The Fourth Betrayal

by Bruce Burrows

  I knew this was probably not good, but Oshie was nothing but happy to see them. When we were all seated at the table, gripping fresh cups of coffee, Louise came straight to the point. “We have to talk about security. I’ve been advised that last night there were a couple of probes.”

  Oshie looked puzzled. “Probes? What kind of probes?”

  Louise placed her hand on top of Oshie’s. “There were two attempts to get close to the house. They didn’t seem to be serious attempts—more like they were just testing the defenses. The first came at 0130. Our patrol car stopped a new Toyota Camry a block away on River Road. Two male occupants, both known to us as members of the DTK Crew. Said they were out for a drive. The second was at 0400. We had surveillance on a vehicle in connection with another case. It drove out here, circled the block and then drove away. If it had stopped, our guys would have acted, but as it was they didn’t have to blow the op.”

  My curiosity was piqued. “Louise, I’ve never heard of the DTK Crew. They new?”

  “They showed up on our radar three years ago. DTK is the first half of a graffiti tag common in the Watts ghetto in the ’70s. It stands for ‘down to kill.’ The second half of the tag was LAMF—‘like a mother fucker.’ It’s interesting how cultural phenomena spread and mutate. Great PhD thesis for some bright young thing.”

  Danny leaned forward and took Oshie’s other hand. “Osh, Ollie doesn’t want to worry you, but all of us think you should take the kids up to Sointula for a while.”

  Oshie’s face brightened. “But that would be great. I know Ollie’s parents would love to see the kids, and I would love to get out of this Steveston rat race for a while. I’ll go to the school this afternoon and get enough homework for two weeks, and we can leave tomorrow. This will be so much fun.”

  Danny looked at me as if to say, “See?” and I looked back as if to say, “That’s my girl.”

  Louise kept us focused on business. “Presumably they can fly up tomorrow. Ollie, can you arrange for someone to meet them in Port Hardy?”

  “I can arrange for half of Sointula to meet them. And once they’re on Malcolm Island, it’ll be like being on an aircraft carrier; no unauthorized personnel will have access.”

  Louise spread three photos on the table, all of the same stocky, mustachioed Asian gentleman. “This is Sun Li ‘Sonny’ Feng. Oshie, you take one photo with you and post it on the Co-op wall. Ollie, you can have one, and give one to the Barely Brothers. Now we all know who to watch out for.”

  The next day I drove my family to the South Terminal and off they went in a twin-engine aluminum tube. When I got back to the house, Danny was making lunch for the brothers. “Gentlemen,” I said, “if the bad guys want access to this house, I don’t see why we should stand in their way. Danny, why don’t you ask Louise to pull the patrols for tonight?”

  “I can get her to pull them back a ways, and be ready to respond to an alarm.”

  And so the trap was set. None of us had handguns, but we all had deer rifles. Louise supplied us with three wireless alarms, just in case things got out of control. I put one in my pocket, Danny had one, and Wall to Wall had the other. We just puttered around for the rest of the day, knowing that if there was a strike, it wouldn’t come until after dark.

  At nine that night we took up our positions. I was in the living room to watch the front door, Danny was in the kitchen, watching the back door, and Wall to Wall was in the basement, which had a door opening into the garage. Half a Day Ray was across the street in our neighbor’s garage, where he could see the whole front of the house. One-Eyed Wayne was in the woodshed in the backyard. We all had handheld programmable scrambled VHF radios, better than anything the cops had. We would be able to communicate without worrying about our messages being intercepted by bad guys. The house was in darkness, but a half-moon shone in the clear night sky, so there was reasonable visibility outside.

  At two a black SUV cruised by the front of the house. Half a Day Ray saw it too. Five minutes later it went by again. Nothing happened for twenty minutes. Then a dark sedan cruised slowly by with its lights off and parked two houses down. I pressed the Send button on my VHF. “Game on.”

  I tried to control my nerves with deep breathing, but it started to make me dizzy. Five minutes crept by like the entire first ice age. It became absolutely imperative for me to move, but I was afraid my knees would crack and give us away. When I heard Wall to Wall yell, my heart almost stopped. “Freeze, assholes!”

  Rifle in one hand and flashlight in the other, I ran down the stairs but stopped at the bottom of the stairwell. Cautiously, I poked my head out of the stairwell and looked in the direction of the door to the garage. I couldn’t see a thing. “Wally, where are you?”

  “Right here. There’s two guys in front of me and to my left.”

  I pointed my flashlight in that direction and turned it on. I saw two black-clad figures in half crouches. They each held a handgun. I switched the flashlight off just as Danny came down the stairs and passed behind me and out into the basement. Five seconds later his voice came from the other side of the basement. “We’ve got you covered on three sides now. Drop your weapons.” I turned on the flashlight again. The two thugs, blinded and surrounded, had no choice but to drop their guns. I felt along the wall for the light switch and turned it on.

  Wall to Wall came up on the two thugs from behind, gave each an authoritative tap with the barrel of his rifle and yelled, “On the floor, assholes.” When they were lying on their bellies with Wall to Wall and Danny standing over them, rifles aimed, I put my rifle down and went up to the two and searched them. They both had additional pistols in ankle holsters and serious-looking knives in belt sheaths.

  I told them to roll over, and when they did I recognized one of them as Sonny Feng. The other was a white guy with a shaved head and tattoos gone wild. His nose looked swollen and bruised. Neither of them carried wallets, so I asked the white guy his name. He didn’t answer. Wall to Wall came up to the guy, poked the barrel of his gun into the guy’s eye and leaned on it. The guy screamed in a high-pitched voice, “Novi, Novi Beravitch.”

  “Novi,” I said. “I hope that’s your real name.” Wall to Wall leaned a little on his rifle, and Novi screeched his affirmation. “Good. Well, listen, Novi, we need a few answers. Have you ever heard of Gerry Steadman or Phil Trimmer?” He shook his head. “Cliff Ernhardt? Tap Dickens?” He shook his head. I decided to test Sonny Feng. “Okay, you. What’s your name?” Feng answered in a burst of what I took to be Mandarin or Cantonese. Back to Novi Beravitch. “Novi, why did you guys sneak into my house tonight?”

  “Robbing. We’re just trying to make a living.” He spoke for the first time in his normal voice, and I felt a shudder of recognition. It was the voice I’d heard on Phil Trimmer’s cell phone the night he’d been killed, the voice that had threatened to kill me and my family.

  I gave way to a sudden burst of anger. “You’re pretty heavily armed for a couple of B and E guys, don’t you think?” I kicked him gently in the ribs. He gasped. Okay, it wasn’t that gentle of a kick. “I think you and your fellow thug came here to kill me and my family.” I kicked him again and he groaned.

  “No, no. Robbing. Thieving. That’s all we was up to.”

  He was almost crying and snot was coming out of his nose. It’s disgusting what passes for tough guys these days. I ripped a piece of paper towel from the roll on the wall and tossed it to him. “Blow your nose.” He honked mightily and threw the crumpled paper towel against the wall.

  Half a Day Ray and One-Eyed Wayne had joined the scene. We all looked at each other, and I shrugged. “I don’t think we’re going to get anything out of these assholes.” At least while they’re together, I thought.

  Danny pulled out his cell and called Louise. “We’ve got two guys here. They snuck in and they were both heavily armed. Why don’t you send the waste-disposal unit?”

  When the thugs had been taken away, we all carefully unloaded our rifles, a
nd I locked them in a closet. I went to a cupboard by the washer and took a plastic baggie from a box. I walked over to the paper towel Novi had discarded and gingerly picked it up.

  “You all saw where this came from?” They all nodded, and I placed the paper towel in the baggie and then got everyone to sign it. “This may be important DNA evidence.” Then we went upstairs, where I distributed beers and Wall to Wall told his story.

  “I was standing against the wall, beside the door to the garage. I heard the door handle turn and the door squeaked just a little when they opened it. There was just enough light from outside that I could make out two guys, even though they were darkly dressed. If I’d let them get too far into the basement, I would have lost them, so I yelled. The rest of you responded like a well-oiled machine.” He raised his beer bottle. “May we always be well-oiled.”

  We all raised our bottles. “Well-oiled!” And two hours later, we were.

  It was almost noon when I got up. Danny was still asleep on the couch. I phoned Louise. “I’ve got your husband, and if you don’t follow my instructions to the letter, I’ll send him home.”

  “You fiend. What do you want?”

  “Information on those two thugs we gave you last night.”

  She laughed. “That wasn’t a gift. More of an off-loading. Anyway, you know about Sonny Feng. The other guy, Novi, is another member of the DTK Crew, with an even longer rap sheet than Feng. Several assaults, assault with a deadly weapon, possession with intent, etc., etc. So what we’ve hung on them so far is B and E and possession of restricted weapons. With their rap sheets, we should be able to hold them until the trial. Also, we sent Beravitch’s prints back east to Stala. And we’re going over their vehicle with a fine-tooth comb.”

  “Louise, you’ve got to hold on to those guys. I’m positive we can tie them to the murder of Phil Trimmer. I recognized Novi’s voice. He’s the guy who phoned on Phil’s cell and threatened me and the family. Also, he might have left blood at the Trimmer murder scene, and I collected a DNA sample last night. I’ll give it to Danny to give to you.”

  Louise sounded impressed. “Sounds like you’re starting to get somewhere. One way or another, I’ll hang on to those two until Stala says yay or nay. Any chance of speaking to my husband?”

  I shook Danny awake, handed him the phone and went to make coffee. As I ground some fresh beans, I analyzed the state of play. The bad guys had killed two people, one of whom was my best friend. The bad guys had threatened me and my family. The bad guys had attempted to follow through on their threat to me and my family. The bad guys were making me very angry.

  My anger was a physical sensation. It churned my stomach and tensed my neck muscles and jutted my jaw. It was not a pleasant feeling, and it pretty much limited my thinking to fantasies of hurting someone—anyone. It was several moments before I could suppress the anger enough to think properly.

  An old sports cliché popped into my brain: the best defense is a good offense. Maybe, I thought, it was time to transition from defense to offense. How could I do that? What plowshares did I have that could be beaten into swords? Well, I had some pretty hard-nosed friends, and . . . I had a lot of money.

  Danny wandered into the kitchen a couple of minutes later and helped me wait for the coffee to perk. He yawned and said Louise was impressed with our efforts. What, he wondered, would be our next move?

  I poured us both a cup of coffee. “Danny,” I said, “I’m tired of letting these guys threaten us, and us just sitting around waiting for them to come after us. I want to take the fight to them. I want to kick the shit out of them on their own turf.”

  Danny considered this. “You mean, go to Ottawa to do battle?”

  “Not yet. I think right now the target is Tap Dickens. I think he’s the one who sent those thugs after us. He and the mysterious Mr. Chen, who’s on the board of Dickens’s pipeline company. They need to realize that they can’t come after my family without paying a price.”

  “So you want to go and fight a war in Alberta. You’ll need an army for that.”

  “What’s the use of having almost a million dollars if you can’t buy an army?”

  Danny looked intrigued. “You could definitely pull a few guys together with that kind of money. So what’s the target?”

  “Dickens’s business. Shut down his pipelines. We could cost him millions of dollars. And with that sort of leverage, we might be able to get him to give us Cliff Ernhardt.”

  “Jesus, Ollie. No one can accuse you of thinking small. How many guys you figure we’ll need?”

  “Fifty, sixty guys. No bikers or psycho killers. Just good West-Coast ruffians who don’t mind getting their knuckles bruised. Pay them two hundred a day, including jail time, if any. Plus expenses. I’ve got nothing else to spend my money on. Nothing this important, anyway. Danny, we could put together a force to be reckoned with.”

  The Barely Brothers walked into the kitchen. Wall to Wall spoke up. “I heard that. Where, when, and who? This could be more fun than a full line-brawl. And there’s no referees.”

  I said, “Wally, one of the bad guys in this whole mess is an Alberta oil guy named Tap Dickens. I want to hurt him by cutting off his revenue stream, which happens to be pipelines. And if we hurt him bad enough, well, it’ll make me feel better for one thing, and maybe he’ll give us something to make us stop the hurting.”

  He feigned thoughtfulness. “But Ollie, is that fair? After all the time and effort and ingenuity our Alberta cousins have spent putting all that oil into the ground, what right do we have to deny them the right to do what they want with it? And I’m sure they must be responsible for putting it into the ground. Otherwise, why would they be so proud of themselves?”

  His query was met with a contemplative silence.

  And so we began to assemble the troops. Calls went out to Port Simpson, Kitwanga and Kitwancool, Prince Rupert, Masset and Queen Charlotte City, Bella Bella, Bella Coola, Klemtu, Hartley Bay, Rivers Inlet, Port Hardy, Port Alberni, Sointula, Alert Bay, Campbell River, French Creek, Ucluelet, Musqueam, and all the little communities hidden along the Fraser River.

  We got crazy Doug Kumara from Ucluelet, the Waddell brothers from Alert Bay, several brooding Yugoslavs from Vancouver, an assortment of beards from Queen Charlotte City, enough Sointula Finns to conquer Russia (five or six—one of them was a carpenter, and I’m not sure if he said “finish” or “Finnish”). There were First Nations guys from Port Simpson to Capilano, and a couple of rugby players that One-Eyed Wayne had gone to high school with. They were mostly fishermen—all gear types, from nets to hooks to traps—a few hand loggers, shake bolt cutters, salal pickers, and a mixed bag of off-the-grid malcontents. A truly sterling crew.

  I decided to house them at the Richmond Inn because it gave me a group rate of only seventy-five dollars a night. I figured two guys to a room, four nights max, would run me about nine grand. Airfare, maybe thirty-five. Wages for sixty guys for, at most, a week would run about eighty-four thousand. Grub: two thousand. Oh yeah, I forgot alcohol: four, better make that six thousand. The pleasure of kicking the crap out of a bunch of Alberta oilmen? Priceless! And the best thing was, at those rates I could afford to run nine, maybe ten, campaigns.

  So one afternoon I was standing in the lobby, directing incoming troops to their rooms and already registered troops to the bar, when I was snuck up upon by my favorite Port Hardyite, Johnny Hanuse. He approached me in a low, deliberate stalk (his mother’s lineage had gained him entrance to the Cougar Clan), and I countered with exaggerated shooing motions (my matrilineal lineage had bequeathed to me the I’m-too-busy-for-this response). He laughed and introduced me to a slender young man who looked just old enough to have gained a skull in the old days and was slightly disappointed that times had changed.

  “Ollie, you half-breed Findian, this is my nephew Simon. I wanted him to meet you because he thinks all white guys are really smart.” He laughed and gave me a dancing hug. “You asshole, my mother still
thinks it was your fault we got thrown in jail for clear-cutting the telephone poles on Halloween night. I will remember to my dying day Dougie Tarkenen with his climbing spurs on, up there cutting the wires so those stupid white-man poles would hit the dirt. Where is that stupid, lovely son of a bitch?”

  “He’s dead, Johnny. He was working in Ottawa and someone killed him. This whole deal we’re doing now? It’s all about nailing whoever killed Dougie.”

  Johnny threw his head back and cursed in a manner that could be characterized as really serious cursing. “You hear that, Simon? Good people never live long enough.”

  Simon shook my hand and offered condolences about Dougie, but I could sense his excitement. He was fresh-faced and guileless, maybe twenty at the most, but he carried himself with a confidence that stopped just short of cockiness. “Jeez,” I said. “I don’t want to be contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

  “You don’t have to contribute,” he said. “I’m self-sufficient in the delinquency department.”

  I laughed as I thought to myself, This kid’s all right. Johnny must really trust him or he wouldn’t have brought him.

  My cell phone rang and Johnny and Simon wandered off, yelling greetings to all the people they knew. Coastal BC is actually a pretty small community.

  It was Louise on the phone. “The car the two thugs drove to your place was owned indirectly by Sonny Feng, through a holding company. When we searched it we found, hidden in the door panel, a bag of gray powder. We’ve run a few tests. It’s not any drug we recognize. Any ideas?”