The Snakeheads

by Mary Moylum

  And if my mother hadn’t escaped, Grace thought, where would I be today?

  In search of a snack, she headed down to the lunchroom, where she brewed a cup of coffee and helped herself to some stale chocolate chip cookies. Back at her desk with a cookie in her mouth, she tried to pull up the file on Sun Sui she had just created.

  “Whaat? I don’t get it?”

  The file was gone. Her coffee got cold as she tried to locate it. Frustration and hope washed over her in waves. Welcome to the wonderful world of computing! No wonder people hated computers.

  She dialled up the systems operator who — lucky for her — was located in another building. A great facesaving device. She was angry with herself for being computer stupid. Things like this — revealed to her that she wasn’t as smart as she thought she was.

  “I’ve got a problem. With this new legal software. Again,” she paused. “I just created a file, saved it, got out of the menu for half an hour. Now I’m back in but I can’t find the file. It’s disappeared.”

  “Didn’t you call me last week with computer problems? The software is new, maybe you need to sign up for a course to learn it. Because files don’t disappear. Gimme the information and I’ll locate it.”

  “Well, the old software was much easier to use. Frankly, I hate the new software.”

  “A lot of users are saying the same thing, lady,” said the tech support operator. He worked with her for several minutes until he found it.

  “Thanks.” She saw that the file had been saved twice. She checked the time. The second save had been when she was making coffee. That was strange. Was it her own techno-stupidity? Or had someone sneaked into her office while she was in the lunchroom?

  On the way out she mentioned it to one of the few clerical staff sitting in the bullpen area outside her door.

  “No, Grace. No one went into your office.”

  “Hmmm. Okay. See you tomorrow.”

  Weird. She hated technology. What she really hated was how absolutely stupid she felt over her inability to keep up with the wired world.

  A large brown envelope with the RCMP logo in the left-hand corner was sitting on top of the heap of papers on Nick’s desk. Ignoring it, he picked up a file that one of his officers had flagged for his attention. He didn’t have to look at the date to know that it was an old outstanding file. The reports inside looked like they’d been archived to death. Dog-eared, torn, and coffee-stained. Tilting back his chair, he was just about to start making case notes when the phone rang.

  “Got the envelope I couriered to you?” It was Dubois.

  “If you’re referring to this big brown manilla thing, it’s sitting right here. I’ll get to it later in the day.”

  “Open it now, Nick. Take a good look at it.” It was an order.

  Holding the phone between his ear and his shoulder, Nick sliced open the envelope and quickly flipped through the photographs. He suffered a quiet shock when he realized who the female subject was. Grace. Sitting at some kind of outdoor café table talking intensely to the other person, an old Chinese man. Then standing in a parking lot with the same man. There were twenty-four pictures, some in sharp focus, some blurred and off-centre. Two had been blown up. All were in colour and some been taken with a telescopic lens. He had seen the old man’s face before, but where? Dubois’s voice in his ear answered the question for him. “His name is Wa Sing. You asked me to ring a check so I assigned one of my rookies. You said you’re seeing her again. She ever mention that she knows him?”

  Nick didn’t answer. Grace’s words came back to him: I know of him.

  “Nick, this is what you get for consorting with the enemy.”

  Dubois’s words hammered into his consciousness. He willed himself to listen.

  “This case has political written all over it. It’s not your usual agent smuggling case of illegals. This one’s about money and power. Not poverty and desperation.” Dubois’s voice was hard and unforgiving. “We may live in a democracy but it’s the power of a buck that makes society go around. Let’s not kid ourselves. We know those with money also have influence and power. And right now I smell bullshit and coverup!”

  “Coverup?”

  “Yeah. This Wa Sing character has been subpoenaed to testify at the inquiry into illegal political payoffs and under-the-table campaign contributions. That scandal’s spreading like an oil slick. The guy’s a hair’s-breadth from being arrested and indicted on influence-peddling charges, and guess what? He flies the coop three hours before our cops show up at his door. The question is, pal, who warned him?”

  He was following Dubois’s drift a little too well. And he was going to be sick to his stomach.

  “One of the things we’re gonna check out is, whose campaigns was he bankrolling? You can bet your ass the opposition wants to know that too! Ask yourself, Nick, how do people get political appointments to the bench? I don’t know of any average Joe or Josephine getting any kind of appointment to any kind of bench. Hell, the average Joe can’t even get his city councillor to return his phone calls.”

  Dubois’s voice cut right through him.

  “Look hard at the photos, Nick. What the fuck do you know really about this broad?”

  Good question. Well, for starters she was great in bed. And she was the only woman he had ever come across who was good with a chainsaw. She was a bit of a butch-femme and he found that sexy. One time she had been mugged in broad daylight by two skinhead punks. Not only had she refused to give up her handbag after they had torn her clothes and knocked her to the ground, but she had gone after them in an unrelenting chase, even pinning down one of them until the cops arrived. Then she appeared in court as a witness and buried them with her testimony. He had watched her on television, standing on the steps of the courthouse, playing the part of the helpless little woman. Talk about going for the jugular.

  “Face the facts. She’s fucking you both ways, pal! Have you ever asked her just who the hell her political backers were? Ask her for her entire goddamn list of supporters!”

  No, he had never asked her that question. He had never even thought of it. Why? Because his dick got in the way, that’s why. What an asshole he was. He didn’t think he was one of those guys who couldn’t keep it in his pants, but he would have one hell of a time explaining that he wasn’t if his entire case went down.

  His eyes were watering. He could feel his knees buckle as he fell back into a chair. Thank God he was in the privacy of his office.

  Dubois’s voice whined on like a buzzsaw cutting through him. “I want you and me to ask ourselves this question: of the two hundred adjudicators on the bench who could hear this case, how come it gets assigned to her? I think the decision is already cooked, Nick. I think it’s already going positive, before one piece of evidence is heard. The fix is already in.”

  chapter twenty-one

  A difficult day on the bench. Several times she almost lost her professional composure, it was a relief to adjourn the case. To add to her troubles, she couldn’t reach Nick. Just wanting to hear his voice, she had left three messages on his home answering machine and called him at work four times. For some reason, she couldn’t get past his secretary. What was going on? Was this his way of dumping her?

  Maybe she was going crazy, but on three occasions she’d noticed an Asian man with a pockmarked face. He was standing right behind her in the coffee-shop this morning, as she grabbed a café latte to go. Was he following her or was it just her imagination working overtime? Maybe she was losing it. Too much stress. The Sun Sui case on top of a full docket of cases. Seventeen decisions to write, and dreadfully late on five of them. A new legal software package she had yet to master. A boss she didn’t like or trust. A man she adored but who was no longer speaking to her. Too many white vans everywhere. And a dead colleague whose killer was still at large. The last thing she wanted, at the end of the day, was her own company.

  She navigated the Volvo through downtown traffic. God, she hated this stretch
of Bank Street, bumper to bumper from the Hill all the way south to Sunnyside. But she had only herself to blame for the fact that Ellen lived in the Glebe. She had helped her friend find the duplex one Saturday afternoon, driving around the Glebe’s ten-mile radius of book stores, boutiques, outdoor cafés and renovated brick mansions. Taking a wrong turn, they had cruised down Fifth Avenue and had found themselves lost on a quiet cul-de-sac. The previous tenant was in the midst of hammering an Apartment for Rent sign on the lawn as they drove by. Ellen had just been complaining that she needed a bigger place, so they circled the block and stopped. Ellen had immediately fallen in love with the place. Grace suspected its charms had little to do with the size and layout of the rooms and more to do with the fact that the previous tenant was a disciple of Martha Stewart.

  The only thing the two of them differed on was their politics. Ellen was one of those feminists who in Grace’s opinion had fallen victim to a rigid feminist ideology. Grace did not see herself as a feminist. She liked to think that she did not suffer the sins of ideology. Rather, she preferred to look at the issues on a case-by-case basis. Ellen, however, had paid the price for her ideology as a feminist who believed that marriage and childbearing were the enemy of women’s liberation. She had lost out on the man she loved over the issue of children. Now, at forty-seven, she was haunted by her lost chance at motherhood. In the end, she became a victim of biology. Then last year, her body had further turned against her when she discovered that she had breast cancer. It was this disease that had cemented the bond between two women from different worlds. She had been there at the hospital when Ellen had gone in for surgery to remove the lump in her breast. When Grace’s marriage had collapsed, Ellen had been there for her.

  She parked in front of the building, a renovated three-storey Victorian house. Celtic music wafted through open windows, Ellen’s or maybe the tenant above. The planters she helped Ellen haul up two flights of stairs were now full of black-eyed susans, petunias and begonias from the farmers’ market. She rang the bell and was buzzed in. Grace double-locked the front door behind her. Picasso prints lined the stairs going up to Ellen’s flat.

  “Thanks for the dinner invitation. I was getting tired of my own cooking. And ordering in Chinese. And hanging out with myself.”

  “Sounds like my life,” said Ellen. She had taken two chilled wineglasses out of the fridge and was opening the bottle of South African white that Grace had brought.

  After thirstily knocking back half a glass, Grace turned her attention to the food. “Mmmm. Yum, yum.” She salivated at the pesto pasta chicken salad, and an earthenware dish of appetizers filled with potatoes, garbanzo beans, chorizo, and eggplant. She helped herself to a piece of chorizo and a leaf of radiccio from the wooden salad bowl.

  “Guess what I heard from one of the justices? You know the illegal campaign contribution scandal that’s been brewing?”

  Grace stopped eating and gave her undivided attention to her friend. “What’ve you heard?”

  “A man named Wa Sing was at the top of the witness list. You know him, don’t you? Not too well, I hope. He apparently contributed heavily to the government winning in the last election. There are even rumours that he was just a front man for some of that money, that it came from an unknown source.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. In a small voice, she asked, “Where did you hear that?”

  “I’m dating this guy who works as a researcher for the opposition. Adam says that several of those big contributors are under surveillance.” Ellen popped a morsel in her mouth.

  “Surveillance?” If Wa Sing had been under surveillance prior to leaving the country, did that mean that she was caught in the net as well? Could the white van be an unmarked police van? Nick had asked her about Wa Sing. Was that a test question? Did he know that she had lied to him about not knowing him? If it was a test, she had failed. Grace lost her appetite.

  Ellen sampled her own appetizers. Picking up a square of bruschetta, she said, “I heard Jean Cadeux on a radio interview this week. He announced that you’re presiding on the refugee case of that nightclub owner.”

  Grateful to change the subject, Grace said, “Yeah, I was forced to take that case. He leaned on me. Almost threatened me.”

  “Threatened? Can he do that?”

  “Well, he did.”

  “Too bad. I wouldn’t take the case. Too controversial. The public has swung way to the right. Some of them have a lynch-mob mentality.”

  “Don’t I know it,” said Grace, pouring herself another glass of wine. “If I grant, they’ll say I’m biased, too left wing. And if I say no, the Asian community will be royally ticked with me. I’ll be made into a modern-day version of Uncle Tom,” said Grace, eyeing the dish of chicken salad.

  “Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Great for your career, Grace, but don’t expect to win a lot of friends.”

  “I love this Middle Eastern stuff,” said Grace, pointing at the eggplant dish. “What’s it called?”

  “Babaghanoush. I made too much of it, so you’re going to have to eat lots of it,” ordered Ellen, setting out plates and utensils. “I’ve been reading cookbooks lately.”

  “Beats reading case files.”

  “Speaking of case files, yesterday we heard the appeal of a sex crime case. Tomorrow is the appeal case of that neo-Nazi group charged with defacing Jewish tombstones. Both highly controversial. Already the press are hounding us, wanting to know our verdict. I saw a clip of myself on the news. Grace, I looked really fat!”

  “I know what you mean,” Grace nodded sympathetically. “The camera can be very unkind. There’s nothing worse than coming home after a long day, wanting to veg on the couch with the remote, and seeing nothing but yourself on television, with a mug shot of the claimant in the upper right hand corner. God, I’m looking forward to the end of this case and it hasn’t even begun.”

  “Are you ready for the big day?”

  “No, I’m not. I’m very nervous. Ellen …” said Grace, looking at her friend. “I had contact with the claimant. I was introduced to him at a dinner party. It was just the one occasion, and we talked about nothing, just made chitchat. Last thing I need is to be accused of positive bias. That is, if by some weird stroke of fate I go positive on the case.”

  “One meeting?”

  Grace nodded.

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Ellen as she poured the rest of the marinade on the pork-chops and brushed the kebabs of zucchini and eggplant with olive oil.

  Grace reached for a piece of chorizio.

  Ellen continued, “If I were you I’d spend more time worrying about my appearance. You know. Hair, mascara. And use some eyeshadow, too.”

  “Ellen, that sounds so — not serious. So frivolous.”

  “After seeing myself on television, I’m giving you the best advice. Do you want to look like a dog on national television? Coast to coast?”

  “I hear you. I was thinking more about the Judge Ito factor.”

  “What does O.J. Simpson have to do with your case?”

  “I watched the O.J. trial and I couldn’t help thinking about poor Judge Ito. Sitting through nine hours of testimony in appropriate judicial repose, day in, day out. Can’t even run your fingers through your hair or slouch in your chair while hearing evidence. I don’t need that kind of scrutiny. The jury’s already out on the kind of decision I’m going to render. I don’t need to be judged on my looks and my judicial demeanour as well.”

  “I’ve never thought of it from that perspective,” said Ellen, handing her an I Luv New York booklet. “Want to go to New York next weekend? Take your mind off work, and all your worries.”

  “Speaking of worries,” said Grace. “Did you find anything out about that licence number I gave you?” She had managed to jot down the plate number of the white van she kept seeing, and had passed it to Ellen.

  “Right,” her friend said. “The creepo in the white va
n. My cop friend says it’s not in the system. It could be a phony plate or it could belong to an undercover cop. But, Grace, I really wouldn’t worry about it. There’re too many cars on the road with phony plates, and too many drivers with no car insurance, not to mention a gazillion white vans in this country.”

  “You’re probably right, but I can’t shake the feeling that I’m being followed,” said Grace.

  “Grace, that’s not a good feeling to have. You’ve been working flat out for the past year. When did you take holidays last?”

  Grace threw up her hands. “I don’t remember. Whose got time for holidays?”

  “We’re taking holidays. We’re going to drive down to New York. Hit Bloomingdale’s. Take in a few plays and art galleries. I hear there’s a great play on Broadway.”

  “Ellen, have you read the business pages? Our Canadian peso is worth sixty-seven American cents. We can’t go anywhere south at those prices. Remember the last time we went down to New York for the weekend? We spent three thousand apiece. And don’t forget that’s in U.S. dollars!”

  “But didn’t we have fun? Didn’t we get some fantastic clothes? Live for today. Stop penny-pinching for your tomorrows.”

  Grace sighed. “Maybe. After the case is over. End of September.”

  “Don’t let me down. I’ll call the travel agent tomorrow and book tickets.”

  So much for vacationing with Nick. Despite being a liberated woman, Grace wanted him to do the asking. What had happened to them? She hadn’t heard from him since their weekend in Montreal. “I’ll light the barbecue,” she said, carrying a tray of wine and glasses out onto the porch.

  Ellen followed, carrying plates of marinated chops and vegetable kebabs.

  After refilling their wine glasses, they swung back and forth on the loveseat glider, watching the street life below. Pigeons cooed from the rooftops of houses. Kids played hopscotch on the sidewalk. A gang of teenage boys wearing oversized jeans whipped down the street on skateboards. Lovers embraced on park benches a block away.