The Snakeheads

by Mary Moylum

  “What was Sun Sui doing when it went down?” asked Nick.

  “I’ll check with my officers. But don’t get your hopes up high ’cause I got a fleet of cars watching him. Two men apiece. For the past two days, Sun has spent it mostly in his condominium. However, a bevy of gorgeous gals have paraded through his pad. With their résumés.”

  “Résumés?” asked Nick.

  “Yeah. You should see the slinky dresses on these gals. Whoa!”

  “More entertainers? Actresses?” asked Nick.

  “Who knows?”

  “Any male visitors?”

  “Nope,” replied Kappolis, keeping his eyes on the road. “The only times he left his pad he walked to Chinatown for lunch. The undercover guys watching him said he bought a paper and ate alone at a noodle bar or dim sum house. Then he circulated through some of the shops on Dundas, talking to a handful of shopkeepers.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to extort protection money from them.”

  “Two of my undercover guys are going to check in on these shopkeepers later in the week. The next team tracked him as he went shopping. Tried on suits, shirts and stuff. Spoke to no one other than the sales help. Then came home. If he put the hit out on Gee Tung, it certainly wasn’t in person or on the phone. The only calls he made were to girls and his banker.”

  They stopped at a red light. A streetcar rumbled to a stop behind them.

  “Except for one afternoon when the surveillance team lost him for about an hour and a half.”

  “Lost him? How?”

  “Sui went to the fair. The cops watched him buy a ticket for the roller coaster ride. They watched him get in line. Both officers declined to do the ride. Twenty minutes later, our boy evaporates into thin air.” Kappolis tapped impatiently on the steering wheel as he waited for the lights to change. “The team stationed outside his condo said an hour and a half later our boy turns up at his condo carrying a bag of candy floss from the fair.”

  Nick pushed the hair back from his forehead. “Did he give the boys in blue the slip or was it incompetence on the part of the surveillance team?”

  Kappolis shrugged his shoulders as he put his foot on the gas. “Who knows? All I know is, we’ve got no suspects in Gee Tung’s death.”

  “What about the ME?” yawned Nick. He could’ve used another hour of sleep.

  “Yeah, the medical examiner is expecting us about now. I was told not to get there too early ’cause Dr. Dillon’s got to drive all the way into the city from the ’burbs.”

  “I don’t see why I need to be here,” said Nick.

  “Orders from the precinct commander. He’s covering his ass on this one.”

  They pulled up in front of the morgue and parked in a tow-away zone. Kappolis didn’t care for traffic cops, nor did they strike fear into his heart.

  The medical examiner, Dr. Dillon, was already dressed in green surgical scrubs, his plastic goggles dangling under his chin. He was a tired-looking, middle-aged man who had clearly been rudely interrupted from his sleep when the call of duty came. Nick twice caught him yawning into his latex gloves.

  “Follow me, gentlemen. We’ll take the elevator down to the autopsy room.”

  They grabbed two lab coats hanging on hooks and rode the elevator down to the bowels of the building. The minute Nick went through the gleaming steel doors, the smell hit him hard in the nostrils. Years in the business, and he could never get used to the smell of death and formaldehyde.

  The medical examiner asked the two orderlies to remove the body from the bag and lift it onto the gurney. Nick stood at a respectful distance and stared at what was left of the victim’s head. The ME followed his gaze.

  “At first glance, it appears that he was shot at least three times at point-blank range. One at the back of the head and two in the chest. One of the bullets punctured his left lung. At such close range, one bullet was enough to make death instantaneous.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Dillon. I hadn’t realized that the victim took three hits.”

  “Oh, yes, he did. But I’ll be able to tell you more after a more complete examination. We’ll be getting started on that in a few minutes.”

  “Fine by us.”

  Nick’s eyes wandered over to the hanging scale, the rows of gleaming steel instruments and the jars of chemicals lined neatly in the glass cabinets. In a few hours, the late Flying Dragons member would have been dissected, weighed, photographed and fingerprinted. What was left of his head would be examined for wound patterns. The bullets would be extracted and marked for ballistics. Although he had attended many an autopsy, he would never be comfortable seeing a chainsaw applied to a human body.

  “Do you want to watch?”

  “No, the autopsy report will do just fine. I’ll pass on sitting in on this one,” said Nick. He knew that the autopsy report, photographs and all information would be given to the detective in charge.

  “I’ll courier it to your precinct, detective,” said the ME without looking up from the forms he was filling out.

  They jaywalked across two lanes of traffic towards a corner doughnut shop that catered to the graveyard shifts of hospital workers and other night owls.

  “Fine way to start the day,” sighed Kappolis.

  Nick grabbed a table by the window while the detective went to get coffee at the counter. It was five thirty and the city was already stirring to life, with early morning traffic and garbage trucks beginning their rounds. The street was like an empty stage set waiting for the play to begin. Soon office workers would be scurrying toward their day jobs. Then in the evening they would go home to their pets and a stack of bills in their mailboxes. What was the point? He felt heaviness descend on him. He couldn’t shake the feeling. It was invisible, but there, like poison gas that hung in the air, slowly permeating the pores and lungs of the unsuspecting. Life was short. You were born, you struggled and you died.

  Was his life any better? In some respects his life was worse. He has been pilloried in the press every day for the past week. The hate mail from special-interest groups had hijacked his e-mail address. He would give anything for a vacation right now. He had the same dreams as every man: once upon a time he had had a wife and a home. Now he was willing to settle for a little bit of love and waking up to a warm body.

  Kappolis returned with a tray of freshly brewed coffee, jelly doughnuts, and an early edition of the Star. Neither man was in the mood for small talk. Nick flipped through the paper while Kappolis checked out the fellow with the floppy hair and ripped jeans who was munching on a croissant at the next table.

  They ordered refills. After the second hit of caffeine it began to feel like night was turning to morning.

  “What exactly is this case about?” asked Kappolis. “Illegal migrants? Or the snakehead that brought them here? Or is it about triads? Then there’s Walter’s murder and the Mandarin Club tie-in.”

  “I wish I knew,” sighed Nick. “Who knows if Sun Sui is a human smuggler or just an honest guy with a fucking arrogant streak? Does he belong to the Flying Dragons? Maybe,” shrugged Nick. “We don’t know. Then there’s Li Mann. What do we know about him? Well, he’s got great survival skills. Took two bullets and swam the length of the St. Lawrence, evading German shepherd sniff dogs and infrared tracking systems. Where did he go from there? We don’t have a fucking clue!”

  Kappolis looked glum. “I’d like to know how he cleaned himself up because there’re no hospital records of an Asian man with bullet wounds being admitted for treatment in either country. The guy must have a pretty good network to house him. We got an international warrant on him and no sign of the perp.” The detective shook his head. “That’s the mark of a professional criminal for you.”

  Nick chewed on a stir stick as he observed the other patrons. “Look at the Italian fellow over there holding hands with that pretty nurse on her coffee break from the hospital. She looks what, Thai? Filipino? The ethnic mix in this city makes it a perfect; place to hide out. Jamaicans rubbing s
houlders with Colombians and Syrians. And they’re probably working side by side with Pakistanis in some biker-owned restaurant.” Nick pointed to two men getting into their car across the street. “Look at those guys. They look like Eastern-European mafia thugs. Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. The point I’m trying to make is, Toronto is as cosmopolitan as New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Looking for Li Mann is like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  “That’s a really depressing thought, Nick.” Kappolis looked glum as he lifted the coffee mug to his lips.

  Nick dusted off the icing sugar before he bit into his second doughnut. “You know,” he said, “I still can’t wrap my head around it. I go to court with evidence linking the appellant to criminal activities like prostitution, selling illicit substances and membership in a triad. And I find that the case has morphed into a trade issue. And Sun walks away. Big fucking deal we’re holding his passport.”

  “For the government to show up and give Sun a character reference, that speaks of political interference, man. They don’t do that for just anybody,” said Kappolis. “I feel we got to tread carefully here, Nick.”

  “I feel the case is going south. That Walter’s murderer is going to get away with the crime,” Nick sighed. “And that hurts me.”

  “We’ve already got a wiretap on Sun’s home phone and the club’s main number. I’ll run a check to see how many other numbers he’s got. Put a tap on that too,” said the detective.

  “Good idea. For that, I’ll treat you,” said Nick as he reached for the bill.

  “Where to now?”

  “Gonna head for the office and get a head start. I’ve been getting messages from the INS at Kennedy Airport for the past week and some.”

  “A week? And you haven’t called them back yet?”

  “I got a lot on my plate. Can’t return every call promptly. Besides, I’m afraid these people are trying to create more work for me. Every call I get is turning out that way.”

  He chewed a toothpick as he walked past a group of people hanging around the corner. Then a bus pulled up and they climbed aboard. He continued walking, jaywalking across the street in the direction of Bathurst. Dressed in a chequered shirt and dark slacks, he blended in. Nobody gave him so much as a glance. He could always count on that in downtown Toronto, Montreal, New York, and Los Angeles. But then he was good at disappearing in a crowd.

  After the war, Li Mann had nothing and no one. He wondered why he had survived. As the years passed, his life became an instrument of his vengeance. With the American trade embargo against his country, his people were isolated from the world, dying of disease, poverty, and despair. No medicines for the sick, no hope for the young. All they needed was money.

  How could he help to feed his people? The answer came to him one day as he was trekking up the valley towards Chang Mai. Starting that day, he worked to turn his village around. By the late seventies every farmer in his village was growing opium poppies. With wealth came new schools, a hospital, and two temples for prayer.

  The American government didn’t understand drug trafficking — that it was a supply and demand equation. As long as the demand was there, the American government could never destroy the supply. People would import it because other people would buy it, at whatever price. Stupidly, the police believed that the illegal trade could be crippled by going after the big drug lords. But the demise of the few drug cartels in Asia had been a bonanza for the hundreds of small traffickers like himself. Dead or jailed traffickers were immediately replaced by their competitors.

  Li Mann shook his head, talking to himself as he walked. No, the Americans didn’t understand that it was easier to infiltrate two or four cartels. How could DEA agents infiltrate hundreds of drug trafficking groups? Logistically, it was impossible. Then there was the matter of race. A bunch of white guys could not run covert missions in Third World countries without being noticed. That’s why the war on drugs had failed. And why the North American war on illegal people smuggling was doomed to fail.

  He strolled down College Street, pleased to see that the Latinos were slowing taking over the place. He heard sounds of Spanish being spoken. He stared into the faces of the new émigrés. The Mexicans, Cubans, Guatemalans, Nicaraguans, and Colombians had arrived from the Third World. The thought brought a smile to his lips. Already, they had forged their identities on their newly adopted city. On this stretch alone, there were two coffee bars, a cooperative handicraft shop and a tortilla factory.

  At the next corner he saw a parked police cruiser. Li Mann touched the pistol tucked inside his pants as he quickly lowered his face, eyes to the ground. Shuffling in the opposite direction, he quickly ducked into a Colombian restaurant. The room was dark and smoky. He squeezed in at the bar, at a discreet distance from the entrance, and ordered a beer and bowl of bean soup.

  He listened to the jokes and tried to follow the conversation around him. But his Spanish was rusty. He liked the Colombians. His history with that country had coincided with his alliance with the Flying Dragons. It had all started with the American-ordered hit on Pablo Escobar. With Pablo gone, the Flying Dragons in Hong Kong had gotten a toehold into Latin America by linking up with the Cali cartel. The big break came with America’s war on drugs. That meant the mass destruction of cocoa plants. The Colombian drug traffickers then cut a deal with the Flying Dragons to import opium poppies. Li Mann had been put in charge of negotiating with the paramilitaries. Within five years, he was delivering poppies to rich landowners and major drug traffickers. In Colombia, they were one and the same.

  Within another five years, the Flying Dragons had penetrated the Colombian government. Entry and exit visas became a mere formality. Less than eight months later, a deal was struck to move illegal aliens from Asia to Colombia. From Colombia, they travelled by bus, plane, and boat into the United States and Canada via Mexico. The next step was a piece of cake. The poor migrants paid off their passage by working as mules, bringing drugs into North America.

  After slurping hungrily on his soup, he cleansed his mouth by chewing on a coffee bean. He watched the patrons come and go as he studied the bill. Li Mann wanted more than anything to return home to his beloved country. But orders were orders, his work was not finished here yet. He pulled out the newspaper clipping from his shirt pocket and critically studied the “wanted” picture of himself. The sketch artist had made his nose too large and his mouth too thin. He wondered if the mistake had been deliberate on Gee Tung’s part. Now he would never know. He re-read the article and wondered about the immigration officer that was hunting him. Maybe he should find him and watch him for a while.

  After he slapped a couple of bills down on the counter, Li Mann walked down the street towards the pay phone. First he would do a little research. Picking up the phone, he asked directory assistance for the telephone number of the Immigration Department.

  Just before two in the afternoon, the phone rang on Nick’s desk. He was moody and glum, and wanted to be left alone with his paperwork. For a minute, he wasn’t going to answer the call until he saw the call display.

  “Good thing we wanted to give that speed boat a second look,” said Dubois on the phone.

  It was hard to understand the RCMP officer with his mouth full.

  “What the hell are you eating?” asked Nick.

  “A BLT sandwich. I’m sitting in a diner on Vanier talking to you on my cell.”

  “Well, don’t talk with your mouth full of food,” lectured Nick. “How on earth could our American friends have missed the evidence?”

  “For the sake of diplomacy, let’s not ask. Anyway, we found a coupla strands of hair on a bar of soap that was wrapped in a zip-lock bag under the bathroom sink. Obviously the owner of the soap had no intentions of sharing it with his comrades and clients. I’ve already sent it over to the lab for analysis. See what turns up. We’ll match it against the DNA taken from Gee Tung and the dead snakehead, and the illegal migrants.”

  “Let me kn
ow if anything interesting turns up.”

  chapter thirteen

  “Hello, Nick.”

  He saw her face, heard her voice. He had dreamt of this moment. “Hello, Grace.”

  The sight of her in the midnight-blue velvet dress he remembered so well evoked powerful feelings. Her hair was long and loose, the way he had always liked it. She was the most elegant woman in the room. He wanted to touch her again, but he couldn’t, not here, not even a handshake.

  He moved toward her. Up close, she was as he had remembered. All teeth, hair and tan.

  “It’s been a long time, Grace.”

  “How have you been, Nick?” She planted a kiss on his cheek.

  Her physical contact left him breathless. “Good. You?”

  He caught a whiff of her perfume. It was the same scent she wore that last time they had made love. Standing next to her, he felt suspended in time, as if he had never left her.

  “I’ve been watching you on the news, Nick. You’ve been keeping busy.”

  “Yeah. You too?”

  He could barely manage to speak, beyond monosyllables. He had detained double-homicides, deported drug traffickers, and prosecuted tough cases. But here he was, acting like a social misfit on his first date.

  “Well, our inventory is up past seventy thousand cases,” he said.

  She took his hand and pulled him aside. “We’re in the path of traffic.”

  The coolness of her skin, the kiss on the cheek, the touch of her fingers, and already he was emotionally wrung out. God help him for the next hour or two.

  “It’s a lot.” He bobbed his head up and down like a dumb dog.

  “I was beginning to think that you’d stopped coming to Ottawa. I miss our sushi lunches. You know I still haven’t found a replacement sushi companion.”

  She favoured him with one of her slow, seductive smiles showing perfect teeth between fabulous lips.

  “Would you like to do sushi? I’m here for two days.”

  “I hoped we could do more than sushi,” she said boldly.