The Trophy Taker. Lee Weeks

six-foot-five Texan who liked to tell people he’d made his money from selling shit, but really he’d made it from fertiliser deals. Although he was originally from Texas, he had his retirement home at Dolphin Key, in the middle of the Florida Keys. It was a once-beautiful bird sanctuary that had been completely ruined by the invasion of condos and resorts. Most of which Big Frank, through his myriad of business interests, had been indirectly responsible for.

      Big Frank loved it at Dolphin Key and had bought himself the biggest and best penthouse available. It had marble floors and a gold-plated bidet, four-poster beds and an original Norwegian sauna. On one side was the ocean. Imported beaches were on the other.

      He loved to open his French doors every morning and stand on his balcony, inhaling the sunshine. He loved to watch the magnificent ocean – alive and dancing – as it slid apologetically into the marina. And even though one boat melted into another, until it all became a jumble of money and yachts, Frank’s keen eyes could always spot it. There in the middle sat the biggest, the most beautiful of all of them – the China Doll – Frank’s baby.

      When Big Frank wasn’t fishing and felt in need of a new challenge, he took off on a business trip. At the moment he was dabbling in import/export. Mainly he imported sexual favours and exported Hong Kong dollars for them, and Lucy was his biggest supplier. She had captivated his soul. She had introduced him to a new world of pleasure and pain infliction – and he found he had a taste for it; couldn’t get enough of it; could hardly get through a day without it.

      They took a taxi to a decent love motel. It was the upmarket kind: warm towels and fountains. It had a brochure full of various themed rooms: Haiwaiian, Parisian, rubber, wet. Lucy giggled dutifully while Big Frank pontificated over the list of extras. His fingers, like blanched sausages, turned the laminated pages and ran down the menu as he read the items aloud: five-speed waterbed, pulsating Jacuzzi and a fruit basket.

      Gotta have me one of those, honey.

      Eventually he picked the most expensive room, with all the extras – the Paradise Suite.

      Lucy didn’t like wasting time like this. She was just about to get started when, from the corner of the room, above the plastic palms, came the offbeat soundtrack of a porn flick starting up. The TV screen came to life with close-up flesh and lurid colour. Big Frank took off his polo shirt and his buff-coloured slacks and stripped to his underwear. He unstrapped his reinforced girdle and left it standing to attention on the rattan chair before flopping onto the waterbed – which tsunamied beneath him – and propping himself up with pillows, ready to settle down and watch the movie.

      Lucy had seen it before. She went into the bathroom, slipped out of her clothes and had a shower. Wearing only a towel, she re-entered the room just as the housewives’ fantasy was starting. She stood, blocking Frank’s vision, and let the towel slip. But instead of appreciating her warm, rounded body, he craned to look past her as rabid panting came from the direction of the television.

      She threw the towel onto the chair, where it hung draped over his corset like a magician’s trick. Then, lying down, she rested her head on his stomach and traced his triple-bypass scar down to his navel hair, which she proceeded to wind around her fingers. His wheezing grew louder and his heart thumped in her ear.

      ‘You know what, honey, I bet you have a girlfriend we could call to come over?’ he wheezed.

      ‘Oh I sollleeee …’ She exaggerated her Suzie Wong voice. ‘All busy tonight.’ Lucy had no intention of letting some other girl in on the act. Frank was all hers. ‘Never mind, Flank.’ She moved onto her hands and knees and turned her bottom towards him. ‘We gonna have fun. Okay?’ She slapped her hand against her right buttock and said ‘Spanky!’ over her shoulder. Big Frank’s chest hair bristled. ‘Coz I think I bin …’ she sank onto her elbows, ‘I think I bin naughty girl.’

       27

      Johnny Mann was heading east from Lan Kwai Fong, the nightclub end of Central District, and working his way along towards Causeway Bay, when he decided to pay another visit to Club Mercedes. He didn’t intend to stay long. He’d come back to the club in the hope of talking to Lucy and taking some more details from her about the foreign women who had stayed in her flat. When he got there he found out from Mamasan Linda that Lucy was out with a customer and that there was a new foreign girl working there – Lucy’s cousin. So he asked to interview her.

      It wasn’t busy. He was given a table at the front of the club. It was an area far enough from the band that you could talk easily and be heard, but it didn’t afford the privacy of one of the VIP booths around the dance floor.

      He was deep in thought when pink toes and gold strappy sandals appeared in his line of vision. Then there were long legs, smooth rounded thighs, a tiny waist and small full breasts to get past. But it didn’t even end there … Shit! That was a face to die for … It was heart-shaped with high cheekbones and large amber-coloured eyes. She had pale skin, a splatter of freckles across her nose, a long, slender neck and espresso-coloured hair that cascaded around her shoulders in pre-Raphaelite curls. She was not just pretty. She was breathtakingly beautiful.

      ‘Miss Johnson … is that right?’ he almost stuttered.

      She nodded and a small anxious smile flitted across her beautiful face. As it did so, Mann saw that her mouth formed an almost perfect circle, topped with a cupid’s bow complete with a small turn up at either end – perfect.

      ‘Please sit down.’

      She did so in a slightly uneasy fashion, as if she were neither used to the dress nor the heels. She seemed very young, thought Mann, and very out of place.

      ‘Mamasan says you’ve just started at this club. Is that right?’

      ‘Yes, tonight is my first night.’ She perched on the edge of the seat.

      ‘Did you work anywhere else before here?’ He tried a smile to relax her.

      ‘No.’

      ‘When did you arrive in Hong Kong?’

      ‘Two days ago.’

      ‘And what reason did you have for coming to Hong Kong?’

      She paused, reluctant to answer, then blurted: ‘I came to find my cousins.’

      ‘Cousins? Ah, yes, Lucy! Have you any other relatives here?’

      ‘No. Just Lucy and her sister Ka Lei.’

      ‘You came all the way here to find them? It’s a long way.’

      Mann felt a pang of pity. He wondered why someone so obviously inexperienced in life had come to the other side of the world, and at the worst time possible?