Shanghai (42 page)

Richard slid his hand out from beneath the Patriarch's and, with what to Vrassoon was surprising dexterity, stacked the deeds and put them back in two large manila envelopes. “I think not. Perhaps I'd be better off with Hercules, or maybe even Dent's. I understand that both are angry that they didn't buy land when they could—that they left the field to us Yids.”

The guards at the door made a move toward Richard, but Vrassoon signalled them to back off. “How many properties are we talking about, son?”

Richard resisted saying,
I'm not your son!
and managed to smile as he enumerated the number, location, and potential revenue of each of his one hundred and seven properties without ever referring to the deeds.

The rest was just dickering. Since Richard knew exactly how much he needed, he refused to sell when the offer was too low and accepted when the offer rose to his needs. The whole process took less than three hours—substantially less time than it had taken him to buy up the entire cotton crop from the Shanghai delta lands—the cheapest fine cotton available in the world outside of Egypt and of course the southern states of the United States of America, which just that morning had declared themselves independent from their federal government in Washington.

* * *

“HOW LONG should it take, Father?” Milo asked as he went over the last of the warehouse contracts that he had settled with Chen.

“For what, Milo?”

“For the price of our cotton to go through the ceiling, naturally.”

Richard lit a cigar and leaned back in his chair. Lily immediately came forward and supplied a fresh ashtray. Richard blew the blue-grey smoke into the evening air and shrugged his shoulders.

Milo stopped what he was doing with the warehouse contracts and stared at his father. “You don't know? Hell's bells, you don't know!”

“We're traders, son, not mystics. We invest and hope. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.”

“And if we lose this time?”

“We lose it all. Warehouses, trading routes, steamships, even the house we're standing in.”

“You mortgaged our house?”

“There's no point in having only
some
of the Shanghai delta cotton.”

“You bought the whole crop?”

“And optioned the next two years', as well. I think the Americans will be fighting with themselves for a long time.”

“Over slaves?”

Richard shook his head. “That war has nothing to do with slaves. It's got to be about money, control, and, you can bet your last
tael,
religion. Both sides claim to be doing God's will. And when religious nuts fight they fight for a long time. Usually until a new generation comes along and tells the old bearded zealots to put their guns up their own arses, that no one cares whose God or gods are right or wrong. That it's time to recognize the obvious, that the world is clearly a place of random occurrences and whim. If there is a God up there, son, he's bored silly with us and awakens only periodically to tinker with our hearts and destroy our lives.” Milo stared at his father. “Worried about my immortal soul, are we?”

“No, Father, I don't give a damn about your immortal soul.”

“Good, because I
have
no immortal soul, nor do you, nor do any of them.”

“As you will.”

“Fine, but what is it that is worrying you, then?”

“You cashed in everything that the Hordoons own, didn't you? Everything. If this goes bad we lose everything.”

“Not true, son. Absolutely not true.”

“Then you didn't sell everything we own?”

“Oh, that I did, son, that I did, every last item that had our names on it has been sold.”

“Then I'm right, we could lose everything.”

“Wrong.”

“How am I wrong, Father?”

Richard began to laugh so hard that he had to take the cigar out of his mouth. He sputtered with laughter. He rocked with laughter. He giggled and guffawed and roared with laughter. And Milo couldn't help himself and joined his father—and Lily thought the two had gone mad, quite mad.

Finally Milo got control of himself and pulled his father to his feet by the lapels of his waistcoat. “So, Father, if you are wrong we end up with nothing.”

His eyes streaming with tears of laughter, Richard shook his head. “Absolutely not—you'll have seventeen warehouses full of cotton!”

* * *

WITHIN SIX MONTHS—six harrowing months in which Richard laid off his entire house staff, closed down all of his operations, and sold off the last of his ocean-going clippers—Richard's cotton gamble proved to be the single most successful commodities play the Middle Kingdom had ever seen. The cost of cotton doubled, then trebled, then doubled that—until finally Richard agreed to sell some of the only available cotton in the world—his Shanghai delta cotton—to keep the shirt factories of Manchester and the textile factories of Lyon and the clothing factories of Bremen afloat.

And money the likes of which had never been seen—more even than the wealth of the Kadooris' rubber monopoly in Siam—flowed into the coffers of Shanghai's Hordoon and Sons.

“Why aren't you happy, Father? We won!” Milo asked.

Richard was still groggy from last evening's opium dreams. Groggy and haggard. He felt the snakes of opium trails in his blood, their slow, sinuous dance lingering where they were no longer wanted. He lunged toward the porcelain bowl in the water closet and doused his face with cold water, then looked in the mirror. The deep lines on his face surprised him. Behind him, in the mirror, his handsome son Milo stood waiting for him to answer his question. How handsome this boy was. How competent this boy was. How this boy loved him—how he loved this boy. He turned to face his adored son.

“Ask me again.”

Milo did. “Why aren't you happy, Father?”

Richard thought of the report he recently received from the Pinkerton he had hired. The report informing him that his father had died in one of Vrassoon's warehouses and that the great man had thrown his father in the Ganges like so much rotten fruit. He thought of the simple two lines about his mother: “No definitive answers. But it is most likely she starved to death long ago.” He sighed deeply, knowing that even that was not the reason for his unhappiness.
Because I'm haunted by whispers of a memory,
he wanted to say, but instead he put his hand on Milo's soft cheek and said, “The Vrassoons. The Vrassoons keep happiness from me.”

“And me, Father.”

“Good. Now let us finally do something about that damnable family. Look, Milo, the source of much of the
Vrassoons' power is the English parliamentary decree that grants them the sole right to sail ships directly from England to China. Everyone else has to figure out elaborate trade and counter-trade provisions at the various stops—Malay, India, Singapore, Ceylon, India, and finally the Azores before they land in England. This costs time and money and opens the vessels to danger from the pirates in the China Sea and the Straits of Malacca, and from other enemy vessels. Ships that need to make that many stops must also be lighter in weight so they can run before the wind and hence carry only limited cannon.”

“I know all this, Father, but—”

Richard charged on, “Not so the great Vrassoon boats of “the Company.” Sometimes twice the size of ours and always armed to the teeth—the Company's ships are seldom the subject of attack. Their huge Indiaman sailing ships load in the safety of Plymouth and land in the equal safety of Shanghai, stopping in the six-month voyage only for food and fresh water. It's a tremendous—and vastly unfair—advantage over us and all the other traders. And why do they have this advantage? Are they better businessmen than us? Do they work harder? Do they risk more? No and no and no.” He reached into the top drawer of his desk, slid a finger under the hidden panel there, drew out the doctored photograph of Vrassoon's eldest son with the little girl, and tossed it on the desk. “And why can a Vrassoon do this to a little girl and …?” That memory again tickled the back of his mind. But what slight chance he had of retrieving it had been forever forfeited by his nightly opium voyages. “Why?” he demanded.

“Because they have the British Parliament behind them, Father. This is nothing new.”

“No, not new, but wrong, Milo. Wrong.”

Milo reached across and looked at the photograph. He stared at the eldest Vrassoon son standing over the partially clothed Han Chinese girl with the flawless skin—maybe ten, maybe twelve years old—naked and bloody on the bed. The blood from between her legs had evidently sunk deep into the feather mattress.

Milo thought for a moment, then tossed aside the photograph. “Okay, what do you need to get back at these bastards, Father?”

“A way into the British House of Lords. Someone who knows those people. Someone who will do our bidding there.”

Milo thought about that, and then about Mademoiselle Suzanne and all the people she knew. “Leave this with me, Father. I think I know where to start looking for just such a man.”

* * *

HIS FATHER HAD CALLED HIM, in his calmer moments, Lord Snivel.
Well, maybe I am,
thought the Third Earl of Cheselwich, Lyndon Barrymore Bartlett Manheim by name, as he looked at the young, naked boy asleep on the bed.
Such fine skin. Fine brown skin,
he thought as he ran his hand along the boy's back. He'd like to pay this fine Chinese boy for the excellent services he'd so nimbly and obligingly rendered, but the Third Earl of Cheselwich had a problem. He was broke. Again.

The boy stirred, turned over, and stretched. Suddenly the boy was on his feet, seemingly not a boy any more—and the knife in his left hand was no child's toy.

The boy's right palm was open and the chunky sounds coming from his mouth, the Third Earl of Cheselwich assumed, were a demand for payment. He'd
heard that demand in many different languages since he had taken his father's unasked for advice and headed for “parts East to seek whatever fortune you can manage.” His father had been right that he could play upon his title, and with the assistance of the three letters of introduction from his father's friends who were members of the British House of Lords many doors would open for him.

He straightened out his linen shirt and said, “Put down the knife. Don't be a silly bugger.”

“
Gei qian!
”

“Ah, am I to assume you are demanding a payment for services rendered?”

“That's what he's asking for.”

The Third Earl of Cheselwich spun around, his pudgy paw of a left hand flying to his puffy-lipped mouth, to find the source of the new voice in the room. After a brief squint his eyes discerned a dark-complexioned young man standing in the doorway. The young man, without so much as a by-your-leave, walked past him to the boy and said, “
Duo qian?
”—Mandarin for “How much?”

The Third Earl of Cheselwich saw the boy's eyes narrow and shrink to small black marbles. Then he spat out, “
Wu shi gang bi!
”

The dark young man laughed a hearty chortle and replied, “
Wu shi gang bi?
Fifty Hong Kong dollars is pretty steep.”

The boy whore shrieked a high-pitched wail that hurt the delicate eardrums of the Third Earl of Cheselwich. Then the boy whore proceeded to pull at his own hair with such force that literally a hunk of the thick black stuff came out in his hand. As he did his knife swung wildly, often close to his face, and he shouted in English, “No, no, no!”

“I comprehended his response. Perhaps my language skills are increasing,” said the Third Earl of Cheselwich with a smile.

“I sincerely doubt that,” said the dark young man, who then threw up his hands and continued in English, “If he is as he is, and this circumstance is evidently as it is, then I leave you to each other.” With that he turned to the door and headed out.

The Third Earl of Cheselwich lunged to follow the dark young man, but the boy whore shouted words that were clearly a warning.

“I don't think he wants you to leave before you pay him,” said the dark young man, known to most of Shanghai's Foreign Settlement as one Milo Hordoon.

“My boy, I'd be in a state of unrelenting happiness if I had sufficient funds to cover the aforementioned expenses.”

“Is that English you're speaking?”

“The Queen's own, and pure, I might add. The voice of Milton and Shakespeare, the ebb and flow of oral commerce, the tongue of the Sceptered Isle itself.”

“Fine. But is it English, yes or no?”

“Put that way—English, yes.”

“Fine. Did you agree on a price with the boy before you began?”

“Of course not. I'm a gentleman.”

“And it would be too crude for …”

“… a gentleman to barter for intimacy as a fishmonger does with a peasant woman or a simple shopkeeper would with a kitchen wench. Matters of the heart are beyond financial recompense.”

Milo stared at the Third Earl of Cheselwich and smiled. His father would be pleased, very pleased, but
he couldn't resist a bit more fun before he paid the fool's bill and brought him back to see the head of the Hordoon clan.

“What did he do for you?”

“Do? Do? We, he and I, partook in …”

“Did you fuck him? Did he fuck you? Did you suck him off? Did he suck you off? Or did you just use your hands?” Milo wished that Silas were at his side to see this.

“My good lad!”

“No. Two mistakes. I'm not your lad and I'm certainly not good.” He couldn't wait to tell Silas about that retort. “So, exactly where was your prick in all this, or his prick—both of your pricks, where were they exactly?”

“Really!”

“This is China, sir. You may be in the House of Paris but make no mistake this is the Middle Kingdom and we here in the Middle Kingdom are not squeamish about pillow matters.”