The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (36 page)

Lehman smiled at the man’s open enthusiasm. “Yeah, it’s great,” he said, not wanting to burst his optimistic bubble.

“And what about the phones? Two phones. And one of them in the john.”

“Yeah, ain’t that something,” said Lehman. “Look, why don’t you ring around the rest of the guys and tell them to meet downstairs in an hour. We’ll go out and get some food, maybe hit a few bars later on. That sound good?”

“Sounds great to me, man.”

When the vets met in the lobby, nobody had any idea where they should go. Lehman was the only one who’d been to Hong Kong before so they all looked to him for guidance.

“Come on, guys, it’s been almost ten years since I was here.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, Dan,” childed Lewis.

“Yeah, you must know where the action is,” said Carmody.

“Okay, okay. Let me think,” laughed Lehman. “The red light area was Wan Chai, and I guess it still is. And there were some pretty good places over the harbour in Kowloon. It all depends on what you guys wanna do. I mean, do you want to eat, drink, have a massage, see a movie?”

“Or E, all of the above,” said Carmody.

“A drink would be a good start,” said Lewis.

“What about you, Eric?” Lehman asked Horvitz who had barely said a word since they’d arrived in Hong Kong.

“A drink’s fine by me,” said Horvitz. He’d tied his long hair back in a ponytail but it didn’t make him look at all feminine.

“McDonald’s,” said Carmody. “I feel a Big Mac attack coming on.”

“McDonald’s?” repeated Lehman. “You’re in the food capital of the world and you want a burger?”

“Not just a burger,” said Carmody. “A Big Mac.”

“Sounds good to me,” said Horvitz. Lewis shrugged his shoulders as if to say he didn’t care.

“I don’t believe it,” said Lehman, shaking his head.

“Come on, Dan. Don’t tell me you’re not fed up with all this noodle and rice crap. Think about a nice, thick, juicy burger with all the trimmings,” said Carmody.

“And French fries,” said Horvitz.

“And a thick strawberry milkshake,” said Carmody.

“I give in,” said Lehman. They went outside the hotel and flagged down a cab.

“Where you want to go?” the driver asked, chewing a toothpick.

“McDonald’s,” said Lehman who had taken the seat next to the driver while the other three crammed in the back.

“Americans?” said the driver as he slammed the cab into gear and roared off.

“How did you guess?” asked Lehman. Behind him he heard three sniggers.

The driver dropped them off outside the familiar Golden Arches. The only difference between it and any of the thousands back in the States were the Chinese characters up on the sign next to McDonald’s. There was even a life-size Ronald McDonald standing to the left of the entrance. They walked up together to the counter and waited until it was their turn to be served.

Lehman had a cheeseburger and white coffee, Carmody ordered two Big Macs, a large fries, a chocolate sundae and a strawberry milk shake, Lewis had a regular burger, fries and Coke and Horvitz asked for a double cheese-burger and black coffee.

They paid for their order and carried it over to a table. “Ketchup,” said Carmody. “We forgot the ketchup.” He went back to the counter and came back with three packets of red sauce. He ripped one open and dribbled it over his fries, picked up one of his Big Macs and took a big bite. He chewed and rolled his eyes. “Home,” he sighed.

“Oh God,” moaned Lehman, not sure whether or not Carmody was being serious. But after he’d taken a few bites of his cheeseburger he had to admit, albeit reluctantly, that he had missed junk food all the time they’d been in Vietnam and Thailand. Rice and noodles were all well and good, but there came a time when a man needed to get his teeth around a good old all-American burger. Lewis didn’t seem to feel the same way. He left most of his.

When they’d finished eating they walked to the Star Ferry Terminal and caught a green and white ferry across the harbour to Kowloon. They sat at the back of the ferry and watched the sky darken over the towering office blocks of the island, turning the hills behind them from green to purple. Lights were coming on in most of the blocks, the sign of office workers staying late. The city that never sleeps, thought Lehman.

Before the ferry docked at the Tsim Sha Tsui terminal housewives and businessmen got up from their seats and stood impatiently by the gangway while the ferry’s ropemen helped manoeuvre the ferry against the dock.

“They’re always in such a hurry,” said Carmody. “Why is that?”

“Borrowed place, borrowed time,” said Lehman. “This whole place gets given back to China in 1997. Everyone’s just trying to pack in as much as they can before the communists take over. Remember what the communists did to Saigon? Think what they’ll do to Hong Kong.”

“You think it’ll go that way?” asked Lewis.

“Hell, Bart. I know nothing about it, just what I read in the papers back home. But I do know that tens of thousands are leaving every year, just like it was before the Americans pulled out of Vietnam. You don’t get panic like that unless there’s something in the wind.”

They stood up and walked across the gangplank and up a concrete slope to the outside. The first thing they saw as they walked out of the terminal was another McDonald’s outlet. The shops of Tsim Sha Tsui were all still open, despite it being after eight thirty p.m., and the Americans had to weave their way through the crowds. It wasn’t just tourists who were wandering around, there were Chinese families out for a promenade, grandparents, parents and young children walking and talking, stopping to stand and stare as if window-shopping was a hobby the whole family could enjoy.

“Where are we going, Dan?” asked Lewis, dodging a girl pretty enough to be a fashion model who was talking into a portable telephone and checking out the display of a jewellery shop as she walked, seemingly on autopilot.

“A surprise,” said Lehman.

He led them past the Peninsular Hotel and its display of green Rolls-Royces, and then turned left into Nathan Road and threaded his way through side-streets, looking for landmarks that would let him know he was heading in the right direction. He took a couple of wrong turns, fooled by the fact that the streets were all so similar, lined with shops selling high fashion, others touting cheap T-shirts, some selling gold jewellery and precious gems, others offering cheap watches, windows full of jade and coral, others full of colourful plastic earrings and brassy hairclips, and everywhere the eagle-eyed salesmen in sharp suits standing in their doorways trying to tempt them inside. There were restaurants, too, of every nationality: Chinese, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Western, Singaporean, Korean – a bigger variety than Lehman had ever seen together in one place before. Even the gaps between the buildings had been put to use, with shoeshine boys squatting beside the tools of their trade and hawkers behind trolleys covered in red cloth on which were spread out gold-plated jewellery, digital watches and key-rings that buzzed when you whistled at them. Above the shops were the metal-framed windows of apartments, scattered with air-conditioners supported by rusting metal stands. Between the apartment windows and the ranks of shiny shops were jungles of colourful signs that reached halfway across the roads below, signs that seemed almost to defy gravity in their attempts to draw attention to themselves. The Star Gem Company. Khyber Indian Cuisine (Members Only). KO’s Jewellery. Bob Tailor. Tuxedos For Hire And Sale. And then he saw the one he was looking for: a sign in the shape of a pair of pouting red lips with white lettering which announced “Red Lips Bar”. He pointed at the sign and urged the group across the road along which crawled taxis full of businessmen, cream and green minibuses loaded with schoolchildren and housewives, and tour coaches packed with holidaymakers heading back to their hotels. In among the traffic, bare-chested youths manhandled cardboard boxes from wooden-sided trucks into the shops, their tattoos writhing on their backs as if alive. The traffic had been slowed by construction which had been surrounded by yellow-painted metal barriers and red and white plastic cones. There were piles of earth, broken tarmac and exposed cables, but there was nobody working in the hole.

“Red Lips Bar?” said Lewis. “What den of iniquity is this you’re taking us to, Dan?”

“I think you’ll like it,” said Lehman, ducking into a dark alley. The entrance to the bar was a hole in the wall guarded by a frumpy Chinese woman of indeterminate age wearing a jet black wig which seemed to have slipped on her head. She had on thick black mascara and too-red lipstick which overlapped the edge of her lips and gave her a clown-like smile.

“Welcome to Red Lips,” she said in accented English.

“You have got to be joking,” grinned Lewis. “You have really got to be joking.” He stood with his hands on his hips and looked around the bar, with its scratched and stained tables, dimly lit cubicles and smoke-stained ceiling, and at the women in ill-fitting evening dresses, none of whom could have been under fifty years old. The Rolling Stones were on the jukebox. “Paint it Black.” It was the same record that had been playing in the bar Tyler had taken them to in Bangkok, and Lehman took it as a good omen. The record was scratched and the sound was down low enough so that they could hear the conversation from the only booth that was occupied in the bar, where two Australians with bottles of Fosters lager were arguing over who got the best deal on their cameras. They looked up almost guiltily as they became aware of the new arrivals, as if they were ashamed of being caught in such a dive. They were accompanied at the table by two women who must have been in their sixties, one with grey frizzy hair and a face that was criss-crossed with wrinkles and the other with hair so black that it could only have been dyed. They were listening attentively to the Australians and sipping from small glasses. From where he was standing Lehman could see that one of the women, the one with grey hair, had her hand on her tourist’s thigh where a gnarled nail slowly scratched the material of his jeans. Lehman felt he could hear the coarse scratching sound all the way across the bar.

“Sit here, sit here,” said an emaciated woman in a purple dress speckled with silver threads which draped around her thin frame as if it were still on a hanger. She fastened her bony fingers around Lehman’s forearm and it felt like the touch of a skeleton. Her eyes were deep-set and there were thick lines around either side of her mouth as if it were set amid two fleshy parentheses. When her lips drew back in a parody of a smile, they revealed that the two front teeth at the top of her mouth were gold. “Sit, sit,” she repeated and Lehman felt the talons tighten on his arm. A chubby woman with shoulder-length hair wearing a scarlet dress with a high neck and puffed-up sleeves attached herself to Carmody’s arm and began edging him towards a booth like a collie rounding up a stray sheep.

“What the hell is this place?” asked Lewis.

“Like the lady said, it’s the Red Lips Bar,” replied Lehman. “It was one of the R&R hangouts during the war, but this one never changed. They never decorated and they claim that it’s the original bargirls still working here.”

The skeleton on his arm nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, yes. Same bar. Red Lips never change. You American, yes? I think I remember you, GI. What your name?”

Lewis and Carmody laughed and even Horvitz managed a rueful smile. “She says that to all the guys,” said Lehman. “I never came here during my time in Nam, but a friend brought me here ten years ago or so. It certainly hasn’t changed since then. But I don’t recognise this woman, I swear to God.” He put his hand over his heart and raised his demonic eyebrows but Lewis and Carmody continued to taunt him as the aged bargirls nudged them into the booth. There was enough room to fit two of the Americans either side with a woman between them, and two more pulled up stools and sat at the end of the table, blocking their escape route. The Stones finished “Paint It Black” and Leonard Cohen took their place with a mournful dirge which Lehman didn’t recognise.

A woman who was even older than the bargirls came over and took their order. Lewis asked what the local beer was and she said San Miguel and they decided they’d all try it. The old woman shuffled off to the bar and came back with four cans and four glasses which looked as if they’d been in service for at least twenty-five years. The four women sitting with the Americans dutifully poured the beers and watched as the men drank.

“It’s good,” said Carmody, putting his half-empty glass back on the table where a round-faced woman with more than a hint of a moustache and spectacles with thick lenses refilled it for him.

“You buy girls a drink?” the old woman asked, flashing them a gummy smile. She could have been anywhere between seventy and a hundred years old, with a high forehead and lifeless hair that had been combed straight back as if she’d been riding a motorcycle without a helmet. Her wrinkled skin was peppered with brown patches and her hands were so clawed with arthritis that she’d had difficulty putting the cans of beer on the table.

“Girls?” shouted Carmody. “Where?” The old woman glared at him and muttered something in Cantonese.

“Yeah, why not,” said Lewis. “Bring the little ladies some refreshment.”

The old woman beamed and nodded and whizzed off to the bar as if on wheels. When she came back she was carrying four glasses on the tray, each containing an inch of brown liquid. She began to put them on the table with trembling hands. Carmody reached over and picked one up with his claw and held it under his nose. He sniffed. “It’s tea,” he said.