The Hamlet Murders by David Rotenberg Page B

night? It was Wednesday. Did any who, who was any who in Hong Kong, have any idea what or who they were doing three days ahead? No. “Give me your cell number and I’ll get back to you,” she said to get him off the line. The young man evidently couldn’t believe his good fortune. He had thanked her more than he should have and gave her not only his cell number, but also the apartment number of the place he shared with three men and even his mom’s phone number.
    The phone on her desk stopped ringing. Joan found the silence that followed strangely unnerving.
    She pulled open a drawer of her desk and found the scrap of paper on which she’d scribbled the lab tech’s numbers. He was clearly either too young or too stupid or both for her to date, but he might be just perfectly equipped to account for at least some of the days she’d be out of Hong Kong.
    She put his phone numbers to one side and stood up. She looked around her. After what she was about to do, all of this could change – to be frank, it could be no more. She didn’t know what she thought of that. She loved her work and she’d been adequately rewarded for her considerable expertise. Now she could be throwing it all away. She looked again at the coded e-mail from Dalong Fada and memorized the instructions and the single contact number there. She knew that once she dialled that number she might never be able to return to her life here. Before she met Wu Fan-zi in Shanghai she would never have considered giving all this up. But now, after Wu Fan-zi, she would. She picked up the phone and dialled the Dalong Fada number.
    The phone was answered with a stiff “Dui.” The use of Mandarin in Hong Kong was unusual, but it was what she expected. Quickly, in Mandarin, she gave the code words from the e-mail, “When does the Club Sierra open?”
    “Just before moonrise,” came the coded answer.
    “Is the movie star dancing tonight?”
    “Dui.”
    The phone went dead. If someone tried to trace the call they would be out of luck. The person who answered Joan’s call only used cell phones once then threw them into the sea.

    Joan took a breath. The silly old British phrase the game’s afoot popped into her head – a remnant from her British education that had featured second-, third-, and fourth-rate British writers above all others. She sat and dialled the young tech’s number. She felt a little bad about using him – but only a little bad. “It’s Joan Shui,” she said. The pause that followed was probably the result of him dropping his cell phone. “Hey, how’re you doin’, hey?” he said in his best impression of a man in complete control.
    It was not a terribly impressive impression.
    “I’ve managed to clear the next few days. Are you busy?”
    Splutter, pause, clunk, then, “Great. Good. No, great.”
    “How about three nights at the Calden Inn?”
    The silence that followed was the longest yet. The poor lad was balancing his good fortune with the incredible expense of three nights at the Calden Inn. The Calden Inn was an exclusive private retreat just across from Macaw. Before Joan Shui had gone to Shanghai to investigate an arson in an abortion clinic and fallen hopelessly in love with Shanghai’s head fireman Wu Fan-zi, she had thought that a weekend at the Calden Inn was the height of chic. Wealthy men sometimes suggested the Calden Inn as a great place for a little R and R and she sometimes took them up on it. Before Wu Fan-zi, she thought of sex much the same way as she thought of calisthenics – sometimes the exertion was very pleasing and sometimes it was less pleasing. The only consistent reality of her many visits to the Calden Inn was the pleasure she had given the men she was with and the luxury that they had provided for her.
    “I’ve already made reservations in your name. I gave them your Visa number; we have it on file here for times that you have to go out of pocket for us. I got us a suite. I have to complete