The King of Shanghai (24 page)

( 33 )

Ava called the clinic from her hotel room and got Dr. Lui. “He’s resting,” he said.

“When he wakes up, please tell him I called.”

“It may be a while. He had a very restless night and morning and I’ve upped the dose of sedative. He needs sleep.”

“Of course. There’s no urgency to my call.”

She unpacked her bags and then turned on her computer. With the Wing issue resolved, she thought for a second about calling Richard Bowlby to try to set up a meeting for that afternoon, but she knew her head wasn’t in the right space. Neither was her body. She was tired. The sleepless night, combined with the adrenalin drain after the meeting with Wing, had left her feeling limp. She glanced at the bed, but she knew that climbing into it would be the worst thing she could do. A two-hour nap would screw up her body clock for days. She needed to do the opposite, she thought, and reached for her running gear.

It was a typical hot and muggy Hong Kong summer afternoon. Ava didn’t mind the heat, but Hong Kong’s humidity and perpetual cloud cover made the air thick and everything seem gloomier, more oppressive. But she was an outdoor runner, and at least she could run in Victoria Park.

She walked from the hotel to the Central MTR station and took the train three stops east to Causeway Bay. Victoria Park was a tiny oasis of green nestled in a concrete jungle. It had been built in the 1950s, on land reclaimed from what had been a typhoon shelter for the yachts, fishing boats, and junks that now anchored at the nearby Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club and docking sites along the bay. It wasn’t particularly large; its forty-six acres paled in comparison to New York’s Central Park, at nearly eight hundred acres, and the combined 630 acres of London’s Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. The Victoria Park jogging path was just over six hundred metres, a quarter the length of her favourite run at Lumpini Park in Bangkok. But everything is relative; given the population density of Hong Kong Island and the pressure on the government to use every square metre of land, Ava was grateful there was a jogging path at all.

The park was open twenty-four hours a day. Early morning and evening were the peak hours. Ava had once tried running in the morning but had given up because the track was so jammed she could barely walk, let alone run. But that afternoon she was able to manoeuvre her way around the track without having to stop. There were also fewer distractions, such as the tai chi practitioners with their fans and swords and the old men with their caged birds, than there were in the morning. She was able to focus on the run, getting past the pain in her thighs and steadying her breathing until she was on cruise control, knocking off each lap in about three minutes. By the second lap she was drenched in sweat. She used a hand towel she’d brought from the hotel to wipe her face.

She tried to think about May Ling in Beijing with Suki, and Amanda and Chi-Tze waiting in Shanghai for the Pos, and then her meeting the next day with Richard Bowlby. But almost without her realizing it, the names Lam and Li came to mind, and she was soon replaying that morning’s meeting with Wing and her talk with Sonny. It wasn’t over, she knew, not by a long shot. There were too many moving pieces, too many men still in the shadows, and she had to put her plan in the hands of Uncle Fong.
That was stupid
, she thought suddenly. How many years had he been retired? How senior had he actually been? How sharp was he? How could she expect him to get a meeting with Lam, let alone convince him to meet with her?

The realization caused her to miss a breath. She felt her chest tighten, her pace slowed, and she came to a halt in the middle of the track. She had done ten laps, six of them while obsessing about Wing, Lam, Li, and Uncle Fong. But she felt energized and her mind was more alert. She’d call Sonny when she got back to the hotel, she decided.

Rush hour had started by the time she went down the stairs into the Causeway Bay MTR station. She was still sweating profusely when she got into the train, which was almost full, and her presence in the car wasn’t welcomed. The people heading home from work didn’t appreciate being crushed against someone so sweaty. She did the best she could to be unobtrusive, but there was no escaping the masses inside the cars. By the second stop she found herself pressed so tightly that her arms were pinned to her sides, leaving her sweat to roll unchecked. The ride back to Central took only about ten minutes, but her discomfort was so extreme that it felt like half an hour, especially since, in addition to being wet, she had to put up with looks of disgust and muttered curses from the other passengers.

Back at the hotel, she stripped and wrapped herself in a thick white terry cloth robe. When her body cooled down, she’d shower. She made herself a coffee and sat at the desk. Her worries didn’t seem quite so extreme now that she was in a different, calmer environment.

Ava turned on her cell and saw that she hadn’t missed any calls. She opened the computer. Her inbox contained a long list of unread messages, most of them from May Ling, keeping Ava up to date on her progress. In the first she responded to Ava’s news that she was checking out of the hotel by writing:
I don’t like the sound of that. Be careful.
In the last she said they’d just finished lunch and were going back to work.

The phrase
to work
implied structure and routine, which Ava found rather strange. The debt-collection business had been anything but regular. Jobs were intermittent, sometimes months apart, and when they did come, they often involved days of endless slogging punctuated by moments of enormous stress and, as she had told Amanda, occasional terror. Could she handle the routine? The first job she had had was with a large accounting firm in Toronto — she didn’t last six months. She wasn’t good at blindly taking orders, she had a low threshold for boredom, and she had been quietly, almost subversively, insubordinate.
Three Sisters won’t be as mundane
, she told herself. May Ling and Amanda were so passionate and committed that she felt stimulated just being around them. And it was nice, for a change, to feel like part of something bigger than herself. With Uncle, Ava had been on her own more often than not. This was different. Whatever they accomplished would be the result of a group effort.

She responded to May’s emails, telling her that she would be meeting with the lawyers the next morning and that she was back in the hotel and life was good.

There were no messages from Amanda. Ava wrote:
Have you heard from Gillian? If not, please call her.

She headed for the bathroom and took another long, hot shower. She checked her cellphone when she came out and saw she’d missed a call. The red light on the room phone was blinking as well.
Xu
, she thought.

It was Sonny, and in his message he sounded pleased with himself.

“It’s me,” Ava said when he answered.

“I just left Uncle Fong. He was thrilled that you want him to do something.”

“I’m glad I made him happy.”

“You’ll be gladder still. He called Lam and the two of them talked. Lam is going to meet with him tomorrow morning.”

“In Guangzhou?”

“On the outskirts, so we won’t have to go all the way into the city.”

“That’s thoughtful of him.”

“Also he might not want anyone to know he’s meeting with Uncle Fong.”

“And why not?”

“You said to keep Li out of this. There’s a better chance of that if they meet on the edge of the city. Besides, these guys are all naturally suspicious.”

“Were you with Uncle Fong when he spoke to Lam?”

“I was.”

“And how did Uncle conduct himself?”

“As you wanted. In fact, better than I could have imagined. I’d forgotten how smooth and persuasive he can be. He was Uncle’s Straw Sandal, and that job was all about communicating.”

“Lam didn’t wonder why Fong wanted to meet with him alone?”

“Yes, but Fong just said it was about something too important to discuss over the phone.”

“And Lam didn’t push for details?”

“No, he didn’t push for details. I don’t know him that well, but Uncle Fong says he’s very smart and subtle. I’m sure he’s reading something between the lines.”

“What time is the meeting tomorrow?”

“Nine.”

“I’ll be at the lawyer’s office from eleven on. Call me anyway on my cell the moment you can.”

“Okay.”

“And thank Uncle Fong for me. Tell him I’m sure he’ll do well tomorrow.” Ava hung up with the sense of satisfaction that comes when a decision is vindicated.

( 34 )

She slept for twelve hours, her dreams calm and fleeting and the outside world kept at bay. When she woke, the room was bathed in almost complete darkness. But when she opened the drapes, the morning sun had climbed well up in the sky and the streets below were full of cars and pedestrians.

She did a bathroom run, grabbed the
Wall Street Journal
and the
South China Morning Post
from the door, and made a coffee. She hadn’t set an alarm or asked for a wake-up call, and with only an hour to get ready before leaving for the lawyer’s office, she knew she shouldn’t procrastinate. Still, she couldn’t help leafing through the
Journal
, making another coffee, and turning on her computer to check her email. There were more updates from May Ling but still no word from Amanda. She turned to the
Post
and scanned it quickly, looking for any mention of violence in Wanchai. There was nothing. She pushed aside the paper and went back to the washroom to shower and get herself presentable for her meeting at Burgess and Bowlby.

May Ling’s description of Burgess and Bowlby had been a revelation to Ava. Her experience with lawyers had been primarily with those who represented the thieves and scumbags who had stolen money from her clients, lawyers who as a rule were as slimy as the people they were trying to shield. They would lie and threaten, and when that didn’t work, they would resort to the legal system to slow things to a crawl. But Ava and Uncle didn’t acknowledge the system when it came to bear on their clients’ situations — going to court wasn’t how they operated. They preferred a more direct, hands-on approach.

It was May Ling who had discovered Burgess and Bowlby about a year earlier. One of her and Changxing’s businesses had become involved in a dispute with a Hong Kong–based supplier that B&B represented. When the firms, together with their lawyers, met to resolve their issues, May Ling had been impressed by Richard Bowlby. She told Ava that he was smart, calm, analytical, and even-handed, and — unlike other
gweilo
lawyers she’d dealt with — he spoke fluent Cantonese and passable Mandarin and really seemed to understand the Chinese mentality. She had used his firm to incorporate Three Sisters and then hired him to paper their Borneo Furniture and Suki Chan acquisitions.

Before leaving the hotel, Ava called the clinic. “Mr. Xu had a peaceful night,” Dr. Lui told her. “He was awake quite early and was able to speak to a couple of his colleagues. But that did seem to tire him, and he’s sleeping again. I think I’ll ban visitors and phone calls for the rest of the day. If he has complete rest today, by tomorrow he should be able to get out of bed.”

“Please tell him I called and that I won’t bother him until you give the green light.”

“Something else you should know — one of his men insisted on sleeping here last night, in the bed next to him,” Lui said.

“That would be Suen.”

“Yes, that’s his name. He makes me rather nervous. We mustn’t have any problems at the clinic.”

“There won’t be any trouble, Doctor. Suen is just naturally overprotective.”

“Then I won’t say anything.”

“That’s best,” she said.

Ava left the hotel at ten to eleven, took a right turn, and within five minutes was walking into the lobby of the Bond Building. As she waited for an elevator, her mind flitting between details of the business agreements and thoughts about Uncle Fong and his meeting, her cellphone rang.

“It’s Sonny. How soon can you get to Guangzhou?” he asked.

“Lam’s agreed to talk to me?”

“Yeah.”

The elevator doors opened but Ava stayed rooted in the lobby. “I’m just about to go into a meeting with some lawyers.”

“How long will that meeting take?”

“I really don’t know.”

“Ava, you can’t make Lam wait all day. When Uncle Fong talked to him on the phone, he stressed how urgent it was that they talk, and I know it was his plan to push for a quick meeting between you two. Now that he’s got an agreement, I think you’d better get here as fast as you can.”

She knew he was right, but that didn’t make her feel any better about cancelling on Richard Bowlby again. On the other hand, she wasn’t sure how well she could concentrate on legal matters with Lam dominating her head. “I can get a limo at the hotel,” she said.

“Yeah, they always have some available on short notice. The drive is about an hour and a half. How far are you from the hotel?”

“Ten minutes on foot.”

“You should be able to get back to the hotel, get a limo, and be on the road by eleven thirty. That’ll get you here by one o’clock. Just to be safe, I’ll tell Uncle Fong that you’ll be here before two p.m.”

“Where is ‘here’ specifically?”

“The Pearl Dreams Hotel in Huangpu. It’s half an hour southeast of Guangzhou, so it’s that much closer to Hong Kong. Tell your driver to take the Huangpu Bridge over the Pearl River to the National Road East exit. From there he should go south on Kaifa Avenue. The hotel is on the avenue just before you reach the river again.”

She hesitated.

“Ava, do you need me to repeat that?”

“No. I’m just thinking about the lawyers.”

“They’ll still be there tomorrow. You can’t count on Lam being so accommodating.”

“I get it.”

“So?”

“I’m heading back to the hotel right now. I’ll let you know when I have things organized.”

“Ava, I have to tell you, Lam’s guys are real thugs. Two of them went upstairs with Uncle Fong when he got here. There are at least two more outside and two sitting with me in the lobby.”

“Are you worried about them?”

“No, I just thought you should know. I don’t want you to get here and be spooked.”

“Thanks,” she said, and then glanced at her watch. “Look, I have to go. I’ll call in a while.”

She searched her contacts list and found the number for Richard Bowlby. She called him as she was walking out of the building. The receptionist said he was in a meeting.

“I’m the reason for the meeting and I’m not there, so there isn’t any meeting going on. Could you please connect me?”

A moment later she heard, “This is Bowlby.”

“Mr. Bowlby, this is Ava Lee. I’m terribly sorry about this, but I can’t make it to your office today,” she said quickly.

“Ms. Lee —”

“And I apologize for the short notice, but something urgent arose when I was literally about to step into one of your elevators.”

“I understand,” he said in a tone that implied he didn’t. “Do you have any idea when you’ll be available?”

“No, I don’t, so I think I’d better call May Ling. Perhaps you could work directly with her until I’m available.”

“I’ll be pleased to work with whomever the company designates.”

“Thank you,” Ava said, noting the stiffness in his voice. “And again, my apologies.” She ended the call less than satisfied with the conversation and walked towards the Mandarin, thinking about what she would tell May. She called her cell, not expecting her to pick up, and was mentally preparing a voicemail when May answered.

“Are you alone?” Ava asked.

“Yes. I stepped outside to call Wuhan. There are some issues there I have to deal with.”

“And I have one here, I’m sorry to say.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve just cancelled the meeting I had planned with Richard Bowlby.”

“Did something happen? Are you displeased with him?”

“No, he’s fine.”

“Are you having second thoughts about these deals?”

“It’s Xu,” Ava said.

“Has he become a problem?”

“No, he’s wounded. He’s in a clinic here in Hong Kong — in Mong Kok, actually.”

May gasped. “My god. Is he going to live?”

“Yes, and he’ll be mobile in a few days. But May, there’s no denying it’s a mess, and I’m in the middle of it.”

“How —”

“That doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is that I have a plan to extricate both myself and him from the situation. It will take a day or two, though, and I can’t focus on anything else until it’s done.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

“Manage the Beijing closing with Bowlby,” Ava said, stopping at a red light.

“What about the Po investment?”

“Amanda hasn’t heard from Gillian, so there’s nothing to be done yet. Frankly, it’s becoming a concern, but I think we should leave it to Amanda to sort out.”

“I agree, and of course I can handle Beijing, but what I meant was do you need help with the Xu problem?”

“No. It’s something I have to do.”

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

“Yes, I will, just not right now.”

“Why not?”

Ava closed her eyes and felt her shoulders tense. It was a fair question, and Ava realized there was no answer that wouldn’t sound like
I don’t trust you enough to tell you.
“Xu was attacked two days ago in Shenzhen by Sammy Wing’s gang from Wanchai and another from Guangzhou,” she said.

“When did you find out?”

“I was with him when it happened.”

May became quiet. Ava could only imagine the kinds of questions that were now in her friend’s mind.

“The gangs used me as bait to draw him there,” Ava said in a rush. “When I met with Sammy Wing in Hong Kong, he said he knew about our financial relationship with Xu and he made some threats about disrupting our business. I went to Xu and told him to fix the problem. He went to Shenzhen to do that.”

“Threats?”

“All they wanted was to get to Xu, and we were a convenient route.”

“And they did get to him.”

“To their regret. Wing’s gang has already been decimated and is now controlled by Xu’s men. We’re just starting negotiations with Guangzhou to restore stability.”

“You said, ‘
We
are starting.’”

“Yes. I’m handling some of the talks for Xu. I’m leaving in a few minutes for the first session,” Ava said, the hotel coming into view.

“Do you know how crazy that sounds?”

“It isn’t quite that bad. I have a plan that I think is workable. This could be all over by tomorrow, or the day after.”

“You never cease to amaze me. You say that as if it’s the most common thing imaginable.”

“It isn’t much different from other situations I’ve had to deal with.”

“I thought those days were behind you.”

“Me too.”

“Oh, Ava, now I’ll be spending the next few days worrying.”

“I’d rather you spent them getting the deal done.”

“That won’t be a problem. It’s what I’ve been doing for more than twenty years.”

“And sorting out the problem of Xu and Guangzhou is something I know how to do.”

“Yes, I guess you do,” May said, and then paused. “Ava, who else knows about this?”

“No one.”

“Then I’ll keep it close.”

“Thanks, and if you don’t hear from me for a day or two, don’t get paranoid.”

“I remember very well how you like to operate.”

“Look, I just got back to the hotel. I have to speak to the concierge about getting a car to take me to Guangzhou.”

“Be careful. Don’t take any risks when you get there.”

“I always am.”

“Remember, you have friends who love you and worry about you.”

“And I love you too,” Ava said.

“Thanks for sharing this with me.”

“Sure,” Ava said. When she ended the call, she realized that May hadn’t asked her a single detailed question about the threats or Xu’s money. She smiled.