Five-Ring Circus

by Jon Cleary

  “How did your mother feel about her second cousin?”

  “She didn’t trust her.”

  “Is there a Mr. Tzu?”

  “There was. She says he’s dead. He was a banker or something in Hong Kong. But we have only her word for it.”

  “You’re like your mother—you don’t trust her?”

  “I can handle her.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  As they got out of the car Malone looked up; the sky was black, clouds spewing up like oil smoke. Then there was a deafening crash of thunder and a blaze of lightning in which the buildings across the road seemed to tremble.

  “Do you believe in omens?” Camilla said as they crossed the street.

  “All the time.”

  He had taken her arm as they dodged the traffic and now she squeezed his hand between her arm and ribs. Cut it out; but he didn’t take away his hand.

  Clements was waiting for them in the lobby. “You haven’t met Ms. Feng?” said Malone, removing his hand now.

  “No,” said Clements, impressed but cautious. Then to Malone: “What are we doing here?”

  Malone explained what he had learned at the Sun office. “The madame doesn’t know we’re coming. Let’s hope the general is still with her.”

  “He will be,” said Camilla. “He’s expecting me. This was to be my next call.”

  “Then you owe me two bucks,” said Malone.

  She opened her handbag, gave him two dollars with a smile and led the way to the lift. Clements raised his eyebrows enquiringly, but Malone just shook his head. He could smell a Chinese stew on the menu.

  There was no doorman in sight to announce them to Madame Tzu and as they stepped into the lift Malone said, “If they ask who you are over the intercom, don’t mention us. We’ll just follow you in when they open the door.”

  “You may get a blast from Madame Tzu,” said Camilla.

  “Just so long as it’s not from a gun,” said Malone, and was instantly sorry when he saw her wince. Even Clements, used to Malone’s sometimes loose tongue, looked at him.

  The door was opened by the maid, who looked at the two detectives in surprise, then scurried away into the apartment, saying something in Chinese. Only a moment or two passed before Malone and Clements followed Camilla into the big living room, but Madame Tzu, it seemed, had already prepared herself.

  “Why, Inspector, how unexpected! The gentleman with you is also a policeman?”

  She’s warning the general “Sergeant Clements, our Supervisor at Homicide. And this gentleman is . . .?”

  “General Wang-Te.”

  Malone had had no experience of Chinese generals. He had a dim image of Chiang Kai-shek from a documentary he had seen months ago on the Soong sisters; the generalissimo had appeared to have more than the usual straight-backed arrogance of Western generals. Wang-Te was thin, stoop-backed and wore glasses; he was in a black suit and stiff white collar and looked like the cliché bookkeeper. Perhaps that was why he was the financial comptroller. He just smiled a big-toothed smile at the two detectives, but said nothing.

  “Does the general speak English?” Malone asked.

  “Fluently,” said Madama Tzu. “And French and German.”

  “We’ll stick to English, our French and German are a little rusty. May we sit down?”

  “Of course, how rude of me.” She said something in Mandarin to the general.

  “What did Madame Tzu say?” Malone, rudely, asked Camilla.

  Camilla looked at the older woman, who said, “I told the general, one can forget one’s manners after a day or two amongst Australians.”

  Malone ducked his head in mock acknowledgement. “Take no notice of her, General. We’re not really rude, it’s just our rough-and-ready ways—”

  There was another tremendous crack of thunder and the building seemed to shake. Then beyond the windows the rain fell down in a thick curtain, silvered by lightning.

  There was silence in the room for a moment, as if everyone was waiting for another avalanche of thunder; then Malone said, “I understand you are here to try and recover some millions of dollars that ex-General Huang seems to have misappropriated?”

  “That is correct.” Wang had a soft precise voice. “Fifty-one million. A large amount.”

  “When did you find out the money was missing?” said Clements, taking over the bowling.

  Wang-Te might look like a bookkeeper, but he had a general’s appreciation of rank. “You are only a sergeant?”

  “A senior sergeant, actually,” said Clements. “Licensed to ask questions of anyone of any rank.”

  Good for you, thought Malone; but looked at Madame Tzu. “Madame, I think things will go better if we stop trying to score points off each other.”

  The general and Madame Tzu exchanged glances; then she nodded. “As you wish. Inspector.”

  Wang-Te looked at Camilla Feng. “What have you told the gentlemen, Miss Feng?”

  She didn’t correct him to Ms.; she knew an irredeemable chauvinist when she saw one. “Nothing they didn’t already know.”

  Nice one, thought Malone: looks like we’re in for a little prevarication.

  “Inspector—” said Wang-Te, ignoring the senior sergeant. “We only learned of the missing money three weeks ago. It had, of course, been coming here for some months—not here, exactly, but into Hong Kong on its way here.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, General, but I understand you are the financial comptroller—wouldn’t you have noticed such a large sum of money missing from your army accounts?”

  “You are naïve, Inspector—” There was another clap of thunder, as if to underline the insult. Wang-Te waited, then went on, “The money didn’t come from army accounts—not all of it.”

  “Then where from?” said Clements.

  It seemed to pain Wang-Te that he had to answer someone so far down the totem pole in rank. “Investments.”

  “Army investments?”

  The general ignored the question, looked back at Malone. “The army has a bureaucracy like everything else. Scandal takes a long time to float to the top.”

  “When you did learn it was missing, did you send someone out here to Sydney to, well, influence General Huang?”

  “In what way?”

  “I’m going to be rough-and-ready—by threatening him?”

  Wang-Te looked at Madame Tzu, who was ready for her cue: “Are you accusing the general of ordering the murder of General Huang?”

  There was another clap of thunder, further away; the rain abruptly ceased. There was a weak blaze of sheet lightning and a moment later a bedraggled pigeon, an orphan of the storm, stumbled onto the windowsill, flapping its wings furiously.

  “Poor bird,” said Camilla, but no one else seemed at all interested in the sodden pigeon.

  Malone said, “He may not have ordered the murders, but if he sent someone out here, things got out of hand. The gun that killed General Huang, Mr. Sun and Miss Feng’s father was the sort of weapon that’s used by the Chinese army in covert operations. A Type 67,” he told Wang-Te.

  “I know the gun,” said the general, “but I am not an ordnance man—that is not my field. Neither are, as you call them, covert operations. I did not send anyone out here to see Huang, with or without a gun.”

  “He must of had accomplices in China,” said Clements, too long out of the attack. “Have you discovered them and dealt with them?”

  “Yes.”

  “Executed?”

  “They are still awaiting trial. Our legal system is not as rough-and-ready as you seem to suggest, Sergeant.” The rank was emphasized, a put-down.

  Malone turned to Madame Tzu. “If the fifty-one million dollars goes home to China, is your investment in Olympic Tower in trouble?”

  “What have you told them?” Madame Tzu snapped at Camilla.

  “I told you—nothing they don’t already know.”

  Another brick in the Great Wall: keep it up, Camilla. Malone wai
ted patiently till Madame Tzu looked back at him.

  “Yes,” she said in a flat tone, “It will place the whole project in jeopardy.”

  “Not quite,” said Camilla quietly. She had been sitting between Malone and Clements, demure as an old-fashioned convent girl: one who would think nothing of cheating at exams after three Hail Marys. Malone had remarked how totally self-contained she appeared to be, as if the two older Chinese did not in the least awe her. “There are half a dozen corporations around town that will jump in if we invite them. The trouble is if we do that, then our investment goes out the window. You and I and the Sun brothers will be told to get lost.”

  The older woman’s face was suddenly as hard as ivory. Malone wondered if anyone, even the Red Guards, had ever told her to get lost. Camilla’s pragmatism, it seemed, was devastatingly offensive.

  “What about the Aldwyches and Les Chung?” asked Clements.

  “They have more clout than we have,” said Camilla. “They would stay.”

  She was businesslike to a degree that Malone had to admire; he was beginning to be on her side. But there was a coolness, almost a coldness, to her that took the edge off his admiration. Did she weep for her dead father when she was alone? Was she more concerned for her legacy than for him?

  Malone said, “While the money is still here. General, would your army command be interested in putting the money into Olympic Tower? You mentioned army investment.”

  Wang-Te might have been asked if the army command should be asked to declare war. “Inspector, I wouldn’t ask a question like that from here.”

  “But you might ask it when you get back to Shanghai?”

  Wang-Te shrugged, it wouldn’t be an army command decision. “Do your defence forces throw money around?”

  “We civilians think so,” said Clements. “They’re the only ones who never suffer a cut in their budget.”

  “Whom are they afraid of? China?” Wang-Te almost smiled as he threw the bait.

  Clements didn’t bite. “While you’re here, why don’t you ask them?”

  Madame Tzu had been on the sidelines too long. Her models were Mei-ling Soong and Margaret Thatcher; she was not a by-stander. “Olympic Tower is a solid investment with a guaranteed return. It is not like some of the schemes some of your con men, your entrepreneurs—” she gave the word a swipe of acid—“the schemes they launched a few years ago. Do you think Mr. Aldwych would have put money into this if he thought it was a risk? I know his past record—”

  “You did homework on him?” said Clements.

  “Of course.”

  “You told him?”

  “Yes. It didn’t upset him. He told me he had retired from his old line of work—”

  “Did he tell you that he’d retired but not reformed?” asked Malone.

  “Yes, he told me that. Every country has its retired criminals, doesn’t it? You accept their money at face value.”

  Malone grinned, shook his head. “Do you voice that sort of opinion in China?”

  Madame Tzu looked at Wang-Te; he gave a thin smile and she took that as approval of what she was about to say: “In Shanghai, yes. If one doesn’t take money at face value in Shanghai, one never attracts it.”

  Malone looked at Wang-Te. “So will you recommend the investment of the fifty-one million in Olympic Tower?”

  “That will depend,” said the general. “First, your authorities have to release the money, then it has to be transferred back to China. But why do you ask? Aren’t you interested only in the murders?”

  “You look in every mirror you find,” said Malone, and smiled at Madame Tzu. “Old Homicide aphorism.”

  “In the meantime,” said Camilla Feng, “you appear to be getting no nearer to finding who killed my father and Mr. Sun.”

  Malone remarked that she hadn’t mentioned General Huang: the disposable one? “Oh, we’ve come some way, much further than we were last Friday night.”

  Clements came in: “You are quite sure. General, that no one came here from China to kill General Huang?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said I didn’t send anyone on such a mission.”

  “So the killer could of come from China?”

  “Possibly. Huang had many enemies.”

  “Did you know any of them, Madame Tzu? You were in business with him.”

  “In business, Sergeant, one makes and needs enemies. Friends never sharpen your wits the way enemies do.” She looked at Malone. “Old commercial aphorism.”

  He grinned and got to his feet. “When this is over, I’ll come for tea . . . When are you going back to China, General?”

  “As soon as possible.”

  “Before you go, I hope to be able to tell you who committed the murders.” It was a dim hope, but the credo had to be demonstrated: the police are hopeful of an early arrest. “May I use your phone, Madame Tzu?”

  She waved her hand towards the entrance hall and he went out there; then had to put his head round the door: “Miss Feng, what is the Sun office number?”

  She took a small Filofax from her handbag, but before she could flip it open Madame Tzu gave the number.

  Clements said, “You have a good memory.”

  “One needs it,” she said but didn’t explain why.

  Malone, out in the hall, dialled the number, asked for Gail Lee, who came on the line almost at once. “You can go back to the office, Gail. How’d you go with the brothers? Learn anything more?”

  “Yes,” she said, and he could hear the undercurrent of excitement in her voice: “Li Ping, the missing girl, was not Huang’s daughter—she was adopted. She and Zhang, who was Huang’s natural son, didn’t get on. They hated each other.”

  III

  “He used to play one against the other.”

  “Splitting heirs?” said Clements. Malone and Gail didn’t get it at first; then Malone groaned and Gail rolled her eyes. Clements grinned and went on, “What sort of bastard was he? Anyhow, an adopted daughter? I thought sons were the first priority with Chinese fathers?”

  “My father would dispute that,” said Gail with a smile.

  They were back at Homicide, in Malone’s office. Clements was going through the print-out of the running sheets. He looked to Malone like the Clements of old: the bloodhound that smelled blood. For a while, since he had become a father, he had been only going through the motions of being a detective. His daughter, Amanda, was now a year old and to all intents and purposes he had seemed concerned only to protect her against the rapists, robbers and romeos converging on her from the future. Yet even on automatic he was the best detective on Malone’s staff and the latter had never complained.

  “How many suspects have we?” Clements held up the sheets. “Madame Tzu, General Wang, the two missing engineers—” He looked at the sheets again; the Chinese names did not seem to lodge in his memory. “Tong Haifeng and Guo Yi. And the missing daughter, Li Ping. And Les Chung and Jack Aldwych.”

  “Cross Jack off the list. But why Les Chung? What would he have to gain by bumping off two of his partners besides General Huang? While I think of it—” He looked up, gestured at Sheryl Dallen in the outer room. She got up and came to the doorway of his office. “Sheryl, get on to Immigration. If General Wang-Te attempts to leave the country without getting in touch with me, I want him held. Tell ‘em I want every airport covered from Cairns to Perth.”

  “Sure, boss.” She was all aglow, as if she had just come from a session at the gym. He had never seen anyone who looked so damned healthy. He could feel the fat growing by the minute round his waist.

  “Has your sweaty friend at the gym come up with anything new?” She looked puzzled and he went on, “The feller at the Securities Commission?”

  She grinned. “All my friends at the gym are sweaty. It’s one of the things we have in common. Yes, Boris has told me a few more things—I’m putting them into the computer now.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Feng family companies are in trouble wi
th the Taxation Office. And the banks are threatening to foreclose.”

  “For Crissakes!” Clements almost crumpled the print-out in exasperation. “Aren’t there any cleanskins in this Olympic set-up?”

  “Jack Aldwych,” said Malone; but he, too, wondered at the nest of snakes in the basement of Olympic Tower. And that Aldwych, of all people, should look like the only untainted one. “How deep’s the trouble with the Fengs?”

  “Enough to bankrupt them,” said Sheryl. “Which would mean they would have to withdraw from the consortium with Les Chung and the Sun family.”

  “What about the Sun companies?” asked Malone.

  “My friend Boris didn’t say anything about them. They apparently are clean.”

  Malone looked at Gail Lee. “I think we’d better have Ms. Feng in here. She’s not telling us as much as she knows.”

  “What if she refuses to come in?” said Clements. “She’s not the one in trouble with the Tax guys. Let Gail and Sheryl go out to Drummoyne and talk to her. Get cracking, girls.”

  He waited till the girls had gone out of the small office, then he stood up, laid the print-out on Malone’s desk. “I’ve got ten more like that on my desk outside. I’m up to my balls in paperwork and you aren’t helping, mate. We’ve also got a problem with our friend Boston. He’s not going to Archives, as you recommended. He’s going to Headquarters.”

  “How’d he manage that? What sort of report did you put in?”

  “As dirty as I could make it without being sued for libel. But someone at Headquarters in on his side. Guess who was his patrol commander when he first worked out of Day Street?”

  “I’ve run out of guesses on this Olympic case. I’m not trying for any more. Who?”

  “Commissioner Zanuch. I dunno whether Zanuch asked for him or not, but Boston’s going over there tomorrow morning.”

  “He’s got no rank. What the hell use will he be over there?”

  “Mate, half the establishment in Headquarters are no bloody use.”

  Malone nodded and they both pondered this terrible state of affairs. In every uniformed service it was a given that deadheads were the airbags round the brass. Troops from Caesar’s day to the Gulf War had chewed on the subject.