The Price

Slippery from the previous night’s monsoonal downpour, Lan Kwai Fong was a tangle of interlocking alleys smelling of wok-fried sesame oil or stale cat urine, perhaps both. Brushing aside a ragged upstart in a coolie hat who tried to panhandle me, I reached Lee’s Restaurant just as a shower of what I hoped was rainwater sprinkled over my hair.

Sandwiched like a dowdy spinster between a neon-lit tattoo parlour and a newly-opened Swinging ‘60s sex toys shop, the restaurant appeared uncomfortable in the louche setting.

With my reputation in the Colony, I’d expected Lee’s staff to kowtow. Instead, a snaggle-toothed youth in a stained singlet appeared from the kitchen and jerked his thumb towards a backroom. A hand-lettered sign was pinned to the door by a dagger with a fleur-de-lis motif handle. The sign read “Privates”, possibly a misspelling, possibly not. 

The aroma of HK$5 cigars mingled with even cheaper aftershave seeped from the room. Inside, a Samurai sword from the Japanese Occupation hung directly behind the only table. Evenly spaced around it, three wastrels in suits concentrated on their bowls of Lee’s Famous Upside Down Fish Soup, so named because that’s how the prime ingredient was usually found floating in the restaurant’s tank.

Instinctively, I touched the Saturday Night Special in its holster beneath my jacket. It gave cold comfort. Westerners, or as locals would sneer: “Gweilo”, the trio were mixed in height, physique and sartorial choices but all looked as if they’d soap the wedding ring off their dead grandmother’s finger.

With a flimflam artist’s confidence, a black-suited man at the table gestured for me to sit before he resumed slurping. His sole piece of jewellery was a fake Longines watch hanging a little too loosely from a hairy wrist. With the shoulders of a Turkish wrestler, the bedroom eyes of Cary Grant and the dining manners of Henry VIII, he devoured the meal while, to his left, a gaunt party picked at pale flesh in a bowl. The sleeves of that one’s suit, bedecked with the wide pinstripes favoured by the male cast of Guys and Dolls, dipped occasionally into the broth.

The third cove had careful hair and beard and an equally careful way of studying the food pinched between his chopsticks. “Is this shellfish?” he asked.

His accent made me feel for the gun again. A South African. Suddenly, Mr Pinstripes poked a lump in his bowl while whispering “vis?”, Afrikaans for fish. Another one. I was about to push back my chair and leave when Mr Black Suit thrust his bowl aside.

“Welcome, I’m Leonardo Duffy – my many friends call me ‘L.D’. This (pointing to Mr Pinstripes) is Slade Cravings and you’ll have heard of Adonis Van Graan, ja?”

With manicured nails, Van Graan flicked the underside of his beard: “I’m in advertising.”

I stifled an urge to make the Sign of the Cross, but this time I did inch my chair away.

Pulling out a monogrammed leather wallet, Duffy produced a well-used business card: Leonardo Duffy, Chairman, Global Imports PLC. A Pedder Street address and local phone number sat next to a crossed-fingered logo.

As I attempted to put the card in my pocket, Duffy took it and slipped it back in his wallet.

“I specialise in shipping the finest Cuban cigars into Hong Kong and Macau,” he said. He held a half-smoked stick towards me. The band above the cigar’s chewed end was boldly printed in red and gold.

I leant closer. “Havana is misspelt. There shouldn’t be an ‘r’ on the end.”

“We’ll correct it on the next print run,” cut in Cravings. The soup dripping from his sleeve created a small puddle on the table next to a Mahjong dice. He looked like a county cricketer gone to seed. The yellow tinge around his pupils indicated he was no stranger to the pleasure of the opium pipe.

“My reputation proceeds me, of course,” I said.

Cravings and Van Graan shook their heads. Duffy sighed. “Let me introduce Fruity O’Flanagan, the Colony’s most expensive private detective.”

“And the best,” I added. “Half the fee in advance plus a modest 17% markup on disbursements.”

“We’ll come to that,” said Duffy. “First, here’s the job. Find our longtime accountant who fleeced us of 50 large – American not Hong Kong dollars – and dump her and her sidekick in the Harbour.”

“Can they swim?” I asked.

Van Graan’s lips slid back over almost perfect teeth. “The question is academic. You’ll have dealt with them.”

As I sprung to my feet, the back of my chair hit the floor. “What do you take me for?”

Duffy held up a calming hand. “We’ll double your fee.”

“Tell me more.”

Ten minutes later, after dropping a few foreign coins into the palm of the still babbling coolie outside Lee’s, I leant back in the rickshaw trundling me towards Central Ferry Pier No 7 and called encouragingly to the consumptive pulling the vehicle: “Chop, chop! No waste-y      time-y.”

The Telegraph, the Colony’s main English-language rag, took up the basement of a decaying Kowloon Side building. I had two editorial contacts there – neither had drawn a sober breath since the Siege of Chongqing. When I arrived they were gloomily considering the bottoms of empty glasses. The taller of the two, Stan Valet, a painfully thin grifter with a narrow-brim black fedora tipped over one eye, had his feet on his desk, a heel placed either side of his Olivetti. The other, Jim McArran, with a quick temper, quicker fists and a tattoo of Hemingway (or Marilyn Monroe, it was hard to tell – it’d been a bargain-priced tattooist) on his forearm, was balling up copy paper and tossing it towards a wire basket.

I placed a fifth of whisky next to Valet’s right shoe.

McArran missed the bin. “You want something, eh, Fruity?”

“Jim, if you don’t want that drink, I …”

Snatching the bottle from the desk, McArran pulled out the cork with his teeth.

Valet attempted to sit up. “Did I ever tell you I slept with Leonard Cohen’s …” he began, before sliding to the floor.

Hiring these two was a risk but I needed to move quickly before the Triads beat me to the stolen loot. I gave the pair the brief: help me find the missing accountant Madeleine Dubois and her accomplice Mary Carberry, and receive a cut of Duffy’s pie. I didn’t mention the body-dumping business. Even journalists have standards and they’d want a bigger slice.

The hunt took 12 hours. By late evening I was standing outside a gin joint in Wan Chai. Through the open shutters came the sound of a Chinese zither torturing a New Orleans jazz standard. The bouncer, wearing a Mandarin-collared golden shirt matching the colour of his remaining incisor, gave a stiff bow. “Fùnyìhng, Mr Fruity.”

Perched on bar stools, Madeleine and Mary were sheathed in shimmering silk cheongsams. With the indulgent face of a Loreto Sisters Mother Superior, Madeleine held a lighted taper to the tip of a Sobranie that a shaky Mary was attempting to keep still. I waited for them to topple over but both were made of sterner stuff, and that stuff appeared to be 99% Plymouth Gin and 1% Noilly Prat.

“Nǐ hǎo, ladies.”

They turned, looking at me as if I was going in and order of focus. Attempting to introduce myself, I stopped as Madeleine waved away the need. “Fruity O’Flanagan. Who else would wear a white linen suit after sunset?”

Unsteadily, the pair climbed down from their stools and tottered on stilettos to a corner booth. Patting the banquette, Mary called: “Get us another round, Fruity, then get your fat arse over here.”

In the booth’s candlelight, both women could be mistaken for being 21. Admittedly, the single candle threw off a dim glow.

“You’ve been naughty, my dears. L.D would like his money back.”

Madeleine lit a long-stemmed pipe. I doubted it was Davidoff tobacco. “You’d have saved a lot of time if you’d just stopped to talk to our coolie outside Lee’s. He was trying to pass on our offer. Every man in a tropical weight suit has a price.”

The thump of my fist on the table made their glasses jump. The tabletop’s stickiness made it difficult for me to lift my fist back up. “What do you take me for?”

This time it was Madeleine holding up a calming hand. “We’ll quadruple whatever L.D is paying you.”

“Tell me more.”

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Note: Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Copyright 2020 GREG FLYNN