by Scott Mackay
He waited. Still no acknowledgment of Tony. He told her that her hearing was fine, that they had a report from Dr. Tse; he wanted to get under her skin for not acknowledging Tony. She made a face, but otherwise steadfastly denied Tony with her silence. He mentioned Rosalyn Surrey. He mentioned Garth Surrey. He told her how Edgar had broken Pearl’s heart.
“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” she said.
“I’ve got the whole thing written out here,” he said. “I’d like you to sign. Pearl has to do some time for this.” He made his try yet again. “Even though we think she might have killed Edgar in defense of Tony, she still has to go behind bars for a while. It’s only fair to Edgar.”
May stared at a shredded spot in the sofa upholstery. The fabric looked as if it had been scratched to bits by her cat. The rain splashed against the window. She glanced at him through her big square glasses. She looked as if she had removed herself, as if she sat on top of a tall lonely mountain and didn’t want anybody to bother her ever again. She ignored the defense-of-Tony theory. She was digging in her heels. She was going to deny. She looked afraid—afraid that if she were to say one word against Pearl, she might fall from the top of her mountain and never be able to climb back up again.
“Can we not forget this?” she said, her voice as soft as a wind chime. She gazed across the room, where her erhu, her Chinese violin, sat in the corner, its bamboo bow hanging over one of its two tuning pegs. Her eyes filled with sudden distress. “Why do you want to hurt me? Why do you want to hurt all of us? If I implicate Pearl, I put myself at risk. Why don’t you let me be?”
“Because I clear murders,” he said, apologetically. “That’s what I do.”
She continued to stare at her erhu. She was still on top of her mountain. Gilbert glanced at the instrument, the drum-like mahogany sound box, the snake-skin covering, the two cat-gut strings stretched along its ungainly neck, and wondered how such a primitive and ancient-looking instrument could make such sad music.
“I’m sorry,” said May. “But I can’t help you. Please go now. Please leave me alone. I’ve endured enough already.”
Nothing about Tony. Nothing at all. Not even a tear. Her own son. He was perplexed. Lombardo was right. How could she deny her own son? What was it with these people?
Twenty-Five
As Gilbert took the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor of Doncliffe Tower, he again wondered how May Lau, after her initial reaction of dropping the teapot, could so easily turn to stone about someone she had raised as a child, someone who was in fact her own son. The elevator doors opened on the marble-and-teak offices of New Asian Solutions. In sticking to her original story, she undermined Tony’s story. Whether that would have an impact on Pearl’s trial remained to be seen. He wondered if he should try again with her at a later date. If she would sign the statement, if she would take the stand, then even a mediocre defense attorney might reasonably offer her the homicide-in-defense-of-Mok theory as a way to pull herself free from any possible 14K reprisal. Pearl would have her mercy. May could go back up to the top of her mountain. And Gilbert would have his murder cleared.
Foster Sung sat forward in his chair, hands folded on his desk, his face showing nothing, his eyes wide, unblinking, as Gilbert sat down.
“I’m afraid Tony Mok is dead,” said Gilbert.
Foster Sung remained still. But then he leaned back in his chair and the strength ebbed from his body. He rested an elbow on an armrest, rubbed his nose, and narrowed his eyes. Sung’s eyes momentarily clouded with tears. Gilbert could expect nothing less. Yet Sung kept himself admirably controlled, considering his blood connection to Tony, as if he, too, like May Lau, had distanced himself from Tony.
“He was gunned down in Hong Kong while trying to give money to the widow of a man he killed,” said Gilbert. “We have reason to believe that Bing Wu ordered the killing.”
Sung’s face went stony. Gilbert kept talking; he wanted to give Sung time to recover. He told Sung of the events leading up to Mok’s murder. He told him of his evening out in the boat with Mok, recounted Mok’s story of the murder—how Sung had examined Edgar’s wound, considered it survivable, then pressed the dish towel to Edgar’s abdomen; how Sung, Mok, Pearl and May believed they could avoid a lot of police and 14K trouble if they told officers the shooter was an unknown assailant; and how they then had to abandon their unknown-assailant story because of Edgar’s unexpected death.
“I’ve spoken to May Lau,” said Gilbert. “She’s sticking to her story.” Gilbert couldn’t help showing his perplexity, even though he had no intention, at least for the time being, of revealing to Foster Sung exactly what he knew about Tony. “She didn’t seem particularly affected by Tony’s death.”
Sung looked up. “She didn’t?” he said. “She wasn’t sad?”
“No,” said Gilbert.
Sung scanned his desk. His lips tightened. He grew still, calmer, seemed to retreat, folded his hands on top of his desk, took a deep breath, and looked out the window.
“Did she have any kind words for him at all?” he asked.
Gilbert saw this was important to Sung. He wished he could offer the suspected Kung Lok leader something that might make his pain easier. But he couldn’t.
“She just wants to be left alone,” said Gilbert. “She doesn’t want to be bothered with Tony anymore. She’s not going to help at all. That’s why I’m here. I know Tony was your ward. I know he means something to you.” Gilbert prowled around the edges of the truth. “You’re distressed by his murder. I can see that. If his memory means anything to you,” said Gilbert, “then here’s your chance to clear his name and corroborate his story.”
Sung paused for a long time. Gilbert saw the calculations, the tactical considerations—an examination of all the various scenarios and possibilities—flicker behind Sung’s eyes.
“He deserves to at least be exonerated,” Sung said at last. He raised his eyebrows, his resignation plainly evident. “I will help you, Detective Gilbert.” His lips came together in an expression of resolve. “I will honor Tony’s memory.” He looked at Gilbert, his eyes clearing, the mist of emotion lifting from them. “But please first understand my intentions, why I did what I did on the night Edgar was murdered.” Gilbert saw what Sung was doing—he was setting the ground rules, constructing a safety net before proceeding over dangerous territory. “I wished to save trouble,” he said, “that’s all. I wished to prevent harm. I never had anything but the best intentions.” Sung glanced away. A hard look came to his face. “Pearl Wu did indeed shoot Edgar.” He looked out the window. The drizzle was constant, thin, particulated, each droplet no bigger than a grain of sand. “What I told you before was true. I was on my way up to ask them to join me and my guests at my table downstairs.” He paused, recollecting events. “When I got there, the door was ajar and I could hear May and Pearl crying.”
“So everything you told me before about Pearl and Edgar having an argument when you went up, that’s not true?”
Sung looked dismayed. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “I was trying to protect Tony. You said you were looking for Tony. I thought if I could steer your suspicion, at least to a modest degree, in Pearl’s direction, it might confuse your investigation enough to protect Tony.”
Gilbert nodded. “Okay,” he said. “So what you’re telling me now is the truth?”
“Yes.”
“So what happened?”
“I pushed my way in,” said Sung. “Pearl stood by the door with a gun in her hand. May knelt next to Edgar. Edgar was lying on the floor by the table with what I saw was a minor gunshot wound to his abdomen. Tony was standing over by the bookcase trying to get some blood off his jacket with a piece of newspaper.”
Here was the corroboration Gilbert needed. Regardless of the ultimate charge against Pearl, she was the instigator, the shooter, the wacky impulsive woman who carried around a Derringer, a gun-happy Gucci Chinese whose sense of right and wrong, life and death, love and hat
e had been hopelessly marred by her tragic bond to Bing Wu. Corroboration, yes. But now it was time for reasons. If anybody had any idea about the reasons, Foster Sung would.
“We found twenty-four hundred grams of heroin in Edgar’s attic,” said Gilbert.
Sung nodded, willing to concede the point, seemingly not bothered by the personal legal risk it presented, holding up well despite the news of Tony’s death. “Pearl and Tony went up to Edgar’s apartment to recover property that didn’t belong to him.” He shook his head. “That’s beside the point.” Sung sat up straighter, lifted his chin, and took a deep breath, marshaling his thoughts, preparing himself for Gilbert’s questions.
“Tony told me Edgar pulled a gun on him,” said Gilbert. “That the reason Pearl shot Edgar was to stop Edgar from shooting Tony.” Yes, he had to try for the poor woman. Despite the blank look in her eyes. The cage door had closed on her once again that night up in Edgar’s apartment, and she’d only been trying to claw her way free. “Tony told me Edgar’s move came unexpectedly, that he was just standing there doing nothing, waiting for Pearl and Edgar to finish arguing. Do you have any idea why Edgar might want to kill Tony?” Yes, he had to build it up, really try hard to convince Sung that it was all just a matter of defense so that when Sung took the stand he might face the Hukowich and Paulsen prosecutors with some ammunition. “Why would Edgar want to kill Tony?”
Of course the reason Edgar pulled the gun was obvious: Tony came in the back door unannounced looking for twenty-four hundred grams of heroin; but if Gilbert was going to make this work in court, he was going to have to sharpen and focus Edgar’s murderous intent.
Sung looked at Gilbert speculatively. He showed no surprise. He appeared fully conversant with this particular aspect of the crime. But then Sung said, “Edgar had his reasons for killing Tony,” and in that instant yet another complication was added to what was already a complicated murder.
“He did?” said Gilbert, feeling suddenly out of his depth, as if he were a caveman trying to understand rocket science. “Why would he want to kill Tony? We do have information that suggests Tony might have shot Edgar in Vancouver last August, but that was never corroborated, and we’re beginning to discount that.”
“Tony had nothing to do with that,” said Sung. So much for Jeremy Austin’s informant, thought Gilbert. And so much for Murphy’s ballistics—a seventy-percent match was really no match at all.
“Then why did Edgar want to kill Tony?”
“In order to understand that,” Sung said, “you have to understand what Tony and Edgar are to each other.” He looked at Gilbert with appraising eyes—the man was trying to gauge the depth of Gilbert’s understanding.
Gilbert decided to give him a break. “I know what they are to each other,” he said.
Sung’s eyebrows rose. “You do?” he said, with sudden emotion, as if he were actually relieved to hear this.
“I tracked down some blood phenotypes while I was in Hong Kong,” he said. “They’re half-brothers.” He paused, looked out the window at the rain, endless rain, oppressive rain, rain all winter, and decided to open the bomb-bay doors. “You and May are Tony’s parents.”
Sung stared at Gilbert, as still as a deer in a forest, his eyes unblinking, the corners of his lips pulled down. He held this pose for several seconds, as if he had just witnessed an exceptional and perhaps paranormal demonstration of uncanny investigative skill and intuition. But then his shoulders sagged. He seemed to acknowledge Gilbert’s words with this sag of his shoulders.
“This is so, Detective Gilbert,” he said. And left it at that.
Outside, a DeHavilland commuter four-prop airplane angled down through the clouds toward the Island Airport.
“Why would Edgar pull a gun on his own brother?” asked Gilbert, wanting to get on with it.
“He had his reasons,” said Sung, now sounding defeated.
“And if May Lau is Tony Mok’s mother…she has no feeling for him. None whatsoever.”
Foster Sung looked at him as if this were a point in which they might find common ground. “You find it incomprehensible that a mother can’t love her own son?” said Sung.
“Yes.” He loved his own children so much.
“Why Edgar pulled his gun on Tony, and why May has no motherly feeling toward Tony…you can’t look at one without looking at the other. These are circumstances in a chain of circumstances that reach back a long way.”
Gilbert leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, and gazed at Sung earnestly. “I have all afternoon,” he said.
Sung’s eyes narrowed. His face flickered with grief once more. He hesitated, as if he were trying to solve a complex puzzle, going over the same convoluted string of logic again and again but always winding up at the same dead end. “It happened nearly twenty-five years ago,” he said.
His voice sounded thin, dry, as if the aperture of his throat had been squeezed. He looked overcome by everything, his eyes once again misting over with tears, his mouth opening as he took a small difficult breath, his lips stiffening into a rictus of remorse. Sung looked away.
“When we were forced to flee Vietnam,” he said, “when we were forced to leave our country…a few years after the Communists took power…I offered passage on my freighter to May Lau, her husband, and Edgar. You know this…May’s told you this.” He seemed to struggle for the proper words. “To be honest, I wished I could have left May’s husband behind. I loved May, and for that reason alone I wished I could have left Ying Lau behind. But May loved her husband, and I…I allowed him to come for her sake.”
As Foster found his voice, he seemed to regain some of his composure, was able to continue with fewer moments of introspection and grief. He shifted in his chair, settled in.
“Ying insulted me constantly while we were on the boat,” he said. He nodded at the memory. “He had a big mouth. He was a troublemaker. I never knew why May couldn’t see this. He stole food while he was on the boat.” Sung smiled at this, seemingly amazed by Ying’s gall. “He wouldn’t take any of the watches. He wouldn’t even care for the children. He was always playing cards or dice.” Sung looked at Gilbert. “Finally I thought I had to teach him a lesson. I thought I better force him to do his watches and take his fair share of the work. He was such a lazy man. So I had my men beat him. This might sound barbarous to you, detective, but in our various societies, secret or otherwise, it’s believed that some men can learn a lesson only through their hide. Ying Lau was such a man. I had my men take him to the engine room and beat him. Not only wouldn’t he do any of the work while on board, he owed me money, a lot, and he refused to pay. He was insolent. He was a fool. An oaf. He constantly dishonored me in front of May, in front of my crew, and in front of the other refugees. Dishonored me even though I’d saved his family from destitution and worse. I had many reasons for having him beaten. But the main reason was because of the way he mistreated May.” Sung shook his head. “He mistreated her badly, detective.” He shook his head as his eyes grew wistful with regret. “Unfortunately, my men…my men went too far…they kept at him until…I’m sorry to report, but they kept at him until they beat him to death. They didn’t mean to. They just went too far. We were all brutes back then. We’d just lived through a war. Human life meant little to us. We were all half crazy on that boat, frightened for our lives, hungry as could be, and thirsty, so miserably thirsty. In hindsight, it doesn’t surprise me that they killed him. No one much liked him. He wouldn’t lift a finger, even when the boat needed bailing.”
“You told me he bailed so hard he worked himself to death,” said Gilbert.
“That’s just a story May and I concocted for Edgar’s sake,” he said. “So Edgar would remember his father as a hero.” Sung’s voice had taken on a brittle tone. Yet within that tone there was also defiance. “When he died,” he continued, “when my men beat Ying Lau to death, I took May.” His eyes focused more keenly. “Do you know what I mean when I say I took her, Detective Gilbert?�
� His face reddened. “I took her.” He looked away. “I felt it was my due.” He paused, leaned back in his chair. Gilbert waited. In a more reflective tone Sung said, “Way back when, I bought her gifts.” He said this as if he thought it might mitigate the enormity of his admission. A melancholy grin came to his face. “Long before she knew Ying, I came to her with jewelry and flowers. I wanted her to love me. I wanted her to marry me. But she wouldn’t. Or she couldn’t. I was in a position to help her family. I was kind to her. But she refused me. I didn’t understand.”
Gilbert contemplated Sung. He again thought of the parallel between Sung and Bing Wu. Two men driven by women who didn’t love them. Could there be anything more tragic? Unrequited love could at times be a dangerous force.
“The wrong sort of men always get power into their hands, Detective Gilbert,” he said. “When she married Ying, I used my power. Power was the lesson of the day. I used indebtedness as a tool of bondage against May.” Another parallel, thought Gilbert. “And when they had Edgar, when they had a son to look after, that just strengthened my resolve. I made them think they needed me. I made May think she needed me. And she did. Ying was bad with money.” Sung shook his head. “I made loans to Ying. He welshed on every one of them. He was a gambler, spent everything at the gaming tables. I gave grocery money to May. At times she was grateful. At times she refused my generosity. But I persisted. I helped her with Edgar any way I could. I made her see that I could provide for her. I made her see that her husband was undependable, and that if she would only reconsider, she would have a much better life, or at least a much more comfortable life with me.”
Sung was silent for several seconds.
“Well…” he said, casting about for more details. “Living conditions finally got so bad near the end of the war that even I found myself in dire financial straits. I did what I could for May, but we had a lot of shortages.” Sung took off his glasses. Murder, war, mistrust, love, and hatred played behind his eyes in a dim kaleidoscope of emotion. “I had to go to great lengths to secure even the barest necessities for May, Edgar, and Ying. I risked my life several times for them.” He covered his mouth with his hand, rubbed his lips with his fingers, and looked out the window at the overcast day. “May thanked me.” He put his glasses back on. “But Ying took everything for granted, even during those hard times. You think he would show some respect for me. But he insulted me repeatedly. He took May for granted too. He knew how I felt about his wife and he thought I was a fool. He didn’t even thank me when I offered them a spot on my boat.” Sung leaned forward and looked at Gilbert more closely. “I wanted her so badly, detective. I needed her. So when Ying died, I took her. War can burn the conscience right out of a man. I wanted her and I was going to have her. I had my men bring her to my cabin. The ship was sinking. I was convinced none of us were going to get off that boat before it went down. What difference did it make if I finally got what I wanted? I’d fed her, I’d cared for her, I’d cared for her son, I’d even cared for her wretched husband. Now it was time to take my due.”