by Scott Mackay
Gilbert’s brow arched in puzzlement. “Then why did you help me?” he asked.
“Because Mrs. Wu wanted us to. Mr. Wu knows how Mrs. Wu feels about Edgar. And while this angers him a great deal at times, he knows that sometimes it’s difficult for Mrs. Wu. He can see Mrs. Wu’s grief. Mrs. Wu insists we help you. She grieves for Edgar and she wants to see his killer brought to justice. Mr. Wu dotes on her, and is willing to do anything for her. Pearl wants us to help you. So that’s why we’re here, Detective Gilbert, you and I. And that’s why you’ll have to go to Hong Kong.”
Gilbert let the challenge settle. He thought through his various questions quickly. First and foremost, why would he personally have to go to Hong Kong when it made better sense for police counterparts in the former British colony to apprehend Tony Mok? And if he in fact had to go to Hong Kong, would Detective Support Command be able to find the necessary money in the expediency fund for hotel and airfare to Asia? And what kind of cooperation would Gilbert get from Hong Kong’s new Communist masters?
“Can’t we have Hong Kong Police apprehend Tony Mok?” he asked.
Hope nodded, as if he fully expected Gilbert’s question. A quietness came to Hope, as if he, too, felt that the border between them was no longer so guarded, that they had met each other halfway, and were now engaged in a most unusual and perhaps notable undertaking.
“There have been many changes in Hong Kong since the People’s Republic of China took over a few years ago,” said the Red Pole. “Hong Kong is still one of the best places in the world to do business—everyone will tell you that—but there have been many reforms.” Hope’s eyes narrowed. “As you might expect, many of these reforms have been in law enforcement.”
Gilbert waited. He sensed conditions on the way—the Red Pole setting up the situation to suit whatever safety net he might need.
“Police are more vigilant in the new Hong Kong,” said Hope. He lifted his chin and stared at Gilbert with eyes that seemed charged with electricity. “What can you expect? They have five thousand new officers, and look where they come from. Look what their traditions are. Look how punitive their justice system is.”
Gilbert studied the Red Pole, realized that Hope was truly concerned, and that the impact of Hong Kong’s handover to Communist China was both real and highly feared by those who had connections to the triad underworld in Hong Kong. The Red Pole sat back in his chair, seeming to measure the effect of his words on Gilbert.
“Because of the unusual nature of our cooperation, Detective Gilbert, I must ask you to make the arrest personally.” Hope raised his hands, as if to qualify. “I know that as a man in your senior position a simple arrest is usually left to uniformed officers, but let us admit, this arrest won’t be so simple. There are certain risks on both sides.”
Gilbert again waited. The Red Pole’s conditions loomed on the horizon ever closer, like a thunderstorm. He watched Hope. Hope took a deep breath and shifted in his chair, looking as if he were now ready to go into greater detail.
“Like I told you, Detective Gilbert, I’ve had associates in Hong Kong apprehend your suspect.” The Red Pole grinned, and Gilbert saw that the irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Hope. “He’s being held as we speak. He is part of…part of our world. The Hong Kong Police would…would never have found him…in our world. So we found him for you.” Hope’s oblique admission—about his shadowy connection to the tongs and triads of Hong Kong—unsettled Gilbert. “We found him because Mrs. Wu wanted us to find him. And we incurred a great deal of risk. Holding Mok, a Canadian citizen, against his will, has opened my associates to all sorts of legal danger. I have to do what I can to protect them. To involve the Hong Kong Police in any but the most superficial way, to get them physically anywhere near my associates, would in the end only jeopardize the freedom of my associates who, after all, are only trying to help you. The only way I can give them protection is by keeping the Hong Kong Police Force at arm’s length. I’m in no position to trust the new Hong Kong Police Force. You might make special arrangements with them to collect Tony Mok from us, but given the slightest opportunity, they would most certainly move in on my associates and indict them on kidnapping charges.”
Hope rubbed his chin with his fingers and looked out the window, where a forklift operator moved a large crate from the back of a flatbed truck and put it next to the receiving dock.
“I’ve thought through all the possibilities,” he continued. “Drug Tony, put him in a car trunk somewhere, have the Hong Kong Police pick him up and save you the trip of going all the way over there. But I can’t let the Hong Kong Police question him in any great detail. He must remain in your custody until he returns to Canada. Given the opportunity, Mok would most certainly divulge to the Hong Kong Police the names of those who…who have so graciously detained him for you. That’s why I must insist on my arrangements. That’s why I must insist you make the arrest yourself.”
Gilbert thought about this.
“What if the Hong Kong Police don’t go for it?” he asked. “What if they’re unwilling to let us go ahead with your plan?”
“Then there can be no arrest,” said Hope. “It will be up to you to smooth things over with them.”
Gilbert nodded. “I’m willing to make the arrest myself,” he said, “and to smooth things over with the Hong Kong Police, but I’m concerned about making an effective arrest. I’m a forty-nine-year-old homicide detective with bad knees, a family history of cardiovascular disease, and not the best eyesight. I’m brave but not stupid. I know Tony’s fast. I know he’s a good street fighter. I’d like to bring my partner Joe Lombardo with me if I could. He’s not Hong Kong Police. He’s young. And he’s a great boxer. He works out. I’d feel a lot safer having him along. I think we’d have a better chance of making a successful arrest.”
The Red Pole thought this through and finally nodded. “Very well,” he said. “You can take your partner. But no one else. You’ll be watched, I’m sorry to say, but what choice do I have?”
“I understand.”
“The main thing is to keep the Hong Kong Police physically away from my associates at all times,” he said. “They’re like wolves. They’ll go in for the kill at the smallest opportunity.” Hope opened the desk drawer and pulled out a Chinese money envelope, bright crimson with gold Chinese writing all over it. “We start with this.”
Gilbert gazed at the envelope tentatively. “With that?” he said, not sure he understood.
“It’s a Chinese money envelope.” He offered the envelope to Gilbert. “Don’t look so perplexed. I assure you, it’s all very practical. I want you to take this money envelope to the Yellow Moon Tea Room in Tung Loi Lane once you reach Hong Kong. It’s really very simple. You’ll find the address inside the envelope. This envelope will establish your credentials with your first contact. Like a letter of introduction, if you will. Give the envelope to the manager at the Yellow Moon Tea Room and sit down. In an hour or so you will receive a similar-looking envelope from the manager. In this next envelope you’ll find some instructions. These will guide you to another destination. At this second destination, if we see you’re not alone, the arrest will be called off. As I say, you’ll be watched, so please make sure any police escorts are nowhere in sight at this point.”
“Okay,” said Gilbert.
“Once we’re certain you and your partner are alone, your next contact will come forward and take you to Tony Mok.” Hope took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “These arrangements might seem troublesome to you, Detective Gilbert, but believe me, they’re the only way I can protect the people who work for me. If you’re prepared to accept them, then all you need do is book your transportation, your accommodation, and we’ll be set to proceed.”
Nineteen
Staff Inspector Tim Nowak reacted with dismay to Gilbert’s latest initiative in the Edgar Lau murder case. As he sat behind his desk staring at his half-finished cup of coffee, with the rain coming down outside ha
rder than ever, he shook his head wearily at Gilbert’s written request for expediency money.
“Barry,” he said, “I have to think of my budget. We’re near the end of the fiscal year and there’s not much left. If it were Vancouver, I wouldn’t hesitate. Even if it were San Francisco, I would say okay. But Hong Kong? For the two of you, that’s five thousand dollars in airfare. Then there’s accommodation. I had Carol check the hotel prices there. Three hundred a night for double occupancy, up to five hundred if you want to stay in any of the upscale places, and that doesn’t include the ten-percent service charge or the three-percent tax. I don’t have ten grand in my budget to throw away on this. And the possibility of getting that much money from the expediency fund is nearly nil.”
So Gilbert reluctantly outlined his second proposal. “Why don’t we contact Frank Hukowich and Ross Paulsen and tell them I’ve worked my way into the confidence of the Red Pole?” he said. “Maybe they’ll offer us some funding. Who knows what I might be able to unearth? That’s got to mean something to them.”
Paulsen took a flight from Virginia that same day. Hukowich drove down from Ottawa. Paulsen had a hard polyester case with him. He opened the case to reveal what looked like an ordinary package of Camel filter cigarettes. Gilbert stared at the package of cigarettes, knowing exactly what it was, sensing, just as he had sensed with the Red Pole, conditions looming on the horizon. He felt as if he were venturing even farther into a no-man’s-land, that he was being pulled in two different directions by two different camps, that he was not so much a detective wishing only to make a simple arrest for murder, but a pawn in a much bigger game.
“This is one of our latest body bugs,” said the American. “It’s better than most of the wires we use, operates on fifteen-hundred milliwatts of power, and can transmit up to fifty miles if the conditions are right. It has a crystal-controlled frequency, so if anybody tries to intercept they’ll have to match the band exactly. It has a microchip to scramble transmissions, so even if somebody manages to intercept they won’t understand any of it anyway, not unless they find a way to decode.”
Paulsen, on a techno-high, spoke more quickly than he usually did, and with a lot more enthusiasm. Gilbert stared at the device. Having spent a number of years in Narcotics, he was familiar with such devices, though this was by far the most sophisticated one he had ever seen. The ones they had downstairs in Technical Support had to be strapped around your waist or worn like a back brace, bulky and cumbersome devices that could easily be discovered. This bug, in its simple disguise, was beyond the reach of the MTPF’s fiscal resources. Only an agency like the Drug Enforcement Administration could afford something like this. He didn’t want to wear it. He was willing to be Ross Paulsen’s ears, to pick up whatever he could when he went to Hong Kong, and then report it back to Paulsen by word of mouth, but he thought wearing this bug would be a major risk.
“Look, all I meant to offer was some background information on some of the things the Red Pole was telling me, and whatever I might hear from his associates in Hong Kong. I’m a cop. Whatever I hear will be good. I’m a watertight witness. Isn’t that enough?”
“For someone like Wu, we need it on tape,” said Paulsen.
“I know…but a wire. Won’t that be risky?” He thought of how he was patted down at Peter Hope’s warehouse. “All I want to do is arrest Mok.”
“They won’t find the wire,” said Paulsen.
“Hong Kong is the gadget capital of the world,” he said. “They’ll find it. At the very least they’re going to have a boomerang detector.”
Paulsen grinned, as if he were glad Gilbert had raised this point. “We’ve got it shielded with lead.” He was like a car salesman selling a fully loaded sports car. “A boomerang detector’s not going to touch it.” Paulsen’s shoulders sank and he made an attempt at being personable. “Look, Barry, you’ve gained the cooperation of one of the most highly placed triad members in the world. Any of his associates—any of them—particularly the ones you’ll talk to in Hong Kong, are going know things and say things that we can add to our library of evidence against Bing Wu. This is a rare opportunity. We’ve got to take it.”
He had to expect this—that in dealing with Paulsen his investigation would in some way be co-opted.
“If they find this thing, I’ll never get Tony Mok. And I’ll wind up dead.”
“They won’t find it, Barry,” said Paulsen. “Look at it. It’s top-of-the-line. We never send our agents into the field wearing junk. We’ve learned the hard way.”
Paulsen lifted the pack of Camels out of the polystyrene mold and handed it to Gilbert. It had the exact same weight and feel of a package of cigarettes. Gilbert opened it and took out one of the cigarettes. It indeed was an actual cigarette. He took out the next cigarette. That too was a cigarette.
“Where’s the battery?” he asked.
“We’ve got a mercury battery concealed in the last cigarette at the end here. You’d have to break the cigarette apart to find it because it’s packed right inside the tobacco,” said Paulsen. “The electronics and the microphone are hidden in the foil.”
Gilbert contemplated the device with growing astonishment. The budget Paulsen must have to work with!
“And if I refuse to wear it?” said Gilbert.
Paulsen shrugged. “Then you don’t get your money,” he said. “It’s as simple as that.”
A few hours later he received a telephone call from the department head of Mount Joseph Medical Records. She had disappointing news.
“I’m afraid we haven’t been able to find the chart on Foster Ling Sung,” she said. “We have it marked as going out to the scanning company, but they say they have no record of receiving it. We’ve done a computer search in our chart location system, as well as a physical search here in the hospital, but we haven’t been able to find it. I’m sorry, Detective Gilbert, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to put Mr. Sung’s chart on our missing list for the time being.”
Gilbert shook his head, disappointed. There was only one thing left to do. Check any Tony Mok records at the Prince of Wales Hospital once he got to Hong Kong in the hope he might find matching phenotypes on Foster Sung there.
His luggage was packed and standing by the front door in the hall downstairs. Lombardo sat in his Fiat in the driveway outside, afraid to come in because of the way he had cancelled on Jennifer a few days ago. Gilbert knocked quietly on his eldest daughter’s bedroom door.
“Jenn?” he said. Thunder rumbled distantly to the west. In January. Bizarre. “Can I come in?”
No answer. As much as he wanted to respect her privacy, he had to try and patch things up before he left for Hong Kong. He opened her door and went in.
He found her sitting at her desk making a sketch of the lymphatic system from her Gray’s Anatomy. He was glad to see she was taking an interest in her schoolwork again.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come down and say good-bye to Joe?” he asked.
She continued to shade her sketch lightly with a pencil crayon. “How do you think it makes me feel, Dad?” she asked.
“How what makes you feel?”
“You really don’t like me, do you?”
He frowned, looked away. “Jennifer, don’t say things like that.”
“Do you have any idea how infuriating you can be at times?” she asked. “Mom’s right. You’re too wrapped up in yourself.”
“She said that?”
“She said that. You don’t know how lucky you are to have someone like Mom. Someone who tolerates you.”
“I know I’m lucky.”
“I don’t know how she puts up with you.”
“Jennifer, please don’t be like this, not before I go.”
“You have to earn the right to be a husband and a father,” she said, putting her pencil crayon down. She turned around and faced him with hard accusatory eyes. “Or didn’t you know that?”
“Yes, I knew that.”
“W
hy do you think you have the right to interfere in my life?”
“Jennifer, I’m sorry about Joe.”
“No, you’re not,” she said. “You’re glad about it. Just like you’re glad about Karl.”
“The whole thing with Joe was a mistake from beginning to end.”
She looked at him more closely. “What do you mean by that?” she asked.
He knew he had blundered again, but he didn’t want to lie to her. He slid his hands into the pockets of his gray flannels and sighed.
“I put Joe up to asking you out to The Nutcracker in the first place,” he said. He wasn’t sure he should be telling her this, but he felt she deserved the truth. “I felt sorry for you. I thought if Joe took you out you might snap out of it. But then it started going too far. You know…the way you were looking at him, the way you kissed him. I thought you were going to end up getting hurt all over again.”
She looked at her father in astonishment. “Shit, I don’t believe this.” Her voice sounded raspy, breathless, and he knew she was precariously close to tears. “I don’t believe this.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“I don’t need your help, Dad,” she said. “I don’t want your help.”
“Jennifer, all I want is what’s best for you.”
She exploded. “How can you know what’s best for me? You don’t even know me. You can’t even stop your own fucking wife from getting beaten up.”
She turned around and made a pretense of shading her sketch again. Gilbert saw a tear fall onto the sketch paper. He felt perplexed. He could make no right move as far as Jennifer was concerned. Everything he said to her was like pouring gasoline onto flames. He was afraid that this new discord between them might be permanent. She went back to school on the eighteenth and he was afraid the emotional distance between them might become even greater if they didn’t patch it up before then. He had no idea why this was happening to them.