The Wild Beasts of Wuhan

by Ian Hamilton

  “I’ve said it anyway.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “You have some work to do,” she said. “I’ll be back in four hours. Is that enough time?”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “It will be about ten o’clock in New York by then, so you can call your brother as well.”

  “He’s a late sleeper.”

  “Get him out of bed.”

  ( 26 )

  Ava walked down Church Street back to the hotel. She phoned Uncle from her room. It was dinnertime in Hong Kong, so she wasn’t surprised to hear the clatter of dishes in the background when he answered his phone.

  “Wei.”

  “I’ve just left Edwin Hughes. It went well, I think. Now I need to get to the other brother, Glen,” she said.

  “Is he in London?”

  “New York.”

  “How soon will you leave?”

  “After Edwin gives me what I want, so I can’t leave until maybe late today, more likely tomorrow morning.” She heard voices. “Are you with someone?”

  “I’m at the noodle shop near Kowloon Station, Andy’s place. Sonny is with me.”

  “Say hello to Andy for me,” she said, and heard Uncle relay her greeting.

  “Ava, these brothers,” Uncle said, “how much money do they still have? How much do you think you can recover?”

  She didn’t answer him immediately. The same question had occurred to her after Edwin’s rant about his brother’s lifestyle. “I don’t have a clue,” she finally said, “but I’ll call you the instant I know.”

  She hung up and was thinking about going downstairs for lunch, when her cellphone rang. May Ling. She let it go to voicemail. A moment later it rang again. Irritated, she picked it up, ready to silence it until the afternoon, when she saw a London number appear on the screen.

  “Ava Lee.”

  “Frederick here. I’m just calling to see how things are going.”

  “I believe I told you I’d phone when I had something to report.”

  “I’m anxious,” he said. “I was up half the night worrying about all this. The more I think about it, the more I realize how difficult this could be for my firm.”

  “Then stop thinking about it.”

  “Easily said.”

  “Leave the office, go to a movie, find a distraction,” Ava said.

  “How are things going?” he asked again.

  She sighed. “Quite well, actually. With any luck, you and I should be able to sit down in a day or two with all the facts at our fingertips and make an informed decision.”

  “I’m counting on that.”

  So is Edwin Hughes, she thought, and hung up.

  Ava took the elevator to the lobby and had lunch in the hotel’s Stable Bar. She then headed outdoors, where the sun was still visible through a bank of clouds that grew darker towards the horizon. She decided to take a walk around the Gardens, and was on her third circuit when her phone rang. The incoming number was for the Hughes Gallery. That was quick, she thought.

  “This is Ava Lee,” she said.

  “I’ve finished my paperwork. You can come by and pick it up anytime,” Hughes said.

  “Have you spoken to your brother?”

  “Yes, not more than ten minutes ago. I think you’ll find him co-operative.”

  She checked her watch. It was just past one o’clock. “I’m on my way now,” Ava said. She was near the bridge that spanned the Serpentine, so she reversed course and headed back to the High Street. She called her travel agent in Toronto as she walked.

  “Gail, it’s Ava. I need to fly to New York. Can you see if there’s a late-afternoon flight out of Heathrow, something that could get me there sometime early this evening? I won’t be near my computer for a while, so call me when you have the information. I’m not sure what part of the city I’ll be going to, so let’s hold off on a hotel until I know for certain.”

  As Ava approached the gallery she saw Lisa waiting by the front door, looking embarrassed. Ava wondered if she’d read the papers she’d been asked to witness. “Mr. Hughes is in the back,” she said softly, as if it were a secret. She’s been told something, Ava thought.

  Ava walked to the offices in the back and found Hughes standing by a photocopier just outside his office, feeding it notepaper with handwriting on it. “That was prompt,” he said when he saw her.

  “I was just around the corner.”

  He turned his back to her as he finished making the copies. He sorted the papers into three neat stacks and stapled each stack together. “One for me, one for you, and I thought you’d want one for Glen, so I took the liberty,” he said, handing her two sets.

  “Do you mind if I sit to read?”

  “Let’s go into the office.”

  There were nine pages of notes, double-spaced, six of them devoted to the earlier forgeries and the remaining three recounting his knowledge of the Fauvist scam, including his meeting with Nancy O’Toole, the letter from Helga Sørensen, and his brother’s admission to him of his guilt. It was a straightforward account, unemotional and not the least bit self-serving. She respected him for his directness.

  Ava pulled out her Moleskine notebook and checked the notes she had made that morning against the documents Hughes had drafted. “Mr. Hughes,” she said, “on a separate piece of paper I’d like you to make a list of the so-called art experts who authenticated the Manet and the Modiglianis.”

  “Is that necessary?”

  “Yes, I want that information.”

  He hesitated. “What bearing does it have on this? I’ve already given you a full confession.”

  “It will give me additional leverage with your brother,” she said, not at all sure it would but figuring it never hurt to have extra ammunition.

  “All right,” he said.

  “I also don’t see any of the information I asked for about your brother.”

  “That’s done, but I’ve separated it from these documents.”

  “Good. Now, do you have a fax machine?”

  “Next to the photocopier.”

  “I’d like to send a copy of your notes to Hong Kong.”

  “Go ahead,” he said.

  Ava put Uncle’s name on a cover sheet and wrote, Here is an accurate description of how the Wongs were cheated. I’m leaving for New York in a few hours. I’ll be in touch. She dialled his Hong Kong fax number and fed the papers through the machine.

  Her cellphone rang as the transmission started. Her travel agent told her there was a five-o’clock flight to JFK that got in at eight forty-five. Ava figured that by the time she’d cleared Customs and found her way into Manhattan it would be at least ten o’clock. She hoped Glen Hughes didn’t mind working nights. “Hang on a second,” Ava said to Gail, and walked back to Edwin Hughes’ office. “Where does your brother live?” she asked.

  “On 65th Street near Lexington Avenue, on the Upper East Side,” he said.

  She repeated this to Gail.

  “There’s a Mandarin Oriental Hotel at Columbus Circle and 60th Street,” Gail said. “It’s on the southwest corner of Central Park. You can have a room with a park view if you don’t mind paying a thousand dollars a night.”

  “Book the flight and the room,” Ava said.

  “I’m finished with the list,” Hughes said, as she hung up the phone.

  She read the document quickly. The only name she recognized was Sam Rice, only because Hughes had mentioned him specifically.

  “And here is the information on my brother.”

  “Only one address. Is that his house or his office?”

  “Both, evidently. He told me he has his office on the ground floor and the living quarters are upstairs.”

  “A townhouse?”
/>   “That’s what he told me.”

  “Is he living alone?”

  “Yes, wife number three vacated several months ago.”

  Ava thought Hughes looked curiously relaxed. This is the man, she thought, whom Edwin Hughes said he detested. “So, you say you spoke to your brother and he’s going to be co-operative?”

  “I did, and he said he would be.”

  “He took your call so easily?”

  “I used Lisa’s mobile. He probably thought it was some old girlfriend trying to reach him.”

  “Was it strained, your conversation?”

  “What does that matter?” Hughes asked. “You got what you wanted.”

  “How hard did you have to push?”

  He laughed and then slowly shook his head. “My brother has a remarkably fine-tuned instinct for survival. He can identify danger from miles away, and I only had to start talking about you and Maurice O’Toole before he had the situation sussed out. He thought the half-million was cheap. He said he’d pay it. He may posture a bit, protest, negotiate, whine, threaten — he has a whole range of theatrics he can call on — but in the end he said he’ll pay. His only concern, actually, was about my ability to pay my share. I almost thought he was going to offer to fund that too.”

  “Did you go into the letters I’ve drafted for the Earl and the others?”

  “I didn’t have to. Glen understood the implications of this going public far quicker than I did.”

  “So he’s expecting me?”

  “Of course. I told him I thought you’d be there in a day or two, and that you’d contact him directly.”

  This has gone well, Ava thought. Maybe too well.

  Edwin Hughes fussed with the papers on his desk. Ava tried to think of anything she might have missed. When she was satisfied she had covered everything, she stood up, put his notes in her bag, and said, “Thanks for this.”

  He walked out from behind the desk. “I’ll walk with you to the door.”

  She hadn’t been physically close to him before, and now that she was, she could smell a distinct body odour. Hughes hadn’t showered or used deodorant that morning, or else he had been sweating up a storm. On his breath she also picked up the unmistakeable scent of whisky. Fear and booze were a bad combination.

  He was walking beside her when he reached out to touch her elbow. Ava recoiled. He realized at once that he had overstepped his boundaries, pulled his hand back, and jammed it into his jacket pocket. “Ms. Lee, I have something I’d like to ask you,” he said.

  “I can’t promise I’ll answer.”

  “My brother, Glen — you are going to hurt him, aren’t you?”

  She wasn’t quite sure what he meant and looked at him sideways. Hughes’ face betrayed nothing. “Does he care about his money?” she asked.

  “Passionately.”

  “Then I am going to hurt him.”

  ( 27 )

  She called Glen Hughes from the Delta business-class lounge at Heathrow, although she wasn’t expecting to reach him. So when she heard “This is Glen Hughes,” she was taken aback, and stumbled before saying, “This is Ava Lee.”

  “I didn’t expect to hear from you quite so soon,” he said.

  There wasn’t a hint of tension in his voice. If anything, he seemed disinterested, bored. Maybe that’s the impression he’s trying to give me, Ava thought. His accent was more refined than Edwin’s, the pace of his words slower, languid.

  Ava was sitting at the bar, a glass of wine and a small plate of smoked salmon finger sandwiches in front of her. “I didn’t see any point in wasting time,” she said.

  “Indeed not.”

  “I’m at Heathrow. I’m scheduled to get into New York tonight around nine o’clock. Is it possible we could meet tonight?”

  “There’s absolutely no chance of that. I have a function at the Whitney.”

  “I don’t mind working late.”

  “Ms. Lee, I’m quite sure you have my address.”

  “I do.”

  “Well, in that case, I’ll see you here tomorrow morning any time after eleven,” he said and hung up. Ava shook her head. It wasn’t often that she was so deftly dismissed.

  She heard the call to board, quickly downed the last of her wine, and gathered her bags to head for the plane.

  The business-class cabin was almost full. Ava settled into her seat and waved at the flight attendant, who was already getting impatient with demanding passengers. “I don’t want anything to eat,” she told her. “After we take off, just bring me two glasses of your best white wine.”

  As soon as they were in the air, Ava put on her earphones and settled back to watch Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, a remake of one of the best Hong Kong films ever made, Infernal Affairs. Ava wasn’t sure that Scorsese would be able to capture the complexity of the original, and was disappointed to see that he hadn’t. The American version added an unconvincing love triangle and ended in the most predictable way: the bad guy got shot. In the Chinese version, the bad guy, played by Andy Lau, had been left to deal with inner demons that eventually drove him to madness. Maybe, Ava thought, the difference between the gweilo and the Chinese approach to the same story can be found in the film’s titles. The name of the original Cantonese version, translated literally, was “non-stop path,” a reference to Avici, the lowest level of hell in Buddhism. That’s where the Lau character ended up, in a never-ending cycle of torment.

  Ava turned off the entertainment system and pulled out her notebook. She had made only rough calculations of what Glen Hughes had actually pocketed; now she wanted to fix a final number. It turned out to be $73,450,000. She wondered how much of it he would be good for. He would start off with denial, of course, as they all did. Then that would give way to accepting minimal responsibility, before finally capitulating. That’s when the negotiations would really start.

  Ava wasn’t in the instalment payment business. She and Uncle would take one shot at getting everything they could for the client, collect their commission, and then move on. She had been lucky on her last few jobs: the culprits had been identified early on and the money was still recoverable. The Hughes scam went back ten years, and from everything Edwin had said, Glen Hughes had burned through a lot of the funds in that time.

  JFK was a zoo when they landed. Ava waited in line at Customs for more than an hour, her patience wearing thin. But the taxi line was mercifully short and the traffic to Manhattan light; at close to eleven o’clock Ava arrived at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. She hadn’t slept much on the plane, which was unusual for her, and with the time difference it felt like four a.m. She was hungry, but her need to sleep overwhelmed her need for food, and by eleven thirty she was showered and tucked into bed.

  She slept a dreamless sleep and woke at nine. It was the longest uninterrupted rest she’d had in weeks. She immediately went to the window and opened the drapes. Central Park gleamed at her, bursting into green under a warm spring sun.

  She boiled water in the kettle at the bar and made a Starbucks VIA instant coffee. Then she settled in at the desk and booted her computer. An email message from Mimi confirmed that she and Derek were actively looking for a house in Leaside, an affluent Toronto neighbourhood. She also wrote that Maria had been really happy with Ava’s reaction to her mother’s visit. I don’t know what you’re looking for in a woman, she added, but you seem to have one who is smart, gorgeous, and loves you to death. When I first met her I thought she was perfect for you. Now I’m more convinced than ever. Ava reread the part about Maria, and for the first time since she had left Toronto she found herself really missing her.

  She went back to her inbox and saw she had received another message from Michael Lee. She opened it with caution. I hope your current job is going well, he wrote. I just want to remind you to give me a call as soon as it
ends. Ava wondered if he knew what she did for a living. She had assumed that this was something her father didn’t know in any detail. Now she wasn’t quite so sure.

  She closed Michael’s message and saw that she had one from Frederick Locke. How are things proceeding? Please let me know, and try to keep me updated on a more regular basis, could you? Frankly, this entire crisis is wearing on my nerves. I’m having trouble sleeping and my concentration is shot. I can’t stop thinking about all the possible ramifications of our discovery, he wrote.

  Our discovery? Ava thought. She wrote to him, Please stay calm. Everything is under control.

  She logged out of her email account and took a shower. When she came out of the bathroom, she took her time dressing. She chose her pink Brooks Brothers shirt and the black linen slacks, completing the outfit with her black leather Cole Haan pumps. She had about an hour to get to Glen Hughes’ residence, enough time, she figured, to take a detour around Central Park.

  Ava packed her bag with her notebook and some of the files. She was still left with the three bound with a rubber band, which she carried in her hand.

  From the hotel on 60th Street she headed north on 8th Avenue, with Central Park to her right. She had been in, through, and around the park many times. Its southern perimeter was marked by 59th Street, and 110th Street was to its north, a distance of about four kilometres. From west to east the park spanned less than a kilometre. She calculated her route from the Mandarin to Hughes’ place on East 65th to be about eight kilometres, which meant she had to maintain a brisk pace. After ten minutes she knew it wasn’t going to work. Her shoes weren’t built for speed, and the sun was so bright that she was already sweating.

  At West 85th she turned into the park and crossed the Great Lawn towards Fifth Avenue. As she exited onto Fifth she saw a sign for the Guggenheim Museum to the north, and another for the Metropolitan Museum of Art to the south. Ava headed over to Lexington Avenue and walked south, past signs pointing to the Whitney Museum of American Art and then the Frick Collection. Glen Hughes had evidently planted himself in the middle of the high-class art world.