The Wild Beasts of Wuhan

by Ian Hamilton

  Ava turned off the television. It was time to call Hong Kong.

  She punched in Uncle’s number. Her call went directly to voicemail. She checked the time. It was midnight in Hong Kong. She left him a message: “This is Ava. Please call me back.”

  She hung up the phone and sat quietly. One more call, she thought.

  May Ling Wong answered the phone with a tentative “Wei?”

  “This is Ava. I’m in London.”

  The phone went deathly silent.

  “Why did you do it?” Ava asked quietly. She could hear May Ling breathing. “Why?” she demanded.

  “I am so sorry,” May Ling said softly. “But it was necessary.”

  “Necessary? You killed the wrong man. Edwin had nothing to do with the Fauvists. He helped us.”

  “He led you to Glen Hughes. We thought it wisest to eliminate the connection.”

  “And the women — what about the two women?”

  “The women weren’t part of this,” May Ling said carefully. “I was distressed when I heard about them. But you know how these things are; you send someone to do a job and something unexpected always happens. The men involved thought it best that there be no witnesses. It’s sad, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  “One of them was just a customer. She had two young children. You’ve made orphans out of them.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry? You should never have gone near Edwin Hughes. I had him neutralized. He was never going to divulge what he knew.”

  “We discussed this —”

  “Who is we?” Ava interrupted.

  There was a pause, and Ava felt her spirits sink even lower. “Changxing and me,” May said.

  Ava wasn’t sure she believed that. “And the two of you decided that Edwin Hughes had to die?”

  “It was necessary.”

  “How about Glen Hughes? Are your people tracking him? When does he die?”

  “Not yet.”

  “But he will?”

  “Maybe not,” May said slowly.

  You bitch, Ava thought. You sneaky bitch. “You made me a promise,” she said, and then regretted the words.

  “And I made it in good faith. But my husband found out about our arrangement. He has had no peace — you saw him in Wuhan. This will help ease his pain.”

  “You should never have done what you did.”

  “I will talk to my husband about the other man. Maybe there’s a way —”

  “No,” Ava said.

  “But if we get our money back he may —”

  “No!” Ava yelled.

  The line went silent. Then Ava heard a sigh. She’s calculating, Ava thought. She wants to ask me about the money but she doesn’t want to do it directly. She doesn’t want to push me even further off course.

  “Have you spoken to Uncle?” May Ling said.

  It was the first time Uncle had been mentioned, and it caught Ava off guard. “No, I haven’t.”

  “He wasn’t pleased with us. He wasn’t as angry as you are, but he wasn’t pleased.”

  “When did he know?”

  “Hours ago.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “Changxing called him.”

  And Uncle didn’t phone me, Ava thought.

  “He wasn’t pleased,” May insisted.

  “I have to go now,” Ava said.

  “Wait —”

  Ava shut the phone, threw it on the bed, and then sat by the window, watching the people below strolling, laughing, talking on cellphones, going about their normal business. That’s all she had been doing — going about her normal business. That was the job. Find the bad guy, get the money. And do it all with a minimum of fuss. And always, always, always keeping the client out of the process. She should have known from the start that the Wongs weren’t going to be passive. They were too rich, too powerful, too used to getting their own way. She’d been naive to think that she could work with May Ling alone when she and Changxing were like one person. Ava guessed that he had known about every conversation she had with May from the outset. And then the two of them had somehow co-opted Uncle, persuading him to pass on information that he normally kept between Ava and himself.

  What’s done is done, she told herself. No more wallowing. Think about now. Ava looked at her reflection in the window and thought about May that first night in Wuhan, sitting on the bed, crying over her husband’s pain. “Fuck you, Auntie May,” she said to her reflection.

  ( 33 )

  She phoned Sam Rice first. “Ava, I’m glad you called. I was beginning to worry about you.”

  “I’m okay, considering. You did hear the news reports about Edwin and the two women?”

  “Of course. How tragic, how unbelievably tragic.”

  Ava detected no sign of strain in his voice. “They were shot,” she said.

  “I know. I called a friend of a friend who works at New Scotland Yard and he filled me in on the details. It was a robbery, evidently. Several paintings were missing from the walls.”

  “Have you spoken to Glen?”

  “Yes, twice. The first time when I came back from the gallery, and the second when I finished my chat with the chap at Scotland Yard. He’s devastated, obviously.”

  “I was going to call him.”

  “I would wait if I were you. He’s trying to reach Edwin’s family right now and plans to be in England tomorrow. Assuming we have the other thing well in hand, he can concentrate on rebuilding that relationship.”

  “You intend to go ahead with the sale of the Picasso and the Gauguin?”

  “Why, of course.”

  “On the same schedule?”

  “Why not?”

  Ava looked out the window, trying to figure out what to say next. How could they not see the connection between the deaths and the paintings? She had expected alarm, panic, fear. Ignorance is sometimes a good thing, she thought. “Can you move even faster?”

  “We had an understanding —”

  “I know. The thing is, this Edwin Hughes affair has upset me more than I can say. I’d like to put this job behind me.”

  “Anything is possible, at a cost,” he said slowly. “I have specific buyers in mind for both paintings, but I was going to dangle them in front of a few other people and try to start a bidding war. If I go directly to the most likely purchasers and if I want them to respond quickly, I’ll lose some of that edge. Our final sale price will be lower. How much, I don’t know, but definitely lower.”

  “I’m prepared to live with that.”

  “But are we?” Rice said.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “You want to net about seventy million dollars. I’ve calculated that after commissions and expenses, I can return that to you and still have about ten million for Glen and me. If I follow your directions now, we might gross only eighty or ninety million. Let’s say it’s eighty. Now, if you take your seventy, that leaves me with virtually nothing after commissions. As I see it, I’m the one creating the value and I’m the one taking the risk. Without me, there is no sale.”

  “As a brokered sale, Harrington’s gets ten percent?”

  “Yes, and that’s not negotiable.”

  She calculated. “Are you sure you can get eighty million if you flip the paintings as quickly as possible?”

  “Yes, I can get eighty.”

  “Okay, Harrington’s gets ten percent and I’ll guarantee you and Glen five million each, regardless of the final selling price. I’ll still want the money to go to Liechtenstein until I give instructions for where my portion is to be sent.”

  “And your clients will be okay with that?”

  Ava thought about May Ling and Changxing high up in their
castle in Wuhan, ready to unleash another killer. “My clients are my concern. I’ll handle them,” she said.

  “When you say ‘sell them quickly,’ what kind of time frame do you have in mind?”

  “Twenty-four hours.”

  “Good God.”

  “Is it possible?”

  He paused and then said slowly, “It is, but we’re now most definitely in the eighty-million range.”

  “I told you, I can live with that.”

  “Then I’ll make my calls. I have one client on standby in Japan and the other is in Germany. I’ll press them to close. If I can get them to do it, I’ll let you know. I won’t call you directly, though. You’ll receive an email and probably a voicemail from my wife. Her name is Roxanne. And Ava, I think we should make it a matter of practice in future to conduct all this business between her and you.”

  “Then I’ll look to hear from Roxanne.”

  “That still leaves the other three paintings, especially the Modigliani that Locke is fretting about.”

  “That paper you wanted me to sign this morning — show it to Locke and send it over to my hotel, will you? I’ll sign it and have it sent directly back. That should mollify Frederick. Tell him that as well as protecting Harrington’s, we decided under the circumstances to keep Edwin’s reputation intact. That’s one more piece of security for Locke.”

  “I thought the very same thing. I think Locke will be completely onside with this.”

  “Locke is your problem now,” Ava said. “I just want to finish this job. I’m ready to go home.”

  ( 34 )

  Ava hung up from speaking with Sam Rice feeling that she had reassumed some measure of control. Now I need to talk to Uncle, she thought.

  She tried his line and it again went directly to voicemail. She had a long list of phone numbers of people associated with him, and the first and most obvious choice was Sonny.

  “Wei,” Sonny answered on the second ring, the sound of traffic audible in the background.

  “It’s Ava. I need to talk to Uncle. Do you know where he is?”

  “He’s inside.”

  “I don’t have a magic phone, Sonny. What do you mean by inside?”

  “Massage.”

  “This late?”

  “He’s been sick. He slept most of the day and is better now. He thought that a guasha treatment would help.”

  Ava had experienced a guasha treatment once: a hot porcelain spoon was dipped in hot oil and used to scrape the back until it was almost raw. It was supposed to leach out impurities. All it did was leave her back red and sore for a week. “When will he be done?”

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  “Have him call me as soon as he’s out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Sonny, this is very important.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  She turned on her computer and logged on to a site that listed all the U.K. newspapers. The Hughes Gallery killings were front-page news: a robbery gone wrong; three bodies found in the back office, hands tied, a bullet in the back of each head. The office had been ransacked and two paintings were missing. There were no known suspects, although several people in the area saw a tall blond man leaving the gallery around the time of the shootings.

  Her cellphone rang.

  “Why didn’t you phone me to tell me about the shootings?” she said before he could speak.

  “I was ill,” Uncle said. “Not thinking very clearly, and I knew we would have an intense conversation.”

  “Uncle, what happened?”

  “What we feared when we first met the Wongs in Wuhan. Wong Changxing wanted revenge more than he wanted his money back. The wife, though, really wants the money. That’s why Glen Hughes is still alive.”

  “But they killed the wrong man.”

  “No, that was deliberate.”

  “Why?”

  “Despite your information, Changxing believed that Edwin and Glen had to be in it together. They were brothers, after all, brothers in the same business, brothers who had worked together before. And even if they weren’t in it together, he thought killing Edwin would send a very clear message to Glen that he was next. They want their money, of course, and they won’t do anything until they have it. In the meantime, I’m sure Wong likes thinking about the terror he has brought to Glen Hughes.”

  “They told you all this?”

  “Wong called me so he could gloat. He was very pleased with himself, and he thought that I would be pleased too. Remember, I am from Wuhan. I know how they think, I know how they act,” Uncle said. “In Hubei province, killing or seriously injuring a person who owes you money is considered to be stupid. If they are dead, how can they pay? So you always pick someone close to them as a way of delivering a message that cannot be ignored. That is the way it was when I was a young man. That is the way it still is with some people. He thought I would appreciate the fact that some of the old ways survive.”

  Ava thought of Glen Hughes, oblivious to the subtleties of messages from Wuhan.

  “May said you weren’t pleased with them,” she said.

  “I knew what it would mean to you.”

  “They lied to me.”

  “They did.”

  “I gave my word to Edwin Hughes that if he helped, he would be safe.”

  “They knew that. I told them.”

  “So they made a liar out of me as well.”

  “I know,” Uncle said.

  Ava struggled to keep her emotions in check. “They played me for a fool.”

  “You are never a fool.”

  “So what am I supposed to do now?”

  “Let us finish the contract, collect our money, and move on.”

  “I wish it were that easy for me,” she said.

  “There are times when you have to —”

  “And there are times,” Ava interrupted, “when I can’t roll over and close my eyes and pretend nothing happened.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I may not want to finish the job.”

  He paused. “I thought it was done,” Uncle said, “that the money is secured, that we are waiting for some transactions to conclude.”

  “The money isn’t secure at all. With one phone call I can make it disappear.”

  Ava waited for Uncle to reply. Please, don’t disappointment me, she thought.

  “That is your decision. You do what you think is best.”

  “And you’ll support me?”

  “That is a question you know you never have to ask,” he said quietly.

  She felt her face flush. His reprimand stung. “I’m sorry, Uncle, I meant no disrespect. This job has affected my emotions.”

  “I prefer it when you are thinking with your head.”

  “My head is still working,” she said. “And what it’s telling me is that we need to go back to the Wongs and remind them who they’re doing business with.”

  “You have something in mind, don’t you.”

  “Uncle,” she said, avoiding his question, “are you prepared to walk away from our commission?”

  “Money I never had is money I cannot lose.”

  “I may make enemies of the Wongs.”

  “Ava, for what it is worth, I do not think that is possible. Changxing sees things in me that even I do not see in myself anymore. He will do what he can to avoid conflict with me.”

  “It is May Ling who is my worry.”

  “You have too much malice for her. She is formidable, that is true, but when I separate her in my mind from her husband, all I see is a practical woman whose love for her husband has pushed her to do things she would not have done by her own choosing.”

  Ava thought of the woman who had sat on her b
ed in Wuhan, of the strange conversation they’d had, of the tears. And then she thought of Edwin, Lisa, Bonnie Knox.

  “Uncle, I have to save Glen Hughes’ life.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “We need to renegotiate our agreement with the Wongs.”

  “That would be difficult for me to do over the phone. I believe I would have to go to Wuhan.”

  Ava drew a deep breath. “I don’t want you to do that,” she said quietly. “I want to do it.”

  “You do not know the man,” he said.

  “No, but I know the woman, and I think she can persuade the man.”

  “You are so sure of that?”

  “I am.”

  The line went quiet and she heard Sonny yelling in the background. She realized they were still on the street outside the massage parlour. “A drunk just bumped into the car. Sonny is sending him on his way,” Uncle said.

  “I’ll talk to the woman,” Ava said.

  “Yes, I think that might be best.”

  “Thank you.”

  He sighed. “We men pretend we control things.”

  “Uncle, if you don’t want me to do this —”

  “No, you have assessed the situation properly. May Ling is the one who can be reasoned with. If there is any chance to renegotiate the agreement, then it has to be between you and her.”

  “I’m going to call her now.”

  “Let me know when she succumbs.”

  ( 35 )

  Ava went to the window and looked out on Kensington Gardens. She thought of Wuhan, of the cranes that formed its skyline, of air so foul that streetlights filtered through construction debris. She thought of May Ling and Changxing sitting on the top floor of their eight-storey mansion with the entire world living below, looking up at them.