The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,12
If she is, I’ll give her a week to pull it together. How does that sound?”
“That sounds reasonable.”
Ava paused. “Lourdes told me about the food poisoning,” she said as casually as she could.
“It was nothing.”
“I find it unusual that you get it so frequently.”
“I have to stop eating bargain sashimi.”
“Was that it?”
“Every time.”
“You have enough money to eat the most expensive sashimi in Tokyo a thousand times a day.”
“Old habits die hard.”
She knew he meant his careful spending of the Hong Kong dollar. “My mother says, ‘Penny wise, pound foolish.’”
“Your mother knows a lot of clichés.”
“That doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”
He laughed. “I will be more careful.”
Ava hung up the phone, feeling better about his bout of illness but frustrated that he hadn’t told her to let go of the Theresa Ng case. He was supposed to be her excuse for saying no. Now she would have to depend on Theresa’s inability to deliver more clients.
( 5 )
Her mother was barely awake when Ava called. Her voice was throaty, smoky. “I played mah-jong until six this morning,” Jennie said.
“How many hours straight was that?” Ava asked.
“Not so many. We took a break at two and went for fried noodles at Big Mouth Kee.”
“Do you want me to call back?”
“What is this about?”
“Theresa.”
“No, no, don’t call back. Tell me now what you’ve decided.”
Ava couldn’t remember the last time her mother had been so eager to talk about anything that early in the morning. “I haven’t decided anything. I spoke to Uncle, and he says he has no interest in chasing after three million dollars.”
“Ava!”
“Wait, Mummy, don’t start having a fit. It isn’t what it seems.”
“Then what is it?”
“You have to understand that for us to go after three million costs us the same amount in money and time as going after twenty or thirty million. Uncle is suggesting that Theresa contact some of the other people who got ripped off and get them to sign on with us. If we can get enough people, and enough money as a target, then he says he’ll agree to take on the job.”
Her mother went quiet and Ava knew she was steaming. Ava was now certain that she had told Theresa it was a done deal, and the last thing she wanted to do was eat her words. “Theresa thinks you have taken the case,” Jennie confirmed.
“I don’t know how that can be, since I never made a commitment. And even if I did, I report to Uncle, and the final decision is his,” Ava said, giving her mother the excuse she could use.
“It won’t be easy for her to do this, you know,” Jennie said. “Outside of their immediate families the Vietnamese are close-mouthed. Even if they want to hire you, they won’t want everyone else to know how much money they had, how much they lost.”
“I’ll keep their secrets. If she can get them to agree to hire us, we’ll give them individual contracts. They won’t have to disclose anything to anyone.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“It’s the only way.”
“You didn’t have to say that,” Jennie snapped.
“Sorry.”
Jennie sighed. “Me too . . . It’s just that she’s such a nice woman and I really want you to be able to help her.”
Ava felt the first traces of guilt creep in. “I want to help her too. So talk to Theresa and tell her to get some more people onside. When she talked to me before, she said she was getting a monthly statement of affairs from that company. All the other people have to do is bring their last statement so I can confirm what they are owed. I’ll also need some basic bank information from each of them — bank name, branch address, and account number. We’ll take it from there.”
“I wish you didn’t have to drag other people into this.”
“That’s the way Uncle wants it.”
“And do you always do what he wants?”
“Yes,” Ava lied.
It would take at least a few days for Theresa to locate and talk to the others, Ava knew, and it was by no means certain that they would want to hire her and Uncle. Agreeing to give up thirty percent would be hard for some of them, even though, as Theresa had said, seventy percent of something was better than a hundred percent of nothing.
Uncle had taught her the most basic truth about clients on the day he hired her. “They are always initially overjoyed that we will help them, prepared to pay just about anything we ask.