Thai Horse (29 page)

She stepped back and ushered him into the main room of the house, a room decorated with plush Western furniture, Oriental antiques and Turkish carpets, its French doors opening onto a sprawling balcony. Beyond it and far below was the bay, and across it, Kowloon. The room smelled of fresh flowers. Nothing about it seemed to have changed since he had last been in the house.

A moment later
Tiana
entered the room, dressed in floor-length silk, her hair decorated with orchids. She didn’t look a day older than the last time Hatcher saw her.

‘Hello, Christian,’ she said in her bell-like voice.

‘Look at you,’ Hatcher said. ‘You still look sixteen years old. Don’t you believe in time?’

‘I will soon be three and oh,’ she said.

‘Don’t tell anybody, they’ll never guess,’ he said and handed her the bottle of wine. ‘Save this for you and Cohen.’

‘Mm goi,’
she said, holding the bottle close to her breast. ‘We will think of you when we drin1 it.’

‘And I will sense the moment,’ he answered.

She stood quietly appraising him and finally nodded. ‘It is a good day for us, Christian,’ she said somewhat plaintively. ‘Robert used to talk about you all the time. Then we heard you were dead, a
n
d after that he never mentioned your name again. Then today! Such excitement. All those years his heart h
u
rt because he thought you were gone. I am glad you are back, for him and for me.’

‘And for me,’ he said.

‘You have not changed much, she said. ‘Still very dashing. I am sorry about.
. .
this.’ She gently touched his wounded neck with her fingertips.

‘Hell, it just makes me sound dangerous,’ he whispered with a laugh.

‘You
are
dangerous,’ Tiana said
quite
seriously, staring straight into his eyes. Then she smiled again. ‘Welcome back.’ She took his face between delicate hands and kissed him ever so lightly on the lips.

‘
That’ll
bring you luck for the next twenty years,’ a voice said behind him, and he turned to see China Cohen standing in the doorway.

Time had put gray in his hair and beard, added some wrinkles to his face, softened the hard lines around his eyes, but otherwise there was little change. He was wearing his customary
cheongsam
,
brocaded with gemstones, and a Thai amulet around his neck. He hurried across the room and wrapped his arms around the taller man.

‘Damn, what a gift,’ China said softly. ‘I should’ve known the shmuck isn’t born could take you down.’

‘Close,’ Hatcher whispered.

His two friends stood close by, looking him over, nodding approval, although their eyes kept straying to the mark on his neck. Hatcher touched it self-consciously and shrugged. ‘An accident,’ he said, reaching out and taking the brass amulet in his palm.

‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Thai, isn’t it?’

Cohen nodded. ‘It’s the amulet of the ten deities, supposed to protect your front and back,’ China said and then chuckled. ‘One of my men took it off a dead Thai swagman. Sure didn’t work for him.’

‘You’re going to run out of wind long before you run out of luck,’ Hatcher said.

‘I have things to do,’ Tiana said and kissed Hatcher on the cheek. ‘Cohen keeps me very busy minding the servants.’ She giggled and faded quietly from the room.

‘I hate to think what it cost you
t
bribe Fat Lady Lau for her,’ Hatcher said.

‘Not a thing. She was a gift to a very good customer,’ Cohen said, grabbing Hatcher by the shoulder. ‘C’mon.’ He led Hatcher to the guest room, which was adjacent to the main room of the house. Hatc
h
er had spent many nights in this room, a sprawling square decorated in yellow and black with a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the harbor below. The headboard of the bed and the furniture we1e starkly simple and painted black lacquer. The sheets were yellow satin. On either side of the bed were hundred gallon saltwater tanks, alive with multicolored tropical fish, while behind the bed the entire wall was covered with a Japanese silk-screen painting of a delicate tree with fernlike leaves and tiny red blossoms. The wall facing it was mirrored. Artifacts and statues were scattered here and there.

On one of the nightstands was a two-foot-tall ivory horse, its nostrils flared, its eyes subtly hooded, standing majestically on its back legs as though leaping to heaven. A strand of black pearls was draped casually over the back of the horse.

The bathroom, which was visible through an open door to the right, was black marble with a Jacuzzi bathtub big enough to accommodate a small army, and there were fresh flowers everywhere.

‘How long you staying?’

‘1 leave Saturday,’ Hatcher said.

Cohen appeared concerned, but said nothing and simply nodded. ‘C’mon,’ he said, ‘we’ll go
outside
and relax’

They went out on the balcony, sat in wicker chairs and put their feet up on the railing and leaned back, basking in the sun.

‘Just like the old days,’ Hatcher said.

‘Better,’ Cohen said. ‘We’re old enough to enjoy it now.

Sung Lo, his servant and bodyguard, appeared and mixed drinks from a bar in the corner. The balcony jutted out into space on long stilts; thirty feet below it, the sharply slanted mountain was covered with ferns and bamboo grass. A large banyan tree hid the house below from their view. It was deathly quiet except for the tinkling wind chimes.

‘I got one surprise for you,’ Cohen said. ‘Tiana and I are married.’

Hatcher was delighted. ‘That’s great news!’ he said enthusiastically.

‘Smartest move I ever made,’ said Cohen. ‘How about you? Ever find anybody that could take Daphne’s place?’

The name momentarily triggered Hatcher’s
ch’uang
t
zu-chi,
a brief flash of the elegant, uniquely beautiful Daphne Chien, who wore men’s Suits, owned a company that manufactured jeans, and was the daughter of a Malaysian beauty and a half-French, half-Chinese banker, a volatile combination.

‘Hell, I try not to think about her,’ Hatcher said, a white lie, for he was not ready to deal with that subject for the moment. Instead they talked about Los Boxes and past times, and they talked about the old Tsu Fi.

‘He died three years ago,’ Cohen said. ‘His ticker finally gave out. It was a helluva thing, Christian. He called me to the hospital, told me I put spice in his last few years. Only time I ever saw the old boy with tears in his eyes.’

‘How about that half-mill he owed you for the Rhodes trick?’ Hatcher asked with a smile.

‘That was the best part of it, Christian, the old boy was a class act to the end. There was this beat-up old strongbox in the corner of the office, didn’t even look like an antique. When I went to the hospital the night before he passed on, he gave me the keys to his office and then he gave me the key to that chest, said it was full of personal things, and when he died I could go through it and throw away what I didn’t want. So I did. Lo and behold, there was half a million dollars in gold coins in it’
—
he held up a finger
—
‘and a piece of silicon the size of your fingernail.’

‘Silicon?’

‘A computer chip. So I took it to a friend and mounted it on a computer board, and when I activated the program, it was like a diary. Phone numbers, names, background on most of the rich taipans on the island and a lot of Orientals

—
all the secrets of Tsu Fi were there. Christian, next to that little piece of sand the half a million looked like a bucket of sand. I didn’t think the old Tsu Fi recognized the existence of computers.’

‘Which reminds me, how’re things upriver?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Changed,’ Cohen said. ‘I don’t go upriver anymore.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Most of the old gang is gone.’

‘Hiekaya?’

‘Dead. And Ty San. Joe Cockr
o
ach. Jimmy Chow. All of them

‘What happened?’

‘T
hey started scrambling. killin
g each other
off.,
The only one who got out whole was
S
am-Sam. Now he’s got this gunslinger working for him, a
n
Iranian name of Batal. I hear he was with the SAVAK b
e
fore the Shah split. A real mean one, Batal. There’s ano
t
her killer up there who ran out of Haiti with Baby Doc Used to be with the Tontons. Calls himself Billy Death_’

‘What the hell are Iranians aid Tontons doing up there?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Dollars, I guess. They’re Sam-S
am
’s newest guns,’ said China. ‘Sam-Sam lives mostly off tribute, knocks off the Chinese coming down from Shan
gh
ai or from out in the provinces, steals their goods, cuts their feet and hangs them off the mast as a warning to ot
h
ers.’

‘Were you worried maybe they
’
d dust you?’ Hatcher whispered.

‘Not really. They need me,’ said
C
ohen. ‘I still finance a lot of the action up there. Besides, I have a lot of friends, loyal friends. This isn’t Chicago, the triads tend to get along with each other
—
even the
C
hiu Chaos stay pretty much in their own backyard. One of the things I learned from the old Tsu Fi: Never eat the whole pie, always give a piece to the other guy.’ Cohen
p
aused pensively for a moment, and added, ‘Now, you,
o
n the other hand, you left footprints all over the place.

‘It was part of the job.’

‘Whatever it was, you made a lot of enemies, Christian. And I don’t flatter myself that this i
s
a social visit, much as
l
ove you.’

It was not a criticism. Hatcher kn
e
w what Cohen meant. In the past there was always
somethi
n
g
one of them needed from the other.

Their conversation was cut short by the appearance of Sing, Cohen’s enormous Chine
s
e bodyguard, who
suddenly appeared quietly in the living room behind them. He cleared his throat to summon Cohen. Cohen went in the other room, talked in
low
tones for a minute or two, and came back. Sung Lo remained in the room. Cohen’s mood seemed darker.

‘A problem?’ Hatcher asked.

‘I’m not sure,’ Cohen said seriously. ‘Are you in trouble, Christian?’

‘Why?’

‘Just curious.’

‘I may need a favor,’ Hatcher said finally.

‘Must be something going on for you to come back to Hong Kong,’ Cohen said. ‘You kn
o
w Tollie Fong is the new
san wong
of the White Palms?’

Hatcher nodded.

‘They all think you’re dead. Th
e
minute Fong knows you’re here, he’ll try to kill you. If
h
e misses, Joe Lung’ll have the whole damn White Pa
lm
Triad on your ass. They’ll follow you to the North Pole if they have to. We’re talking about family honor, blood
o
aths, saving face, the whole ticket. It would be better if y
o
u were left dead.’

‘I know the score.’

‘Well, you act like you forgot,’ C
o
hen said. ‘This is their turf, Christian. As long as you’re in this house, you’re safe, but I wouldn’t give a Confederate dollar for your chances out in the colony. I love
you
pal, and I hate to see you leave, but you can’t stay in Hong Kong. Somebody’s already got a tail on you, old pal.

‘Yeah. I think it’s the Hong K
o
ng police. A sergeant named Varney with the Triad Squ
a
d paid me a visit this morning. He claims my name popped up in their computer when I went through customs.’

‘You don’t believe him?’

‘I believe the computer part of
it,
that could happen. But this Varney seems a little
too
interested in me. They followed me from the hotel.’

‘Humph,’ Cohen said pensively. ‘This Varney just showed up at your room?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t trust anybody, particularly where you’re concerned,’ said Cohen. ‘I’d forget whatever brought you here. Go home, Hatch.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why? What’s so special about this trick?’

Hatcher told Cohen the whole Murph Cody story, ending with the death of Windy Porter and the disappearance of Wol Pot.

‘Right now, I don’t have a lead except this ghost camp in Laos. If it existed, somebody upriver knows about it. Maybe I can get a name, some lead before I go to Bangkok.’

‘Bangkok! Shit, it’s worse in Bangkok,’ China said, his voice going up an octave. ‘Fong spends half his time wasting dissidents up in the Golden Triangle and the other half getting laid at the Royal Orchid Hotel. Why don’t you just go over to Macao and hatch an egg in his front yard.’

‘There’s five million people in Bangkok. I can keep away from Fong and his bunch.’

‘Hell, a damn cop already knows you’re here. You think you can just slip in and out of Bangkok without stirring up something? And you have no other leads?’

‘A picture of Cody and his hoo
ch
girl. Does the phrase “Thai Horse” mean anything to you?’

Cohen looked at him and smiled for the first time since Sing discovered the house was being watched.

‘Thai Horse? Why?’

‘It popped up somewhere.’

‘Come here,’ Cohen said, leading Hatcher back into the bedroom. He pointed to the ivory statue of the horse by the bed.

‘That is a Thai Horse,’ he said.

‘The statue?’ Hatcher said with surprise.

‘That’s right. It’s a real treasure. Authentic Thai Horse, about third century
B.C.
Been kicking around for a
long
time.’