The Red Pole of Macau (7 page)

Ava wasn’t much of a girl for bars, especially when she was alone, but the day had jangled her nerves and she needed to calm down.

She went to her room first, collected her notebook and laptop, and rode the elevator two levels up to the twenty-fifth floor. She wasn’t overly superstitious, as were many Chinese people, but she still had more superstitions than any
gweilo
, and one of them was that she wouldn’t stay on or visit the twenty-fourth floor of the hotel; in fact, she closed her eyes if the elevator stopped there. It was from that floor that Leslie Cheung had jumped to his death. Ava wasn’t a huge fan of Cantonese pop but she’d liked Cheung, maybe partially because he was gay, and it haunted her that his sexual orientation had somehow contributed to his suicide.

The M Bar looked out on Victoria Harbour, its lotus-bud–shaped counter positioned so that everyone sitting there had a view. It was early and she had a choice of seats. She took one of the high-backed chairs on the right side. The bar served tapas, Hong Kong style, and she was tempted. There were two restaurants on the same floor: Man Wah, which some people considered the best Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong, and Pierre, a Michelin two-star French restaurant. She was hungry. The snow pea tips and a few scallops were all she had eaten that day. She decided to wait to have a real meal, and ordered just a glass of white burgundy.

She turned on her laptop and made the wireless connection. She sent Uncle the financial summary of the Wuhan case and was about to connect to the Millennium website when her cell rang. It was her father. She knew he was still in Toronto and realized it was six a.m. there. Michael must have called him.

“Daddy,” she said.

“How are you?”

“I’m okay. Has Michael been talking to you?”

“Yes.”

“How upset is he?”

“He doesn’t know what to be upset about first.”

“It is a mess,” Ava said, seeing no reason to be anything but honest.

Her father sighed. She could imagine him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the morning newspaper, dressed in a pair of the Holt Renfrew silk pyjamas her mother made him wear. He had thick black hair that he still wore long, and in the morning it was always rumpled. She and Marian loved to see him like that, rather than in his normal Hong Kong–slick mode.

“Michael is worried that you think he’s a fool.”

That should be the least of his worries
, she thought. “Well, they certainly did a foolish thing.”

“Obviously. And Ava, you are sure about this Lok character, that he is triad?”

“He is, and he’s pulled this real-estate scam before. If they had done any serious due diligence they would have found that out.”

“It is Hong Kong,” Marcus Lee said. “We still do business on handshakes, we trust friends and family. Michael trusted Simon, Simon trusted this David Chi, and that overrode common business sense.”

“I know. A lot of my business comes from people whose friends have screwed them over.”

“Yes, you would know, and now Michael knows. A bit late, of course.”

She heard the resignation in his voice. “Daddy, I’m still working on a few ideas. I’m going to meet with Michael and Simon tomorrow, so let’s not quit just yet.”

“Ava, Michael is clinging by his fingertips to the hope that you can come up with something. I’m a bit more realistic. Don’t try anything silly.”

“What do you mean?”

“He told me about the man Wu. He’s upset about having put you at risk.”

“I know how to handle people like Wu.”

“Obviously you do. What I don’t know is how often you’ve had to do something like that, and how you came to have those skills.”

“You paid for martial arts training for years,” she said, sidestepping the rest of his question.

“Michael found it alarming.”

“Michael hasn’t had to do business with men like Wu and Lok before. I have, more often than I care to remember.”

“You need to be careful.”

“I always am.”

His voice became indistinct and Ava wondered if there was a problem with the phone line. “Excuse me, your mother just came into the kitchen and I was speaking to her. Do you want to say hello?” he asked.

“No, tell her I’ll call later when I have more time to talk.”

“All right.”

“Daddy, I have some work to do here. I’ll meet with Michael tomorrow and we’ll see what we can sort out.”

“Do you really have some ideas?”

“I do,” she said before ending the call. What she didn’t want to tell him was that the only one she thought was viable was to put her own money into Michael’s company so he could get off the hook at the bank.

She opened the envelope Michael had given her the night before and re-explored the financials. They were bare-bones; she was going to have to see more detailed numbers before putting together a final offer. There weren’t going to be any more deals done on a handshake if she was involved.

If the numbers did hold up, though, it looked as if the company could be valued at between US$12 and $15 million, based on a price of eight to ten times earnings. She wanted at least a third of the company, so she figured she could put in $5 million for share purchases and then loan the rest of what they needed at a reasonable rate of interest. She would want their shares pledged to her as collateral, as well as personal guarantees. They’d have to sign non-­competes, and there would have to be financial controls in place that gave her comfort.

She didn’t have all the cash on hand, but when she got her share of the Liechtenstein money she’d have more than enough. Investing it in her brother’s company had been the furthest thing from her mind when she came to Hong Kong, and it wasn’t ideal in terms of how she saw her own financial position. The thing was, she didn’t know what other options were available. If she did nothing then Michael’s business would be destroyed by the bank, her father’s business would come under attack, and the whole underpinning of the family’s security — the extended family’s security — was going to be threatened.

Ava had enough money to look after her mother, but that wasn’t the point. Her mother’s life was tied to her relationship with Marcus Lee. However strange outsiders found it, her mother had a husband and a structured family life. If Marcus became unable to sustain it and she was forced to rely on her daughters for support, the loss of face, the humiliation would be catastrophic. Ava loved her mother too much to let that happen, and she loved her father too much to watch him go through hardship that was not of his making. The way she saw it, it came down to a choice between family and money. She had only one family. And there were lots of ways to make money.

She sat in the M Bar for another hour writing in her notebook, trying to detail as much as she could the proposal she’d put to Michael and Simon at lunch the next day. It was difficult to find a balance. She needed to be fair, but it was her money and there had to be checks in place to make sure it wasn’t squandered.

Just after seven she closed the book, thought about food, and left the bar. Man Wah or Pierre? She had often eaten at Man Wah. Their dim sum were superb, but they wouldn’t be serving dim sum at this time. Dinner would be good, she knew — some shark fin soup, a steamed sea bass. She had never tried Pierre, though, and realized she felt like meat.

The restaurant shared the same view of Victoria Harbour as the M Bar. Night was descending and the Hong Kong skyline had begun to light up. She tipped the ma
î
tre d’ one hundred Hong Kong dollars and asked for a table near the window. If there was a more magnificent view than the Hong Kong harbour at night, she hadn’t seen it.

The menu was skewed towards tasting options. Ava preferred to pick and choose, regardless of the cost.

She had carried a glass of burgundy with her from the bar and told the waiter to keep filling her glass with the same wine. He stood next to the table, pen in hand. “I’ll let you know when I’m ready to order,” she told him.

“They seem to be in such a rush,” a voice said behind her.

Ava turned and saw a middle-aged couple sitting at the next table. The accent was American, the clothes were as well.

“In Chinese restaurants efficiency is valued,” Ava said. “This restaurant may serve French food but the servers are all Chinese. They can’t escape their culture.”

“Why, thank you,” the woman said.

“You’re welcome,” Ava said, turning back to the menu.

Although she loved foie gras, there was a limit to how much meat her system could absorb. It took her five minutes to decide what to have for dinner. The waiter stood against the wall now, trying to ignore her. She snapped her fingers. Her mother would have been upset. One of her life lessons was to never upset a waiter, particularly a Chinese one, as their penchant for spitting in customers’ food was legendary. Ava had long ago decided not to worry about what waiters did with her food before it got to the table.

She ordered a black truffle, mushroom, and spinach tartlet, bouillabaisse mousseline, and a roast saddle of lamb Lozère with oregano, white beetroot purée, and tabbouleh.

The woman at the next table said, “Good choice. I had the lamb last night and it was wonderful.”

Ava looked at them again. They were older than she had first thought, and the man was drooping, his chin falling onto his chest as he tried to keep his eyes open. “Do you mind if I join you?” Ava asked.

“Please,” the woman said, introducing herself as Ellen, and her husband as, Larry.

They were from Shaker Heights, Cleveland, and this was their first trip to Asia. They were travelling with another couple who seemed obsessed with shopping, having bought a new suitcase already though they had been in Hong Kong for only two days. They were scheduled to go to Singapore, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur. The woman was nervous. Hong Kong was more than she could have imagined, and for the rest of it, well . . .

For once Ava enjoyed the distraction. The husband was out of it, barely able to stay awake long enough to eat, but the woman was smart and curious, and Ava found herself lecturing. She had been to all of the places on their tour and waded into the pros and cons. The woman had a little pad in her purse that she pulled out to take notes as Ava rambled on. Kuala Lumpur was okay; it was too bad they had scheduled Singapore, as Bangkok was worth more time. And how, how could they not go to China?

“Larry wants us to go to Macau tomorrow,” she said, flicking a finger at her husband.

“Do you like Las Vegas?” Ava asked.

“No, I hate the place.”

“Macau is a perverse Vegas.”

“Oh.”

“So what do suggest?”

“Go to Lantau Island, see the Buddha, see the part of Hong Kong that isn’t all concrete and commercialism.”

Their food kept arriving as they talked, Larry waking long enough to taste everything and then nodding off again. Ava ate as if she hadn’t seen food in days. It was all wonderful, the lamb medium-rare and so tender she barely had to chew.

The women passed on dessert and ordered cognac. Larry was now sleeping soundly. As they sipped, Ellen asked Ava if she was married.

“I’m a lesbian,” Ava said.

“That wouldn’t go down so well in Shaker Heights,” Ellen said.

“I’m from Toronto. Not so bad there, but in Hong Kong it makes you a pariah.”

“Funny world.”

“Not to me.”

The bill arrived and Ava reached for it, but Ellen was there first. “No, you have to let me pay. You have been charming and so very helpful. I suspect that when I’m back in Ohio and I’m at a dinner or party and someone asks me what I remember best about Asia, I might very well tell them it was this meal.”

“That’s kind. Thank you.”

Ava departed first, leaving Ellen to wake Larry and get him to their room. She found herself missing Maria in a way she had never done before.

She woke at just past eight with an urgent need to pee. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so soundly, so devoid of dreams.

She thought about running but didn’t have the patience for Victoria Park, and if she couldn’t run in the park she didn’t want to run at all. So she made a Starbucks VIA instant coffee, read the
South China Morning Post
, and then headed downstairs to the business centre with her notebook.

Despite — or maybe because of — her business experiences, Ava’s proposals tended to get too detailed, too concerned about what could go wrong. So what should have been simple became horribly complicated, until even she could hardly understand what she meant. She persevered, starting from scratch four times, until it finally began to take the form and clarity she intended. It was important to her that Michael and Simon not see this as charity in any way. This was business. She was offering to buy in to their business and lend them money under terms and conditions that were serious, professional, demanding, and equitable. In truth, if they objected to them she knew she was capable of walking away.

She finished at around eleven thirty, made three copies of her offer, and then headed for the shower. Uncle called just as she was walking back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel. Her first thought was that something positive had happened with Lok.

“Uncle,” she said.

“I received your breakdown of the money in the Kowloon bank. I sent the Wongs’ share on to them immediately. They phoned me this morning to say how grateful they are,” he said.

Her deflation was immediate. “That’s fine.”

“May Ling was particularly anxious that you know that.”

“Know what?”

“How grateful she is.”

“Uncle, we’ve talked about this. I have no interest in what May Ling thinks.”

She heard him sigh. He had said more than once that he thought she could be a powerful ally for Ava. “I hope that will pass,” he said.

“She betrayed my trust,” Ava said.

“That is true, but she has acknowledged that and explained herself. What more can she do?”

“I don’t care what she does.”

“When I spoke with her,” Uncle said, “she asked if you would at least take her phone call. I told her I was not in a position to answer that question.”

“She is the wealthiest woman in Hubei province. What does she want with me?”

“I told you before, she believes that you and she are connected.”

“I don’t want to talk about it any more,” she finally said.

He sighed again. “Just do not close the door entirely.”

“You taught me never to do that.”

“That is all I can expect,” he said.

“Now, Uncle, you must excuse me. I have to get ready to meet with Michael and his partner.”

“You are not going to try to talk to Lok again, are you?”

“No, I know you’re correct in your assessment. I just need to go over some other business with them.”

“I am sorry there is not more I can do.”

“
Momentai
.”

“When will you leave Hong Kong?”

“Tomorrow, I think.”

“Please call me before you do.”

It was eleven thirty. She reached for business clothes: a powder blue button-up shirt with French cuffs and a modified Italian collar, a black pencil skirt. She brushed her hair, fixed it with the ivory chignon pin, and then put on a light touch of black mascara and scarlet lipstick.

At twelve she was in Man Wah at a table next to the window. She ordered jasmine tea and waited.

At twelve ten she began to look towards the door for some sign of Michael or Simon.

By twelve fifteen she found herself getting annoyed.

At twelve twenty she became agitated.

By twelve thirty she was furious, and reaching for her cell to call her brother. That’s when her phone rang and she saw Michael’s name on the screen.

“Where are you? I said our meeting was at noon,” she said.

“I’m in my apartment, the Mid-levels,” he said, his voice wavering. “Ava, we fucked up. Simon and I, we really fucked up.”

“What’s happened?”

“Can you come here?”

“Where are you?”

“We’re on Queen’s Road,” he said.

“Give me the number.”

As he did she heard crying in the background. It sounded like Amanda.

She took a taxi, her imagination working overtime as the cab dragged its way through heavy traffic. The Mid-levels was on the Hong Kong side of Victoria Harbour. The streets to that area ran from the harbour through Central and up the mountain towards Victoria Peak, or “the Peak,” as it was commonly referred to. The higher the real estate, the greater the cost. The Mid-levels, as the name implied, was halfway between the harbour and the Peak. The neighbourhood was mainly residential, nearly entirely apartment buildings, and home to the comfortably retired, senior managers, and a younger crowd that aspired to eventually buy higher.

Ava had no idea what to expect when she reached the apartment, other than that she was sure it somehow involved Lok and Wu.

They lived in an older apartment building, only twenty storeys high, with red-brick walls and small windows, but still posh enough to have a doorman. She told him who she was there to see. “They called down,” he said as he opened the door for her.

Their unit was on the eighteenth floor. As Ava stood in the elevator her anger turned into anxiety.
If those guys are going to keep doing stupid things they’ll have to do it on their own
, she thought.

When Amanda opened the door, her face streaked with black where the mascara had run, her eyes puffy, her nose running. She threw herself at Ava, wrapping her arms around her neck.

“What’s going on?” Ava asked.

“He’s in the bedroom,” she sobbed.

“Then let’s go to the bedroom,” Ava said, untangling herself from Amanda’s embrace.

Amanda grabbed her hand and pulled her across the room, which was furnished in black leather with large glass tables. The walls were bare and the tables had nothing on them.
A man’s apartment
, Ava thought.

Michael lay on the bed. He was wearing the same slacks and shirt she’d seen the day before, except now the pants were grimy and torn at one knee and the shirt was stained with blood. He was holding an ice pack to his face, and when he heard them enter the bedroom, he removed it. His lip was cut in two places. One ear was red and mangled. There was dried blood under his nose.

“They’ve got Simon,” he said.

Ava sat on the bed so she could have a better look at the damage they’d done. It was mainly superficial, except for a cigarette burn on the back of his hand that would leave a permanent scar. Nothing was broken. She opened his shirt to look for bruising but didn’t see any, which calmed her concerns about injuries to his internal organs. Overall it was the kind of abuse that sent a message, meant to scare more than to hurt.

Michael seemed to be in a state of shock, his body twitching of its own accord. She knew his reaction was out of proportion to the physical beating he had taken, but he was someone who had probably never encountered physical violence and didn’t have the psychological means to put it into perspective.

“I think it would be better if you moved around a bit, assuming you can,” she said.

He sat up.

“I’d like Amanda to take you to the bathroom. Have a warm shower and change into some clean clothes. Then we’ll sit and talk, okay?”

He nodded.

“And, Amanda, wash your face too. He’s going to be all right. It looks worse than it is.”

Ava sat at their kitchen table and waited. The refrigerator door was plastered with photos fixed with magnets. Michael and Amanda at Tokyo Disneyland. Michael and Amanda at the Happy Valley Racetrack. A picture of Michael with three other young men, perhaps his brothers — her brothers. She moved closer to have a good look and the family resemblance almost blew her away.

When Michael emerged from the bathroom, he had already regained some of his natural colour. Amanda had washed, and without makeup she was actually prettier than with it, Ava thought.

“Do you have coffee?” Ava asked.

“I brewed some an hour ago,” Amanda said.

“Perfect.”

“I’ll have one too,” Michael said.

As Amanda fussed with the cups, Ava reached out to Michael, her hand caressing his cheek. He flinched and she knew he still felt unsteady.

“How did this happen?” she asked.

He drew a deep breath. “We were so fucking stupid.”

“That’s obvious, but it isn’t helpful. You need to tell me what happened.”

“He phoned me last night around seven o’clock.”

“Lok?”

“Yes, Lok. He phoned me to say that he and Wu had been talking and that they felt badly about the way the meeting had gone. He said they thought there might be room for compromise, and that if we were willing to sit down with them, then they’d sit down with us.”

“Did he mention what compromise he had in mind?”

“No.”

“Did you ask?”

“Yes, and he said it was something they’d rather discuss in person, but that we shouldn’t come if Simon was going to keep being a hothead. Then he made a big point about my being able to keep Simon under control. I said that if they were really going to put a compromise on the table, Simon wouldn’t be any bother. And then I added that if they were that worried about Simon I’d leave him in Hong Kong and just bring you to the meeting.”

“And he wasn’t agreeable to that?”

“Not in any way. He said they didn’t want you at the meeting. No outsiders, just the principals.”

“And that didn’t make you suspicious?”

“I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. I was still distraught about how things had gone down and this seemed to be a way out, so I guess I just wanted to believe everything I was hearing.”

Amanda put cups of coffee in front of them and joined them at the table, her grief giving way to interest.

“Where did they want to meet?” Ava asked.

“Macau, of course.”

“And you were still not suspicious?”

“Lok said they’d meet with us anywhere in Macau we wanted. They had no preference.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him I had to talk to Simon.”

“And you did, and Simon leapt at the chance to make things right, didn’t he.”

“Yep.”

Ava sipped her coffee. “So off you went.”

“I called Lok back and told him we’d meet him at Morton’s Steakhouse in the Venetian at ten o’clock. He pushed me about Simon again, insisting that I keep him under control. He said that if I did that he’d be able to get Wu to go along with something that was fair for both sides.”

“Did he ask you if you’d called me?”

“No.”

Lok’s smart
, Ava thought. He pushed just enough of the right buttons in the lightest possible way. Dangle the carrot, don’t overpromise, don’t make a big issue over her, and make it sound as if Michael and Simon actually had some control over the situation.

“How was Simon when you saw him?”

“Excited. He talked all the way to Macau. I kept reminding him that he had to behave himself. He said he’d kowtow and eat shit if he had to, and I know he meant it. Until the lunch meeting I don’t think he’d really accepted that we might lose all our money, and when he did it was like his life was over. He kept saying this was a second chance and he wasn’t going to blow it. And truthfully, Ava, I think he was really pleased that it was just me and him going over, a sort of reaffirmation of our partnership.”

“And neither of you considered for a second that this was a set-up?”

Michael closed his eyes, his teeth grinding. Amanda shot a glance at Ava that said,
How could they be so dumb?

“We heard what we wanted to hear, and we were going to Morton’s. What could happen at Morton’s?” he said.

“So you get to Macau . . .”

“Yes, and they’re waiting for us outside the station. We start to walk towards the taxi stand when Wu — who has a big cast on his arm — and another guy come up to us. The guy has a coat on, a gun sticking out of it. Wu tells us to follow him,” Michael said. “We should have run at that point, I guess, or screamed, or done something, but neither of us has ever had a gun in our face. We were so shocked, so scared that we just went along. They took us to a white van that was parked near the station. There was a driver I didn’t recognize. They opened the rear door and made us get in. The guy with the gun jumped in after us. Wu took the gun and held it while the guy tied our hands behind our backs and blindfolded us. Then I think Wu went to sit in the passenger seat while the other guy sat in the back with us.”

“Did anyone say anything to you?”

“Not a word.”

“How long did you drive?”

“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, maybe more. I’m not sure; I was completely disoriented.”

“So, no idea of direction.”

“No.”

“Did you stop at a border crossing?”

“No.”

“Do you remember anything at all about the trip, anything out of the ordinary?”

“When we got to where we were going, the van stopped and I heard the driver yell at someone to open the gate. That’s it.”

“And then they took you inside a building?”

“Yes, we climbed five or six steps. I heard a door open and then I heard Lok ask Wu if anyone at the station had paid any undue attention to us.”

“So Lok was there.”

“Oh yes, he was there,” Michael said, his voice cracking.

“Have some coffee,” Ava said.

She finished her own. Amanda pointed to her cup, asking if she wanted another. “Sure,” Ava said.

Michael barely touched his. She saw that his hand was beginning to shake. “Do you mind if we take a break?” he said.

Ava shook her head. “No, we need to get this out of the way. Drink some coffee.” She waited for him to take a couple of careful sips. “Now you’re in a building with Lok and Wu and they start to beat on you, right?”

“They put me on my knees and left me there for maybe ten minutes. I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t hear anything. Then out of nowhere someone punched me on the ear. I fell over, then they picked me up and left me again.”