The Secret (39 page)

The lights in the room dimmed to brownish-yellow, leaving only the stage brightly lighted.

The first model to appear wore one of our international-orange swimsuits: a Cheeks signature item. Bai so described it. He said it was seen on beaches and at pools everywhere in America and Europe.

The next model showed a sheer black catsuit stitched with floral lace. After that came a teddy of similar material, to which garters were attached to hold up the model’s dark stockings. Then a series of bra-and-panty sets.

I was curious to know how far Bai would go. During an initial show at home we did not show everything we sold.

Bai Fuyuan did. He showed bras with holes to display the nipples. He showed panties with slit crotches. Two of his models were shaved and showed their inner parts when they modeled slit panties.

Then he had his models show items we never showed but only sold in private rooms in our shops—fetishist items: handcuffs, leg irons, leather collars fastened with padlocks, rubber-ball gags …

The people on the couches nodded solemnly, whispered comments to each other, and tittered.

Bai’s commentary came through my headphones in English, loud and clear. I heard him say, “Before we show you our final item, I want to introduce an honored guest to say a few words. We are able to sell Cheeks merchandise in China by the courtesy of the officers and directors of Gazelle, Incorporated, which owns the Cheeks line. May I present Mr. Len Cooper, the president of Gazelle.”

Bai had earlier presented me a text and suggested I use it. I didn’t. I simply acknowledged the presence of the two dignitaries, thanked the audience for coming, and said how very glad we were to be able to offer our merchandise to Chinese customers. I said I hoped they would always be pleased with anything they bought from us and invited them to return anything they found defective, for a full refund.

Bai winced at that last. He had anticipated no such thing.

And now the finale of his style show. “You all remember pretty little Ling,” he said. “She modeled several items for you. As did Lufeng. They will now demonstrate the value of one more item we will make available.”

Ling, a tiny Chinese girl who could not have been older than seventeen, stark naked, blindfolded and gagged, was led to the stage by Lufeng, herself naked but for a tiny white G-string and a white nippleless bra. She carried a cat-o’-nine-tails. A heavy black leather collar was padlocked around Ling’s neck. A strap from that collar ran down her back to leather cuffs that were locked around her wrists, pinning her hands together and behind her. Her nipples were pinched by clamps, with a chain running between them. Lufeng wore the nipple clamps, too.

Lufeng gave Ling a firm slap on the rear, and the little girl bent forward. Lufeng swung the cat. It swished audibly through the air and smacked Ling’s hinder cheeks with a sickening jolt. The little girl grunted through the rubber ball of her gag.

Lufeng swung again. Ling moaned.

“It is sufficient,” said Bai. “You see the point. Some love to receive the blows. Ling does, believe it or not. Some would rather give them. Lufeng would. This kind of merchandise will be available to our more adventurous customers.”

The six models all came out then and showed themselves to the assembly, all of them absolutely naked. Little Ling received a round of applause.

*   *   *

Vicky allowed herself to be escorted through a round of dinners and cocktail parties and a second show, this one in Shenzhen. She smiled on cue, said nothing, and accepted gifts that included earrings of the finest dark green jade. She accepted and wore a cheongsam: an exquisite dress made of emerald-green silk embroidered with gold and silver thread. It fit like water poured over her body. Its collar reached her ears. The skirt reached below her knees, but it was slit almost to her hip. She was spectacular in it.

After one of these events, when we had been home ten minutes, Vicky spoke.

“I haven’t said a fuckin’ word. Every word we spoke in those hotel rooms was recorded. But I don’t think they’ve got
this
place bugged, so I can tell you what I think.”

“What do you think, honey?” I asked.

“I think you can’t do business with those people. I think sooner or later the shit’s gonna hit the fan.”

“Like…? Meaning…?”

“You ever bang one of those models?” she asked.

I shook my head emphatically.

“I can live with that. I’m your wife, I’m the mother of your kids, and so long as you don’t get it in your head to leave home for some Chinese whore I can understand your fucking one now and then. But I’ll bet you something. If you ever did, you’re on videotape. Those guys are not stupid. Nothing happens without a purpose. ‘Let’s go to the videotape!’”

“Maybe I’m naive,” I conceded.

“I doubt that,” said Vicky grimly. “But they don’t supply you with whores for nothing. These Chinese bastards don’t do
anything
for nothing. But they’ve got a big surprise coming when they show a tape like that to me.”

“Vicky—”

She kissed me. “When they do, I’m gonna say, ‘Too fuckin’ bad. Don’t show me this shit. I don’t care.’”

I shook my head. “They wouldn’t.”

“Hey, Len. You think you know everything? Okay. Maybe you oughta be wiser. I’m gonna tell you something you don’t know. Your father made his bones some years back. Not too long ago, either—maybe ten years ago. Before you and I met. A guy and a gal tried to kill him. They sleep with the fishes. That’s a silly cliché nobody really uses. But that pair do. They tried to kill your dad, and they got eaten by sharks. Or … apparently they did. They disappeared in Florida and were never seen or heard from again.”

I can’t say how shocked I was. I knew Vicky wouldn’t lie about such a thing. I also knew she had sources of information.

“I’ve just proved something to you, my darling,” she said. “You can’t rely on promises.”

“From whatever source,” I said bitterly.

“Okay. The world is the world, Len. What I’m telling you right now is that you can’t rely on those Chinese operators. Cover your ass, Len. Cover your ass, because they’re gonna cover theirs, for damned sure, and they’ll take the first opportunity to steal you blind.”

“You telling me to back out?”

“No, I’m not telling you to back out. I’m telling you not to trust them.”

“You’re telling me not to trust anybody, not even you. Isn’t that what you’re telling me?

“Trust me? Well …
I’ve told you.
I’ve trusted you. I do trust you, lover.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I promised your father I would never tell what I’ve just told you.” She shrugged. “I lied to him. I didn’t know I was lying to him when I said that, but … Don’t tell your father what I said to you about Florida. Okay? Don’t ever mention that to him.”

“All right,” I said.

I suppose I was as depressed that night as I have ever been—ever, anyway, since I was given the news of the death of my mother. When we were in bed, Vicky did that thing for me that she alone could do; she sucked my entire scrotum and testicles into her mouth and held them there, licking and warming them, until I could think of nothing else but what she was doing. She was eighteen years older than I was, and I suppose Chang Li was eighteen years younger, but Vicky was the artist Li would never be.

56

Tom Malloy and Liz McAllister pronounced themselves satisfied with the chips coming to us from China. Guangdong Micro-Technology, GMT, proved capable of producing chips that consistently met every test. The tests were beyond my comprehension but not beyond my understanding that
they worked,
which was what counted, so far as I was concerned.

Malloy designed the Sphere IV and put it out for beta testing. He took it to national trade shows and let the computer types play with it. It got good notices in the trade journals. There was a half-breathless anticipation for it, something like what there had been for Windows 95 before it shipped.

All I knew was, it was a handsome machine. And, more important, it ran Windows, not just a Malloy proprietary operating system. That would make all the difference.

The merchandise from Bai Fuyuan was generally good. Charlie Han inspected it in Hong Kong before it was shipped to the States. He rejected an occasional batch of items, but on the whole the lingerie was put together well from high-quality fabrics. Charlie Han knew fabrics, and he knew stitching. We were lucky to have him.

The only real problem we had was with colors. For some odd reason, Bai’s people could not exactly match our colors. That is, he could not match the colors used by our Hong Kong makers.

Okay …

We were doing business as we had planned. The legalities of some parts of it were mysterious, but we relied on Hong Kong solicitors to steer us. The merchandise was made in China and shipped to Guangzhou or Hong Kong without labels. In those two cities labels were sewn in saying the merchandise was made in Hong Kong, some of it in the United States. Shipments to the States—merchandise with Hong Kong labels—went out as air cargo. When it arrived in the States, import tariffs were paid. Shipments from Guangzhou went up the coast and were delivered at various Chinese ports, chiefly Shanghai. The labels on the merchandise said it had been made in Hong Kong. The shipping documents said it had been made in China and was being shipped only in coastal trade.

I asked my father to come out to Hong Kong. I wanted him to see the Friendship Store in Guangzhou, and Bai wanted him to be present for the opening of our two shops in Beijing. He insisted that an appearance by Jerry Cooper was important.

One reason why he did not want to come was that Therèse did not want to. She had settled into a comfortable life in Florida, fishing, playing bridge, and feeding her herons; and it was true that the flight out and back was an ordeal, even for younger people, even if they did travel in the first-class section.

Reluctantly, my father agreed to make the trip alone. He sounded weary on the telephone, and I was tempted to tell him to forget it, that he was entitled to his relaxation.

Imagine my surprise when I met him at the new airport and found him not alone. Liz was with him.

“She wants to see how Zhang makes chips,” he explained. “So, it occurred to me that she could come with me and ease some of the burden of travel.”

My father was full of surprises for me always. He casually announced that Liz would not be going to a hotel but would share his room in the second apartment.

*   *   *

She had brought with her a Sphere IV. She hooked it up in my apartment office and shortly had it doing impressive things. I’d learned a lot about computers before leading our company into making the commitment it had made, but Liz was a computer guru and could make the machine do things I didn’t know any machine could do.

“Look, honey,” she said to me, leaning over me and brushing me with her oversized breasts. “This one is set up with both Microsoft Word
and
Corel WordPerfect.”

I knew that was important. Loyalists for both programs wanted to see documents formatted for their choice between these major word processors. To do that, the Sphere had to have a lot of RAM: a lot of memory, plus a capacious hard drive. What was more, this computer ran at six hundred megahertz, which was about as fast as any desktop could then run—what the advertising copywriters liked to call “blinding speed.” Of course, I knew that today’s blinding speed would be a crawl tomorrow.

My father watched quizzically, without total interest, as Liz demonstrated the Sphere and then turned it over to me. He didn’t pretend to know what we were talking about. He had pronounced himself too far along in life to learn a whole new science.

*   *   *

He was no innocent, though. At the end of his second day in Hong Kong he took me aside in my apartment office and asked me a pointed question.

“How much are we paying Charlie Han?”

“A hundred twenty thousand,” I said. “Plus perks.”

“Do his perks include that Mercedes? That’s one hell of a luxury car.”

“No. We’ve known all along that he was doing some business on the side.”

“All I want to know is, is he competing with us? Or worse, is he cheating on us? You know, he could be putting his imprimatur on merchandise that does not in fact meet standards.”

I nodded. “Are we getting complaints? Are the customers back home…?”

“No. Well … it would take time. But no. We’ve had no complaints about the merchandise. But I can walk into a store and tell immediately what was made in Hong Kong and what in China. It’s good stuff. It’s correctly sewn. But the colors are all a little off.”

“I’ve noticed that,” I said.

“I wonder,” said my father, “if Bai Fuyuan doesn’t have some reason for that. I mean, he can walk into any store, anywhere, and know what part of the stock came from him.”

“I tend to trust Charlie Han,” I said.

“I’ve got good reason to trust him,” said my father. “He committed perjury for me, one time.”

“But it’s a slippery business. I lose sleep over it.”

*   *   *

Liz went over to Guangzhou to meet Zhang Feng and see his shops. Charlie sent along a young Chinese woman to be Liz’s interpreter.

Bai Fuyuan wanted us to be in Beijing for the opening of the first Cheeks shop there. Liz very much wanted to see Beijing and said she would pay her own expenses to go there. So it was arranged that she would fly from Guangzhou to Beijing and meet us there. I knew, of course, that my father would take care of her expenses.

She already had her visa for visiting China. We had to obtain ours and so had to go to the Chinese travel agency, be photographed, and fill out our applications. Two days later we returned to pick up our passports with the visas stamped inside.

Before we left for Beijing, Zhang Feng appeared in Hong Kong and offered us a boat ride. We agreed to go. The boat would circle Hong Kong Island and stop for a fish dinner on Lamma Island. We would have a good time, he promised.

Zhang was conspicuously taken aback when he discovered that my wife was with me. He had brought along three little girls. He had planned that we should have a good time.