by John Burdett
Ghosts of the departed British colonial power are everywhere, especially in street-and place-names. Victoria and Stanley are the biggest haunters, with George and Albert as runners-up. Now I’m on a funicular railway climbing a mountain called Victoria at about thirty degrees to the vertical. I get off to do the famous walk on a path called Stanley, which, at a certain point, overlooks a town of the same name. The path is circular, so you end up staring down at a harbor also called Victoria-but it’s a magnificent view. High-prowed green fishing trawlers compete for sea space with giant oil tankers, luxury yachts, sailboats, and high-speed ferries plying between here and Macau, where you can gamble legally. You can gamble illegally in Hong Kong to your heart’s content, but those homemade roulette wheels are notoriously easy to fix and inevitably lead to fights-better to take the forty-five-minute trip to the former Portuguese enclave where Siberian whores will wipe your brow after every loss, assuming you are not attracted to the local girls.
It’s a near-God experience, up here above the mighty throbbing silicone heart of the tiny city-state which took over China ten years ago. (Haven’t you noticed how Beijing looks more like Hong Kong with every passing minute?) Your sense of divinity decreases as you descend, though. In the backstreets of Wan Chai, a red-light district that has the effect of making me feel more at home, the clacking of mahjong tiles is deafening, like a heavy sea shifting gravel right next to your ear. And I can’t say the local personal habits quite live up to the sartorial elegance. Just now I watched a well-dressed Chinese man in his sixties expertly blow the snot from his left nostril while pressing with an index finger on his right at exactly the point in his stride when he was leaning somewhat to the left, thus ensuring the turbocharged mucus would hit the pavement (or someone else-these streets are jam-packed 24/7) rather than his person, then perform exactly the same maneuver with right nostril, left index, right-inclining stride. I guess in the Asian city that never sleeps people don’t have time to blow their noses on tissue.
I’m told there’s a good Thai restaurant on a street called George, just off a street called Stanley, so I decide to leg it over there so I can speak Thai. Kathmandu never made me this homesick, and I’ve only been here three hours. It takes me a while to find the Sawatdee restaurant. When I get there the food is perfect, but no one speaks Thai; the owners and staff are all Filipinos. I say, “I thought you people were experts at imitating music?”
“Filipinos can imitate anything” is the proud reply. “In America, Europe, and Saudi Arabia we imitate nurses all the time and nobody notices. Next challenge will be brain surgery. What are you doing in Hong Kong?”
“Imitating jewelers,” I say.
46
The Grand Hyatt is Renaissance Rome with more money and less God: vaulted ceilings, lamps held up by brass cupids at every elbow, more polished marble than you could point a spray can at, prices to bankrupt nonmembers of the millionaires’ club. The Gem Traders’ Society of Hong Kong is holding its annual bash in the main reception room on the ground floor.
Just my luck that neckties are fresh out of style among the gem-trading elite. Black Nehru jackets with high collars set off with sparkling diamonds in gold or silver are de rigueur, though you can sport rubies, sapphires, lapis lazuli, jade, pearls, opals, and even amber as long as the settings are the highest examples of the jeweler’s art; aquamarines and other species of beryl are not big in the Far East, but at the end of the day it’s all about the four Cs: color, cut, clarity, and carat. After a few minutes I’m sure I hear those words in English and Cantonese repeated all over the room.
As far as male fashion is concerned, farang, at this kind of function if you are gauche enough to wear a thousand-dollar sports blazer, whatever you do don’t wear a tie with it; no, sir, you just leave the top two buttons of your five-hundred-dollar shirt undone to reveal the independence of your spirit and the success of your business-and perhaps the bijou body-art tattoo just below your throat. Neckties are for the salaried masses and carry the stigma of middle management. So why don’t I simply pull mine off? Because if I did they would start focusing on my jacket and pants; better they think I’m just a decade out of date. How did I get into the party? Well, in a town where everyone knows everyone else, security is not that tight. I noticed how the guests casually flipped their gold-embossed invitation cards into an enormous silver bowl in front of a waiter in a starched white jacket, whom I distracted by playing with my gigantic garish tie with my left hand, flopping the end of it in front of him like a silk fish, while I clipped one of the cards from the silver bowl with the other. “Oh, you want the invitation card?” I exclaimed. “Here it is.” No billionaire ever chucked a gold-embossed invitation card into a silver bowl with more panache. I deeply impressed the waiter, who allowed me in with a respectful bow.
One thing for sure about Johnny Ng: he’s as gay as a fairy light. I spot him from a distance behind a gigantic ice diamond about a yard wide which dominates the central buffet table. Except it’s not a diamond, is it? The ice has been dyed orangey pink, and the facets send slivers of light all over the enormous room. One catches Ng as he makes queenly gestures that cause his filigree gold bracelets to shake while he plays with the long thin gold chain around the neck of his Nehru jacket. We’re separated by an army of narcissists, though. A lot of the men, all of whom are Chinese, have decked themselves out in jewelry just like Ng, although most are more conservatively dressed businessmen in tuxedos. This night is really for the women, however. I already know from my research that to the cognoscenti diamonds are common rocks compared to the incomparable padparadscha. I see plenty of them, along with other corundums hanging from long elegant Chinese necks of flawless alabaster. As everyone knows, the purpose of gems is to make girls’ eyes glitter, and so it is tonight: the whole place is ablaze with photons bouncing from polished stone into black Chinese eyeballs and out again. There’s not a female in the room who does not find herself irresistible. Some wear the traditional silk cheongsam, where dragons compete for nipples and there is a tantalizing slit all the way up one thigh, but the vast majority are sporting the very latest products from the best haute culture ateliers of Milan and Tokyo.
The crowd is excited by its own wealth and beauty and it takes me a while to work my way through to the main table: Chinese-style crispy pork and duck; wonton soup; snow fungus soup; dim sum; roast beef, English style; wok-fried vegetables of all kinds; blanched kaylan in oyster sauce; steamed fish in lemon sauce; spareribs with watercress and apricot kernels; scallops with ginger and garlic-I’m describing just that corner of the table nearest to me. When I catch sight of the shellfish stand on the other side of the room, I decide to load up on oysters before approaching Ng, but I get distracted by the sushi table-then I see that the dessert booth includes crкpes suzette made to order by the short-order chef in the tall white hat, and I gulp. I’ve not eaten crкpes suzette since Monsieur Truffaut entertained Nong and me at the Lucas Carton, off the place de la Madeleine in Paris. Exquisitely torn between the Sydney rock oysters on the one hand and the crкpes on the other, I pause in the middle of the room-and notice I am being watched. Well, with so much wealth adorning people’s bodies you’d expect the society would have taken care of its own security: there are quite a few Chinese men in tuxedos between the ages of thirty and forty with faces like rocks who are not participating in the high-pitched gossip and are certainly not interested in seducing anyone. At least two of them are staring at me. Under such pressure, one is forced into quick decisions. I go for the crкpes suzette and wait patiently while the chef pours the mixture into the pan and adds the orange sauce, prodding the pancakes in the approved way until they are soaked in Cointreau. Conscious, now, that my remaining time as a privileged member of the global billionaires’ club is short, I stride as quickly as I can across the room in the direction of Johnny Ng, holding my plate piled high with cutely folded sauce-soaked pancakes that reek with the divinely fragrant sauce. The two bodyguards also adopt fast strides
as they converge toward me, and it so happens that we all meet on the other side of the ice padparadscha, where Ng is playing with his gold chain and flirting with a younger man. I just have time to say, “Good evening, Mr. Ng,” hoping I pronounced the Ng right, when the two heavies, taken aback because I seem to know one of the stars of the evening, say something softly but firmly to Ng in Cantonese. Now, farang, if you think Thai is a singsong kind of language, try getting your ear around Cantonese. It’s impossible to tell anything at all by Ng’s tone when he gazes at me quickly and shrugs at the security guards. Then he turns to me and says in perfect English, “Would you mind telling me who the hell you are?”
I feel like Clark Kent when he removes his shirt as I pull at my tie to yank it off-it’s an identity issue-then take out my wallet to flash my cop ID. What I’m interested in, of course, is his reaction to the Thai script and the royal emblem on the card. Sure enough, his expression flattens and his eyes harden when he looks up at me from examining the card. He says something firm and not at all fey to the two men, who nod and stand on either side of me. “Go with them,” Ng says. “I’ll join you shortly.” Then, with the kind of contemptuous benevolence only the best crooks can muster, he glances at my crкpes suzette and adds, “You can take that with you.” Anyone of good breeding would have been crushed, but his disdain has no effect on me at all. I’m still holding the plate and munching on the last of the crкpes when we reach the underground garage, the heavies and I.
47
Have you noticed, farang, how even in the very finest of modern buildings the parking garages have all been designed by Stalin? I predict an architectural revolution one day, which will give us underground parking garages to die for, rather than in. (Our descendants will watch ancient footage and exclaim, How could they ever have put up with such drab parking garages?) Dismal is the word, and now I’ve finished the crкpes suzette and don’t know what to do with the plate. I feel diminished. I’m going through my usual self-recrimination at having turned myself into a fool while flying by the seat of my pants: Why couldn’t you just play it straight for once, you just had to imitate a frigging Hong Kong jeweler, for Buddha’s sake, what the hell were you thinking of, still trying to prove you’re a cop and not a consigliere, who are you kidding? You will understand that in this state of mind, it is quite a relief when Ng roars up in a red Ferrari, opens the passenger door, and snaps, “Get in.” He is still in his Nehru jacket, but the gold jewelry has been safely deposited somewhere and his top buttons are undone, giving a quite different impression of the personality of the owner, whose voice has deepened a shade and lost its queenly intonation. I cannot resist handing the empty plate to one of the heavies, along with the silver fork, before getting into the car.
Now we’re all about torque as we roar up a turnpike, which leads up the mountain called Victoria fast enough to create our own bow wave. Lesser vehicles get out of the way: wealth here is a sign of power, and every Asian knows from bitter experience that might is right. We’ve turned off the turnpike before Ng speaks again.
“You have no investigative powers here.”
I nod humbly. “That’s right.”
“And by crashing our party you compromised yourself totally.”
“That’s true.”
“If a Hong Kong cop behaved like that I’d have his balls for batter.”
“That’s a good expression. Where did you get it?”
He allows himself the ghost of a smile. “One of my mothers was English. So was one of my wives.”
“Was your English wife male or female?”
For some reason Ng finds this question very funny. He’s still laughing when security lets us into his high-end condominium building.
Now we’re standing in a great split-level salon with floor-to-ceiling windows through which dark energy travels from the city below. At the back soft footlights illuminate two ten-foot commemorative portraits: a Chinese couple in frontal pose sitting on elaborately carved chairs draped in brocade, a lavish carpet at their feet, wearing winter gowns and fur-trimmed robes. The woman’s feet and hands are hidden, and they both wear long jade necklaces and elaborate headdresses with gold and silver ornaments. The resemblance to Doctor Moi’s ancestral portraits is so strong I want to know if they are the same; but when I step closer I can see that they are not. Ng watches me with curiosity. He is entirely at home, entirely relaxed. I’m the third-world nerd who provides a kind of foil. If I weren’t here, who would he feel superior to?
“My paternal great-grandparents,” he explains. “Before the revolution.”
“You are from Swatow?”
“I’m not from anywhere. Chairman Mao threw Mummy and Daddy into an oven when I was four. They say I cried out loud at the very moment their brains popped-that was my childhood over and the end of identity.” He waves a hand to forestall questions. “Distant relatives, foster parents, some of them foreigners-I wound up in Hong Kong. By age fifteen I was already an old man. I met a mind master and a benefactor. For a high price he shared his wisdom: Don’t try to be somebody. Don’t try to be nobody. You are already dead. Enjoy. Of course, the words mean nothing unless part of an initiation-in my case a kind of mental chemotherapy that annihilated all remnants of the notion of belonging.” He smiles at me without warmth or hostility-just a smile performing a function. “Shall I offer you a drink? Is it that kind of moment? Or shall I just spill my guts? Obviously, it’s too late to tell you to fuck off, now you’re my guest. I had to get you out of that party, didn’t I? That was smart of you; I doubt I would have bothered with you at all otherwise.” He pauses to reflect. “Actually, you were the perfect excuse. I’m so bored with those overblown Hong Kong functions.”
He stares out into the city night: quite beautiful, I have to say, with the fattest skyscrapers competing for attention with laser light shows, and the water of the harbor black behind them. When he speaks it is to the window.
“You probably don’t realize how mad Mimi Moi really is, nobody does who hasn’t lived with her.” He spares me a glance. “That must be why you’re here, right? Mad Moi, Doctor of Chemistry, the first and only Thai-Chinese woman to do chemistry/pharmacology at Oxford and get a First?” I nod. “Without her maid she can’t even dress herself-she really can’t. When we lived together I watched sometimes while the maid spread her knickers for her to get into in the morning. She refuses ever to bathe herself, the maid has to do it. And she’s hopeless with money. The maid has to control the purse strings.” He smiles, perhaps at my reflection in the window. “Now that’s a good cop point, isn’t it? But you’d be wrong to draw conclusions. It’s much, much deeper than that.” He shakes his head. “No, that maid doesn’t care about money, she’s already incredibly rich.” He smiles again, thinly. “Now I’ve really shocked you, yes? Probably the richest slave in the world. And d’you know that’s exactly what she is half the time? There’s nothing she doesn’t do for Moi, nothing she won’t do. She even puts medicinal cream on her hemorrhoids. The two of them have been an item since Mimi was born. But Mimi is a baby, Detective. A brilliant, witty, cynical, beautiful, charming, highly sophisticated, perfectly educated baby. Not unusual, perhaps, among the rich in any society. Anyway, the executive summary is that Mimi cannot live without her, and I dare say the maid would probably not consent to live without Mimi. Together they make up the two hemispheres of a perfect private world, and they know it.”
“No room for husbands?”
“Oh, as long as I didn’t seek attention I got on okay. I was relatively young, but not that young. I needed a trade. She wanted to prove to the world that she could catch a man as well as any other woman-I mean, at that stage in her life she was still pretending to be normal.”
“Trade? I thought you were a jeweler? We’ve already established that Doctor Moi is a pharmacist.” By the way he smirks I realize I’ve given him the information he wanted: how much do I already know? Not much, apparently, for he says, “I’ll have to educate you from the beg
inning, it seems. I’ll tell you what, why not stay the night? Don’t worry, I don’t fancy you in the least. Your wardrobe turns me right off.”
48
Johnny Ng has a maid, a Filipina who brings us breakfast on his vast balcony overlooking downtown Hong Kong. Ng points at some buzzards hanging in the sky above the tall apartment buildings. “Their numbers diminish every year,” he says. “I think it’s a miracle they’ve hung on this long.” After the coffee and fresh croissants, he drives me to the rail terminal in the city center, and I take a train to the airport. It is not an ordinary train: there is a “train ambassador,” who walks through the carriages making sure everyone is okay on the twenty-minute journey. She gives me the standard Hong Kong money smile, but takes in my clothes as she passes. From the airport I call Sukum to tell him about my evening with Johnny Ng. Sukum refuses to comment over the phone; all he communicates is fear, so it seems I have to carry the burden of enlightenment all on my own. As soon as I touch down in Bangkok, I call him again. “That was the deal, wasn’t it? I do the investigative stuff, then you corroborate or not?”
“Not on the phone. I’ll come around to your house. No, wait, I don’t want to be seen visiting you, I don’t want them to think we have a personal relationship.”
“D’you want me to wear a disguise?”
“Would you?”
“I was joking, Detective.”
He coughs. “How about Hua Lamphong?”
“Thirty minutes.”
• • •
So now I’m sitting at a cafй in the train station with an iced lemon tea, watching some backpackers hump their packs to the platform from which the train for Chiang Mai and all points north will depart. The station is crowded, as usual, mostly with rural Thais who have come to find fortune in the big city, or to depart in sorrow that they have failed. There are plenty of food vendors and taxi hustlers, as well. There is a big clock under the old-style rotating noticeboard that carries the departure times and makes it possible to imagine it is a hundred years ago when the station and its clock were new. Sukum is late. Sukum is terrified.