The Dragon Head of Hong Kong (2 page)

( 2
)

AVA WAS WALKING
home to her one-bedroom apartment on Leslie Street, just south of Highway 7. She lived in Richmond Hill, a northern Toronto suburb with a large Chinese population. She would have preferred to live in the city centre, but when she had returned to Canada after graduating from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, her entry-level salary from the multinational accounting firm that hired her couldn’t support a downtown lifestyle. So for practical reasons, Ava had located in the north. It wasn’t entirely a hardship. She was spared the agony of what would have been an hour-long commute from the city to the office; there were at least fifty Chinese restaurants within a fifteen-minute walk from her apartment; and her mother’s house was only a slightly longer walk away.

Her mother had asked Ava if she wanted to move back into the family home. Ava thought about that for less than ten seconds before saying no, and her mother seemed relieved. The two were close but they were different, and they both understood that living together for prolonged periods of time wasn’t healthy for their relationship. Among other things, Jennie Lee was a night person who thought nothing of dusk-to-dawn mah-jong games. When Ava was growing up, it wasn’t unusual for her mother to be coming home as Ava headed out for her daily morning run.

Ava’s job with the multinational had lasted for just over three months. Her resignation was mutually agreed upon. She had a strong mind and found it difficult to take instructions blindly from people who knew less than she did. Even when working alone she found it tough to follow corporate guidelines and regulations that she found inflexible and often wanting. And the firm wasn’t about to let her operate as she saw fit.

She interviewed for other jobs and was offered several, but she immediately got cold feet at the thought of being locked into another bureaucracy. And the jobs that wouldn’t encumber her independent nature tended to be mundane, involving more bookkeeping than accounting. Jennie Lee had come to her rescue. Not only did she suggest that Ava set up her own company, she had already lined up a handful of clients, including Mr. Lo, whose business was the most interesting.

Mr. Lo had been quite cocky when Ava first met him. He had found a poultry farm in rural Ontario that wasn’t exporting its chicken feet and had no idea of their real value. Lo was able to buy them at about half the going market rate. He had been doing this for six months before Ava became his accountant. Lo had managed to talk the farmer into signing a one-year contract, with a right-of-first-refusal clause for a second year. Lo wasn’t stupid; he knew the farmer would eventually be contacted by other buyers and that his price would go up. His aim was to ship as much as he could in that first year.

Lo had started slowly and carefully. At first he had three Hong Kong–based customers, but it turned out the supply wasn’t large enough to meet their demands. Any one of them could have taken all the production, and they each agitated to do exactly that. Kung Imports finally offered him a premium above his price and convinced Lo to drop the other clients. In the beginning, Kung paid by wire transfer upon receipt of the bills of lading. Those terms were modified to payment after customs and health department clearance, and that’s when the trouble started. Every shipment seemed to be held up by the health department, which refused to release the products to Kung for sale — or so Lo was told by Kung. Eventually some shipments were released and paid for. But because Lo kept shipping more product and because those shipments were being tied up by the health department, the unpaid invoices began to accumulate.

Ava had advised Lo to stop until the accounts were settled, but his contract with the farmer was nearing the end of its first year and he was anxious to export as much product as he could. When she asked him what kind of man Kung was, he replied, “I met him in Hong Kong. We had several dinners and he took me to his club on the Kowloon side. He showed me around his warehouse and his office. It’s a big operation. He looked like a guy I could trust.”

“What about your friend’s brother, the one who recommended Kung to you? What does he have to say about this?”

“He said he met Kung socially and never did business with him.”

“Will he call Kung for you?”

Lo shook his head. “He said he didn’t want to get in the middle.”

It was six o’clock when Ava opened her apartment door. It was about eight hundred square feet and furnished with old couches and chairs from her mother’s basement and garage, and a few items she had cared enough about to bring back from Wellesley. She went into the bedroom to change. She slipped off her white button-down shirt and a pair of black cotton slacks she had bought at the Brooks Brothers store on Newbury Street in Boston. She had never worn Brooks Brothers before going to work, but now it was basically all she ever wore for business. She thought the clothes imparted a professional image. She also didn’t have to tax her imagination every morning when it came to clothing choice.

She hung the shirt and slacks on the closet door to air and put on her Adidas training pants and a plain black T-shirt. When she returned to the living room, she saw that the message light on her phone was blinking. That surprised her. Her mother and most of her friends called her cellphone. She dialled the access code, expecting to hear a sales pitch.

“Ava, this is Mummy. Call me when you can,” Jennie Lee said. “I tried your cellphone. It’s off.”

Her mother sounded upset, and it was with some nervousness that Ava dialled her number.

“
Wei
,” the familiar voice said.

“Mummy, is everything all right?”

“Your cellphone is off.”

“I know. I just realized that I turned it off during lunch with Mimi and left it in my purse all afternoon. Is that why you’re calling?”

“Of course not, Ava. Did you meet with Hedrick Lo this afternoon?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Did you make him any promises?”

“Like what?”

“Did you tell him you would help him get back some of the money he is owed?”

“No. He asked me to, but all I said was that I would have to think about it.”

“Well, that isn’t what he’s telling Jessica Lo.”

“That son of a bitch is twisting my words,” Ava said and then paused. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude about a client.”

“Jessica is saying worse things than that about him,” Jennie said. “Jessica says he’s an aggravating man at the best of times, and right now she says the times are not very rosy. How bad are his problems?”

“Mummy, I’m not sure I should be sharing that kind of information with you.”

“You aren’t a lawyer or a doctor. I didn’t know accountants had to swear an oath of secrecy.”

“We don’t, but there are ethical boundaries.”

“Jessica sent him to you, and all the money that he’s been using to finance his business is from her and her family.”

Ava heard her mother take a deep breath and pictured her dragging on a cigarette. “What has he told her?”

“Not much, and that’s the problem. He came home this afternoon looking worried, and when she pressed him, he told her there were some issues with the client in Hong Kong. He said he was having trouble getting fully paid but that she wasn’t to be concerned because you were looking after it.”

“Good God.”

“So it isn’t true?”

“Some of it is.”

“Ava, how much money is involved?”

“Enough.”

“Poor Jessica,” Jennie said. “Ava, do you think you could actually help Lo?”

“I’m trained to find money that’s gone missing, but finding it and getting it back are two different things. In Canada I could take someone to court. He was shipping to Hong Kong. I have no idea how their law works.”

“I can tell you one thing,” Jennie said. “There’s no such thing as bankruptcy there.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you can declare bankruptcy, but that doesn’t mean the people you owe money to will just go away,” Jennie said. “Beyond that, I don’t know. The person you should talk to is your father. There isn’t much that he doesn’t know about doing business in Hong Kong and China. I’m sure he would love the chance to discuss it with you.”

“Maybe I will. If not for Mr. Lo, then for future reference.”

“Oh, Ava, please do it for Lo if you can,” her mother said suddenly. “Jessica’s family is high-powered and successful. They’ve been looking down on Lo for years. This little venture of his has improved his status with them, and it would be a shame if it fell apart. If he loses the money they put into the business, they’ll make the rest of his life a living hell.”

“Did Mrs. Lo tell you that?”

“Yes. Despite her complaints, she does care about him, almost more than about the money. And her reputation — her face — is tied up with his.”

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll call Daddy. I’ll make up my mind about what to do after I talk to him.”

“Normally he leaves the house after eight o’clock. Don’t call him until then. He won’t be able to have a conversation.”

“I understand,” Ava said.

( 3
)

MARCUS LEE WAS
the father of Ava and her older sister Marian. He was also the father of four sons from his first wife, and the father of a son and daughter from a third wife. The marriage to the first wife was legal; his second and third were traditional and more form than substance. He still lived with the first wife in Hong Kong. Jennie Lee had been shipped off to Canada when Marian was four years old and Ava was two. The third wife had appeared much later, had given him two more children, and was now living in Australia.

It was, by Western standards, a strange family structure. But in Hong Kong it wasn’t that unusual among the wealthy for a man to have more than one wife and family. There were rules of engagement, and as long as everyone followed those rules, the system worked.

Jennie had been working in a company that Marcus owned when they met. They fell in love, embarked on their marriage of sorts, and the girls followed. She knew from the outset that he would never leave his first wife, and that his sons would inherit his estate when he passed. She thought she could manage the situation, but her emotions eventually got the best of her. When things got really bad, Marcus sent her to Vancouver. She lasted two years there before the cold and the dampness got to her. Then she and the girls moved to Toronto and settled in Richmond Hill.

Oddly, the distance between Marcus and Jennie saved their relationship. They talked every day on the phone and he spent two weeks a year with her. He loved the girls, and he supported them and Jennie in a style that was comfortable if not luxurious. He had bought her a house, paid for a new car every three years, provided a monthly allowance, and covered the expenses of the girls’ private-school education and extracurricular activities.

To Ava’s knowledge there had never been another man in Jennie’s life. As far as her mother was concerned, Marcus was her husband and he had her complete loyalty. Similarly, both Marian and Ava never thought of him as anything but their father. That they saw him for only two weeks a year wasn’t that much different from the lives of their Chinese friends at school. There were, Ava realized later, a great many second and third wives in Toronto. Her mother said that Toronto’s most elite private schools would be half-empty without their offspring.

When Ava was in her late teens, her relationship with her father began a subtle change. Instead of communicating with her through Jennie, he would call her directly. He had a keen interest in her education, making quiet comparisons between her progress through the accounting programs at York University and Babson and the educations his sons were receiving. She knew Marcus often spoke to Jennie about his other children, but she found it awkward when he did so with her. Still, she listened politely and didn’t ask if he was as open with his first wife and four sons when it came to the subject of his Canadian family.

Ava looked at her watch and saw that it was too early to call Hong Kong. She reheated some noodles with shrimp in the microwave and sat on the couch to watch television. The couch had come from her mother’s basement. Marian had lost her virginity on it. Ava had lost hers in her dorm, to the captain of the women’s soccer team, when she was a freshman at York University.

Hong Kong was twelve hours ahead of Toronto, so Ava waited until eight thirty before she phoned, figuring that her father would be in his car by then, working his way down Victoria Peak to his office in Central. She dialled his cell.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said after two rings.

“I hope this is convenient,” she said.

“I’m in the car.”

“So you can talk?”

“Of course, but it’s rather strange for you to call like this. Has something happened to Mummy?”

“No, she’s fine. I have a business problem I wanted to discuss with you.”

“This has to do with your new business?”

“Yes.”

“Mummy said it was going well.”

“Well enough, but I have a client who has a problem,” she said. “He’s been shipping containers of chicken feet to Hong Kong and the buyer has decided to renege on paying the invoices.”

“My knowledge of chicken feet is restricted to ordering them in a restaurant.”

“My client is owed a million dollars.”

“Hong Kong?”

“American.”

“That’s serious.”

“He’s asked me to try to locate the money. That’s something I’m trained to do, but I have no idea what legal remedies are available to us in Hong Kong if I do find it.”

“Has the importer been making quality claims?”

“How did you know that?”

“It’s the oldest con game around. They say there’s a quality problem with the shipment and use that as an excuse not to pay or to heavily discount. Of course, they suck in the exporter by paying in full for the initial loads before the claims start. But once they start, they escalate. And if your client doesn’t buy the lies and decides to sue, the importer throws the claims at you and keeps you tied up legally for months. Once he thinks he’s exhausted the law, he just stops negotiating and disappears.”

“Have you gone through something like this?”

“No, but I can send you to ten people who have.”

“What do they do about it? My client has gone to collection agencies, but none of them seem to want to take it on.”

“Is the importer triad?” Marcus Lee asked quietly.

Ava paused. “I have no idea.”

“That’s one possibility. The other is that he’s just smart. It isn’t hard to set up a company in Hong Kong and then in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and move around the goods and the money. The law gets complicated.”

“I’m told he’s smart.”

“Then it will be difficult.”

“What if I find the money? Is there anything I can do to claw it back?”

“Ava, you’re getting into some dangerous waters.”

“Daddy, I’m only asking what’s possible.”

“Normally — and I’m telling you this second-hand, you understand — finding the money is the least important part of the equation for the people here who are expert at collecting debts. The first thing they want is the debtor. Once they have their hands on him, the money — or what’s left of it — has a way of coming home.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

“It isn’t the kind of thing you want to be involved in.”

“What do they charge to collect a debt?”

“Ava!”

“I’m just asking.”

He paused and Ava expected him to put her off. “Thirty percent,” he said.

“Wow.”

“I know it sounds like a lot, but it’s the going rate,” Marcus Lee said. “So what are you thinking of doing about this client of yours?”

“He needs help.”

“And you’re trained to provide it,” Marcus said, and then paused. “I have to say I was a little surprised when your mother told me about your new venture. Never mind that all those years at York and Babson equipped you to do more. All I kept thinking was how bored you must be. You’ve always struck me as a girl who has a very low threshold for boredom.”

“I wouldn’t do this because I’m bored,” Ava said, surprised that her father could read her so well. “I would only do it if I thought I could help Mr. Lo.”