David Rotenberg - The Lake Ching murders

The crowd cheered. Money passed hands. “There must be some sort of betting associated with this,” Fong thought. A small tractor, its driver protected by thick metal meshing, came out into the arena and shooed the lion back into his cage. The goat’s carcass was tossed in after the animal. Then, as several men with hoses washed down the arena (hence the drain in the centre), twenty Chinese girls dressed like cheerleaders came out and did a cheap imitation of something that some would call dance and others would call lewd. Fong called it neither.

Fong looked to Chen. “Let’s get this over with. Where are they?”

Chen pointed to an enclosed luxury box overhanging the top of the stadium. They walked up a set of carpeted steps. At one point, Fong turned back to the stage. The girls were finishing with a flourish. He’d never seen cheerleaders before and had no idea why anyone would dress this way. Yet another foreign influence that he could well live without.

At the door of the box Chen identified himself. Two large men frisked Chen and Fong. When one found Fong’s ankle bracelet, he looked up. Fong said, “Everyone who is anyone has one of these in Shanghai.”

For a moment the man pondered that. Then he smiled and checked Fong’s crotch with much more force than was necessary. Fong did his best not to wince.

Once they passed inspection, they were guided through the door. Fong and Chen stepped into the room. It was air conditioned and, for China, extremely antiseptic. Two men sat in cushy leather chairs facing the arena.

A cheer went up from the crowd.

Fong couldn’t resist taking a peek. A wild boar came racing out into the arena. Its deadly, cutting tusks were already smeared in blood. It kicked the concrete with its vicious hooves. The clacking sound snapped through the air of the arena.

“Do you like the games, officer?”

Fong swung back to face the speaker. He was a middle-aged man with smooth, handsome features and a cultured accent. This must be the financial officer, Fong thought. “Pak Tsz Sin,” Fong said with the slightest nod of his head.

The man acknowledged the correct use of his title but said, “Not really all that hard to guess though, is it, Detective Zhong? After all, I’m too young to be the Incense Master, aren’t I?”

Be cool, Fong reminded himself, but couldn’t resist saying, “You are that – too young, that is.”

“But I am not,” said the second man who turned in his chair to face Fong. The man was Fong’s age and had deep pools for eyes and rage so clear that it sat on his skin like a sunburn. The man rose from the chair. He looked frail.

A second roar from the crowd announced the arrival of another beast.

“Go ahead, have a look, Detective Zhong. You want to. It’s only human to know who has entered the ring.”

“Who?”

“As you prefer – what. What has entered the ring.”

Fong looked. The black panther was sleek and powerful. A full-grown male with bloodshot eyes and a shiny coat. He circled slowly, never taking his eyes off the deadly tusks of the wild boar. Fong forced his eyes back to the Incense Master.

The man had moved from his chair and was now halfway across the room, eyeing Fong.

“You want to talk about the boat.” It was a statement not a question.

“I do,” Fong acknowledged.

“Not our style, Detective Zhong.”

Fong had always found it odd that gangsters thought they had style of any sort. Women, yes. Money, yes. Power, sometimes. But style, never.

“You mean killing’s not your style?”

The Incense Master smiled. “Killing is such a condemnatory term, don’t you find?”

“I wouldn’t know about that.”

“We are in business, Detective Zhong. We do what is good for business. Killing those foreigners on that boat was not good for business. We were already partway to an understanding with them. We’d offered the necessary protections for working in this part of the world.”

“You mean you’d already settled on your extortion fees.”

“More condemnatory terms, Detective. And no, we hadn’t settled on terms. We were close though to an agreement that benefited all. In fact, as a show of our good faith we offered to supply the entertainment for the party on the boat.”

“What was the party for?”

“A celebration, I believe.”

“For what?”

“That was the foreigner’s business – not ours.”

“Yours was extortion.”

The Incense Master smiled.

“So, you supplied the girls for the party.”

“Women,” he corrected Fong.

“But none of your men were on that boat?”

“Not a one.”

“Explain this,” Fong said as he threw him three pictures of the Triad insignia on the outside of the boat.

“Explain?”

“Yes, I assume you know the meaning of the term.”

“I do. My explanation is that anyone with a brush and paint could have marked the outside of that boat with our emblem.”

“And this?” he threw him a photo of the Triad warning on the ceiling mirror of the dead American’s room.

“That? That you’d need not only brush and paint but also a ladder. Do you have more pictures, Detective Zhong?”

“No.”

“What a relief. I was beginning to think you were going to publish a book. Everybody does these days, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know. I do have this.” Fong held up the Triad medallion on its broken chainlink.

The Incense Master laughed.

“What?” Fong demanded.

“Where have you been, Detective? Open the drawer over there.”

The young financial officer opened the drawer for Fong. There were hundreds of medallions there. “They’re big sellers, Detective Zhong. The tourists love them. They are a fine source of income for our business, as well as unpaid advertising. Like putting Tommy Hilfiger on a shirt, wouldn’t you say?”

Fong didn’t want to admit that he didn’t know who Tommy Hilfiger was, but was saved the embarrassment of asking when a huge cry went up from the arena.

The panther had leapt at the wild boar, which had met the challenge by raising its cutting tusks. The sharp things had pierced through the underside of the panther’s chin sending howling cries from the injured cat. The boar then pushed hard off its tiny feet and pressed its advantage, trying to drive the tusks through to the panther’s brain. The move, however, exposed the boar’s underbelly. The cat raked the belly with its back claws. The boar roared and drove forward, its intestines falling as it moved. Blood shot from the panther as its head hit the concrete.

Boar tusks and panther claws did the work for which they were designed. Both animals twitched in the final throes of their lives. Then amid the mess and stink and offal, they died – and the crowd cheered.

Fong dragged his eyes from the event. Both Triad men were looking at him. Finally, the financial officer spoke. Indicating the arena, “That is what we do, Detective. We are here to make money, not scare it away. There was no money to be made in killing those foreigners. There was money to be made in ‘assisting’ the foreigners. Not in killing them.”

“So you had nothing to do with it?” Fong said, feeling stupid.

“Oh, we had something to do with it, officer.”

“What?” Fong demanded.

“As I said, we supplied the women.” With that, he reached into his pocket and took out a fistful of gaudycoloured business cards.

Chen took them.

The Triad man stared at Fong but pointed at the cards in Chen’s hand. “Those women, Detective Zhong.”

The coroner held the bar room section of the model in his hand. The tiny body of the eldest Chinese man swung gently from the rafter, his face a red blotch.