Chapter One

 Late one Tuesday afternoon in May I spilled drunk from a Wyndham Street bar.   The  humidity made it feel like the height of summer; I already regretted putting on my jacket.

 “Where shall we go?” I asked my companion, a blonde who I’d spent several hours plying with drinks.

 “Ha ha, Jake,”  she smiled up at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this drunk on a weekday.  You do this a lot? ”

 She stuck her arm out and a cab pulled up.  Running out of time, I thought.  Pulling her to me I whispered, “C’mon, let’s go somewhere, I’m so attracted to you.”

 It happened quickly:  she planted a short kiss on my cheek (the first hint of intimacy I’d received from her)  while opening the cab’s back door.  I was still standing there,  wondering what to say, when the door slammed.  She blew a kiss and was off with a roar of diesel.

 I watched the cab disappear around a curve.  I’d just put a long, expensive liquid lunch on my company’s tab that had gained me nothing other than a waning intoxication which clamored for more booze.  I was tempted to go somewhere for another drink,  but it wasn’t even five, and I reckoned I’d abused my liver enough over the weekend.  I hailed a taxi.

  “Connaught Road West,”  I told the driver.

 “Wah?”

 “Fucking Connaught Do Sai. What’s the matter with you?”

 “Ah!  Sorry sorry!  Connaught Do Sai momenti.”

 “Jesus.”

 We drove down into Central.  Rush hour had yet to begin, but as usual pedestrians thronged the sidewalks of Queens Road and the traffic moved slower than the people.   For a few minutes we were stuck next to a jackhammer crew busy ripping up the sidewalk.  I was tempted to scold the driver for this, but it wasn’t really his fault and anyway bullying a random peon, tempting as it was, would do little to salvage the ruins of my afternoon.  

 On Connaught the traffic sped up; mounting the flyover I looked out to see the flashing strobe of a Macau-bound Jet Foil in the harbor.  Behind it the water teemed with ferries and barges and farther still lay the skyline of Kowloon and the silhouette of the suspension bridge to the airport. All this vanished as the cab sped into a ravine of skyscrapers before descending to ground level and stopping at my building. 

 I paid the driver, got a receipt, and climbed out.  I paused for a moment to breathe the fuel-like air of the city while trucks, cars, and buses tore by.   Out west the sun set red behind a veil of filth, sullenly lighting the tramps who spent their days on the sidewalk watching a television a more entrepreneurial tramp charged them to watch.  They were filthy men with nervous ticks and gaunt faces; the entrepreneur himself was a  small un-showered man with a mane of matted black hair.   Apparently not addicted to the vice of his clientele, Cantonese soaps, he preferred pacing about muttering to himself.   Shrewdly, he had diversified from his TV business:  second-hand fans, old stereos, and even a few archaic computers covered a nearby table, to which was chained a hairless mongrel that periodically produced a litter of rat-like pups that he would sell to passersby.  Hong Kong’s can-do attitude at its finest.

 I considered walking to 7-11 for beer and mineral water, but it was hot as shit so I embarked on the long, dark climb to the flat.  After six flights of  green-tiled steps, flickering lights, the fragrance of joss sticks, and hidden Chinese voices I was there.  Somebody was home; an old Oasis tune came through the door as I undid the nine locks.

 Thomas, hunched over the coffee table, looked up as I entered. 

 “It’s me,” I said.

 “I reckoned.   You always start with the bottom lock, Inksy the top.”

 I shut the door and re-locked it.

 “Jesus, is that coke?” I gestured at the table.

 “Nope, mate. K.” 

 “Wonderful. How much jail time for that? Ten years?”

 Thomas ignored me and went back to using a razor blade to cut small, precise portions from a pile of fine white powder.  His long sweeping motions always somehow reminded me of a Macau card dealer.  With his right hand he stroked the long scar on his cheek.   Maybe…you’re gonna to be the one that saves me, sang Liam Gallagher.

 I walked the few feet to my room.   On the narrow bed was the pile of  laundry that shuttled endlessly between the bed and the floor.  I dumped my jacket atop this mess, and with nowhere to sit regarded my personal view of Hong Kong, the city tourist brochures said boasted the world’s most photographed skyline.  My window, though, looked across a four foot gap into a sausage factory, where old, muscular Chinese men worked all hours under white light stuffing red meat paste into membrane-thin tubing.  The place’s smell, of rotten meat and spices, was abominable; I’d learned this a year earlier when I’d tried to air my room.  Despite the electric tape I’d since used to seal the window, I often fancied the smell lingered.  The men, hunched and grime-covered, looked to be in their seventies.    What mistakes of youth led to such a fate?   Not me.

 My mobile rang.  Imelda?  Was she finally returning my calls?

 “Jake Stratton,” I answered.

 “Hey, baby.  Remember me?”

 “Imelda!  How are you?  Where have you been?”

 “Jake, please don’t be upset.  We spoke last week.”

 “But what about the weekend?  Your phone was off, didn’t you get my messages?”

 “I’m sorry.  I lost my phone and had to get a new one.”

 You still could have called, I was tempted to say, but didn’t.  “How are things in Manila?  What am I up to?”

 “Straight to business,” she purred.  “Don’t care about me.”

 “No, sweetie, it’s not that way…I miss you.”

 She was silent for a moment, and then curtly said, “You’re at five hundred and eighty thousand.”

 “Hey, don’t be upset.  Money’s important.”

 “More important than me?”

 “No…nothing’s more important than you, darling, but that being said I may have a nice little package for my account soon.”

 “Really?   How much?”

 “Two hundred honkie.”

 “So it’s been a good month?” 

 “Excellent.  Orson should pass me the money tomorrow.”

 We continued talking.   She told me she’d seen a few nice houses in Borokay; the one she thought I’d like most was situated atop a cliff and had a pool big enough for laps.  All for just US$250,000, which in crowded Hong Kong would barely be enough for a tenth floor rabbit hutch with no view, no pool, and certainly no lawn in a big, anonymous development full of screaming children.   As she described the kitchen I interrupted:  “Why don’t I just buy it?  I’ll fly down this weekend. I need to get out of here for a bit anyway.”

 She paused. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

 “Why?”

 “Our research team thinks property prices will fall 20% or so in Borokay.  It’s better to wait.   Also, I’ll be in Sydney for two weeks starting Friday, so you’ll have to TT that two hundred as soon as you get it..”

  “You’re going to Sydney for two weeks?  When the hell did this come up?”

 “Jake, don’t get upset.  I only found out today.  Why don’t you fly down when I’m back?  We can go down to Borokay, stay at Sandcastles, look at houses, and watch the sunset every night.”

 Oh yes, and rut like animals, I thought as I picked at the pile of dirty shirts, socks, and underwear while she rattled on.  Shit, if I liked the place with the pool I’d just buy it, to hell with her company’s research department.   It was time to start enjoying my retirement.   My current domestic situation was no more than an unpleasant relic of the past, and as long as those idiots Thomas and Inksy didn’t get me busted for drugs, I’d be at a million US dollars in a year or so, and then I’d embark on a retirement of extreme indulgence on sunny Borokay.  Goodbye to smog-induced asthma attacks, crowded streets, expensive drinks, and nerve-jarring jackhammers; hello to life with my tall, lovely, dark-haired Imelda, and swimming laps every morning and drinking one dollar San Miguels all afternoon.  Just one more year of squalor, that’s all it would take, and then peace and pleasure for the rest of my years, which should be quite a few as I was only 29.

 After we finished talking I went back into the living/dining room, a space only slightly larger than my bedroom, but into which squeezed a cheap dining table, a black two-person couch Inksy had found on the street a few years back, a coffee table that was always covered with drugs of one sort or another, and a bookshelf that held my crap TV and Inksy’s crap stereo.  Dominating the room was our fridge, a white American monster that took up about an eighth of the room.  I couldn’t move around the place without squeezing between things sideways.   You know that I gotta say time’s slipping away, sang Liam.

 Thomas was still on the couch, but the white powder was gone, no doubt parceled off into miniature sandwich bags and hidden somewhere safe from the rats.  He was smoking a joint, one of his 5-inch conical specials, and staring at a Chinese girl in a shampoo commercial.  In the window the air conditioner shuddered at full power although the room was still very warm.   The place reeked of stale smoke and the wastebasket overflowed with beer bottles.

 In the fridge I found only the yellow Park n’ Shop bags full of the shit Inksy and his girlfriend, Debbie, liked to eat,  one of Thomas’s frozen pizzas, which wasn’t actually frozen because the freezer didn’t work properly, my long-expired grapefruit juice, but no beer. 

 “Who drank all the beer?”

 Thomas flicked his blade-like face and laughed.  “You drank most of it last night, mate. Don’t go blaming me and Inksy.”

 He was right, but I wasn’t much in the mood to hear it; it had been an hour or so since the last vodka soda, and there’s little worse than getting nice and toasty in the afternoon only to sober up in the early evening.  Fucking miserable, feeling the hangover begin to throb throb throb with the sun still in the sky – not that the sun was ever visible from the apartment.

 “Jesus I need a drink.”

 “There’s always the Chinese shite, mate.”

 Yes, there was always that; otherwise it was downstairs and 3 blocks to the  7-11, but schlepping up 6 flights once a day was more than enough.

 “Jesus, that shit’s nasty.” 

 “Your call, mate.”

 In our phone booth of a kitchen two dirty frying pans sat atop the burner.  One contained the remnants of bacon and eggs, the other a hardening paste of baked beans; and in the sink were several dirty plates - the aftermath of one of Inksy’s foul fry ups.   Never mind, without fail Debbie, the dumb bitch, would come along sooner or later and clean it all up.

 On the shelf among Inksy’s bottles of sauces, all of which had thick lines of dried gunk down the sides, was a harmless looking bottle of clear liquid with a label of Chinese characters.  I’d seen tramps drink the stuff straight, and smile while it yet glistened on their lips, but even when mixed with fruit juice it burned my more-cultured palate something awful.  I returned to the living room and placed it on the coffee table.  I sat down and Thomas handed me the joint.

 “Join me for a drink?” I said, taking a puff.

 “Not of that, but tell you what, mate, I have a bottle of black label in my room.  Care for a jot of that?”

 Indeed I did, but I held my tongue: I couldn’t remember the last time the stingy bastard had offered to break out the good stuff.   Did he want to borrow money?  But fuck it, anything was better than the Chinese shite.

 “That’d be great.  I’ll owe you a drink, okay?”

 “Sort some glasses then.”

 I got glasses from the kitchen and returned as Thomas, ever paranoid about his stash, locked his bedroom door.  He held a bottle of Black Label, three quarters full.

 He filled a quarter of my glass (not enough, I thought) and we started drinking.

 “What’s the occasion?” I said.

 “I’ve had a brilliant idea,” he said, flicking his pony tail, but adding nothing - making me wait for it, the bastard.  

 “Well?”

 “Ahhh, Mr. Stratton, my idea is going to make me and Inksy rich.  One year from now we’ll be sipping champagne on my yacht.”

 Uh oh.

 Thomas took a long drag and exhaled a great cloud of smoke.  Then, dark eyes intense, he leaned close and whispered, “We’re going to implement an e-strategy for my business.  It’s a brilliant bloody idea.  We’ll make a fortune.”

 I didn’t know what to say for a moment.  “An e-strategy?  Like, e-commerce?”

 “That’s right, mate.  I’ll set up a site where people can buy records, but people who place orders will get drugs instead of records.  You know, order a Jimi Hendrix album and you get acid.  Order a Bob Marley album and you get pot.  Something like that.”

 “And what will you call this site?  Thomas Dent dot com?”

 “Don’t be bloody stupid, of course I won’t use my bloody name. I think it’s brilliant. What do you think?”

 Since I wanted more whisky I couldn’t tell him what I really thought.

 “Well…sounds like a good idea.  But don’t you think it’ll be easy to get busted?  I mean, all the cops have to do is order something from the site, and…”

 “Ah!  But that’s the beauty!  We’ll give our customers special pin numbers.”

 “I see, and how will you finance this?  It won’t be cheap, you know, and even if there are any venture cap guys still willing to finance e-commerce the drug spin won’t exactly appeal to them.”

 “Ah, but Mr. Goh said he can…”

 “Mr. Goh from Queenly?  Are you still in touch with him?”

 Thomas went pale.  “No,” he finally said.  “I was only going to repeat what Mr. Goh used to say, and that was always work smarter and not harder.  I have no idea what happened to the guy.”

 Yeah, right.  Aside from Goh, how many Chinese had Thomas known well?    None that I knew of, although I knew the E, charlie, and grass that flowed through the apartment had to have a triad connection somewhere, but Thomas had always been so secretive about his sources that I’d stopped asking long ago.  Why hadn’t I thought of Goh before? It had to be him, not that I cared a damn.

 Out in the corridor Insky snapped at Debbie.  The locks turned one by one from top to bottom, and in they came, breathless and red-faced after the climb, immediately raising the room’s temperature.  I wasn’t sure whether this was because of their sheer size (Inksy was 6’4’ and well-filled out, Debbie was short but fat) or the humid air that wafted in while they carried in several plastic bags of groceries.  In any case, their arrival rendered the air-conditioner’s valiant efforts of the last hour or so worthless.

 “Hullo,” said Inksy sullenly.

 Debbie, sweating like a pig, said nothing but frowned when she spotted the whisky. 

 “Deliveries go okay?” Thomas asked.

 “Piece of piss,” Inksy replied.

 Inksy went into his room while Debbie started stashing the groceries.

 “Can I throw this juice away?” she asked.

 “No,” I said. 

 “But it expired last month.” 

 “I still want it,” I said.  I’d never drink it, of course, but keeping something bulky in the fridge served two purposes: 1) It reserved some fridge-space for me in case I ever needed it; and 2) It irritated Debbie, who, I was certain, hoped one day to totally monopolize the fridge.

 “Fine,” she said.  “But I think it’s disgusting.  Not that I really care, but you could get really sick drinking something like this.”

 Fuck off, bitch.

 Inksy - his real name was Robert Inglis - came back and squeezed into the couch beside Thomas.   He’d removed his jacket and tie, and the big chunk of whalebone he wore on a manky string about his neck gleamed like plastic, which I’d always thought it more likely to be.   He was a big guy, about 240 pounds, and was still a formidable rugby player even though he was running to fat; his features, though, were surprisingly delicate: he had a thin nose and a long, narrow head with a tiny jaw.   The most disconcerting thing about him was his eyes, which were small, black, and owing to the shape of his face, very close together.

 “Debs, I need a glass,” he said.

 “Why don’t you get your own bloody glass,” she said sharply, but fetched one anyway, setting it down hard on the table in front of Inksy, who then,  to Thomas’s obvious discomfort,  poured himself a generous glass of Black Label, giving me a good reason to recharge my glass.  The bottle was only a quarter full by now.

 “I’ve been telling Jake here about our e-strategy,” said Thomas, pouring more for  himself. 

 “Really?  Bloody brilliant, Stratton, isn’t it?  I’ve always wanted to be part of the internet thing.”

 Since the whisky was getting precariously low, being honest posed no risk: “I think this is one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard.  Are you guys serious?”

 “We’re talking millions of dollars here, mate,” said Insky. “Of course we’re serious.”

 I shrugged.  There was no point reasoning with them; since they were essentially lazy cunts I knew they’d never attempt anything very challenging, and even if they did their efforts would end at the first hint of adversity.  It was cold comfort for me, though, for their current drugs business was already far too risky for my liking.  

 Thomas and Insky had not always dealt drugs.  As with many dealers it had  started quite innocently, with Thomas selling the odd bag of pot to friends, but then Queenly Commodities, where we’d all been colleagues, had been busted, and by then Thomas had realized that the profits on narcotics beat schlepping into some office and working for a salary day in and day out.  As for Insky, after Queenly he’d made an attempt at selling insurance, but by all accounts he’d been abysmal at this, and had joined up with Thomas as a courier.  I was the only one who’d made something of myself, securing a good job with a big American company, and arranging things so that I’d retire not only young, but rich.

 “Robert!”  shouted Debbie from the kitchen.  “It’s bloody disgusting in here.  For just once can you clean up for yourself?”

 “Can you sort it out?” Insky shouted back.  “We’re talking business.”

 The water spluttered and she got to work, but made such an angry clatter with the plates and glasses that any moment I expected to hear something break.

 “Yes, e-strategy,” said Thomas, stroking the scar on his cheek.

 “One of my rugby mates is a programmer,” said Insky. “Maybe if I ask him…”

 “No way,” said Thomas.  “I’ll sort out the programmer.  Not that I don’t trust your mate, you see, I just know somebody we can trust more.”

 Although I didn’t take them seriously at the time - their idea was, after all, idiotic - Thomas’s and Inksy’s e-strategy would, much later, result in a big career break for me, but before the arrival of that day many unfortunate, unpleasant, and downright dangerous things would come to pass.  If I’d known then what I know now, I’d have left my whisky half finished, packed a suitcase, and caught the next flight to Manila, never to return again.  We’re all fools in hindsight.

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