( 4
)
SHE DIDN’T SLEEP
well. Her conversation with her father kept circling around her head. He was right; she was bored. All those years of education were being wasted doing basic accounting for people who could do it themselves if they bothered. And the amount of money Lo had lost wasn’t insignificant, she told herself. It was certainly worth an effort to recover it. Then she smiled. Even if she got back only a tenth of what was owed, she wanted to go after it, as long as Lo was prepared to pay at least her expenses.
She called him at nine o’clock. “Mr. Lo, this is Ava Lee. I’ve been thinking about Kung Imports. Could you come by my office around ten?”
“Are you going to go after him?”
“Is ten okay?”
“Does this mean you’ve decided to do it?”
“I need to talk to you before I make my final decision, and I don’t want to do it over the phone.”
“I’ll be there.”
“And just in case, please bring all the contact information you have for Kung. I want every phone number, every address, and the names of everyone you know who is acquainted with him. If you have any photos of him, bring those too.”
Lo showed up on time and sat in the same chair he had the day before. But this was a different man. The desperation was gone from his eyes and his demeanour seemed, if not confident, at least composed.
“My wife sends her regards, and her thanks for taking this on for us,” he said.
“We need to discuss my terms before that becomes a reality.”
“I’m sure they will be reasonable,” he said. “Besides, at this point you’re my only option. I can’t imagine what you might ask for that I can’t agree to.”
Ava stared at him across the desk, not sure if he was being sincere or if he was in some sly way appealing to her sense of fairness. “You do understand that I’ll have to go to Hong Kong. I can’t do this from here.”
“Yes.”
“And you will have to pay my expenses.”
“
Momentai.
”
“I won’t go crazy, so don’t worry about that.”
“I’m not worried,” he said, and paused. “Would you object, though, to using some Marco Polo miles I have, to book your flight on Cathay Pacific?”
“No, I guess not.”
“And the hotel I stayed in last time was a good deal for Hong Kong.”
“As long as it’s clean and well situated.”
“It’s both,” he said. “Once I know when you’re leaving, I’ll book it for you.”
“Thanks,” Ava said, keenly aware that, only option or not, Lo was already negotiating. “Now there’s the question of my fee.”
“What do you want, some daily rate?”
“I thought about that and decided against it. I mean, I could spend two weeks traipsing around Hong Kong and not recover a dollar, and you’d be out of pocket even more money,” she said. “I think the fairest thing is for me to take a percentage of whatever money I can recover.”
“Do you have a number in mind?” he said carefully.
“I made some phone calls last night. The people I spoke to told me that collection agencies in Hong Kong normally charge thirty percent.”
His face fell.
“Mr. Lo, you told me you contacted some collection agencies there. Is that number inaccurate?”
“No, but there weren’t any expenses involved.”
“You weren’t their client, and you are mine. So, given the nature of our relationship and the expenses being paid, I am proposing that I keep ten percent of what I collect.”
“Do we deduct your expenses from that?”
“No.”
“I wasn’t being picky,” he said quickly in response to her firm tone. “I just wanted things to be clear.”
“And are they?”
“Yes.”
“Well then, you should book me on the earliest possible flight to Hong Kong and organize the hotel. Now, did you bring the information I asked for?”
He slid a large brown envelope across the desk. “Everything I have on Kung is in here.”
( 5
)
THE CATHAY PACIFIC
plane began its slow and steady descent to Chek Lap Kok airport almost an hour before it was scheduled to land. This would be Ava’s fourth trip to Hong Kong. The other three had been with her mother and sister to visit Jennie’s family and friends there. They hadn’t seen Marcus — or at least the girls hadn’t. Jennie had left them alone in their hotel room on two nights, saying that she had mah-jong games. Marian believed her. Ava didn’t.
“Will you see your father?” Jennie had asked when Ava told her that she was going to Hong Kong to try to help Hedrick Lo.
“I don’t have any plans to. I’m there on business.”
“Still, you won’t mind if I tell him that you’re there?”
“No.”
“What hotel did you book?”
“The Oriental Crocus.”
“I’ve never heard of it. Is it part of the Mandarin Oriental chain?”
“Hardly. It’s a three-star hotel in Mong Kok.”
“Why did you choose that?”
“I didn’t. Mr. Lo did. He’s paying.”
“He’s cheap.”
“He told me he’s stayed there himself and it isn’t so bad. The office of the importer he was working with is nearby, so it’s convenient.”
“He probably wants to save money on taxis. Or did he actually tell you to take the
MTR
?”
“Mummy, you’re the one who asked me to help him.”
“I know.” Jennie sighed. “It’s just that the idea of you going to Hong Kong alone is kind of odd. You’ve never been there without me. I want to feel that you’re safe, and a three-star hotel in Mong Kok doesn’t sound secure.”
“You know I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.”
“I still worry.”
“Don’t, and don’t harass me when I’m there either, or ask Daddy to check up on me. I’m going there to work. I don’t need to be babysat and I don’t need any distractions.”
Jennie became quiet, and Ava knew her mother was probably offended by her directness and her tone. This was how many of the conversations between them ended — Ava declaring her independence; her mother acting hurt; Ava saying, “I’m sorry, I know you love me”; and Jennie replying, “I know, and I also know you will do exactly whatever you want to do regardless of what I say.” This time Ava added, “I do promise that if I run into any serious problems, I’ll call Daddy.”
Ava had taken a limousine to Pearson International Airport to catch the Cathay flight. It departed at ten thirty in the evening and, after crossing the international dateline, would land her in Hong Kong at six in the morning two days later. She spent most of the day of her departure fussing about what to take with her. Her travel experience was limited to holidays, when she packed casual clothes, and major upheavals such as moving from Toronto to Wellesley, when she took just about everything she owned. This was her first extended business trip and she was unsure about what to pack. She finally decided to restrict herself to business wear and her running gear. Four Brooks Brothers shirts, two pairs of black slacks, a pencil skirt, two pairs of pumps, slippers, underwear for a week, and her cosmetics bag filled a suitcase. She stuffed her running shorts, socks, and T-shirts into a carry-on and wore her running shoes, track pants, and jacket to the airport.
Because it was a last-minute booking, Ava was assigned a window seat in the rear of the economy section. She shared the row with an elderly Chinese couple, who told her they were going back to Hong Kong for Chinese New Year in March. Ava asked why they were going four weeks before the actual event.
“To visit with friends,” the woman said in Cantonese. “Our children are in Toronto, but we still miss our Hong Kong friends.”
Ava was fluent in Cantonese. It was the language spoken in her mother’s house six days a week. Mandarin was Sunday’s language, and Ava spoke it passably after ten years of Saturday classes and Sunday practice.
The flight took sixteen hours. After learning everything she could about her seatmates in less than an hour, Ava retreated to the video programming and then fell asleep. She woke somewhere over the Pacific with a burning need to pee. The Chinese couple had fallen asleep with their legs stretched out. The seats in front were pushed back as far as they could go. Ava would have to be part contortionist to slip between the seats and the couple and get to the aisle. She was five feet three inches tall and weighed about a hundred and fifteen pounds. If she’d been larger or less lithe, she wouldn’t have made it out and back without stepping on the elderly couple.
When she had settled back into her seat, she tried to sleep again, but it was already morning in Toronto and there was no convincing her body that it was otherwise. She reached into her bag and pulled out the paperwork that Lo had given her. There were multiple addresses and phone numbers for Kung Imports. Disconcertingly, the purchase orders didn’t have a company address on them, other than “Mong Kok.” There were phone and fax numbers and an email address on the POs, but Ava had tried them before she left Toronto. No one answered the phone or responded to her fax or email. She checked the wire transfers that Kung had sent to Lo. They had been issued by a bank in Shenzhen, not Hong Kong. Why hadn’t she noticed that before? Well, for one thing, her job had been to make sure the money added up. It was Lo’s responsibility to make sure he wasn’t getting cheated.
The last thing she looked at was two pictures of Lo with the man he said was Kung. They were in a nightclub or karaoke bar. The men were sitting on a couch in front of a small round table that held several glasses and a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label Scotch. Ava was no expert on Scotch, but she knew that Blue Label was the premium brand. Two women in evening dresses were draped over the men’s shoulders; one of them had her tongue in Kung’s ear. Both men had silly grins splashed across their faces. Ava had no idea how tall Kung was, but he was broad across the shoulders, and burly. He had a full head of black hair that was combed back, and his face was round and fleshy under the eyes and the jaw. The shape of his face was oddly out of sorts with a rather delicate nose and thin lips.
What an odd-looking man
, Ava thought.
She put the photos and the other paperwork back into the envelope and took out a pen and a Moleskine notebook from her bag. On top of the first page she wrote
KUNG — LO
and then detailed every fact she thought was relevant. Her plan was to find Kung and discuss the accounts payable situation in a professional, businesslike manner. If that didn’t work, she would threaten him with lawsuits. If that failed, she would call on the banks with his purchase orders and Lo’s invoices in hand and see if she could get their co-operation. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure what else she could do.
As the plane continued to glide towards Hong Kong, Ava looked out the window and saw the first hint of morning sun. It peeked out from just beyond the horizon, the South China Sea glimmering under the light it cast. The sea was alive with ships. Ava counted more than twenty in her immediate view. Hong Kong was one of the world’s largest container ports; the traffic below was waiting to enter the harbour, steaming towards it, or already fully loaded and headed out to another destination. The plane was flying low enough now that, among the massive tankers, freighters, and container ships, Ava could pick out sampans and what looked like fishing boats. It was, she thought, all so exotic — almost romantic — and it reminded her of how different life was in this part of the world.
There was nothing romantic about Chek Lap Kok. Within forty minutes of landing, Ava had disembarked, cleared Customs and Immigration, and collected her bag and was walking to the express train that would take her to Kowloon. The airport was built on reclaimed land on Lantau Island, to the southwest of Hong Kong. It replaced the old airport, Kai Tak, which had been situated on Kowloon Harbour.
The first time she had landed at Kai Tak she was ten, just old enough for it to make a lasting impression. Her mother had put her in the window seat and Marian in the middle, but as the plane weaved its way through the mountains that encircled the city, they had pushed against her so they could share the view. The South China Sea was beneath them and to the west; a long strip of a runway that jutted into the harbour was in front. To the east was Kowloon, its office and apartment buildings so close to the airport that Ava felt she could reach out the window and pluck laundry from apartment balconies.
Kai Tak was as congested as the neighbourhoods that surrounded it. The lineups at Immigration seemed endless. Baggage took forever to reach slow-moving carousels. Then there was the walk into the arrivals hall, where families and friends were crushed so close to the exit door that Ava was afraid she’d lose her mother in the melee.
“I love this airport,” Jennie Lee had said, gripping her daughters’ hands. “The instant you step through these doors, there’s only one place in the world you can be.”
Well, that’s not true anymore
, Ava thought, as she neared the train station. Chek Lap Kok had sister airports in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, and she was sure more would follow. Modernization had become a mania in Asia.
She spotted an
ATM
outside the station and withdrew $5,000 Hong Kong, just less than $1,000 U.S. Then she waited ten minutes for the train that would take her over the Tsing Ma Bridge, a dual-decked structure that stretched one and a half kilometres over the Ma Wan Channel, more than sixty metres above the major shipping lane in and out of Hong Kong. The train was on the lower deck of the bridge. Above, three lanes of traffic moved in each direction. It never ceased to amaze Ava how efficient it all was.
It took only twenty minutes to get to Kowloon. Ava exited at Olympic station. The Mong Kok neighbourhood was to her east; to her south was Tsim Sha Tsui with its five-star hotels, expansive malls, and breathtaking view of the Central district of Hong Kong, across Victoria Harbour.
The air was cold and damp when she walked out of the station. Winter in Hong Kong was bone-numbing. Few of the homes — more than ninety-five percent of them apartments — had central heating, and inside and out the chill was pervasive. She took a cab to the Oriental Crocus. Mong Kok was fully alive with the morning commute, and as the cab inched eastward on Cherry Street and then north on Tong Mi Road, she began to wish she had taken the
MTR
.
Mong Kok was a working- and middle-class neighbourhood of modest-sized office buildings and older apartments lined up along narrow streets, interspersed with storefronts and restaurants that catered strictly to the locals. The driver had seemed to know where he was going when Ava mentioned her destination, but he still almost drove past the hotel. Its façade was no wider than two small storefronts, and if Ava hadn’t spotted the name above the doorway they would have missed it. The moment she did see it, she wished she hadn’t allowed Mr. Lo to make the reservation. On her trips to Hong Kong with her mother they had always stayed at the Mandarin Oriental in Central — a true five-star hotel that epitomized unobtrusive luxury. The Crocus was merely unobtrusive.
She walked into the lobby and was relieved to see that it was clean and airy. The hotel had nine floors and her room was on the eighth. When she opened the door, she felt a surge of regret. The room wasn’t much bigger than a jail cell. It had a double bed, a small dresser, and a folding table and chair. She knew she would have to slide her luggage under the bed if she wanted room to turn around. She unpacked, putting her clothes in the dresser, pushed her bags under the bed, and then headed to the bathroom for a shower.
When she came back into the room, she sat on the bed and thought about what to do. Part of her was tired and the idea of crawling under the duvet was appealing, but she remembered from her previous trips how necessary it was to try to stay awake if she wanted to avoid serious jet lag. She reached out and took Lo’s envelope from the table. She had printed out a map of Mong Kok and had marked where Kung’s office was. It didn’t look like more than a ten-minute walk from her hotel. It was time to put Plan A into action.