Read Online The Girl with the Phony Name by Charles Mathes - Free Book Online

successful dealer in contraband in his own right.
    The authorities had begun to crack down on the black market, however. Without the protection of the Americans, Taki was at the mercy of the yakuza, or Japanese gangsters. He was persuaded to retire by a man missing several finger
joints with tattoos running up his neck and spilling out of his cuffs onto his wrists.
    It was 1951, the Japanese economy was in shambles, and Taki was Chinese, a nonperson. Within a few years he was reduced to sweeping the floors of a Tokyo fish market. He did his job and waited for things to change.
    It took a decade for Taki to save enough to open his own stall in the fish market. The humorless Japanese men for whom he had mopped, cleaned fish, and repaired equipment congratulated Taki on his industry, then forced him out of business in a matter of months.
    Taki was thirty-two years old and had nothing to show for a lifetime of work. One night, after drinking sake until two in the morning, he dreamed he was sitting in the middle of a busy crossroads when a bull walked up and pissed on his head. Taki awoke enlightened. He had been sitting at the fish market, waiting for the Tao to stop for him. All the while the world had been moving, passing him by.
    Through friends Taki was able to get a berth on a commercial tuna boat. In less than a week he was on his way to the Philippines, as happy as his seasickness allowed, all his belongings stuffed in a canvas sack. He would go where the winds took him.
    Tak Wing sailed around the China Sea for a few years. It was a busy life, full of hard work and a certain wary camaraderie. Taki was happy and could have done it forever, but then one day the boat was impounded in the harbor at Sydney—the Korean owners had gone bankrupt. Taki was stranded in Australia.
    Taki had no incentive to make his way back to Japan, but to remain in Australia he needed someone to sponsor him. After being thrown out of a dozen offices, Taki found Bartlett Hewby, the flamboyant president of an Australian development company.
    â€œCome, come, my little slant-eyed friend,” said the big
man, sipping tea behind a long desk. “What on earth do I need a translator for?”
    â€œMuch Asian money shopping in Australia. I fluent in all Oriental languages,” said Taki, though he was barely understandable in anything but Japanese. “You need clever fella. Keep Japs honest in dealings with you.”
    Hewby smoothed his patrician head with a manicured hand. “My dear boy, why would I trust one Wog over another?”
    â€œI bring you luck,” said Tak Wing. “You engaged in big deal right now, yes?”
    â€œI’m always engaged in big deals,” sniffed Hewby.
    â€œNo, no. One in particular.”
    â€œWell, yes, I suppose. There is the Owens Flats contract. What are you leading to?”
    Taki nodded happily. “I study this carefully. They bluffing.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œYou can do twice as well as you think,” said Taki confidently, not knowing whether Hewby was the buyer or seller, but recognizing an inside straight when he saw one.
    Taki called a week later (a phone call was even safer than thirty feet). Hewby had been able to purchase the Owens Flats property for half the original asking price and wanted Taki to be his new assistant.
    Things had changed. Taki had a new career, a new country, a new life.
    By the time Hewby decided to retire to London a few years later, Taki had learned the real-estate business inside out. He wasn’t rich, but he was able to offer Hewby a complex leveraged buyout for the company: an Australian bank would advance Hewby half the purchase price and Taki would pay out the balance over ten years.
    For a while Taki prospered, developing properties. Then he got involved in the Adelaide water deal. Adelaide was a friendly little town in South Australia cursed with some of the
worst-tasting tap water on earth. Always a tinkerer, Taki designed