The Godfather of Kathmandu - By John Burdett Page 0,123

up in Hong Kong. By age fifteen I was already an old man. I met a mind master and a benefactor. For a high price he shared his wisdom: Don’t try to be somebody. Don’t try to be nobody. You are already dead. Enjoy. Of course, the words mean nothing unless part of an initiation—in my case a kind of mental chemotherapy that annihilated all remnants of the notion of belonging.” He smiles at me without warmth or hostility—just a smile performing a function. “Shall I offer you a drink? Is it that kind of moment? Or shall I just spill my guts? Obviously, it’s too late to tell you to fuck off, now you’re my guest. I had to get you out of that party, didn’t I? That was smart of you; I doubt I would have bothered with you at all otherwise.” He pauses to reflect. “Actually, you were the perfect excuse. I’m so bored with those overblown Hong Kong functions.”

He stares out into the city night: quite beautiful, I have to say, with the fattest skyscrapers competing for attention with laser light shows, and the water of the harbor black behind them. When he speaks it is to the window.

“You probably don’t realize how mad Mimi Moi really is, nobody does who hasn’t lived with her.” He spares me a glance. “That must be why you’re here, right? Mad Moi, Doctor of Chemistry, the first and only Thai-Chinese woman to do chemistry/pharmacology at Oxford and get a First?” I nod. “Without her maid she can’t even dress herself—she really can’t. When we lived together I watched sometimes while the maid spread her knickers for her to get into in the morning. She refuses ever to bathe herself, the maid has to do it. And she’s hopeless with money. The maid has to control the purse strings.” He smiles, perhaps at my reflection in the window. “Now that’s a good cop point, isn’t it? But you’d be wrong to draw conclusions. It’s much, much deeper than that.” He shakes his head. “No, that maid doesn’t care about money, she’s already incredibly rich.” He smiles again, thinly. “Now I’ve really shocked you, yes? Probably the richest slave in the world. And d’you know that’s exactly what she is half the time? There’s nothing she doesn’t do for Moi, nothing she won’t do. She even puts medicinal cream on her hemorrhoids. The two of them have been an item since Mimi was born. But Mimi is a baby, Detective. A brilliant, witty, cynical, beautiful, charming, highly sophisticated, perfectly educated baby. Not unusual, perhaps, among the rich in any society. Anyway, the executive summary is that Mimi cannot live without her, and I dare say the maid would probably not consent to live without Mimi. Together they make up the two hemispheres of a perfect private world, and they know it.”

“No room for husbands?”

“Oh, as long as I didn’t seek attention I got on okay. I was relatively young, but not that young. I needed a trade. She wanted to prove to the world that she could catch a man as well as any other woman—I mean, at that stage in her life she was still pretending to be normal.”

“Trade? I thought you were a jeweler? We’ve already established that Doctor Moi is a pharmacist.” By the way he smirks I realize I’ve given him the information he wanted: how much do I already know? Not much, apparently, for he says, “I’ll have to educate you from the beginning, it seems. I’ll tell you what, why not stay the night? Don’t worry, I don’t fancy you in the least. Your wardrobe turns me right off.”

48

Johnny Ng has a maid, a Filipina who brings us breakfast on his vast balcony overlooking downtown Hong Kong. Ng points at some buzzards hanging in the sky above the tall apartment buildings. “Their numbers diminish every year,” he says. “I think it’s a miracle they’ve hung on this long.” After the coffee and fresh croissants, he drives me to the rail terminal in the city center, and I take a train to the airport. It is not an ordinary train: there is a “train ambassador,” who walks through the carriages making sure everyone is okay on the twenty-minute journey. She gives me the standard Hong Kong money smile, but takes in my clothes as she passes. From the airport I call Sukum to tell him about my evening with Johnny Ng. Sukum refuses to comment over