Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  There was a long silence. “You don't like people who smoke do you?” Keelan said.

  McReadie leaned forward now. “Lace, tell him about Eddie Lau.”

  “How can I be sure we are speaking about the same person?”

  McReadie shrugged. “I think the odds are in our favour.”

  “So you do know an Eddie Lau?” Keelan said.

  “To echo a point you made earlier, Mister Keelan - not personally.”

  “Well can you tell me what you do know?”

  “His real name is Lau hsu-shui. Street name is Crazy Eddie. We have an extensive dossier on him, but the last conviction was in 1984, when he received a suspended three month sentence for aggravated assault. He is a powerful and well-connected gangster associated with the Wo Sing Wo. At the moment I have a warrant for his arrest. Your Mister Li has named him as one of the men who chopped him this morning.”

  “Chopped?”

  “Assaulted him with a meat cleaver. It's a favorite form of personal expression among the triads.”

  “So you believe this attempted murder is drug related?”

  “Your presence here this morning begs the question, doesn't it? I have a statement from the victim, I'm not much concerned with why it happened at this stage.”

  “What have you got on Mister Li?” McReadie asked.

  “He has no police record. For the last twenty years he has worked a trawler, the Wan Fu, out of Aberdeen.”

  “A humble fisherman.”

  “Not quite. We’ve done some checking. He owns an apartment overlooking Deep Water Bay and three rented flats in west Aberdeen.”

  “Must have caught a lot of fish.”

  “His luck took a turn for the worst last week. After the attack on Mister Li we tried to interview some of his family members. We discovered that his brother-in-law was admitted to Queen Mary hospital in Pokfulam last week with serious facial injuries. He told the triage nurse he had fallen down a companionway on the Wan Fu in a storm. He discharged himself from the hospital the next day and has since disappeared.”

  “Doesn’t sound good.”

  “There are grave fears for his safety,’ Lacey said, straight-faced.

  “What was this Li doing at the Wanchai Mah-jongg Club?” Keelan said.

  “Playing mah-jongg. It's not unusual in Hong Kong.”

  “We'd like to talk to Mister Li as soon as we can,” McReadie said.

  “Wouldn't we all? It shouldn't be too difficult to arrange, he won't be going anywhere for a while.”

  “We’re getting a search warrant for the fishing junk, as well as all of Mister Li's properties,” McReadie added.

  “You won't find anything.”

  “I know, Lace. But we'd better look anyway.”

  “And what about this guy, Eddie Lau?” Keelan asked.

  “We're still looking for him. He may have decided to stay away from the wind, as the Chinese say.”

  Keelan and McReadie stood up. Keelan held out his hand. “It was a great pleasure to meet you, Inspector Lacey. I'll remember what you said about the Commercial Codes.”

  “I doubt it,” Lacey said.

  He gave her a twisted smile and left.

  McReadie followed him out, then stopped at the door. “He's okay,” he said to Lacey. “Don't take it personally.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Does he know the Marlboro Man is dying of lung cancer?”

  “I don't think he gives a damn. Let us know when you find Eddie.”

  “I will. Thanks for the visit.”

  ***

  “Got a plum shoved up her ass,” Keelan said in the elevator.

  “You don't find a whole lot of women in Serious Crimes,” McReadie said to him. “If she wasn't tough they'd chew her up and spit her out. What did you expect?”

  “She broke my balls.” Keelan said. “High-handed, snotty-nosed little bitch.”

  “Yeah,” McReadie said. “she's also my niece.”

  Keelan stared at him. No, he wasn't joking. He sighed and closed his eyes. “Sorry,” he said.

  “It's okay,” McReadie told him. “I hear it all the time.”

  Chapter 6

  Ruby Wen drove a red convertible BMW 525i with licence plates RW 163. They had cost her a hundred and twenty five thousand Hong Kong dollars at auction, because in Chinese numerology they were considered lucky. The number six signified life, and the number three perpetuity; so 163 meant 'live all the way'. It was something Ruby Wen shui-ming intended to do to the full.

  Kwun Tong was a sulfurous corridor of concrete, just four hundred meters from the runway at Kai Tak; two hundred thousand people were crammed into a square kilometer of flyovers and filthy, shambling high rises.

  Ruby parked the car in the road outside a cluster of Mark II twelve story apartment blocks, built during the boom of the late sixties, the concrete now blotched with brown cancers and the spill of ancient air conditioners. High above her laundry fluttered on poles, the tawdry bunting of Hong Kong; a few limp ferns protruded from the high windows on crowded metal racks.

  Ruby Wen stretched one long black-stockinged leg out of the car, her short nappa leather skirt riding high up her thigh. She hitched a leather Cardin bag over her shoulder and popped a wad of spearmint gum in her mouth. Her black high-heeled pumps clipped on the concrete.

  She was feeling lucky. That morning she had consulted the T'ung Shu, juggling the numbers of her birth date with the present configuration of the twenty eight constellations to find the most propitious hour of the day for this visit. The book had told her that between eleven and three o'clock the stars were in a favorable alignment for making male heirs and beginning new business ventures.

  As she got in the elevator she wrinkled her nose at the smell of stale urine. The whole place stank. The apartments had been built without kitchens, so tenants cooked their food in the corridors and as she got out on the top floor she was assailed by the reek of boiled cabbage and ginger. She found her tiger balm in her Dior bag and dabbed some under her nose.

  She found the apartment and knocked five times; three long, two short. The door opened a fraction. The face that peered out at her was hidden behind a pair of industrial goggles, the straight black hair drenched with sweat.

  She slipped inside.

  Shades had been pulled across all the windows, and the tiny room was lit by a naked one hundred watt globe. An electric fan whirred in the corner but it made no difference, the heat was appalling. She almost gagged on the stinking vinegar smell of hydrochloric acid.

  Ruby wheeled around and kicked the door shut. “You fucking crazy?” She had to shout over the hissing of the gas burners in the living room.

  Martin Fong pulled off the mask, his face flushed and gleaming. His overalls were rank with sweat.

  “Nearly fifty kilos of morphine on that boat!” he shouted back at her. “We make it into number four, we got another two million dollars, Ruby! Each!”

  “Already got eight million, never mind! You fucking crazy? This stuff blow up, what do we have, heya?”

  “I know what I'm doing,” Martin said.

  “Stinks in here! Everybody in Kwun Tong know that smell, know you are making number four up here!”

  “You want us to leave it here? When I can make us another two million Hong Kong?”

  Ruby stared at him.

  “No one follows you?”

  “Men follow Ruby Wen all the time,” she said

  “Don't joke,” he said.

  “Bad luck to be so serious. Give me the little four. Can't stand it in here, too hot. Make my pussy itch.”

  He went into the bedroom to fetch the suitcase. While he was gone Ruby checked the rest of the tiny apartment. Three others, dressed in filthy overalls like Martin, sat on their haunches on the floor, their eyes fixed on thermometers suspended in coppers of boiling water. Pyrex flasks simmered in the water, and coiled glass tubes extended from the necks of the flasks. More glass bottles, containing soda, ammonia and hydrochloric
acid, were lined up on the bare cement floor.

  Too much dangerous, she thought. Easy to ruin the morphine if they didn't do it right, easier still to blow the apartment and everyone in it to kingdom come heya!

  She turned around. Martin held out a blue Samsonite case, snapped open the locks and lifted the lid; inside was fifteen units of Khun Sa's Double U-O Globe number four heroin, ten and a half kilos, worth one and a half million Hong Kong dollars wholesale; worth more, much more in New York or Manchester or Hamburg.

  “Five days we got another seventy units.”

  Ruby took the case from him. She had always thought she was the greedy one. Life was full of surprises. “You fucking crazy,” she repeated, and went to push past him to the door.

  He grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the bedroom, away from the hungry eyes of his friends. He put her hand on his crotch. She pulled it away just as quickly, as if he'd put it in a scalding water.

  “Ruby?”'

  “No dirty stuff here, you stink like boiled cabbage.”

  “You don't butterfly on me?”

  “I don't make sweet eyes with anyone but you. Only love you, baby, love you too much. Now I got to sell this white powder, okay?”

  He grabbed her arm. “Don't you cheat me, Ruby.”

  Her pretty heart shaped mouth left a smear of lip gloss on his mouth. “Trust me,” she said, and hurried out the door.

  ***

  Ruby laid the suitcase on her kitchen table. Her mouth was dry and her chest felt tight. So much to win, so much to lose. If Eddie came through that door now she would be dead. Maybe. Eddie always forgave his Ruby for anything. Always did before.

  She clicked the locks and opened the lid. Each glassine bag contained seven hundred grams of 98% pure white heroin. No good to cut to thirty per cent and sell it here in Hong Kong, it would drive down the price and Eddie would soon find out. To really get rich, she would have to sell in Europe or America to the foreign devils, the gwailos.

  So the question was how much to cut. The more she cut, the more profit she would make. Cut too much and she could wake up one morning dead.

  She decided to cut the purity to eighty five per cent. Then ten and a half kilos became twelve kilos, and the extra one and a half kilos was pure profit.

  She went to the window. Two helicopters angled across the harbor, returning to the hulking US aircraft carrier anchored in Wanchai dock. She closed the blinds, then turned off the air conditioner and stripped down to her briefs to try and stay cool.

  No good to have draughts when she was cutting powder.

  She went into the bedroom and took down a box from a shelf. Inside was a cheap workman's face mask, a piece of oil cloth, a set of kitchen scales, a flour sifter, some bags of milk sugar and a small bottle of quinine powder. The milk sugar resembled heroin, while the quinine would replace the bitter taste that would be lost in the dilution. At the bottom of the box were a number of forged Double U-O globe packets. She counted out twelve and went back into the kitchen.

  Ruby double checked that all the windows were closed, then fitted the mask. No matter how careful she was, she could not avoid leaving a fine dusting of heroin in the air, and this was no time to get high. Breathe in too much stuff and it could kill her.

  She spread the oil cloth on the kitchen table, cut open the glassine bags and carefully weighed three hundred and fifty grams of the heroin on the scales, then transferred it to the sifter. To this she added five grams of quinine and fifty grams of the milk sugar.

  Then she meshed the wire screens of the sifter so that the powders mixed together evenly. It was a long and laborious process and when it was done she had to sift the mixture again to fluff it out. Finally she stacked it in the center of the oilcloth with a spatula.

  She used a piece of cardboard to scoop the heroin into the glassine packets, seven hundred grams of the adulterated heroin in each, then sealed the bags.

  When she had finished she tore off the mask, threw the oilcloth and the implements into a green garbage bag. Then she lit a cigarette. She made a quick mental calculation; four hundred and twenty Hong Kong dollars for the quinine; ninety five Hong Kong dollars for the milk sugar; nothing for the heroin. After costs her one fifth share would be around two hundred thousand United States dollars plus another one hundred and fifty thousand clear profit for what she had cut.

  Downside: she owed Peter Man five hundred thousand Hong Kong dollars for her gambling debts, just over sixty thousand American. Fine, she would pay him his money from her small change. Toss it out of her purse at him like throwing coins to a beggar.

  But this was just the first instalment. There was another one hundred and ninety kilos in the apartment in Kwun Tong. After overheads, a one fifth share was still a fortune.

  With joss.

  She would need a lot of joss. One of the boys Martin had recruited to help him was ex-PLA and the other two were Chinese illegals, more desperate than smart. Martin himself was still only a pimply little boy who liked to play with chemicals. He had hardly any real experience at this

  She replaced the packets in the Samsonite case, snapped the locks shut and put it on the top shelf of her robe in the bedroom. Then she went back to the kitchen, and rang a paging service on her cellular phone.

  Chapter 7

  Every Chinese has at least one nickname and Henry Pi Hso-chang - Three Finger - had earned his in a gang fight in Singapore when he was seventeen and had thrown up his left hand to stop a blow from a meat cleaver. It had saved his life, but cost him most of his hand.

  He was taking breakfast in the lobby of the Peninsula in Tsim Sha Tsui, lounging in a high-backed Victorian chair, an incongruous presence among the bas relief and potted plants. He held a white bone china jar in the claw of his left hand and with the other he spooned maple syrup over his French toast.

  He was a round and cherub-faced Malay Chinese. He was grossly overweight and his face was slick with a sheen of sweat, even in the cool interior of the lobby. Scallops of flesh hung from his cheeks like saddlebags.

  His physical presence contrasted with the elegance of his clothes; a pearl grey cashmere sweater, black trousers and Gucci loafers. He had fat gold rings on his fingers, even on the claw. His Rolex had diamonds set in the face.

  Like a pig with jewelry, heya.

  He stood up to greet her, his eyes shining with appetite, as if she were an especially sumptuous platter of sweets. He licked his lips. “Ruby-ah,” he said. “Good to see you again.”

  Ruby shook his hand - like holding a dead fish, she thought - and sat down. A waiter hovered with napkins and silverware.

  Henry poured some coffee from a silver pot into her cup. Coffee was a western habit; he thought he was sophisticated.

  They had met only once before, in Kuala Lumpur; a connection of a connection. His specialty was transportation; for thirty to forty per cent of your profits Henry Pi would deliver your product anywhere in the world.

  “You would like some breakfast, Ruby? It's jolly good.”

  “Don't eat breakfast.”

  “Quite right, quite right. A wonderful figure like yours. You look very beautiful this morning.”

  Ruby was wearing a black Calvin Klein, its hemline an inch above her knee. She caught him staring and carefully crossed her right leg over her left so that her skirt rode a little higher up her thigh. The sweat broke out like dewdrops on his upper lip.

  “I had hoped we would meet again,” he said. “It was jolly pleasant to hear from you again.”

  “Maybe got a little business for you.”

  “Ah, business.” He smiled at her, his lips wet. “What do you need, Ruby-ah?” He switched to Cantonese. “You want to get powder to Europe or America? He held up the three fingers of his smashed hand. “Three days, okay? It's there.”

  “Twelve kilos. To Golden Mountain.”

  “Twelve kilos? Where did you get so much little four?”

  “Not your business. How much?”

  “Seven
hundred.”

  “American, Hong Kong?”

  He laughed at her little joke.

  “Five,” she said.

  “For such wonderful service, and for so much risk? No, Ruby-ah. Six fifty.” He lit a Dunhill, the cigarette held between the second and third finger of his crippled left hand.

  Ruby pointedly looked at her watch. “Have to go. Nice talking to you.”

  She stood up to leave. Henry Pi laughed, his jowls wobbling like dewlaps. He waved her back to her seat. He stuffed his mouth with French toast, which he swilled down with a mouthful of coffee.

  After he had finished chewing he leaned back in his chair and picked up his cigarette. “You behave bloody big, Ruby. But I like you. Maybe I can do for six hundred. Three hundred now, three hundred on delivery.”

  “Perhaps I can do five fifty,” Ruby said. “I will have to ask the higher authority. But there is one problem.”

  The string quartet on the balcony had begun a Bach fugue. Henry Pi moved his head from side to side in time with the music, his finger tapping the table, without rhythm. “Problem, Ruby-ah?”

  “Pay on delivery.”

  Henry Pi pursed his lips into a thin smile. “Must have half now, Ruby-ah. A lot of expenses in my business.”

  “Okay, I pay you six hundred, when you deliver, and you got syrup on your chin.”

  Three Finger wiped it away with his napkin. Unexpectedly, he laughed. “You are some piece of business,” he said.

  “We have a bargain, Pi hso-chang?”

  Henry Pi considered. “Three hundred thousand dollars is not a lot of money, Ruby-ah. Why is it your higher authority will not pay my expense? Perhaps there is no higher authority?”

  “Six hundred when you deliver,” she repeated.

  Henry Pi shrugged, and reached into his breast pocket. He took out a red one hundred dollar note from his crocodile skin wallet and tore it in half. He handed her one half of the note. “Perhaps tonight we can mix business with pleasure,” he said, switching back to English.