Tonight is a dark and dreamy night in the most isolated city on the planet, one of those Drambuie ad nights where if you close your eyes and drink enough Bundy it can feel like youe in Paris instead of in Perth, Western Australia, at the ends of the earth. A slow warm rain is falling, softening the hard-edged corners of the boomtown skyline. The wash of lights rushing into the city along the wet highway, the moving reflections on the black satin river give the whole scene a sexy French impressionist shimmer. Raindrops glitter like diamonds on the plexiglas port cochere of the Regency Hyatt, the ritziest hotel in the city, as Zan pulls up behind a long white stretch limo unloading a half dozen Japanese gangsters in elaborate punch perms and polyester. She is too far away to see if any pinkies are missing but their fiercely impassive expressions are a dead giveaway. And the body language. Most Japanese businessmen walk kind of humble but these sumos are swaggering down the long red welcome carpet into the Hyatt. Odd, she thinks, the Yakuza usually stay at the Casino. It Japanese-owned. Slipping the fancy-dress doorman a fiver to park her little car, she cocks her hips in her inky black cashmere Armani tuxedo and vogues down the runway and on through the door. Her too sexy for my suit�designer entrance is lost on the middle-aged Asians singsonging in their Siamese cat voices and fussing with baggage near reception. She moves past them quickly and paces the huge open lobby, appraising the decor. She come early on purpose so she can hang out and suck up some mise en scne, along with a quiet aperitif in The Conservatory. The fake Pommy Raj look the new owners have gone for 10
