Fall Guy

by Scott Mackay

  She collected herself, raised her chin. A vague defiance settled into her cat-green eyes. “Detective Pemberton was handling this case,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re here.”

  “Take a guess,” he said. If she wanted to skirmish, he would skirmish.

  “I haven’t a clue,” she said.

  “We have evidence that links your husband to the murder of Edgar Lau,” he said. “There’s your clue.”

  Her eyes widened and she stared at him. Her mouth opened, but the shock he saw on her face looked more like an act. He knew she was the kind of woman who was going to play the game for as long as she could, who would be tenacious in protecting herself and her husband, and who wouldn’t give anything away unless she saw she had something to gain from it.

  “I have no idea why my husband would ever want to murder Edgar,” she said. “They don’t even know each other.”

  “Are you close to your husband?”

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Do you know where he was on the night of Edgar’s murder?”

  She looked away. She might have been a product of big-city politics, a great dissimulator, but she was so obviously thinking on her feet Gilbert wondered why she even tried. “No…” she finally said. “No, I don’t.” As if she had decided that at least a little truth might appease him.

  “So he doesn’t tell you where he goes?”

  He could see she was annoyed by this unwarranted and inappropriate assumption. He was glad. Anything to get her off balance.

  “I don’t know why you think he had anything to do with Edgar’s murder.” Back to the party line.

  “We’re just trying to find him,” said Gilbert, softening his stance, going back to his own party line. “That’s why I’m here. We’re trying to find your husband for you, Mrs. Surrey.” Gilbert paused, glanced at the glass sculpture on the shelf, a modernist piece, abstract, hard and reflective on the outside, but fluid and soft-looking with a number of different dyes on the inside. “And if we’re going to do that, we have to know something about him.” Gilbert took a few steps and sank into one one of the waiting-area chairs. “I note from Detective Pemberton’s report that he’s presently unemployed.”

  Rosalyn looked away. “Yes,” she said. She offered the truth, as long as the truth remained innocuous.

  “Has he been unemployed long?” asked Gilbert. “There’s no mention of any previous employers we might contact to help us find him. Does he have any old work friends he might go to?”

  She looked at him. “Have you checked Florida yet?”

  “Detective Pemberton’s sent a description to the Florida State Police.”

  “What about Tampa?”

  “He’s sent a description to them as well,” he said. “Have you phoned all your friends down there?”

  She nodded. “I’ve phoned the lot,” she said.

  “You have no children?” he asked.

  She frowned. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Sometimes couples who don’t have any children drift apart.”

  “Sometimes they do,” she conceded, with a trace of contempt.

  “He disappeared on the night of the fifteenth, the night Edgar was murdered.” He looked at her inquisitively. “Did you have a big fight that night?”

  “No.”

  “I came here the next day. Before I even had a chance to tell you why I was here, you asked me about Garth. You were concerned about him? Why?”

  This stopped her. This was like a brick wall to Metro Councillor Rosalyn Surrey. She looked at her knees. Her cheeks flushed. She was scrambling. The silence lengthened. Outside, the north wind howled. He felt sorry for her. He felt he had to give her a chance.

  “Rosalyn…” he said. “Rosalyn…it’s only going to get worse. You might think you can play a decent game against me, but I know what I’m doing, and what I’m doing is trying to help you. So don’t try and fight me. Your position might intimidate some people, but it doesn’t intimidate me. You’re a woman who has a lot of upfront confidence, but your confidence means nothing to me. Your constituents think you deserve to be where you are, and believe me, I’ll be the last to take that away from you. But if you don’t cooperate with me, what am I supposed to do? Why don’t we work together on this and figure it out? I’m sure we can minimize the fallout. I know you feel you have to be perfect in front of your constituents, that your political viability depends on it, but I look at you, a young woman, thirty-two or -three, and I see you’re scared, and that you’re not telling me everything you know. Maybe I should get Detective Bannatyne down here to yell at you, to shake some sense into you. Or maybe you can learn to trust me. Because like I say, if you don’t trust me, it’s going to get worse. Do you know Bob Bannatyne?”

  She nodded grudgingly. “I met him at a community fund-raiser once.”

  “Bob doesn’t know how to be diplomatic. He likes to shake out witnesses, and he likes to shake them out fast, regardless of the damage he does. If I were to let Bob Bannatyne take over, he would call Ronald Roffey at the Star and tell him we’re looking for Rosalyn Surrey’s husband. In connection with Edgar Lau’s murder.”

  He saw she was like that glass statue up on the shelf—hard on the outside, soft and fluid on the inside. Her shoulders sank, her head bent forward, her blond hair hung around the sides of her face, and she raised her thumb and forefinger to her nose. Then she looked at him. He had to admire the resilience he saw in her eyes.

  “I’m not the political animal you think I am,” she said. Her tone was different now, broad, incisive, without the usual obfuscation of most politicians, but still as tough as leather.

  “Rosalyn, I want to help you.”

  “I see what you’re doing. Barry.”

  “Good, good,” he said, sitting up straight, putting his hands on his knees. “You’re cynical.”

  “And so are you.”

  “I never said I wasn’t.”

  “Don’t think you can manipulate me,” she warned.

  “Why do you fight me when I’m trying to help you?”

  “And don’t think you can use my political ambition as leverage. Call Bob Bannatyne. I don’t give a shit.”

  “Is that what you tell your constituents?” he asked.

  “My constituents mean a lot to me,” she said, regaining some of her poise. “But I’m beginning to dislike municipal politics. Especially since the amalgamation. Megacity. A definition for nothing that works. Barry, you’re so transparent you’re practically invisible.”

  “I’m forty-nine years old,” said Gilbert. “I’ve been a homicide detective for seventeen years. You want me to speculate? You want me to tell you why I think your husband killed Edgar Lau?”

  She shook her head, grinned bitterly. “You don’t have to tell me,” she said. “I can guess.”

  “I think you loved Edgar Lau,” he said. “And I think he loved you. I don’t know you, and you don’t know me, but I know by looking at those photographs, with you in that cheongsam, that they’re the work of a man who felt nothing but tenderness for you. And I can tell by the way you smile in them that you felt nothing but tenderness for him too.”

  “You’re forty-nine and you watch too many old movies,” she said. She tilted her head to one side. Her green eyes glowed in the overcast light coming in through the window. “Edgar was my photographer,” she said. “That’s all. A volunteer. Whatever you saw in those photographs was meant solely for my husband. I’m sorry Edgar’s dead. I have no idea what he got himself mixed up in. You can call Bob Bannatyne. You can do anything you like. It’s a free country and everybody’s allowed to make a fool of themselves any way they please. But facts make a case, Barry. Not speculation. When you have some facts, you can make an appointment to see me again. Until then, I wish you wouldn’t bother me anymore. If you bother me too much, I might have to raise the matter with the Police Services Board. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?” She looked at him sweetly.
“Not when there’s still more cutbacks on the way. Not when so many of your colleagues have already been downsized out of their jobs.”

  That afternoon, when Gilbert got back to headquarters, he found Frank Hukowich of the RCMP waiting for him in the squad room. Pearl Wu was coming for an interview and Hukowich wanted to observe. Lombardo walked Hukowich through the case file on the computer.

  “And Peter Hope’s a player,” said Hukowich, shaking his head with a gleeful look in his eyes. “This is great. I knew we were going to get a nibble on this thing.”

  Gilbert wondered if Hukowich’s obvious familiarity with Peter Hope meant a deeper degree of unwanted interference in the investigation.

  “Where’s Paulsen today?” asked Gilbert.

  But Hukowich was too caught up in this newest development to pay any attention to Gilbert. “I wonder why we never got a flag from Customs and Immigration on him,” said Hukowich. He shook his head, bewildered by this breakdown in the system, perplexed by how Hope could have entered the country without someone personally notifying him about it. “Something went wrong somewhere.”

  “Who is Peter Hope?” asked Lombardo. “He says he’s Pearl Wu’s personal assistant, but Barry and I think it goes further than that.”

  Hukowich turned to the young detective. Something about Hukowich, thought Gilbert, some sleight of hand about his personality, something Gilbert didn’t trust.

  “Benny hasn’t filled you in?” asked Hukowich.

  “Benny has a local file,” said Lombardo. “Nothing international.”

  Hukowich nodded. His hair, sculpted to perfection, was a cheesy masterpiece, a pompadour sweeping back in a mathematically precise curve to the crown of his head. “We think Peter Hope is a highly placed member of Hong Kong’s 14K Triad,” he said. “Our sources suggest he’s the triad’s Red Pole, the Hung Kwan, the number 486. That means he’s the triad’s enforcer, its top fighter and battle tactician. In his day he was a much feared master of the martial arts, but he must be well over seventy by now. Hope hasn’t been active for a number of years, so that’s why I’m surprised to see him turn up in your file like this. He has close connections to Bing Wu. Bing Wu is seventy-four. We have a whole album of surveillance photographs of the two of them together. He was Bing Wu’s best man when he married Pearl seven years ago.”

  From down the aisle of desks, Carol Reid’s telephone rang.

  “He didn’t seem particularly fearsome to me when I saw him out at the airport,” said Lombardo. “Just annoying.”

  “Don’t underestimate him just because he’s old,” said Hukowich. “The Hong Kong Police have never been able to touch him but they believe he’s ordered ninety-six murders in the last decade alone, eleven of which have been in Canada. He’s a ruthless man, Joe, and as cold-blooded as any killer you have in any of your case files,” said Hukowich, waving to the computer screen. “And if he’s here in Canada, it can mean only one thing. There’s trouble somewhere. Bing Wu’s called him out of retirement to deal with it. And that’s just the kind of mud we like to see stirred.”

  “Barry?” called Carol from her desk, holding the phone against her shoulder. “Your appointment’s here. Do you want me to go downstairs and card her in?” she asked.

  Gilbert remembered Lombardo’s comment about the lump of coal. “No, it’s all right,” he said. “I’ll go down.” He turned to Lombardo and Hukowich. “Do you guys want to get a look at our beauty queen of the East from the atrium gallery?”

  Hukowich shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? Let’s see the old man’s trophy.”

  Gilbert, Lombardo, and Hukowich left the Homicide office.

  Like so many of the newer buildings in Toronto, the first few floors of police headquarters on College Street were arranged around an open-air atrium, with galleries overlooking a broad and spacious lobby downstairs. They followed the gallery to the right, past Sexual Assault, and paused to look over the stone barrier to the ground floor. Gilbert looked for a beautiful Chinese woman. But there were no beautiful Chinese women down there.

  “Holy shit,” said Hukowich.

  “What?” said Gilbert.

  “It’s him,” said Hukowich. “Hope. Sitting on the bench by the elevators.” Hukowich looked like a kid in a candy store. “This is starting to turn into something we can really use.” Gilbert didn’t at all like the sound of that. “I’m going to have to call our guy in Hong Kong and see what he can dig up about this. Something’s going on and it might be big.”

  “Where’s Pearl?” asked Lombardo. “I don’t see her.”

  Gilbert scanned the lobby again. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe she’s in the washroom.”

  All three men stared at Hope. He was a small aging Chinese man with gray hair combed to one side, longish hair for someone so old, unruly hair, as if the man had just stepped in from a windstorm, rakish and theatrical hair. He wore a simple gray overcoat. A silk scarf hung loosely around his neck. He sat forward on the bench, feet firmly planted on the marble floor, hands braced against his knees, looking as if he were ready to spring.

  “I better go down,” said Gilbert.

  Hukowich nodded. “I’m going back. I can’t let him see me. I’ll watch through the glass.”

  Gilbert turned to Lombardo. “Joe, better check the video camera,” he said. “It was acting up a few days ago.”

  “Sure,” said Lombardo.

  Lombardo and Hukowich went back to the Homicide office. Gilbert continued toward the elevators. Using his security access card, he took the elevator to the ground floor. The doors slid open and he approached Peter Hope. Gilbert searched his memory, trying to recall if he had seen Peter Hope in and around the Champion Gardens Restaurant on the night of the murder. Now he thought he might have. The man sprang from his spot on the bench and hurried forward, spry for one so old, smoothing out his long gray hair with his hand as he approached Gilbert.

  “Are you Detective Gilbert?” he asked. His English was moderately accented but nonetheless easily understandable.

  Gilbert looked at the small man, his face like stone. “And you are?” he said, playing along with the charade.

  “Allow me to introduce myself,” he said, with elaborate formality. “My name is Peter Hope. I’m Pearl Wu’s personal assistant. I’m here to answer your questions.”

  Gilbert looked past the elevators toward the public washrooms. “And where’s Mrs. Wu?” he asked. “I was expecting her to come alone. I asked her to come alone. Can she not follow simple instructions?”

  Hope bowed. “Mrs. Wu cannot come today,” he said. “I tried to work a spot into her appointment book, but at the last minute she had to meet with some potential buyers for a restaurant we own in Markham, and she couldn’t make it. She sends her sincere apologies.”

  This didn’t in the least please Gilbert. He was sick of interrogation by appointment only. “You know what I’m going to do?” he said, unable to hide his annoyance. “I’m going to phone York Regional Police and have them go get her. Where is she? I want the exact address.”

  Hope lifted his hands, trying to placate Gilbert. “There’s no need for that,” he said. “Really, there isn’t.” The man smiled, but he smiled the way a shark might smile. “I’ve come in her place. I can answer all your questions.”

  “This isn’t a dinner date,” he said. “She can’t decide not to show up. I’m not her hair stylist, I’m a homicide detective. And she doesn’t cancel on a homicide detective.”

  Hope now looked like an excitable old man, a retiree who was easily discombobulated by small things, if only it weren’t for the shark-like smile.

  “But I was there in the restaurant on the night of the murder,” said Hope. “I saw everything there was to see. I can help you. Trust me. I can really help you.”

  Like an old man pleading with muggers not to take his Social Security check.

  Gilbert stared at Hope. He knew Hope was trying to protect Pearl Wu, even suspected he had been ordered to pro
tect Pearl from any untoward attention by Bing Wu. Whether Pearl Wu had canceled her appointment was now beside the point. What mattered was Hope’s assurance that he could help Gilbert, weighted as it was with unmistakable innuendo, that he could perhaps provide inside information about the murder. They could still talk to Pearl. They could pick her up any time they liked. She didn’t seem to be running.

  For now, though, he had this man in front of him, this Red Pole, this Hung Kwan, this number 486 who in his capacity as 14K enforcer had ordered the murders of ninety-six people. And maybe that was an opportunity a homicide detective shouldn’t be so quick to pass up.

  Eleven

  In the interview room upstairs, Hope calmly surveyed his surroundings. He picked out the small camcorder mounted on the tripod in the corner, the overhead microphone, the window of one-way glass, then took off his coat and slung it over a chair. He sat down, but instead of perching on the edge of his chair, hands on his knees, as he had done downstairs, he lifted one knee over the other, leaned back, and folded his hands across his lap in a pose of studied ease, as if he were used to such rooms. He regarded Gilbert with a blank expression, his dark brown eyes unwavering behind the inscrutable folds of his Chinese eyelids. Liver spots covered the backs of his hands.

  Hope glanced at the one-way glass. “They watch us?” he asked.

  Lombardo and Hukowich were out there.

  “Mr. Hope,” he said, “I’m a homicide detective. I’m interested in one thing. Finding Edgar Lau’s killer. Some people want to broaden this investigation.” He glanced at the one-way glass. “I don’t.” He could fairly sense Hukowich bristling in the squad room. “As the primary investigator on this murder, I’ve looked into the history of my victim, and I know that criminally he’s not untainted. I know the people he deals with aren’t untainted.” Gilbert paused. He saw that Hope, an astute old man, understood the meaning of his pause—that not only had Gilbert looked into the history of Edgar Lau, but into the histories of everybody connected to Lau. Gilbert acknowledged Hope’s own criminal past with this pause. Hope realized this. They both moved on. “None of that means anything to me unless it has a direct bearing on who killed Edgar Lau.”