13

Hong Kong

It’s not lost on Sobieski that tonight the most important man in her life is dead, stretched out on a cold rack in an HKPD morgue.

Patrick freaking Lau. Her first and in all likelihood—she’s a government financial agent, a numbers cruncher after all—her last homicide. Semi-drunk and planning a special dinner one second and facedown and dead on his countertop the next. And not just any countertop. This was gorgeous white Carerra marble in an apartment and a kitchen that put any she’s lived in to shame. Not that she covets Lau’s place. The truth is the only thing she ever does here in her own modest apartment is work and sleep. Or at least try to. Plus, the last time she attempted to cook a decent meal was more than a year ago. And she botched that even more than she botched the date.

Sobieski knows that she’ll probably never live in a place like Patrick Lau’s. Not as long as she works this job and lives this life anyway. Since she started at TFI, she’s lived in five cities and tried and failed at myriad romances. In that time she’s had one serious relationship. With a Brit in Budapest, a filmmaker of all things. She cared enough about him to consider declining her next assignment, a transfer to Zurich. But before she had a chance to explain, the filmmaker, Blake, flat-out refused to consider moving with her, despite the fact that he was in between projects, despite the fact that he’d once said Switzerland was one of his favorite countries. If he hadn’t been so adamant about staying, or if he’d at least been in the middle of something profound and great, she might have told him she’d consider turning down her assignment to be with him. But it was clear that making a sacrifice on her behalf never entered his mind. So she dumped him. She’d thought she was in love, but her definition of love was evolving. When you were truly in love, she reasoned, you’d do anything or go anywhere to be together. Despite each other’s faults. Because being together, theoretically, made the faults go away. Too bad in practice that was never the case.

She was going to wait until morning but decides to call Michaud now, just after ten o’clock.

“Michaud.” The instrumental prelude to Bon Jovi’s “Dead or Alive” in the background indicates that he is still in a karaoke bar.

“My God, Boss,” Sobieski says. “Please tell me that you’re not still there.”

Rather than directly replying, Michaud gets right to business. “Anything to that thing?”

“If there is, it’s buried in the data. Which the army of lawyers at Hang Seng is not in the least willing to share.”

“So that’s that, then.”

Sobieski pauses. Either an animal has been wounded in close proximity to Michaud or someone who should be forbidden from coming within ten feet of a microphone is singing: “I’m a cowboyyy, on a steel horse I ride . . .”

“Obviously,” Michaud says, “you’re thinking there’s something else.”

“Well, sort of.” She tells him about the martini on the counter, the restaurant page on Patrick Lau’s phone, Lau’s recent social and financial history, and about the way that Emily Cheng looked downward after her final question. “The guy absolutely made some money today.”

“Well, those things happen in the financial industry. And even if you’re right, and he made it illegally,” Michaud responds, “it sounds like it’s Hong Kong’s problem. Mo’s problem; not TFI’s.”

“Agreed. But Mo did ask us to take a closer look. And you wouldn’t have sent me if you didn’t think . . .”

“Okay, then. Run it. But you’ve got to promise: This is a murder investigation, big money. Who knows what level of scum. Russian mob scum. In-house bank scum. And it’s not a distinctly American thing. If this becomes something more than a numbers case . . . data . . . electronic paper trail . . . anything more than that . . . if it gets dangerous in any way, you pull back.”

“Right.”

“No reason to risk your life over some scumbag’s money.”

“Right,” Sobieski answers.

“Want me to make the call?”

“No, I got it.”

“Of course you do, Sobi. Always doing the right thing. Meantime, feel like coming downtown to do a little duet, maybe a little Captain and Tennille with me?”

“Who?”

“Ashford and Simpson?”

“I don’t follow.”

“Ike and Tina, with me as Tina?”

“Good night, Michaud.” She hangs up and looks out her window at the closed stalls of Stanley Market. Not the spectacular harbor view that Patrick Lau had, but in the daytime it pulses with tourists and vendors. Sobieski likes the energy and the kinetic vibe of the human interactions happening all around her. Even if, after two years on Hong Kong Island, she doesn’t know very many of the humans and a scant few of the interactions involve her.

She decides that in the morning, after she works out, she’ll visit the tech center and do a secure and thorough search on any recent activity at Hang Seng Bank. But for now she is content to fix a cup of Chinese chrysanthemum tea purchased yesterday at a market stall not a hundred feet from her front door and use her own laptop to conduct an informal midnight inquiry into the life and times of Patrick Lau.

Always doing the right thing.

Why? Because it’s more or less her job, and it keeps her out of trouble. But also because this stranger’s death has forced her to contemplate the parallel circumstances of her own life and a world where a single, good-looking, twenty-nine-year-old, allegedly successful financial expert can die alone in a Hong Kong apartment, and no one seems to care.