THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels)

by Needham, Jake

“All kinds of shit, but none of it has anything to do with this.”

  “It sounds to me like you already know who’s behind this.”

  Pete shook his head. “I don’t.”

  “At least you suspect somebody.”

  “Other than the triads, and you, it could be anybody.”

  “No, it couldn’t be anybody. It would have to be somebody with manpower and organization on the ground in Macau. I spell that—”

  “It’s not the triads.”

  “Horseshit.”

  We both drank a little coffee and thought about all that for a while. I finished thinking first.

  “You said some other casinos were involved,” I reminded him. “Is the same thing happening at them?”

  Pete reached around, shoved his hand down the back of his collar, and scratched at his neck. “I don’t know for sure that it’s exactly the same thing. If the smurfing business pans out, you better talk to some other people, too.”

  “Like who?”

  “Let me have a word with Steve Wynn, maybe Sheldon Adelson, too. See if I can get you into their places.”

  “So you and Steve and Shelly are real pals, are you, Pete? I didn’t know that.”

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me, pal. You should keep that in mind.”

  “Yeah, but here’s what I’m wondering. How much of that other stuff do I really want to know?”

  Pete mimed a laugh and abruptly jumped to his feet.

  “Got to go. Heads to break. Asses to kick. When are you heading back to Macau?”

  “Probably next week.”

  Pete got about halfway to the door before he stopped and turned around.

  “One big thing bothers me about your theory. Why would anyone be smurfing money into a casino and back out again? And why would it be just two denominations of two currencies? I never heard of anything like that before.”

  “Neither have I.”

  Pete thought about that and eventually he nodded slightly.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let me talk to some guys.”

  He made his thumb and index finger into a little gun and pointed it at my chest.

  “I’ll be around,” he said.

  And then he was gone.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON MY office phone rang. I didn’t get many calls on the office phone. Most of my clients communicated with me by email, and most of my friends called my cell. I figured it had to be Pete.

  It wasn’t. It was Pansy Ho.

  “Is this the man I’m supposed to call about the tacos?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it is indeed.”

  “I’m in Hong Kong. How about tonight?”

  “Ah…maybe I should warn you. The place I was talking about isn’t very fancy. In fact, it’s kind of a dump. They don’t even take reservations.”

  Pansy chuckled. The sound of it was low and throaty and warm, and I liked it a lot.

  “Somehow I’ve never had any trouble getting a table at any restaurant I wanted to go to. I guess I’m just lucky that way.”

  Now it was my turn to chuckle, but I doubted I sounded nearly as good as Pansy when I did it.

  “Tell me where to meet you,” she said.

  “I’m afraid the place is in Lan Kwai Fong.”

  Lan Kwai Fong is a trendy district on Hong Kong Island about a quarter of a mile up D’Aguilar Street from Central. A narrow, L-shaped lane closed to vehicle traffic forms a rectangle with a sharp turn in D’Aguilar Street, and the rectangle and most of the area around it is filled with trendy, expensive bars and restaurants. Decades ago, Lan Kwai Fong was called Marriage Arranger Lane for the large number of female marriage arrangers who worked in the area organizing marriages for traditional Chinese families. Today, some might say that Lan Kwai Fong is exactly the opposite, more like a marriage un-arranger lane.

  Throughout Hong Kong, the area is known for two things. Loud, cool bars and mobs of foreigners – most of whom are equally loud but not nearly as cool – drinking energetically and prowling for women. It’s only a certain sort of local who would be caught dead surrounded by big, frequently drunken foreign louts giving the eye to any local woman who happens into view. I had no idea if Pansy Ho was one of those locals or not.

  “Are you still game?” I asked.

  “Does the Pope…well, you know how that goes.”

  I laughed. “Eight o’clock?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “It’s called Brickhouse,” I said. And I told her how to find it, which wasn’t easy.

  “Got it. See you there at eight.”

  Well, how about that? I thought when she had hung up. I’m having tacos with Pansy Ho tonight. Maybe I ought to shave…

  ALL COOL RESTAURANTS ARE difficult to find, which is probably why Brickhouse is at the end of a dark, narrow alleyway off D’Aguilar Street. The place doesn’t even have a sign. You have to tell people to walk down the alley to a street stand that sells counterfeit handbags, back up a couple of paces, and look behind the stand. That’s the only way to find it and that was the way I explained it to Pansy Ho.

  Brickhouse is all bare brick walls and exposed ceilings and concrete floors. It has tables that could have been stolen from a homeless shelter and rough wood benches and little red stools. It’s hip and funky, and of course it knows that all too well.

  I got there a little after seven-thirty since I couldn’t imagine anything worse than making Pansy Ho hang around on her own in a place like Brickhouse waiting for me to show up. I ordered a Carta Blanca, got some tostada chips and a tub of guacamole to stave off hunger, and settled in to wait. I wondered exactly how late Pansy would be…

  She was five minutes early. An unheard of thing, in my experience, for almost any woman. Particularly in Asia.

  Pansy was wearing jeans, a man’s white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and brown loafers. She had on very little makeup and wore no jewelry at all. I thought she looked absolutely terrific.

  As she walked toward the table she waved at a waiter and pointed to my Carta Blanca and another bottle arrived at almost the same moment she did. I pushed the chips and guacamole toward her and smiled as she dug in.

  We chatted easily for a while about one thing and another. The cave-like design of the place made it so loud that to be heard we had to bend toward each other and put our heads close together. I didn’t mind a bit. Eventually we opened our menus and ordered. Three platters of tacos – rib eye, pork, and chicken – some beans, some Mexican sweetcorn, a watermelon salad. And two more beers.

  PANSY DIDN’T ASK ME what I had found out so far about the money moving over MGM’s tables, and I was glad she didn’t. I wasn’t going to lie to her if she did ask, but I didn’t want to tell her what I suspected quite yet either. It would worry her, and maybe I was wrong.

  But when we finished eating, the table had been cleared, and another round of beers delivered, she did ask.

  So I reluctantly told her about the possibility that MGM was being smurfed with large quantities of $50 bills and €100 notes.

  “It’s only a theory at this point,” I added quickly when I was done. “I’m not certain of anything yet.”

  “But that might be happening?”

  I nodded.

  Pansy thought about that for a minute, took a pull on her Carta Blanca, and said, “That wouldn’t look very good for me, would it?”

  “Even if it’s true, it’s not necessarily the triads who are responsible.”

  “Who else could it be?”

  I didn’t have a good answer for that so I didn’t say anything.

  “What am I going to do, Jack?”

  I didn’t have a good answer for that either.

  The change of subject had put a damper on the evening, and now the noise in the place was starting to feel more irritating than charming, so I pointed toward the door and raised my eyebrows in a question. Pansy nodded.

  I pulled out some bills and dropped them on the table, and we headed out into the night.
r />   WE TURNED DOWNHILL ON D’Aguilar Street and walked together for a few minutes without talking. It was Pansy who finally broke the silence.

  “I need you to fix this for me, Jack.”

  “I don’t know for sure yet what needs to be fixed.”

  “If the triads are responsible—”

  “I don’t know that they are.”

  “If they are, you need to fix it for me.”

  I couldn’t imagine what Pansy meant by that. Fix it? Fix it how? Go tell the triads to stop being bad boys? Cover it up so that no one found out? The possibilities were endless and all of them seemed to me to be pretty unappealing. So I settled for a reply that committed me to very little.

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  I had no doubt at all Pansy understood I had slipped the question without giving her a direct answer, but she let me and she only nodded. I was grateful for that. It had been a nice evening. I didn’t want to spoil it.

  Pansy produced a cell phone from her bag and pushed at a speed dial. She spoke a few words in rapid Cantonese and hung up. I thought I caught her mention D’Aguilar Street somewhere in there, but I wasn’t certain.

  Suddenly a black Mercedes with dark windows was at the curb right in front of us and a big, swarthy Chinese in a too-tight blue suit was standing outside holding open the rear door. The car had appeared so quickly that it might have risen up right through the pavement,

  Pansy stopped walking.

  “You’ve got to fix this for me, Jack.”

  Not knowing what else to do, I just nodded.

  “Thanks for dinner. It was fun. Next time it’s my treat.”

  Pansy leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and slid into the car. The big Chinese slammed the door and jumped into the front passenger seat, and I stood there and watched the big car power away west on Queen’s Road.

  Next time, huh? Well, how about that?

  FIFTEEN

  IT RAINED IN HONG KONG for the next three days straight. Generally I like the rain, particularly when I am in a big city, watching it cleanse the streets and rinse the buildings. The idea of a city being purified by the rain is an awful cliché, but it became a cliché because there is so much truth in it. Still, this rain was a bit too much of a good thing. It was steady and drenching. It filled the streets and overflowed onto the sidewalks.

  I avoided going anywhere except to make a quick run down the Mid-Levels escalator to the office each day. It wasn’t that I was afraid of getting wet, but rather that I had no intention of tangling with crowds of Chinese wielding umbrellas. Even on the best of days, walking in Hong Kong is the next thing to hand-to-hand combat. Arm all those frenzied Chinese pedestrians with open umbrellas and it becomes nothing short of medieval warfare.

  I spent my days loafing around the office tidying up the cases I had going. I also reread the MGM cash reports and currency inventories looking for anything I might have missed the first time through. I found nothing. In spite of my optimism that something would come to me that could explain the extra money flowing through the casino other than it being smurfed by the triads, not a single penetrating insight put in an appearance.

  I wanted to help Pansy if I could. And not because she was an attractive woman worth several billion dollars who appeared to like me.

  Or maybe that was it.

  BY THE THIRD DAY the rain slowed to an on-and-off drizzle. I had a bad case of cabin fever from being penned up in the office and was thinking about going out somewhere interesting for lunch. Before I could decide where to go, someone knocked at the office door.

  The sound was so alien to me that at first I didn’t even know what it was. Almost no one ever came to the office. And I certainly wasn’t expecting anyone then. Still half convinced there had to be some other explanation for the knocking sound, I walked over and opened the door.

  A small Chinese woman was standing there. She was no more than five feet tall and looked to be not more than thirty, but I had long since given up trying to guess the age of any Asian woman. This one could be anything between twenty-five and fifty-five. She wore heavy black glasses with wide, rectangular lenses that gave her face a quizzical air, and she was dressed in a plain grey jacket and matching trousers.

  “Are you Mr. Jack Shepherd?”

  When I nodded, she thrust a business card at me and I accepted it with two hands in the gesture of courtesy expected in Asia when somebody hands you a business card.

  I glanced down at the little white card printed in some elaborate typeface.

  Cynthia Cheung

  Assistant Business Editor

  South China Morning Post

  A reporter?

  Uh-oh, I thought, this can’t be good…

  “MAY I TALK TO you for a moment, Mr. Shepherd?”

  “Look, Miss Cheung, I really—”

  “Call me Cindy. I won’t keep you for long, I promise.”

  Before I could say anything else, the woman walked past me into the office and seated herself in one of the two guest chairs in front of my library table. They were battered captain’s chairs that I had found in yet another used furniture shop, and their uncushioned wooden seats were profoundly uncomfortable. Which was exactly how I thought the guest chairs in any office where I was working ought to be.

  I closed the door and sat down behind the table. Cindy looked harmless enough, but that didn’t make me feel any better.

  This really couldn’t be good…

  IT WASN’T.

  “I understand you are investigating money laundering at the MGM Macau, Mr. Shepherd.”

  I tried for a chuckle, but the noise that came out sounded more like I was being strangled. Which, more or less, I was.

  “I can’t imagine where you heard that, Cindy.”

  “I have a very reliable source.”

  Yes, you fucking well do, I thought.

  But of course that wasn’t what I said.

  “I’m a lawyer, Cindy. I don’t investigate anything. I advise clients.”

  “Are you advising the MGM Macau about money laundering at their casino?”

  I cleared my throat and shifted my weight in the chair and I immediately regretted doing it. I had made it obvious to the woman that she was making me uncomfortable. Which, of course, meant that she had me dead to rights.

  “You’re putting me in a difficult position, Cindy. You must already know that a lawyer can’t talk about his clients at all, let alone tell anyone exactly what he’s doing for them. But if I say that to you, you’re going to take it as a confirmation that you’re right, even if you’re completely wrong.”

  A pretty good piece of double-talk if I do say so myself.

  “We are running a story tomorrow saying that the MGM Macau and some other casinos have recently experienced unusual spikes in their gambling revenue. It also says that the MGM suspects they have a significant money laundering problem and that they have hired you to determine the source of the unidentified funds. Would you like to comment?”

  “No.”

  “You do understand we are running the story regardless of whether you comment or not?”

  “You may well be, Cindy, but that doesn’t change the fact that I won’t talk about my clients.”

  “That sounds to me like a confirmation that the MGM Macau is your client.”

  It does indeed, I thought, even to me.

  “It is well known that you represented Plato Karsarkis when he was a fugitive from the United States,” the woman continued. “Will you talk about him?”

  “If it’s so well known, I don’t see why you need me to talk about him.”

  “I’m only trying to get some personal material, Mr. Shepherd. Something I can use to give my story a little color. Can you tell me something about your background?”

  “Cindy, if you really are going to run that story, you’re on your own. You’re not going to get any help from me.”

  I smiled and kept my voice low and even. That was something all good lawyers learned
to do. To appear totally unconcerned while the building burned down around you. To keep smiling and to keep murmuring all the while, Fire? What fire? I don’t see any fire.

  “This isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?” Cindy said with the kind of smile that suggested she hadn’t really expected it to.

  “Doesn’t bother me,” I shrugged. “I’m not trying to go anywhere.”

  A little silence fell after that and I used it to think as fast as I could.

  There was a leak somewhere and that scared me. I did not want to be publicly fingered as a guy hired by MGM to investigate money laundering at their casino. If the triads were responsible for whatever was going on there and I was identified as the guy who was supposed to prove it…well, I didn’t even want to think about that. The last guy who tried to investigate the triads in Macau had his car blown up.

  So, okay, let’s start with who could possibly have leaked it. Who knew about what I was doing in Macau? The MGM people knew, of course. Pansy and Gerald Brady and probably a few others. And the FBI knew. Pete and whoever he was working with. Was there anyone else? Whoever was muling the money into the MGM knew what they were doing, of course, but I didn’t think they knew anyone was onto them or that I was involved. And even if they did know, they would hardly announce it to a newspaper reporter about. Who else might know? Try as I might, I couldn’t think of anyone.

  I was going around in circles. Surely neither MGM nor the FBI could be the source of the Cindy’s information since it would hardly be in either of their best interests for all of this to become public, and I couldn’t think of anyone else who knew what I was doing.

  “Has it occurred to you, Cindy, that by running a story like that you’re putting me in danger?”

  “How am I putting you in danger?”

  “Whether your story is true or not, if you cause people out there to think I’m trying to prove they’re guilty of money laundering—”

  “You think the triads are behind this, don’t you?”

  Gotcha! I could almost hear her screaming.

  I was digging myself in deeper and deeper by continuing to chat politely with this woman. She wasn’t going to tell me her source – I wasn’t even going to bother to ask – and she was running that story regardless of what I said.