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I’d heard plenty about Markle Hyde, of course. Financier, philanthropist, professional do-gooder; and I wondered what he was doing with such efficient, old-time bodyguards.
I soon found out.
He was a man of sixty or so, tough, agile, very sure of himself except in patches, a short, stubby sort of man who stood on two wide-spaced feet as though daring the world to come and knock him down. And everything about him spelt money.
The house was big and cool and comfortable in the old Portuguese Colonial style, overfilled with Chinese furniture and decorated with Chinese sculptures in stone and jade, some fine pieces among them. A huge and ugly bronze bear from the Han Dynasty, heavily gilded, was the centerpiece of the room I was in; and when I looked at it with admiration—there are only three of these pieces left in the world—Markle Hyde said tartly: “Not my taste, Cain, this is not my house. Now, what’s your drink?”
His voice was sharp and imperative, the voice of a man used to giving orders. But he was holding out his hand and saying in the same breath: “I’m Markle Hyde, and you’re going to work for me.”
I said mildly: “I am?”
“Yes. Yes, you are. Sit down, Cain. Sit down and listen.”
I said: “You offered me a drink.”
“All right, what’ll it be?”
“Back home, this kind of weather, I like to drink gin and tonic. But out here...anything long and cold. Whatever you have.”
It was almost an affront to an overly developed sense of hospitality—or perhaps I should say, of the pride that comes from possession and the ability to make it show in even the smallest ways; he was going to put me in my place right away. He said: “What kind of gin? Just name it.”
“Gordon’s Gin, Schweppes tonic, lots of ice, and a fourteen ounce glass. Please.”
He said coldly: “Good. I like a man who knows what he wants.” He made no move towards the mirrored bar at the back of the room; but when I turned at the breath of a sound, an elderly Chinese servant was padding across the room in almost absolute silence; I heard the tinkle of glassware, Markle Hyde said suddenly: “And before I tell you why you are here, I’d better ask if you know who I am?”
I said: “I’ve heard of you. Who hasn’t? But I only know what I read in the papers.”
“Ah yes, you’re a voracious reader, aren’t you? They told me.”
“They?”
He ignored the question. He shrugged his shoulders and said: “And I’m sorry about that little incident outside. If you’d let my man drive you in from the airport, it wouldn’t have happened.”
I said: “It’s three miles. For me, that’s a pleasant stroll. I like to walk.”
The elderly Chinese, red-robed and soft-slippered, was there beside me, handing me a fourteen ounce glass on a silver tray, bowing and showing his yellow teeth; I was astonished at the absolute silence in which he moved; I fancied I could hear old bones creaking and nothing more.
I said: “Nobody important got hurt, so it’s a trifle. What happens when that skiff runs out of gas and the dead body turns up?”
He shrugged. “This is Macao, Cain. It’ll probably hit the other coast anyway, and then it’s their problem, not ours.” He said abruptly: “Did you ever hear of a man named Ben Stirani?”
“No.”
“A gangster, old-style, post-Capone.”
“Ah yes. Drugs, I seem to remember.”
“That’s the man. Did you ever hear what happened to him?”
I frowned: “No...I seem to recall that he just...dropped out of sight.”
In the back of my mind, there were bells ringing, announcing little bits of useless information that had long been half-forgotten. One of my students at Stanford had written a thesis on the theories of supply and demand in a permissive society; it was concerned largely with the idea that when society as a whole permits what the law prohibits, then there is a complete reversal of all that the law stands for. Part of his argument dealt with a climate in which the gangsters not only flourished, but became shrouded in an aura of legendary glamour. Stirani had figured largely in his arguments. I thought it was a strange world for a man like Markle Hyde to be interested in, till it occurred to me that a man of his enormous wealth must, from time to time, be aware of the predators around him.
He said now, with a touch of sarcasm: “Stirani was undoubtedly one of the most vicious hoods in history, Cain. If anyone can be said to have deserved the end he was reputed to have met, then Stirani did.”
“Oh? I didn’t bear about that?”
“According to the files of the FBI, Stirani was dropped into a bath of sulfuric acid. In Geneva, Switzerland.”
“Oh? And whose idea was that?”
He laughed. “Almost everybody’s. But it’s not true, Cain. That was the story that was discreetly passed around to facilitate his disappearance. And his reappearance as someone else.”
The bells were still ringing, and all the little pieces were coming back into focus in my memory. They were sketchy; there were only newspaper reports to go on.
I said: “And there was a story a while back that Stirani’s old crowd has surfaced again, led by a man named...Ming? Alexander Ming? Are you suggesting that Ming is Stirani? Because if you are, I’ll be damned if I can see what the hell all this has to do with me.”
Interrupting me, Markle Hyde said sharply: “No, Cain, I’m not. I wouldn’t have brought you all this way, I wouldn’t have hired you in the first place, if all we’re concerned with is...God dammit, gang warfare. I know a great deal more about you than you know about me. I know that you can’t be hired for trivia. And to my mind that’s all it is when hoods start killing each other off, jockeying for position, coming to the surface and drowning again...It’s a matter of the least possible concern to me. I need you for something much more vital, so vital you can’t possibly turn me down. So shut up and listen.”
He didn’t have a particularly disarming manner. But I’d come a long way and wasn’t prepared to run off in a sulk just because his manners were offensive. There was something that was worrying him deeply under all that bluster.
As if reading my thoughts, he said:
“I know that you can only be called upon when...when something terribly wrong has to be put right.”
My empty glass disappeared in silence; it was refilled and put back in silence.
