looking at her in the rear-view mirror. “Uncle said the last time you were here you ate jook in Kowloon and that it brought you luck. He’ll meet you at the same restaurant.”
“That’s fine,” Ava said.
They drove the first part of the trip to Hong Kong in silence. Sonny wasn’t a talker at the best of times and Ava was entirely comfortable with silence, so it was a natural state for them both. But as they crossed the Tsing Ma Bridge and Hong Kong bore into view, Sonny said, “I can’t tell you how happy he is that you’re here and that you’re working on a job together again.”
“It will be good to see him too.”
“He needed this.”
“What do you mean?” Ava asked.
“He needed something to be interested in again,” Sonny said. “Lourdes and I have been worried about him.”
“You’re scaring me,” Ava said quickly. “Is there something going on that I need to know?”
Sonny half turned towards her. “We aren’t sure.”
“Sonny, talk to me, please.”
“There is nothing really to talk about, no real reason to be scared. It’s just that there have been days when he hasn’t left the apartment, and you know that isn’t like him. And then there are other days when he’s left by himself, without telling me. That isn’t like him either.”
“Do you know where he goes?”
“No.”
“Sonny, this is too strange.”
She saw from his eyes in the mirror that he was confused. “Lourdes thinks he’s just getting old.”
“He is old.”
“Of course he is, but he’s never acted old. His mind was always so sharp, and physically he was never a man to have aches and pains.”
“What’s changed?”
Sonny hesitated, and she knew that it was difficult for him to talk about Uncle in any way other than with complete, blind respect. Even suggesting a normal human frailty would seem to him a betrayal of sorts.
“We’re like a family, Sonny,” she said.
“He’s been talking to me about the old days,” he said slowly. “We’ve been together for more than twenty years. He pulled me out of trouble, you know. I had a temper back then, and I never thought twice about anything; I’d just react to whatever got in my face. Well, I went too far when I was running a small gang in the New Territories. Uncle was the boss — the big boss — and it was up to him to decide what would happen to me. He could have just given the order, but instead he sent for me and we talked. I’d never met him before. It turned out we shared a common kind of childhood; there was a connection — rough, of course. He told me he thought I could be useful to him if I could control myself. I said, ‘I don’t know how to do that.’ And Uncle said, ‘Just do exactly what I tell you to do. Do not try to think for yourself anymore. Life will be easier for you that way.’ And it has been.”
Ava felt her cheeks flush. The relationship between Sonny and Uncle had been one she had observed but had never tried to analyze or question. It had a life of its own, closed to outsiders. She had never expected Sonny to be the one to talk about it. She was also taken aback by how long he had gone on for. She wasn’t sure she had ever heard him utter more than two or three consecutive sentences. “You say he’s been talking about the old days?”
“Yeah, and he never did that before. Oh, when he was with Uncle Fong or some of his old colleagues, they’d reminisce about it, but he never did it with me. Now he does.”
They exited the bridge and began the slow crawl through Hong Kong towards the Cross-Harbour Tunnel to Kowloon. “What does he say to you?” she asked.
“It bothers him what’s happened to the societies. It all came to a head when he couldn’t help you with that asshole in Macau. He told me that when he was chairman, he thought he had brought some structure to them and that the oaths meant something again. But as soon as he left, everything reverted to shit. He feels his time was wasted, that part of his life was wasted.”
“He still has so much to be proud of.”
“He doesn’t seem to want to listen to that.”
“Well, I’ll talk to him,” she said.
Sonny fell silent again and Ava wondered if he’d dismissed her offer. Then he said, “Yes, I think