THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels) (11 page)

There’s the catch, right there…

If your application is denied, you are immediately deported. And depending on where you’re deported to, the consequences of deportation could be fatal.

I wondered if there was a way to avoid that risk in this case? If Freddy actually turned out to be a good catch, I supposed I could pitch him to the CIA, but my track record with the CIA really wasn’t all that good. To tell the truth, it was terrible. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was on an enemies list over at Langley, and I had no doubt at all that they had an enemies list over at Langley.

The FBI? The FBI didn’t have anything to do with granting political asylum in the United States, of course, but Pete was leaning on me to do this job for Pansy Ho. Perhaps I could hold out on Pete and refuse to tell him anything about what I found unless he did me a favor in return.

I realized, of course, that I was getting way ahead of myself. Okay, I was curious about Freddy. Anybody would have been. But my curiosity had gotten me into trouble too many times before and I had learned to control it.

At least I did most of the time. And I was damn well going to control it this time.

THE NEXT MORNING I
spotted Pete Logan waiting for me the moment I stepped off the Mid-Levels escalator. He was about fifty yards up Hollywood Road, leaning on the wall in front of my office and playing with his phone.

Fleeing was a possibility, of course, but I hadn’t yet had enough coffee to manage a decent flee so I kept walking. When I got to where Pete was waiting for me, I gave him the hardest stare I could manage before breakfast.

“How did you know I was back in Hong Kong?”

Pete smiled.

“And even if you knew I was in Hong Kong, how did you know I was coming to the office this morning?”

“Look, Jack, I’m the fucking FBI,” he grinned. “You got no place to hide. We see all and know all.”

“And tell all.”

“That hurt. That really hurt.”

“Tough shit. Coffee?”

“Sure, why not?”

We walked back down to the Pacific Coffee Company together and stood in line behind two drop-dead gorgeous Chinese girls who couldn’t have been a day over thirty. They were engaged in an animated discussion about price options trends on the Hong Kong commodity exchange.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with young people today,” Pete said.

When we both had firm grips on large take-away cups of black coffee, Pete stopped and took another long look at the two women, now sitting at a table and bending earnestly toward each other as they continued their conversation. He sighed and shook his head.

“How do you talk to women like that, Jack?”

Pete sighed heavily again, and we started walking back to my office.

“SO WHAT’S GOING ON?”
Pete asked as soon as we were upstairs.

“I thought the FBI saw all and knew all.”

“Well…sometimes the picture is a little foggier than we’d really like. You want to clear it up for me?”

So I drank my coffee and told Pete about the MGM’s cash management reports and the river of $50 bills and €100 notes flowing through their casino.

“It’s got to be some kind of smurfing deal,” I finished, “but I won’t know for sure until I see a few days’ worth of security pictures. If it is, that puts the triads squarely in the frame, regardless of what you say.”

“It’s not the triads.”

“Get serious, Pete. Who else could organize a big-time smurfing operation in Macau? The girl scouts?”

“It’s not the triads.”

“And this you know exactly how?”

“I just know.”

“What is it you’re not telling me here, Pete?”

“All kinds of shit, but none of it has anything to do with this.”

“It sounds to me like you already know who’s behind this.”

Pete shook his head. “I don’t.”

“At least you suspect somebody.”

“Other than the triads, and you, it could be anybody.”

“No, it couldn’t be anybody. It would have to be somebody with manpower and organization on the ground in Macau. I spell that—”

“It’s not the triads.”

“Horseshit.”

We both drank a little coffee and thought about all that for a while. I finished thinking first.

“You said some other casinos were involved,” I reminded him. “Is the same thing happening at them?”

Pete reached around, shoved his hand down the back of his collar, and scratched at his neck. “I don’t know for sure that it’s exactly the same thing. If the smurfing business pans out, you better talk to some other people, too.”

“Like who?”

“Let me have a word with Steve Wynn, maybe Sheldon Adelson, too. See if I can get you into their places.”

“So you and Steve and Shelly are real pals, are you, Pete? I didn’t know that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, pal. You should keep that in mind.”

“Yeah, but here’s what I’m wondering. How much of that other stuff do I really want to know?”

Pete mimed a laugh and abruptly jumped to his feet.

“Got to go. Heads to break. Asses to kick. When are you heading back to Macau?”

“Probably next week.”

Pete got about halfway to the door before he stopped and turned around.

“One big thing bothers me about your theory. Why would anyone be smurfing money into a casino and back out again? And why would it be just two denominations of two currencies? I never heard of anything like that before.”

“Neither have I.”

Pete thought about that and eventually he nodded slightly.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me talk to some guys.”

He made his thumb and index finger into a little gun and pointed it at my chest.

“I’ll be around,” he said.

And then he was gone.

LATER THAT AFTERNOON MY
office phone rang. I didn’t get many calls on the office phone. Most of my clients communicated with me by email, and most of my friends called my cell. I figured it had to be Pete.

It wasn’t. It was Pansy Ho.

“Is this the man I’m supposed to call about the tacos?”

“Yes, ma’am, it is indeed.”

“I’m in Hong Kong. How about tonight?”

“Ah…maybe I should warn you. The place I was talking about isn’t very fancy. In fact, it’s kind of a dump. They don’t even take reservations.”

Pansy chuckled. The sound of it was low and throaty and warm, and I liked it a lot.

“Somehow I’ve never had any trouble getting a table at any restaurant I wanted to go to. I guess I’m just lucky that way.”

Now it was my turn to chuckle, but I doubted I sounded nearly as good as Pansy when I did it.

“Tell me where to meet you,” she said.

“I’m afraid the place is in Lan Kwai Fong.”

Lan Kwai Fong is a trendy district on Hong Kong Island about a quarter of a mile up D’Aguilar Street from Central. A narrow, L-shaped lane closed to vehicle traffic forms a rectangle with a sharp turn in D’Aguilar Street, and the rectangle and most of the area around it is filled with trendy, expensive bars and restaurants. Decades ago, Lan Kwai Fong was called Marriage Arranger Lane for the large number of female marriage arrangers who worked in the area organizing marriages for traditional Chinese families. Today, some might say that Lan Kwai Fong is exactly the opposite, more like a marriage un-arranger lane.

Throughout Hong Kong, the area is known for two things. Loud, cool bars and mobs of foreigners – most of whom are equally loud but not nearly as cool – drinking energetically and prowling for women. It’s only a certain sort of local who would be caught dead surrounded by big, frequently drunken foreign louts giving the eye to any local woman who happens into view. I had no idea if Pansy Ho was one of those locals or not.

“Are you still game?” I asked.

“Does the Pope…well, you know how that goes.”

I laughed. “Eight o’clock?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“It’s called Brickhouse,” I said. And I told her how to find it, which wasn’t easy.

“Got it. See you there at eight.”

Well, how about that?
I thought when she had hung up.
I’m having tacos with Pansy Ho tonight. Maybe
I ought to shave…

ALL COOL RESTAURANTS ARE
difficult to find, which is probably why Brickhouse is at the end of a dark, narrow alleyway off D’Aguilar Street. The place doesn’t even have a sign. You have to tell people to walk down the alley to a street stand that sells counterfeit handbags, back up a couple of paces, and look behind the stand. That’s the only way to find it and that was the way I explained it to Pansy Ho.

Brickhouse is all bare brick walls and exposed ceilings and concrete floors. It has tables that could have been stolen from a homeless shelter and rough wood benches and little red stools. It’s hip and funky, and of course it knows that all too well.

I got there a little after seven-thirty since I couldn’t imagine anything worse than making Pansy Ho hang around on her own in a place like Brickhouse waiting for me to show up. I ordered a Carta Blanca, got some tostada chips and a tub of guacamole to stave off hunger, and settled in to wait. I wondered exactly how late Pansy would be…

She was five minutes early. An unheard of thing, in my experience, for almost any woman. Particularly in Asia.

Pansy was wearing jeans, a man’s white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and brown loafers. She had on very little makeup and wore no jewelry at all. I thought she looked absolutely terrific.

As she walked toward the table she waved at a waiter and pointed to my Carta Blanca and another bottle arrived at almost the same moment she did. I pushed the chips and guacamole toward her and smiled as she dug in.

We chatted easily for a while about one thing and another. The cave-like design of the place made it so loud that to be heard we had to bend toward each other and put our heads close together. I didn’t mind a bit. Eventually we opened our menus and ordered. Three platters of tacos – rib eye, pork, and chicken – some beans, some Mexican sweetcorn, a watermelon salad. And two more beers.

PANSY DIDN’T ASK ME
what I had found out so far about the money moving over MGM’s tables, and I was glad she didn’t. I wasn’t going to lie to her if she did ask, but I didn’t want to tell her what I suspected quite yet either. It would worry her, and maybe I was wrong.

But when we finished eating, the table had been cleared, and another round of beers delivered, she did ask.

So I reluctantly told her about the possibility that MGM was being smurfed with large quantities of $50 bills and €100 notes.

“It’s only a theory at this point,” I added quickly when I was done. “I’m not certain of anything yet.”

“But that might be happening?”

I nodded.

Pansy thought about that for a minute, took a pull on her Carta Blanca, and said, “That wouldn’t look very good for me, would it?”

“Even if it’s true, it’s not necessarily the triads who are responsible.”

“Who else could it be?”

I didn’t have a good answer for that so I didn’t say anything.

“What am I going to do, Jack?”

I didn’t have a good answer for that either.

The change of subject had put a damper on the evening, and now the noise in the place was starting to feel more irritating than charming, so I pointed toward the door and raised my eyebrows in a question. Pansy nodded.

I pulled out some bills and dropped them on the table, and we headed out into the night.

WE TURNED DOWNHILL ON
D’Aguilar Street and walked together for a few minutes without talking. It was Pansy who finally broke the silence.

“I need you to fix this for me, Jack.”

“I don’t know for sure yet what needs to be fixed.”

“If the triads are responsible—”

“I don’t know that they are.”

“If they are, you need to fix it for me.”

I couldn’t imagine what Pansy meant by that. Fix it? Fix it how? Go tell the triads to stop being bad boys? Cover it up so that no one found out? The possibilities were endless and all of them seemed to me to be pretty unappealing. So I settled for a reply that committed me to very little.

“I’ll do what I can.”

I had no doubt at all Pansy understood I had slipped the question without giving her a direct answer, but she let me and she only nodded. I was grateful for that. It had been a nice evening. I didn’t want to spoil it.

Pansy produced a cell phone from her bag and pushed at a speed dial. She spoke a few words in rapid Cantonese and hung up. I thought I caught her mention D’Aguilar Street somewhere in there, but I wasn’t certain.

Suddenly a black Mercedes with dark windows was at the curb right in front of us and a big, swarthy Chinese in a too-tight blue suit was standing outside holding open the rear door. The car had appeared so quickly that it might have risen up right through the pavement,

Pansy stopped walking.

“You’ve got to fix this for me, Jack.”

Not knowing what else to do, I just nodded.

“Thanks for dinner. It was fun. Next time it’s my treat.”

Pansy leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and slid into the car. The big Chinese slammed the door and jumped into the front passenger seat, and I stood there and watched the big car power away west on Queen’s Road.

Next time, huh? Well, how about that?

IT RAINED IN HONG KONG
for the next three days straight. Generally I like the rain, particularly when I am in a big city, watching it cleanse the streets and rinse the buildings. The idea of a city being purified by the rain is an awful cliché, but it became a cliché because there is so much truth in it. Still, this rain was a bit too much of a good thing. It was steady and drenching. It filled the streets and overflowed onto the sidewalks.

I avoided going anywhere except to make a quick run down the Mid-Levels escalator to the office each day. It wasn’t that I was afraid of getting wet, but rather that I had no intention of tangling with crowds of Chinese wielding umbrellas. Even on the best of days, walking in Hong Kong is the next thing to hand-to-hand combat. Arm all those frenzied Chinese pedestrians with open umbrellas and it becomes nothing short of medieval warfare.