by Scott Mackay
“Do you play?” he asked.
“It’s my husband’s,” she said.
“He’s a musician?”
“Well…was…had a brief recording career in the early nineties, but then ran into tax problems and…he’s not that active anymore. He’s had that piano for a long time. It’s got a cracked soundboard and it’s really not worth fixing, but he insists we keep it.”
“I’m sorry about your husband.”
She looked away. “Would you like a drink?” she asked. “I was about to pour a sherry.”
“You go ahead,” he said.
He watched her move to the liquor cabinet, her walk fluid and easy, a bright example of feminine poise. The cabinet looked like an antique, walnut or oak, with ten beveled glass panes in the framework of each door. The fire cracked and embers leaped up the flue, and the rain suddenly seemed far away to Gilbert. The furniture was soft, comfortable, upholstered in off-white fabric. The walls were white and the trim was wood, varnished in muted tones. She came back. She smiled in a girlish way. She kicked off her moccasins, revealing white socks with a pink frill around the top, and folded her right foot under her left thigh with yoga-like flexibility.
“I have information that might help you solve Edgar Lau’s murder,” she said.
He took the statement calmly, and, considering how uncooperative she’d been thus far, expected nothing from it.
“And that information might be?” he asked.
Her eyes focused and her smile dropped away, and he saw the iron-hard city councillor coming back. “Ever since I was elected,” she said, “I’ve received complaints about illegal gaming houses in and around the Chinatown area of Ward One. If you read the minutes of any of the Police Services Board meetings, you’ll see that I’ve raised the issue again and again, and that again and again the chairman says she’ll contact officers at 52 Division to deal with the problem. I respect Julie Winslow, I think she’s an excellent board chairman, and I think she’s established clear lines of communication with the various command sectors in the police force. But somehow this particular problem doesn’t go away.” Gilbert kept quiet. He saw no reason just yet to tell Rosalyn that he knew about the connection between herself and Constable Jeremy Austin. “So I’ve had a closer look at the problem on my own time. I grew up in Ward One, Detective Gilbert. I went to Orde Street Public School, and I went to Jarvis Collegiate. I know the Chinese community. Most of my friends in high school were Chinese. I know I have to expect at least a modest amount of gambling in Chinatown, despite the complaints. It’s part of the culture and I don’t want to disrupt things too much. I can accept the gambling.”
He nodded. “We all have to get along,” he agreed.
“I’ve identified at least eighteen such gaming houses in my electoral district and that’s all right, that’s okay. But I’ve determined that at least seven of these are acting as fronts for drug-smuggling and prostitution rings. I’ve developed sources within the Chinese community, and one of my primary sources happened to be Edgar Lau.” She paused, took a sip of her sherry. She looked at the wine magazine on the coffee table, an issue devoted to the wines of South America, with a bottle of Isla Negra, from Chile, on the front cover. “Before he was murdered Edgar told me he had conclusive evidence that linked certain officers at 52 Division to these drug-smuggling and prostitution rings. You have to understand. I don’t mind the gambling. But drug-smuggling and prostitution rings? No way. The reason these places haven’t been closed down is because of corrupt police involvement at 52. Edgar was up to his neck in it, trying to find things out for me, and I believe Edgar may have been discovered.” A shadow of grief darkened her face. “I believe one of these bad officers might have murdered Edgar.”
He stared at her. Here was an alternate canvas, a different picture, yanking suspicion not only away from Garth Surrey, such as she obviously intended, but also away from Tony Mok and Pearl Wu.
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” he asked.
“Because I was afraid if you began investigating along these lines you might possibly jeopardize some of my other sources. And I didn’t want to jeopardize anything, particularly at that point, because Edgar was so close to handing over documented proof to me.”
Gilbert looked through the gauze curtains. The chimney next door looked distorted and faint through the curtains. “Why come to me now?” he said.
“Because you said you wanted to help me,” she said. “And because I’ve had a chance to think about it.” She looked down at her knees, and, in a softer voice, said, “And because I’m scared.”
He stared at her. “You’ve had threats?” he asked. He thought he was going to get a replay of Jeremy Austin.
“I really want to trust you,” she said.
“Why would Edgar help you?” asked Gilbert. “Why would he risk it?”
She looked up at him. “I don’t know why,” she said, and she looked truly perplexed. “He started as a volunteer. I saw his photography skills as an asset and I tried to get him on board. Then we became friends. I began to trust him. He understood the Chinese in Toronto as only a Chinese can. And he helped me with that. He advised me on that. He was a paid member of my staff for a while. When I told him what I was doing, how I was sick of these drug and prostitution rings, he told me to be careful, that there was a lot of infighting just now, that a lot of the older Toishan establishments were being taken over by the Hong Kong Chinese, and that the Hong Kong Chinese could be dangerous. That’s as far as it went. For six months, whenever I talked about it, he would just keep quiet, never say anything about it. Then, one day near the end of November, he told me he would help me.”
Gilbert took a deep breath. “Any idea what prompted the change?” he asked.
Rosalyn’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know…but a change…yes, a definite change…a change in his character.” She turned to Gilbert. “One thing I always admired about Edgar was the control he had over his emotions. But when he came to me and told me he wanted to help me, I saw this black, this dark…something in his eyes. His face was like stone, not a muscle twitched, but in his eyes I saw the most ominous and frightening…determination. He looked…” She shook her head, bewildered by the memory. “I couldn’t believe the change. I asked him about it but he never talked about it.”
Gilbert paused to consider. He still couldn’t understand why she would wait two weeks to tell him this. He was suspicious. If her story was true, certain 52 Division officers, as yet to be identified, would now become suspects in Edgar Lau’s murder too. And that meant that he would have to take a closer look at Donald Kennedy, what with the dish towel and Chinese-man discrepancies in his report. He would verify what he could with Jeremy Austin. As for now, he couldn’t rule out the possibility that she was attempting to deflect suspicion from her husband. This soft interior, the fire in the grate, the offer of a drink, her casual clothes—these all seemed part of a carefully orchestrated plan to steer Gilbert away from Garth Surrey.
“How close was Edgar to having concrete documented proof?” he asked.
“He said he had it,” she replied.
“And when did he tell you this?”
“Two days before he was murdered.”
“Because we checked every square inch of his apartment. We examined every single file on his computer, once we had our technicians hack through his password. There’s nothing there that indicates corrupt police involvement in his murder.”
“He said he had the proof hidden away in a locker somewhere,” she said. “That’s the thing about Edgar. Everything is planned. He was going to fly to San Francisco. Some friends down there were going to hide him for a while. He was going to mail the locker key with instructions to the Solicitor General’s Office. Then he was just going to watch the whole house of cards collapse from a safe distance.”
Twelve
The following morning, after working a domestic stabbing in Riverdale—a dunker complete with a repentant husband in blood-
spattered jeans and a dead wife lying on the kitchen floor—Gilbert and Lombardo, both on rotation for Saturday, drove to Toronto’s exclusive Bridle Path, a posh community of thirty-room houses, three-car garages, and private tennis courts a world away from the government-subsidized high-rises of Riverdale. On the way up Leslie Street, Gilbert, having done some homework on the subject, told Lombardo what Edgar Lau had done with himself over the last few months. He kept remembering Rosalyn Surrey’s words, that Edgar had changed at the end of November, and he was trying to find out why.
“Canadian Airlines has him flying to Vancouver on the twenty-eighth of November,” said Gilbert, “but they don’t have him flying back. I’ve checked all the other airlines. I’ve checked Via Rail, Canadian Pacific Rail, and all the bus lines, but there’s no indication he took any kind of public transportation back to Toronto after flying out there.”
“What about a rental car?”
“I’ve checked,” said Gilbert. “No rental car. So how did he get back to Toronto? I thought about that for a while. I think he drove a private vehicle back to Toronto. He flew out there so he could drive something back—deliver something back to Toronto. In a private vehicle. Maybe the product we found in his attic.”
Lombardo nodded. “I think you might be right,” he said.
Gilbert passed a bus. “He had to get the smack from somewhere,” he said. “I figure he got it in Vancouver and drove it back here. I phoned the Vancouver Police and talked to a Detective Pam Nichols of the Asian Crime Squad. I asked her to retrieve the twenty-four-hour report on the shooting of Edgar back in August. No suspects, but it referenced Edgar’s name to another report, one that ties into a major investigation the Vancouver Police are conducting on a Ling Han Lam, a suspected major narcotics trafficker with connections to the 14K Triad. They’ve been watching Lam for a long time. One of their undercover agents spotted Lam talking to Edgar in a pai-gow parlor on East Pender in November. Edgar’s just a footnote in this much bigger investigation, but I think it’s safe to assume he was in Vancouver for business, not pleasure.” Gilbert glanced at Lombardo. “How’d the neighborhood canvas go?” he asked. “Did Benny Eng give you any leads about who you might talk to, people who might actually know Edgar, or who might have some guesses about how he got himself killed?”
“He did.”
“So you made progress?”
“I did,” said Lombardo. “I covered the downtown Chinatown as well as the one by the Don Jail,” he said. “I talked to one of the older Chinese out there, a Danny Leung, a guy from Canton who runs a tearoom, but the place is really a gaming house. Leung told me Edgar worked for him as a bouncer a few years back. He also mentioned Tony Mok. He has the same information Jeremy Austin does—that Tony Mok was responsible for the Vancouver shooting. As for Edgar’s murder, he doesn’t know anything about it. But he’s heard rumors about a split between the 14K and Kung Lok triads, and he’s convinced that Edgar was somehow caught in the cross fire.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.” Gilbert shook his head. “This is really starting to smell,” he said.
“This is starting to reek,” said Lombardo.
Foster Sung’s mansion came into view a few minutes later. It was new, made of flesh-colored brick, ungainly and huge, too modern and functional-looking to be attractive in any but a conventional, suburban way. The driveway passed a shrubbery garden of a few blue spruces in a bed of white quartz stones. Two garish Chinese lions stood on either side of the front door. The thermal pre-fab windows looked plugged into their spots, displaying an architectural disregard, as far as Gilbert was concerned, for the more enchanting possibilities of fenestration.
Gilbert and Lombardo got out of the Lumina and walked up to the door. Gilbert rang the doorbell. Two cocker spaniels leaped at the window beside the door and yelped. Gilbert saw someone yank the spaniels away. The barking grew fainter as the dogs were shoved into a nearby room. The door opened and a middle-aged black woman in a white apron confronted them with inquiring eyes.
“Yes?” she said.
Gilbert showed his badge and ID to the woman. “We’re here to see Mr. Sung,” he said. “He’s expecting us.”
The woman looked him over suspiciously, then nodded. Her dark face remained immobile. “Come with me,” she said. “He’s waiting for you in his study.”
They followed the woman down the hall to a room at the back. She gave the door a few discreet taps and pushed it open. Foster Sung was on the phone talking in Cantonese.
“Detective Gilbert is here to see you, Mr. Sung,” said the woman.
Sung beckoned to the woman and the detectives while he continued to speak on the phone. The woman ushered them halfway into the room. “He should be done in a minute,” she said. She retreated.
Gilbert and Lombardo took the opportunity to glance around the room, looking for anything that might be of evidentiary value, conducting a plain-view search while Sung continued to talk in Cantonese on the phone. Gilbert didn’t see anything in the least incriminating. Sung sat behind a vast walnut desk. Intricately carved rosewood panels covered the walls. Taking a closer look at the wall, Gilbert saw antique sheets of music framed under glass, the brass plaque under the frame identifying them as Chopin’s Nocturne et Berceuse, the original handwritten manuscript, penned with a quill in brown ink by the composer himself. He turned to Sung. So, he was a collector. He continued to glance around the room. The expensive furniture was upholstered in liver-colored leather. This was as much of an office as it was a den. Sliding glass doors opened onto a rain-drenched deck, and beyond, backing against a small wooded area, Gilbert saw a kidney-shaped swimming pool covered with a blue pool cover. Sung waved them toward some chairs in front of his desk. The two detectives sat down. Sung, after a few more words, hung up. He swung his swivel chair in their direction and gave them a neutral smile.
“Gentlemen,” he said. The man looked impervious.
Gilbert started first by comparing Sung’s version of events on the night of the murder to Peter Hope’s version.
“He has Pearl going up the stairs first, then he has you following ten minutes later.”
“Yes, this is correct,” said Sung. Today, the suspected triad member wore a blue blazer with a nautical crest above the left breast pocket, gray flannels, and a silk scarf tucked down the front of a pale yellow shirt. Gilbert couldn’t help thinking how young he looked for his fifty-seven years.
“I think you can guess why this has us so concerned,” said Gilbert.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Sung, still smiling.
“Because it puts you at the scene of the crime right around the time of the shooting. You went up twice. Once ten minutes after Pearl went up, and once later, when May Lau came and got you. Why didn’t you tell us you went up twice?”
Sung raised his eyebrows. “Because it didn’t pertain,” he said.
Gilbert and Lombardo glanced at each other. Lombardo spoke up. “Of course it pertained,” he said, feeling his way around the odd word, a word a Chinese man learning English in a British colony might use. “Everything you did that night—” Before Joe could finish, his pager went. He pulled his sporty blazer aside and looked down at the number. Then he looked at Sung. “I’ve got to use your phone.”
Sung gestured at the telephone on the desk. “Be my guest,” he said.
“Is there somewhere private?” asked Lombardo.
Sung swept his palm toward the door. “There’s one out in the hall,” he said.
“Thanks.”
Lombardo got up and left the room. The page was really a ruse designed to widen the plain-view search. Telford had beeped Lombardo for that specific purpose.
With Lombardo gone, Gilbert went over things in more detail with Sung. He started with Tony Mok, telling Sung what they knew about him. “We know Mok was born to an unmarried refugee woman by the name of Fang who escaped Vietnam on your boat, that he was interred in a refugee camp in Hong Kong for the early part of his life, and tha
t he then came to Canada. From what we understand, you more or less acted as the boy’s guardian. You took a personal interest in Tony.”
Sung’s smile disappeared and he leaned forward, folding his hands on the red blotter. “I took a personal interest in a lot of orphans,” he said.
“We understand Mok was in the Champion Gardens Restaurant on the night Edgar was murdered.”
“Yes, he was there,” said Sung, but apparently didn’t think that pertained either.
“And you didn’t mention him?”
“Why would I mention him?” he said. “He stood there for a minute or two, waiting for Pearl. When Pearl went upstairs, he left. I can’t see what he has to do with any of it.”
“We’d like to find Tony Mok,” said Gilbert, “but we have no idea where he might be.”
Sung smiled in an honest and unconcerned way. “Neither do I.”
“We have strong evidence that ties him to Edgar Lau’s murder.”
“You shouldn’t waste your time on that,” said Sung quickly. “I saw him leave the building. He was nowhere near the building when Edgar Lau was murdered.”
“Does he have any friends?”
“He has a few.”
“Can you give me names?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Sung.
“Because you won’t, or because you can’t?”
“Because I don’t remember their names. Have you talked to Pearl Wu yet?” asked Sung.
“Not yet.”
“She’s the one you should be talking to.”
“Why?” asked Gilbert.
“Because she’s Edgar’s old flame, for one thing.” Sung turned his head, looked at a giant carving of a turtle on his desk. “And because she was…” He unfolded his hands and tapped the blotter a few times. “I went up there the first time to invite them both to my table in the restaurant. I believe in the traditional forms of hospitality. I didn’t want either of them to feel slighted. I thought they might enjoy talking to Tak-Ng Lai, our guest from China, an exceptional musician, one who’s done much to promote Chinese music throughout the world.” Sung shook his head. “They were having an argument. I don’t know what they were arguing about. I didn’t ask.”