“That’s what I call policing,” I say. • •
At the station Inspector Chan does not lead me to the cells or the interrogation rooms, although they all look pretty comfortable compared to District 8, but straight to his office. (Such luxury: air-conditioned to exactly twenty-four Celsius, and he has his own door that he shares with no one. That’s a tiger economy for you.) Chan hangs his hat on a hook so he can press a hand up and down on his spikes while he sits in his executive chair, opens his top drawer to fiddle with something, and stares at me. “You told the gwaipaw you were investigating a murder,” he says.
“No, I didn’t. I told her I was from the murder squad.”
“So you’re from the murder squad investigating tax evasion? Is that how Thai law works?”
“We already agreed I wasn’t investigating anything.” I stand up. “Where’s your voice recorder? In your top drawer, by any chance?”
He smiles, takes out a digital voice recorder from a drawer, and lays it on his desk. “Just testing. Turn it off yourself so you feel comfortable.”
I look at it for a moment as I sit down again. I say in a loud voice, “I am here in Hong Kong purely for private interest and have no professional purpose to pursue during my stay in the SAR of the People’s Republic of China,” then switch it off and give it back to him.
Now he’s laughing. “Streetwise, that’s for sure. Kind of third-world, though. You remind me of the sort of cops we had here under the British. They were so corrupt, everyone spent their entire working lives covering their backs. Had to-it was what the job was all about.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s all about guanxi — a different ballgame altogether.”
I’m about to ask what guanxi is, when he stands abruptly and starts to pace with his hands in his pockets. “I’ll be straight. I run the cops up on the peak, and one of my most important assignments is to keep an eye on the Yips.”
“They are trouble?”
“They’re gifted maniacs. Eccentrics of the old school, the kind of Chinese women the West doesn’t yet know much about. Ha! A lot of gweilo have this fantasy our women are all submissive slaves who would still have their feet bound if not for Western enlightenment. Anyone who thinks that way should meet the Yips.”
“Tell me.”
“No. You first.”
It may not seem it, DFR, but I’m in a tricky spot. Chan could easily find some excuse for locking me up and delaying my departure if I don’t play his game, but on the other hand it has occurred to me that everything I’ve done that involved the Yip sisters has been either illegal or highly eccentric. I’m playing for time when I say, “They like to gamble.”
Chan stops pacing and stares at me. “You don’t say.”
“I mean, they’ll gamble for astronomical stakes on anything, like a fly crawling up a window.”
“So would ninety percent of the population of this city. How d’you think we got so good at capitalism?” He is watching me with a slightly altered attitude. “They didn’t invite you to Monte Carlo by any chance?”
“Monte Carlo?”
“From your body language I think they did.”
“Did they invite you?”
“Yes, but unlike you, I didn’t go. You went, didn’t you?”
I’m fighting a blush. “It was part of an ongoing investigation I’m not at liberty to talk about.”
He extends an arm in order to point a finger directly at me and says, “Ha! You did. You went. Ha, ha, you fell for it. Now you’re pissed that you were not the only one. Ha, ha. They corrupted you in a heartbeat, ha, ha. Poor little Thai cop lives in a hovel and drives a clapped-out Toyota if he drives at all, dazzled by money and glamour-I’m assuming that black Amex is just on loan-from a wealthy superior perhaps who has a vested interest in the case? Now the Yips have you in the palms of their hands. Ha, ha. ”
This guy sure knows how to irritate. I’ve never used soft-obnoxious as an interrogation technique myself, although I’ve heard of it. Just to spite him, I refuse to ask how many other men the Twins have taken to Monte Carlo over the years.
“D’you want to know how many other men have fallen for that?”
“No.”
“Liar. I’ll tell you. I keep records. You are the last of at least five we know about.”
“Were all the others Hong Kong cops?”
He frowns and sits in his chair, puts his feet up on the desk. “No.”
“But some were?”
“One.”
“Did he live in a hovel and drive a Toyota?”
Chan stares at me. I know what the stare means because I’ve used it so many times myself. It means that if I don’t tell him something useful, or at least a piece of gossip worth repeating, he’ll hold me for the night out of pure spite. “I’m on a special assignment,” I confess.
The phrase, hackneyed and overused though it is, seems to strike a chord in Chan. He raises his brows. “About time. That’s what I’ve been trying to get at since we picked you up.”
“But I mean, it’s a Thai special assignment.”
“Meaning? Don’t tell me, let me guess. Meaning illegal, not at all the sort of thing cops do, but something you have to do to lick the ass of your superior?” He waves a hand. “We study Thai police as an example of how not to do things. Now I’ve met you, I know why.”
I have to make a choice. On the one hand, I really want to get back to Bangkok; on the other, if I tell all, I risk getting snuffed by Vikorn. But I really want to get back to Bangkok. “It’s to do with organ trafficking,” I say.
To my surprise, Chan looks suddenly bored. “Really?”
“You know that’s what they do?”
“Sure, but they don’t do it in Hong Kong.” He has suddenly and totally lost interest-or is he faking? “How far have you got?”
“Nowhere yet-I’m at the beginning.”
“That’s why you’re here? Nothing else? No other dimensions to your investigation?”
“What ‘other dimensions’ could there be?”
“Not telling you.” Chan bites his thumbnail for a while. “D’you gamble?”
“Not at all.”
“Really? They say Thais are worse than Chinese. The milliondollar blackjack tables at Las Vegas are dominated by your people these days.”
“The Thais who play at Vegas all have Chinese blood. They’re Chiu Chow, from Swatow. They run the economy.”
Chan assesses me with his eyes. “And you? You’re half gweilo? A half-caste product of a GI on R amp;R from Vietnam and a Thai peasant?”
“The GI was a peasant too, from the Midwest. I have pure blood.”
The volatile Chan seems to have decided he likes me for saying that. As an interrogator myself, I can see he has made a decision of some sort. He has changed his tone and manner by about a hundred and eighty degrees and speaks almost gently when he nods at the map on his wall. It is of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories, and the various islands that make up the Hong Kong SAR. Now he stands to walk up to it and points at a giant island at least twice the size of Hong Kong.
“Lantao Island. Heard of it?”
“Isn’t that where the airport is located?”
“Correct. It’s where you landed. Personally, I find it mysterious the way Lantao Island has become important all over again, thanks to the airport.”
“Why, what was it important for before?”
“Opium storage. There were pontoons used as go-downs at all the western beaches-it’s closest to Macao and the Pearl River. They had square miles of pontoons where opium was stored. You see?”
“Not really.”
He is pointing at the jagged coastline of the island and showing how close it is to the mouth of the Pearl River. “The ships from India-Patna was the capital of opium-would unload onto the rafts, so smaller riverboats could take the product up into the heart of Canton.”
I nod politely while scratching my jaw. Chan just doesn’t look like the kind to carry resentment for the colonial debt. Nor does any other Hong Kong Chinese I’ve ever met; in this former colony, at least, the symbiosis between races was deeply satisfying to both. The locals made even more dough out of Hong Kong than the colonizing Brits, from opium to coffins: most of the caskets used during the Vietnam War were made in Hong Kong.