“You do nothing,” he said quickly. “You cannot reason with him; you cannot scare him; you have no means, legal or otherwise, to get to him. You have to tell your brother that his investment is gone. He should walk away.”
“Just like that?”
“Exactly like that.”
She sighed. “I think you’re right.”
“So, assuming I am right, what are your plans?”
“I’m having lunch with my brother and his partner tomorrow. I’ll let them know how this ends, and then I’ll get the first plane I can back to Toronto.”
He reached over and took her hand in his. “I am sorry I could not help.”
“And I’m sorry for not calling you earlier.”
“Go home and rest. Spend some time with your mother and sister. This business of ours is hard on all of us.”
She walked him to his car. As Sonny opened the door for his boss, Uncle said, “Wuhan called. They are very happy about the speed with which you retrieved the money.”
“Has it reached the Kowloon bank?”
“Yes, this morning.”
“I’ve prepared a breakdown of who got what in Europe and how our share should be distributed. I’ll email it to you later,” she said, realizing she should have done that the day before.
The art forgery case had been concluded less than three days ago. To Ava it felt like light-years.
( 7 )
Ava wasn’t much of a girl for bars, especially when she was alone, but the day had jangled her nerves and she needed to calm down.
She went to her room first, collected her notebook and laptop, and rode the elevator two levels up to the twenty-fifth floor. She wasn’t overly superstitious, as were many Chinese people, but she still had more superstitions than any gweilo, and one of them was that she wouldn’t stay on or visit the twenty-fourth floor of the hotel; in fact, she closed her eyes if the elevator stopped there. It was from that floor that Leslie Cheung had jumped to his death. Ava wasn’t a huge fan of Cantonese pop but she’d liked Cheung, maybe partially because he was gay, and it haunted her that his sexual orientation had somehow contributed to his suicide.
The M Bar looked out on Victoria Harbour, its lotus-bud–shaped counter positioned so that everyone sitting there had a view. It was early and she had a choice of seats. She took one of the high-backed chairs on the right side. The bar served tapas, Hong Kong style, and she was tempted. There were two restaurants on the same floor: Man Wah, which some people considered the best Chinese restaurant in Hong Kong, and Pierre, a Michelin two-star French restaurant. She was hungry. The snow pea tips and a few scallops were all she had eaten that day. She decided to wait to have a real meal, and ordered just a glass of white burgundy.
She turned on her laptop and made the wireless connection. She sent Uncle the financial summary of the Wuhan case and was about to connect to the Millennium website when her cell rang. It was her father. She knew he was still in Toronto and realized it was six a.m. there. Michael must have called him.
“Daddy,” she said.
“How are you?”
“I’m okay. Has Michael been talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“How upset is he?”
“He doesn’t know what to be upset about first.”
“It is a mess,” Ava said, seeing no reason to be anything but honest.
Her father sighed. She could imagine him sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and the morning newspaper, dressed in a pair of the Holt Renfrew silk pyjamas her mother made him wear. He had thick black hair that he still wore long, and in the morning it was always rumpled. She and Marian loved to see him like that, rather than in his normal Hong Kong–slick mode.
“Michael is worried that you think he’s a fool.”
That should be the least of his worries, she thought. “Well, they certainly did a foolish thing.”
“Obviously. And Ava, you are sure about this Lok character, that he is triad?”
“He is, and he’s pulled this real-estate scam before. If they had done any serious due diligence they would have found that out.”
“It is Hong Kong,” Marcus Lee said. “We still do business on handshakes, we trust friends and family. Michael trusted Simon, Simon trusted this David Chi, and that overrode common business sense.”
“I know. A lot of my business comes from people whose friends have screwed them over.”
“Yes, you would know, and now Michael knows. A bit late, of course.”