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

by Colin Falconer

  “Oh?”

  “Maybe get information for you, okay. Help you find big time number four heroin in Golden Mountain. No shit.”

  “How would you come by this sort of information?”

  Ruby looked at McReadie as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She took her cigarette from the ashtray and blew a stream of cigarette smoke towards the ceiling.

  Keelan turned over one of the coasters and pushed it across the bar. “Can you write your name for me. Chinese characters.”

  “Why you need my name, okay?”

  “It's the policy of my agency that anyone who offers to become a confidential informant has their identity properly established. We have to take fingerprints ...”

  “Yau moh gau chor! Think I'm crazy? Care for my life, okay. Triad find out they chop me dead finish, no shit.”

  Keelan looked at McReadie, who just shrugged.

  “Here to do you good deal, okay?” Ruby said. “Help you find number four powder, very big time, you get your name in all the paper if you want. No name, no fingerprint. Ruby doan want to wake up tomorrow dead.”

  “If you want to work for us, I have to be sure I can trust you,” Keelan said.

  “I told you this, Ruby,” McReadie said.

  Ruby stubbed out her cigarette and leaned across the table. “Think I'm stupid, fucking your mother?”

  “No, I don't think that.”

  She leaned closer. “Got to explain how this work, heya? If I tell you about powder, what you do for me?”

  “We have a Witness Protection program.”

  “What sort of protection?”

  Keelan sighed. “If the information is worthwhile, and leads to the prosecution of major traffickers, we can provide you with a new identity, relocate you to some part of the United States where you will be safe from reprisals.”

  “Big house, security camera, bodyguard? That shit?”

  “We can't go that far.”

  “How much money you pay me, okay?”

  “The United States government does not provide us with a great deal of funds for that purpose, Ruby.”

  McReadie looked at Keelan. “I told her this, John. She didn't believe me.”

  “Got to be crazy. I can get you big bust, American.”

  “We'd certainly be very grateful for any kind of information you can provide.”

  “Then how much you pay, heya?”

  “If you were to agree to become a confidential informant for the United States Government I could perhaps authorize a monthly payment of five thousand US dollars ...”

  “Would not break wind in your soup for five thousand dollar.”

  “I'm sorry you feel that way.”

  McReadie picked up the glasses on the table. “I'll get some more drinks.”

  When McReadie was gone Ruby's manner changed abruptly. She rested her chin on her hand and ran a scarlet fingernail along Keelan's wrist. “You are very handsome guy,” she said.

  “Thank you, Ruby.”

  She touched the ring on his finger. “You married, Kee-Lan?”

  “Yeah, married.”

  “Your wife in Hong Kong?”

  He shook his head.

  “Maybe you like take me to dinner, okay. Like hot food, lot of chili. You like hot, heya?”

  Her fingernail made tiny circles on the flesh on the back of his wrist. He snatched his hand away and leaned across the table. “What is it you really want, Ruby?”

  The question seemed to surprise her. “Just want very fun life, okay. Like everybody.”

  “You got a fun life now?”

  Ruby frowned and fumbled in her bag for her cigarettes. “Can help you very much, okay.”

  “You're just fucking with us.”

  “Want to help you. Don't want to do no more dirty drugs business, okay.”

  “No, that's not it.”

  “What is this, fucking you mother?”

  “Tell me what you really want, and I'll tell you if we can help you.”

  She stood up. “Don't need this shit!” she said, as if he was a car dealer and had turned down a perfectly reasonable offer on a new car.

  “You better take this,” Keelan said. He gave her his card. It had his mobile and fax numbers on it. “If you change your mind, or if ... something comes up ... maybe give me a call.”

  Ruby glanced at the card, then ripped it up and dropped the pieces on the carpet.

  McReadie came back with three drinks. He stared at Ruby's delectable behind in its black leather skirt as she flounced out through the door. “Oh, you charmer,” he said to Keelan.

  “She had a hidden agenda.”

  “Sure she did. You could still have played footsie a bit longer. With Ruby, you have to read between the lines a little.”

  “She was wasting our time.”

  McReadie sat down, shaking his head. “I don't know what it is with you and women. You could have humored her a little.” He looked at his watch. “Look at that. Almost time for lunch.” And he downed his whisky in one swallow.

  ***

  Ruby drove with her hand pressed on the car horn even though there was nowhere that she had to be. What was she going to do? She still owed half a million to Peter Man. All she had been trying to do was win back the money Three Finger had stolen from her. May his ancestors scream in endless torture in the otherworld and may his children turn into pi-dogs and dig up his bones! Just not fair. If not for Martin Fong she would have seven figures in a bank in Taiwan, have more red notes than a cat has hairs!

  So much for Americans. This Kee-Lan was the rump-sniffing son of a leper.

  That morning she had consulted the T'ung Shu and it told her it was a bad day to make new babies or to polish an ancestor's bones but it was an auspicious day for juggling new business enterprises. Today's lucky number was three. She decided she would try her luck in the fan tan parlor off Hollywood Road.

  She would bet with the money the Ox had given her for telling her the name of the ghost inside the Sun Yee On.

  ***

  McReadie took Keelan to lunch at the Press Club on Lockhart Street in Wanchai. The Club was on the third floor; the fourth floor was a brothel.

  It was an L-shaped room, there was a bar on one side, the far wall filled with mounted press photographs; burning refugee huts from the late sixties; a crashed CAAC airliner half submerged in the harbor; a black and white portrait of Mao Tse Tung. The bar had a friendly if dilapidated atmosphere, stranded in a time warp from the seventies.

  McReadie found a table below a mounted poster of two bare breasted Polynesian girls. He ordered them the day's special, roast beef with potatoes and something he called Yorkshire pudding. Keelan braced himself for that.

  McReadie returned from the bar with two Carlsbergs. “Sorry,” he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “About the thing with Ruby. I told her you couldn't make her a millionaire overnight, but she insisted on talking to you. In some ways she's a very smart girl, but in others she's very naïve.”

  “How long have you known her?”

  “Long enough. She's one of life's mercenaries, John. Her bottom line is money. So is her top line and middle line.”

  “You trust her?”

  “Of course not.”

  “So what about this information she claims to have?”

  “Remember that trawler we impounded a few weeks ago carrying two hundred kilos of number four? The tip-off came from Ruby. Sometimes she tells the truth, that’s the hell of it.”

  “I handled it badly,” he said.

  “Well, it wouldn't have hurt to have sweet-talked her a little. But if you don't have the kind of money she's after, I suppose the wash-up would still have been the same.”

  Lunch arrived. Keelan prodded the Yorkshire pudding with his fork as if it was an unidentified fungus.

  “By the way,” McReadie said, 'have you seen my wee niece lately?”

  “Bumped into her in the lift the other day. Did she tell you?”


  “No, she didn’t. She's a dark horse, that one.”

  “Are you checking me out to see if my intentions are honorable?”

  “What she does on her own time is her business. But I am very fond of her. Been more of a father to her, in many ways, than her own dad. He was a bastard, that one, and I say that as a good friend of his.”

  “What do his enemies say about him?”

  “If you want to know what his enemies said about him you just have to read the transcripts of the trial in 1975. I'm sure you'll find some copies at the ICAC. Change the subject, here she comes now.” He jumped to his feet. “I'll get some more drinks,” he said.

  “My round,” Keelan said.

  “Your money's no good in here, you're not a member. You have to have a number to buy a drink.”

  “I can't get a drink without a number?”

  “You can, but it would cost you twice as much.”

  McReadie went back to the bar.

  Lacey sat down. She looked bone weary, and there were plum colored bruises under her eyes. “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Mac invited me.”

  “Did he tell you I meet him here for lunch every Friday?”

  “He never mentioned it.”

  Lacey looked embarrassed. “Set up,” she murmured. “Thank you for the flowers by the way. That was a nice thought.”

  “They were growing on the balcony next door. I just leaned over with a pair of scissors.” When she didn’t laugh, he said: “That was a joke.”

  “I was laughing inside.”

  “I guess you caught a lot of flak.”

  “Can't say my bosses were impressed.”

  He looked up at one of the mounted photographs on the wall; a group of police in Kevlar vests and riot gear wading through a swamp; some Chinese police fighting to hold back a very small number of protesters and a very large number of press photographers; a policeman trying to persuade a potential suicide to come down off a roof.

  “You'll be up there one day,” Keelan said. “They must have got themselves some real dandies of you bending that newspaper guy's ass over the rail.”

  “What would you have done?”

  “If I were you? The same damned thing.”

  “I have been charged with bringing the department into disrepute.”

  “My guess is no one else in the department thinks so. Let's change the subject. Thanks for dinner the other night.”

  “Don't mention it.”

  McReadie returned from the bar with three beers. At that moment his belt pager went off. He checked the message on the display. “Duty calls,” he said, and went to the phone on the bar.

  Keelan pushed the Yorkshire pudding to the side of his plate. “Will you tell me something? Be as brutally frank as you like.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  Keelan tapped the Yorkshire pudding with his knife. “Is this, or has this ever been, alive?”

  “It's just dough and water. Like a dumpling.”

  “Do you know any place that doesn't serve Yorkshire Pudding for lunch?”

  “Perhaps. Why?”

  “Will you go there with me one day?”

  Lacey did not answer. McReadie came back a few moments later and the conversation drifted to other things. He supposed she was still torn between mixing the job with her private life. Or perhaps she just didn't like him. It was a long time since he had done this, and he had forgotten how to read the signals.

  Chapter 37

  A supposedly satirical cartoon of Sir Gordon Wu had defined his position in Hong Kong society when he first rose to public prominence eight years before. It showed him sipping champagne, the pockets of his tuxedo crammed with stocks in Hong Kong's leading companies. The caption underneath read: He came, he saw, he cocktailed.

  Generally adept at handling the media, he was nevertheless reticent to answer questions about his birthplace, his age, and the origins of the capital that had launched him on his mercurial rise. Some rumors claimed that the money had come from Beijing, or that it was Marcos money. Lacey had once seen a classified police dossier that instead suggested it was laundered drug funds from Burma.

  Sir Gordon claimed to have attended Oxford University, and when in an expansive mood he liked to talk about the balls he had attended there, speaking affectionately of English rural life. No journalist had ever been able to verify this.

  If there was mystery about his past, his present was well documented in the South China Morning Post and the Far Eastern Economic Review; he had vast interests in property and shipping and a 55% share in Dragon Life and General, one of the largest insurance companies in Asia. He owned three hundred taxis, five tour companies, three car hire firms, and seven travel agencies; he had investments in hotels in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and had recently unveiled a scheme to become Hong Kong's next airline operator. He owned a villa on Bluff Path on the Peak, and a summer house at Ting Kao overlooking the eleven and a half mile beach.

  He had what the Chinese called guanxi - the right connections. He was even a familiar of Li Peng, the Chinese strongman, and of the Suhartos in Indonesia.

  He had a reputation for philanthropy. In the last three years alone he had financed the construction of three schools and two hospitals in Guanzhou, in mainland China. It would undoubtedly count in his favor when Hong Kong became Xiang Gang in 1997. He spent millions every year on charities, earning merit for the afterlife and a knighthood from the Queen; he called it the quinella.

  Visitors to his penthouse office in the Landmark building, the most prestigious address in Hong Kong, were made to stand facing a full length window, squinting into the glare. Sir Gordon would sit in a white leather chair with the sun behind his head. Someone once told her it was like visiting God.

  So receiving a visit from Sir Gordon Wu had caused a flutter of excitement even inside the Arsenal Street headquarters of the Royal Hong Kong Police.

  Most of the establishments Tyler and Lacey had closed down in the previous twenty-four hours were owned and operated by Sir Gordon Wu. Not directly of course, all the licenses were held by dummy companies.

  Tyler wandered into Lacey's office with a polystyrene cup of black coffee and a stupid grin. “Want to meet a celebrity?”

  “Kevin Costner?” Lacey said, brightly.

  “Not as tall.”

  “Danny de Vito.”

  “Not as good looking.”

  “Now you've really got me hot.”

  “Sir Gordon Wu.”

  “He's in your office?”

  “Looks like a swan in a duck farm. He keeps looking round for someone to come and clean out the ashtrays and pour him a glass of champagne. Come in and I'll introduce you.”

  ***

  Sir Gordon wore a grey blazer with charcoal trousers, a soft pink shirt with a button down collar and grey silk tie. A diamond glittered on the little finger of his left hand. There were more diamonds on his tie pin and the buckle of his crocodile skin belt. He sat with his legs crossed, perfectly at ease, his Italian leather shoes slick as smoked glass.

  Two gorillas in Italian-made suits sat outside.

  “Sir Gordon,” Tyler said as they went in. “This is a colleague of mine, Detective Inspector Sian Lacey. Sian, allow me to introduce Sir Gordon Wu.”

  Sir Gordon smiled and nodded but did not stand up or extend his hand. Lacey felt instantly invisible.

  Tyler gave her an encouraging smile and pulled up a chair for her. Lacey hated her boss's office. It stank of other people's stale cigarettes, and there were coffee cup rings on the polished surface. Papers had been sorted into random piles.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Tyler said to Sir Gordon, his face deadpan

  Sir Gordon looked at the polystyrene cup and forced yet another smile. “No thank you, Chief Inspector,” he said carefully.

  Tyler put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his cracked leatherette. It creaked at the shifting of his weight. “How can
we help you, Sir Gordon?”

  “I have not come here on my own behalf.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “This morning I was contacted by some associates of mine who have business interests in Wanchai. They are very concerned about certain recent events. They have asked me to represent them in this matter.”

  “What recent events are you referring to?” Tyler said, looking genuinely puzzled.

  “In the last two days, your police officers have forced the closure of three cocktail bars and five restaurants in the Wanchai area.”

  “Cocktail bars?” Tyler said. He made great show of fumbling for his spectacles and opened a manila file on the desk in front of him. “Let me see. According to our files they were not quite cocktail bars, by the exact definition, anyway. If I may be so indelicate, girls have been seen dancing there in their underwear.”

  Sir Gordon Wu crossed and re-crossed his legs. “For myself I do not approve of this sort of thing.”

  “Nor do I,” Tyler said. “Definitely not.”

  “But we are all men of the world, Chief Inspector.”

  Tyler looked over the top of his half-moon lenses at Lacey. “With certain exceptions.”

  Sir Gordon looked at Lacey, non-plussed by her inclusion in this conversation. “What I mean, Chief Inspector, is that we all know this sort of thing goes on. But regardless of personal feelings, one must consider that what you have done effects even greater harm. Many people derive their employment in such places. How are people to live if the police take away their livelihood at a whim?”

  “Well, this was not what I would characterize a whim, Sir Gordon.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  Tyler looked confused by the question. “Enforcing the law,” he said.

  “Some of these women have young children, Chief Inspector. Can you sleep tonight knowing that children are going to bed hungry?”

  “Well, I'd certainly like to rectify the situation. If I could. At the moment there is little I can do. My hands are tied, as it were. The law, as they say, is the law.”

  “Can you suggest some way we can resolve the matter?”

  Tyler appeared to think very deeply. “Can you assure me you have no financial interest in any of these businesses, Sir Gordon?”