Bad Traffic (7 page)

Jian fumbled in the old man’s pocket and found a mobile. He shifted uncomfortably, this position being tough on his knees, and called the student Song. The phone rang and rang – she had better be up – then a sleepy voice muttered in English.

‘
Zhe shi zhong guo jing cha
… This is the Chinese policeman. Tell me what this man is saying.’

‘
Zenme hui shi le?
… What’s going on?’

‘He’s speaking English, but he’s distressed. Just tell me what he’s saying.’

Jian held the phone down over the old man’s babbling mouth, then put it back to his ear. The girl sounded awake now, and alarmed.

‘Is that the man from that restaurant?’

‘He knows about my daughter. Tell me what he is saying.’

‘What have you done to him? What’s going on? Maybe I should call the police.’

‘If you hang up, I’ll hit him again. Then I’ll call someone else.’

‘You hit him?’

‘He knows about my daughter. I’m going to keep hitting him until I find out what he knows. If you want me to stop, tell me what he’s saying.’

He could hear her ragged breathing, and just from that constructed an image of her distraught expression. He
suppressed
a twinge of guilt.

She said, ‘Put the phone on his mouth.’

He did so, and the screen display lit up frightened eyes. He let her hear twenty seconds of jabber, then returned the phone to his ear.

‘Well?’

‘He says she was here but it’s not his fault. He says he’s really sorry but there was nothing he could do. He keeps say it. Nothing he could do, nothing he could do. He’s very scared. He says he wants to help you.’

‘Now what is he saying?’

‘Oh, this is too horrible.’

‘What’s he saying?’

‘He says that he really liked her and he’s got something to show you. Don’t ever call me again.’

‘Don’t hang up.’

‘He’s going to show you something. Don’t ever call again.’ The phone went dead.

Jian hauled the old man to his feet. He was rubbing his neck and whining, so Jian checked for damage. He was okay – a little superficial redness.

The man beckoned with a scrawny wrist and led Jian into the restaurant. He reached behind the ceramic figure of the portly Kitchen God and slid out a thin briefcase.

Jian took two chairs and they sat opposite each other at a corner table. As the old man fumbled with the combination lock, Jian lit a 555 and the table candle. The little flame cast an intimate glow over the two figures and threw thorny shadows round the rest of the room.

The old man took out from his briefcase a pink clamshell phone. He gave it to Jian. A green gonk hung off it. Jian knew that dumb toy, and looked up sharply.

‘This is my daughter’s.’

The gonk’s fur was matted with dried black gunk. More coagulated between phone keys.

The old man reached back into the briefcase, then stepped away and his chair toppled over. He was pointing a gun, a squat six-shooter. Jian looked at him coldly. The barrel wavered, the old man had no idea how to handle it. Perhaps he did not have the strength to pull the trigger. The safety looked to be still on. A couple of seconds passed and Jian didn’t get shot, so he went back to examining the phone.

With a nail Jian scraped gunk from between the keys. He held a flake on the tip of his finger and brought it close to the candle flame. It was slightly translucent, with a
reddish
tinge. It looked like dried blood. He felt the stone in his stomach turn over.

‘What’s going on? What’s happened?’

The old man reached for the phone.

Some five months previously, Wei Wei had walked into the Floating Lotus restaurant and asked about the job ad in the window.

Mister Li, manager, knew right away he was going to employ her. Possibly she’d be trouble, but it was worth
finding
out. She was tall and beautiful, her hair was slick and her skin pale and smooth, she moved well and she knew how to dress. She was wearing tight jeans and high-heeled boots and a white blouse. Not much was left to the
imagination
, but it wasn’t too trampy.

They communicated in English, she did not speak any Cantonese. Her manner was forthright, and when she talked, she held Mister Li’s eye and did not dip her head, but she didn’t come across as too forward, either. It turned out she was a mainlander, pretty much fresh off the plane. That surprised him, as he considered
mainlanders
rude, ruddy and uncouth. But of course things had changed up there of late: earthy peasant values had gone out of fashion, now they’d got developed they could afford manners. He said he’d pay her four pounds fifty an hour, could keep half her tips, and would she start that evening?

She was good. She picked things up quickly, she was charming and a lot of guys started turning up just for the honour of being served by her. When she wasn’t
working
, she chatted on her pink mobile. It was high end, a clamshell. She liked to film herself on it. She always
had good stuff. Young Chinese these days, they spent all their money on name brands and didn’t save the way his generation did.

One midweek evening, a Chinese man who he had not seen before, eating alone, let a hand drift over her thigh. She slapped him across the face. He laughed, and when he had finished eating he left her a tip of a twenty-pound note. Li watched her pocket it. She did it well, slipping it into her palm while sliding in its place a couple of pound coins.

If Li had not been well used to the tricks of waitresses, he would never have noticed. He considered what he should do, and decided to leave it, and that was the point at which he admitted to himself that he was infatuated. He loved to watch her work, he loved to make her smile, and he loved to see her happy. He looked forward to her coming in and kept an eye on the rota to see when she was due. He was dressing better these days. He entertained fantasies that she would agree to become his lover. It did not strike him as absurd, as, after all, he was a man of means. But for the present he was content to keep his feelings under wraps, as he had a business to run.

A week later the big tipper came back, and this time he brought three mates with him. Li felt uneasy. They sat in the middle of the dining room and did not seem to care how much noise they were making or how drunk they got. They were playing drinking games, and the place emptied as they grew more raucous.

Wei Wei put a soup tureen down on the lazy susan.
Skeletal
fish heads with white eyes bobbed in a murky stew. The leader of the group, the good-looker with the
birthmark
, winked at her. She didn’t react. He lunged and she stepped back and he laughed and upended the tureen.

He said, in the English of a native speaker, ‘I’m not paying for this muck. Get the manager.’ Soup dribbled, fish gaped.

Mister Li had been watching and was expecting something like this. He hurried to the table. Now the men slouched in attitudes of insolent threat. The leader introduced himself as Black Fort. It was just the kind of nickname a tong bruiser would give himself.

‘Your food is shit,’ said Black Fort, speaking Cantonese, ‘but the place is nice.’ He broke a toothpick in half and began working it from one side of his mouth to the other.

‘Please pay for your meal,’ said Mister Li, and then he heard what he been dreading.

‘We’re in insurance. We’ll insure you for one hundred and eight pounds a week. Think of it as luck money. First
payment
now.’

‘You don’t scare me. If you are not going to pay for your meal, get out of my restaurant.’

‘Pay us now.’

‘No.’

Black Fort swept a hand across the table and plates
clattered
to the floor and smashed. Another guy filled the soup spoon and flicked it. A third picked up a length of noodle with his chopsticks and whirled it around. A piece flew off and splattered into the wall, and the guy laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world.

Mister Li explained to the last remaining customers, a young couple, that he was very sorry but they would have to leave, and of course he did not expect them to pay for their meal. He told the waitresses to go into the kitchen. He
stood breathing carefully as the men ripped the limpet hats from the walls and put them on. They knocked the
remaining
plates to the floor and stamped on them if they didn’t smash and turned over tables. Mister Li forced himself not to flinch. He hoped that they did not attack the shrine of the Kitchen God, and that his staff had the sense to stay in the kitchen.

‘They’ll stop if you pay.’

‘No.’

At some signal from Black Fort, the gang assembled, out of breath from their labours. Black Fort and Mister Li assessed each other. Li did not waver. He noticed that Black Fort’s eyes were unusually pale. There was something yellowish about the pupils, which combined with his delicate
complexion
to make him unsettling. And he knew it, obviously.

The toothpick travelled from one side to the other. Black Fort smiled dreamily, as if at some pleasant thought, and said, ‘We’re going to charge you for redecorating, too. One hundred and twenty pounds a week.’ He tucked a black namecard into Li’s shirt pocket.

He asked around. The Indian restaurants and the shops owned by whites didn’t pay extortion money, but the east Asians had all been preyed upon. Some had made an initial payment, but others, like him, had refused, and nothing had yet happened. The community was bracing itself.

Li sensed that it was vital to stop this rot while it was still possible. If he left it longer, everyone would be paying, the tong would be stronger, and there would be no
question
of fighting back. Their quiet city would become like London and Manchester, where every east Asian business announced its fealty to one tong or another with a plaque behind the counter acknowledging a contribution to this or that benevolent fund.

Of course the matter could be dealt with simply by
bringing
in an established triad to deal with these upstarts. One importer had made inquiries of the Wu Song Wu, and a friend of a friend knew a Little Horse in the 14K. But that, he knew, was no long-term solution, for when the smoke had cleared they would be left with another tong to deal with, and, however sympathetic they started out, tongs always reverted to type. They were leeches who lived upon the honest.

The black card held a design of a cocktail glass and a pair of red lips beside the two characters, printed in a script that mimicked brush calligraphy: Black Fort. There was an address in English, in Liverpool, and no phone number.

Mister Li went to the address, in a shabby street at the back of an industrial estate. A nondescript door had an expensive intercom. He buzzed and a girl’s voice, in
Cantonese
, told him to hold the card up to the CCTV camera above the door. He obeyed and the lock clicked.

It led to a dark, narrow hallway. He went upstairs and came out in a small bar lit with garish red light. Plastic bunches of grapes hung from the ceiling. Chinese pop music was playing. Prints of soft-focus nudes in heavy frames were hung against flock wallpaper. A blonde woman whose white dress billowed around her thighs was smiling at him – no, it was a cardboard cutout.

Two men sat at the bar: Black Fort and a podgy, middle-aged white man. Black Fort had his arms around the waists of two Asian girls. He patted them and pointed at a sofa and they wobbled away in platform heels and curled up on it.

He said in Cantonese, ‘Good of you to drop in,’ and gestured at the stool next to him. ‘Drink? On the house.’ Another girl stubbed out a cigarette and slipped behind the bar.

Mister Li, choosing to stand, said, ‘Thank you, but no.’ He was still getting used to the lighting. More details came out of that red gloom – fake flowers, plastic fruit in a bowl, the
thick make-up on the three girls which turned their faces into masks.

‘A pity. I have very good whisky, single malt. Everything here is of a high quality.’ He pinched the barmaid’s cheek and she didn’t flinch. Obviously he was the man in
command
here, and wanted to show it.

He switched, without a pause, to English. ‘Let me
introduce
you to my companion. This is my good friend Kevin. Kevin, this is Mister Li, manager of the Floating Lotus restaurant.’

Li found himself shaking the thick white hand, though this Kevin person seemed as uninterested as him in the process. The hand was heavy but the shake limp.

‘Kevin is in the people business. If you ever need staff, give him a ring.’

Black Fort plucked the namecard out of Mister Li’s hand and gave it to Kevin, and Kevin wrote his name and a mobile number on the back, saying, ‘Yeah, I’ll sort you out. Very cheap. I do all the paperwork, you get me the cash and they turn up and do the job. Good little workers who won’t give you any trouble.’

Mister Li put the card in his shirt pocket and gathered himself, throwing back his shoulders and raising his chin.

‘Okay,’ said Black Fort, and switched back into Cantonese. ‘Let me hear it. I can’t pay, overheads, you’ll put me out of business.’

‘I am inviting you to a banquet. I know the value of a good insurance policy and I want to set the table and talk
business
. Come to my place on Wednesday night.’

‘Around seven okay?’

‘Excellent.’

‘Will you be cooking some tasty dishes?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will the tastiest dish of all be there?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘That waitress. The mainlander.’

‘She will serve us.’

‘Excellent. Would you like a girl? Considerate and discreet.’

‘Thank you, but I am a little tired. I must attend my
business
.’ He said a courteous goodbye and stiffly made his exit.