Blue lantern, p.6
Blue Lantern, page 6
Brodie caught the minty breath, saw the red purse of lips, and turned gently away. He thought that there was secret coin, of which he saw the merest flash in the feeble light of the corridor, money nobody would speak of, which passed in silence to a chosen few.
He stood at the edge of the indoor pool; it contained a group of fat, naked men, brown, black, white, caramel and oatmeal skinned, soaping each other’s backs. He thought of the grime filtered from so many bodies into the water, silting up crevices between the tiles, and coagulating in corners of the pool.
“No girls,” he said.
“Take your pleasures one at a time,” Marsden laughed, pushing him into the hot, opaque, green water.
A bald pot-bellied Indian waved Brodie forward, grabbing his neck, and began to soap his chest. The onlookers laughed. The sight of the lean, golden body charmed them. The Indian put an arm-lock on Brodie from behind, while the others joined in the soaping and groping, and then he was dunked in the scalding water like a child; it was playful, and Brodie didn’t show the discomfort he felt. He scrambled out of the pool, and was beckoned into a massage cubicle by a heavily muscled Chinese youth, naked except for bathing trunks and wooden clogs. Brodie, enervated, climbed on to the table submissively.
“I want girl to do massage, OK?”
The masseur grinned and agreed, but proceeded with his job. He kneaded Brodie’s shoulders and knees, flattening him out like a lump of potter’s clay. Staring at the ceiling, with the masseurs rippling torso rising above him, Brodie did not give up.
“You savvy girl?”
The masseur seemed to assent readily, seizing Brodie’s arm, and cracking the joints; then he pounded Brodie’s chest with the heels of his hands, and even attempted to bend Brodie’s knees in reverse. “Girls like you pretty good after this,” he said.
“You don’t understand – I want the massage done by a girl.”
Brodie got the words out between blows as a kind of self-defence. He knew this was a male establishment, and he was helpless in the grip of a masculine machine. The masseur nodded happily, flipped him over like a pancake, on to his belly, and began to hammer his back. Then the masseur slipped off his clogs, and sprang on to the table. He kneaded Brodie’s calves with a big-toed foot. Then the man jumped on to Brodie’s back with both feet. Brodie groaned at the crushing weight centred over his shoulder blades. The masseur’s foot pads pulverised his muscles. Pains ran down his spine like electric shocks. The masseur made satisfied grunts, treating Brodie’s cries as expressions of pleasure. Brodie tried to tip the masseur off his back, but the man was as sure of his balance as a tightrope walker. At last the massage, if it could be called that, came to an end.
“OK. Stand up now. Get showered, ready for girl, eh?”
The masseur revealed his broken teeth as Brodie levered himself up from the table, quivering, his head watery.
“You also give me tipsy? Ten dollars.”
Brodie dressed gingerly after a shower, paid his bill including the tip, and stepped into the street. Marsden came out in a few minutes, combed, pink-scalped, and radiating good humour.
“Never again!” Brodie said.
“Ah, there are some things a girl can’t do for you,” Marsden declared.
Flinn took Brodie to a restaurant near the Mongkok station; they could not have dined together at the station because commissioned officers had a separate mess. Brodie tried to think of something beyond pleasantries as they walked together in the street, but they had nothing in common but their work. The restaurant was evidently one where Flinn was amongst friends – two CID inspectors, a Portugese accountant, and three Chinese businessmen. Brodie missed the names in a hurried introduction.
As a preliminary it was drinks and poker for small sums. Brodie didn’t play and the others didn’t press him. Their party occupied the corner of an upstairs room, by the windows, screened from the other tables. After twenty minutes the food was served, six dishes; prawns, corn soup, baked grouper, crumbed crab claws, goose, and duck’s feet with plain rice and tea. Bottles of gin and brandy were on the table. Brodie stuck to beer. The Chinese took plenty of liquor and became red faced and noisy.
The pace of the meal was that of men who could afford a couple of hours at ease in their group. The conversation, mostly in English, was about cards and horses and the financial indiscretions of people unknown to Brodie. When the meal concluded, Brodie was left with Flinn as the others conversed with their neighbour or moved to the card table. Flinn’s order of grilled steak, a special favour for a special customer, had been late in arriving. Flinn had picked at the Chinese dishes, but mainly consoled himself with brandy. Now Brodie watched while Flinn ate. He consumed the meat and green vegetables first, gulping without tasting, and left the potatoes. He contemplated the four ovoids swimming in gravy. He held his knife and fork each in a fist pointing at the ceiling. He squinted at Brodie, and rearranged the four potatoes. He sliced one in half and examined the circle of white flesh. He forked the chosen half on to a grey carpet of tongue. Flinn swallowed the lump with a quick bow of his head. He removed gravy from the crack at the corner of his mouth with a finger. He wiped his finger on the side of the plate, and studied the Chinese character he had inadvertently produced on the glaze.
“Y’know Mike, we have a system here. We can’t keep control of the Colony with a handful of police. Cooperation. We have to have the cooperation of the Chinese cop on the beat, and the people. Don’t forget the people.”
“Sure,” Brodie said, watching as Flinn foraged in the gravy for another potato.
“Y’ve got a good record. I’ve seen your report. Don’t be too impetuous. Don’t rush out into the street and arrest everybody. Go gently.”
“I don’t get it. I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You’ve been causing us some embarrassment is what I would say, some of your arrests.”
“They’ve all been legitimate, based on evidence.”
“I’m not questioning that. There’s a larger picture, and you’re getting in the way. If every inspector fresh out of the School arrested everybody he could, we’d have chaos. You see a street dealer, you collar him, and maybe screw up the plans we have to get at the people behind him. Get it?”
Brodie considered this; it seemed reasonable. “So how do I know when to act?”
Flinn returned a complacent smile. “Simple. Trouble with Yanks or Brit soldiers, tourists, street fights, robberies, domestic arguments, shoplifting, assaults – your problem. And it’s a big problem. There’s a hell of a lot of work for you out there. For the rest, wait until I tell you, or Staff Huang tells you.”
“If I see someone pushing drugs, I don’t arrest them. I ask you or Staff Huang?”
“Right. Stay out of anything to do with narcotics, prostitution or games. Most street crime is yours. God knows there’s enough of it. Anything else, and any doubts, see me or Staff Huang. This is the rule.”
“I never heard of the rule. And who says I have to follow it?”
Flinn wrestled with a belch which contorted his oleaginous features. “I say, and the whole way we work here says.”
“OK.”
Brodie could see the sense in coordinating action on organised crime. He believed, now he came to think of it, that it must happen. And he had unwittingly been frustrating it.
Flinn settled the last potato in his cheek and pushed his plate away. “Right. Smart thinking. We’ll tell you who, and where, and when. A nice selection.”
“What happens if do arrest somebody I see pushing, or pimping or running a game? I mean there isn’t always time to come back to the station and discuss it. If you don’t move, you lose the collar.”
Flinn looked at him sullenly. “Don’t do it.”
Brodie was having supper at Marsden’s apartment. Marsden lived in a spacious private tower in Tsim Sha Tsui looking across the wharves and harbour to the high-rises of Central District. The living room was plastered white, with wide windows like movie screens. The rooms were furnished with pieces acquired by Marsden rather than the cheap white pine supplied by the Force. Brodie had been given a tour on an earlier occasion. Marsden had pointed out then, that the Bang & Olufsen stereo, the Dolby tape recorder and the Bosch air conditioners were the best of their kind. The other criterion which Marsden allowed for his possessions was exoticism; this applied to the geisha doll in a glass case, the carved wood chests, the Japanese sword, and the brass Buddha lit from within by an electric lamp. Brodie concealed the fact that he felt no enthusiasm for Marsden’s acquisitions.
The other feature of the apartment which struck Brodie was order. The leather bound classics on the bookshelf were neatly in line by author; even a pile of Time magazines was straight-edged. The perfumes in the bathroom were graded in colour and size. Marsden knew where everything was, from a volume of short stories to a bottle of after-shave lotion. Brodie had been introduced by Marsden to a rational world where correspondence was kept up to date and filed; bills were paid on time; suits were dry-cleaned in rotation, and dental appointments made at regular intervals. Marsden handled the minutiae of everyday life with gusto, while Brodie fell behind, and beat himself with the stick of what other people might think of his lapses.
The amah had prepared small dishes of rice, noodles, tuna and pigeon. Marsden opened a bottle of cabernet sauvignon from his native Australia, and talked learnedly about the vineyards of New South Wales and Adelaide. He had read and appreciated and remembered it all.
“To me wine is either plonk, or palatable,” Brodie confessed.
Marsden ignored the remark. He was expansive, and anxious to show he believed in living gracefully. “I enjoy my work. I live in comfort. I have as many women as I want. I’ve chosen this, Mike. I could have had a number of other careers. But I’ve decided on this one. I don’t spend time wondering what life might be like if I had another job, in another place. In that respect I’ve learned from Candide. I’ve created this environment, this world for myself.”
Brodie had only a vague idea who Candide was, and he wasn’t going to disclose his ignorance by asking. He couldn’t determine what it was that brought a clever middle class kid from Perth, to embrace the Colony so wholly; perhaps a spirit of adventure, or a rejection of the, as Marsden described it, boring suburbia of his native Perth, with its immaculate houses and gardens, where nothing ever happened.
“I don’t need to lean on others for approval of my taste or friendships. I don’t want approval. I think you’re a lot like me, Mike. That’s why I like you. You have a will of your own. You stand up to the morons. What I can’t understand is why you’re so friendly with a loser like Sherwin.”
Marsden grinned at Brodie from his solitary, oriental spiced comfort. Brodie remained silent, swigging the cabernet sauvignon, avoiding the chopsticks, and spooning more pigeon into his bowl.
“You don’t fancy Paul Sherwin, do you? I mean he has no other attractions.”
Again, Brodie didn’t respond, treating the remark as a jibe rather than a serious enquiry.
Marsden reached across and placed his hand upon Brodie’s hand, which lay palm down on the table at that moment. “I despise dissipation, Mike but I’m a great advocate of pleasure consciously pursued. I think Lord Chesterfield said that in one of his letters to his son.”
Brodie smiled agreeably, and ignored the message. But he knew that there would come a time when he would have to declare himself. He had allowed a wrong impression to be created, and he was confused at the prospect of how to tell Marsden without giving offence.
After the meal, they were sipping cognac and listening to Ella Fitzgerald on the stereo. Marsden opened a drawer in his carved chest. Inside lay many photographs, perhaps more than a hundred. “You haven’t seen these. All girls. Take a look.”
Marsden ran his fingers through the loose cards, cackling. To be polite, Brodie picked up a handful; they were casual shots taken in the street or on the beach, beautiful young Chinese and Filipino girls.
“Where do you meet them?” Brodie asked, knowing the answer, and without real interest.
“It’s as I said, speaking the language; mostly bars and ballrooms. All of them give you a snap. I never ask.”
“And where are the rest from?”
“Shops, offices. They’re not the daughters of merchant princes.”
“What’s happened to all these beauties?”
“As soon as things get complicated I chuck them. Some see there’s nothing in it and drift off. They go to bed easily. They don’t bargain with their cunts like our women. I get bored with them. Intelligence and depth aren’t easy to find, Mike. I could have more companionship with somebody like you.”
Brodie bowed his head sagely, and attempted to return to the girls. “You’re getting on a bit now for all this cradle-snatching, Andy.”
But Marsden had no thought that time was running against him. “Men get more attractive to woman as they get older. You lose a little hair. You look more worn. Women don’t care. They like an experienced man.”
It was one of Marsden’s many certainties which Brodie did not share. When he studied his visage he could see the skull beneath advancing through the skin.
“I think I’ve worn rather well,” Marsden said, producing two photos from his wallet. “Tell me which you think is the more attractive of these two men.”
One photo showed a sallow young man of about twenty, bony cheeks, thin lips sprouting a beaver of black hair; the other the full-faced man in his mid thirties, more forehead, more jowl, more arrogance.
“I can candidly say the older man,” Brodie lied.
Brodie replaced the shots of the girls in the drawer, unable to feign more interest, and then noticed on the top of the pile, a girl in a coat with a white fur collar, crossing a street. He looked more closely at the grainy colour. “This is Vanessa?”
“Vanessa? Oh yes, I’ve got all the Lotus crowd there. It doesn’t mean I’ve been to bed with all of them.”
Brodie invented a story about taking Vanessa to Repulse Bay for dinner in order to borrow Andy Marsden’s car. He met Helen Lau by arrangement at the Star Ferry on the Hong Kong side at nine in the evening. While he had been worrying that she might have lost interest in him, he found that she accepted his offer of a trip to the Peak with alacrity.
“My, this is a very smart machine,” she said as she slid her small body into the low seat of the MG. “You must have important friends.”
He smelled her perfume, and leaned over toward her, nearly touching her cheek with his lips.
“Not here,” she said firmly, moving away. “Too many people.”
They were parked in a space beyond the main ferry gates where waiting cars often pulled in, but there was hardly anybody about. He started the car and nosed through the Central District traffic, and up Magazine Gap road, slightly offended.
“Nobody is going to notice you around here.”
“I’m pretty well known, you know, and I just don’t want to risk it.”
“You make me feel as though I’m out with a married woman.”
“Well, I’m not married, Mike, and I’ve already told you what concerns me.”
There was a finality in her tone which ended the debate. He engrossed himself in booting the MG up the steep grade, and round the tight bends, changing gear up and down between second and third repeatedly to keep up the speed.
After a while she said in a bossy tone, “Hey, come on big boy, don’t sulk. Just remember that when you’re in a public place with me, you can’t behave as if I’m your girlfriend.”
“And how would I behave with a girlfriend?”
“You know very well.”
“How about when we’re not in a public place?”
She thought about her reply. “It depends on how we feel about each other. I like you, but I hardly know you.”
The tyres squealed on the tarmac, but Helen seemed to enjoy it. “You like speed?”
“The bends make it seem fast. We’re not going very fast.”
When they were near the Peak, mist engulfed the car. The Peak could host a cloud for several days on end. Brodie couldn’t see the trees on the roadside.
“It’s a pity because I’ve been looking forward to the view. It’s over a year since I was up here.”
Brodie slowed. He had visibility of only a few yards ahead. “It’ll mean we won’t be in a public place.”
He looked at her and she laughed, warm, feline and encouraging.
The dimples showed. “We can talk. There’s such a lot to talk about.”
The road was lonely, with houses set back behind thick white walls. The mist mixed with the glare of sodium lamps blanketed the windows like orange blinds. Brodie parked, and they sat looking at each other in near-darkness. He put his hands on her shoulders, and drew her toward him and she yielded warmly. He felt her lips tremble on his, and her hands caress his shoulders. He touched her breasts through her thin cheong sam. The dress unbuttoned down the front, and he undid the buttons. She was now almost naked, resting loosely in her open frock, and he was fully clothed, slacks, long sleeved shirt, and necktie. As they kissed, she loosened his tie and helped with his other buttons, with the dexterity of a doctor handling a patient. All this was to Brodie’s surprise.
Even as Brodie and Helen prepared to embrace, it began to dawn upon both that the restrictions of the car almost forbade it. The steering wheel was close to Brodie’s chest; between the seats, the gear and driveshaft housing occupied the space. The rear seat was designed for luggage rather than people. Faced with an anatomical impossibility, they both giggled as they wriggled for position.
Helen said lightly, “You chose the car.”
Brodie hadn’t thought about the car because he hadn’t expected this. Somehow, despite the verbal sparring on the drive, it had suddenly become surprisingly easy to feel close, and the long verbal overture which he had expected wasn’t necessary. Helen had moved from caution to sensual hunger; but the most Brodie could do was lean over the transmission housing and press his bare chest against her; their fondling was haunting and sure.
