by D. L. Kung
She hoped she wasn’t fumbling something so sensitive by speeding to the point. ‘Vic disappeared while working on a story about your company. We didn’t know anything about it until you phoned last Friday. Maybe the fact that he’s still gone is unconnected with that story, but all I know is that he just hasn’t shown up. He might be in Hong Kong, he might still be in China. And I think—well, I think something has happened to him or he would have contacted us.’
‘You’ve notified the police?’
‘And the consulate.’
‘What can I add? I’d like to help you, but all I know is that Vic didn’t keep his appointment.’ He buttered one of his muffins deftly with the heavy silver knife without losing a crumb. So skillful, and yet here was a Vietnam veteran, a decorated survivor of one of her country’s most brutal wars.
He wore no wedding ring. She smiled at herself for noticing. Yes, MacGinnes was very attractive.
‘We know Vic got as far as your factory. Didn’t you get any feedback on his visit? He might have asked the wrong questions, angered the Chinese at that end in some way, got himself picked up by someone who’s not responding to the official inquiries from our Guangzhou consulate.’
MacGinnes was looking at her, but gazing more than responding. Maybe he thought her dress was too pretty for an interview like this. Maybe he didn’t like the way she’d done her hair. Maybe he was mentally reviewing production runs of next year’s electronic notebook.
‘What do the police think?’
‘They suspect that Vic is on the run because he was involved in the death last week of another reporter who was borrowing his apartment on Cheung Chau—our Bangkok stringer. They were both seeing the same girl. The stringer washed up on shore Sunday morning.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, shot and then dumped into the sea.’
‘Shot?’
MacGinnes looked understandably bewildered. Despite the flow of illegal guns across the border, not many people got shot in Hong Kong—meat cleavers were the Hong Kong weapon du choix.
‘It hasn’t made it into the Post, because the police don’t want to complicate the investigation, although I figure it’ll be leaked by the Thai police in a day or two. I can see why the Hong Kong police just kept it quiet. Things are tense here with the Chinese taking over. The local editors do what they’re told these days. But it’s not so easy to muzzle the Thais.’
MacGinnes enjoyed a can-do reputation. Would the reality of a corpse get his blood running hot enough to help her out? She gave him the details of Hager’s time in Hong Kong and his death as best she could. She could see that her guest was a quick study from his nods and questions. He was hardly put off by a death, even a mutilating one.
The more intrigued he became, the more she felt a growing sympathy between them that comforted and surprised her. She was glad she’d worn the Donna Karan dress. She felt ashamed she was glad—Xavier also liked that dress.
When she was finished bringing him up to date, he thought for a moment, then asked, ‘And the police think that Vic is involved in your stringer’s death, and that the girlfriend knows more than she’s saying? Where’s she? What does she do?’
‘To make matters worse, she’s disappeared from both her job and her flat. And the only way I can prove that Vic is innocent is to find him, and by showing what he was really doing in China, get his alibi out front, on the record. He was interested in labor issues, in investment, and he must have been on to something that was so good he didn’t want to share it.’
‘For example?’
‘I don’t want to be rude to you, especially as you’ve been nice enough to listen to all this sordid stuff, but is there something your Chinese partners might be doing that would make a good story for us? Let me just go over this with you. He wanted to know about your company’s wage levels, your workers, and your terms of agreement with the Chinese, right?’
‘Right. I told him we were very happy with our arrangement. Our profits have risen steadily. Sure, it’s hard to get the Chinese to appreciate the requirements of overseas deadlines, but they’re starting to understand the language of simple profit. The longer I work with them, the more I’m absolutely convinced that they see straightforward capitalism as a way out of their political quagmire. Mao’s dead, Deng’s a Parkinson’s vegetable. They call President Jiang Zemin the “flowerpot”—just there for decoration. Cash is king or should I say, emperor?’
‘That wouldn’t make a story for us now. We ran lots of stories in the mid-eighties about China’s open door, et cetera. Vic was digging for more. You must know what he was sniffing around for. C’mon, it can’t be worth holding out on me when his life is at stake.’
MacGinnes took a deep breath and gave a little chuckle.
‘All right. I knew he was trying to pin me down on something, but for a while I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I heard he went back up to our production lines, asking about sourcing and sub-contractors, you know, shitty working conditions up the production chain. Pretty soon I figured it out.’
‘What?’
‘You know, the underage labor angle, the usual scandal of us employing thirteen-year-olds for fourteen hour days. He thought he was being really sneaky and clever about it, but I just gave an order for the below-sixteen’s to take a day or two off. I mean, get a grip. Do you know what their lives would be like if we didn’t offer them jobs in town?’
‘Yes. Is that all?’
‘Well, couldn’t you check? His notes?’
‘We’ve got his computer—’
‘God! There’s your answer!’
MacGinnes looked impatient, so she shook her head, ‘We don’t know his password yet.’
‘Oh, too bad. You said yourself, he was pretty green. Sorry, I can’t help you more. Frankly, I had worried he wanted to do a hatchet job on me as a callous profiteer with no sensitivity to the Democracy Movement—you know, a picture of that kid with his plastic shopping bag defying the Tiananmen tank right next to a photo of my main factory. But I’m a big boy. I can take the heat. Some people are arguing that Brainchild should have pulled out after Tiananmen. Lots of companies did, or let’s be honest, pretended they did. We didn’t. And now we’re all back in for the long term.’
MacGinnes sounded almost evangelical.
‘And you’re ahead of the game.’
‘That’s right. Brainchild has a very special relationship with the Chinese. We think they’re special, too, with unique challenges. Very special. They’ve got social problems Americans can’t even dream of, like one to two hundred and fifty million or more unemployed. We have to show them, maybe on a very small scale, how to put those people to work.’
MacGinnes shrugged and leaned back, polishing off his second muffin. ‘May I call you Claire?’
‘Sure.’
‘You and I have been around here long enough to understand what a new reporter like Vic doesn’t get. You don’t just chopper down with your American mindset onto the factory floor and start firing your automatic at situations you don’t understand.’
‘On the other hand, sometimes those of us who’ve been here too long might forget why we came.’
‘You can’t have been here all that long,’ he winked. ‘You know, you’ve got really lovely eyes, sort of greenish-brown? Goes with that outfit.’
‘You’re flirting with me—’
‘You’re married?’
‘No,’ she smiled.
‘I’d really like to help, on the condition of course, that you don’t run some tired story on teen-agers—’
‘Cold coffee.’
‘That’s what I thought. So . . . does this breakfast have to stay all business?’
Chauffeured cars waited in no-parking zones and gym trainers worked overtime by appointment for men like MacGinnes. But all the time, if you put your ear to the ground, you could hear the clock ticking and the money tinkling. It was hard to believe that in the years MacGinnes and Claire had shared in Asia, he’d
built a fortune while all she had were three inches of yellowing news clips.
She thought of the political idealist Chen who’d joined up as a Brainchild partner—to make up for time lost on principles while the rest of his Communist colleagues were ‘jumping into the sea of commerce.’ There had been a hint of envy in his voice when he talked of the rich profits made by ‘Red Capitalists’ in Guangdong.
The next breakfast shift was arriving—the Mandarin waiters turned over tables as fast as commuter trains moving out of stations. Early tables were breaking up with handshakes, the flash of metallic credit cards and the snap of calling cards.
She had to get MacGinnes to focus on Vic’s fading image.
‘OK. So Vic saw you in Hong Kong before the New Year. Then he crossed into China without telling us so he could check out your factory. He met your Chinese partner.’
‘Yes, I was wondering when you would admit you’d met Chen yourself,’ MacGinnes chuckled. ‘He tells me you were looking around Punyu the other day. You should have told me. We could have lent you one of our drivers for the day. Well, Chen waved Vic off in his car to Guangzhou. The trail is probably pretty cold by now. I assume you’ve checked with the mainland side? With immigration? The Guangzhou police?’
Claire nodded in agreement. ‘But the Chinese police have nothing and their immigration service says he’s back in the colony, while our computer system says he was in Shanghai and—’
‘Hold on, hold on,’ MacGinnes laughed. ‘He can’t be in two places at once.’
‘Exactly. He sent a message from Shanghai into our e-mail system. But the US Consulate in Shanghai said there was no trace of him being up there. The Chinese at the border ran a check for our Consulate in Guangzhou, and they say he came back to Hong Kong a week ago.’
MacGinnes nodded. ‘So he’s back.’
She wasn’t going to let him off the hook this easily. ‘What about your other partner, this guy P. C. Wong? Maybe he saw Vic, maybe he knows something?’
MacGinnes didn’t look up at her right away; he wiped the crumbs off his lips with the corner of his napkin.
‘Wong?’ he smiled wryly. ‘How did you get on to Wong? No, I don’t think Vic would get any joy from Wong. And frankly, I’m not entirely happy thinking you might approach him. He’s a touchy guy, very sensitive about foreigners. It took us a long time to get him to trust us. If I could ask you a favor, let me know before you look up Wong. You’d need me to grease the wheels with him. You speak Chinese?’
She nodded.
‘Well, all the more reason. He’s bound to wonder why a guay po is asking him a lot of questions. He’s the man as far as our suppliers and foreign-currency hassles are concerned, not Chen. Chen just advises us on red tape. I’ll talk to Wong for you. And he’s well connected, so if there is anything going on up there, Wong will tell me. Believe, Claire, I do want to help.’
She didn’t like being told whom she could or couldn’t question. At the same time, his manner was undeniably sexy. When he asked a favor, it sounded like an order. And when he gave an order, it sounded like an irresistible plea. Maybe that’s how you make $80 million, she thought. Despite herself, she imagined the same voice saying to her, ‘Just leave the high heels on.’
‘Aren’t you eating anything?’
It was kind of him to notice.
‘No, this whole business is making me literally sick to my stomach. I’ll just finish my juice.’ She forced her thoughts back to business.
‘I know this sounds kind of off-the-wall. But have you ever run across a small-time import-export bullshitter named Chew Lo-man?’
‘Let me ask our buyers and get back to you. You forget we’ve got more than half a dozen operations in China. You can’t expect me to know every Wing, Wang, and Wong that comes through the gate.’
No, this wasn’t getting her very far, she thought. Good thing Cecilia was already on the job, checking out Wong before anyone could call her off. She would explain to MacGinnes later that it was just a question of crossed wires, no more. She knew she could rely on Cecilia’s natural instincts. If this Wong guy was so damn touchy, Cecilia was the right person to be careful.
‘Weren’t you in Punyu yourself, the day Vic was there?’
‘No. I sent my car and driver with some buyers up for the day.’ He suddenly leaned into the table, his eyes twinkling with humor at her drift. ‘But I do want to help you, Claire Raymond. I like your magazine and I like you. Why haven’t we met before this?’
‘We’re both busy people. You know Hong Kong.’
‘Well, if you knew me a little better, you wouldn’t be insinuating I’ve done away with a Business World reporter and off’ed some guy from Bangkok I’ve never heard of. But I do give jobs to twelve-year-olds. You got me there.’
‘Sorry.’ She smiled apologetically. Looking at MacGinnes now, sharing an intimate booth in the back of the dining room with him, feeling the pull of his money, his tailoring, his broad white smile, she couldn’t quite see him dragging Hager’s body down the stairs of the grubby island apartment building and pushing him off the edge of the Cheung Chau quay.
She tried to salvage some of the sympathy she’d felt from him earlier. ‘I’m picking up the tab, or rather, let’s stick it to New York. They haven’t sent so much as a wreath to Hager.’
‘Well, if you need help cracking open that computer of his, don’t forget, my people have the knowhow. Here’s my private number.’ He scribbled on the back of his business card. He turned out to have more ‘private numbers’ than her bureau had extensions.
As they rose, MacGinnes helped her out of the soft cushions and kept her arm as they descended from the terrace to the main floor and walked towards the hotel lobby. A couple in well-padded old age observed them and then nodded to each other in agreement, and then turned back to their meal. MacGinnes and she made an eye-catching couple. She caught herself guiltily, not because she was ashamed she still found other men besides Xavier attractive, but because she knew that one of the things that made MacGinnes so goddamned seductive was his aura of power and money. He was like some Mills & Boon romance character—dangerous, dark and masterful.
He even cared whether she ate breakfast or not.
Did they really make’em like that? Apparently now and then, they did.
***
She had to take all bureau calls herself and they’d driven her crazy all morning. Now that it was lunchtime, she switched the answering machine on. Some of her construction companies had started calling back, including a secretary named Vogue Kam calling on behalf of her boss, a broker at Indosuez, one Napoleon Kuok.
When Claire returned the call, Vogue said, ‘Mr Kuok suggests you might be thinking of UniGlobal Properties,’ she said.
UniGlobal? Jason Ng? Claire had seen Ng many times at Crown Land property auctions. He was a confident man in his early fifties, always surrounded by his henchmen, all equipped with the newest mobile phones, calling back bids to their strategists working the calculators back at UniGlobal Towers in Central District. So Jason Ng was building a new unit for the First Affiliated Hospital. And his offspring could be aged anywhere from their late teens to their early thirties.
While she was pulling the file on Ng, she heard Fresnay’s voice on the answering machine. She picked up his call.
‘Salut. I just wanted to see how things were going. Any news of Victor?’
‘None. And nothing from the investigators on Hager, either. I looked into MacGinnes’s company, and it seems to have very close links with the Chinese government, but I’m not sure at what level. He’s got a silent partner with offices at the China Resources Building whom I met briefly. Then I had breakfast with MacGinnes this morning, but I didn’t get as much help from him as I had hoped. It seems Vic’s big secret swoop was on underage labor.’
‘Any news from Cecilia?’
‘We’ll hear again from her tonight after she’s checked out this silent partner up in Punyu. She says MacGinnes’s car was at the
factory the day Vic disappeared, but MacGinnes says he just lent it to buyers for the day. Oh, I did find out that a certain billionaire Jason Ng is building a new wing at the First Affiliated Hospital in Guangzhou.’
‘Ah, good work. You think he’s the donor who paid five million yuan for the two kidneys?’
‘Well, at least he might know who’s paying the bills. I still have to work on it.’
‘You sound exhausted.’ Fresnay’s voice was filled with sympathy. ‘You’re feeling all right? You’ve got some work to occupy your mind while the police do their job?’
She wasn’t all right, but how to explain it?
‘Tell me this, Robert. I wasn’t supportive enough of Vic, I know. If I made him feel inadequate, do you think I’m responsible, I mean, that I’m guilty, if something really serious has happened to him? It’s been on my mind since we found Hager. At first, I was just irritated when Vic didn’t come back to the office, and then I was worried. But now I feel slightly nauseated all the time. I feel like crying, but the tears don’t come. Just a sick feeling.’
‘Stop, woman,’ Fresnay said. His voice was soothing, and Claire, who had always known him as a China-watcher, wondered if this was his less familiar priestly persona, summoned up unknowingly by her fears. ‘You didn’t intend to drive Victor into the void. There was no thought of committing a sin. And Victor has his own free will, like the rest of us. He’s responsible for his own actions and his own reactions. If you were a hard taskmaster, and I suppose you have your demanding moments, he was supposed to react as an adult, not a child.’
Claire reflected for a second. Was Vic really an adult, or still an adolescent who had somehow entered his thirties without being tested, like those inner-city high school kids you heard about who managed to graduate without learning how to read?
‘You’re trying to make me feel better, I know. Thank you. Maybe it’s just this diabolical combination of continuing on with the job, worrying about Cecilia, wondering about Vic, and feeling frightened because of what happened to Craig. Thanks anyway.’