The Snakeheads

by Mary Moylum

  He could still feel the pain of it. She had lied to him from the very beginning. Less than four months after their Malta trip, he called her at home because he wanted to hear the sound of her voice before getting on a plane to Turkey to investigate a phony passport ring. It had been a hell of a shock to find himself talking to her husband.

  She had lied to him once. What would stop her from lying to him a second time? Nothing, he answered himself. He didn’t know what the hell she was involved in but Dubois was right — not only had she lied, she had also taken privileged information on a case he had told her about in bed and used it against him and his department. There had been hell to pay on that one. The director general had given him one hell of a tongue-lashing.

  No, he had to confront her when her defences were down. The truth was, he still cared about her. But being her second-string man was definitely out of the question.

  After a walk around several blocks, he went back to work. Yes, he wanted to see her again. But it had to be on his terms.

  BJ hated surveillance work and Harry was driving him crazy, wanting him to do more of it.

  Harry wailed, “Why did the broad have to show up at Crosby’s place, right then?”

  “She looked right at us,” said BJ.

  “That doesn’t mean she can ID us in a line-up.”

  “If we’re not sure, we whack the broad,” said BJ. “She coulda seen the van. Maybe it’s just damn fate for her to die too.”

  “We can’t go about whacking people left and right.”

  “You want to go back to the Pen?” asked BJ, cleaning his fingernails with an X-acto knife.

  “BJ, we don’t want to go back to prison. On the other hand, we just can’t go about killing people. First, we got to figure out who she is. That way, we can watch her. Then we got to run into her again, see if she remembers us.”

  “How do we find out who she is?”

  “Easy. We knew where he worked. We watch the workplace again. See if she works there.”

  “She coulda been the girlfriend.”

  “Nah, she was in a suit. Girlfriends don’t go on dates in business suits, BJ.”

  “Whatever you say, Harry. When we catch up to her again, I say we whack her. Take care of the problem then and there.”

  “Only if she can ID us.”

  BJ continued cleaning his fingernails. He didn’t want to argue with Harry but he thought his friend was chickening out on him. Any moron knew not to leave witnesses alive at the crime scene. The killing of a judge was a big-time offence. “You whacked one. What the hell is two?” said BJ, inspecting his nails. He had no problem with icing the broad. One thing for sure, no damn way he was going to spend another day in the Kingston Pen. The leg irons and handcuffs were still fresh in his mind.

  Yeah, no damn way he was going back there.

  chapter ten

  “Boss, I think you better stay indoors today.” It was Rocco was on the phone.

  “What?” mumbled Nick. His brain was in another dimension.

  “How bad can it be?” He pried his eyes open. Outside the bedroom window, the sky was sullen, gunmetal grey. His clock read 5:59 a.m.

  “Turn to CHKU 99 to get the full flavour. The shit is worse than we expected. The feminists and multicultural groups and civil rights activists are all yelling. They say we had no right to put those girls in lockup last night. Plus, one of the girls is on the loose. She escaped our officers during the raid. Afraid she got away. We got an immigration warrant out for her arrest as we speak. Cops are doing their best to find her.”

  Nick told Rocco he’d be in touch soon, and hung up. He turned the dial on his bedside radio one twist to the left. He was fully awake now. A female voice blared, “… the girls are themselves victims. It’s not fair to charge them with prostitution and move to deport the victims when the owner of this club, who’s nothing more than a pimp, is running around scot-free.” The announcer came on, identifying the angry speaker as the spokesperson of a women’s shelter.

  More and more callers commented on the issue. At least half the country was against him. Several minutes later, his phone rang again. It was the concierge downstairs warning him that a mob of people and reporters were lying in wait for him on the street, outside his condominium building. The thought of being a prisoner in his apartment held no appeal. He would die of cabin fever.

  He called the concierge back. “How about letting me use the service elevator and exit?”

  “I’m not supposed to. Well, okay, just this once.”

  Several minutes later he reached the subway, lungs aching. He caught his breath as he waited for the westbound train and assessed his situation. How the hell was he supposed to know that putting fifty girls in lockup was an unspeakable offence against political correctness? He was just doing his job.

  Every move he made toward catching Walter Martin’s killer seemed to be taking him farther away from his goal, not closer to it. Every witness he’d tried to secure had been killed or ran away, and now this eruption. He’d have to spend valuable time and energy putting out more brushfires on the secondary issues.

  After two stops, he got off and briskly walked towards his refuge at Odansky’s diner, his favourite breakfast joint. Who would think of looking for him in a mom-and-pop greasy spoon?

  Albert Odansky waved to him from the kitchen, peering out through the window that allowed him to survey his customers.

  Nick waved back, making a beeline for his customary cubicle.

  “Morning, Olga. I’ll have the usual.”

  The usual meant two eggs sunny side up, two fat sausages and whole wheat toast. Olga poured him a cup of coffee in a chipped stoneware mug.

  The whole city had become one big temple for those with money. The Caffé Galleria down the street was done in funky colours and expensive stone floors, and the coffee came in Italian glass and cost four dollars. He’d only been to there once, when it had first opened. No, he preferred the greasy spoon. There was something comforting about a place that hadn’t changed since it opened its doors in 1964. The Formica-topped tables, plastic booths, swivel stools at the counter and the green linoleum floor were as he had remembered them from his student days at St. Mike’s. In those days, $1.05 for breakfast was all he could afford. Now the best high-cholesterol meal in town was still cheap at $2.50.

  Like his parents, the Odanskys had fled the Communists for Canada. They had escaped the Ukraine in the middle of the night and had found asylum in Saskatchewan. When they had first arrived in the country, they had found work as farmhands. After moving to Toronto, and more years of saving and scrimping, they had finally bought the modest diner on College Street. He smiled as he lifted his empty coffee cup to Olga who came over to pour him a refill. The Odanskys were living proof that the country had been built on decent, hard working immigrants. People wanting to immigrate here weren’t all like Sun Sui. He shouldn’t forget that.

  After paying the bill, he headed east towards University Avenue and the Metro Precinct.

  Kappolis, with his feet up on an open drawer, was on the phone working another case. Nick eavesdropped long enough to hear about a fugitive who had re-entered the country illegally six times after he was booted out. He was wanted by his home country for embezzlement. Nick didn’t want to know any more. He could only devote a hundred percent of his concentration to one case at a time. He walked down to the water cooler and got himself a drink of water.

  Kappolis hung up and called out, “Nick, where did you go?”

  “I’m here. Thought I’d give you some privacy.”

  “I don’t need any privacy,” he replied, flipping through a stack of computer printouts. “I heard about your troubles. I’ve been trying to reach you for the past hour. Where were you hiding?”

  “I wasn’t hiding. I was having breakfast.”

  The detective gave him a look. “Oookay. Good to hear that you’re taking things in your stride.”

  “How else?” said Nick.

 
“You know you’re in deep shit, don’t ya?”

  “Steve, I acknowledge only one thing: that you can’t win these days. First, I get in trouble with the mayor for not doing my job. Now I’m in trouble for doing my job,” said Nick, shrugging his shoulders. He then grabbed a chair that was leaning against the wall and pulled it up to Kappolis’s desk. “Give me a status report. How’s our search going?”

  Kappolis threw up his hands. “In the beginning we got no sightings. Now we have two boxes of reported sightings of our guy Li Mann. Personally, I think people are trying to bullshit us for the reward money.”

  “Surely there has to be at least one promising tip buried in those two boxes,” said Nick.

  “Nick, we’ve got leads. They’re just too vague to follow up. What the hell do you do with a lead where the caller says he saw a guy matching that description boarding a bus. A bus going where? The caller doesn’t know. Or when? Maybe yesterday he says. Or maybe a week ago.” The detective hunched up his shoulders and turned the palms of his hands out. “We wasted time on one lead that seemed like a hot tip. Wrong guy.”

  “Being ethnic doesn’t help. To most Anglos, all ethnics look alike. That’s probably why there’re so many sightings of him,” said Nick.

  “Nothing comes up on motor vehicles registration or social security or the credit bureau. Officially he doesn’t exist, doesn’t have a driver’s licence, a health card or a credit card. But we know that isn’t true.”

  “Anything interesting on Gee Tung’s surveillance?”

  “Nada. I suspect he knows he’s being watched and is on good behaviour,” said Kappolis, loosening his tie. “So, you going back to work?”

  Nick got up and adjusted his chinos which were sticking to his body.

  “Where else? I’ve got too much damn work on my desk. I’ll take my chances with the special interest groups. So watch for me on the news tonight.” He gave a humourless laugh as he walked out the door. As he left the station, he was relieved to see that there was nobody waiting to pounce on him.

  He sneaked into his office through a side entrance. At his desk, he saw that he had two calls from the Immigration and Naturalization Service in New York regarding a Sri Lankan gunrunner they’d arrested at JFK. Not now, he thought. After cleaning out his messages, he went down to the cafeteria and grabbed a pop. Back in his office, he concentrated on the case at hand. The evidence he did have against Sun didn’t look good. More holes were beginning to appear in his case against the man. The problem was, for every bit of information gathered, a whole lot of new questions opened up. Sun was obviously abusing the work authorizations, but where the hell were the visa officers at the Canadian and American embassies? Were they asleep at the switch? Didn’t they see that the Mandarin Club was running a scam to bring people to North America?

  Everything came right back to Immigration. He knew he should take the case upstairs and discuss it with the director general. But if he did that, he would be ordered to downplay or even drop the case against Sun. The director general’s answer to incompetence and stupidity was secrecy. The DG didn’t want to know about the dumb mistakes immigration officers made in the field because he didn’t want the public to know. And Nick wasn’t going to drop the case. Sun was all he had to lead him to Walter Martin’s killer.

  Li Mann flew out of La Guardia and into Pearson International. Seventy-five minutes flying time from New York to Toronto. He had no problems leaving the country six days ago. Why would he have problems re-entering the country? Nor was he frightened by the thought that the city would be crawling with cops hunting for him. He had been hunted before, by American soldiers and CIA operatives in the jungles of Nam, and by DEA agents in the Golden Triangle in Thailand. So what else was new?

  He took a taxi downtown to the ferry docks. The meeting place was on Toronto Island. Half an hour later, he was strolling on the Ward’s Island boardwalk. The wind rolled in from across the lake.

  The General was dressed for the rainy weather; rubberized slicker and runner shoes. His companion, the Red Prince, had difficulty keeping the fedora on his head. Li Mann could pass himself off as a day labourer walking with his master.

  “We have no choice. We must act.” Li Mann’s voice was firm.

  The Red Prince looked at the General in consternation. “I’m in no hurry. I need to consult — ”

  “Consult what, the stars?” the General asked curtly. “Let’s not be foolish, and let’s not be dabbling in religion at this point. We can’t afford to have our best-laid plans derailed by a few immigration officers.”

  “I don’t want the shedding of more blood! It’s bad enough that you killed that senior immigration officer.”

  “That was unintentional. I had no choice,” replied the General, as he examined his scarred hands and chipped fingernails. He didn’t like the direction of the conversation. It was difficult working with civilians. They knew nothing of military tactics and strategy. Li Mann Vu prided himself in these things. He appraised his walking companion at a glance. The Red Prince, for all his education and connections, was essentially a weak man. The General looked upon him as a peacock. All he cared about was the cut of his suit and the art of a business deal; little else. The General shook his head in private disgust, but the reality was he’d have to work with what he had.

  “We need at least another fifty million to complete the joint venture real estate deal in Macau, but if we move now we could lose everything. It’s all over the news. Immigration officers are on alert in both countries. We can’t afford to lose another cargo ship,” said the Red Prince. “But then again, we can’t afford to lose three hundred migrants at fifty thousand a head.”

  “The sweatshops on East Broadway are clamouring for more bodies. I already told some of the businesses down there that we were going to wait it out.”

  “That decision was not yours to make.” The Red Prince curtly reminded his companion.

  They walked several yards in silence. Every few steps, the Red Prince tossed pieces of stale bread to the flock of geese that followed them.

  “We have a more pressing problem and I want you to take care of it.”

  “I could smuggle him into New York. I think we should send him down to Fuzhou Number One street for retraining,” argued the General.

  “It’s not our job to provide retraining. He’s a loose cannon. He could destroy everything. Is that what you want?” It was a rhetorical question. The Red Prince didn’t expect an answer. Nor did he get one.

  Neither man spoke as they retraced their footsteps back to the ferry.

  “I’ll contact you in a few days,” said the Red Prince. “I don’t need to remind you that you don’t have supreme authority here.”

  Li Mann flinched as if he had been struck. For a long time he stood on the dock and watched the ferry pull away, until it became a dot on the horizon. Theirs was not a relationship of equals. But if the Red Prince thought that a former military officer would accept being subservient to a civilian for long, he had a surprise coming. For now, though, the General preferred not to rock the boat.

  He plotted and argued with himself as he waited for the next ferry. The boat, when it came, was almost empty. In the dark, he could see the rain coming down in sheets. When he boarded the streetcar for Kensington, the General knew what he had to do when he got off.

  chapter eleven

  One of the hardest things Nick had to do was show respect for judges for whom he felt nothing but contempt. He had been hoping to buy time and build his case against Sun when he filed the deportation notice. But when he heard that Kenneth Egan would be presiding on Sun Sui’s case, he knew the deck was stacked against him. The left-leaning Egan had made his name by leading the good fight for conjugal rights for prisoners and generous welfare payments to single mothers.

  Nick had decided to go ahead with the deportation hearing, hoping to save taxpayers at least a million dollars by prosecuting Sun now, even though he didn’t really have enough evidence. Andy Loon
g was dead. Gee Tung had changed his mind about trading information for a lighter sentence, and he wasn’t talking. Neither were any of the entertainers from the Mandarin Club. One of them, Niin Tran, still had not been found. And Li Mann, whoever he was, was still at large.

  As Nick took a seat in the old Courthouse, a man in wire frames and moustache approached carrying an expandable briefcase. He introduced himself as Jeremy Klein, and added, in a gently apologetic tone, “Department of International Trade. I thought you should hear it from me first, but I’m supporting Mr. Sui’s claim to remain in the country.”

  Nick’s jaw dropped. Holy shit! What the hell was going on? How could Immigration deport a man that the Trade Department wanted to protect?

  He looked down at Klein’s card, then stared as he moved away and seated himself next to Sun Sui’s lawyer. Sun Sui himself was nowhere to be seen. Probably didn’t want to show up in court like a common criminal.

  Judge Egan opened the morning’s proceedings, intoning from the bench, “Mr. Slovak, I’ve read your pleadings and exhibits. Frankly, I’m somewhat confused on exactly why you want to remand the appellant into custody prior to deportation. Because I don’t see a case for deportation here.”

  Nick watched Judge Egan peer at him over the top of his bifocals.

  “Given the pleadings, I want to remind the Immigration Department that we’re not living in a police state. What I see in these documents is the use of unnecessary force and fascist tactics.”

  “Thank you, Your Honour.” Verster threw Nick a gloating look.

  Without missing a beat, Nick argued, “Your Honour, it is the argument of the state that the appellant is a member of an inadmissible class. There are reasonable grounds to believe that he has committed offences both outside and inside Canada, and these offences could be punishable under any Act of Parliament by a maximum term of imprisonment of ten years or more.”