The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  “It’s only a game,” Suzanne whispered.

  “I know,” Pimlott replied. It might only be a game but he’d bet fifty bucks on the result and he wasn’t sure that he actually had the money in his wallet.

  Carmody seemed to get bored with playing on his own and he stepped away from the machine while soldiers were still shooting at him.

  “Well, College Boy, time to pay up,” he said, clicking his claw. “Fifty big ones.” He held the claw out for the money and opened it. Pimlott stared at the three metal prongs. Carmody seemed to revel in his discomfort and clicked the claw impatiently. “Come on, it’s only Daddy’s money, after all.”

  “What gives with this College Boy thing? And why all the digs about my father?”

  Carmody sneered at the youngster. “Because all my life I’ve seen guys like you, rich kids, who don’t even have to wipe their own noses. Rich kids with rich fathers, who don’t know what life is about, who think they own the world because they can pay for it. Well, College Boy, you’re nothing, you never will be. Whenever you come up against someone like me you’ll get knocked right down.” He gestured towards the video machine with his claw. “See this?” he said. “You use your daddy’s money to play this fucking game, shooting at helicopters, blowing away soldiers, playing at being a man. You ever really shot a man, College Boy? Ever killed anyone? Of course you haven’t. How old are you? Eighteen? Nineteen? Just a kid.”

  Carmody’s voice was becoming louder and more strident, and some of the children playing in the arcade stopped and looked across to see what was happening.

  “Well let me tell you, College Boy, when I was nineteen I was doing that for real. I was shooting real bullets at real people, and when my friends were hit they died, they didn’t just put in another handful of Daddy’s quarters and hit the ‘restart’ button. They came home in body bags. Tell me, College Boy, where was your father when I was blowing people away in Vietnam? What did your old man do during the war? I bet he wasn’t caught up in the draft, was he? I’ll bet he sat in some nice, safe college somewhere studying to be a high-powered lawyer or rich fucking doctor. Am I right?”

  Pimlott said nothing. He looked down at the floor, afraid to look at the man’s face, afraid of how his reflection would appear in the lenses of the sunglasses.

  “I don’t think you’re being fair,” said Suzanne.

  Her support just made Pimlott feel even more ashamed. The vet had been right. His father hadn’t fought in the war, he’d been in medical school. “Look, I don’t want any trouble,” Pimlott said quietly.

  Carmody sneered. “You couldn’t handle trouble, College Boy,” he said. “Not the sort of trouble I’d give you anyway.” He held out his claw. “Fifty bucks,” he said.

  “What is your problem?” asked Suzanne, her hands on her hips.

  “No problem,” he said. “But it seems to me that you’re wasted on the college boy here. Seems to me that you’d be a hell of a lot happier with a real man. A man who could give you what you want. What’s he give you, lover? Stimulating conversation? Witty repartee? A quick grope in the back seat of his daddy’s car? You know what you’d get from me, lover? Do you want me to tell you what I could do for you?”

  Suzanne looked down at the floor, hugging herself tighter. She wanted to attack, to strike out, verbally if not physically, at the angry stranger who seemed to be able to look right through her, but she knew that, intelligent and quick-witted as she was, she was no match for him. She wasn’t used to hurting people, but he clearly was.

  “Well?” pressed Carmody, unwilling to accept her silence. “Do you, lover?”

  She shook her head, small, jerky movements. “No,” she said quietly.

  “Hey, man, leave her alone,” said Pimlott, but his voice was shaking so much that it contained no threat. It was a plea, and Carmody looked at him with open contempt. He clicked his claw. Pimlott reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He opened it and flicked through the bills inside, conscious that the vet was looking at the two credit cards it contained. The cards were in his father’s name.

  Pimlott extracted the notes and quickly counted them. Most of them were one dollar bills, and there were a couple of fives and a ten. Thirty-eight dollars. That was all he had. Suzanne read the confusion on his face and she began going through the pockets of her skirt and her blouse. She found a five dollar bill and two singles and she gave them to Pimlott with trembling hands.

  Pimlott recounted the notes and then bit his lower lip, mentally cursing himself for being such a fool, for not checking beforehand that he had enough cash to cover the bet.

  “The money, College Boy,” said Carmody.

  “I’ve only got forty-five dollars,” said Pimlott, his voice little more than a whisper.

  “I can’t hear you, College Boy,” said Carmody.

  “I said I’ve only got forty-five bucks,” said Pimlott, louder this time. “I’m five dollars short.”

  Carmody nodded and began to move his jaw as if he was chewing gum. He reached up and scratched his beard with his claw. It made a rasping sound that reminded Pimlott of a blade being sharpened. “Well, isn’t that a fucking pity,” said Carmody.

  “I can get the five dollars,” said Pimlott, holding out the notes. One dropped to the floor and he knelt down to retrieve it, groping around with his free hand until he found it because he didn’t want to take his eyes off the man’s face, fearful of what he might do while he wasn’t looking. He straightened up and handed over the bills. Carmody took them effortlessly with his claw and poked them into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  “I don’t trust you, College Boy,” said Carmody. “I think you might not come back. I think you’re a chip off your old man’s block. I think you’re a coward. I think you’d rather run away than fight.”

  A crowd of ten or twelve people had gathered around, openly staring at the argument. Pimlott looked around the curious faces, hoping to see someone who would take his side, but all he saw were teenagers who didn’t want to get involved. They had been brought up on a diet of violent television shows and space invader video games and now they wanted to see blood on the floor. His blood. He couldn’t believe that the man would actually get physical in front of so many witnesses, but each time he tried to get by his way was blocked, and the vet began making poking gestures with his claw, threatening to hit him in the face. Pimlott felt tears of helplessness and shame sting his eyes. “Just let me go,” he whined. He felt Suzanne’s grip loosen and when he turned to look at her she’d gone. Part of him hoped that she’d gone for help, but at the back of his mind was the thought that she’d abandoned him. “I just want to go home,” he said. “Please.”

  Carmody shook his head firmly. “You owe me five dollars, College Boy. If you haven’t got it, I want you to leave something as security.”

  “What? What do you want?”

  Carmody pushed his sunglasses further up his nose with his good hand. “Your watch,” he said, nodding at the boy’s wrist.

  “My watch?” said Pimlott. It had been a gift from his father, a reward for getting into law school. “Come on, man. It’s worth over 500 bucks.”

  “The money, College Boy. Or the watch.”

  Pimlott scanned the crowd again but no one made a move to help him. Over the vet’s shoulder he could see the entrance to the arcade.

  Carmody smiled and clicked his claw. “The watch,” he repeated.

  Pimlott began to tremble and his bladder felt as if it was about to empty. He reached across to his watch with his right hand but as his fingers touched the metal he seemed to explode into action, kicking out with his right leg, flailing with his hands and screaming like a stuck pig.

  Carmody stepped back, feinted a punch with his left hand and then slammed the metal claw into Pimlott’s temple, flooring him instantly. The metal prongs tore into the flesh and blood trickled down his cheek as he fell to the floor. The crowd gasped and moved back but not too far, shocked by the violence but st
ill entranced by it. Carmody glared at them as if daring them to intervene. When no one said anything he bent down and slipped the watch off the boy’s wrist.

  When Pimlott regained consciousness, a paramedic was holding something soft against his temple and telling him to lie still. Above him he could make out two uniformed police officers talking to the owner of the arcade, a stocky, balding man with rolled-up sleeves and chunky gold bracelets. Pimlott’s vision blurred and he felt as if he was going to throw up so he closed his eyes.

  “Yeah, his name was Carmody,” he heard the owner tell the police. “Larry Carmody. He was a vet with a king-size chip on his shoulder, a real attitude. Shouldn’t be hard to track down, one of his fucking arms was missing. Which one? The left, I think. He was living in some flophouse downtown, I’ve got his address somewhere in the office. Yeah, seems to be about 3,000 dollars missing, but I won’t know until I’ve checked the books. Yeah, cash. This is a cash business, right? Of course it was cash. What do you think he’d take, pizza? Cleared out the fucking safe and took the change float, too. A social security number? What do you think I’m running here, fucking IBM?”

  It seemed to Anthony Chung that only someone with a particularly British sense of humour could have given the name “Nineteen 97” to a bar frequented by Hong Kong’s beautiful people. There was nothing the average Hong Konger had to celebrate about the date when the British colony was due to be handed back to its true owners, but the bar cum disco was nevertheless packed with young exuberant expatriates and affluent Chinese, dancing themselves senseless to the driving beat of the latest Canto-pop hits.

  Chung leant on the bar and surveyed the dancers as he sipped a brandy on the rocks. A girl with shoulder-length wavy brown hair and too much green eye-shadow smiled at him but he ignored her. Two young Americans, tall and thin enough to be basketball players, moved to each side of him and tried to attract the attention of one of the barmaids. Chung eased himself out from between them and went to stand by a pillar. It was Saturday night, Nineteen 97’s busiest time. Most Hong Kongers worked a five and a half day week and Friday night was always more subdued because a high proportion of the bar’s clientele had to be in the office Saturday morning. There were several American ships in port, too, and it didn’t take long for the navy boys to find their way to Gweilo Alley, the narrow thoroughfare which contained Nineteen 97 and more than a dozen other bars and chic restaurants. There was a garbage disposal depot at the end of the road, built at the insistence of Chinese bureaucrats shortly after the Lan Kwai Fong district reached the pinnacle of its popularity. Chung thought that demonstrated a particularly Chinese sense of humour.

  The small dance-floor was the showcase for some of Hong Kong’s prettiest girls, Chinese and Caucasian. Two long-haired Eurasian girls, one in a tight-fitting white dress, the other in black, danced together, their eyes only for each other. Chung watched the two basketball players try to split them up and fail, walking dejectedly back to the bar to nurse their beers. They’d been wasting their time. One of the girls was a lesbian, often featured in the showbiz pages of the Chinese gossip magazines on the arm of her latest lover. She was an actress in an afternoon historical soap opera and she had the reputation of picking up pretty shop assistants in high-class boutiques, seducing them, keeping them as close companions for about a month, and then dropping them. Chung didn’t recognise the other girl, the one in black, but whoever she was she clearly wasn’t wearing any underwear under her low-cut dress. The pop record was replaced by a slow ballad and the two girls moved together into a clinch, arms around each other. The actress reached up to stroke the other girl’s hair, and gradually moved her head around until their lips were together and they kissed passionately.

  Chung dragged his eyes away. He scanned the faces of the rest of the dancers but didn’t see the girl he was looking for. It was the second Saturday night he’d gone in search of Debbie Fielding. He knew what she looked like because she was regularly featured in the Hong Kong Tatler, usually between her mother and father, holding a glass of champagne with a napkin and a fixed smile on her face. He was in no rush. There was a limited number of places where the daughter of the chairman of one of the biggest banks in Hong Kong would go to enjoy herself on a Saturday night. He’d find her sooner rather than later.

  “Nice jacket,” said a voice to his right. He turned to see the girl with wavy brown hair. She smiled and put her head on one side, showing white, even teeth. She was pretty and full-figured, her black halter top barely concealing her large breasts which she aimed at his chest like a gunslinger taking aim. She stroked the pale tan material. “Armani?” she asked.

  Chung nodded.

  “My favourite designer,” she said. “My name’s Sandy.”

  “Anthony,” he said, raising his glass. “Anthony Chung.”

  “Do you want to dance?” she asked. Chung was surprised by her forwardness. He knew that many Caucasian women were attracted to his lithe physique and good looks, his dark brown eyes and high cheekbones, but they usually waited for him to make the first move because they weren’t sure how to handle a Chinese.

  “I’m not much of a dancer,” he said. In fact he was an excellent dancer – ballroom, Latin American and modern – but he didn’t have time to waste on the girl, attractive as she was.

  She rubbed her breasts against the front of his jacket and looked up at him. For the first time he saw how glazed her eyes were and smelt the gin on her breath. She raised her eyebrows, trying to look cute but actually looking as if she were about to pass out. “Will you take me home?” she asked. He felt her hand move down the front of his trousers and squeeze him.

  He looked at her levelly. “I can’t,” he said. “I’m waiting for my boyfriend.”

  The hand stopped moving. She took a step back, confused, then she smiled. “I could make you forget your boyfriend,” she said, running her right hand down the side of her breast.

  “I’m sure you could, but he gets very jealous,” he said.

  She shrugged, turned on her heels, and went over to one of the navy boys. Within thirty seconds she was rubbing herself up against him and squeezing him between the legs.

  Chung placed his half-finished drink on a table and left the bar, his ears ringing from the loud music. In the street outside a young man with slicked-back hair was throwing up in the gutter, much to the amusement of his friends, who laughed like public schoolboys and slapped each other on the back. Two Chinese boys, barely out of their teens, giggled and walked down a flight of steps into one of the gay bars that were to be found in Lan Kwai Fong. Homo-sexuality had been illegal in Hong Kong until 1991, but the authorities never prosecuted. In fact, even before 1991 it wasn’t unusual to see government officials and lawyers dancing with Chinese men in some of the more discreet up-market bars that served the gay community.

  A dark green Mercedes sounded its horn and edged past the youth in the gutter and turned on to the main road towards the central business district. An English couple, he in a tuxedo and she in a glittering gown and pearls, walked arm-in-arm into a French restaurant. It was a hot and humid night and Chung felt sweat trickle down the middle of his back. He took off his jacket and held it over his arm as he walked to the California bar along the road. It was the fifth he’d been in that night.

  A pretty brunette sitting on a stool behind a wooden lectern smiled at him and asked if he had a membership card. When he admitted that he didn’t she took a hefty entrance fee from him and waved him in with another smile.

  The volume of the music was lower than in Nineteen 97 but the clientele was similar, young men and women dressed in expensive designer clothes, partying as if there were no tomorrow, trying to squeeze as much enjoyment out of the place as they could in the little time they had left. Chung knew that most of them reckoned that under Chinese rule the good times would soon be over. The frantic excitement of the Lan Kwai Fong revellers reminded Chung of nothing so much as the band playing as the Titanic went down.

  T
wo executives of one of the more successful Chinese stockbroking firms were drinking a bottle of champagne at a table. Chung had done business with them in the past and they waved him over. They offered him a glass but he said no, he was there to meet someone. They presented him with new business cards listing their recently opened offices in Singapore, Taipei, Jakarta and Bangkok. Like most of the colony’s local brokerage firms, they were preparing for the day when the world’s investment community would regard Hong Kong as just another inefficient Chinese bureaucratic nightmare rather than a free-wheeling tax haven and manufacturing centre. When that happened the downgrading would be rapid and severe, and investment money would shift dramatically away from the local stock market and into the other little dragons in the region. The ever resourceful Hong Kong Chinese stock-brokers would make money either way. Chung wished them well and went back to the bar where he ordered himself a brandy and ice.

  The dance-floor in the California was bigger than that in Nineteen 97 and less crowded, giving the dancers more room to move. They were taking full advantage of it – a cosmopolitan mix of Chinese, Caucasian and Eurasian. Lan Kwai Fong was one of the few places in Hong Kong where all the races truly mixed on a social level, where the only qualifications for acceptance were a wallet full of money and the desire to have a good time.

  Chung had sipped about half of his drink when he saw her coming out of the Ladies. The photographs in the Tatler didn’t do her justice. Debbie Fielding was about five foot six, slim in a boyish way, with fair skin and straight blonde hair that reached just past her shoulders. From across the room Chung couldn’t tell the colour of her eyes but he guessed they’d be blue or green. She had a slight upturn to her nose and a sprinkling of freckles and her cheeks were flushed as if she weren’t used to alcohol. Her lips were full but she didn’t appear to have any make-up on. He put her age at about nineteen, maybe twenty. She was wearing a simple off-the-shoulder pale blue dress which looked like silk and which ended just above the knee. She had good legs which were accentuated by very high heels.