Wish I hadn’t asked. “Give my love to Marilyn. And thanks.” Well, he’d vetoed the Triad’s decision to top me.
“It was nothing, Lovejoy.” He did his smile.
“Not much,” I said with feeling. “Tara, Titch.”
“Good-bye, Lovejoy. And don’t keep Ling Ling too long. She’s hostessing an international banking convention tonight.”
Chance’d be a fine thing. “I promise.” I walked off.
Go towards Pok Fu Lam on Hong Kong Island, and before you reach the big hospital, there’s a garden center. On the right is a road that circuits Mount Davis, with the cemetery occupying a scoop of terracing which falls towards Sandy Bay. Stonemasons work at the bottom under awnings during daylight. Now, it was all in dusk, pinned to a velvet backcloth with golden lantern points. I told the driver to wait, got the little scroll, and made my way into the graveyard. The stone seats and tables, the stone armchair graves still puzzled me. How on earth did they originate? I didn’t have to go far.
Three fokis were chatting and smoking. They had a number of lanterns and a torch. A full-scale meal was laid out on a marble grave table, lanterns and cutlery and heated trays. It would have fed a regiment, let alone a couple of hungry ghosts. “Splendid,” I said, to delight the fokis.
I had barely finished paying them when Ling Ling’s footsteps spun us round, the fokis exclaiming in awed admiration. Leung and Ong were with her, and one woman. It wasn’t Marilyn. Ong reached across to give me an airline ticket. “Midnight,” he said. “Be there.” Four other goons moved shadowly on the road above us.
“Thanks for coming, love,” I said to Ling Ling. She stood silently looking at the paper house on the path. I coughed. “Maybe it’s a rotten idea. Blame me.”
She gave a quiet command. The rest left, Ling Ling’s people noisily asking the paper men how much it had cost. She was motionless until the sounds had receded.
“Who is this for, Lovejoy?”
“These.” I gave her the scroll. I’d paid a fortune to have a calligrapher transcribe the two names Titch had sent me onto genuine silk. Slowly she sank on a stone seat, looking round at the graves.
“I’ve never seen my parents’ names written, Lovejoy.” She was a picture in the lantern light, the trees behind her, the stone sculpted all about in fantasy compositions. “I’ve forbidden people to speak their names aloud.”
Oh, hell. Another Lovejoy winner. How do I think up these perennial losers? She gestured to the lantern. I took it up. By its light she slowly inspected the paper house, nodded imperceptible approval at its paper garden, its wealth of paper clothes laid in its bedrooms, its piles of hell money adorning the paper gateways. It took her a few minutes. Then her hand made a slight movement.
For a second I hesitated—were ritual words in order? Also, local gods went big on incense, and like a fool I’d not brought any—then knelt, lit a hell banknote off the lantern and touched the flame to the paper house. It fired with a whoosh. For a second I glimpsed Ling Ling’s face shining tears in the firelight, then it was simply hot dusk while Ling Ling’s handbag softly went click! on the scroll.
We traveled through Kennedy Town, at my request. Ling Ling had had me fetched into her magnificent Rolls. Her attendant amah sat looking out at the lights and traffic. The sight of all the folk stopping to give that delighted exclamation, “Waaaaiiieeeh!”
unnerved me. I felt in a moving greenhouse. Plus Ling Ling was silent. Angry? I knew I’d put my foot in it, as always.
I’d asked to be dropped outside the Capital Triple-A Bar in Wan Chai, thinking to escape the tourists and have a drink, so when Ling Ling commanded me to remain seated I drew breath to expostulate, but stayed quiet. I could catch a tram back.
We stopped at a splendid hotel. I alighted, turning to wave her off, but the Rolls stayed and Ling Ling descended.
“One hour’s delay,” she told her driver, and glided regally in. I dithered, followed with apologetic glances at the umpteen doormen.
“Er, Ling Ling. Titch said I wasn’t to delay you…”
Her woman shepherded me to the lift. Ling Ling made an imperial progress, people standing aside, even applauding, undermanagers scrambling ahead, reaching doors in the nick of time. I tried to look stern, a hood in her pay or something worthy.
Except I found myself inside her royal suite with the doors closing behind me and two amahs coming at me to take off my jacket and pulling me gently towards the private steam room.
“Ling Ling!” I yelped, fending them off. Women seem to be all fingers sometimes.
“Let them prepare you, Lovejoy.” Her serene voice floated from the bedroom. It was full of hidden smiles. “You’re safe with me.”
An hour later she had gone. I was dozing, half-seeing my reflection in the ceiling mirrors.
The end. Soon I’d be on the peat white bird winging homeward. Ong’s envelope contained a bundle of dollars, some pounds, my one-way air ticket. Ling Ling had been magic, perfect. The bliss moment, ecstasy and paradise in one. Aren’t women great?
She’d been so good to me: loving on that beach, agreeing with Titch to spare my life, and now giving me a woman’s most beautiful farewell. And I was alive. Something warmed my chest. I padded over to her dressing table. A pendant of genuine Han orange-peel jade leapt into my hand from a drawer. Honest, I didn’t search. It was suddenly there, its clever electrum mount gleaming. I’d promised one of these to Phyllis Surton. I strove to replace it—only a blackguard would steal from Ling Ling after all she’d done for me, right?
The phone rang. “Carmen who?” I said. “No, sorry. Nobody called Lovejoy here. Sorry.”
And got an earful of high-pitched splutter. I cut the line, dressed quicker than I’d intended.
It rang again. Like a fool I answered, thinking it might be Ling Ling.
“Lovejoy? Lorna. Where on earth have you been? Mame saw you in the foyer—”
Good old Mame. “Thank heaven you’ve phoned, love! A friend of mine has been taken seriously ill. Er, thrombophlebitis of the, er, liver bronchi.” I jiggled the receiver and made a scraping noise, cut the line. I froze as somebody knocked on the door.
“Lovejoy?”
Hellfire. Janie? Here? I ran about, frantic for escape. Bedroom, bathrooms, opened cupboards, flung the curtains aside.
“Lovejoy. Open—this—door! I know you’re in there.”
Fire exit? A notice in English and Chinese: “Fire Exit to Next Floor.” I tugged at the window. It opened on a steep iron staircase, miles above planet Earth.
“Lovejoy! I’ve had you followed…” Thump-thump-thump.
God, but fire escapes are scary. I clung to the windowsill.
“I’ve found out about you and those women, Lovejoy—”
Nothing for it. I crawled out of the window and down to the next floor. Lifting the window I found myself in a corridor below the royal suite. I hurried along and fled down the staircase, flight after bloody flight. The foyer loomed. I flung myself through.
“Lovejoy!” somebody called from a crowd. “Dwoorlink!”
A taxi was pulling out by the fountains. I ran after it, gasping, wrenched the door open, bawling, “Quick, quick!”
We shot off, tires squealing. I fell into the seat.
“Where?” the driver said, enjoying my panic.
Yes, where? I had two airline tickets on me. Ong’s one to London, plus one to America.
Titch had only said to leave Hong Kong, not where to. And home meant Big John Sheehan’s unrighteous anger. I fumbled in my pocket. Astonishingly, there was Ling Ling’s lovely jade pendant, the sort I’d promised Phyllis. How on earth had it got there?
Not so penniless after all.
Tough luck, Phyllis.
“America,” I told the driver. “Fast as you like.”
—«»—«»—«»—
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Jade Woman l-12 Page 26
