The Water Rat of Wanchai Read Online Free PDF Page A

as if they were programmed to steal, and once they had your money, getting it back was harder than pulling teeth with your fingers. One of her clients in Vancouver had bought two forty-foot containers of Chinese scallops; when the product arrived in Canada, he found that the boxes — clearly marked scallops — were filled with freezer-burned mackerel. It had taken her close to two weeks’ trekking around seafood plants in dusty, dirty Dalian in northeast China, on the Yellow Sea near the Korean border, before she caught up with the packer. It took another week before she got the money back. Even then the job wouldn’t have wrapped up so quickly if Uncle hadn’t put her in touch with a high-ranking general. They had to split their recovery fee with him (and probably the rest of his unit), but without his influence she might have been there for several weeks more.
    Tam’s company was called Dynamic Financial Services. It was on Des Voeux Road, almost next door to the headquarters of the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank, on Queen’s Road in Central, the very heart of Hong Kong’s financial district. About a year before, Seafood Partners had come to Dynamic Financial Services with a master purchase order from Major Supermarkets for six million pounds of Thai shrimp, cooked, peeled, and deveined, with the tail on.
    Ava made her first note: Who introduced Dynamic to Seafood Partners?
    The purchase order was of twelve months’ duration, and the selling price was locked in for the entire period.
    Note 2: Isn’t shrimp a commodity? Don’t prices fluctuate? How could Seafood Partners commit to Major Supermarkets for a year?
    The product was to be packed under Major Supermarkets’ own label, and Tam had affixed a copy of their specifications. They didn’t seem particularly onerous. There had to be an average of thirty-seven to thirty-nine shrimp in every bag. Each bag had to have a true net weight of one pound, true net weight being the weight after the shrimp had thawed. The tails were to be a uniform red colour, with no black tails allowed. Tripolyphosphates and/or salt were permitted up to a residual level of two percent. The shrimp had to be processed from fresh and frozen only once. On the specification sheet Tam had highlighted in yellow the net weight requirement and the tripolyphosphates level.
    It was anticipated that Major Supermarkets would need about 500,000 pounds of shrimp a month. In order to manage that level of business, Seafood Partners would need to have 1.5 million pounds of shrimp in their system at any one time — an on-hand inventory of 500,000 pounds, another 500,000 pounds in transit to the U.S. from Thailand, and another 500,000 pounds being processed. Seafood Partners was buying the shrimp at $4.10 a pound and selling to Major Supermarkets at $4.80 a pound.
    Note 3: Given what was essentially 90 days’ financing at 2 to 3 percent a month, and given customs, storage, trucking, and distribution charges, how the hell did Seafood Partners expect to make money?
    The master purchase order was from Major Supermarkets to Seafood Partners. Seafood Partners assigned the purchase order to Dynamic Financial Services, and Dynamic issued letters of credit to the Thai packer and imported the product into the U.S. Major Supermarkets had six distributors that drew up weekly purchase orders for shrimp; Seafood Partners and Dynamic Financial Services were copied on those purchase orders. Seafood Partners released the product from inventory and Dynamic Financial Services sent an invoice for the product directly to Major Supermarkets. The cheques went to Dynamic, which took its money and interest off the top and then sent the balance of the funds to Seafood Partners.
    Note 4: Why didn’t Dynamic retain complete control of the inventory? Why did they allow Seafood Partners to release product?
    After five months, relations between Major Supermarkets and Seafood Partners began to go sour. Shrimp sales were not meeting