“I take her with me, Cain. That’s all there is to it.”
Well, I didn’t think it would matter very much. I said: “Okay, then make at least a pretense that she’s showing you around, a guide, a personal friend, that sort of thing.”
“That’s exactly what she is, a personal friend. And does that bother you?”
“Oh. Well fine. But I’ll have a man behind you anyway. If anything untoward happens, get word to him fast, and he’ll get it to me. Unhappily I stand out in a crowd, so I can’t stick too close to you.”
“I’ll bet.” She said: “There’s just one thing. What makes you think they’ll try to pick me up rather than just...knock me off. Mann-Crawford seemed to think you were pretty sure about that.”
I said carefully: “Two things. They just might believe you really are Sally Hyde, in which case they’ll pick you up because Ming will want to know how come Sally Hyde knows so much about his movements. Or, on the other hand, they might realize at once that you’re not; in which case they’ll want to find out what the hell goes on and who put you onto them and why. In either event, they’ll snatch you and try to make you talk. I don’t have to tell you the risk is considerable, so keep your wits about you.”
I saw her shudder. She lost her composure for a moment and muttered: “You’d better keep that money coming in, that’s all.”
I said: “Sally Hyde must have a friend, or friends here, someone who told her Ming was here. She’s not the kind of woman to race off on a wild goose chase without some sort of knowledge. That’s the bit of knowledge that they’ll want to drag out of her.”
She was standing in front of the mirror, stroking her fine breasts. She said moodily: “They stick bamboo slivers in you and set fire to them.” Her hands stayed on her breasts as she turned to look at me solemnly, questioningly.
I said gently: “I’ll take good care nobody hurts you, Bettina.”
She was suddenly her old self again, and she said sharply: “Mai will do that.”
I said, worrying about it: “I don’t want to pull any punches. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“I know. If you did, I’d get up and go, and the hell with you and your money. So, don’t ever hold back on me, Cain. As long as this lasts, keep up the honest boy scout bit, it comforts me. And talking about comfort, you want to take me to bed?”
I said politely: “Not right now, dear.”
“Okay, just an idea. You want Mai?”
“Later, maybe.”
“Just say the word.”
“Tell me about her, Bettina. I can’t believe you regard her as...for God’s sake, as a bodyguard. All ninety pounds of her.”
Bettina slopped some ice into our glasses and filled them with Scotch. She lay back on the bed with her shoulders on the pillows and sipped her drink and said:
“Mai’s more than she seems, a lot more. When they killed her father two years ago, she came to me for work. There’s not much for a good-looking broad like Mai to do in these parts that pays better than what I could offer her, and she knew it; only...my God, at twenty-eight she’d never been to bed with a man in her life, can you believe that? In this day and age? And she didn’t really want to, but I thought what the hell, she’ll learn, and then...Well, I found out that she had some unexpected talents, very considerable talents. Her father had taught her how to use a gun, and use it well, and she has a black belt in karate too. Her old man was as tough as a bag of hobnails. He taught the terror squads over on the mainland how to keep the good guys subservient to the bad guys...Anyway, just about this time one of the secret societies was trying to horn in on my business, and they’d sent one of their thugs round to see me. This jerk was going to rough me up because I told them all go to hell. He had a knife, the ugly little bastard. Well, Mai was there, and the moment he pulled out his blade she snapped his arm in two places with the flat of that tiny little hand, ruined him for life with a sharp kick in the balls, and then threw him out, clear through the second-story window. So I figured there might be better things for her than tarting around with the rest of them. She’s been with me ever since. Companion, bodyguard, call it what you like.”
Was I being old-fashioned? I said: “I still find it hard to believe she’s all that good.”
Bettina shook her head stubbornly. “Whether it makes sense or not, take my word for it. You get into a fight, and in my business that happens all the time, Mai’s worth any ten men I know. I don’t care what the opposition is, or what they’re fighting with, Mai will take them, but good. For God’s sake, you’ve never heard of warrior women before?”
“All right. And what happens when she learns that the opposition is Ming?”
Bettina said sourly: “You don’t have much of an opinion of women, do you, Cain? First me, then Mai. Take my word for it, neither of us is going to wet her pants on account of Ming.”
“So that’s all right then.” I got up to go and turned back to look at her lying there with one arm behind her head and sipping her whisky. I thought that at this moment, at certain angles, her hard face was quite attractive, even beautiful; it was a face with past agonies etched deeply into it, agonies that had been overcome but never quite forgotten. The softness had gone, and it is the touch of softness in a woman that makes for true beauty. She looked terribly vulnerable, and I hoped I wasn’t being too optimistic about her chances.
I said: “Start out at eleven this evening, but wait till I come back here first. I want you to see that man who’s going to be close behind you, the man you yell for if anything happens.”
She nodded gravely.
“So...see you around ten-thirty or so. Don’t leave this room till then. Chances are it’s all over town that Sally Hyde’s in port.”
I went outside, and there, sitting on a window seat at the end of the corridor was the fragile Mai, backlit with her lovely face half in shadow. Her deep brown eyes watched me as I walked away towards the wide stairway; when I looked back, she was still watching me, not moving at all, just sitting there demurely with her hands in her lap. On an impulse, I went back and spoke to her.
I said: “You know the danger you’re liable to be in?”
Her childlike face was solemn, composed, unemotional. As I looked at her, she smiled and then laughed, showing her very even teeth shining brightly against the red of her mouth.
She said: “Yes, I know the danger, Mr. Cain, for all of us. You too. For you more than anyone.”
“Oh? Why so much for me?”
“This is our life, Mr. Cain. We move all the time among people you probably never meet except once in a lifetime. Not nice people. This is a very hard place, and I don’t think you know that yet.”
“I know it.” It was hard to talk to her; she looked like a child.
She said: “Remember it always. It is better.”
I wondered if she knew more than I did about all this. Come to that, I wondered if everybody knew more than I did. As I went back to the stairs, I reflected that, in this evil place, I was working for an ex-narcotics king, and my allies were whores and panderers and a man whom the Hong Kong police would dearly like to get their hands on. But in this sink of iniquity, these were precisely the people I needed. But I was, I thought, none the less the gullible newcomer ready to be stepped on the moment he got too worrisome.
It seemed wise to take the back way out of the hotel. I went through the kitchens, where a number of eyes were raised in surprise, and out onto the narrow passage that ran down behind the hotel.
But getting into the habit can be a bad habit. I should have used the front entrance, where there were crowds and the relative safety that crowds imply. Because the moment I stepped out into the bright sunlight, I saw that I’d made a mistake. That’s where they were waiting for me.
There were four of them. Big men, from the North. Big, that is, for Chinese; not one of them came up as high as my chin, nor came within thirty pounds of my weight. And I remembered, inconsequentially, Bonelli’s cryptic remark: You know you have to watch out for the big men, don’t you? It hadn’t meant much at the time; but now, with the clarity of sudden panic, I remembered one of those tinkling bells—Ming was an American, of Chinese origin. But the Chinese part of him came from the North, from Shantung, where the men, unlike the small and light-footed Cantonese of the South, are big and burly and muscular. Look out for the Northerners, Bonelli was saying. They’re liable to be Ming’s men. They stick together, these men from the North.
