The Red Pole of Macau

( 4 )

She stepped out of the building into a gorgeous day with hardly a cloud in the sky, a light breeze blowing in from the sea, and the temperature balmy. Hong Kong had, Ava believed, one of the worst climates in the world. The summers were long, hot, and unbearably sticky, and all of the hotels, shops, restaurants, and public places responded by jacking up their air conditioning to the max. Moving between indoors and outdoors, between those two extremes, had given Ava some of the worst colds of her life. The winters were long, dull, wet, and cold enough to put a permanent chill in your bones. The weeks that bridged those two seasons were the best time to be in Hong Kong, and Ava had lucked out on this trip.

She walked down the hill to her hotel, occasionally turning to face the sun. The previous two weeks had been spent in northern Europe, in a persistent damp drizzle. She was a fool for the sun.

She wanted to go for a run in Victoria Park, but she knew that at lunchtime she wouldn’t be able to manoeuvre along the packed jogging path, so she decided to eat first and run later. Dim sum on her own didn’t appeal to her. On the way to the hotel she stopped at a noodle shop and had a plate of lo mein with beef and XO sauce. She ate only half of it, just enough to take the edge off her appetite.

It was two o’clock when she stepped out of the MTR station at Causeway Bay and crossed the street into the park. The crowd had ebbed and she was able to run unimpeded. Normally she ran the inner jogging path, which was about seven hundred metres in circumference, but there were so few people in the park that the outer route was manageable. It measured just over a kilometre and she was able to work up a real sweat after eight laps.

As she ran, her mind turned over Michael’s problem. She knew that nothing would be accomplished until she had met with Ma Shing. On the surface it seemed straightforward. The contract and the addendum were clear, so unless there was something she hadn’t seen, it was going to come down to what kind of people Lok and Wu were. If they were serious businesspeople then a deal could get cut. If they weren’t, she’d have to figure out a way to get the money back that didn’t involve lawyers.

She had two worries. First, it was possible that Simon To had made a verbal commitment. Chinese businessmen took a handshake as seriously as, if not more seriously, than a contract. If To had been stupid enough to verbally commit to putting up more money, she would have to talk her way around that from a severely weakened position. Second, she didn’t know if Ma Shing actually had the funds to repay Michael and Simon. If they had put the money into the land purchase and they weren’t liquid, that could be a problem.

She rode the MTR back to her hotel in Central, sweating like mad in the subterranean climate of the Hong Kong underground. She jumped into the shower as soon as she got into the room, and then put on a clean T-shirt and her training pants. She guessed they’d be eating outside at Sai Kung, so there was no reason for her to dress up.

She turned on her computer and checked her inbox. Her father had written: Sorry to have missed you before you left. Thank you for going to Hong Kong so promptly. Keep me posted if you can. Love, Daddy. Ava sighed. She made it a policy not to communicate with clients when she was on a job. They had a habit of taking every morsel of progress and exaggerating its impact. She preferred them to have minimal expectations, and one way to maintain that was to keep them in the dark. Her father might not be a client exactly, but she decided she would have to treat him like one. I have arrived safely. I’ll let you know when I have something definite, she wrote back.

Maria had emailed as well, and reading her message brought a smile to Ava’s face. I miss you already, but I haven’t showered since you left and I can still smell you on my skin. Hurry home. Ava wrote: I’m in Hong Kong and things are fine. It looks like I’ll be here for a few days. Please wash. Love you.

She logged out of her email and did another search for Ma Shing, and then one for Kao Lok in both English and Chinese, and came up with absolutely nothing. She sighed and told herself she’d find out more when they met. She hoped Michael would be able to engineer a meeting in Hong Kong, but she suspected it was going to be in Macau.

It had been a while since she’d had any dealings in Portugal’s former colony, but judging from Michael’s situation, it was evidently still a rough-and-ready place. Ava had been there once with Uncle, in 1999, just a few years after Portugal had returned the territory to the Chinese. They had a potential client, a furniture manufacturer, who had shipped two container loads of goods to Dalian and then been stiffed on payment.

It was winter, and he’d arranged to meet them in the old town, in the area where the wild-animal restaurants were located. Those restaurants did a booming business in the winter. In addition to the usual reason to visit them — to strengthen the male libido — many older Chinese people believed that eating snake or raccoon or bat or bear or any number of other wild animals thickened the blood and staved off cold-weather illnesses. In deference to Uncle, the furniture manufacturer took them to a very expensive snake restaurant. There was a glass cage in the front window where hundreds of snakes were displayed until they became someone’s meal. Four snakes were extracted and fed to them in various forms, starting with soup and ending with grilled meat.

When the dinner was over, they agreed to take on the case. Then they found themselves with several hours to kill before catching the hydrofoil back to Hong Kong. So she and Uncle walked over to the Hotel Lisboa, where he said an old friend of his worked.

The Lisboa was also a casino, and at the time probably the premier casino in Macau. It was owned by Stanley Ho’s Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, as were the other four or five casinos in Macau at the time. Ho had been granted a monopoly in 1962 and still held it when they were there. Later the People’s Republic of China opened the doors for competition, but at the time every property belonged to Ho.

Ava detested casinos in general, and the moment she walked into the Lisboa she put Macau’s casinos at the top of her hate list. The place reeked of cigarette smoke and the carpets were stained and damp from people spilling drinks and spitting on them. There were lineups at the tables as people jostled to bet, fighting for a chance to give their money away. “Wait here while I look for my friend,” Uncle said, leaving her at a blackjack table.

A gweilo with an American accent was seated at the table. Two old Chinese women crushed against his back, staring over his shoulders. Ava knew blackjack, but she hadn’t seen a table like this one before. Behind the regular spot where a player placed his bet were two circles. As she watched, the gweilo placed his bet in front and then the two women reached around him to put money on the circles, betting on his cards.

He was dealt a ten and a five. The dealer had a jack. Ava listened to the women chatter in Cantonese; they wanted the man to stand on his fifteen. From what she knew, he should hit, which is what he did. When he motioned for another card, both of the women hissed at him. He obviously didn’t understand the Cantonese word for “a*shole.” He bust with a nine, and one of the women flicked the back of his head with her middle finger. He turned and looked at them.

“They didn’t want you to hit,” Ava said. “When Chinese gamble, they like straightforward one-time win-or-lose bets. They don’t want to have to think about what to do.”

“Then they shouldn’t play blackjack,” he said.

“I’ll tell them,” she said, but she didn’t.

The gweilo lost steadily over the next five minutes, the women getting more and more agitated. Finally his cards turned and he won five or six hands in a row, including two in which he took a third card. The hissing stopped. After the first win, Ava saw the dealer short-pay the gweilo. Before she could speak up, the dealer beat her to it, shrugging and saying, “Tell him I don’t speak English.”

Ava relayed the message.

“What the hell is she doing?” he asked.

“Why are you paying less than he won?” she asked the dealer.

“I’m taking my tip.”

Ava told him what the dealer had said and then watched as the man’s face turned red. “I decide when and how much to tip. Tell her to stop doing that.”

Ava told the dealer what the man had said. The dealer, looking bored, said to Ava, “Those are Macau rules.”

“I don’t believe this place,” he said. “It stinks, it’s dirty, the dealers are so f*cking rude. In Las Vegas this place would be scheduled for demolition.”

Uncle rescued her. His friend was in his office on the other side of the casino. They walked across the floor, his hand looped through her arm as they passed a long line of baccarat tables. They were all nearly full, with lines of bettors behind the players. What was odd was the people who weren’t playing but who sat with briefcases on their laps. They were tightly focused on the play in front of them, hardly ever looking up. Two who did glance their way saw Uncle and bowed their heads.

“Who are those men?” she asked.

“Moneylenders.”

“In the briefcases?”

“Cash.”

“What, they just open the briefcases and hand money to players?”

“The ones who are sitting next to a player have done that already. They are watching their money, ready to give more if it’s needed.”

“Is it legal?”

“This is Macau. Everything is more or less legal.”

On the return trip to Hong Kong Uncle said, “I have never liked Macau. It was always a good place for business, but all the Portuguese left behind were Ho’s casinos, one wall of a cathedral, and some lousy cuisine. For four hundred years of occupation, that’s not much of a legacy.”

“How about the language, the culture?” she asked.

“Less than one percent of the people can speak any Portuguese, and as for the culture, after African chicken there isn’t much.”

After several more trips she had begun to share Uncle’s view. Compared to the other European territory attached to China — Hong Kong — Macau was an exercise in mediocrity. What the Chinese would do with it was anyone’s guess; all she knew was that it couldn’t get any worse.

Ava typed “Macau” into several search engines and tracked its changes since the handover, since it had become a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic. The population hadn’t grown that much: it was now about 500,000 people, 95 percent Chinese. And despite reclaiming some land, Macau was still the most densely populated place on earth, with close to twenty thousand people squeezed into every square kilometre of a territory that had almost no arable land, pastures, or woods. Despite the tight quarters, the Macanese had the highest life expectancy in the world — over eighty-four years on average.

Its economy was driven by tourism to its casinos, and the number of visitors had increased from just under nine million a year in the late nineties to close to thirty million today. Ava did some rough math. Las Vegas covered 219 square kilometres and had forty million tourists a year. Macau squeezed thirty million into 28 square kilometres. Almost eight times the density, and at least twice the intensity, given the Chinese mania for gambling.

Macau consisted of four regions: the Macau Peninsula, the most northern part of the province, which was connected directly to the Chinese mainland; Taipa, an island to the south accessible via three bridges, and a major residential area; Coloane, an island still farther south that was less developed; and Cotai, the strip of reclaimed land between Coloane and Taipa. That was where the Venetian had been built and where Michael’s shopping centre was supposed to be going up.

In terms of location for gamblers Macau couldn’t be much better. It was only 60 kilometres across the South China Sea from Hong Kong. Guangzhou was 145 kilometres away. The Zhuhai Special Economic Zone was right next door, feeding carloads — and, more often, busloads — of gamblers through the Portas do Cerco and over the Lotus Bridge. That was about a hundred million people right on Macau’s doorstep.

Stanley Ho, Uncle maintained, was the least far-sighted businessman he had ever met. To have a monopoly on the only casino action in or near China and Hong Kong was like a dream, and for forty years it was Ho’s reality. In Uncle’s opinion, Ho should have used those forty years to make himself completely irreplaceable. But he hadn’t. The problem, according to Uncle, was not the money he took out; it was what he didn’t put back. His casinos were small and shoddy. The hotels were second-rate. The service was deplorable. Did he think that Macanese and Chinese government officials never went to Las Vegas? That they wouldn’t make comparisons? That they wouldn’t realize what Macau could become if they opened it up? So open it they did, in 2004, and in rushed the big boys from Vegas — Wynn, Sands, MGM, the Venetian — and in flowed some serious Australian and Chinese money to build hotels and casinos that matched their American rivals. Ho kept his little casinos and finally invested some money in them. All too little, too late, Uncle said. Even Ho’s daughter, Pansy, had joined forces with outside investors to compete against her father.

Ava hadn’t been to Macau since the big build-up started in 2004. Hopefully they would have their meeting with Lok in Hong Kong, and she’d be able to avoid it one more time.

At five to six she went down to the lobby wearing her training pants and a matching nylon jacket. Michael was already at the hotel entrance, his silver Mercedes coupe idling, a woman sitting next to him in the front. He got out of the car when he saw Ava, his eyes taking in her clothes. “Do I need to dress for Sai Kung?” she asked.

“No, no, of course not,” he said.

Ava saw the woman in the car staring at her. She turned and smiled as Ava climbed in the back seat. “I’m Amanda Yee, Michael’s girlfriend,” she said.

Everything about her looked expensive and, Ava had to admit, quite classy. She was young, in her mid-twenties, slim and fine-featured, her hair, long and loose, falling over the shoulders of a light blue jacket. When she tucked her hair behind her ears, Ava saw diamond earrings that had to be more than a carat each, and a diamond pendant around her neck that was around three carats. Her eyes were lively, friendly, and whatever misgivings Ava had felt when she first saw her began to dissipate.

“And I’m Ava.”

“Oh, I know you are,” Amanda said. “You’re all I’ve heard about for weeks. And I have to say the family resemblance is remarkable. All of the Lees are too good-looking for their own good.”

It was a forty-minute ride to Sai Kung, and Ava hardly said a word the entire time. Amanda talked and talked. She had been away from Hong Kong for two years, at graduate school in the U.S., she told Ava, and had been back for only nine months. She had met Michael two months after her return, at a charity event at Happy Valley Racetrack — her father owned several horses — and it was love at first sight. They’d been living together for five months and they were planning on marrying. She was an only child and her father had been a bit jealous at first, but he was coming around. It helped that Michael had his own, successful business. As for her, she was working at her father’s import–export business, but her father was locked into the old ways and she could hardly wait for the chance to have more authority.

She stroked Michael’s cheek as she nattered on, and several times she turned towards the back to look at Ava with eyes that were kind and gentle. Ava had lots of experience with self-absorbed Hong Kong princesses. There was something about Amanda, though, that prevented her from pinning on that label too quickly.

Ava couldn’t help noticing that, as bubbly as Amanda was, Michael remained quiet. She figured the meeting at the bank hadn’t gone that well. “Did you get hold of Ma Shing?” she asked during a small gap in Amanda’s monologue.

“Left two messages and asked them to get back to me. Nothing yet.”

Sai Kung Town was on the southern coast of the New Territories, just east of Kowloon. It had been a fishing village but was now more famous for its seafood restaurants, which sold species from all over Southeast Asia. The restaurants faced Clear Water Bay as they surrounded the harbour of the old town, their storefronts distinguished by tiers of huge tanks full of live fish.

Michael had to circle Man Nin Street three times before he found a parking spot a couple of hundred metres away.

Amanda was wearing four-inch stilettos, and even then she was barely taller than Ava. “There are Simon and Jessie,” she said, waving at a couple seated at a table outside a restaurant that had six sets of tanks tiered four deep.

So much for a business meeting, Ava thought.

Jessie waved back and stood to greet them. She was short, a bit stubby without being fat, and had a mass of frizzy black hair that circled her face, making it look fuller than it probably was. She had a huge grin on her face, and the word jolly crept into Ava’s mind. And then she felt a bit guilty because jolly was the word her mother used to describe every fat Chinese woman she had ever met.

Simon, on the other hand, barely glanced their way, more interested, it seemed, in the San Miguel beer in his hand. He looked stockier in person, but most striking was his hair, cropped short to his head and now dyed blond.

“Hey,” Michael yelled.

His partner pulled himself to his feet. He couldn’t have been more than five foot six, and Ava guessed his weight was close to two hundred pounds. The two couples exchanged hugs and then Michael introduced Ava. “This is my sister,” he said.

He said it so casually that it startled her, and she almost added “half-sister.” She caught herself and extended her hand. “Nice to meet both of you.”

Jessie was drinking white wine and the bottle was nestled in an ice bucket. When she asked what everyone wanted to drink, Ava and Amanda opted for the wine. Michael joined his partner and ordered beer.

“I hope you don’t mind, but we’ve already chosen dinner,” Jessie said.

Ava had taken a quick look at the tanks as they’d walked past. It was hard to think of anything she wouldn’t like. “That’s perfect,” she said.

“How was your day in Shenzhen?” Michael asked Simon.

“Not bad. The franchisee is thinking of opening a third shop and wanted to negotiate a reduction of his royalty fee. I told him that we couldn’t do that until he had five.”

“Sounds good.”

“More important, how was your day?”

“So-so,” Michael said.

Simon’s face was strained. Beside him Jessie was chatting away with Amanda, neither of them noticing the tension in the men. Jessie and Simon were married, it turned out, and had one child. Ava listened to them and marvelled at the things that could occupy their minds despite their partners’ travails. Then she realized that the women probably didn’t know what was going on. Any last hopes she had about talking business over dinner disappeared.

“Did you reach Chi?” Michael asked.

“No. I left him a couple of voicemails, and unless he’s in the middle of the f*cking jungle and didn’t get them, I guess he doesn’t want to talk to me,” Simon said, glancing at Ava.

She wasn’t sure she liked the doubt, the suspicion, maybe even a little hostility, that she saw in his eyes. What exactly had Michael told him about her?

As if on cue, Jessie turned to Ava and said, “What is it you do? Simon was a bit vague about it, although I have to say the little I heard sounded really interesting.”

“I’m an accountant.”

“Oh, come on,” Michael said with a laugh.

“Actually, I’m a forensic accountant.”

“The only forensics I know are on CSI,” Jessie said.

“My life is hardly so exciting.”

“But what is it you actually do?”

“Well, when money goes missing, it’s my job to find it. After I’ve found it I try to get it returned to its rightful owner.”

“And how do you do that?”

“Persuasion.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It sometimes is.”

Simon looked agitated and began to ask a question, but he was interrupted by a waiter carrying a huge platter. He placed it in the middle of the table while another waiter brought a bottle of soy sauce and a small plate of wasabi and ginger slices. “Lobster and geoduck sashimi,” Jessie said.

Ava looked at the thin, translucent white slices of lobster meat and felt her appetite soar. God, the Chinese know how to prepare seafood, she thought.

The five of them ate slowly, savouring every bit. The bottle of wine was emptied and replaced. Two more beers were brought to the table, the chilled bottles glistening. No sooner was the sashimi finished than the platter was replaced by a plate of grilled sliced squid with a touch of teriyaki sauce and a bowl of Manila clams drenched in black bean sauce.

Every so often a short, round bald man wearing an apron peeked out from behind the restaurant door. Simon’s father, Ava guessed. She gave him a vigorous thumbs-up. He beamed.

Next came a spiny Asian lobster, at least five pounds, steamed with garlic, ginger, and onions and cut into manageable portions; two blue crabs, deep-fried and served whole with a chili sauce; and bok choy drizzled with hoisin sauce. They were also served a plate of large whole prawns, the steam still rising from them, the garlic scent tickling Ava’s nose. Jessie and Amanda ate the tails, leaving Ava and the two men to suck the meat from the heads.

Ava was expecting a steamed fish to finish the meal, maybe a sea bream or grouper. Instead the little man came out of the restaurant with a platter holding the largest deep-fried pomfret she had ever seen. She had eaten the fish in Thailand but rarely in Hong Kong or China. It had to be close to four pounds, its skin a golden brown, the flesh on either side cut into cubes they could pluck with chopsticks.

“This is one of the finest seafood meals I’ve ever had,” Ava said to the man as he put the platter on their table.

He smiled at her, and then at Jessie and Simon.

“My father-in-law runs the best seafood restaurant in Sai Kung,” Jessie said. “This is nothing special — this is the way he always cooks. So make sure you come back, and make sure you tell your friends.”

“I will, I will,” Ava said, pleased by the way Jessie had praised him and promoted his business.

They all reached for the pomfret, but before Michael could take his piece his cellphone rang. He looked annoyed as he pulled it out of his shirt pocket, and then anxious when he looked at the incoming number. “Excuse me, I have to take this,” he said, standing and then moving off about twenty metres.

While the women ate, Simon focused his attention on Michael. Ava, watching the two of them out of the corner of her eye, saw Michael motion for Simon. Simon stood and left without saying a word.

Michael covered the mouthpiece of his phone as he talked to Simon, the smaller man nodding his head aggressively. Then Michael moved closer to the table and said, “Ava, can you come here for a minute?”

She thought the other women would find that to be a strange request, but they paid no heed when she walked over to join the men.

“It’s our friends in Macau,” Michael said. “They’re available tomorrow.”

“Where do they want to meet?”

“Macau.”

“Tell them to come to Hong Kong.”

“I tried. It’s a no-go.”

“Then tell them it has to be a neutral site, not their office or their lawyer’s office.”

“Okay.”

“Make sure you tell them I’m coming. No surprises,” she said.

The two partners exchanged glances, and Ava’s previous sense that Simon hadn’t been thrilled to see her was confirmed.

“I’ve already told them. They were reluctant, but I said that you’re our financial adviser and we need a fresh set of ears and some different approaches to handle this matter. We can’t just keep going around in circles,” Michael said, as much to Simon as to her.

Simon shrugged. Michael returned to the phone and told the caller they’d come to Macau, but only if the meeting place was neutral. She could hear the caller arguing, and then Michael said, “If the place isn’t to our liking, we’re not coming.” There was a long silence. Then Michael covered the mouthpiece again. “The Treasure Palace restaurant in the City of Dreams at one o’clock?” he said.

“That’s fine,” Ava said.

“You’re on,” he said to the caller.

Ava said to Simon, “I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t seem overly pleased that I’m involved in this.”

He took a deep breath. “I thought we could handle it without outside assistance.”

“But we haven’t been able to,” Michael said, after ending the call.

“If you two want to talk alone and if the end result is that I fly home, I won’t have any objections,” she said.

“No, I want you there,” her brother said.

“What the f*ck?” Simon said.

“I want her there.”

“Okay, okay.”

They walked back to the table, Simon a few paces ahead of them, his tension visible to Ava’s eye. This was immediately confirmed when he looked at his wife and said, “We have to leave. We have a meeting tomorrow in Macau and I need to get some rest.”

Jessie pointed to the pomfret. “We aren’t finished.”

“I’ll tell my father and I’ll settle the bill,” he said, and then turned and headed towards the kitchen.

The two women stared at Michael. “He’s had a long day,” he said.

Jessie stood. “He’s been having a lot of them lately.”

“It’s a stressful time for the business,” Michael said.

Ava sat at the table, her appetite lost. Amanda Yee picked at the fish, but her eyes were on the kitchen door, where Simon had reappeared with his father by his side. Ava watched the two men hug, and then the older man waved at the table.

Jessie gave a quick hug to Michael and Amanda and then extended her hand to Ava. “I guess we really are leaving now.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ava said.

“And you. Hopefully the next time it won’t be so rushed,” she said as her husband reached the table.

He took his wife by the hand and nodded at them. “I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

Michael sat down, his eyes on the retreating couple. “I guess we should be heading back soon ourselves,” he said quietly.

“Yes,” Ava said, beginning to feel that she had wasted her time and money by flying to Hong Kong.

The car ride back was filled with Amanda’s steady prattle. Michael drove as if every metre required his complete attention, while Ava’s thoughts drifted to their meeting in Macau.

When they got back to the Mandarin, Michael got out of the car with Ava. “I’ll walk you in,” he said, taking a large brown envelope from the glove compartment.

“No bother.”

“Please.”

Inside the lobby he reached for her hand. “I want to apologize for Simon.”

“No need.”

“Yes, there is need. This is not like him, not like him at all. He’s been a wonderful friend and a great business partner. This has thrown him for a loop. He blames himself for all of it and is struggling with the fact that his other best friend, David Chi, helped create the situation.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’m convinced Chi screwed us over.”

Well, he understands that at least, she thought. “Probably,” she said.

“And Simon has trouble accepting that.”

“At the end of day, the business and you will win out.”

“I hope so.”

“One thing, Michael. What do Amanda and Jessie know about all this?”

“They know about the project, of course, but not that it’s gone off the rails so badly. It’s better that way. They couldn’t handle the stress.”

They couldn’t do much worse than you and Simon, she thought, but simply said, “Whatever.” It must have sounded dismissive, because she saw his face collapse. In that moment he looked exactly like her father the last time she had seen him. “Michael, relax. We’ll work this out.”

“We have to.”

“Well, if we don’t, at least that was one hell of a meal, and it was on the house,” she said.

“You’re joking?”

“Yes, I am.”

His laugh was forced. “So, tomorrow?”

“We’ll need to catch the jetfoil at eleven thirty.”

“Then we’ll pick you up at eleven.”

“That’s fine,” she said.

He offered the envelope to her. “I brought along the financials of our company. I thought you might go over them before the meeting. We are viable, you know. I want you to understand that if we can get through this we have a bright enough future.”

“That wasn’t necessary.”

“I figured the more you know, the better.”

“Yes, that is normally true.”

“And, Ava, as for Simon, he’ll get past this.”

“Michael, I don’t care about Simon,” she said. “I care about you.”