“Elder Brother,” Sergeant Lee began politely, “is there a fixed reward we can offer our informers? Is there a minimum or a maximum?”
“Yes,” Tang-po told them, then added carefully, “The High Dragon has said 100,000 HK if within three days …” The room was suddenly silent at the vastness of the reward. “… half for finding Noble House Chen, half for finding the kidnappers. And a bonus of 10,000 to the Brother whose informer produces either—and promotion.”
“One 10,000 for Chen and one ten for the kidnappers?” the corporal asked. O gods grant me the prize, he prayed, as they all were praying. “Is that right, Elder Brother?”
“Dew neh loh moh that’s what I said,” Tang-po replied sharply, puffing his cigarette. “Are your ears filled with pus?”
“Oh no, sorry Honorable Sir. Please excuse me.”
All their minds were on the prize. Sergeant Lee was thinking, Eeee, 10,000 and—and promotion if in three days! Ah, if within three days then it will be in time for Race Day and then … O all gods great and small bless me this once and a second time on Saturday’s double quinella.
Tang-po was referring to his notes. “Now to other business. Through the cooperation of Daytime Chang and the Honorable Song, the Brotherhood can use their showers daily at the V and A between 8:00 A.M. and 9:00 A.M., not 7:00 A.M. to 8:00 A.M. as before. Wives and concubines on a roster basis. Corporal Ho, you rearrange the roster.”
“Hey, Honored Lord,” one of the young detectives called out, “did you hear about Golden Pubics?”
“Eh?”
The youth related what Daytime Chang had told him this morning when he went to the hotel kitchens for breakfast. They all guffawed.
“Ayeeyah, imagine that! Like gold, heya?”
“Have you ever pillowed a foreign devil, Honorable Lord?”
“No never. No. Ayeeyah, the very thought … ugh!”
“I’d like one,” Lee said with a laugh, “just to see what was what!”
They laughed with him and one called out, “A Jade Gate’s a Jade Gate but they say some foreign devils are lopsided!”
“I heard they were cleft sideways!”
“Honored Sir, there was another thing,” the young detective said when the laughter had died down. “Daytime Chang told me to tell you Golden Pubics has a miniature transmitter-receiver—best he’d ever seen, better than anything we’ve got, even in Special Branch. She carries it around with her.”
Tang-po stared at him. “That’s curious. Now why should a foreign devil woman want a thing like that?”
Lee said, “Something to do with the guns?”
“I don’t know, Younger Brother. Women with transceivers? Interesting. It wasn’t in her luggage when our people went through it last night, so it must’ve been in her handbag. Good, very good. Corporal Ho, after our meeting leave a gift for Daytime Chang—a couple of reds.” A red note was 100 HK. “I’d certainly like to know who those guns were for,” he added thoughtfully. “Make sure all our informers know I’m very interested in that too.”
“Is Noble House Chen tied into the guns and these two foreign devils?” Lee asked.
“I think so, Younger Brother. I think so. Yes. Another curiosity—to send an ear is not civilized—not so soon. Not civilized at all.”
“Ah, then you think the Werewolves’re foreign devils? Or fornicating half-persons? Or Portuguese?”
“I don’t know,” Tang-po said sourly. “But it happened in our district, so it’s a matter of face for all of us. Big Mountain of Dung is very enraged. His face is in the mangle too.”
“Eeee,” Lee said, “that fornicator has such a very filthy temper.”
“Yes. Perhaps the information about the transceiver will appease him. I think I’ll ask all my Brothers to put surveillance on Golden Pubics and her gun-running friend just in case. Now, there was something else …” Again Tang-po referred to his notes. “Ah yes, why is our contribution from the Happy Hostess Night Club down 30 percent?”
“A new ownership’s just taken over, Honored Sir,” Sergeant Lee, in whose area the dance hall was, said. “One Eye Pok sold out to a Shanghainese fornicator called Wang—Happy Wang. Happy Wang says the Fragrant Grease’s too high, business is bad, very bad.”
“Dew neh loh moh on all Shanghainese. Is it?”
“It’s down, but not much.”
“That’s right, Honored Sir,” Corporal Ho said. “I was there at midnight to collect the fornicating week’s advance—the stink fornicating place was about half full.”
“Any foreign devils there?”
“Two or three, Honored Lord. No one of importance.”
“Give Honorable Happy Wang a message from me: He has three weeks to improve his business. Then we’ll reconsider. Corporal Ho, tell some of the girls at the Great New Oriental to recommend the Happy Hostess for a month or so—they’ve plenty of foreign devil customers … and tell Wang that there’s a nuclear aircraft—the Corregidor—coming in the day after tomorrow for R and R …” He used the English letters, everyone understanding rest and recreation from the Korean War days. “I’ll ask my Brother Dragon in Wanchai and the dock area if Happy Wang can send some visiting cards over there. A thousand or so Golden Country barbarians will certainly be a help! They’re here for eight days.”
“Honored Sir, I’ll do that tonight,” Corporal Ho promised.
“My friend in marine police told me that there are going to be lots of visiting warships soon—the American Seventh Fleet is being increased.” Tang-po frowned. “Doubled, so he says. The talk from the Mainland is that American soldiers are going to go into Vietnam in strength—they already run an airline there—at least,” he added, “their triad CIA does.”
“Eeee, that’s good for business! We’ll have to repair their ships. And entertain their men. Good! Very good for us.”
“Yes. Very good. But very stupid for them. Honorable Chou En-lai’s sent them warnings, politely, for months that China doesn’t want them there! Why won’t they listen? Vietnam’s our outer barbarian sphere! Stupid to pick that foul jungle and those detestable barbarians to fight against. If China couldn’t subdue those outer barbarians for centuries, how can they?” Tang-po laughed and lit another cigarette. “Where’s old One Eye Pok gone?”
“That old fox’s permanent visa came through and he was off on the next airplane to San Francisco—him, his wife and eight kids.”
Tang-po turned to his accountant. “Did he owe us any money?”
“Oh no Honored Sir. He was fully paid up-to-date, Sergeant Lee saw to that.”
“How much did it cost that old fornicator? To get the visa?”
“His exit was smoothed by a gift of 3,000 HK to Corporal Sek Pun So in Immigration on our recommendation—our percentage was paid—we also assisted him to find the right diamond merchant to convert his wealth into the best blue whites available.” Ho referred to his books. “Our 2 percent commission came to 8,960 HK.”
“Good old One Eye!” Tang-po said, pleased for him. “He’s done very well for himself. What was his ‘unique services’ job for his visa?”
Sergeant Lee said, “A cook in a restaurant in Chinatown—the Good Eating Place it’s called. Oh ko, I’ve tasted his home cooking and old One Eye is very bad indeed.”
“He’ll hire another to take his place while he goes into real estate, or gambling and a nightclub,” someone said. “Eeee, what joss!”
“But what did his U.S. visa cost him?”
“Ah, the golden gift to Paradise!” Ho sighed. “I heard he paid 5,000 U.S. to jump to the head of the list.”
“Ayeeyah, that’s more than usual! Why?”
“It seems there’s also a promise of a U.S. passport as soon as the five years are up and not too much harassment about his English—old One Eye doesn’t talk English as you know …”
“Those fornicators from the Golden Country—they squeeze but they aren’t organized. They’ve no style, none at all,” Tang-po said scornfully. “One or two vi
sas here and there—when everyone here knows you can buy one if you’re at the right time with the right squeeze. So why don’t they do it properly in a civilized way? Twenty visas a week—even forty—they’re all mad these foreign devils!”
“Dew rieh loh moh but you’re right,” Sergeant Lee said, his mind boggled at the potential amount of squeeze he could make if he were a vice-consul in the U.S. Consulate of Hong Kong in the Visa Department. “Eeeeee!”
“We should have a civilized person in that position, then we’d soon be set up like Mandarins and policing San Francisco!” Tang-po said, and they all guffawed with him. Then he added disgustedly, “At least they should have a man there, not one who likes a Steaming Stalk in his Ghastly Gulley, or his in another’s!”
They laughed even more. “Hey,” one of them called out, “I heard his partner’s young Foreign Devil Stinknose Pork Belly in the Public Works—you know, the one who’s selling building permits that shouldn’t be!”
“That’s old news, Chan, very old. They’ve both moved on to unwiser pastures. The latest rumor is our vice-consul devil’s connected with a youth …” Tang-po added delicately, “Son of a prominent accountant who’s also a prominent Communist.”
“Eeeee, that’s not good,” Sergeant Lee said, knowing at once who the man was.
“No,” Tang-po agreed. “Particularly as I heard yesterday the youth has a secret flat around the corner. In my district! And my district has the least crime of any.”
“That’s right,” they all said proudly.
“Should he be spoken to, Elder Brother?” Lee asked.
“No, just put under special surveillance. I want to know all about these two. Everything. Even if they belch.” Tang-po sighed. He gave Sergeant Lee the address and made the work assignments. “Since you’re all here, I’ve decided to bring payday forward from tomorrow.” He opened the large bag that contained bank notes. Each man received the equivalent of his police pay plus authorized expenses.
300 HK a month salary with no expenses was not enough for a constable to feed even a small family and have a small flat, not even a two-room apartment with one tap and no sanitation, and to send one child to school; or enough to be able to send a little back to the home village in the Kwantung to needy fathers and grandmothers and mothers and uncles and grandfathers, many of whom, years upon years ago, had given their life’s saving to help launch him on the broken road to Hong Kong.
Tang-po had been one of these. He was very proud that he had survived the journey as a six-year-old, alone, and had found his relations and then, when he was eighteen, had joined the police—thirty-six years ago. He had served the Queen well, the police force impeccably, the Japanese enemy during their occupation not at all and now was in charge of a key division in the Colony of Hong Kong. Respected, rich, with one son in college in San Francisco, another owning half a restaurant in Vancouver, Canada, his family in Kwantung supported—and, most important, his Division of Tsim Sha Tsui with less unsolved robberies, less unsolved woundings and maimings and triad wars than any other district—and only three murders in four years and all solved and the culprits caught and sentenced, and one of those a foreign devil seaman who’d killed another over a dance-hall girl. And almost no petty theft and never a tourist foreign devil harassed by beggars or sneak thieves and this the largest tourist area with upward of also 300,000 civilized persons to police and protect from evildoers and from themselves.
Ayeeyah, yes, Tang-po told himself. If it wasn’t for us those bone-headed fornicating peasants’d be at each other’s throats, raging, looting, killing, and then the inevitable mob cry would go up: Kill the foreign devils! And they would try and then we would be back in the riots again. Fornicate disgustingly all wrongdoers and unpeaceful persons!
“Now,” he said affably, “we’ll meet in three days. I’ve ordered a ten-course feast from Great Food Chang’s. Until then, let everyone put an eye to the orifice of the gods and get me the answers. I want the Werewolves—and I want John Chen back. Sergeant Lee, you stay a moment. Corporal Ho, write up the minutes and let me have the accounts tomorrow at five.”
“Yes, Honored Lord.”
They all trooped out. Tang-po lit another cigarette. So did Sergeant Lee. Tang-po coughed.
“You should quit smoking, Elder Brother.”
“So should you!” Tang-po shrugged. “Joss! If I’m to go, I’m to go. Joss. Even so, for peace I’ve told my Chief Wife I’ve stopped. She nags and nags and nags.”
“Show me one that doesn’t and she’ll turn out to be a he with a ghastly gulley.”
They laughed together.
“That’s the truth. Heya, last week she insisted I see a doctor and you know what that motherless fornicator said? He said, you’d better give up smoking, old friend, or you’ll be nothing but a few cinders in a burial jar before you’re twenty moons older and then I guarantee your Chief Wife’ll be spending all your money on loose boys and your concubine’ll be tasting another’s fruits!”
“The swine! Oh the swine!”
“Yes. He really frightened me—I felt his words right down in my secret sack! But maybe he was speaking the truth.”
He took out a handkerchief, blew his nose, his breath wheezing, cleared his throat noisily and spat into the spittoon. “Listen, Younger Brother, our High Dragon says the time has come to organize Smuggler Yuen, White Powder Lee, and his cousin Four Finger Wu.”
Sergeant Lee stared at him in shock. These three men were believed to be the High Tigers of the opium trade in Hong Kong. Importers and exporters. For local use and also, rumor had it, for export to the Golden Country where the great money was. Opium brought in secretly and converted into morphine and then into heroin. “Bad, very bad. We’ve never touched that trade before.”
“Yes,” Tang-po said delicately.
“That’d be very dangerous. Narcotics Branch are very serious against it. Big Mountain of Dung himself is very seriously interested in catching those three—very fornicating serious.”
Tang-po stared at the ceiling. Then he said, “The High Dragon explained it this way: A ton of opium in the Golden Triangle costs 67,000 U.S. Changed into fornicating morphine and then into fornicating heroin and the pure heroin diluted to 5 percent, the usual strength on the streets of the Golden Country, delivered there you have almost 680 million worth in American dollars. From one ton of opium.” Tang-po coughed and lit another cigarette.
The sweat began on Lee’s back. “How many tons could go through those three fornicators?”
“We don’t know. But he’s been told about 380 tons a year are grown in the whole Golden Triangle—Yunnan, Burma, Laos and Thailand. Much of it comes here. They’d handle 50 tons, he said. He’s certain of 50 tons.”
“Oh ko!”
“Yes.” Tang-po was sweating too. “Our High Dragon says we should invest in the trade now. It’s going to grow and grow. He has a plan to get Marine with us….”
“Dew neh loh moh, you can’t trust those seagoing bastards.”
“That’s what I said, but he said we need the seagoing bastards and we can trust a selected few, who else can snatch and intercept a token 20 percent—even 50 percent to appease Mountain of Dung himself at prearranged moments?” Tang-po spat deftly again. “If we could get Marine, Narcotics Branch, and the Gang of Three, our present h’eung yau would be like an infant’s piddle in the harbor.”
There was a serious silence in the room.
“We would have to recruit new members and that’s always dangerous.”
“Yes.”
Lee helped himself to the teapot and poured some jasmine tea, sweat running down his back now, the smoke-ladened air sultry and overbearing. He waited.
“What do you think, Younger Brother?”
These two men were not related but used the Chinese politeness between themselves because they had trusted each other for more than fifteen years. Lee had saved his superior’s life in the riots of 1956. He was thirty-five now and his heroism in the
riots had earned him a police medal. He was married and had three children. He had served sixteen years in the force and his whole pay was 843 HK a month. He took the tram to work. Without supplementing his income through the Brotherhood, like all of them, he would have had to walk or bicycle, most days. The tram took two hours.
“I think the idea is very bad,” he said. “Drugs, any drugs, that’s fornicating bad—yes, very bad. Opium, that’s bad though it’s good for old people—the white powder, cocaine, that’s bad, but not as bad as the death squirts. It’d be bad joss to deal in the death squirts.”
“I told him the same.”
“Are you going to obey him?”
“What’s good for one Brother should be good for all,” Tang-po said thoughtfully, avoiding an answer.
Again Lee waited. He did not know how a Dragon was elected, or exactly how many there were, or who the High Dragon was. He only knew that his Dragon was Tang-po who was a wise and cautious man who had their interests at heart.
“He also said one or two of our foreign devil superiors are getting itchy piles about their fornicating slice of the gambling money.”
Lee spat disgustedly. “What do those fornicators do for their share? Nothing. Just close their fornicating eyes. Except the Snake.” This was the nickname of Chief Inspector Donald C. C. Smyth who openly organized his district of East Aberdeen and sold favors and protection on all levels, in front of his Chinese underlings.
“Ah him! He should be stuffed down the sewer, that fornicator. Soon those who he pays off above him won’t be able to hide his stink anymore. And his stench’ll spread over all of us.”
“He’s due to retire in a couple of years,” Lee said darkly. “Perhaps he’ll finger his rear to all those high-ups until he leaves and there won’t be a thing they can do. His friends are very high, so they say.”
“Meanwhile?” Tang-po asked.
Lee sighed. “My advice, Elder Brother, is to be cautious, not to do it if you can avoid it. If you can’t…” he shrugged. “Joss. Is it decided?”
“No, not yet. It was mentioned at our weekly meeting. For consideration.”