Sin City (24 page)

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Authors: Harold Robbins

BOOK: Sin City
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HONG KONG, 1982
When Windell's plane landed at Hong Kong, he took his time getting off so he could follow two flight attendants. The two women tried to ignore the character leering behind them, but Windell was hard to ignore.
“Can I buy you girls a drink?”
They both shook their heads at the same time and gave him a professional smile. Anyone watching them would easily have realized that the only thing the two women wanted was to get rid of the creep trying to pick them up.
Windell's ticket, courtesy of Zack, had been in coach, but Windell bumped himself up to first class by hacking into the airline's computer system. During the long flight, he had made himself the caliber of jerk to the flight attendants that only he was capable of achieving. He identified himself as the CEO of a major, but unnamed, Silicon Valley computer company. Had he shut his mouth after that he might gotten a half-blind, developmentally challenged flight attendant to give him the time of day, but after several hours of hearing him trip over his own boasts, the general consensus of the flight crew was that he had won his first-class seat in a McDonald's fast-food contest.
“Windell?”
Windell turned to the only two attractive women who had voluntarily initiated public contact with him in his life.
“I'm Zack's friend, Chenza. And this is Maria.”
“Hey, is Maria for me?”
“Do chickens have lips?”
“Hey, you do know Zack. I don't know about chickens, but I've got the hottest lips in town.”
A limousine awaited them outside. The two women sat on either side of him and smiled. Other than Janelle's purposeful seduction, this was more attention than Windell had gotten from women since he had had his diapers changed. The limo took them into the heart of the teeming
city to a down-at-the-heels hotel in a narrow alley crowded with butcher shops with naked chickens and ducks hanging from hooks in the windows.
“I thought we were taking a boat to Macao?”
“Later,” Chenza said. “You need to relax before making the trip.”
“Relax?”
Chenza put her hand on his thigh and squeezed. “I think you could do with a nice hot shower and a massage.”
Windell was speechless for the first time in his life.
The inside of the hotel smelled like sweaty feet, but Windell was too mesmerized to notice the smell or the undesirables hanging around the lobby. Chenza entered the room on the fifth floor first. When Windell stepped inside, he found Luis Kang and two other men waiting for him.
“What the fuck—”
Kang punched him in the stomach. Before he could catch his breath, they grabbed his arms and taped his mouth. They dragged him to a window and shoved him halfway out. Windell stared wide-eyed at the street five stories below. He couldn't scream but the terror came through in his frantic eyes. They pulled him back in by his belt and let him lie on the floor as he tried to get air through his nose.
“Take off the tape,” Luis said.
Chenza and Maria sat on the bed and sniffed in a line of coke while Luis stood over Windell who was still gasping for breath. He threw a computer disk in Windell's lap.
“There are instructions on the disk. When you work on Wan's computer, you will follow those instructions. Understand?”
Windell nodded.
Luis knelt beside him. “You see those ducks and pigs dripping fat in the shops below? You fail to obey my instructions and I'm going to have you skinned alive and hung by the hooks over a slow fire. Understand?”
Windell nodded again. He couldn't control his trembling. As soon as Luis and the two thugs left the room, Chenza and Maria helped him to the bed. They peeled off his jacket and lay him back on the pillow. While Maria took off his shoes and rubbed his feet, Chenza sat down on the bed beside him and unbuttoned his shirt and pants. Her hand slipped inside his underwear and began to massage the limp penis.
“Poor baby,” Chenza said. Her cool lips caressed his. “We're going to make it up to you.”
I got Windell working on Wan's computer system. The British had their own nerd, a guy as geeky as Windell. I informed him that Windell was there to test the system's defenses against outside hackers. That story settled well with him because the British nerd had heard of Windell, or at least the handle he used in the world of hacking—The Stud.
Meanwhile, I studied the casino operation and worked out ways to attract more business. Wan's story that he wanted me to introduce Vegas-type player comps and contests at his casino had another big flaw besides my suspicious nature—the place was packed every night. He couldn't have handled any more business. I figured I was the pawn in some intrigue between him and Luís. That gave me two choices: turn tail and run or ride it out and see what I could make of it. It was a tough town, tougher than Vegas, but I didn't have it in me to return to Vegas with my tail between my legs.
To honor Windell's arrival, Wan threw a dinner party for his British and American crews. Chenza said she had “other plans” and I didn't bother asking what they were—we hadn't drifted, we raced apart since arriving in Macao. At the party, Wan had the girlie crew that services the casino's high rollers. One of them had even been told to be nice to Windell. I hoped she got a bonus.
The women didn't do anything for me. They reminded me of Chinese dolls—very pretty but pure porcelain underneath.
A-Ma was not at the party and I hadn't seen her since spotting her at the casino. Nobody at the casino seemed to know much about her. I couldn't find anyone that had actually spoken to her. “She's a
jinni,”
a croupier from Malaysia told me. “A ghost-spirit who can take human form.”
After the meal I slipped out the patio door to get some air. A full moon lit Wan's incredible garden. With dozens of bushes in the shape
of people and animals, he must have spent a fortune keeping the place trimmed. I had nothing else to do, so I tried to find a method in the madness, looking for a common theme in his design. Some of the bushstatues struck me as warriors in battle. I was looking over a warrior slaying a two-headed monster when a voice behind me said, “Gesar of Ling.”
I had never heard her speak, but I was sure that the voice belonged to the enigmatic A-Ma.
“Good evening,” I said, turning to the young woman. She wore a pale pink silk robe that glowed in the moonlight. It was hard to believe that she was sixteen. There was a timeless quality to her features. “What did you say?”
“Gesar of Ling, that is the theme of Mr. Wan's garden,” she said, as if she had read my mind.
“Some kind of Chinese myth?”
“Somewhat Chinese, but mostly central Asian. Gesar is a hero to Tibetans, Mongolians, Manchu, and the Khams in Szechwan. In the West you have the
Iliad
and the
Odyssey
. In central Asia, Gesar was a warrior-hero much like Odysseus and other Greek heroes.”
“Really.” I couldn't come up with anything more brilliant. I never heard of this guy Odysseus.
“As a young shepherd boy, Gesar won the right to a kingdom and a beautiful princess in a horse race, but he had to go on a journey to find treasures to finally claim the kingdom. He had to defeat terrifying monsters to claim the treasures of Magyalpumra. Those are the treasures there.” She pointed at a row of carved bushes. “The knots of life that protect the wearer: a magic helmet, a thunderbolt scepter, arrows tipped with iron from the gods, a whip with a magic charm inset in its handle, and a spear called ‘the conqueror of three worlds.'”
I followed her as she pointed out the shapes. No question about it, I was sexually attracted to her. But I kept a lid on it, not only because she was Wan's property, but I figured she'd had enough older men on her tail.
“That's King Lutzen.” She pointed at the tallest of the carved bushes, one three times my height. “He was an evil giant whose tongue was a bolt of lightning. His subjects were all demons, except for his wife, who was beautiful. Gesar seduced the giant's wife and persuaded her to reveal his vital spot, a round white mark on his
forehead. Gesar slew him by shooting an arrow into the spot. It was his Achilles' heel, you see.”
“Clever,” I said.
“Yes, but Gesar didn't understand the wiles of women. After he slew her husband, the giant's wife drugged Gesar to keep him in her bed and her in control.”
She fascinated me. I followed her around as she explained other shapes—his horse Karkar, a terrible monster named Machig, the three demon kings in the land of Hor.
She finally stopped and looked at me appraisingly. “I am boring you.”
“Conversations with beautiful women never bore me. I was just thinking how unlikely it was that a man like Wan would have a fantasy garden.” Actually what I was thinking was that if it truly was Wan's garden, he would have beasts coupling with humans.
“You've guessed a secret. Yes, the garden is mine. Gesar is an all-but-forgotten hero and I wanted to bring him back to life.”
“Does Wan give you everything you want?”
“Mr. Wan is very generous.”
She looked meaningfully at one of the leafy statues. I took a closer look and saw the wire to a sound bug. That was no surprise to me. Wan trusted no one. People who were untrustworthy themselves tended to be overly suspicious of everyone else.
“Would you like to see more of the garden?”
“Sure. Give me the whole tour.”
She led me down the hillside of the garden to a waterfall and pond with large iridescent fish.
“There are no ears here.”
I leaned against a rock wall and watched her as she knelt by the pond. She murmured something in Chinese as she put her hand in the water and a fish swam to her hand. It didn't surprise me that she could call a fish. I wouldn't doubt this bewitching young woman could call birds from the sky.
“What do you think of Macao, Mr. Riordan?”
“It reminds me of a wet towel that's been used too often at a school gym. Damp, moldy and smelly.”
She laughed, a musical sound. “Macao is a Portuguese city of Chinese run by gangsters. We live under the shadow of the Red Dragon
and know that someday the Reds will march in. Like the people in the movie
Casablanca,
Macao is a city of refugees. When the Reds come, men like Mr. Wan expect to be shot.”
“If I was Mr. Wan, I wouldn't stick around for the firing squad. What about you, A-Ma, what do you want?”
She remained silent for so long, I asked, “Tough question?”
“More than you realize. No one has ever asked me that and I am puzzling over the answer. Your question betrays a difference in cultures. You grew up expecting to have choices in life, decisions about where you will live, work, whom you would marry. My life follows a path put out before I was born. My feet will walk the way set out for me. I cannot take the detours that you do.”
I started to tell her that she could do anything she wanted, but I knew that wasn't true. She wasn't Wan's prisoner, but a lovely bird in a gilded cage. She would be helpless outside the cage because she knew so little about the practical matters of life—working a job, paying rent, lights, and gas. I would have loved to take her with me when I left Macao, but she was too young. And Wan would get revenge for his loss of face wherever I took her.
“I'll make you a promise, A-Ma. I'll be your friend from now on. If you ever need anything that I can give you, call me, no matter where I am. If I can help you, I will.”
She looked at me, puzzled. “Why would you do this for me?”
“I don't know.” That was the truth. I really didn't know. “Maybe because I'm a gambler. We're a screwy breed, all with lucky charms. Something tells me that you'll bring me luck someday.”
She was silent again for a moment. “You know that there is a war going on?”
“You mean here in Macao? I figured that on my first day on the job.”
“It reminds me of the warring states period.”
I gave her a puzzled look.
“You don't study Chinese history in America, do you, Mr. Riordan?”
“I don't know what they study. I never hung around school enough to study anything.”
“It's a time when many small states fought to gain control of all of China. Have you ever read Sun Tzu's
Art of War?”
She pronounced the name
Sun-sue.
“I must have missed that one on the comic book racks.”
“I apologize, Mr. Riordan.”
“Call me Zack.”
“All right, Zack. I was not trying to be condescending. The treatise was written over two thousand years ago, but is well read today by many Japanese and American businessmen, who practice its teachings. Napoleon, the German high command, and even the great Mao Zedong read Sun Tzu. Mao used the tactics to fight the Japanese and defeat the Nationalists.”
“What's the guy's pitch?”
“Sun Tzu was a Chinese general for one of the kings in the warring states period. His theory is that one must avoid combat until one is certain to win. He advocated using speed and surprise against enemy forces.”
“Sounds logical.” I didn't have the faintest idea where the conversation was headed, but A-Ma appeared so sincere about this guy Sun Tzu, I listened politely.
“He taught that a good general plans in secret, never letting his own officers know his plans. He must maintain complete self-control and his face to the world must be unfathomable. And a good general is patient, which is a trait cultivated by my people.”
“Patience is a virtue only to those who already have what they want,” I said.
“Deceit and deception is an art of war, Sun Tzu wrote. The clever general must spread false rumors, create false appearances, employ trickery and deceit. Everyone around him must be expendable, especially the agents he uses to gain information or confuse the enemy. He called them ‘doomed men.'”
She let a fish nibble her fingers for a moment before looking up at me.
“Mr. Wan has studied Sun Tzu carefully.”
 
I left the party early, keeping a happy face on for Wan when I said good-bye. Rather than returning to my room, I headed for a nightclub I'd gone to before with Chenza and Luís's sister Maria. The torch singer at the club reminded me of a Chinese Jane Russell, give or take a few bra sizes. I needed to think out what to do about Wan. A-Ma's message was clear: I was expendable, one of the “doomed men” in the
Macao war of the triads. Deception and trickery, that fit nicely with my own appraisal of the devious Mr. Wan. My deep-down suspicion was that Wan had brought me in to throw his triad opponents off while he planned something else.
I was even more sure now that I could get one of those 9mm café coronaries they served in Macao restaurants.
The maître d' was showing me to a table in the nightclub when I saw Chenza with Luis at a table across the smoke-filled room. She stared across the room at me with drug-glazed eyes, wide and excited. Grinning, she ducked her head into Luis's crotch. I left as she was fumbling with his zipper.
All in all, I was beginning to dislike Macao a little more every day. And the town was definitely not liking me. But what the hell, maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe it was what A-Ma said: Our lives were set out for us and we had to walk a set path. Maybe that was it.
Maybe it wasn't Macao that stunk, but my karma.

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