Yes, teelak means darling in Thai. Yes, I am waiting for you. Can you send me a photo?

A cool positive? McKay smiles. That’s exactly how he would have replied if he had been in her position. Clearly, she is a master of the game, like him. The secret to McKay’s success: he never fools himself: lawyers are whores too.

As it happens, his laptop includes a digital camera. He takes a snap of his face turned slightly to highlight the manly strength of his jaw, and zings it off to her.

Just then the laptop telephone beeps. This is McKay’s secret number which he gives out to no one except Samson Lee. Lee has an Asian addiction to video conferencing.

McKay’s only important client appears on the monitor, looking a lot more Chinese than Thai, with eyes so slit McKay wonders how any light ever got in there: a vast moon face with near-circular wrinkles, small flat nose, cheap off-the-peg sweater.

“I can’t see you,” Lee snaps. McKay switches the movie camera function on. “That’s better.”

“Good morning, Mr. Lee,” McKay says with a big, bright, yes-I-do-love-to-suck-your-bum smile. He tried using “Samson” once at the beginning of the relationship, but it didn’t work for either of them. Lee is very conservative in the Confucian tradition. His sons are his slaves and his daughters marry whoever he tells them to marry. The Lee’s are certainly a centralized family, if not a close one.

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