Hot Poppies (27 page)

“I can't drink any more. I'm not sure if I can stand up any more. I'm tired, Tolya. It's one in the morning and I'm weary as fuck.”

“One more for the road. Then I call driver,” he said.

“It's all bullshit, you know. All this sniffing around is Russian melodrama.”

“I am Russian, I do what I can, Artie, you know. I told you. OK, Sonny Lippert asked me. Help him, Tolya, he says. Help him help me before more girls die in New York City. This is how I know to help. Look around. Call me James Bondski. I call you Yankee Doodle Dandski. What do you want from me?”

“American Club,” Tolya answered, as we emerged from an elevator on the forty-seventh floor of a skyscraper in the business district. “Home sweet home. America the beautiful. CIA. ABC.”

At a Steinway grand, a guy played Cole Porter and he was good. Tolya chose a table near a window, went to the long bar himself and returned with three vodka martinis and a man in a suit.

“Chris Roy,” Tolya said. “Artie Cohen. Chris is a friend of Pete Leung.”

“Hi,” Chris Roy said.

“Hi,” I said, and we shook hands and the three of us settled into deep chairs. Chris Roy polished off his martini in one gulp. “Great view.”

After a night out in Hong Kong, I was sick to death of views. You got views with booze, views with food, views with strippers. Spectacular views. Panoramic views. Views of the skyline. Views of the peak or the water or the out islands or all of them at the same time. OK for a bird, but views don't tell you much about the town you're in. Some geography, maybe. Otherwise, not one fucking thing. For that, you need people in a landscape.

“So. You know Pete Leung a long time?”

“I was in grad school with Pete briefly,” said Chris Roy.

“And Dawn?”

“No. No. I never met her then, not at the time,” he said. “I went to the State Department; Pete stayed with money. We kept in touch. You know how that is. You're American.”

I said, “Yes.” Tolya raised an eyebrow and flicked an olive from a bowl on the table into his mouth.

“So. What can I do for you, Art? Any pal of Tolya's is a pal of mine. Tolya is Mr Hong Kong, of course, as you know, I'm sure. Everyone loves Tolya Sverdloff.” He shot a faintly patronizing glance at Tolya, who was talking into his cellphone across the table. Tolya had let Chris Roy—and for all I knew, everyone else in Hong Kong—assume he was a clown.

“Christ, I remember what a trip it was when we started getting pally with the Russkis. What a time. So. What can I tell you about Hong Kong?”

“Whatever, Chris.” I drank the martini. “What brought you over here?”

“Well, officially Hong Kong was British, of course. But it's really been ours for years. Huge financial stakes here. Officially, being anti-imperialist, the US is for the return to the motherland.” He signaled for a waiter.

“Reality is, we need the Chinese market. We need them to buy our shit, we need them to buy our cigarettes. Tobacco guys were desperate, they need markets, they leaned on George Bush. Reagan. Mrs Thatcher, too. Everyone was screaming back in '89, '90. With my help and our distinguished leaders, we have made this market our own. We've even got the Chinese girls smoking. They think it's way cool.”

“What about the banking rules? They're pretty loose here, Chris, that right?”

“Sure are, Art. Secrecy in the banking trade here makes the Swiss look downright candid. Big banks. Private banks. Gang banks.”

“Smugglers' banks?”

“Why not? Smugglers. Pirates. Russkis.”

“I see. Very interesting. Tolya, could you get some more drinks?” I said, and when he had gone, I leaned over to Chris and lowered my voice. “So, uh, between us, could we talk about other types of smokes? Christ. I mean besides the tobacco trade, you know?”

By now, Chris was drunk. His watery blue eyes were rimmed with red. He looked to me like one of those CIA specimens who always stay on too long in a foreign country. For Chris I made like a spook. He was thrilled to talk business.

“Sure. Sure, Artie. I get the picture. You're talking something confidential.”

“That's right, Chris. You know how it is. So, look, did you ever meet anyone that scored some smack named Hot Poppy, Chris?”

“Why?”

“I have some interest, Chris.”

Slowly, he smiled. “I'm surprised you know about it. It's hard to come by. Very rare. Specialty stuff for the rich and recherché.” He was wrecked on booze. “You know someone, for instance, who's looking to score, Artie?”

“So to speak. Yeah. Someone.”

“I'll give you a call if I can help your friend, OK?” He was knowing. “And shall I tell Pete you're looking for him? If I see him?”

“Do that, Chris. Tell him. Tell him I'm at the Regent Hotel for, let's say, another forty-eight hours.”

Roy took a pill out of his pocket and ate it. “Heart. I'm thirty-six and I got heart stuff wrong.” He looked out the window. “Fucking views,” he said. “Who's going to run it all? How's it gonna be for the millions of poor bastards that ran away from the commies already and got themselves a life here, twenty-four grand per annum, in dollars, even a little nibble of democracy lately. You think the pricks from the People's Republic know how to run a railroad? You think the PRC is gonna care about a western education? You want your home town defended by the People's Liberation Army, Artie? The PLA guys that rolled the tanks over kids in Tiananmen Square? It sucks.” Chris Roy took another pill out of his pocket. “What the hell. I'll be going home. Wherever that is. For now, Art, it's party time. Yes!” He punched the air with his fist. “Yes!”

Tolya, who was no clown, watched Chris go. “He's a jackass, but he's right, you know,” Tolya said. We drank for a few minutes silently, watching the skyline and the harbor.

“Do you know, Artyom, that Hong Kong is one nine-thousandth the size of China?”

“You looked it up.”

“I always liked school. Hong Kong Island is a tiny rock. Out there across the harbor is Kowloon, the New Territories, and then China. China all the way to Mongolia, to Tibet, to the Russian border. Think of it in terms of your New York City. Hong Kong Island as the Manhattan you love. Kowloon, the New Territories, are the boroughs, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx. Worker housing, factories, airport, cargo terminal, power plants, water supply. Also beaches, universities, fishing villages. Like New York, right?”

“Sure.”

“Borough of Bronx, it's connected with mainland of America, right?”

“Right.”

“So imagine if on the border of Bronx is one billion Chinese. One fucking billion plus, all wanting to take a bite. Prada meets the People's Liberation Army. This is a city on the fucking edge of a nervous breakdown but you know what? End of last year, stocks soared, real estate went through the roof. You can make a shitload of money waiting for Armageddon.”

Tolya had reserved himself a suite at my hotel, and when we got back, we stood in the lobby for a minute. In the wrinkled green suit, he looked terribly tired. “Tomorrow we begin. Tomorrow, we begin with Lily. The other thing, also.”

“Tolya?”

“What?”

“You said Sonny told you about the dead girls in New York, the kidnapping, the extortion. You actually think they can pull the strings here in Hong Kong on stuff that goes down in New York?”

He kissed me on the cheeks three times, Russian-style.

“If there is money involved, you can pull any string.” He held up his cell-phone. “The world is only about this big, Artyom. It's only about as big as your dick.” He laughed. “And you can carry it in your pocket.”

25

The next day, and most of the day after that, Tolya turned on the juice. By the time Lily was up, he was waiting for us in the coffee shop, dressed in a black Armani suit, his guy at his side, a list of appointments in one hand, his cellphone in the other.

Sober, Tolya's English was charming. He greeted Lily and ordered breakfast for her. Unfurling her napkin, he put it on her lap and then buttered her pancakes and poured the maple syrup delicately between the layers. “It's nice?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then eat some more.” Tolya smiled and listened to Lily talk.

After a while, he said gently, “I think, Lily, that you should step out of the picture for a few days. People know you have been making noises about Chinese. Noises about adoption, about girl babies.”

“So what?”

“This looks like the West,” Tolya went on, “but is not exactly the West. I told Artyom, a person could get hurt here for talking too much. Please, Lily Hanes. Would you consider this, stepping out of the picture for a few days?”

“I can't do that.”

In Russian, Tolya asked his guy to get the car. Then he got up. “I understand. Come. We'll try to fix something.”

In the Hummer, we criss-crossed Hong Kong all day, visiting men and women in government offices, visiting consuls from three countries, also bankers, policemen, friends. Like the night before, Tolya was welcome everywhere; by day, though, Tolya was jolly but sober. This was a city built for business by day. With Lily he was lovely. He made her buy some clothes. At a restaurant he ordered snacks she found irresistible. He even got her to laugh.

For a day and a half, we were on the move or on the phone. I tried Pete Leung. Eventually, I tried Dawn. I came up empty handed. I took a call from Sonny Lippert, who gave me some names. While Tolya took Lily shopping, I introduced myself to Sonny's contacts who seemed like good cops. But they were busy men—trouble brewing, they all said, and I was unofficial.

For most of the day and most of the day after, I watched Lily suck hope out of all the activity; when she insisted on buying tiny outfits for Grace, I wanted to cry for her.

The official we were looking for, when Tolya finally tracked him down, was a middle-aged man with an ashen, drained face, and he sat at a desk in a government office on Ice House Street, a tensor lamp on his desk, feeding paper into a shredder. Between the thumb and forefinger of the other hand he held a cigarette. His short-sleeved white shirt was buttoned to the neck. He looked up. “What can I do for you?”

I was alone with Lily. Tolya had moved on to another appointment.

“I understand you might know what happened to this child.” Lily pushed a photograph of Grace across his desk. He turned off the shredder and glanced at it, then snapped open a drawer in the metal desk and riffled a few thick manila files. Behind him was a pile of brown cartons. Books stood in stacks on the floor.

“Where is she?” I said.

“This child is no longer yours.” Ignoring me, he picked up some more paper and spoke to Lily. “She will be placed with another family. Currently she is in a facility, probably in Guangzhou. Possibly in another city. I think you have been told before.”

“When? When will she be placed?” Lily was very tight, very tense. I could see the skin on her neck pulse with rage.

“As soon as possible in order not to cause disruption in her life. There are always many families waiting.”

“Show me the file. I want to talk to your boss.”

“I am the boss,” he said.

“What about trying again?” I said. “We have time.”

“I have no time.” The man had heard it all before. “I am leaving this job. This country if I can. Someone else will come. Someone from the new government.”

“From China?”

“Yes. From the mainland.”

“Is that why you're shredding your files?” I didn't care why, but I figured if I showed some interest, he might do a little extra work for Lily. She was restless and obsessed. I think she had forgotten everything except the child. I said to him, “You expect trouble?”

“Some of my employees have been involved in pro-democracy rallies.”

“Where will you go?”

“Anywhere I can,” he said as the shredder hummed.

Lily leaned over the man's desk, her face a few inches from us. “You don't care because Grace is a girl, isn't that right? In China, all the abandoned babies are girls. If they get lucky, if someone doesn't drown them. Ninety-seven per cent female it said on the adoption forms.”

“Lily, let's go back to the hotel.”

Lily turned to me, but the caustic words were for the man. “Did you know, Artie, that children in China, especially girls, can't be adopted? They have to be abandoned. Formally.
Then
they're put up for adoption. Grace was tossed on the sidewalk near a paint factory in some godforsaken village and left to die. Adoption is actually illegal. It's people like him who make the rules.” To the man himself, she said, “Why don't you do something?”

Removing his wire-rimmed spectacles, the man behind the desk got up, walked to the door and opened it. “I don't make any rules. Now please go.” Staring at Lily, face impassive, he added coldly, “I have three daughters.”

By the time we got back to the hotel, Lily was wrung out. There was no more room for maneuvering, no more time. I think she knew it, too, but all she said was, “I want to take a shower, Artie. Then I'm going to sleep.”

“I'll stay with you.”

“Don't be silly. I'm not going to kill myself.”

I stayed a while anyway.

Whatever shit's going on, it's better for me when Lily's around. That night, waiting for her to fall asleep, I brushed the hair away from her face and I thought, suddenly: I'd like to marry her. I wanted to marry Lily.

Later, in my room, I made some more calls. Tolya sat on the bed, his cellphone in his hand. On a table was the remains of the room-service dinner we had eaten. He looked up. “Tomorrow night I have to go to my place on Macau for a couple days. You and Lily must come with me.”