by Ian Hamilton
“Yes, but I would prefer it if our conversation was just between the two of us.”
“Do you want to step outside?”
“No, that’s not necessary. It will be fine if Xu and Fong give us a little more room here at the table.”
“We’re moving,” Xu said, standing and poking Fong in the arm.
Ren took Xu’s seat and smiled at Chow. He was a large man, more broad than tall, with a full-fleshed face and a mass of thick, grey-streaked hair. “I want to talk to you about tomorrow’s meeting,” he said.
“Did you read my notes?” Chow asked.
“I’m not much of a reader. I’d rather you explained it.”
Chow lowered his head as he gathered himself. “It is quite basic. Right now we are collecting protection money — what some of our brothers refer to as ‘insurance money’ — from most of the merchants in town. In these tough economic times, some of the merchants are becoming unhappy, and many of them are going to the Hong Kong police with complaints. It isn’t a healthy situation.”
“And what are you proposing as an alternative?”
“There is no night market in Fanling. I am suggesting we create one. I’ve already discussed the idea with some local politicians, and they say they’ll support us. They would close off two or three streets in the middle of town every night. We would set up stalls that we would then lease to the merchants. They wouldn’t have to pay insurance, but we hope they would also buy goods from us.”
“Hope?”
“The goods are knock-offs, and they’d get them at a discount. I’ve talked to our brothers in Kowloon, where they have a huge night market. They don’t mind sharing their sources of supply.”
“So the local merchants would buy the knock-offs from us?”
“That is the plan. If they do, we’ll make money twice over — from the leases and from the purchases,” he said. “Which should make us happy as we make them happier. I mean, who needs merchants running to the police with complaints?”
“I thought you had the police under control.”
“No one ever truly has the police under control,” Chow said, lowering his voice, dismayed that Ren would broach such a sensitive subject in public. “There are limits to everything. The police have been adding men to the New Territories northern region and they’ve been making themselves more of a presence on the street. That’s given some of the merchants the confidence to tell us they won’t pay. Wang has been able to get most of them to come around, but it isn’t always easy, and sometimes it can be messy. I don’t see that situation improving on its own.”
Ren stuck a toothpick between his teeth and turned his head to one side. “I like what you did with the off-track betting sites, casinos, and mah-jong parlours.”
“You didn’t at first.”
“True. I thought that eliminating bookmaking would cut our income. I didn’t realize how much the bookies were stealing.”
“All I did was centralize and organize the process. The bettors like the comfort of our shops and knowing that they will get paid immediately if they win. We simply made it difficult for freelance bookies to steal from them — and us.”
“What about those extra cops you mentioned? You don’t think they’ll start interfering with our gambling operations?”
“I do not,” Chow said, more forcibly than he intended, and then flashed a quick smile at Ren. “What the police dislike and feel compelled to address is chaos, unhappy citizens, and disrespect for the rules of a civilized society. Our gambling business is victimless; in fact, you could almost call it a community service. We run it fairly and above board. The citizens are happy with it, so the police have no reason to get involved.”
“Except for the fact that we’re breaking several laws.”
“Laws that the police are quite content to ignore as long as things remain calm and orderly.”
“I have always assumed — though Gao won’t discuss it — that we’re also paying the cops to turn a blind eye.”
“That isn’t the case,” Chow said, again sharply but this time without a smile. “I know it is common practice among other gangs to pay the police, but we don’t, and it should never be suggested that we do.”
“Then how do you keep them off our backs?”
“That’s a question you’ll have to ask Gao,” Chow said.
“No, I won’t bother, and I don’t really care anyway — the results speak for themselves. The cops basically leave us alone and that’s good enough. But let me come back to your night-market idea,” Ren said. “I’ve always understood how the betting shops can be profitable, but I’m not as certain that this market can replace insurance money.”
“It won’t just replace it; it will add more money to our bottom line,” Chow said.
“You seem certain about that.”
“I am. And I’m equally certain that having those merchants as partners in the night market will eliminate a lot of their complaints and give the cops less reason to harass us.”
Ren nodded, sipped at his beer, and then stood up. “I like your confidence, Uncle. I still have to think some more about this, but for now you should assume I’ll support you.”
“Thank you.”
Xu and Fong returned to their seats as Ren walked back to his table.
“Was that as positive as it appeared to be?” Xu asked.
“I think so. But with Ren I’m never quite one hundred percent sure,” Chow said.
“Well, I can tell you that I’m sure Ma is crapping all over us right now,” Fong said. He nodded in the direction of a table where the Deputy Mountain Master was speaking intently to Gao. “He keeps looking at us as he’s talking.”
“Don’t leap to conclusions,” Chow said.
“It doesn’t take much of a leap to figure out what position he’s selling.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Chow said abruptly. “Gao is coming this way.”
They watched as the Mountain Master weaved around several tables and wayward chairs, stopping a few times to acknowledge greetings from brothers. He was over six feet tall and as broad as Wang, with a shaved head and tattooed arms. The stories of how vicious he’d been as a Red Pole were legendary, but those days were gone. He’d put on a lot of weight, and as his body had softened, so had his personality. Gao preferred to lead by consensus rather than dictating. At times Chow found his management style onerous, but given that more often than not he ended up with what he wanted, it was a criticism he didn’t voice.
“Boss, how are you feeling?” Chow said when Gao reached their table.
“It was a good day and that was a good meal,” Gao said. “Are you prepared for tomorrow?”
“I’m ready.”
Gao moved closer and lowered his voice, but not so much that Xu and Fong couldn’t hear. “I’m thinking that it might be a good idea for us to talk before the meeting. I’m going to Sha Tin tonight. Wu is going to pick me up in the morning and drive me to the office. Why don’t you come with him. We can talk in the car.”
“That’s fine with me.”
“He’ll get me at eight-thirty, so he should meet you in Fanling around eight. Where will you be?”
“Jia’s Congee Restaurant.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“And I’ll see you in the morning,” Chow said.
The Mountain Master was leaving by the restaurant’s front door before anyone spoke, and then it was Xu who said, “What’s in Sha Tin? I thought he still lived in Fanling.”
“His new girlfriend is in Sha Tin,” Fong said.
“Does his wife know?” Xu asked.
“If she does, she probably doesn’t care,” Fong said. “By my count that’s his fifth or sixth girlfriend since I joined the gang, and the wife is still hanging around.”
“I don’t understand why, when a man has a good w
ife, he needs a girlfriend,” Xu said.
“You are still young, and more to the point, so is your wife,” Fong said. “You’ll get the itch yourself one day.”
“I don’t think we should be discussing the boss’s personal life so freely,” Chow said.
“Or mine,” Xu said.
“Or Xu’s,” Chow said with a smile.
( 3 )
It was close to ten when Chow left the Emerald Phoenix to walk back to his apartment. After only a few hundred metres, he stopped to light a cigarette. He leaned against a wall, took a couple of deep puffs, and replayed in his head the conversations with Ren and Gao. He thought it had gone well with Ren, but he couldn’t stop wondering what Ma had said to Gao, and if it was the reason why Gao wanted to talk to him before the meeting. Regardless of what Chow thought of Ma, Gao trusted him. They had both been born and raised in Fanling and had been friends since they were boys. The underlying strength of their relationship surfaced periodically, and Chow had seen it undo proposals even from Wang. Was it his turn to be undone?
I’m overthinking this, he told himself. I’ve made a good case, and unless I’m totally misreading everyone, I have the support I need. Now it’s out of my hands. Gao will make a decision and there’s nothing more I can do to influence it, so I should stop worrying about it.
He started to walk again, stopping at a small newsstand to buy the racing form for the next night’s card at the Happy Valley racetrack. He tucked it under his arm and continued on his way home. As he passed the restaurant on the ground floor, he caught a whiff of garlic and ginger coming through the open door. He hesitated, but it had been several hours since he’d eaten, and the aromas had rekindled his appetite. He went inside and bought noodles with beef and XO sauce.
He’d been living above the restaurant for eight years and hadn’t changed a thing since the day he moved in. Its single bedroom held a double bed and dresser. The living room contained a large leather reclining chair near a window that looked out onto the street. Flanking the chair were two small portable metal tables and one metal folding chair. One table was bare; on the other sat a large glass ashtray and several pens. The bathroom had a sink, toilet, and shower stall. The kitchen had a stove — which Chow had turned on less than five times in eight years — and a small fridge that held beer, bread, butter, and a jar of marmalade. He put the noodle container on the empty table and the racing form on the other, and sat down to eat.
Chow took the lid off the container and smiled. There weren’t many foods he enjoyed more than the dish in front of him. His chopsticks plucked a sliver of glistening beef from the bed of noodles. It was so tender he barely had to chew. He took another bite of beef and then attacked the noodles. He ate quickly, almost with urgency, as if he was afraid someone would take the food from him. Eating so fast wasn’t a good habit, he knew, but he couldn’t seem to break it. He suspected it was a subconscious carryover from the time in his life when getting enough food to stay alive was all he could think about. Xu had once observed that for someone who seemed as calm as Uncle was on the surface, the way he ate hinted at some hidden inner turmoil. Whatever the underlying motivation, he finished off the entire container in less than ten minutes.
Chow went to the kitchen, took a San Miguel beer from the fridge, and returned to the living room. He eased into the leather chair, reached for the racing form and a pen, and felt a rush of anticipation as he opened the paper’s pages.
The Hong Kong horse-racing season lasted ten months, from September to June. Races were held twice a week, on Wednesday nights and Sunday afternoons, at the Happy Valley Racecourse on Hong Kong Island. The track had become his escape. From the moment he walked through its gates, he thought of nothing beyond its confines.
It was Fong who had introduced him to Happy Valley and given him a rudimentary education in the intricacies of the racing form. The first time he went, he’d won, but that first-time luck and the money that came with it meant far less to him than the exhilaration he’d felt watching the horses race down the home stretch, accompanied by the screams and exhortations of fifty thousand frenzied bettors. It was a place, he quickly discovered, where you could be part of the crowd but still completely alone. It was a place where he could turn loose all the emotions he kept in check during the rest of the week.
Chow did not consider his forays to Happy Valley as gambling. In fact, he intensely disliked most games of chance and felt badly for people who lost money they couldn’t afford, in the legal casinos of Macau and even the illegal ones like those operated by the gang in Fanling. All casino games were rigged, not because anyone was cheating but simply through the mathematical certainty that the house odds would always prevail if a gambler played long enough.
Horse racing was different. The odds were not preordained. Each race had a plot and a cast that was singular and unique. The bettor was free to make his own judgement about how a race might unfold, based on his analysis of the information he had at hand. And there was no better source of information than the racing form. The form was available to everyone, and within its pages and rows of numbers there were histories to be gleaned about the horses, jockeys, trainers, and owners. When those details were combined with the race distance, track preferences, recent training workouts, past race performances, race conditions, and the weight a horse had to carry, an educated person could make an informed decision about how any race would unfold, and about which bet offered the best return.
Horse racing had become Chow’s sole hobby. It provided an emotional release, it challenged him intellectually, and occasionally it provided him with a deep sense of satisfaction, almost superiority, when some nugget of information he’d unearthed in the racing form led him to choose a winning horse that the mass betting public had overlooked. It was also a timeless exercise, something that could be trusted and counted on. There had been racing at Happy Valley since 1846, and there would always be a next race.
The previous Sunday had been a good day for him financially, but now Uncle put those memories aside as he began to examine Wednesday’s card. Almost at once he was lost in the minute details of past performances, race fractions, and closing last furlongs. His pen crossed out, circled, and underlined the numbers that eliminated or enhanced a horse’s chances in his mind.
He finished his San Miguel, got another, and opened a fresh pack of Marlboros. Fuelled by the racing form, cigarettes, and beer, the night sped by. Several times he checked the time and thought about going to bed, but he put it off until his eyes closed and — as on many other Tuesday nights — he fell asleep in his chair.
Chow woke at five a.m. after about four hours’ sleep, which was fairly normal for him. If he had a choice he wouldn’t sleep at all, for his nightly dreams were so disturbing that he dreaded closing his eyes. But he couldn’t go without sleep entirely; his body and mind had apparently agreed that he could survive on four hours a night.
He slid from the chair and went into the kitchen. He put a large teaspoon of Nescafé instant coffee into a cup and then filled it with hot water from a Thermos on the counter. It would be his only coffee of the day. He enjoyed it, but he found that when he drank too much, it put him on edge. Tea would be his beverage of choice for the rest of the day. It might have as much caffeine but, for whatever reason, it didn’t have the same effect as coffee.
He carried the coffee back to the chair and sat down. He took a couple of sips and then reached for the racing form. Reading the form was never a one-time project, and many times he was still going over it when there were only a few minutes before the race started.
At quarter to six he put the paper aside and walked to the bathroom. He shaved, brushed his teeth, and showered. Twenty minutes later, he left the apartment wearing a fresh white shirt and a clean black suit, the racing form tucked under his arm.
The weather was mild for June. It wouldn’t be much longer before the typical Hong Kong summer, with its oppre
ssive heat and humidity, descended on them. Chow hated that kind of weather but stubbornly refused to give in to it; he wore his suit on even the hottest of days. Despite the early hour, he wasn’t alone on the street. Two elderly female street cleaners were already sweeping debris from the sidewalk, and a news agent was organizing his papers on top of wooden crates. Chow bought a copy of the Oriental Daily News from him. The paper had been launched just a few months before; he liked its news coverage, and the paper employed a race handicapper who was quite astute.
He continued down the street for another four blocks towards a twenty-four-hour congee restaurant. It had opened five years before, and Chow ate there every morning. He had been greeted on virtually every one of them by the same server, Jia, a short, stout woman with a perpetual grin. She and her husband owned the restaurant; he worked in the kitchen while she ran the front. Chow had never been in the restaurant, night or day, when one of them wasn’t there. As he walked in, Jia waved at him and pointed to a booth near the back with a “reserved” sign on it. Even at that hour of the morning the sign was necessary, because the restaurant was almost always full.
Chow had no sooner sat down than Jia placed a pot of tea in front of him. “Good morning, Uncle. What are you having today?”
By itself congee epitomized blandness, but he never ate it plain. The boiled rice porridge could be improved by adding ingredients such as dried pork belly, sausage, salted duck eggs, scallions, black pickled cucumber, tofu, or various sauces. Chow also typically ordered youtiao, sticks of fried bread that he used for dipping.
“Youtiao, pickled cucumber, and scallions.”
“I’ll add some sausage as well,” she said.
He smiled. “One day we will agree on what I should have on my congee.”
“I like all my customers, but you are the only one I worry about,” she said. “You’re too skinny. You need meat as well as vegetables.”
“Then put in the sausage and bring me two salted duck eggs.”
“Great choices.”
