climate of the Hong Kong underground. She jumped into the shower as soon as she got into the room, and then put on a clean T-shirt and her training pants. She guessed they’d be eating outside at Sai Kung, so there was no reason for her to dress up.
She turned on her computer and checked her inbox. Her father had written: Sorry to have missed you before you left. Thank you for going to Hong Kong so promptly. Keep me posted if you can. Love, Daddy. Ava sighed. She made it a policy not to communicate with clients when she was on a job. They had a habit of taking every morsel of progress and exaggerating its impact. She preferred them to have minimal expectations, and one way to maintain that was to keep them in the dark. Her father might not be a client exactly, but she decided she would have to treat him like one. I have arrived safely. I’ll let you know when I have something definite, she wrote back.
Maria had emailed as well, and reading her message brought a smile to Ava’s face. I miss you already, but I haven’t showered since you left and I can still smell you on my skin. Hurry home. Ava wrote: I’m in Hong Kong and things are fine. It looks like I’ll be here for a few days. Please wash. Love you.
She logged out of her email and did another search for Ma Shing, and then one for Kao Lok in both English and Chinese, and came up with absolutely nothing. She sighed and told herself she’d find out more when they met. She hoped Michael would be able to engineer a meeting in Hong Kong, but she suspected it was going to be in Macau.
It had been a while since she’d had any dealings in Portugal’s former colony, but judging from Michael’s situation, it was evidently still a rough-and-ready place. Ava had been there once with Uncle, in 1999, just a few years after Portugal had returned the territory to the Chinese. They had a potential client, a furniture manufacturer, who had shipped two container loads of goods to Dalian and then been stiffed on payment.
It was winter, and he’d arranged to meet them in the old town, in the area where the wild-animal restaurants were located. Those restaurants did a booming business in the winter. In addition to the usual reason to visit them — to strengthen the male libido — many older Chinese people believed that eating snake or raccoon or bat or bear or any number of other wild animals thickened the blood and staved off cold-weather illnesses. In deference to Uncle, the furniture manufacturer took them to a very expensive snake restaurant. There was a glass cage in the front window where hundreds of snakes were displayed until they became someone’s meal. Four snakes were extracted and fed to them in various forms, starting with soup and ending with grilled meat.
When the dinner was over, they agreed to take on the case. Then they found themselves with several hours to kill before catching the hydrofoil back to Hong Kong. So she and Uncle walked over to the Hotel Lisboa, where he said an old friend of his worked.
The Lisboa was also a casino, and at the time probably the premier casino in Macau. It was owned by Stanley Ho’s Sociedade de Turismo e Diversões de Macau, as were the other four or five casinos in Macau at the time. Ho had been granted a monopoly in 1962 and still held it when they were there. Later the People’s Republic of China opened the doors for competition, but at the time every property belonged to Ho.
Ava detested casinos in general, and the moment she walked into the Lisboa she put Macau’s casinos at the top of her hate list. The place reeked of cigarette smoke and the carpets were stained and damp from people spilling drinks and spitting on them. There were lineups at the tables as people jostled to bet, fighting for a chance to give their money away. “Wait here while I look for my friend,” Uncle said, leaving her at a blackjack table.
A gweilo with an American accent was seated at the table. Two old Chinese women crushed against his back, staring over his shoulders. Ava knew blackjack, but she hadn’t seen a table like this one before. Behind the regular spot where a player placed his bet were two circles. As