by Ian Hamilton
The cottage was on Lake Couchiching, near the town of Orillia, about an hour’s drive from Toronto’s northern suburbs and only fifteen minutes from the casino. She had found it online, surprised to find something that could give her the privacy she wanted and still be close to good restaurants and the services she was used to.
She worked down her email list, deleting most messages until she got to the part of her world that was ending its day. There were emails from Amanda Yee, her half-brother’s fiancée, in Hong Kong, and from May Ling Wong in Wuhan. Ava had met Amanda during the Macau affair and they had become friends. She was Jack Yee’s only child. Jack owned a Hong Kong trading operation that occasionally — something common enough for traders — ran into problems with suppliers or customers. Twice he had hired Uncle and Ava to get his money back. Twice they had succeeded, once saving his life in the process.
Ava hadn’t known that Amanda and Jack were related until after she had met Amanda as her half-brother’s fiancée. It had been a difficult introduction, made in the middle of a kidnapping and the financial fiasco that threatened her half-brother Michael’s business and the entire family’s well-being. But Amanda had been a rock throughout it all, earning Ava’s respect. In her email, Amanda was fretting about wedding dates and venues; friends or not, and respect or not, those were two subjects Ava had no interest in.
May Ling’s message was long and colourful. Ava had met May Ling as a client. She and her husband, Changxing, were the wealthiest couple in Hubei province, and among the wealthiest in China. They had hired Ava and Uncle to find the people who had sold them some fake Fauvist paintings and to retrieve their money. It wasn’t a simple job and had been made even more complicated when the Wongs decided they also wanted revenge. Lies were told, some vicious acts ensued, and the early relationship between Ava and May Ling devolved into mistrust and anger. But fences had been mended and May had been supportive and, indeed, integral to Ava’s success in Macau. The two women were now friends, and perhaps becoming more than just friends. May’s emails were chatty, full of news about her business and other things going on in her life. She asked questions, sought advice, but mainly wrote to Ava as if she were writing in a diary. The first few times that May became intensely personal, Ava had been taken aback. She didn’t need to know, she thought, about May’s fears, the details of her marriage and sex life. Then she became accustomed to May’s openness and even found herself — tentatively — sharing more of herself with May. They had not been and never would be physically intimate, but there was an emotional connection. May Ling, a Taoist, said it was qi — the life force — flowing between them.
About once a week May would phone. She was smart, tough, and funny and could buck up Ava’s spirits in no time. It was during one of those calls that May had asked Ava if she would be interested in joining her business. It was time she and her husband made some North American investments, she said, and they needed someone to spearhead the initiative.
“I wouldn’t be a very good employee,” Ava said.
“A partner, then,” May said.
“I have a partner, and I have a business.”
“Ava, you know that Uncle can’t keep doing this for much longer, and I can’t imagine you would want to do it without him.”
For ten years Ava and Uncle had been partners in the collection business. They had met when both were separately pursuing the same thief and had bonded almost at once. He was now in his late seventies or maybe his eighties — Ava didn’t know — and he had become more than a partner. He was a mentor, almost a grandfather, and the most important man in her life. That was the source of her dilemma. She was tired of the stresses of the job, fed up with the kind of people she had to pursue, and she was beginning to wonder how much longer her luck could hold out when it came to dodging bullets and knives.
As she mended, she had waited for the urge to get back to work to return. It hadn’t. She then began to ask herself if it was possible it never would.
During her recuperation Uncle had stayed in constant touch by phone. He didn’t discuss business or ask when she was coming back; his only concern was her health and her family and friends. He did talk about May Ling, whom he knew well. He had urged Ava to make up with her when their relationship went sour, and his judgement of May Ling’s character had proven to be correct.
“The woman has guanxi, influence, and could be a very powerful ally for you in the years ahead. You need to stay close to her,” he said during one call.
Ava didn’t know if Uncle knew about May’s offer, and she wasn’t about to tell him. “I have a business partner,” she said.
“Yes, one who is not going to be here forever.”
“I have a business partner,” she repeated.
“I am not suggesting otherwise,” he said.
Ava thought that over time she could grow as close to May Ling as she was to Uncle, the kind of closeness where trust is absolute and forgiveness is never necessary. The chance to do real business, to build a company, was an attractive proposition. Ava was an accountant with degrees from York University in Toronto and Babson College, just outside Boston, and she liked the idea of using her education for something other than locating and retrieving stolen money.
But no matter how she spun things, it all came down to one fact: she couldn’t leave Uncle. He loved her, she knew, and she realized that she was the daughter — or, more likely, granddaughter — he had never had. She loved him in return. Neither of them had ever mentioned the word love. Their relationship was built on things that were never said, and never needed to be said.
Ava finished her coffee and weighed the options of having another or starting her workout. At the beginning of her second week in the north, Ava had begun to exercise again. She started with just a morning walk, advanced to a walk/jog cycle, then a full jog, and now she was able to run some distance at close to her normal pace. Every second day she limited her run and instead went down to the lakeside to do bak mei drills in slow motion, as she had been taught. Only a handful of people in Canada practised this martial art. It was taught one-on-one, traditionally passed down from father to son, or in her case from teacher to student. It wasn’t pretty to watch but it was effective, designed to inflict the maximum possible damage. Ava had become adept at it.
“Ava, do you mind if I join you?”
The voice startled her. She looked up and saw her mother standing to one side with two cups in her hands.
“I made you another coffee,” Jennie Lee said.
“Thanks. I’m surprised to see you up this early.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Is something bothering you?”
Jennie passed a coffee to her daughter and then sat in the other Muskoka chair, ignoring its dampness, her eyes fixed on the lake. “I need a favour,” she said.
Jennie was close to sixty years old, but even without makeup and with her face lit by the morning sun, she looked like a woman in her forties. “What is it?” Ava said.
“I’d like you to drive me to the casino at three o’clock.”
“That’s early, Mummy. Maria doesn’t get in until five thirty.”
“I know, but I need you to talk to someone there.”
“Who?”
“Theresa Ng.”
“Who is Theresa Ng?”
Jennie Lee took a pack of du Maurier extra-mild king-size cigarettes from her housecoat pocket, lit one, and blew smoke towards the lake. “She is a baccarat dealer at Rama.”
“Why would I talk to a baccarat dealer?”
“She has a problem.”
“I’m not a counsellor.”
Jennie took two more long puffs and then threw the cigarette to the ground. “She has a money problem.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked her why she looked so troubled.”
Ava knew that her mother made friends as easily as other people changed clothes. There wasn’t a store she went into or a restaurant she ate at where
she didn’t ask the server or the sales associate what their name was and how they were doing.
“How does this involve me?” Ava said.
Jennie leaned her head against the back of the chair and then slowly turned towards her daughter. “Just because I never talk to you about what you do for a living doesn’t mean I don’t know.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really. I’ve always had suspicions that you didn’t make all that money you have by being a good accountant. I also found it strange that you work with Uncle, but I ignored all the rumours about his Triad connections by telling myself he’s an old man who’s moved on to other things. But any doubts I had were put to rest after you went to Hong Kong and Macau and saved Michael’s partner’s life, and their business.”
“Michael wasn’t in Macau.”
“Ava, please don’t treat me as if I’m an idiot or can’t handle the truth.”
Ava sipped her coffee and stared out at the water, which was dotted with people quietly fishing from canoes and small boats. The jet skiers usually invaded the lake after lunch and then departed before dinner, leaving the lake to the fishermen again until dusk. “Macau was hard on me emotionally as well as physically,” she said. “I don’t like talking about it.”
“Other people in the family, including Michael, have done enough talking for everyone to know what happened.”
“And I’m sure it’s been exaggerated.”
“What, you didn’t save the partner and the business?”
“I had help.”
Jennie waved her hand dismissively. “You led; we all know you did. When your father heard the story, he couldn’t handle his emotions. It was the first time I’ve seen him cry. And then I cried, because I knew you had not only saved Michael, you had saved the entire family. If you hadn’t recovered all that money, your father would have emptied his bank accounts to cover Michael’s losses. And then where would we be? His years of labour gone, and my security and that of the other wives and children completely at risk.”
“I did what I had to do.”
“You mean you did what you chose to do, and that’s why I’m so proud. When I was raising you and Marian, that was my prayer — that my girls would become women capable of being true to themselves.”
“Some days that’s harder to do than others,” Ava said. “When it is, I often think of you and how you have persevered.”
“Ava, you don’t have to —”
“I’m not. I mean it.”
“Well, it’s true that my relationship with your father has tested me. When I married him, I knew what I was getting into: the second wife of a man who wouldn’t leave his first. I thought I could handle it, but all of us being in Hong Kong was too much. So I moved us to Canada. That was my choice, Ava, not his. And once we were here, I re-established my marriage on a basis that suited me and was designed to look after you girls . . . I would have done anything to look after you girls.”
Ava reached over and touched her mother’s hand. “We know.”
“And your father and I have somehow made it work for more than thirty years.”
“I know it wasn’t easy.”
“No, it wasn’t, and it isn’t. I know what people, particularly non-Chinese, say and think about my so-called marriage. They don’t understand our culture and traditions, and in their eyes I’m sometimes a mistress and sometimes a whore. I just pretend I don’t hear them and I go about my business and my life, knowing that it is a life I chose and not one that was imposed on me.”
“We’re the same that way. Neither of us can stand being told what to do.”
“Your father sees that as a blessing in you and a curse in me,” Jennie said.
Ava closed her eyes. She wasn’t up for a discussion about her father or the complicated family he had created — her mother and sister and her alone in Canada; her father with his first wife and four sons in Hong Kong; and a third wife with two young children in Australia.
“This Theresa Ng, she’s a friend?” Ava said.
Her mother sipped her coffee and took out another cigarette. Ava saw her jaw relax. “By now she is.”
“And you say she has a money problem?”
“Yes, and I told her you were good at sorting out that kind of thing, so she asked me to see if you would talk to her.”
“Uncle and I don’t normally take on Canadian clients.”
“She’s Vietnamese Chinese.”
“But her problem is in Canada?”
“Yes, I think it is.”
“Well, there are other options she can pursue here. She could get a lawyer, a good accountant, even a local collection agency. This is a country with laws that actually work.”
“She wouldn’t feel comfortable with them. Besides, from what I can gather, the problem she has is complicated.”
“How so?”
“She’s vague about the details. She just shakes her head and moans every time she starts to talk about it.”
“Mummy, very honestly, I don’t think this is a job for me.”
Jennie Lee took a deep drag on her cigarette, and Ava saw her jaw muscles tighten again. “The thing is, I told her that you would talk to her.”
“I wish you hadn’t.”
“Well, I did, and it’s too late to undo it.”
“Why?”
“She wasn’t even scheduled to work today. She’s driving up from Mississauga for the sole reason of meeting with you.”
Ava sighed. “I wish you wouldn’t do this kind of thing.”
“I’m sorry, but all you have to do is listen to her and then point her in the right direction.”
Ava put her hands over her face and rubbed her eyes in frustration. “You cannot tell anyone again that I’ll meet with them. Uncle and I have our own way of operating, and I don’t freelance.”
“Does that mean you’ll drive me to the casino early?”
“Yes, I’ll drive you to the casino early.”
“Thank you. And you will take the time to speak to Theresa?”
“Yes, I’ll talk to the woman, but that’s all. You didn’t promise anything else, I hope.”
“No.”
“Good. Now, how large is the problem this baccarat dealer has?”
“Between three and thirty million dollars.”
“What?”
“Like I said, she’s vague about the details.”
( 2 )
The casino parking lot was getting full already, and by six it would be jammed for the long weekend. “Go around to the side. I told Theresa we’d meet her near the bus drop-off area.”
There wasn’t a vacant spot to be seen, and cars were circling like vultures. Ava joined the carousel, beginning to get irritated at her mother’s randomness. “I’m going to wait five more minutes before I drop you off and leave,” she said.
Jennie Lee kept her attention on the front of the casino, pointedly ignoring her daughter.
“Did you hear me?”
“There she is,” her mother said. “The short woman in jeans and a red blouse.”
Ava drove as close as she could to the casino entrance and stopped the car. Jennie opened her door and ran over to Theresa. They chatted for a minute, Jennie motioning to go inside the building, Theresa shaking her head. The two of them walked back to the car. Jennie climbed into the front seat, Theresa into the back.
“Theresa says she can’t talk to us inside the casino. Employees aren’t allowed to mingle with customers,” Jennie said. “There’s a Tim Hortons coffee shop on Highway 12 just before Rama Road. Why don’t we go there?”
Ava tried to contain herself. If Theresa knew they couldn’t talk in the casino, why ask them to meet her there? Why not go directly to Tim Hortons? And second, her mother knew she didn’t like Tim Hortons; her choosing it was her way of making Ava pay for being grumpy in the parking lot.
“I’m so sorry to put you to this trouble,” Theresa Ng said.
Ava looked back at Theresa’s round face: pale
lips; no makeup; hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, highlighting eyes that were nervous and timid. The woman smiled, flashing beautiful white teeth, and her right hand tugged at the bottom of her red silk blouse.
“No problem,” Ava said.
Tim Hortons was peculiarly Canadian, like curling and like donning shorts as soon as the spring temperature reached ten degrees Celsius. The country was in love with the chain, a fact reinforced when her Audi A6 came within sight of the store on Highway 12. There was a line outside the drive-through window that snaked almost all the way to the main road. This was hardly a phenomenon; it was probably happening at every Tim Hortons in Canada at that very minute.
She found a space in the crowded parking lot. She got out of the car and walked quickly to the coffee shop, her mother and Theresa trailing behind, deep in conversation. Ava could hear Theresa apologizing to Jennie for putting her to all this trouble. The apologies were misdirected, Ava thought, but they did seem sincere, and the woman seemed nice enough.
Theresa insisted on paying for Ava’s bottle of water and Jennie’s tea. They found a table at the back of the shop and wiped off doughnut crumbs and splashes of coffee with a napkin.
“Theresa is Vietnamese Chinese; her mother is originally from Shanghai,” Jennie began. “They came here in the 1970s when the communists invaded the south — she, her mother, and three sisters.”
“My two brothers came later,” Theresa said.
Jennie said, “They are all Catholic, like us.”
Catholic and part Shanghainese. Little wonder my mother wants to help, Ava thought.
“We all live in Mississauga, on the same street,” Theresa said. “At first we lived in the same house, my sisters, my mother, and me. We all got jobs, paid off the house, and then bought another one, which my older sister moved into with her new husband. When we got that one paid off, we bought another, and so on and so on. We now own six houses on the street. Everyone is close by, so it’s perfect.”