Fall Guy

by Scott Mackay

  Austin glanced around again. “He’s a member of the Kung Lok here in Toronto,” said Austin. “Or at least he was. His status is unclear at the moment. He’s young, a relative newcomer. He can’t be more than twenty-five. But he’s got a sheet six pages long, mostly assault charges from both here and Vancouver, a wildcat, my informer tells me, a dangerous man. My informant believes he’s the one who killed Edgar Lau last Friday night, and that the killing was 14K instigated.”

  Gilbert sensed connections again, but the connections were vague, obscure, as intangible as the rain outside. A couple of dental students from the Faculty of Dentistry descended the faculty steps next to Kinko’s and huddled under a big Fuji Film umbrella as they made their way toward Bay Street. The highest levels of the 14K Triad in Hong Kong. Bing Wu. Pearl Wu. Edgar Lau. And now Tony Mok.

  “If this Tony Mok’s a member of the Kung Lok, why’s he taking tenders from the 14K?”

  “Infighting between the 14K and the Kung Lok,” said Austin, as if it were obvious. “This is dangerous territory, Detective. There’s a lot happening right now. A lot of bad feeling. A lot of bad blood. You have the Toishans fighting the Kung Lok, you have the Kung Lok fighting the Toishans, and then you have the infighting between the Kung Lok and the 14K. All the triads are using everything in their power to come out on top, and the amount of money involved is enormous. Benny’s been looking into it, but so far no charges.” Austin leaned forward and glanced around the Great Canadian Bagel Factory. “That’s what I want you to know. This environment…to have to solve a murder in it.” Austin looked at Gilbert with true concern. “Be careful, man. It’s not only Tony Mok you have to worry about. You have to worry about everybody. You have to be cautious. You have to watch your back. All this money they have floating around, available to anyone who wants to help…bad cops grow like maggots on a garbage heap with that kind of money floating around.” Austin’s eyes moistened and his look of concern turned to one of intense worry, as if his worry were an old wound that wouldn’t heal. “I’m in some kind of shit right now, detective, I don’t mind telling you. Things are bad at 52 Division, and they’re getting worse.”

  Austin shook his head, looking defeated by the whole thing. Now all his nervousness made sense.

  “Do you have any names?” asked Gilbert.

  “I can’t name names yet,” he said, sounding angry with Gilbert. “I’m not in a position to name names yet.”

  “You’ve been threatened?”

  “I’ve been threatened.”

  “By fellow officers?”

  Austin nodded. “By fellow officers.”

  Gilbert leaned forward, shaking his head. “Jeremy…damn…Jeremy, you’ve got to come forward.”

  “I can’t come forward,” he said. “I’ve got a family.”

  “They threatened your family?” said Gilbert, growing more alarmed.

  Austin nodded. “I have two grown sons and a little girl.”

  “Well…how…how bad is it?”

  “It’s bad. It’s not like the old days, when just the Toishan Chinese were here. Back then, we turned a blind eye to the gaming houses, quietly collected our fines, you know. It’s part of Chinese culture, all this gambling, so…they would show their appreciation by sending a gift or throwing a lavish dinner for us. We didn’t even think of it as bribery. Hell, my wife got a jade necklace once, and I didn’t think nothing of it because we were still giving out fines. Not closing the places down, you understand, but at least following some form of due process. These days it’s a lot different. Cash payments totaling thousands of dollars. Bad cops collecting protection money. Bad cops involved in assault in their off hours. Bad cops protecting prostitution and drug rings.”

  “Jeremy…Jeremy, you’ve got to name names,” he said.

  “I can’t.”

  “Have you told anybody else besides me?” asked Gilbert.

  “That’s just it,” said Austin. “I have to be careful who I tell. At least until I get some proof. And I’ve been working on that. But I’ve had to go to people outside the force to help me.”

  “And who have you gone to?”

  “There’s only one person I can go to,” said Austin. “And that person is Rosalyn Surrey.” Connections. Strands hooking up with other strands in unexpected and startling ways. “She’s looking into things for me.” A pretty blond woman in a cheongsam, and Gilbert was at first startled by the connection, that he should find the councillor’s name issuing from the lips of this poor scared constable who knew too much for his own good. “She’s putting pressure on the Police Services Board to do something about it.” But now that Austin mentioned the Police Services Board, she seemed an obvious contact for Constable Austin.

  “You should let me help,” said Gilbert. Nothing got to Gilbert like a scared cop; he wanted to do something about it.

  “No, sir,” said Austin. “The only reason I tell you all this in the first place is because I want you to be careful. You’re in a jungle now, detective. You stick to Edgar Lau. You stay away from all the rest of this and you should be fine. You just try and track this Tony Mok down. That’s what they pay you for. All this other stuff—just watch out for it, that’s all. Stay clear of it. If I didn’t feel you had to watch your back, I wouldn’t have told you nothing about any of it in the first place.”

  Kitchener-Waterloo lies about sixty miles southwest of Toronto in the middle of southwestern Ontario, a small city with a large Germanic population, a city primarily known for its extensive Oktoberfest celebration each fall, but also for its university in the Waterloo part of town, and the numerous Mennonites who clip-clop to the suburban malls for supplies in their horse-drawn buggies and carts. Though not a particularly large municipality, the city supports a thriving arts community, including the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra.

  On the evening of December twenty-first the orchestra featured guest concert pianist Tak-Ng Lai, from Shanghai, in a performance of composer Shau-Kee Kwan’s masterpiece of social realism, Evening Snow, a concerto in one movement for piano and orchestra.

  Gilbert sat in the green room as he waited for Lai to take his second bow. After another minute Lai appeared at the door.

  He was a giant, nearly seven feet tall, disconcerting in a race of usually diminutive people, had big black-framed glasses, wore a tailored gray suit in a Mao cut, and had huge hands, gigantic appendages that looked as if they could uproot trees and lift cars. In contrast, his translator, a slender young woman in a pink dress, was a mere wisp, no more than a hundred pounds, and under five feet. Her name was Shen, and it was through her that Gilbert tried to verify Foster Sung’s version of events on the night of the murder.

  “Yes,” said Shen, “the woman Mr. Lai later learned was May Lau came to his table at the Champion Gardens Restaurant shortly after ten o’clock.” Shen translated stiffly and timidly, with a deference and respect for the concert pianist that was painful to behold. Tak-Ng Lai watched her intently. “Mr. Lai says this woman was distraught. He says she told Foster Sung that her son had been shot. Mr. Lai had just arrived from his performance at Roy Thompson Hall.”

  “Was Mr. Lai introduced to everybody sitting at Foster Sung’s table?” asked Gilbert.

  Shen translated the question for Tak-Ng Lai. Lai, as a means of verification, was, of all the men sitting at Sung’s table, the most likely to tell the truth.

  “Yes, he was,” said Shen, translating for Lai.

  “Can he recall the names of the men he was introduced to?” asked Gilbert.

  Shen again translated Gilbert’s question. Tak-Ng Lai’s face stiffened. For some reason he seemed insulted by the question. Gilbert couldn’t help thinking he looked like a Chinese version of Victor Frankenstein’s monster.

  Shen turned to Gilbert with apprehensive eyes. “He wishes you to know that he has perfect and total recall,” said Shen. “This is his gift. He has had this gift all his life.”

  Tak-Ng Lai then recited, without the need of translati
on, the names of the people sitting at Foster Sung’s table. “Foster Sung, Xu Jiatun, Charlie Peng, and Peter Hope.”

  Peter Hope. Gilbert checked his notes. No mention of Peter Hope from Foster Sung. He wrote the name down.

  “Who’s Peter Hope?” he asked Shen, who in turn asked Lai.

  Lai grunted an answer, displaying a temperamental impatience that was beginning to grate on Gilbert. Shen translated. “He says he doesn’t know,” she said. “He says he was Foster Sung’s guest, and that he and Peter Hope were introduced for the first time that evening.”

  Gilbert nodded, but made a mental note to himself to check Peter Hope out later on. “And when May Lau came to the table, Foster Sung went up to Edgar Lau’s apartment with her?”

  Shen again translated. “Yes,” she said. “He was up there for at least fifteen minutes. Mr. Lai waited because he was of course concerned. When Foster Sung came down, he assured Mr. Lai that there was nothing he could do, that the police would look after it, and that there was no point in tiring himself by waiting around when he had such a busy concert schedule. At that point, Charlie Peng took Mr. Lai back to his hotel, and that’s the last we’ve heard of this matter.”

  The next morning Lombardo dropped a canvas bag on Gilbert’s desk.

  “What’s in there?” asked Gilbert.

  “Take a look.”

  Gilbert loosened the drawstring and peered inside. He then looked up at Lombardo. “Keys?” he said.

  “I had Rafferty down in Support make them,” said Gilbert.

  “Am I missing something here?” asked Gilbert.

  “They’re duplicates,” said Lombardo, sounding amazed. “Of the key we found in Edgar’s intestine.”

  Gilbert gazed at the big pile. “That’s a lot of keys,” he said. “What have you been up to?”

  Lombardo grinned, proud of himself. “I talked to June Sayers in Community Services,” he said. “She says she can promise a hundred auxiliary and volunteer support staff to help look for the locker. Then I talked to Ricky Munroe in Training and Education. They have a new cadet intake of sixty-six, and he’s going to give every one of them a key. The auxiliary, volunteers, and cadets live all over the city. Ricky and June are going to ask them to check their neighborhoods for any public lockers. Everybody knows they’re looking for locker 43.”

  It sounded like a good plan, but Gilbert still had some reservations. “Joe, how do we know what’s going to be in locker 43 when and if we find it? What if it’s a bomb? What if it’s drugs? Or money?”

  As a police officer of twenty-eight years, he always anticipated every eventuality.

  “Everyone has instructions to call us immediately.” Lombardo leaned against the desk. “How else are we going to cover all that ground? Missing Persons has pulled the same trick before. Why can’t we do the same to find our locker? The man stuffs a key in a balloon and swallows it. You have to have a good reason for doing that. Who knows? We might find something that will let us write a decent warrant on Pearl Wu. We can nab her at the airport when she comes back and take her right downtown.”

  Gilbert nodded distractedly. “Just tell everybody to be careful, okay? I would hate anybody to get hurt. Or to get suddenly rich with money they don’t own.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  Gilbert shuffled through some papers on his desk. “I got the printout on Tony Mok.” He found it under the Police Services Annual Report. Slipping on his reading glasses, he scanned the sheet. “Assault, break-and-enter, resisting arrest, reckless endangerment, three arson charges, vandalism…the guy’s a punk, what can I say? I talked to Benny Eng. He knows Mok. He believes Mok is affiliated with the Kung Lok Triad. Not as a full member, never a blood initiation or tattoo, just a foot soldier who occasionally hires on when they need extra help.”

  “Do we know where he comes from?”

  “Hong Kong. I checked with Immigration. He came here as a child. An orphan. Sponsored by a couple, Rose and Henry Kwon. We’ll have to try and find the Kwons. Immigration tells me they’re not sure where Tony was placed after the Kwons, only that he stayed with the Kwons for less than a year. They suggested UNESCO might have some information. UNESCO arranged his original placement with the Kwons. I haven’t been able to get in touch with them. Christmas. As for his sheet, Mok became active seven years ago, when he was sixteen. He beat a Vietnamese gang member with a chain. He was charged but given a suspended sentence because the victim refused to testify, didn’t even show up in court.” Gilbert glanced over some of the background information. “Went to school at Eastdale Collegiate but dropped out when he was sixteen. By that time he was living on his own.”

  “Have you been able to find him?” asked Lombardo.

  “No,” said Gilbert. “The last address we have for him is Cecil Street. When I drove by there this morning the place was gutted. One of those old Edwardian brownstones. I’m sure it’s slated for demolition. I saw a dog sniffing around inside.”

  “Maybe Mok’s in Vancouver,” said Lombardo. “If what Jeremy Austin says is true, about the shooting…”

  “Maybe,” said Gilbert. “But right now we have nothing that connects him to the scene of our particular crime, even though Austin has a source who tells him Mok might have been responsible for the Toronto shooting.”

  “What about Ballistics?” asked Lombardo. “Have they got the bullet from Vancouver yet?”

  “Not yet. And there’s no one down in Ballistics this week anyway,” said Gilbert. “It’s Christmas. Murphy says if the bullet arrives he’ll come in for an afternoon and have a look at it.”

  “What about Peter Hope?” asked Lombardo. “Anything on him yet?”

  Gilbert shrugged, sat back in his chair, and took off his reading glasses. “Not much,” he said. “He’s new. He’s a Hong Kong resident but comes here regularly on two- or three-month visas. Benny hasn’t been able to gain access over the holidays to any international file on Hope, but as far as our own file is concerned, we know Hope has a part interest in Kowloon Textiles, out in Agincourt. We also know that Bing Wu has part interest in Kowloon Textiles and that Wu has just reinvested significantly in the company. So Hope’s obviously connected somehow, though whether there’s any criminal connection is too early to say. He’s down in Queens visiting relatives right now, due back on the twenty-eighth. I’ve e-mailed Hukowich in Ottawa to see if he has anything, but he hasn’t gotten back to me.”

  “Damn this Christmas,” said Lombardo. “I wish it would just go away.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Joe,” said Gilbert. “Your Christmas spirit.”

  “You know what?” he said. “I don’t even have a date for Christmas Mass this year. My mother’s going to wonder if I’m gay.”

  “Speaking of dates…have you…” Gilbert looked away. “You know…my daughter…”

  Lombardo raised his chin. “Oh…sure…you have nothing to worry about, Barry. I’m taking her to The Nutcracker tonight. I couldn’t get tickets for Les Mis after all.”

  “So you talked to her?” asked Gilbert.

  “I listened,” clarified Lombardo.

  “And how did she sound?”

  Lombardo stared at Gilbert, his eyes tactful, concerned. “She’s heartbroken, Barry,” he said. “You’ve got a heartbroken little girl on your hands.”

  “Goddammit.”

  “Actually, we talked for nearly twenty minutes.”

  Gilbert raised his eyebrows. “You did?” he said. He rubbed his brow with his fingers and shook his head. “I’m lucky if she says good morning to me these days.”

  “She really loved this guy.”

  Gilbert squinted irritably. “Don’t say that.”

  “You got to think of something nice to say about him,” said Lombardo.

  Gilbert couldn’t control his impatience. “Like what?” he said. “When he was here at Thanksgiving he had her out in my Windstar until two in the morning, even though I told him to be back by twelve. Not only that, he was drunk. D
runk, and driving my twenty-five-thousand-dollar Windstar, like the fact I’m a cop doesn’t mean anything to him. What can I say nice about a jerk like that?”

  “She’s under the impression she’s unattractive,” said Lombardo. “She thinks she’s undesirable. She cried a lot while she was talking to me.”

  Gilbert raised his hands in rigid claws, looking ready to strangle someone. “If I could get my hands on Randall,” he said, “we’d have another homicide up on the board right now.”

  Lombardo put his hand on Gilbert’s shoulder and gave it a comradely shake. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll see if I can cheer her up tonight.” Then he gave Gilbert an arch look. “Maybe you should let me use your Windstar to take her out in. I’m sure I could have it back before midnight. That is if I don’t get too drunk.”

  Dr. Blackstein, the coroner, dropped by the Homicide office later that afternoon with a gift box of deluxe nuts—cashews, pistachios, almonds, and a half dozen others, all in their separate pie-shaped segments of a red tinsel box, his standard Christmas gift to the squad. He gave the box to Carol Reid, the squad secretary, then moved through the office to Gilbert’s desk at the back.

  “I’ve been rereading my report on Edgar Lau,” he said, “comparing it to the crime scene photographs you sent me.”

  Blackstein sat on the edge of Gilbert’s desk, a knit in his brow, and folded his hands over his knee.

  “And?” said Gilbert.

  “I’m just thinking about the way he had all that Kleenex balled up in his hand,” he said.

  “What about it?”

  “And then I read your addendum. About the dish towel?”

  “We found no dish towel,” said Gilbert. “We can’t verify that.”

  “One way or the other,” said Blackstein, “I don’t think this man should have bled to death as quickly as he did. Not with the kind of pressure dressings we’ve got here. Not with the kind of wound he received.”

  Gilbert leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “What are you saying?”