Foresight by Ian Hamilton

Author:Ian Hamilton [Hamilton, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2020-01-20T16:00:00+00:00

( 18 )

The next three days passed so slowly that Uncle wondered if time was playing tricks on him. The businesses in Fanling almost ran themselves and didn’t need his involvement. He touched base with Ming and a couple of their warehouse managers in Shenzhen and was told that everything was operating normally. He phoned Xu and Tse every day, but they had nothing new to report. He did not hear from Liu or Ms. Gao, but given how calm things were in SEZs, he saw no reason to reach out to them. Once he called the Lisboa Hotel in Macau to talk to Fong, but there was no answer in the mama-san’s suite and he didn’t phone again.

The one piece of definitive news had come from the hospital. Wu’s man had been taken off the critical list and was on the mend. That said, Uncle still wasn’t ready to call Wu, and Wang was keeping their men on alert.

On Sunday he went to the races in Sha Tin, and even those four hours seemed to drag. He felt engaged during each race, but he spent most of the time between events thinking about what was going on in Shenzhen. He couldn’t get rid of the feeling that things weren’t quite right there. He had nothing specific to pin his unease on; it just worried him that it was so calm. He sensed danger but was frustrated that he couldn’t say exactly why. During his years as a triad, Uncle had always trusted his instincts. Now they were screaming that trouble was brewing. Stop being paranoid. You’re overthinking this. Concentrate on the racing form, he told himself several times, but after a few minutes his mind would drift back to Shenzhen.

He stayed at Sha Tin until the last race and left the track with a profit of eleven thousand HK dollars stuffed into his suit pockets. A win like that usually lifted his spirits, but he remained in a sombre mood as the taxi took him back to Fanling. The thought of going home to his apartment held no appeal, so he told the driver to take him to Dong’s Kitchen.

Dong’s was on San Wan Road, near the centre of Fanling. It specialized in Cantonese cuisine and served all-day dim sum. The house specialty was chicken feet marinated in a secret sauce that combined sweet, sour, and the sharp heat of some unknown chili. But as good as the food was, that wasn’t Uncle’s main reason for going there. On Wednesdays and Sundays Dong’s became one of the gang’s betting shops, and despite the competition from the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club’s new outlet, it was managing to hold its own. Uncle attributed that to the talents of Tian Longwei, who had been running the operation for more than a decade. Uncle’s trip to Dong’s was motivated by a desire to talk to Tian, a man he trusted as much as Xu.

Tian had been Uncle’s triad mentor and sponsor. He was the uncle of Tam, one of Uncle’s friends who had made the swim from China with him in 1959.

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