Meanwhile, Sabina finished her report, fired it off, and checked the RCMP data base. She got nothing on Mary and little on Kylie. She printed it and left the office for the museum. Harry finished his review, made a few more notes, and left the office to see Olivia.
◆◆◆
The museum was downtown in the new conference center behind the Serious Coffee that took up the front north corner. It wasn’t much in space or content. Mostly it was book racks and Haida stuff from all over the island. The focus was on the local reservations, as expected, but the overall effect was disappointing.
“We used to be up on the hill in that hexagonal building. It was old and shabby, but it was a lot better than this.”
Sabina whirled around from the display case she’d been looking at and there was Sally.
“My god, I wouldn’t recognize you. You look like a librarian. Do you need those glasses, or are they for effect?”
Sally gurgled with laughter. “You look so damn startled. Yeah, the glasses are protective colouration. In my other life, they’re a hindrance as you can imagine. How do you like my outfit?”
She was dressed in a grey knee-length pleated skirt and a white blouse buttoned to the top. Her grey heels were low. She looked just like what she was, a curator. She’d put her hair up too. She still looked beautiful, she couldn’t hide that.
Sabina looked at her critically and twirled her finger, so Sally turned around for her. She gave her thumbs up. “It works perfectly. You’re exactly what you should be except that you’re a bit sexy even in that stuff. I mean, I’d fall for you even if I had a burning interest in moose hide and First Nations, or whatever they call themselves. Hard to concentrate with you floating around the place.”
Sally looked about, then slid her arm around Sabina’s waist. “Wanna see my storage room? Got lots of artifacts back there, even a functional teepee. We could sit cross-legged and look up each other’s skirts.”
The banter went on for a bit while Sally showed her around the place. Then they went for lunch. The Modern was crowded, but they found a booth at the rear against the brick wall and ordered wine and salads. Sabina took Sally back through everything, looking for anything that might help. There was nothing there. Sally got to know Cat’s real name and told Sabina about the tiny girl’s insatiable appetite for sexual exploration, her obvious love of deviance, and her excitement at living on the edge. “She’s like a hyper version of us, like she’s got to cram everything in as fast as she can, and she loves it all. She’s one of the most sensually alive people I’ve ever met. I hope you get her back. That one’s got a lot of living to do.”
They walked back to the museum together, promised to meet again soon, and Sabina went back to the office.
◆◆◆
Isabella had taken a call from Will, who had spent most of the day milking his contacts without turning up anything useful. He’d talked to Rory too and had nothing more from that source either. Harry had done what Sabina had done, reviewed everything, and talked to all his sources, including Olivia and Alan, who’d told him to stop bothering them. Olivia had tried, but there was nothing there. This investigation was as barren as Kylie’s. There was nowhere for any of them to go. The truck was still the only tangible lead, and it was so slight that nobody expected any kind of break. Mary had disappeared as thoroughly as Kylie had, and from the same area, whatever that might mean. Whoever was doing this was skilled and careful. All they could do at this point was wait and watch.
XIII
That afternoon, Harry and Sabina sat at their desks deciding how to approach Mamma Jing without having her too involved too soon. It wasn’t easy. The woman had a small army and she used it at her discretion, fixing stuff when the authorities didn’t or couldn’t. She was a powerful force in the community and not one Harry wanted to cross in any way. Sabina knew her from the last case, and she knew her power and her authority. Getting what they wanted without disturbing her web too much would be tricky. They had to plan the approach. That took an hour or so. Then they left the office, separating to question different sources.
Sabina walked up the street to the yard of the Anglican Church. It was a small building, plain and stucco, but someone had taken pains with the triangle of yard by putting in flower beds and keeping the grass trimmed and the beds edged. It even had a bench. She sat there for a while thinking through what they had so far. She was sure of two things: that the stroll was the key and that the vibes the two girls gave off were what attracted the killer. Not necessarily the clothes, but that would help. The location and the vibes though, that’s where the connection was. His motive was anybody’s guess. She got up slowly and walked back down three blocks, across Terminal, and up the hill to the office.
Harry was still out, and Isabella wasn’t sure where. The call came an hour later.
“H, where are you?”
“At the ferry terminal. I spent an hour with Alicia. Got nothing. She sure doesn’t know much about what Kylie was up to. Will’s going after the crew, Jen, Billy, and Jimmy, and we need to get to Vancouver. Just got a call from Mamma Jing, and our attendance is requested. Set stuff up with Izzy, grab a nice skirt, and bring the car. I’ll watch the gulls and stuff, maybe a few of the girls. Just for comparison, you understand. Take your time.”
“Okay. See you soon and keep your hands on your coffee.”
Within a half hour, she was in a car line at the ferry. She walked over to the terminal building and found Harry sitting at the windows. She slid onto the stool next to him.
“So, big guy, you wanna fool around on the ferry? We can rent one of those side rooms if it’s a new one.”
Harry continued to look out the window but slid a Starbucks Grande her way. “You always proposition good-looking guys in ferry buildings?”
“I do when I can find one. If I can’t, I take whatever’s around, like today.”
They watched the ferry dock and made their way to the car.
It wasn’t one of the new ones; they seemed to be out of service in these days of route cuts and fare hikes. This one was the Queen of Coquitlam, an old workhorse in a fleet of old workhorses. But like the others, it was in good shape, having suffered a series of refurbishments over the years.
Once upstairs, they sat at one of the small circular tables in the cafe across from the gift shop. Sabina amused herself on her laptop, and Harry watched girls. There were usually lots of girls on these crossings, dressed mostly in something tight, but even tightly-wrapped young females couldn’t hold Harry’s interest long for, certainly not for an hour and forty minutes.
“I’ve got Jim up and here’s something interesting. There’s a lot of traffic between Singapore and the computers at Horseshoe Bay, but the files are encrypted with a key Jim doesn’t have. Apparently, it’s Mamma Jing’s private line, and only Zhi has access. Jim’s curious and so am I, and so should you be since it obviously involves Mary. You could turn yours on, you know, I’ve set up enough security so you don’t have to worry even here.”
“When I’ve got you, why do I need to turn on a computer?” Harry smiled, flipped up an eyebrow, and waited. Sabina shook her head and went back to keyboarding.
“I’m sending Jim a note, then I’m closing down, and you can look at me instead. You’re really fidgety this trip.”
“I was just thinking. Mamma Jing’s into Singapore and she’s also into us, so she must have something she needs us for. Otherwise, why haul us over? And what the hell could it be? She’s better equipped than the cops and better informed than CSIS. She’s got a bloody army she can call on and the equivalent of a couple of swat teams. So why us?”
Sabina glanced at her watch. “We’ll find out shortly, so why get antsy about it on the boat?”
“Because it’s too weird, that’s why. And it’s a ferry, not a boat. You have to be more discerning if you want to be a detective. What could possibly require our physical presence? We’re in constant contact electronically, well, you are. It’s puzzling. It d
oesn’t require an army, it doesn’t require intelligence gathering, it doesn’t need electronic tinkering. So it’s a mystery I can’t fathom. Good pun there, don’t you think? Fathom, as in boat and water?”
“It’s a ferry not a boat, and you a detective! I can’t imagine what might prompt the old dragon, but whatever it is, we’re gonna know soon. So relax.”
The announcement startled them. They hadn’t realized they were close to docking. Sabina shut down and they walked back down the three flights to the car, which was once again in the basement with the huge rigs and monstrous campers. They both disliked being put down there, mostly because of the diesel smell, but at least they got off faster than upstairs.
The docking was an efficient operation and they were on their way up the long grade out of Horseshoe Bay in minutes, dodging the big transport trailers and double gas tankers. The huge campers were the slowest, and Sabina got rid of them early. She was an impatient but highly skilled driver, and on motorcycles, as Harry could attest, she was an expert.
She took Taylor Way to the Lions Gate. They both remembered the last time they’d been in the area. Then, they were being hunted and had hidden out in rooms above a Chinese restaurant.
The lights were favourable, the traffic moving in long dashes between them. They arrived at the feed to the bridge quickly, but it always jammed here with two heavily trafficked roads intersecting. Sabina waited with the stop-and-go traffic, feeding slowly onto the three lanes of the bridge.
As they crossed the span over the Narrows, Harry looked out at the freighters moored in the outer harbour. One was on its way in and about to pass under them. He could just see two kayakers in the channel, looking like matchsticks beside the great lumbering vessel. He could hear the insistent whistle of the freighter even in the car with the windows closed.
The drive through Stanley Park was fast, the heavily forested park rushing by in a torrent of green. They followed the traffic flow out of the park onto Georgia as it took them around Lost Lagoon and into the downtown core.
Sabina turned off on Pender and ran straight through to Main and the center of Chinatown. Parking anywhere around there was a problem. She ended up parking on the other side of Pender beside a church turned into a community center. It was an easy walk to Mamma Jing’s establishment, an old, unassuming little place no one would give a second glance.
Mamma Jing, the matriarch of Chinatown, used the store as her center of power in an insular separate world within the city. Her influence, however, spread far beyond its borders. Anywhere Chinese workers appeared—in the forests, in the fields, in the city—she had ears and eyes. She was like a spider in the center of a gigantic web. The least disturbance in its fabric reached her instantly and her reaction was swift and sometimes deadly.
Sabina and Harry paused in front of the storefront, looked at each other, eyebrows raised in question, joined hands for a moment, then entered. The great lady was in her usual place in the rear, her bulk overflowing the arms of the massive dragon chair. She was looking directly at them with a twinkle in those obsidian eyes, and a low throaty chuckle shook her corpulent body.
“One Sigh, how you be? And Wei too. I have special dish for you, you will like for sure.”
Wei was the name the great lady had given to Sabina during their last case when Harry had introduced her. She’d explained where the name came from and how perfectly it suited Sabina’s nature. In legend, she’d told her, there were two rivers that met at the base of a mountain, the Chen and the Wei. Where they met, an orchid flourished that protected against the evil of men. When the rivers overflowed their banks, as they did each year, boys and girls crossed the swollen Wei and came to the orchid beds and the green fields on the far side. There, they took their pleasure together. Each girl was given an orchid as a token that protected its owner. Thus, the great lady said, the name was destined to be Sabina’s because of the river’s promise and the fields of pleasure that were so much a part of her nature. And One Sigh, she had added with a glint of humour in her dark eyes, would be in need of such promise as much as the pleasure of the fields. When she’d finished her tale, the great lady had handed Sabina a long, black lacquered box, beautifully inlaid, and stroked her hair gently.
After the case was finished and they’d returned to the island, Sabina had lifted the lid to reveal an exquisitely carved jade orchid. It was very old, the jade imbued with a kind of inner light, an opalescence. Harry and Sabina were astounded and understood its significance. They gave it a special place on the mantle.
Now, once again in the great lady’s presence, Harry inclined his head in greeting and Sabina, who was still in awe of this woman, almost curtsied. Neither one said anything, since nothing was required. Mamma Jing hadn’t moved, but one of the ubiquitous old women who seemed to scurry about the place appeared on cue with steaming bowls of something neither Harry nor Sabina looked at closely. All three imbibed in silence with the required slurps and grunts of approval, especially from the matriarch herself.
Once the bowls were empty, they disappeared to be replaced by tea. That ceremony took time and was performed with infinite care under the watchful eye of the matriarch. Nothing was allowed to disturb this ceremony, the tea itself almost incidental. At last, with the niceties finished, Mamma Jing began.
“One Sigh, is good you come. This bad day for me. Singapore girl now lost. Friend of my most unhappy this be.”
Harry and Sabina nodded in tandem.
“I look, I find red-hair demon of girl. Won’t talk to me. Ling help. You see later. Girl know you.”
Mamma Jing inclined her head toward Sabina. “She ask for you, so you come with One Sigh, is good. You see, yes?”
It wasn’t a question, as Sabina and Harry both knew. It was what would happen. Mamma Jing smiled at them, her dark eyes knowing and amused, a smile playing around her lips.
A young man appeared out of nowhere at some signal neither Harry nor Sabina could see. They followed him to a back room on the ground floor. As he opened the door, the woman inside turned, mouth open, anger and frustration written all over her. Sabina recognized her immediately. It took Harry a moment longer. The girl’s anger changed to amazement as she took them in.
“How the hell did you get here? Those chinks round you up too? They’re nasty fuckers, they are. Where’d they find you? You been away somewheres?”
“I’ve been away, Red. How’ve you been, I mean other than here? You still working the stroll, usual place?”
“Until these fuckers, yeah, they just came round like they knew me or somethin’, showed me this fuckin’ photo, you know. I said maybe I knew her an’ maybe I could remember with a little help, you know, and next I knew, I’m in the back of a fuckin’ van and here I fuckin’ am. Been here a while too. Then I got dragged up a hall to a real fat bitch in a big chair, and she, like, reamed me a new one, but she got nothin’. Stuck me in here like forever, then you show up. She get anything outta you?”
“She’s a friend, and I wouldn’t call her anything remotely like that if you want to get out of here in one piece. And if you really want to remain who you are, you’ll forget you were ever here.”
Red just stared at her, mouth open, this time in surprise.
“Holy shit, she’s a friend? That tub of, I mean, that woman out there, the uh real big one?”
“Yeah, she is, and I think now I know why she got us here. You remember Harry, the guy in the alley got roughed up?”
“Oh, yeah, you puked all over my boots, how could I forget? Couldn’t even stand up last time I saw you, kept sliding down the fuckin’ wall. You look better now.”
“Oh. I am, much better. That lady you met? She’s a friend of mine too, so the two of us come by invitation. We weren’t hustled like you. Thing is, she just wants some info you seem to have, so why not give it to her?”
“I’m not givin’ nobody nothin’, not when I been scooped up like that. She could’a asked nice, you know.”
“Once you were
here, I think she did,” Sabina said. “But I know you, Red, you got a temper on you, and you probably told her to fuck off.”
“You got that right, Hun, but she scared the shit outta me. I mean, she just looks at you, you know, and fuck, it’s like she’s thinkin’ of takin’ you apart bit by bit. But I been scared before. Only way out is don’t show ‘em you are, don’t tell ‘em nothin’, you know? She sent in another girl, dark-haired one, real fancy talker, showed me the same photo as those assholes who grabbed me. Asked me about this chick. I told her fuck all. Asked me about you too, Hun, knew your fuckin’ name. So I told her I’d talk to you, if she could find you, and nobody fuckin’ else, right?”
The room was comfortable, some easy chairs, a pull-out couch, table, and two chairs on the side. Sabina could see a bathroom through a partly open door. It was a nice place, given what Red usually lived in. Except it had no windows.
“You have any idea where you are?”
“Not a fuckin’ clue. Can’t see out the back of a van, you know, and when they hustled me in here, one of’ ‘em threw his jacket over my head. Pissed me off. I been here ever since except for a visit to that fat… that friend of yours. I know we drove a long time, so maybe out of the downtown somewhere, like in Surrey or somethin’.”
“Close, so behave yourself and you’ll be back on the stroll before you know it. And if you’re good, I bet you get paid for your time.”
Sabina and Harry sat in the easy chairs and Red threw herself on the couch and glared at them.
Sabina gave her a shortened version of events, enough so she knew that she and Harry were together. That got a knowing smile.
“So you guys shacked up or what?”
“Better than that, Red, much better. Now we need to know about the girl. That’s why we’re all here. We had to come a long way, so let’s talk and we can all get back to what we were doing.”
NIGHT MOVES: The Stroll Murders Page 17