Year of the Dragon

by Robert Daley

  WRUNG OUT and cranky, Carol landed at Kai Tak airport and was met by a tall Chinese named Austin Chan, who took her bags and led her out to the street to the bureau car, a green Mercedes, for some reason hurrying her along, briefing her while they walked. Suite at the Mandarin, okay. Sound man, okay. Light man, okay. Camera man, okay. Car, okay. He was like a checkout clerk stuffing groceries into the bag faster than her eye could follow. Was he trying to palm something? If she was smart she would pay attention. It was like too much fine print at the bottom of a contract - suspicious. There was bad news there somewhere. Makeup man, okay, said Chan, beginning tomorrow.

  “Tomorrow?” said Carol sharply.

  And the network’s resident Southeast Asia correspondent was not here. Most unfortunate, Chan said. Had to go out of town. Had to go to Taiwan on a possible story. She would find the flowers he had left for her at the hotel.

  The man’s absence did not surprise Carol. Bureau chiefs were always furious when she - when any New York talent - invaded their territory, because it seemed to prove that New York wanted a story they had overlooked. They felt they were being both criticized and upstaged. They used to make her life a misery, and sometimes blocked her from the story she was after. Now they didn’t dare. Now they usually left flowers, then left town - town in a huff, and flowers out of fear that she might try, once back in New York, to blight their careers.

  “What about my interviews?” asked Carol.

  Interviews all set up and ready to go, said Chan. But there were problems.

  “Problems?”

  “It certainly is lucky your plane was on time. The police commissioner can’t see you next week. His schedule is too busy. But I was able to get him to set aside time this afternoon. The crew is already there waiting for you.”

  The police commissioner, whose name was Richard Worthington, represented the longest and most important of the interviews she had come for. Today was Friday. She had asked Chan by telephone to arrange it for early next week, giving her time to prepare for it, and time to talk to Powers about it first. The police commissioner had evidently rejected Chan’s request. The bureau chief, had he been here, no doubt could have done better.

  “Can’t you call him back and put it off till Monday?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Have you explained how important the network is, the exposure we’ll give him?”

  “Yes, but he said that the only time he had was today.”

  No American police chief would have posed conditions if offered an interview with Carol Cone. Naturally the one here did not know who she was, and evidently Chan had not managed to get her stature across. And where was that bureau chief?

  “I’m to get you to police headquarters on Arsenal Street as fast as I can,” said Chan.

  This was impossible. “If you think,” snapped Carol, “that I’m going to jeopardize my career by going on camera looking hung over, you have another think coming.” But her jeopardy was double. To miss interviewing the police commissioner was to jeopardize the story she had come here for. Her very professionalism was pulling her in two directions at once. And she still wanted to talk to Powers first.

  Her bags had been passed to the chauffeur who locked them into the trunk. She slid into the back seat, and was not surprised when Austin Chan took his place up front, where he soon began to converse glumly in Chinese with the chauffeur. Carol was sorry she had snapped at him, and was at the same time convinced she had read his rank correctly. He was the bureau chief’s lackey, and the police commissioner, knowing this, had been able to push him around with impunity. Carol began to grow extremely angry at the missing bureau chief.

  The Mercedes moved away from the airport, and entered the tunnel underneath the harbor. She was thinking it out, and by the time they drew up in front of the Mandarin had made her decision.

  “I’d like you to come upstairs with me,” she said to Chan.

  As they waited for the elevator she looked about the lobby for Powers, but did not see him. It was just as well; she did not have time really to talk to him, and two minutes in his arms might simply undo her, break the string that held the package together. She was so tired and upset she might start crying again, and the only result of that would be new ravages on her face.

  Once in her suite, ignoring the bureau chief’s massive bouquet, she marched through into the bathroom and took a good look at herself, tilting her head at various angles. With her hands she moved her hair about. She studied her appearance as critically as she could.

  Her eyes were nice eyes, she decided, and they were hardly puffy at all. She did not look all that bad. Given an hour or so in which to bathe, change her clothes and put on makeup, she concluded, she could get through this interview.

  Returning to the sitting room, she instructed Chan to telephone Commissioner Worthington, and inform him that her plane had just landed. She would be along in about an hour. He was to wait for her. “Be extremely forceful,” she advised Chan. “Don’t forget you have the network behind you.” Closing the door on him, she set the bath water pounding and began to get undressed.

  She used up every bit of the hour she had allotted herself. For twenty minutes she lay in the bath, wallowing in hot, hot water. This was followed by twenty minutes on her hair, manipulating like a woman with three hands the blow dryer, the comb, and the hair spray can. The result was like crusty meringue, but every hair was in place and the unnatural stiffness would not show on film.

  The final twenty minutes went into work on her face. The foundation went on in layers. It was like repainting a used car. She painted, then buffed, then painted again and buffed again. There was no other way to achieve the gloss she was after. She wanted to look like the newest model in the showroom, as if she had never been used, not once, and she very nearly succeeded. There, not a dent showed. Very lightly she brushed rouge onto her cheekbones - just a hint of it, the barest suggestion, as light as a dusting of sugar on top of a cake. Then the mascara. Then the eyebrow pencil, and the pencil outline of her lips, lines as definite as curbs along a street. She was ready.

  In the car she had her notebook on her lap, preparing the interview she meant to conduct. The key line of questioning concerned Koy. She wished she could have talked this out with Powers. At what point did she introduce Koy’s name into the interview? Early? Late? She was still trying to decide as the chauffeur steered them in past the sentry post and across the courtyard, and drew up in front of the headquarters building. A Chinese police constable in a green uniform opened the car door.

  Upstairs in an interview room that had been prepared for them, Chan introduced her to the members of her waiting crew, all of them Chinese, and about five minutes after that two deputy commissioners walked in, followed almost immediately by Commissioner Worthington himself.

  A tall skinny Englishman. About fifty years old. Bald. Not friendly. In fact, downright hostile. Kept referring in the conversation that followed to “you pressmen.” Evidently neither liked nor trusted “pressmen.” Was hostile to Carol for three reasons, she judged: because she was press, because she was a foreigner, and because she was a woman. A woman’s place, to this man, was elsewhere, and the police could do their job much better if civilians, male or female, would mind their own business. Civilians were meddlers.

  In major American cities, according to Carol’s experience, police chiefs who dared talk this way no longer existed. Modern police chiefs had become as affable one and all as candidates for public office - which was virtually what they now were. They accepted civilian control totally, having no choice. They had learned to stand firm with the public even against their own men. Any other stand, they knew, would get them fired.

  Carol was trying to appraise her man so as to judge how this interview should proceed. The camera was not yet rolling, and she was feeling him out. What were his responses likely to be? But he bristled at nearly every question. Triads? The Royal Hong Kong Police Force had them well in hand and any evidence
to the contrary was an invention of irresponsible pressmen.

  Carol was beginning to enjoy herself. This would not be an easy interview, but she thought it would be a good one. Blinking her eyes, flashing Worthington her warmest smile, she tried flattery: “You certainly are a man of strong opinions. I like that.”

  But he only stared at her, as if he found her distasteful. Carol was not offended. She was working. Nothing he might do or say could affect her personally.

  “Have the Triads been exported to New York?” she asked.

  “Rubbish.”

  “Would you care to elaborate on that?”

  “No.”

  Beside him the two deputy commissioners sat stock still. They had not yet budged in their chairs or spoken one word.

  “In New York,” said Carol, “it is said that the Chinatown street gangs are made up almost entirely of youths from Hong Kong.”

  “It is said. Who said? Explain yourself.”

  “Well, our police department intelligence division thinks so.”

  “They told you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you are seeing there is young hoodlums from China. They may have passed through Hong Kong - illegally, I might add - on their way to New York. But they are not from Hong Kong, they are from China.”

  “I see,” said Carol. She turned toward her crew. “Are you ready to start filming?” she asked. Because the police commissioner seemed to be growing more and more testy. He seemed to be trying to prove to her that she was wasting his time. At any moment he might decide to break the interview off. Carol had made her decision. It was best to get something – anything - on film before it was too late.

  “What else do you intend to ask me?” demanded Worthington.

  “I thought we might just chat on film for about ten minutes, if that’s all right with you.”

  “I warn you, if you ask any question about points we haven’t gone over I shan’t answer them.”

  It was a threat Carol would have to consider. To give herself time, she beamed him another warm, fond smile. There were several questions about Koy she must ask, and the best thing would be to surprise Worthington with them toward the end of the on-camera interview. She mulled this over. His reactions should prove interesting. But suppose, instead of answering, instead of reacting, he just got up and stalked out? Would this cripple her story, or kill it? Could she afford to take such a chance?

  “Well, as a matter of fact, there is one other line of questioning I would like to pursue,” she said. “Does the name Jimmy Koy mean anything to you?”

  Worthington simply stared at her. She set her mouth into a thin hard line and stared back. If this was a contest of wills, she was determined to win it. The man was rude, she thought, as nearly all policemen everywhere used to be in the days when each one was a law unto himself. Except perhaps in outposts like Hong Kong, such cops had proven, like certain species of wildlife, unable to withstand the stresses of modern civilization - the pressures of racial minorities, the Supreme Court decisions, the television scrutiny. They were like those types of organisms that could function only in near-total darkness. They were not complex enough. Without darkness it was impossible for them to reproduce themselves.

  Unable to stare Carol down, Worthington spoke. “What do you want to know for?”

  “Because he appears to have set himself up as the overlord of organized crime in Chinatown.”

  “More rumor,” snorted Worthington.

  “I did my homework, Commissioner,” said Carol. “I went to the New York Police Department, to the FBI, to Drug Enforcement. It’s more than rumor. It’s what the police agencies there believe and are operating on.” An exaggeration that Carol covered at once. “Which doesn’t make it fact. Fact is what I’m trying to ascertain. I’ve come thirteen thousand miles to ask you what the facts are as you see them. Now can I have those facts, or not?”

  About a minute passed during which they again matched cold stares. Then Worthington, with an elaborate sigh, sent one of his deputies out to get Koy’s dossier. When the man had gone, there was silence, and this silence endured. Carol buried her face in her notes, as if studying them. She did not want to stare, or be stared at, any further, and she did not wish to risk damaging the mood of conciliation that had evidently come over Worthington.

  She did not know where the deputy commissioner would go, nor what he would do, and did not consider such details important. In fact the man returned to his own office and told his secretary, a Chinese constable, to phone down to personnel for Koy’s dossier. At personnel, a second constable received the request, and a third retrieved the actual folder, and hand-carried it back to the deputy commissioner’s office.

  The entire transaction took less than ten minutes, and was accomplished at no cost at all, except that three Chinese constables now asked themselves why this sudden interest in Koy. Two of them had worked in the Wanchai district when Koy was station sergeant there, and the third had once worked for Sergeant Hung. They would arrange to meet in the hall later, when they would ask each other: what does it mean? An investigation into Koy’s activities must be under way, that much was clear. Was he perhaps back in Hong Kong? They would find out. Perhaps they should warn him.

  When he had the dossier in his hand, Worthington consented to read Carol certain facts from it: Koy’s date and place of birth, date of appointment to the force, commendations won, dates of promotions, date of resignation.

  “All this is immaterial,” said Worthington. “The man has been absent from the Colony for five years.”

  “He’s here right now,” said Carol.

  Worthington only stared at her, but the stare had a different quality to it. It contained surprise, and Carol felt for the first time that she had impressed him.

  He had closed Koy’s dossier and was tapping it with his finger. He looked thoughtful.

  “Will you read me those same details on camera?” asked Carol.

  “Mind you,” said Worthington, “I shan’t denounce the fellow. We have laws against that here. The enquiry into his official conduct was not pursued. As far as the Hong Kong authorities are concerned, he can go and come as he likes.”

  “I’m not asking you to denounce him,” said Carol. “I’m asking you to repeat on camera all that you have just told me.”

  Once again their eyes met, only this time Worthington’s right cheek twitched. It was almost a smile. It was an admission that a kind of armed truce existed between them. It meant, Carol felt, that she had won his respect, and she didn’t know why she should care, but she did care. She was thrilled. It meant also that she would leave this office with almost exactly the footage she had hoped for, footage that meant good television, and this was a second thrill. Twice thrilled was perhaps the maximum allowed one human being in one afternoon, and she could hardly wait to meet Powers and tell him what a triumph she had had. They would have dinner together. And then?

  She smiled to herself, feeling suddenly thoroughly confident, thoroughly happy. The night might prove lovelier than the day.

  IT WAS past 8 P.M. before Chan dropped her off in front of the Mandarin. Powers had not yet come in. She left him a message that stuck half out of his box. It gave the number of her suite, but not her name. It was signed “An old friend.” She did not mean to be coy, but rather wanted to surprise him. She wanted to hear the gladness in his voice, see it on his face. She didn’t want it wasted on a piece of paper.

  Upstairs she luxuriated in another hot bath, replaying in her head today’s footage. She would not see it until she got back to New York, but did not need to. In addition to her interview with the police commissioner she was covered as far as intros and wrap-ups were concerned. She had filmed various versions of each in a number of scenic parts of the city, including one sequence in Koy’s old red-light district, and another aboard the ferry boat traveling from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon.

  Although she was very pleased with herself, this pleasure began to cool at abo
ut the same rate as the water in which she lay, for her phone still did not ring. Soon the bath was almost cold. Should she add more hot? Her toes curled over the faucet - she would not even have to sit up. With an abrupt movement she erupted from the tub, water sluicing off her. By 9:30, dressed, she was irritably pacing the sitting room of her suite, and growing increasingly hungry. She ordered a meal sent up: minute steak, salad, yogurt. When it came, she signed for it, wolfed it down, and resumed pacing, her irritation rising. Crossing to the phone she checked one last time with the front desk, and was told that her message was still in Powers’ box. He had still not come in. Furious, she ordered her message yanked.

  In the bathroom she stared again at her face, seeking additional reassurance, but not finding it. She was like a man checking the contents of his wallet. How much was left? How much longer did it have to last? She was really showing her exhaustion now, she decided. Which was normal - she had run the marathon today. It was just as well she wouldn’t be seeing Powers tonight. Swallowing two sleeping pills, she went to bed, and slept until 10 o’clock the next morning when she was awakened by Austin Chan’s phone call. He was waiting downstairs with the crew. Carol phoned Powers’ room, but he had already gone out. The day had just started and she was angry at him already. Don’t be such a bitch, she told herself. It’s not his fault.

  She took her time dressing. Chan and the crew could wait. That’s what they were being paid for.

  It was Saturday, and she accompanied her crew throughout the Colony filming more scenery: the exterior of a police station, the border with China, the exterior of banks. When she would put the piece together in New York, this scenic footage would run beneath voiceover commentary as she described parts of her story for which no accompanying footage existed - the history of the Triads, for instance, or the structure of youth gangs.