurting like hell.

  She dried her hair, pulled it back, and fixed it with the ivory chignon pin. She had worn the pin to the meeting with Wan, and somehow it had survived. She had left her other jewellery in the room, and now she put it on, finding security in its familiarity. The Cartier watch. Her crucifix. She put on a white Brooks Brothers shirt and secured the cuffs with her green jade links, and then she slid on a pair of black linen slacks and her black Cole Haan pumps. She was applying some mascara when her room phone rang.

  “Ava, the woman is here. Wan is talking to her,” Suen said.

  “I’ll be right down,” she said. She phoned May’s room. “She’s here. I’ll meet you downstairs at the elevators.”

  She started towards the door and then noticed her computer was on. She went to it, accessed her inbox, and found a long list of messages. One caught her eye: it was from Jeremy Bates. She opened it.

  Ava, I received the information from your man Smits. It is all very compelling. I spoke to my colleague in Aruba, and though it does cause him concern, he isn’t sure it gives him sufficient legal reason to deny a withdrawal request from the parties who control the account. He’s asked us — you, actually — to provide him with something that has some binding legal teeth. In the meantime, he’s promised that he’ll inform me if any withdrawal requests are made. Sorry, that’s the best I can do.

  Ava replied, Thanks for the try. You should have what you need in the next few days. Tell your man it would be wise for him to stall if the account holders try to move a lot of money. She paused, reread her last sentence, and then deleted it. It sounded too much as if she was threatening the bank. Besides, she would have Ah-Pei under control soon enough, and the Dutch were probably happy enough to leave their money in what they thought was a secure location.

  May was standing where the hotel lobby connected with the banks of elevators. The two women walked into the lobby side by side. It was more active than when they’d left. A line of people was now waiting to check out, and a knot of people at the door surrounded by luggage looked as if they were ready to check in.

  Ava could see Sonny and Suen sitting together on a couch, staring off into the distance. She followed the direction of their eyes. In the farthest corner, in an alcove, Wan sat in a chair, his face visible. Across from him she saw the back of Ah-Pei’s head, her straight black hair just reaching the nape of her neck.

  “There they are,” Ava said to May, pointing to the alcove. “Let’s visit.”

  “I’m nervous,” May said. “I don’t know why, I just am.”

  “It will pass,” Ava said.

  Wan started to stand up as soon as he saw May and Ava crossing the lobby floor. Ah-Pei turned. When she saw her partners, her mouth gaped and then her hand flew over it.

  “I meant to ask you, did you reach the lawyer?” Ava asked.

  “He’s on standby.”

  “Great.”

  As the women neared, Wan moved to one side as if he was getting ready to leave. “Wait a minute. You need to tell Ah-Pei what you told me,” Ava said.

  He shrugged and stared at Ah-Pei. “I told them that you hired our men to beat up those women,” he said.

  “Thank you. And now you can go.”

  Ava looked down at Ah-Pei. Her hands were trembling, her head was lowered, and there were tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Wan left quickly, not looking back. He was halfway across the lobby when Suen stepped in front of him. He took Wan by the elbow and guided him towards the couch where he and Sonny were sitting. Ava knew they wouldn’t let him leave until her business was done.

  “I’m Ava Lee, and this is my partner May Ling Wong,” she said. “We just wanted to introduce ourselves again.”

  Ah-Pei pressed her arms together, burrowed her chin into the top of her blouse, and sank deeply into the chair.

  “Look at me,” Ava said.

  Ah-Pei shook her head. “I can’t,” she whispered.

  Ava stood over her, reached down, and took hold of her chin with both hands. “You can’t avoid this,” she said, forcing the woman’s head up.

  Ah-Pei’s eyes finally met Ava’s. They were red, and the skin around them was puffy and etched with small lines.

  Ava took the chair that Wan had vacated and May took the one next to it. Ava pulled hers closer to Ah-Pei until their knees almost touched.

  “You w
ere expecting something like this when Wan called?” Ava said.

  “I didn’t know what to expect. I just knew it wasn’t going to be good,” she said, lowering her eyes again.

  “Look at me,” Ava said.

  “I didn’t mean —” she began, and then the words were overtaken by deep, wrenching sobs.

  Ava thought she had seen every response of thieves and thugs to getting caught. Most of them — nearly all of them — started with denial, and then when the facts became clear, they would veer off into various combinations of bluster, threats, and elaborate justification. When those didn’t work, the next stage was attempts at silence, which Ava always had ways of breaking, or violence, which she could manage as well. But as she looked at the woman across from her, she knew that none of those things was going to happen. Ah-Pei had already capitulated, collapsed, and the challenge would be how to calm her enough to tease the story from her. Talking about her sister was not the way to begin.

  “We know about the money,” Ava said softly. “We know about the bank account in Aruba, and we know about your bank account in Kuala Lumpur. What we don’t know is whether your brothers were involved in this scheme. Were they?”

  “No.”

  “We had assumed they were. It made sense that it would be them, grabbing a bit more money on their way out the door.”

  “They were happy with what they got. Why wouldn’t they be?” Ah-Pei said, her voice wavering but clear.

  “You mean they got all that money that they’d never really earned?”

  “Yes.”

  “So they had no involvement at all, not even in putting together the sales contract?”

  “Jan told them what he wanted. They were too obsessed with getting their buy-out money to care what it meant for the business.”

  “Jan de Groot?”

  “Yes.”

  “You and he were . . . familiar?”

  Ah-Pei lifted a finger to her mouth and chewed at the cuticle. Her eyes wandered. She seemed distracted, as if she was struggling to dig up a complicated memory. Then she shivered. “We had sex.”

  “You were lovers?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  “We had sex. Whenever he was here, and the few times I went to the Netherlands. The rest of the time there was nothing going on between us.”

  “You weren’t friends?”

  “Maybe. I don’t really know and I didn’t really care. I had my needs. He was willing and able enough.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m thirty-four.” Ah-Pei’s voice was stronger now. “From the time I was seventeen I worked full-time in the business, six or seven days a week, ten to twelve hours a day. I don’t remember having a holiday that was more than a long weekend. My sell-by date for finding a man here went past without me noticing,” she said, and then passed her hand across her chest. “The first time, I forced myself on him.”

  “But he came back for more.”

  “He said he liked my enthusiasm.”

  “That’s a strange word.”

  “It’s the word he used. I didn’t mind.”

  “Was it de Groot who suggested that you help him cheat your own company?” Ava asked.

  Ah-Pei’s head fell forward and Ava knew it was easier for her to talk about sex than money.

  “I want to know whose idea this was,” Ava persisted.

  “It was Jan’s,” she said, her voice cracking.

  “How did that come about?”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Yes, you do. And I should tell you now that, after you’re finished here with us, May will be taking you to our lawyer to repeat the entire story.”

  A look of panic came into her eyes and Ava realized she might be close to scaring her into silence.

  “Ah-Pei, listen to me,” Ava said, placing a hand on her knee. “We’re going to get our money back from you, and from the Dutch. That is what this is about. We need to know why things happened. But as for what it means for you and your sister . . . well, I’m not sure that’s for us to decide. So talk to me about the money.”

  “The police?”

  “If we wanted to involve them, you would be talking to them right now, not us.”

  Ah-Pei drew a deep breath and then sighed. “The idea was Jan’s, but I might have set it in motion,” she said. “When Chi-Tze began to talk about buying out our brothers, I liked the idea at first. Then, as we got close to finalizing the deal, I began to think about how much money they would be getting and the kinds of lives they would have. I didn’t think it was fair, that it was right.”

  “Because you built the business?”

  “Me and my parents.”

  “And Chi-Tze?”

  “I love my sister — even if it doesn’t look that way — but she’s the baby of the family and has always been treated differently. When I left high school, there was no talk about university; I went right into the business. For Chi-Tze it wasn’t just university; it was a university abroad, and then it was graduate school abroad. My parents spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on her education. Her contribution to the business didn’t come close to what had been spent. Maybe it would one day, but maybe not.”

  “The money spent on her was money you had earned?”

  “Money I helped to earn.”

  “You resented them all? Your brothers and your sister?”

  “Sometimes. Not always, but sometimes.”

  “So what was in it for you to sell us part of the business?”

  “I’d be rid of my brothers, I’d be able to hire some capable people to replace them, and I’d have access to working capital. I can’t tell you how many times we ran out of money over the years. Growing a business when you’re undercapitalized isn’t any fun.”

  “When did that plan change?”

  “You mean when did I decide to keep some money for myself?”

  “I mean when you decided to steal some money for yourself and Jan de Groot.”

  “And Meijer too. He was Jan’s partner.”

  “Answer my question, please,” Ava said.

  “Jan was here in KK,” she said. “We were at my house. I told him we were going to sell off part of the company. He asked me why and I told him I was fed up with my brothers, that I was tired of carrying the load for everyone. He didn’t say much right away, but the next night he came back to the subject and started asking me a lot of questions.”

  “About the deal?”

  “Yes, and about you and Ms. Wong.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “How much money you were putting in and how much you had behind you.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yes, he had things figured out quite well. He said it was a crime that my brothers should get such a big payday and that my sister, with her MBA and her connections with you, would probably end up running the company, while it was I who had made it all possible for everyone. He said it didn’t have to be that way. He said there was a way I could be properly rewarded for what I had done.”

  “Aside from the illegality of it all, it didn’t concern you that his scheme might put the company entirely out of business?”

  “Jan said that because of all of the money you had already put in, you wouldn’t let that happen . . . He was right.”

  “Yes, he was right,” May Ling snapped.

  May had been so quiet that Ava had almost forgotten she was there. Now she turned to her friend and saw in her firmly set jaw and steely eyes that Ah-Pei shouldn’t expect even a shred of sympathy.

  “The way he explained it to me, I thought it was a good plan. Everything would be done legally, he said, and we would be protected by the bankruptcy laws.”

  “What he didn’t factor in is that Ava is very cle
ver at finding money that has lost its way, and when she finds it, she doesn’t let things like Dutch laws stop her from recovering it,” May said.

  Ah-Pei shook her head and slumped deeper into the chair. Ava, sensing that her confession had used up most of her emotional energy, quickly pressed another button. “Why did you hire those goons to attack your sister and Amanda?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true. All I said was that I wanted to throw a scare into them. Hwang misunderstood me.”

  “How did you find a man like Hwang?”

  “My father used him years ago to help collect bad debts. I remembered him and was surprised to find that he was still alive and in the same business.”

  “And why did you want to scare the girls?”

  “Because of her,” Ah-Pei said, looking at May.

  “What do you mean?”

  “She hired that lawyer to go after my brothers. I didn’t want her to, but she wouldn’t listen. They aren’t even here; they’re in Thailand with their wives. When they heard about what was going on, the charges that were being levelled against them, they freaked out. Mamat called me to find out what was behind it all, and I explained about de Groot declaring bankruptcy. That freaked him out even more, because he thought you might try to claw back the money you’d paid them. He said that I was the one responsible for the contract, and if anyone should be blamed it should be me. He also said he knew that de Groot and I were sleeping together, and that if I didn’t call off the lawyer he’d make sure everyone knew.”

  “Did he know that you and de Groot pulled off this scam together?”

  “Mamat may be lazy but he isn’t stupid. I think he at least suspected something.”

  “And you didn’t want him talking to May, or to our lawyer.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you thought that if you frightened the girls, they might go to May and ask her to back off?”

  “That was the general idea. I thought that if the three of us went to her it would be hard for her to say no.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice cracking again. “They were supposed to just yell at the girls and tell them that if they kept making false charges through lawyers, people would start getting hurt. I never wanted anyone to actually get hurt.”