THE KING OF MACAU (The Jack Shepherd International Crime Novels) (7 page)

“This is Jack Shepherd, the best loved lawyer in Hong Kong.”

“No such thing. Nobody loves a lawyer. Not in Hong Kong, not anywhere.”

“There’s got to be one somewhere. I think it’s me.”

Raymond didn’t laugh. Sometimes I wondered what sort of sense of humor Chinese guys had. Were there Chinese comedians? Had to be, I guess. Could there be a Chinese knockoff of Monty Python out there somewhere? That I would only believe if I saw it with my own eyes.

“Your meeting’s at noon,” Raymond said.

I glanced at my watch. “You buying us lunch at Henri’s?”

“No, not here. Do you know the Ah-Ma Temple?”

Of course I knew the Ah-Ma Temple. Every tourist who had ever visited Macau knew the Ah-Ma Temple. A Taoist complex built on the side of Barra Hill in the fifteenth century, it faced the inner harbor from the southeast corner of the Macau Peninsula. I had walked past it yesterday as I was wandering through the old city, but the mobs of Chinese tourists around the place had made the thought of going inside pretty unattractive. Besides, I had never seen myself as much of a temple kind of guy.

“Get serious, Raymond. You want me to meet this guy at a temple?”

“It’s not what I want, it’s what he wants.”

“Well, it’s not what I want. Tell this fellow to come here to the MGM and—”

“Stop!’

I stopped. I didn’t ever remember hearing Raymond speak so sharply to anyone before, let alone to me, and now that he had I wasn’t sure how to react.

“Look, Jack, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to do this the way my friend wants to do it. It’s important. You have to trust me on that. When you meet him, you’ll understand why.”

“Wow, I love a mystery.”

“Just shut the fuck up, will you? Be at the Ah-Ma Temple at noon. Go in through the main gate between the stone lions and climb the stairs to the Hall of Benevolence.”

“The Hall of Benevolence? You’re shitting me.”

“It’s Ming Dynasty. Supposed to be five or six hundred years old. It’s the third or maybe the fourth building up the hill.”

“You disappoint me, Raymond. You’re not sure which building is the Hall of Benevolence? I though you people really knew your temples.”

“I’m a Catholic.
Dominus vobiscum
, baby. I know from nothing about all this Taoist mumbo jumbo.”

“How will I find this friend of yours when I get there?”

“You won’t have to find him. He’ll find you.”

“You think I should wear a red carnation or something like that?

“Get serious, white boy. You’re conspicuous enough around here already. Don’t need no red carnation.”

“What’s this guy’s name?”

“Just call him Freddy.”

“Freddy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Which I’m certain is his real name. I know a lot of Chinese guys named Freddy.”

“Did I say he was Chinese?”

“Well, no, come to think of it, you didn’t. But if you play the odds in Macau—”

“Don’t worry about it, Jack. Get your butt over to the Ah-Ma Temple at noon, meet the guy, and listen to his story. You can call him Barbra Streisand, for all I care. He won’t care either.”

“Wait a minute, Raymond, this really does seem a little—”

But I was talking to myself. Raymond had hung up.

I LEFT THE MGM
about an hour later and found a taxi right away. Since Macau isn’t a very big place, by eleven-thirty I was standing in the little square in front of Barra Hill looking up at the pavilions of the Ah-Ma temple on the rocky hillside. I was early, so I sat down on one of the wooden benches shaded by willow trees that were scattered around the sides of the square. I thought it might not hurt to watch the world for a while before I climbed up to the temple. I didn’t know what I was looking for, of course, but I figured looking was a good idea anyway.

The area in front of the temple is called Barra Square, although it really isn’t much of a square. It’s only a big open space between a wide roadway that runs along the inner harbor and the small hill where the buildings of the temple are wedged into the rock. Bordered on two sides by small Mediterranean-style buildings painted in shades of pink, green, and yellow, the square itself is paved in tiny cream and black mosaic tiles. Right at its center is a five-sided green kiosk selling cheesy souvenirs and packaged ice creams that looks like it was stolen from a Paris Metro station.

The whole area was thronged with Chinese tour groups huddled around guides holding aloft small colored pennants, and the people in each cluster were wearing tags color-coded to match their group’s pennant. The whole thing looked as rigidly organized as a national day celebration in North Korea.

After watching the crowds for a while without seeing anything unusual, I walked over to the kiosk and bought a chocolate-covered ice cream bar. When I returned to my bench, I watched them some more while I ate it, but what was I actually looking for? I didn’t have a clue. Even if there were surveillance around Raymond’s mysterious friend, I wouldn’t have spotted it unless everybody involved was wearing a red hat with a rotating beacon on top.

But why would he be under surveillance anyway? Surely the guy wasn’t that important. Regardless of what Raymond said, I would still bet he only turned out to be some poor schmo who had gambled away money he had embezzled from a state-owned company in China and was looking for an alternative to going home and getting shot. Who could blame him for that?

After fifteen minutes, the ice cream was gone and so was my patience. I tossed the stick and wrapper into a trash barrel and walked across the square to the temple’s elaborate entry gate. It was crowned with dramatically upturned tile ridges and decorated with dozens of colorful ceramic animals I couldn’t quite put a name to. I felt like I was entering Disneyland. Which, in a manner of speaking, it turned out I was.

The first pavilion up the steps was the First Palace of the Holy Mountain. Dedicated to Tian Hou, the goddess of seafarers, it is a rectangular granite structure with high gabled walls and an extravagantly upturned roof covered in green glazed tiles. Chinese tourists clogged the doorway, pushing and shoving each other to get inside. It was a good thing the rendezvous hadn’t been planned for the First Palace of the Holy Mountain. I would never have been able to fight my way inside through the mob of Chinese seeking divine delivery of fortune and prosperity.

I stood for a moment in front of a round lattice window through which I could see inside the structure. Dozens of giant, conically-shaped coils of red incense hung from the ceiling, each of them burning slowly and giving off tiny tendrils of white smoke that spread the musky fragrance of the incense throughout the temple. The drifting haze gave the whole place a mysterious, otherworldly air, which I suppose was really the whole idea. I rubbed at my eyes with my fingers. Incense made my eyes water. How spiritual was that?

Another thirty yards up the stone staircase, I found the Hall of Benevolence perfectly aligned with the entry gate and the First Palace of the Holy Mountain. Built of faded red granite and white brick with Chinese characters painted on it in yellow, the Hall of Benevolence was much smaller than the other pavilions. Its roof, too, was covered in green glazed tiles and elaborately upturned ridges, but it incorporated into its design a natural recess in the rock of Barra Hill. It looked like a small, if extravagantly decorated, shed built in front of a cave.

There were no crowds of Chinese imploring the deities for riches at the Hall of Benevolence and, blessedly, no drifting clouds of incense. Apparently benevolence had nothing to do with accumulating riches. But then I already knew that.

I stood before the cave with the little shelter in front of it, not sure what to do next. The Hall of Benevolence was very small and a waist-high fence of wooden pickets blocked the only entry. I turned slowly through a full circle. There was no one else near me, and no one who appeared to be waiting for me. After the bedlam below, it was all remarkably peaceful and I rather liked that.

I sat down on a large grey boulder right in front of the Hall of Benevolence and glanced at my watch. Two minutes before noon.

Okay, I was here.

Now what?

THE MAN WATCHED WHILE
Shepherd ate his ice cream. He was a few yards up a narrow street at the far end of Barra Square, leaning against a maroon Toyota van and pretending to talk on his phone. He moved his lips occasionally to make sure the picture was complete. Just one more Asian talking on a cell phone.

When Shepherd stood up, tossed away his ice cream wrapper, and started toward the temple gate, the man ambled into Barra Square behind him. His eyes quartered the area around Shepherd, looking for other people moving at a similar speed and in a similar direction. He found none. He didn’t expect to, but he was a careful man by nature and he was being even more careful under these circumstances than usual.

Shepherd strolled through the temple gate and started up the stone steps. The area was so crowded with Chinese tourists that now the man was able to move up very close to Shepherd without any concern that he would be spotted. One more Asian face in a crowd of hundreds wasn’t going to attract the slightest notice from a Caucasian. The man got very close. He was now no more than twenty feet behind and a little to one side of Shepherd. The man studied him as they climbed the stairs.

There was nothing particularly remarkable about Shepherd physically. Average height, average weight, average age. He looked to be somewhere in his mid-forties and his dark hair was a little long for a lawyer. He was wearing round, rimless sunglasses that didn’t look like they belonged to a lawyer either. Dressed as he was in a plain white long-sleeve shirt with the cuffs rolled up over his elbows, khaki pants, and dark brown loafers, he looked less like a lawyer than he did an architect inspecting a project.

The day was hot and the man began to sweat as he climbed the steps. Where was the damn fog when you needed it? He liked Macau well enough, but it was too hot most of the year and the humidity broke his back sometimes. He didn’t spend any more time outdoors than he absolutely had to. Nobody did in Macau, except for a few crazy Americans he had seen jogging the streets in their expensive running shoes. If they could afford such nice shoes, couldn’t they afford to take a cab wherever they were going? He wiped at his damp forehead and studied Shepherd’s face.

His eyes were an unnerving shade of blue and they looked like they could pin you to a wall. His nose was slightly crooked, as if it had been broken, and the rest of his face had the same quality of hard wear. The man hadn’t expected Shepherd to seem so beaten up, but he looked tough, too, like an old boot that had been left out in the rain for a long time. He also looked like a man who had given as much as he had gotten. Maybe more.

The man was glad to see that Shepherd hadn’t turned out to be a fat guy in a blue suit. He needed an American lawyer, but he didn’t need a fat guy in a blue suit. He needed a fighter, a guy who could handle himself in a barroom brawl. Once he committed himself that was what this was going to be: a barroom brawl.

SHEPHERD REACHED THE FIRST
Palace of the Holy Mountain and paused to look through the big round latticework window at the Chinese tourists frantically shaking incense sticks and praying for wealth. The man smiled to himself. Every westerner tourist did that. The drifting incense, the flickering candles, the murmured prayers for prosperity. It was everything they had heard about the mysterious east, all in one room.

When Shepherd rubbed at his eyes, the man smiled again. He couldn’t stand incense either, and the incense here was particularly unpleasant. It had a musty, old wood smell with something peppery in it. He tried to hold his breath when he walked by without being too obvious about it. If he didn’t, he would taste the foul stuff in his mouth for the rest of the day.

Shepherd reached the top of the next set of steps and walked directly to the front of the Hall of Benevolence. He stopped and turned all the way around to see who might be watching him. The man felt Shepherd’s eyes slide over him, but they didn’t stop. He was anything but surprised at that. He knew that people didn’t notice him. Even when they were looking for him, they didn’t notice him. He had that kind of face and that kind of body. He was just one more middle-aged Asian guy. A little chubby, losing his hair, not important, not a threat to anyone. It wasn’t very flattering but, under the circumstances, it was usually for the best.

Shepherd, on the other hand, did stand out, and not only because he was white. He stood out because he looked like a man who had everything under control. He looked like someone you went to for directions when you were lost. Which, now that the man thought about it, was exactly what he was doing. He was lost, and he needed Shepherd to show him the way home.

The man walked past the Hall of Benevolence without stopping and began to climb the next set of steps. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shepherd sit down to wait on a big rock at the end of the walkway. Shepherd wasn’t going to wait there forever. He had watched Shepherd eat his ice cream, dump the wrapper into a trash barrel, and start into the temple after only a few minutes of checking out his surroundings. Shepherd was not a particularly patient fellow.

The man figured he had about five minutes to decide. After that, Shepherd would get annoyed with waiting for him and leave. Probably call Raymond before he got to the bottom of the steps and chew him out for wasting his time.

It was now or never, wasn’t it?

Now or never…

I HAD NEVER REALIZED
how much sitting on a rock hurt your butt, and I’d about had enough of it when I spotted the man climbing slowly down the steps from somewhere above the Hall of Benevolence. Since his eyes were locked onto mine, I was anything but surprised when he turned and walked straight toward me. I was clearly about to meet Freddy.

Something about him seemed vaguely familiar. He looked like someone I had seen before, not personally maybe, but perhaps in the newspapers. The idea scratched at me, but I couldn’t bring it into focus.