Chapter 3

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MARCUS LEE WAS the father of Ava and her older sister Marian. He was also the father of four sons from his first wife, and the father of a son and daughter from a third wife. The marriage to the first wife was legal; his second and third were traditional and more form than substance. He still lived with the first wife in Hong Kong. Jennie Lee had been shipped off to Canada when Marian was four years old and Ava was two. The third wife had appeared much later, had given him two more children, and was now living in Australia.

It was, by Western standards, a strange family structure. But in Hong Kong it wasn't that unusual among the wealthy for a man to have more than one wife and family. There were rules of engagement, and as long as everyone followed those rules, the system worked.

Jennie had been working in a company that Marcus owned when they met. They fell in love, embarked on their marriage of sorts, and the girls followed. She knew from the outset that he would never leave his first wife, and that his sons would inherit his estate when he passed. She thought she could manage the situation, but her emotions eventually got the best of her. When things got really bad, Marcus sent her to Vancouver. She lasted two years there before the cold and the dampness got to her. Then she and the girls moved to Toronto and settled in Richmond Hill.

Oddly, the distance between Marcus and Jennie saved their relationship. They talked every day on the phone and he spent two weeks a year with her. He loved the girls, and he supported them and Jennie in a style that was comfortable if not luxurious. He had bought her a house, paid for a new car every three years, provided a monthly allowance, and covered the expenses of the girls' private-school education and extracurricular activities.

To Ava's knowledge there had never been another man in Jennie's life. As far as her mother was concerned, Marcus was her husband and he had her complete loyalty. Similarly, both Marian and Ava never thought of him as anything but their father. That they saw him for only two weeks a year wasn't that much different from the lives of their Chinese friends at school. There were, Ava realized later, a great many second and third wives in Toronto. Her mother said that Toronto's most elite private schools would be half-empty without their offspring.

When Ava was in her late teens, her relationship with her father began a subtle change. Instead of communicating with her through Jennie, he would call her directly. He had a keen interest in her education, making quiet comparisons between her progress through the accounting programs at York University and Babson and the educations his sons were receiving. She knew Marcus often spoke to Jennie about his other children, but she found it awkward when he did so with her. Still, she listened politely and didn't ask if he was as open with his first wife and four sons when it came to the subject of his Canadian family.

Ava looked at her watch and saw that it was too early to call Hong Kong. She reheated some noodles with shrimp in the microwave and sat on the couch to watch television. The couch had come from her mother's basement. Marian had lost her virginity on it. Ava had lost hers in her dorm, to the captain of the women's soccer team, when she was a freshman at York University.

Hong Kong was twelve hours ahead of Toronto, so Ava waited until eight thirty before she phoned, figuring that her father would be in his car by then, working his way down Victoria Peak to his office in Central. She dialled his cell.

"Hello, sweetheart," he said after two rings.

"I hope this is convenient," she said.

"I'm in the car."

"So you can talk?"

"Of course, but it's rather strange for you to call like this. Has something happened to Mummy?"

"No, she's fine. I have a business problem I wanted to discuss with you."

"This has to do with your new business?"

"Yes."

"Mummy said it was going well."

"Well enough, but I have a client who has a problem," she said. "He's been shipping containers of chicken feet to Hong Kong and the buyer has decided to renege on paying the invoices."

"My knowledge of chicken feet is restricted to ordering them in a restaurant."

"My client is owed a million dollars."

"Hong Kong?"

"American."

"That's serious."

"He's asked me to try to locate the money. That's something I'm trained to do, but I have no idea what legal remedies are available to us in Hong Kong if I do find it."

"Has the importer been making quality claims?"

"How did you know that?"

"It's the oldest con game around. They say there's a quality problem with the shipment and use that as an excuse not to pay or to heavily discount. Of course, they suck in the exporter by paying in full for the initial loads before the claims start. But once they start, they escalate. And if your client doesn't buy the lies and decides to sue, the importer throws the claims at you and keeps you tied up legally for months. Once he thinks he's exhausted the law, he just stops negotiating and disappears."

"Have you gone through something like this?"

"No, but I can send you to ten people who have."

"What do they do about it? My client has gone to collection agencies, but none of them seem to want to take it on."

"Is the importer triad?" Marcus Lee asked quietly.

Ava paused. "I have no idea."

"That's one possibility. The other is that he's just smart. It isn't hard to set up a company in Hong Kong and then in Guangzhou and Shenzhen and move around the goods and the money. The law gets complicated."

"I'm told he's smart."

"Then it will be difficult."

"What if I find the money? Is there anything I can do to claw it back?"

"Ava, you're getting into some dangerous waters."

"Daddy, I'm only asking what's possible."

"Normally - and I'm telling you this second-hand, you understand - finding the money is the least important part of the equation for the people here who are expert at collecting debts. The first thing they want is the debtor. Once they have their hands on him, the money - or what's left of it - has a way of coming home."

"I see."

"Do you?"

"I think so."

"It isn't the kind of thing you want to be involved in."

"What do they charge to collect a debt?"

"Ava!"

"I'm just asking."

He paused and Ava expected him to put her off. "Thirty percent," he said.

"Wow."

"I know it sounds like a lot, but it's the going rate," Marcus Lee said. "So what are you thinking of doing about this client of yours?"

"He needs help."

"And you're trained to provide it," Marcus said, and then paused. "I have to say I was a little surprised when your mother told me about your new venture. Never mind that all those years at York and Babson equipped you to do more. All I kept thinking was how bored you must be. You've always struck me as a girl who has a very low threshold for boredom."

"I wouldn't do this because I'm bored," Ava said, surprised that her father could read her so well. "I would only do it if I thought I could help Mr. Lo."

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