Dead and Kicking

by McGeachin, Geoffrey

  ‘How old is this Playford Peng character?’ I asked.

  ‘Early thirties, I’d say. Casino is a family business, but it’s not a family I’d like to be related to. The story is Old Peng, the patriarch, made the family fortune on the black market and from pushing junk to American servicemen on R and R in Hong Kong in the sixties and seventies. He eventually used the money to fund his casino.’

  ‘Old Peng still involved?’

  Jimmy shook his head. ‘Not since his stroke a while back. From what I’ve heard, he just sits around in a wheelchair now, mumbling to himself and dribbling. Totally off the air. Rumour has it the stroke may have been brought on by a combination of disappointment at his only son’s profligate ways and a severe and unexpected blow to the head from one of Playford’s henchmen.’

  ‘Sounds like a happy family.’

  ‘I’d steer well clear of them if I were you, Alby. Old Peng is the traditional family name for the senior member of the clan and the buzz is the current Old Peng got the title at the age of sixteen when he encouraged his old man to go for a moonlight swim in Deepwater Bay while connected by chains to a very large steel girder.’

  ‘Charming,’ I said.

  ‘The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree and Playford is a pretty nasty piece of work. He’s actually Old Peng’s second son. Jason Peng, the heir to the Peng fortune and number-one son, was electrocuted in his bath when Playford was about nine. According to the coroner it was an accident involving a faulty hair dryer, but nobody bought that. Fingers were pointed in the direction of young Master Playford, who was sent off to boarding school in Melbourne as soon as the funeral was over.’

  ‘What boarding school?’

  ‘I think it was Fairbrothers, same as Fischer.’

  The connections were piling up.

  ‘So Playford is Old Peng in waiting?’

  Jimmy nodded. ‘He doesn’t have the title yet, but since the old man’s stroke he’s got full operational control. And right now the big money wagers in Macau are on how long it’s going to take young Playford to drive the multibillion-dollar Peng empire into bankruptcy.’

  THIRTY

  In Hong Kong, a nice thing to do after dinner is to take a trip on the Star Ferry across that magical harbour and then grab a ride on one of the rickety, skinny little double-decker trams on Des Voeux Road out to the terminus and back through Central. A not so nice way to end your dinner in Hong Kong is getting yourself kidnapped.

  It was a mild night, the sky was clear and there weren’t too many people about, which would make spotting a tail pretty easy. A ferry was just pulling into the Hung Hom pier when I arrived and the wooden gangplank on the upper deck clattered down as I passed through the turnstiles.

  Two minutes later, to the noisy warning of an electric bell, the gangplank was hauled up, ropes were cast off and the engine rumbled into action. We left the blazing lights of the mainland behind, heading towards the massive neon-lit skyscrapers rising up out of the throbbing heart of Hong Kong Island. In an effort to help the planet, I’d recently changed over to energy-efficient light bulbs in my apartment at Luxor Mansions back in Bondi, but now I wondered if I should switch to candles to compensate for this energy overkill.

  Halfway across the harbour I got a text message from Jezebel. ‘FANCY A DRINK?’

  Why not? I decided. It was another opportunity to see what I could dig up. I keyed in ‘ON FERRY – FCC IN 20 MINUTES?’ and hit send.

  ‘COOL’ pinged back in around thirty seconds.

  The Hong Kong Foreign Correspondents Club was started in the 1950s as a meeting place for journalists covering the postwar turmoil in the region, and it now describes itself as a social, cultural and intellectual melting pot with no rival in Asia. While this is probably true, everyone I know goes for the booze and the bullshit and to see who’s hanging out in the main bar.

  Ten minutes later, the gangplank clattered down again and I was in Central. From the ferry it was an easy walk over to Queen’s Road, up along Wyndham Street past the Fringe Club, then finally looping back down the hill on Ice House Street. I figured on doing the energetic uphill stretch at a pace that would help burn off my dinner.

  The footpath was torn up for repair work on the left-hand side of Wyndham Street by On Hing Terrace, where a short flight of stone steps led up to Ivy House. I’d had a studio in Ivy House back in the eighties, and I was amazed that the little five-storey building was still there and hadn’t been replaced by a skyscraper. I crossed to the right-hand side of the road and continued up the hill.

  The streets were empty now, except for a van parked on the side of the road ahead of me with two men lounging beside it. Just as I reached the van, light flared into the face of one of the men as he lit a cigarette. The side door of the van suddenly slid open, and I had no time to react. A flying tackle from a heavy-set bloke who came out of a doorway on my right knocked me sideways into the van, and there was a bag over my head and my hands were tied behind me by the time the vehicle got into second gear.

  My kidnappers had been thoughtful enough to put a mattress on the floor of the van and I would have been pretty comfortable if two of them hadn’t been sitting on my back. I listened carefully, trying to hear what they were saying, but it was mostly just grunts in Cantonese and the road noise wasn’t giving me any clues as to where we might be headed. My prospects for being ransomed didn’t look all that hot. I’m sure Gwenda would pass the hat around back at D.E.D., but you had to wonder how much I’d raise.

  When I twisted my bound feet to get a bit more comfortable, and brushed against what sounded like heavy chain, I realised that the question of ransom might not actually be on the table. If we were heading down towards the harbour, I figured I was in a lot of trouble.

  The van suddenly jammed on its brakes and blasted its horn, and I was shunted forward, bashing my head against something solid. There was the usual post-traffic-accident yelling and opening of doors, and then the noise of a scuffle and the unmistakeable sound of the bolt being cocked on a submachine gun.

  The van door slid open and the blokes inside with me were ordered out in coarse Cantonese, with the kind of threats that the Chinese do so well. The driver’s door slammed shut and the engine revved up, then someone was in the back with me, the side door was closed with a thud that shook the van and we took off with tyres squealing. Being kidnapped twice in one evening was a new record for me.

  What must have been ten minutes later, we skidded to a stop and I was dragged out of the van. There was the sound of water lapping and it looked like I was going for that dip in the harbour after all, but then someone carried me down what felt like a swaying gangplank. I was dumped on a hard flat surface and I heard a voice say, ‘Get the bow line.’ A diesel engine rumbled into life and I rolled backwards as the boat pulled away from the dock.

  I was turned over on my face, the plastic tie on my wrists gave way to a sharp blade and the bag was pulled off my head. My vision was still blurry from the blow to my head and I didn’t recognise the Chinese bloke standing over me, but I knew the type. Hired muscle, and the quality stuff, too – none of your bargain-basement street-corner hooligans like the blokes who’d grabbed me in the first place. He was dressed all in black, as was the other bloke standing at the bow.

  I got slowly to my knees, and then to my feet. We had just come out of the typhoon shelter and the Star Ferry terminal at Central was coming up on our left. Straight ahead I could see a Star Ferry crossing our path, heading for Central from the Kowloon side. We could easily have throttled back and slipped behind it, but whoever was driving our boat wasn’t about to give way. The engines roared, we surged forward and I grabbed a stanchion for support. All I could see was the ferry towering above us, its horn blaring, and then we were under its bow and safely on the other side.

  I turned back to the bridge to get a look at the maniac at the helm who was wearing the same outfit as the other two, black hoodie, black pants and black combat boots, but the bu
ild was a little less muscular.

  ‘Miss Hoang,’ I said, ‘this is a very pleasant surprise.’

  ‘Indeed. Have you been keeping well, Mr Murdoch?’

  I nodded. ‘Much better than you might expect for a man with a price on his head. I’ve been speaking with your uncle and Mr Stark recently, Miss Hoang, and they’re also keeping well.’

  ‘I was aware that Uncle and Mr Stark had survived the incident at Dien Bien Phu, but thank you for the reassurance.’

  ‘What brings you to Hong Kong, Miss Hoang?’ I asked. ‘The food, the sights, the shopping? I believe there’s a sale on at Shanghai Tang.’

  Shanghai Tang is an upscale Chinese retro hip-chic fashion store on Pedder Street. I could see Nhu in one of their cheongsams or a pair of silk pyjamas – or out of them, for that matter, which isn’t a fantasy I have about a lot of the coppers I know.

  ‘I’m conducting an investigation which has brought me here, Mr Murdoch.’

  ‘An investigation?’

  ‘Into money laundering by Vietnamese citizens in the casinos of Macau.’

  ‘And at the moment we appear to be heading in the direction of Macau.’

  ‘A most fortunate coincidence,’ she said.

  I figured the odds on this being a coincidence had to be about the same as those of a horse with a wooden leg winning at the Happy Valley racetrack. But I wasn’t about to complain.

  THIRTY-ONE

  We docked at a marina chock-full of gigantic luxury cruisers that made our runabout look like something you’d find in a bathtub along with a couple of rubber ducks. Nhu had made a phone call during the trip and a Mercedes with tinted windows was waiting for us at the end of the dock. If there were customs and immigration formalities, I didn’t see them. We cruised smoothly over a very big bridge and into downtown Macau, passing ugly casinos lit up brightly enough to be seen from distant galaxies.

  I was rubbing thighs with Nhu for most of the trip, which was very pleasant. The driver turned off Avenida Almeida Ribeiro and we drove into the basement of a small three-storey stone building that looked like it was a holdover from the old Macau. A heavy-duty metal shutter came down behind the Mercedes and a familiar figure was waiting for us at the bottom of the ramp.

  ‘Welcome to the Pousada do Estoril,’ Jack Stark said as we exited the Merc. ‘We have four suites for the discerning, discreet and well-heeled plus five-star fine dining by reservation-only on the ground floor. There are no elevators, but if you’re rich enough to stay here you can afford porters to carry you up and down the bloody stairs.’

  We climbed the stairs without benefit of porters and emerged in a small foyer. VT was waiting and he gave Nhu a hug. He was using a cane so I figured the twisted knee from the chopper crash was still giving him pain.

  The foyer was all dark-stained timber, plush carpets and polished brass.

  ‘Very swish,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, not bad for a boy who grew up in a housing commission home in Broadmeadows, eh?’ Jack said.

  ‘Not bad at all. You win the lottery or something?’

  Jack grinned. ‘Something like that. The joint was built as a hotel in the 1890s and refurbished in the late 1920s. We basically knocked her down and rebuilt her back to specs, with the addition of the car park and our penthouse apartment. All the woodwork and fittings are original from the refurbishment but under the skin she’s brand-new, with modern wiring and plumbing and so on.’

  The restaurant had eight tables for two and one table for four, and a state-of-the-art kitchen. The tables were set with damask napkins, Christofle cutlery and Riedel stemware. The restaurant, like the rest of the hotel, was empty.

  ‘Quiet night, Jack, or did the health inspector shut you down?’

  He shook his head. ‘Nope, I closed the joint when I took the film gig. My people are off on full pay till I decide to reopen. The place is mostly a hobby anyway so when I get bored I chuck out the guests and turn off the phones.’

  ‘A most interesting business model,’ Nhu said.

  Jack laughed. ‘Works a treat. As soon as word gets out we’re open again we have people hammering on the doors – well, they actually get their personal assistants to hammer on the door, but you know what I mean. Never ceases to amaze me how the filthy rich love being treated with total disdain by hoteliers.’

  Jack led us into a small Art Deco bar with an open fireplace and comfortable armchairs. The dark-skinned man who had driven the Merc to the hotel now stood behind the bar in a crisp white jacket. Jack introduced him.

  ‘This is Mr Rayes. Mr Rayes is Macanese – Portuguese Chinese. If I was a serious wanker I’d say he was our comprador.’

  ‘What’s a comprador?’ Nhu asked.

  ‘In the old days, foreign trading companies in Macau and Hong Kong employed native-born agents as sort of go-betweens to represent them in commercial transactions with local Chinese. You really couldn’t get anything done without them. And we probably couldn’t get anything done around here without Mr Rayes. He’s extremely discreet, has a black belt in Tae Kwan Do and a Harvard MBA, and I’ve got a sneaking suspicion he could buy and sell me three times over. He also mixes a mean Manhattan.’

  ‘Sounds good to me, Jack,’ I said.

  We settled into leather armchairs by the fire. I chose one where I could keep an eye on the bar.

  Mr Rayes placed four cocktail glasses on the counter, then filled them with ice and topped them up with water to chill. He noticed me watching and, turning back to the shelf of liquor bottles, selected two and held them up for me to choose. One was a Jim Beam Yellow label and the other was Old Overholt. I nodded towards the Old Overholt and Mr Rayes smiled.

  A few minutes later four cocktails arrived on a tray, the liquid classically golden red with a maraschino cherry resting on the bottom of each glass.

  ‘Here’s to living to fight another day,’ Jack said raising his glass.

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ I said, taking a sip.

  ‘This is delicious,’ Nhu said.

  ‘Proper American rye whisky,’ I said. ‘Accept no substitutes. Only way to make a real Manhattan.’

  ‘Anyone hungry?’ Jack asked. ‘I can whip us up a quick snack.’

  I shook my head. I could feel my body starting to complain about the abuse it had taken over the course of the evening, and I flexed my shoulders. I must have grimaced or twitched at the movement and Jack smiled.

  ‘Can’t take a couple of kidnappings and a bracing sea voyage all in the one evening, Alby? Struth, mate, you’re getting old. Ought to get yourself some exercise. Mr Rayes is available for workouts in the basement gym for those wishing to keep limber,’ he continued, looking at Nhu, ‘and we can also supply an interesting range of pistols and light automatic weapons for those who like to keep their distance,’ he said, looking at me.

  ‘I’m a lover, not a fighter, Jack,’ I said. ‘You know that.’

  Jack laughed. ‘In your dreams, mate,’ he said, and VT gave me one of those concerned-uncle warning looks.

  ‘And speaking of dreams,’ Jack continued, ‘just grab any key from reception when you’re ready to hit the sack. Breakfast will be served on the terrace upstairs anytime you want.’

  I finished off the Manhattan and stood up. ‘It’s been a bit of an interesting day and I think I need a good night’s sleep. And maybe a nice long soak in a hot tub.’

  ‘There’s a jacuzzi in the Lisboa Suite. Mr Rayes can point you in the right direction.’

  THIRTY-TWO

  Reception was unattended, but the door behind it was slightly ajar so I stuck my head in. The brass plate on the door said ‘Manager’s Office’ and Mr Rayes was managing very nicely. He looked up from behind a desk and smiled. Besides the usual computers and office equipment there was a wall of video monitors showing images of every possible approach to the hotel and the building’s entry and exit points.

  ‘To let you know when guests might be approaching?’ I asked, indicating the monitors. ‘So you
can break out the bellboys?’

  Mr Rayes nodded. ‘Mr Stark likes to be aware of the disposition of all visitors at all times.’

  That sounded fair enough. I’d had a few unexpected visitors just lately whose disposition I hadn’t much cared for.

  ‘And I guess in a classy establishment like this some of your visitors warrant a twenty-one gun salute.’

  I was referring to the rack behind the desk that held half a dozen nasty-looking Benelli M4 Super 90 shotguns.

  ‘We reserve the right to refuse service,’ Mr Rayes said, ‘and sometimes it is necessary to make the point forcefully.’

  I made a mental note not to complain about anything during my stay.

  ‘Mr Stark has suggested I might like the Lisboa Suite,’ I said.

  Mr Rayes stood up. ‘An excellent choice.’

  You had to wonder if in a five-star, four-room hotel there was such a thing as a bad choice.

  The Lisboa Suite was huge, decorated in a Chinese retro thirties style with antique rosewood furniture, old brass ceiling fans to complement the air-conditioning and a bigger-than-king-size bed. The bathroom had a tub the size of an Olympic swimming pool, which I filled while hunting down some aspirin in a well-stocked cabinet full of razors, aftershave, moisturisers, shampoos and bubble bath. I squirted some bubble bath into the tub, stripped off and lowered myself slowly into the hot water.

  I’d turned on the spa jets and was just getting comfortable when Nhu walked in. She was naked; well, almost, apart from the 9mm Russian Yarygin Pya.

  She was just as spectacular as I remembered from Saigon – lean, muscular and very, very toned, with a flat belly and the most amazing breasts. I suddenly wondered if the hotel’s video surveillance system was confined to the exterior.

  ‘Nice gun,’ I said, ‘but you won’t need it. I’ve taken some aspirin. I wasn’t going to pull the old “not tonight, I’ve got a headache” routine.’