The Golden Mountain Murders

by David Rotenberg

  The silent partner thought about ingratitude of Canadians, then about disease and sickness, and then looked at the “partners” – the family’s historical partners – the bringers of contagion whose coils were wrapping tighter and tighter, bringing the British Columbian deeper and deeper into the silence.

  The silent partner glanced out the window towards the mountains – the purity. Between where they stood now in this tastefully furnished flat and the mountains was clear evidence of the ingratitude of this land’s newcomers. The detritus of those who came to Canada for only one reason: to take her money, then return “home” with their booty. The silent partner was always furious upon returning from speaking in San Francisco or New Orleans or Chicago. The magnificence of the architecture of those cities was the direct result of the beneficence of those who left buildings behind in gratitude to a land that had given them refuge, honoured them and made them wealthy. But not here. True, Vancouver was not as atrocious as Toronto – the physically ugliest big city in the entire Western World as far as the British Columbian was concerned. None of the whores there – the wops, the Caribbean Negroes and the kikes – left any sign of their gratitude to the place that had allowed them in and made them welcome . . . and made them rich.

  Things really began to go to hell in this country in the late 1960s with the advent of multiculturalism. Multiculturalism, hell! Non-gratitudism, non-nationhoodism would be more accurate terms. Come on in, we’ll hold the country still, spread her legs, while you assault her! Nah, pay no attention to the people who made this country from the heathen rock, ignore their values, blaspheme their churches, degrade their language – mock their ways – and we are to roll over and agree? We never did in the past, we do not now.

  Let them freeze in the dark!

  Oh for the days when you wanted to buy something you got your fat little fanny down to Eatons or Woodwards. Our stores, not theirs. Then in the early 1970s discount stores from the East tried to what they called “open up” Vancouver – to upset our world. Funny how their trucks kept slipping off the roads in the mountain passes. Funny about that. One’s an accident, two’s suspicious . . . nine and they got the message – NOT WANTED OUT HERE IN GOD’S COUNTRY!

  Going back a little further in the family history, there was the ill-fated raid on Japtown that ended with six white men hanged from the lampposts in that ill-begotten part of Vancouver. Then when the Supreme Court of the land couldn’t figure out who to punish – so they punished no one – our anger went into dormancy. But it did not die. Our anger never dies. Eventually the war came and our revenge fell upon them. Not a stick of furniture, a garden, a home or a farm was left in the hands of the Asians. We shipped their sorry asses to southern Alberta to live out the war in the harshest climate in the country – without so much as a twig of firewood to heat their badly built sheds. Welcome to Canada, fellas!

  Purity has a price and part of that price was sitting in the room with these slant-eyed monkeys. They were talking again – they were always talking. True, they were better dressed now but they were still monkeys freshly down from the rutting trees. The Chinese men spoke quickly to each other in Mandarin. The silent partner wanted to smile but didn’t – all these years and they still didn’t get it that the British Columbian spoke their doggerel tongues. All of them – Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka – even the highly idiomatic Shanghanese. The silent partner listened a little further. So they wondered aloud if the complexity of the situation was understood by the stupid Round Eye – if their Long Nose partner had gone senile since their last meeting. The British Columbian allowed their Mandarin slanders for a few more highly insulting moments then said, “So the shipment is totally spoiled?”

  That swung Chiang’s head, breathing tube and all, in the silent partner’s direction, “Totally spoiled.”

  “That was two months’ collection?” the silent partner asked, knowing full well it was a lot closer to four months of collection.

  “Actually three months,” Old Chiang replied, knowing as well that they were talking about four months of work down the proverbial drain.

  “Do we have a figure?” the British Columbian asked.

  The granddaughter handed over a spreadsheet. The British Columbian touched her pretty hand. Very nice. Then he handed it to the handsome young cop whose unbelievably light blue eyes turned dark with anger. The British Columbian said, “Easy, Son. Are you still tracking the car?”

  “The bug works just fine,” Blue Eyes answered.

  The British Columbian took the spreadsheet and handed it back to the head of the Chiang family. “The loss is yours. Your error – your responsibility. I’ll expect prompt reimbursement of my investment. Surely you insured the shipment?”

  The youngest Chiang spat on the floor – old habits die hard. “No insurer would touch this shipment,” he barked.

  The British Columbian thought about that. There was technically nothing illegal about their business dealings. However the deal, like so many before it with the Chiangs, was unsavoury. Thus, insurance companies, ever wary of their public image, wouldn’t consider being caught making money off the transfer of blood from Asia to North America.

  The railway business was not so different from the blood business. Totally legal – significantly unsavoury. The country is desperate for blood products but doesn’t want to know where or how the blood is attained. Just as long as the blood is safe – who cares how it gets into our hospitals. It was the same in great-grandfather’s time with the railways. The country wanted a transcontinental railway built within a specific period of time for a specific amount of money. So what if the Chinese labourers were lied to when they agreed to come to the Golden Mountain. So what if every dangerous job was given to the Chinese. So what if Chinese men made less than twenty percent of the wage that white men doing the same or less arduous jobs made. So what if thousands of Chinese men lost their lives building the railway. So what if once the railway was completed (the greatest act of industrial conspiracy in Canadian history that guaranteed a fine income for the families behind all this) we kicked the Chinese out on their skinny asses, then charged them a fortune in head tax to get back into the country they helped build. And even then we did everything we could to keep their women out. No Chinese breeding here! So what!

  The British Columbian thought about the connection between blood and purity – the longevity of that connective – the essential nature of it. The Nazis went too far, but the whole world knew what was happening over there and no one raised a finger until the Germans threatened the real power structures of the West, England and the United States of America. Until then the world was content to allow the prerogatives of purity to play themselves out. Even after the war ended, when Canadians were asked which nationalities they didn’t want in their country, the order of the unwanted was Japanese, Jews, then Germans (Chinese were already blocked entry by the Exclusion Act). The nation had just fought a war against the Germans but preferred them to Jews. The prerogatives of purity were still in play. It always made the British Columbian laugh when hearing Ontario liberals twist themselves into logic pretzels in their effort to support the purlaine racist policies of Quebec – asymmetric federalism, my fanny!

  They were talking again. More Mandarin mumble-mouth. Finally, the silent partner painfully rose. The gabble stopped. “The guild assassin is in place.”

  The eldest Chiang’s mouth flopped open. The granddaughter’s shock was deeply gratifying.

  “My family has dealt with problems in China for many generations. We have many sources of power there. Now, there are two things that need doing post-haste. One, you need to reimburse me for my losses due to your negligence and two, it is time to put an end to this Shanghai investigator’s investigation. We could sic the Vancouver police on him,” the silent partner pointed towards son Doug, “but that could get unnecessarily complicated. The guild assassin is in place – I’ll activate him.” The British Columbian turned towards the mountains, “After all, what’s o
ne more dead Chinaman to the city of Vancouver?”

  The British Columbian smiled then added, “It’s time for you people to go.”

  As they left, the silent partner thought about Shakespeare and Dryden and Pope and Longfellow – and the beauty of an Anglican boys’ choir. They were the beauty of this life. They were us. Not them. Ours. Not theirs. Unique, special, unmatched in any other culture, unparalleled – a sacred trust to be protected at all cost.

  It took Matthew very little time on his cell phone to determine that the third assistant director on the shoot was a member of the community, and very little time after that to get someone he knew who knew the man and contact him.

  Shortly, a chubby man came out the front door with a clipboard in his hand, an earpiece plugged into his left ear and a quizzical look on his face. “Are you Matthew?”

  “Was your shoot always planned for this location?” Fong demanded.

  “Yeah.”

  Fong believed in coincidence, but not like this.

  Then the man added, “It was always planned for here but next week, Thursday night. Suddenly out of nowhere we get a call to haul ass over here. It’s crazy, but this is a crazy business.”

  “Better,” Fong said. “They’re scurrying to cover their tracks.”

  “Better than what?” Matthew asked.

  “Nothing,” he said, then turned to the third AD. “Can you get me into the building with you?”

  Matthew whispered something into the third AD’s ear and the man said, “Yeah, but just for a peek okay. The male stars are really touchy on this show. They’ve begun to think they really are superheroes or something. They hate looki-loos.”

  Across the street, the guild assassin watched Fong talk to the plump man then go into the building. He sat back and opened his second Nanaimo bar of the day. The chocolate-covered chocolate squares were as close to perfect as the old assassin had ever experienced. Sugar’s version of nirvana. He thought about buying a third bar then decided he would wait until it got dark to treat himself again. He checked his cell phone. Still no call. But it had to be soon.

  His revenge could not wait forever.

  Fong entered the lobby of the building behind the third AD and then slid to one side beside a “WATCHDOG PROTECTS THIS BUILDING” sign. He wanted to see the elevator banks. To see the numbers as they descended. All four elevators were at lobby level. He noted that there were over forty floors and from the size of the lobby probably many offices on each floor – way too many possibilities.

  A striking blonde woman, dressed in an army fatigue costume, passed by him. She carried a small baby and cooed, “Olivia,” to her. She noticed him and smiled. He smiled back. An actress, he thought.

  There were a series of commands shouted from various assistant directors, and many walkie talkies responded. Lights were thrown on the walls and massive black draperies were dropped over the windows. Naturally Fong thought, they were supposed to shoot next week, at night, now they have to shoot in the daytime so they have to modify the light. Fu Tsong’s phrase “day for night” came to him.

  He looked back at the elevator banks. The far one was rising from the ground floor. The others were all still. A camera crane moved between him and the bank of elevators. He took a step forward to see past the crane and a hand landed on his shoulder.

  Fong spun and couldn’t believe his eyes. “So there you are, Zhong Fong,” said his young welldressed Beijing minder whom he thought he had lost in Calgary. “I didn’t know you were a fan of this show.”

  ”What show?” Fong said.

  “Star Gate. Very big hit at home, Zhong Fong. Very big. I couldn’t miss the opportunity of getting to watch them film an episode. Very exciting.”

  Fong tried to step past the man but the Beijing man stood in his way. “You’re not going to disappear again are you, Inspector Zhong?”

  Fong couldn’t see the bank of elevators because of the crane. Finally he said, “I hope you enjoy yourself,” and shoved his way clear of the man. He stepped past two technicians and turned quickly to see the elevators. The elevator was already descending past the twenty-seventh floor.

  “Damn!” he said aloud.

  “Quiet,” three people yelled at him.

  Then the elevator opened and he had his first look at an ancient evil and the beautiful young dowager. The Chiangs stood for a moment in the light of the opened elevator as if they were the stars of the event – which as far as Fong was concerned, they were.

  Later that night Fong faced a serious truth. He had no way of knowing which of the floors above the twenty-seventh floor, let alone which of the offices on those floors, the Chiangs had gone to. Despite that, he jotted down a note to get an exact list of the occupants of all the offices above the twenty-seventh floor of the building. He remembered the three columns of cards on his desktop back in Shanghai. The first column led from the lawyer to THE MONEY. That had failed. And now his second column through the Chiangs to THE MONEY had also failed. He had no more tools to force the Chiangs to contact the silent partner again.

  He mentally moved to the third column of cards he’d left on his desk back in his office on the Bund – the column headed by the card with the large question mark.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A GUILD ASSASSIN

  The guild assassin watched the shadows move in the dirty windows of the warehouse. He was about to reenter and resume his watch from above when an elderly stooped Chinese man walked past him and instinctively averted his eyes.

  The assassin stopped and rage filled him. He hadn’t even noticed the man’s approach. He felt the surge of his blood as it circled the eye marks on the hood of the cobra on his back. A mistake! He had to be careful. There should have been no way that an old man could have gotten that close to him. Then his cell phone purred in his pocket and he felt the hood flare – open – ready.

  The fading light slitted through the filthy windows of the deserted warehouse. Fong wondered, not for the first time, why Tong guys liked meeting in storage rooms like this. In Shanghai this place would have been across the Su Zu Creek north of the city, the reek from the creek’s junks pungent in the air. Here in Vancouver they were in a dock area far up the estuary past Deep Cove. The Tong guards were not obvious, but Fong knew they would not be far away.

  Fong stood beside Robert. Matthew and the head waiter of the restaurant stood to one side. The Dalong Fada guys stood near a pyramid of rusting barrels in a corner. The Tong leader, followed by six of his men in a tight phalanx, entered the room as if he were entering the Forbidden City at the head of a conquering army.

  “We called in a lot of favours, Inspector Zhong, to get you this far.” The Tong leader’s voice was tinged with warning, like a poufy white dog giving notice that he’d had enough of whatever it was he didn’t want repeated. “You owe us an explanation, Inspector Zhong – so explain.”

  Fong was careful to hide his distaste for the man. “Okay,” Fong said. “I set events in motion in China, then followed the Chiangs’ reaction, hoping they’d lead us to their silent partner. All we learned was that they met with someone in the EA Building in an office above the twenty-seventh floor.”

  “Not terribly useful information, Inspector,” the Tong Leader said.

  “I agree. As well, I tracked down the lawyer who handled the Shanghai blood company’s business in Vancouver, but that proved to be a dead end too. The lawyer has been working in a legally structured blind where he never meets or even knows the name of the silent partner. He has no record of the silent partner’s name. All contacts are made through Internet sites. All payments are made through account transfers in offshore bank accounts.”

  “So you have no idea whose money is behind all this. You have found nothing!”

  Fong again reminded himself that although he really didn’t care for the man’s approach he could not afford to lose the Tong leader as an ally if he was going to get anywhere with this. “I’m sure that the lawyer is not the man, nor is anyon
e else in his firm, nor does he know who the money is behind the Chiang’s blood-collecting operations in Anhui Province.”

  “The Chiangs have enough money to fund such an operation themselves,” the Dalong Fada guy suggested.

  “No doubt, but the Chiangs’ history suggests that they never spend their own money on anything. They provide muscle, contacts and expertise – but not money.”

  The Tong leader looked to the smallish bespectacled man in his entourage. The man nodded his head. “And you think this lawyer is telling the truth?”

  “I know that he doesn’t know who the silent partner is.”

  “And you know this exactly how?” the Tong leader demanded.

  Robert coughed. Fong thought Robert was warning him not to reveal Charles Roeg; then the man’s cough increased, sending wracking spasms through his body. Robert threw his hands over his mouth.

  Flecks of blood seeped through his fingers.

  “Are you all right?” Fong whispered.

  Robert nodded but kept his hands tight to his lips.

  Matthew turned away, stared out a window and thought of his grandfather. Finally he said, “So what do we do next?”

  “Perhaps we walk away from this,” said the Dalong Fada guy. “There are other battles to fight.” He slid off the barrel and straightened his sweater.

  “Where’s the rag man?” Fong asked.

  “Who?”

  “The rag man. The guy who warned me on Pender Street. He’s one of yours, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” said Matthew.

  “So where is he?” Fong demanded.

  “Why?”

  “Where is he?” Then Fong surprised them all. He raised his voice and ordered, “Find him! Now!”

  * * *