She laughed suddenly, and the laugh transformed her face completely; she looked a good deal more pleasant. Then she relaxed again and said: “Well, it won’t be the first time.”
“It might well be the last.”
She was very tense all of a sudden. She said flatly: “Then there’s something that bloody cop didn’t tell me, is that it?”
“The man gunning for you is Alexander Ming. Does that worry you?”
Again, there was a freezing of motion, and then she went on brushing that long hair rhythmically and with a great deal of concentration. She said finally: “There’s always a catch, isn’t there? I wondered why you were so free with the money.”
I asked her again: “Does it worry you?”
She said easily: “Of course it worries me, you stupid bastard.” She looked at me sharply and said: “You don’t know much about the seamy side of life, do you, or you wouldn’t ask a stupid question like that. In my world, you worry about every bastard who’d like to stick a knife up your arse. Because, if you don’t worry, you don’t survive; but I suppose a thought like that never occurred to you.”
I said: “Are you backing out before you’ve given it a try?”
“No.” She waved the bundle of money at me. “Just keep the currency rolling in; it’s a mighty cure for all ailments.”
“All right. And a fat bonus when we’re through.”
“Unless I get killed.”
“If you get killed, I’ll have saved myself that little bit extra, won’t I?”
She laughed again, unexpectedly, and said: “You’re all right, Cain. I like you. And when this is over, if you want to join my operation, I’ll take you in with me. Room and board and the pick of the broads, how does that sound?”
She leaned in to the mirror and started making up her eyes. They were dark, dark blue, almost black. She said thoughtfully: “Alexander Ming...I owe that bastard a turn or two.”
“Oh? How come?”
She said with a shrug: “He gets a cut of my operation. He gets a cut of everybody’s operation. Pay up, or else look out.”
I didn’t like the sound of that and said so. “If you pay these dues, isn’t it likely that they’ll know you?”
She said: “Pooh. One of my minions pays one of their minions; lower-echelon stuff—it’s no problem. And that’s in Hong Kong, not Macao, and the compartments are kept watertight.”
“He must be a very popular man around town, Alexander Ming.”
Bettina said: “You want to run gasoline into Red China, or bring girls from Bangkok, or hijack guns outside Takow, you pay a cut to Ming, or the pirates are there waiting for you.” She stared at me suddenly and said: “Yes, that makes him pretty unpopular; but don’t kid yourself; you won’t easily find people to work against him.”
“But you will.”
“For money, yes. I hate his guts, and I don’t like his main source of income very much either.”
“Drugs?” I was absolutely sure I wasn’t making a comment.
But she turned on me almost accusingly. “All right, I’m probably the most immoral bitch you ever laid eyes on, but my commodity is sex, Cain, and sex never killed anyone. It never turned a woman into a sniveling, gut-rotted animal; and if you’ve never seen what Ming’s product can do, then don’t try to tell me how wicked I am. My business keeps them clean and healthy and happy; yes, happy, for God’s sake, because they’re no good to me any other way, but Ming—that bastard. Have you ever seen anyone who can’t get off the stuff?”
“I’ve seen. And I’m not trying to lecture you. How well do you know Macao?”
“I’ve been here a dozen times before.” She turned and grimaced at me. “How’s that?”
“How’s what?”
“The eyeshadow, idiot?”
“The eyeshadow’s fine. Then you’re known here?”
That shrug again. “Only in the best circles. I usually change my name if I move around too much. In my racket, it isn’t always healthy for everyone to know just who is where, when. There’s always some jerk trying to move in on me every time some pretty little teenager comes to my nest. It’s bad enough with the big boys.”
I wasn’t about to say a word, but Bettina said swiftly: “They come to me out of the slums, starving, barefoot, and covered all over with lice, without a hope in the world for anything—until I get my hands on them. Then they get fed, and cleaned up, and clothed, and well looked after, and they make good money. And all they’re doing is what they’ve been trained from babyhood to do; only when they’re working for me, they’re doing it with a guy who washes, and not some filthy, stinking peasant who hasn’t had a bath since the day his grandmother dropped him in the stinking harbor. Once they’ve been with me for a couple of weeks, my girls wouldn’t go back to what they came from for all the tea in China. And neither, if you’d seen what that’s like, would you.”
Well, that was quite a speech.
I rang for room service and said: “What about a drink? Gin? Scotch? Or whatever?”
“Scotch, dearie.”
“Soda?”
“No soda. Soda makes my ankles swell up.”
The man came and I ordered a bottle of Haig and Haig and some ice; and when he had brought it and we were sitting there like old friends, I gave Bettina a list of night clubs together with the precise times she was supposed to spend at each one.
I said: “I want to know exactly where you are at each minute of the day. You start at eleven tonight, and you keep it up till dawn, and when it looks right you ask somebody, anybody, if he knows where you can find Alexander Ming. That’s all; just—Where can I find Alexander Ming? You come home at dawn, and you do the same thing tomorrow night, and the night after, and keep on doing it till we get some action. Play the tables, spend a little money, and don’t forget that your name is Sally Hyde. Now, your companion is a problem, Sally Hyde wouldn’t be toting a Chinese girl around with her.”
Bettina said flatly: “Where I go, Mai goes.”
“So I’ll see that there’s a man handy to keep an eye on you.”
