Kerry Young - Pao

I pick up the baby and coo her a bit while I say goodbye to Madame Chin and Madame Fong and I watch Tilly running fresh water over the ham choi and rinsing it for dinner. After dinner when the house empty and Ma gone to temple I tell Zhang ’bout Morrison and DeFreitas and he say to me, ‘So what you want with this doctor anyway?’

‘I paying out a lot of money to doctors, what with Fay and the children and Gloria and the baby, and then there is the normal things to do with the girls.’

‘You mean your whores?’

‘Why you always got to call them that?’

‘Because that is what they is.’ And I just look at him because even after all these years he just can’t stop drawing attention to it and reminding me how he feel about it even though it is the money from these girls that is helping to put food on the table. Somehow the two things don’t match up in his head. Maybe because he still getting everything he want for free – the herbalist, the barber, the pharmacy, clothes, shoes – hell he still even eating in Chinatown when he want to for free.

‘Well it cost me a lot of money and I just reckon that if I can get me a doctor then I can make some saving.’

‘You no pay him?’

‘No, he work for a favour to me.’

‘What favour you do him?’

‘I write off his gambling tabs.’

‘You buy them up?’

‘I reckon it worth it because he pay it back over and over year after year and he still owe me. And I can save him face as well because I don’t mention none of it to his wife so he can carry on being a good Christian as far as she is concerned.’

‘DeFreitas not honest businessman. He find out you want doctor he raise price of tabs. Then maybe it not such good bargain.’ Zhang look away from me, off somewhere like he thinking. Then he say, ‘You have to make DeFreitas give you the tab, like you taking it to do him a favour.’ Sun Tzu say, ‘ To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill .’

Next morning I call Clifton Brown and tell him to meet me over the Blue Lagoon.

‘You want me to go threaten DeFreitas over this doctor?’

‘I want you to go take some boys in uniform and a big police van and drive over to West Kingston and tell him that you can’t have him roughing up this white man in broad daylight in a public place like that. Tell him Morrison complain to you and he is a white man and a respected doctor and you just can’t have it. DeFreitas got to leave the doctor alone.’

‘What about the money?’

‘Tell him you don’t give a shit about his money. The way he acting making you look bad, after all you supposed to be fighting corruption and you can’t have him acting like he don’t respect your authority. Tell him to forget about the doctor otherwise you going shut him down, his whole operation, and you going make it mean and nasty so whatever Morrison owe him be a small price to pay.’

And that work out just fine because a week later news was all over town ’bout how DeFreitas was looking to shift Morrison’s tabs. So I offer him half of what he was asking and he take it. And the next day I tell Finley to go buy up the rest of Morrison’s tabs.

Sun Tzu say, ‘ He who understands how to use both large and small forces will be victorious .’

But Morrison running up more and more money he owe to bookies all over town and I am having trouble explaining to these men that I have no intention of picking up any more of his tabs, that whatever they doing with Morrison they have to think of as extending a personal courtesy to me. So finally I decide is time I go have a little talk with him.

I take a drive up to the hospital one rainy afternoon and they show me into a upstairs office that got his name on the door in shiny brass letters, ‘Dr George Morrison’, and where a skinny little nurse with a white uniform and buck teeth tell me to wait. Outta the window I look down into a little garden with bird of paradise and a frangipani growing in the middle of it. It look pretty, what with the little wooden seat round the tree, and it sound peaceful with the raindrops dripping off the banana leaves. When Morrison come into the room he walk over to the window and stand next to me looking into the garden.

‘You like?’

‘Yeah, it look like a pretty space. Calm and peaceful like.’

‘It has given me many hours of pleasure.’

‘I surprised a man like you got time for a thing like that.’

‘I am a very keen gardener.’ Then he jut out his chin towards the window and say, ‘This is one of the few pleasures I still allow myself.’ He have a little think to himself and then he say, ‘How can I help you? Is the baby fine? And your good wife, is she well?’

I look at him and I smile to myself because I can’t understand how come he manage to sound so proper and formal for a man with his secrets, and what he think he doing acting like that with me after we been drinking Appleton together and him telling me all ’bout his personal business with his wife and how she can’t get a baby and such. Or maybe he just got a bad memory. I notice that ’bout white people. They got bad memories.

So I say to him, ‘They both good, doctor. Thank you for asking but they not what bring me here today.’

He raise one eyebrow and look at me like he can’t imagine what I have come there for. So I reach in my pocket and I pull out a couple of his tabs and I hold them up in front of him. He look at them like he got no idea what they are, and then I see the panic creep ’cross his face, and that is the first time he look at me. Really focus on me.

So I say, ‘You know what these are?’ But he don’t say nothing, he just stand there shaking his head like he think that maybe he in a dream and he soon going wake up. So I wave the tabs around, like rock them from side to side in my hand and I say to him, ‘These belong to me now. Actually, all your tabs belong to me now. I done buy up all of them. Even the ones from your friend Louis DeFreitas.’

Morrison look worried but him still can’t say nothing to me. Is like his whole body gone into shock and all he can do is sweat because now his doughy white face is wet and red and clammy.

So I tell him, ‘I not going hurt you, yu know. I didn’t spend good money on these so I can do you damage.’

But he still don’t say nothing, so I say, ‘What you think happen after all that business in King Street? Yu no notice how everything gone quiet on that front?’

He start to open his mouth, then almost like he was squeezing the air outta his lungs he say, ‘I thought perhaps he had gone away.’

‘Gone away! DeFreitas? You think DeFreitas go away and just forget that you owe him money?’

‘I thought he had perhaps been detained by the authorities. He seemed that sort.’

Well that is when I really laugh, right out loud. I nearly bust my gut. When I finally calm myself down and him standing there like he still don’t understand what is going on I say to him, ‘No, DeFreitas not gone nowhere. And none of them others neither. They all still right here in town, but now you owe me instead of them. And what I come to tell you is that it time for you to settle up.’

Morrison sit down in his big old leather chair and listen to me. And he agree to everything. Funny thing was, afterwards he take my hand and shake it. It seem like him so frighten of DeFreitas he actually grateful to me for stepping in.

So now I had me my very own personal physician, and the children had a doctor and the girls could rest easy ’bout all their little trials and tribulations. And in exchange Dr George Morrison had the full protection of the Yang family and a clean slate with everybody, except me. Just before I leave I say to him, ‘You have to curb your gambling.’