by Mary Moylum
“I got them on video camera. My boss says if nothing interesting turns up in another week, he’s going to pull the squad teams off surveillance duty.”
“Nothing we can do about that. Let’s just keep our fingers crossed. Before we sign off,” said Nick, “did your team go through Gee Tung’s place for prints?”
“Yeah. Nothing usable. Certainly not Sun Sui’s. And we got nothing on the guys who killed him. A hired hit done by professional triad members. Looks like it was the perfect crime. The girlfriend can’t even remember what they looked like.”
“I hate this case,” said Nick glumly. “I got a rich nightclub owner with fat political connections, but dirty hands. For all we know, he could’ve bought the bullet that killed Gee Tung and Andy Loong, but we’ve got nothing. I can hear him laughing at us now.”
“We’ll get him.”
“Yeah. Let’s work on that goal.”
After a few more files Nick called it a day and walked over to Hart House. He changed into his swimming trunks, and seventy-three laps later, he was spent and smelling of chlorine. He walked along Wellesley towards Yonge Street, losing himself in the crowd. Evenings on the Strip you were lucky not to get stabbed to death for chump change. He wasn’t worried. Hands jammed in the pockets of his chinos, he made eye contact with everyone he passed, daring the scumbags to push their luck. Still feeling restless, he walked the city, pushing past the strip joints where half-naked young girls stood beneath tacky marquees hawking show times. He walked past a newspaper and magazine stand where his gaze wandered to the rows of women’s magazines pushing beauty and how to trap a man. To him, it was just another genre of porn. Carried along by the crowd, he observed the massage parlours with their attendants pushing sex toys to passers by. Further up the street, the scent in the air changed — from the fetishistic to the gastronomic. All-night pizza joints and Chinese take-outs.
Fatigued and lonely, he took the short-cut back to his condo. At eleven-twenty, he was sitting alone in the dark on the balcony, the night sky above him stretched out like a black tarp.
Later, just as he was falling asleep, too late, he remembered that Kelly Marcovich had wanted him to call her.
chapter seventeen
“Nick, I think you should walk away from this case.”
“Walk away? And let him get away with murder?” Nick switched on the speaker phone and fanned himself with a file folder. The muggy weather of the past few days had turned into a heat wave, and the air conditioning system in the building was too antiquated to work properly. As he talked, he cleared files off his window vents.
“If Sun’s got friends at International Trade, my advice to you is, save your breath. Canada is scouring the globe for trade. First it was Mexico. Then Chile. This year it’s gonna be China. Bad timing, my friend,” said Dubois.
“What the hell are you reading?”
“Go to the International Trade Department’s website. It’s all there. Check it out yourself. It says right here in the government website, ’when Canadian firms compete for contracts and strategic partnerships abroad, they are not competing against other Canadian firms. They are competing against top U.S., French, and German firms. The race is global.’ Nick, we’re fucked, my friend.”
“Dubois, we know the whole Sun Sui mess is political.”
“Listen, I got the full membership list of the Asia Business Council. One thing I found out. Your ex-girlfriend’s a member. Maybe you should talk to her.”
“Grace? You know she’s not so ’ex’ anymore. I ran into her again. At the annual tea party.”
Dubois groaned. “I thought you looked down on the snobby crowd and their pretentious ways.”
“I do.” Nick didn’t feel like elaborating.
“Hey, it’s your life. I don’t know what you see in her. She ain’t the only woman you can screw, you know.”
Nick decided the best response to that was no response.
After the phone call, Nick worked in a desultory way until Kappolis showed up and dropped his six-foot-two frame down on the lumpy chesterfield.
“What’s up?” asked Nick, looking up from the report he was writing.
“Good news. That house Li Mann was renting in Montreal. I tracked down the location of the landlord and owner. Here it is.” Kappolis handed Nick one of his business cards with the information written on the reverse side.
“Thanks,” said Nick.
“I ran a check already. Seems the owners of the building are non-citizens. I think you should be the one who pays them a visit. Throw your weight around a little, know what I mean.”
Grace found comfort in rituals. After almost twenty years, the daily routine of putting on running gear, tightening laces, and stretching hamstrings had become a form of indulgence for someone with a sedentary job. Besides, her body was now hopelessly addicted to the endorphins, her drug of choice. She had first started running in university. Back then it had been a means of distracting her mind from dry and musty tomes, and a means of escape from the loneliness of moving east and a crowded dormitory. In the beginning she had run no more than a mile. But as the years passed the mileage increased because she found pounding the pavement to be therapeutic. Not the least of it was that an hour on the road meant an hour of private time to herself. Time to reflect and to make peace with herself and the world. Everything around her became a passing blur, and that was as good as a rest, particularly after a full day on the bench, when she needed to empty her mind of work and worry.
She headed down her street of parked cars in the direction of the park. The moon was just rising in the blue sky as she cut her own trail along the tortuous dirt path, the domain of endurance athletes, masochists and testosterone-heavy jocks. Grace kept her eyes on the ground, on the lookout for outcroppings of rock and roots. Periodically she would look up and be charmed by the floral scenery and the ducks feeding down by the river. After a mile, she noticed that she was the sole runner on the path. Fine with her. By the second mile, she was running at an easy pace and her mind was in another channel.
The sun was sinking across the river. Another beautiful sunset. In another forty, fifty minutes, it would be dark. At the bridge that joins Ontario with Quebec, she turned around. As a city-bred woman, she had a healthy fear of sex predators lurking behind trees and bushes. After she passed the sycamore and the weeping willows, she headed back to urban life by running along city streets.
Crossing Bronson towards Hintonburg, she was on the wrong side of the tracks: cheap real estate, lawns overgrown with weeds, and sidewalks strewn with garbage and broken beer bottles. She ignored the few rude gestures from drivers and pedestrians. Waiting for the lights to change, she noticed a white van and wondered if it was the same white van she’d seen when she started out three miles ago. But what were the chances of that in a city of a million white vans? She wrote it off as coincidence, and the suspicious mind of a person who lived in a city with too many perverts.
Past the tacky billboards promoting underwear and cars, her feet took her down a favourite street of splendid Victorian mansions and through a children’s park. She observed lovers holding hands and a child throwing a temper tantrum. She passed a row of park benches and headed for the exit at Lydon park, sidestepping a homeless person panhandling outside the park for change to hit the liquor store. She jogged past a restaurant that she hadn’t visited in a while; in the windows were people seated having dinner. When would Nick be coming up to visit her again? She wanted to call him but didn’t want to appear too clingy. After years in a marriage, she would have to relearn old dating skills.
Turning right, she detoured down a favourite block of athletic and outdoor stores like Eddie Bauer, Trailhead, and Mountain Equipment Coop — she liked looking in the windows as she jogged by, and why not? She kept them in business with regular purchases of Gore-Tex, polar fleece, and running shoes. It took her less than six months to turn two-hundred-dollar runners into a mush of rubber. As she checked out the latest in shoe technolo
gy, she noticed a white van reflected in the window. The same white van again? Only one way to find out. But there was too much traffic for her to wade the street and jot down the license number. Still, she kept her gaze on the van hoping to get a good look at the driver or passenger. But the windows were tinted and rolled up. She watched until it drove out of sight.
Once safely inside her house, she decided she must have been letting her imagination run amok. God help her. Was she so scarred by urban life and lurid news stories of sex maniacs pouncing upon unsuspecting women? She chastised herself for letting her paranoia get the better of her.
chapter eighteen
He drove with one hand on the steering wheel while his other hand held hers. Neither of them wanted to talk about their violation of legal protocol. How they were breaking the cardinal rule of the immigration system: the judicial side just did not fraternize with the enforcement branch. Instead he listened to her banter about the immigrant population in Montreal, and how you could find everything from tandoori houses to Korean grills to tapas bars all within the same block.
After a three-hour drive, he almost lost his cool as they checked in.
“You’d think a five-star hotel like this, in a cosmopolitan city like Montreal, would have at least one English-speaking clerk at the front desk,” he complained.
She squeezed his hand. “My French will get us through the weekend. Let’s not ruin a perfectly good romantic getaway by talking Quebec politics.”
Once inside the hotel room, he took her in his arms. “Let’s go to bed.”
“What about dinner?” she asked, exploring his mouth with her tongue.
“Later.”
He didn’t bother closing the drapes. Outside the window, the sky to the east was a steel blue tinged with pink and black. He looked down at the woman in his arms; her eyes were closed. A good part of their relationship was carnal; he liked that. He had had sex with other women and remembered enjoying it. This was different. He moved his hands up her skirt, exploring the feel of her thighs.
Slowly they undressed each other. The sight of her naked brought a rush of desire so powerful that for a disconcerting second, he felt like a teenager again, overwhelmed with lust and longing.
Her hands worked the length of his body.
“Mmmm. I’ve had detailed fantasies about this all week.”
“Which part?” she grinned naughtily. “This part?” Her hands had stopped between his legs.
“You might want to apply for the job as my personal masseuse,” he moaned.
“I didn’t think there was a position open.”
“For you babe, anything,” he said as he flipped her over on her back, pinning her down with his body and hands. Her body felt like silk underneath his tongue. He started from her breasts and worked his way down.
He was just the kind of lover she wanted, just as he’d always been. Attentive and unhurried. Unhurried, even in their desperation to have each other.
Later, in the darkened hotel room, she broke the silence. “So tell me why you invited me to Montreal.”
“I want us to try again. I want you to be in my life. But I don’t want us to have secrets from each other. There’s another reason. I have to interview someone. I think you could be of help to me.”
“Work. It figures,” she sighed, running her hands on his body. “Where’re we going tomorrow?”
“I’m checking out the landlady who rented a house to a snakehead called Li Mann. Maybe she has a good photo of her tenant, because we sure as hell don’t.”
“Stop. I don’t want to talk about work anymore.”
They made love again. Afterward, they ordered dinner from the room service menu because neither of them wanted to get dressed. Nick wanted to talk.
“I want you to know everything about me,” he said, with his arms around her, he began telling her about his parents’ flight from Czechoslovakia in 1968. He had never told her the whole story before. “My parents used to talk about the Russian tanks advancing into the city. They were very apprehensive because they’d lived through that kind of thing before, with the Nazis. My father’s parents were both arrested by the Gestapo. My father was just a boy — he never saw his parents again.”
Grace lay quietly listening.
“My father went to live with his uncle. He met my mother in university. In ’55, they married and lived on campus. The following year my dad became faculty head of the economics department. I was in grade school when the situation in the country changed from bad to worse. My parents knew they would be among the first to be arrested. They planned their escape along with others from the university. In the final days, we hid in the homes of friends. Dad had befriended someone at the American embassy, who in turn helped them emigrate to the United States. They came for freedom, but somehow I think they left their hearts behind in Prague.”
Grace put her arms around him, snuggling into his shoulders.
“Dad found work at the University of Rochester teaching economics. It took him another eight years to make faculty head. He retired last year. You should’ve seen the big retirement party they threw him.”
He adjusted his position, facing her, cupping one breast in the hollow of his hand. “No complaints. I had a good life. Dad made me join Scouts. I spent just about every summer hiking in the Adirondacks and skiing in Vermont.”
“So how did you wind up in Canada?”
“My parents thought it would be a good idea if I saw something of the world. Their idea of this was to have me do my undergrad studies at the University of Toronto.”
“We missed each other like two ships in the night. I came to do graduate studies,” said Grace, clasping one hand over his. “Besides, we probably needed to marry other people to appreciate each other.”
“There’s something to that,” replied Nick. “Anyway, I slunk back home to study law at Columbia. How about you?”
“Osgoode Law School in Toronto. What happened after Columbia?”
“I practiced for two years in the prosecutor’s office in New York, and then in Boston. When I got married, we moved to Toronto again because her family lived there.”
“How long were you married?”
He sighed and stared out the window at the moonless night. “Seven years. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did. The relationship was built on sand.”
“How?”
“It was superficial. She thought I had a good pedigree and would be a great breadwinner. And that I would wine and dine her practically every night.”
“That’s pretty unrealistic.”
“Hmmmm. Tell me,” said Nick, touching her cheek with his lips. “What about you and this David guy I spoke to on the phone once?”
She twirled a lock of hair around her fingers as she spoke. “David Rikeman. We were both stationed in El Salvador. He was with the American embassy. We met at one of the diplomatic parties and matched up for a whole string of reasons. Sex and friendship and playing the part of the white knight in shining armour.”
His eyebrows rose inquiringly.
She elaborated. “At the time I was in the country on a United Nations human rights project. I was part of a team of anthropologists digging up the bodies of those killed by the military. Mass graves. The army did their best to threaten and intimidate us. David used embassy resources to protect us. He gave us use of his bullet-proof Mercedes. Dating him provided some sort of diplomatic immunity. That made a big difference.” She had a faraway look in her eyes as she talked. “At times it was very scary being there. But I cared about the work. I come from a family whose mantra is, service to others. I believe in it too. So I renewed for another term.”
She sat up in bed and reached for a water glass. “Dave and I, our relationship really clicked in El Salvador. Our relationship thrived on the fear and adrenaline. It was the coming home that was a relationship killer.” She shook her head sadly. “Strangely, marriage counselling only made things worse. And then I met you.”
�
��Well, I’m glad you did,” said Nick, sliding his hand under the sheet.
After breakfast the next morning, she consulted a map as Nick pulled the rental car out of the underground garage. “You know Montreal?” he asked.
“A bit. This is one of my least favourite parts of city. You can be sure that the neighbourhoods along this strip don’t make it into glossy tourist brochures. See,” she pointed. “By day, the strip looks normal enough with fruit stores, bakeries and hanging salamis and smoked meat briskets hanging in the windows of delicatessens. But at night, God help us. The cokeheads, prostitutes, and the paedophiles are out in full force.”
She stopped and grimaced, pinching her nose shut.
“Whoa!” Nick exclaimed.
The smell of baked urine was overpowering. Down the next street, the sound of sewing machines buzzed feverishly as immigrant women turned out piecework to anonymous contractors in the shmatte business.
Nick parked in front of the address they were looking for. After ringing the doorbell, they listened to the sound of heavy footsteps pounding down the stairs, then the sound of chains being released. The door opened a crack. Nick flashed his badge and launched into his immigration spiel.
The woman was unimpressed. “Me already speaka to polica. Big francophone men come to door. I say to the stupid one whose English is worse than mine; I not know tenant. Asian man good tenant. He rents house and give post-dated money. Very good. That’s all I care about.”
Ramona Santiaga was her name. She rolled her chubby shoulders while her big-boned frame blocked the doorway entrance to her house. She reminded Grace of the stereotype Latino hired help portrayed in Hollywood movies with her heavy accent, thick black hair and flashing eyes, and the small white apron that circled her stocky waist. A pair of pink mules incongruously adorned her feet.
It was obvious that she distrusted and feared authority at the same time. Nick seemed to know what she was thinking. “I’m not the Montreal police,” he assured her. “I’m with Canadian immigration. This isn’t a police matter.”