by Lee Weeks
A barmaid named Comfort kept the energy circulating in the bar with a big smile and a substantial push-up bra. Her laugh ricocheted around the walls as she bantered happily with the three men who had nothing else to do but sit and watch her.
Comfort looked up as Jed and Peanut came in and she moved down to the end of the bar where the signing-in book was. She leaned over the book, pen ready.
Jed didn’t acknowledge the other men in the bar. He walked in as if he were on stage. He talked loud, laughed louder. He was showing the older men that he was a young stud.
‘You got a room for an hour, baby?’
He rested his elbow on the counter and leaned over to get close to Comfort and look further down her cleavage. He grinned smugly; his gold teeth flashed in the gloom of the bar. She grinned back. Peanut stood waiting patiently for it all to be over. She was an un educated girl from the countryside, and spoke very little English. She was unattractive: dark-skinned and rough-featured. Her scrawny legs dropped down from beneath a micro denim skirt like two sticks of gnawed liquorice. But Peanut was a hit with men who liked their women to look like undernourished girls. Jed towered over her at six foot four to her four foot nine.
Comfort flicked her hair back from her face and turned her large round eyes, as clear as amber marbles, towards Jed, ignoring Peanut altogether.
‘You go-in’ to need two hour, Big Boy.’
He raised an eyebrow and let out a laugh that boomed out across the bar. ‘Damn! Is that right? How come? You plannin’ on joinin’ us?’ He ran his hand down her forearm. ‘You want a repeat performance?’ He stroked the round of her breast as it rested on the signing-in book. ‘You missed me that much you want some more of the big man?’
Comfort looked up at Jed and bit her bottom lip playfully.
‘You spoil me. Give me ree-al good time larse time.’ She reached out and ran her fingers lightly down his chest to his crotch. She felt the muscles in his abdomen tense. ‘I’m go-in to have to give it to you for free, Big Man. You leave door unlock. I come up an’ party wid you. Okay?’
He grinned inanely. ‘Oh yeah, baby! Me and Peanut here are gonna be waitin’ for you.’
He flashed his teeth and clicked his tongue, placed his hand on Peanut’s tiny bottom and steered her towards the stairs at the far end of the bar. A door there led to the two floors of short-stay rooms. Above them slept the women who serviced those rooms. He turned back and winked at Comfort. She winked back, waited till he was out of sight then turned to look at the Colonel. He was watching her through the window. He tapped his watch at her. She nodded.
7
For a few seconds Amy didn’t know whether her eyes were open or not-it was too dark to tell. She felt around the bedcover with her hands. It didn’t feel like the soft cotton one that she was used to. It felt hard, waxy. She scrunched it in her fingers-no, it definitely didn’t fold in her hand the way it should, it was like cardboard. She blinked again…yes…her eyes were open. She lay there in the darkness and thought hard. She tried to remember what had happened: Lenny picked her up from school; they drove to an apartment block next to lots of others, in the middle of nowhere where lots of buildings were going up all around. They came up in a lift. The flat smelled of paint and had hardly any furniture in it. It didn’t look as if Lenny or anyone lived there. Lenny didn’t know where anything was. He had opened the wrong door in the kitchen when he wanted the fridge. Then he had shown her her room. She remembered sitting in the lounge and watching telly whilst Lenny made a few calls. It was then that she had begun to feel very uncomfortable and she had looked for her schoolbag so that she could make a phone call. When he came off the phone she asked Lenny where it was. He said it was still in the car and that they’d get it in a minute when they went back out. But nothing felt right. Amy had drunk her Coke and pretended to watch the telly but inside she wanted to cry. Then she remembered feeling so tired that she just had to close her eyes for a little while. She gasped now. Was she naked? Had he undressed her? She felt under the bedclothes. It was all right, she still had her clothes on. She blinked again and this time she saw a faint orange glow in the room coming from beneath the door. She looked around; only moving her eyes, she didn’t dare move her head. Yes-there was the desk, the chair, the old lamp. She was lying on a mattress on the floor, not in a bed; it was the room she had seen before. She must have got sick and Lenny had put her to bed. That was it. She could hear the sound of a television in the room next door.
‘Lenny?’ She sat up and called out. ‘Lenny?’
The television went off. She heard the rustle of someone moving; she heard someone approach the door and turn the handle.
A man stood in the doorway. He was Chinese. Amy knew his type: rough Hong Kong low-life type. She had been around types like him all her life.
‘Where’s Lenny?’
The man didn’t answer for a second and Amy could see that he had something behind his back. Only when he came into the room did she see what it was-it was a length of rope with a loop at the end.
8
Johnny Mann went back to his flat to unpack and repack his case before he headed over to Stanley Bay to see his mother and explain why he wouldn’t be over for Sunday roast. He knew she would be looking forward to seeing him. He hadn’t caught up with her for a while. The last case had kept him working twenty-four-seven and then the aftermath had left him needing to get away and recover his sanity.
‘They’re lovely.’
He stood behind her in the hall mirror and finished fastening the string of pink pearls around his mother’s neck. She reached up and touched the hand he had placed on her shoulder and smiled at him in the mirror. Molly was about to hit seventy but she kept herself fit and active and stood erect. She was a good-looking woman, strong-featured with piercing grey eyes and a straight roman nose; she had high cheekbones and ivory skin. Her hair was a beautiful mix of grey and silver interwoven with darker shades. It was long and thick and she twisted it into a bun and caught it with a clasp at the back of her head. Now that Mann stood behind her he realised how slight she was. Her shoulders felt bony beneath his hands.
‘You shouldn’t have spent your money on me, but it’s very thoughtful of you, Johnny.’ She patted his hand before turning away. Mann followed her through to the kitchen.
‘Nonsense-it’s a pleasure. How have you been, Mum?’
She put the kettle on. ‘I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me.’
He watched her make tea. He liked the familiarity of her actions-her hands never dithered or wavered. Her actions were always measured and decisive and her fingers moved with grace.
She was not a gabbler or a waster of words. She was a woman who took her time and thought things through. She was a holder-in of emotions. He had never once heard her raise her voice in uncontrolled anger. Molly didn’t boil over, she just simmered. She was prickly, almost, except her heart was soft-not everyone could see or knew that, but Mann did.
He looked around him. Something was missing in the flat-the maid hadn’t come in to say hello to him as she always did.
‘Where’s Deborah?’
‘Day off.’ Molly didn’t turn to look at him as she answered.
‘Mum?’ He could tell by her sudden busyness-looking for a teaspoon in a drawer for seconds that she knew where to put her hand on at once-that she was not telling him the whole story.
She glanced over to him on her way to get milk from the fridge.
‘Well, I don’t need anyone full time. What will I do if I have nothing left to occupy my time? I gave her some money to go back home to the Philippines for a while. She has kids she hasn’t seen for months. It’s not right. I am able to look after myself.’
‘And you have enough money to afford an army of maids-it’s Hong Kong, you have to have a few maids, Mum; it’s just the way it is. You have all the money you could ever need in the bank. Why don’t you spend some of it?’
She brought the tea over to Mann, who was s
itting at the kitchen table.
‘When the time comes you will inherit it, then you can decide what to do with it-for now I don’t need the money.’ She was getting agitated.
‘I don’t want it. I want you to make a point of spending every last dollar of it, leave me nothing. You are still young, Mum-you look great for your age. You need to get out more. It’s time to make some more friends: join clubs, go on singles’ holidays.’
‘Ha!’ she laughed. ‘With a bunch of other oldies, you mean?’
‘I am sure amongst all the incapacitated octogenarians you will find a few that are like you. Why don’t you go on a cruise or go around Europe and look up family and friends. Use the money to have some fun?’
She stared into her tea.
‘I don’t want to touch the money. I have everything I need.’ She got up and went to wipe the work surface where she’d made the tea.
Mann could see that the time had come for him to drop it, otherwise she was going to clam up completely. He held up his hands in a surrender gesture.
‘Okay, sorry. Let’s drop it. Please come and sit with me. This must be the only kitchen in the whole of this expensive block of flats in which the owners sit and drink tea. Better make sure no one catches us or you’ll be chucked out of the wealthy widows’ club.’
‘Ha…’ she laughed. ‘If such a thing exists, I don’t think they would ever ask me to join, do you?’
‘No, you’re right-you’d have them donating all their money to the poor and making baskets to sell.’
A ginger cat appeared and wound itself around Mann’s legs. Molly’s face lit up when she saw it.
‘Hello, Ginger-just woken up, have you?’
‘I didn’t think you’d agree to take on David White’s cat…Never thought I’d see you with a pet; I always thought you hated them.’
‘Nonsense, it was your father who hated animals, not me. I always had animals when I was a girl, back on the farm. I grew up with them.’ She leaned her hands against the rim of the sink and stared out through the kitchen windows at the wooded hills that rose in a bank of emerald green opposite. ‘My life was very different then.’
‘I can imagine little Molly Mathews running around with straw stuck in her hair and mud on her knees.’
She turned from the window and smiled, but there was sadness in her eyes.
‘That was such a long time ago, it feels like another life. I hadn’t thought about my childhood for years until recently. Now something comes back to me almost daily-vividly-I’m not sure I like it.’ She sighed and turned back from the window, buffing the taps with a cloth as she did so. ‘Anyway, son, tell me…How is it with you? Did you get the rest you needed?’ She came and put her arm around his shoulder and leaned over to kiss his cheek.
‘I did a lot of thinking. As the saying goes, Mum-you can run but you can’t hide.’
She sat opposite him and leaned forward to hold his hands in hers.
‘You mustn’t be so hard on yourself. You have been through such a lot these last few months.’
‘It’s nothing to what others have endured, Mum, and I feel responsible for some of that.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Johnny. No one could have known that Helen would be killed.’
‘But I let her go, Mum; I have to live with that.’
‘You let her go because you didn’t think she was the one for you. You didn’t know she would be killed.’
‘If Helen had never met me she’d be alive today.’
‘Chan was the one to blame, not you. None of us could ever have imagined he would turn out like that. All those years we knew him as a child, we never realised how envious, how vindictive and downright evil he was.’
‘Father saw it in him. He hated him.’
‘Your father saw something in him: a ruthlessness, a mercenary heart. He knew the triads well and he knew that Chan had been enlisted.’ Molly gave an involuntary sigh and picked up Ginger the cat and held him close to her. ‘You have to be a bit kind to yourself. You have to let it go now. Time will heal, son.’
Mann looked at his mother and searched her eyes.
‘I will never let it go, Mum. In my own way I got justice for Helen, and I will get it for father. I will find out who killed him and I will make them pay.’
‘Your father made enemies. It killed him. We can’t keep raking up the past.’
‘And I cannot forget it…the sight of my father being executed will never leave me. I can see it so clearly. It is branded on my mind’s eye, on my subconscious, in vivid detail. There is no forgetting for me until I get it explained. I want to find out why his death was ordered and I want to get the man who ordered it.’
Molly was staring at him, horrified. Mann felt instant remorse. He had not meant to worry her. He reassured her with a smile and stroked Ginger, who purred in her arms.
‘I never knew that about Dad-that he hated animals.’
She looked at him and met his eyes with her piercing grey stare.
‘There was a lot you never knew about your father.’
9
‘What is that fucking awful smell?’
The Teacher sat back in his chair and waited for an answer. Reese sniggered.
The Colonel paused, beer bottle to his mouth. ‘What smell?’ He lifted his chin and sniffed the air from right to left.
‘The all-prevailing smell of shit in this place.’
Reese giggled nervously. ‘You get used to it, bro.’
‘Don’t you smell it, Colonel, or is your nose buggered from all that speed you shove up it?’
Reese and Brandon looked anxious. It wasn’t often they saw their boss at the butt of someone else’s jibes. He wasn’t the best at taking a joke. But then, he didn’t usually have to suck up to anyone. His word was the law in Angeles. He owned five of the big clubs there: Hot Lips, Lolita’s, Lipstick, The Honey Pot and Bibidolls. They were the best clubs in Angeles with the youngest, prettiest girls-handpicked by him. He also owned several bars and hotels. The Bordello was one of them, the Tequila Station another. The Colonel set his beer carefully down and looked at the Teacher. He smiled.
‘I thought the same when I first got here. I thought “what a shit-hole”. Now I think “what a gold mine”. The smell of shit and the smell of money have become one and the same for me.’
‘Just as well, because this place is an open sewer.’ The Teacher looked about him in disgust. ‘Literally…’ He was referring to the foul running water that ran the length of the street and followed a course beside the cracked and uneven pavement.
The Teacher gave up the conversation and sat back and drank from his beer bottle. There was too much noise to talk. Opposite the Bordello the mosquito drivers with their noisy motorbikes with sidecars, were trying to impress the girls who stood outside Bibidolls in their bikinis. They were competing to see who could rev their machine the loudest-the night was young and they were bored. They belched fumes and beeped at one another whilst the girls giggled at them-although both sides knew it would not end in a coupling. The boys didn’t make enough money and the girls didn’t give it away for free. The girls’ sole aim in life was to marry a foreigner and get off the Fields. They were Guest Relations Officers, GROs. Their job was to entertain the tourists on Fields Avenue. Besides their yellow plastic bikinis they wore permits that hung long around their tanned necks and settled just below their pert cleavages-permits that had their photos and stated they were legally permitted to work in the clubs and that they were eighteen and over. Most of them weren’t; their documents were forged. The girls swished back their hair and pushed their chests forward as they bantered with the whorists as they passed by.
Upstairs in the Bordello there were no GROs. This point on Fields Avenue was the boundary. Here marked the beginning of the descent into unlicensed bars and twenty-four-hour hostess clubs where the girls didn’t wear badges. They often didn’t wear bikinis. They were kept locked in a back room. They were children.
The Colonel flashed the group of mosquito drivers a look that silenced them instantly and they moved hastily away.
‘What about the police? Have you fixed it? Blanco hates fuck-ups.’
The Colonel drank from his beer at the same time as he kept his eyes fixed on the Teacher. He was letting him know that whilst he would take some, he would not take a lot of dissent, especially not in front of his men.
He set his bottle down. ‘Blanco doesn’t need to worry. Over the years I have cultivated a good working relationship with the police. Some I have had to trick by providing them with a girl for the night and then informing them that they have slept with a minor. Others, I have had to give a small share of my profits to. Most of the time it has just taken hard currency.’
‘Everyone here has a price, huh?’
‘Not everyone…he he…’ Reese was eager to show he could be part of the conversation and saw his chance to impress the Teacher. ‘…not the Irish priests.’
‘Yes…’ The Colonel stared disapprovingly at Reese. ‘…that is true…they are all over the fucking Philippines like a plague.’
‘Yeah, man. They have a refuge just up the road from here and for as long as the Colonel’s been pimping the girls the priests have been saving them. Twice the Colonel’s been to court …he he… He had to pay off everyone: the girls’ parents, the police and the fucking court judge.’
‘I think you will find…’ The Colonel glared at Reese and made sure that he understood that he had said enough before taking his eyes from him. ‘…that it isn’t just us bar owners who would happily pay to see the priests shot. Even the local church here doesn’t want them interfering. After all, we bring in big revenue and we always give a fucking big donation to charity. But-nevertheless they remain a thorn in our sides. One that I hope you will remove sometime soon-very soon.’
