by Ian Hamilton
As Theresa recited the number, Ava couldn’t help thinking about one of the maxims of the great American community organizer Saul Alinsky: If you don’t make a decision, someone else will make it for you. She had procrastinated, tried to fob off the decision onto Uncle, and in the end had been caught up in other people’s expectations. Alinsky had been writing about Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago, caught between his lover, Lara, and his wife, Tonya. He couldn’t decide which woman to live with — Too bad he wasn’t Chinese, Ava thought. He could have had both — and as he rode from Lara’s house back to Tonya’s, filled with doubt and guilt, a Red Army patrol burst from the woods and took him away to serve for years as their surgeon. If he’d made up his mind, Alinsky said, his life would have been entirely different. Ava believed that. Normally, if she was guilty of anything, it was of being too decisive. Now Theresa had turned into the Red Army.
“How many people will be there?” Ava asked.
“At least forty, maybe more.”
“How many speak and understand English?”
“Some.”
“I’ll need someone to translate. I don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”
“The restaurant owner is good.”
Ava had a copy of their standard contract on her computer but had no idea how many copies she would have to bring. “Theresa, I want one person signing for each family, for each group, so how many of those will there be?”
“At least the twelve I mentioned.”
“Okay, I’ll bring twenty contracts just in case.”
Ava checked her watch and wondered if she should call Uncle, then decided not to. Better to wait until she saw exactly how much money they would be chasing.
( 6 )
She spent the early part of the afternoon getting organized for the meeting. All that really involved was printing up the contracts and going through her closet, pulling out the assortment of skirts, slacks, and shirts she wore for business. They hadn’t seen daylight in months. She tried some on and to her surprise found that the skirts and slacks were a bit loose. The shirts, a wide selection mainly from Brooks Brothers, all with French cuffs, fit as snugly as before. Ava had large breasts for a Chinese woman and wasn’t shy about making that plain to see.
She laid out a black skirt that came to the middle of the knee and a white linen shirt with a modified Italian collar. Then she looked at the time. She had hours to kill before she had to drive to Mississauga. Her bak mei teacher worked out of a house just north of her condo and just west of Avenue Road. He had only two students of the art, her and Derek. He made his real living teaching other martial arts to large evening classes. Derek and Ava did their training separately — bak mei is always taught one-on-one — and when she was in the city they coordinated their hours. They didn’t have to call Grandmaster Tang. The afternoons were always open, and he was nearly always there and happy to see either of them.
Ava decided to forego calling Derek. It was only a short walk to the house, and if Tang wasn’t there or Derek was, she could head back home. She had started taking martial arts when she was in her early teens, and had almost immediately shown ability. She was quick, agile, and fearless, and she loved to practise. In a matter of months she was so far ahead of everyone in her class of fellow teens that she was moved up to train with the adults. After two years she was at a level that almost equalled her teacher’s. That’s when he pulled her aside and asked if she was interested in learning bak mei. Ever since then she had been making the trek to the house in Toronto to learn from Grandmaster Tang.
Bak mei is almost the perfect martial art for a woman. The hand movements are quick, light, and short, snapping with tension at their fullest extent, where the energy is released. It doesn’t take a lot of physical strength to be effective. Bak mei attacks are meant to do damage. They are directed at sensitive areas of the body, such as the ears, eyes, throat, underarms, sides, stomach, and groin. Kicks are aimed low, hardly ever above the waist.
It hadn’t come completely easily to Ava. Derek was probably a more natural student, but she had persevered. And although she couldn’t match his power, her lightning-quick reflexes and her ability to attack weak spots with uncanny accuracy made her formidable.
The Grandmaster lived in an anonymous two-storey brick house. He had no reason to advertise his presence to the neighbourhood or to martial arts students. Anyone in Toronto who was the least bit serious about the arts knew who he was and where he was.
Ava rang the buzzer at the windowed front door. If he was in, he’d answer. She waited for close to a minute before she saw him coming down the stairs. She had no idea how old he was, maybe in his mid-fifties, but his usual costume of jeans and a white T-shirt revealed the body of a twenty-year-old. He smiled when he saw her and Ava gave him a little wave. Tang opened the door and then bowed his head ever so slightly. “Welcome home,” he said.
They worked out for two hours, focusing on all of the core forms. On her own she tended to focus on the panther, the snake, and sometimes the crane. Tang spent close to half an hour on the dragon, and then another long stint on the tiger. He knew her tendencies and he knew her weaknesses, and he saw no reason not to strive for perfection. Ava thrived on the challenge.
It was close to five o’clock when she returned to the condo, her entire body feeling as supple as a rubber band. She showered quickly and dressed. Up north at the cottage, not only had she never dressed in anything the least bit formal, she hadn’t worn a single piece of jewellery. Now her Cartier Tank Française watch came out of its case. She fastened the gold crucifix around her neck and then went through her collection of cufflinks, choosing the green jade pair she’d bought in Beijing. Finally she brushed back her shoulder-length hair, jet black and fine as silk, and secured it with an ivory chignon pin. Ava had a large collection of clasps, combs, and barrettes, but the ivory pin had become a good luck charm; she wasn’t sure she could ever go on a job without it.
She called downstairs for her car. In normal traffic, Mississauga was no more than thirty minutes away, but it was five thirty and she knew the Gardiner Expressway would be packed.
It took her thirty minutes to edge her way down University Avenue to get to the Gardiner, and then a full forty-five minutes of stop-and-go traffic as she headed west on the Queen Elizabeth Highway, with Lake Ontario on her left. When she got to Hurontario, she turned north.
Mississauga, a city of half a million, bordered on metropolitan Toronto. It was a big suburban sprawl of housing developments, apartment buildings, strip malls, and the occasional larger shopping centre. The restaurant was only a kilometre north of the QEW and was, no surprise, in a strip mall.
Ava gathered the stack of contracts and tucked them under her arm. She was ten minutes early but Theresa was there already, standing at the front door. She rushed over to Ava and said, “Let me help you with those.”
As Ava followed her into the restaurant, the aromas of cilantro and nuoc mam wafted through the door. Theresa walked towards the back. There were maybe twelve people in the place, and Ava began to think Theresa had misled her about the turnout. Then she heard the murmur of voices from behind a closed door. “Everyone is here already,” Theresa said as she opened it.
There were about sixty people, sitting in four rows. The room went instantly quiet as the two women entered, every eye focused on Ava.
“I have to say I’m surprised you got so many people, and so quickly.”
“They’re desperate now. They have nowhere else to turn — that’s what my brother and I told them.”
Theresa walked to a table at the front with two chairs and put down the contracts. A tall, thin man with steel-grey hair got up from his seat in the front row and joined them. “This is Eddie Trinh,” Theresa said. “He owns the restaurant and will act as translator.”
Trinh shook her hand and then sat at the table, his arms folded across his chest. Ava remained standing as she looked at the assembly. Most of them were middle-aged or old
er, most likely boat people or the children of boat people — good, hard-working immigrants with old-fashioned Asian values.
“I’ll speak slowly and try not to say too much at once,” she said to Trinh. “It’s really important that everything be explained in full, so if I go too fast or you don’t understand something, please let me know right away.”
He nodded and then stood beside her.
“Good evening, my name is Ava Lee,” she began. She spoke for just under half an hour, explaining who she and Uncle were and how their company operated. She took one of the contracts and went through it page by page. When she mentioned the thirty percent recovery fee, she saw people glancing at one another. She went into great detail about how she and Uncle would bear the cost of expenses, regardless of the outcome.
“Now, one last thing,” she said. “If we take this job you have to understand that we work quietly and discreetly. None of you can contact us, and we won’t contact any of you unless there is something substantial to report or we need more information. If either of those situations arises, I’ll call Theresa Ng and she will be the go-between. So don’t expect any progress reports and don’t expect success right away. These things often take a lot of time, so we don’t make any promises in terms of job duration or outcome. We will do the best we can as fast as we can, but the reality is that sometimes we fail. Is there anyone here who can’t accept that?”
Ava looked out at a wall of blank faces. “Okay, then, let’s get the contracts signed. One person per family, and I need to see the last financial statement you received from the Emerald Lion Fund. We’ll put that amount in the contract and then you will sign two copies, with your name, address, and phone number. I’ll sign the contract for my company. You get one copy, I get the other. So if you could, please come up here one at a time.” Ava sat behind the table and took her Mont Blanc pen from her bag.
Trinh and Theresa organized a line along one wall. “I’ll go first,” Theresa said.
One by one, seventeen people came to the table and handed Ava a statement with a green lion logo and a slip of paper with their bank information on it. She recorded the information in her notebook, and after each contract was signed she wrote the person’s family name and the amount owed in a running tally. By the tenth contract she was already over fifteen million dollars. After the last one was signed, the total was thirty-two million. Ava was beginning to realize that Lam Van Dinh had probably scammed a hell of a lot more money than had been reported.
When she had the last signature, Ava gathered together her copies of the contracts and tucked them into her Chanel bag. People were lingering, chatting among themselves and glancing at Ava. She imagined they had all kinds of questions, but she knew most of them would be hypothetical, and she wasn’t in the mood for conjecture.
It was past eight o’clock when she left the pho restaurant. Theresa and Eddie Trinh walked her to the door. She saw in their faces that they had questions too, or at least the two questions that every client had: How long is this going to take? How much do you think you can get back?
“I meant what I said in there,” Ava said. “I have no idea if I’ll be able to find Lam, or, if I do, if he’ll have any money, or, if he has, how much I can get back. I could be on this for weeks.”
Trinh began to speak but Theresa interrupted him. “Thank you, Ava. I’m sure, if something important happens, you’ll call.”
“Yes, if something important happens,” Ava said. “One thing I would like to know is the name of the friend of your brother who is the friend of Lam — the one who got you into this mess.”
“Lac, Joey Lac.”
“How can I reach him?”
Theresa paused. “I’m not sure he’ll talk to you.”
“Why not?”
Another, longer pause. “When the troubles began, my brother went to see him and told him he had to do something for us, and for other friends we recommended the fund to. He said he would try, and maybe he did, but nothing happened. My brother got very angry with him and they had words and, well, my brother hit him. He hasn’t heard from Joey since.”
“Theresa, I need you to call your brother and I need your brother to call or go to see Joey Lac and make some kind of peace. It’s important that I meet with him. Give my phone number to your brother and ask him to pass it along to Lac. I’d like to get together with him right away.”
“Maybe I should call him myself.”
“If you think that’s best.”
“I do.”
“Okay, but when you talk to him, please be persistent. I’ll meet him anytime at all, and I don’t care where.”
( 7 )
The drive back to the city was quick, and by nine o’clock Ava was sitting in the Italian restaurant a few steps from her condo, digging into a dish of linguine with rapini and portobello mushrooms. Her black Moleskine notebook was open on the table, and between bites she began to make a list of the things she wanted to do the following day. She kept a separate notebook for every job she undertook. In it she recorded names, numbers, dates, summaries of conversations, questions to be asked, questions answered, and her thoughts as the case unfolded. When the job was done, the notebook was put in a safety deposit box at her local bank. Ava’s friends teased her for being so old-fashioned, but there was something about putting pen to paper that cemented memories and sparked her imagination. It had been three months between notebooks. And as she wrote, the first stirrings of anticipation began to form. Maybe I’ve missed working after all, she thought.
She phoned Uncle’s apartment and Lourdes answered. “Is he out?” Ava asked.
“No, he’s still in bed.”
Ava looked at her watch. When did Uncle ever sleep this late? “Have him call me as soon as he can,” she said.
She had finished the linguine and was picking at the remnants of a bowl of mixed olives when Uncle’s Hong Kong number flashed on her phone screen. “Wei,” she said, mimicking his usual response.
“You sound happy,” he said.
“We have a job, I guess. We have seventeen clients who’ve lost a combined thirty-two million Canadian dollars.”
“Good, good. It is nice to be back at work again. I was beginning to wonder if you were ready to retire before me.”
“Never,” she said, knowing full well he had sensed her uncertainty.
“When do you start?”
“Right away. I have things I need to do here tomorrow. And I have a Vietnamese licence plate number I need you to track for me.”
“Give it to me.”
She read him the number, then said, “How are our contacts in Ho Chi Minh City?”
“Excellent.”
“So this shouldn’t take too long?”
“One phone call, perhaps two, that is all.”
“And if I need to go there?”
“You will have all the help you need. We have some old colleagues there who are still active, and they have friends with the police and the army.”
“Then, in addition to the licence plate, could you ask them to come up with whatever they can on a Lam Van Dinh? He was spotted about a week ago in Ho Chi Minh, so there must be a record of his entering the country sometime in the past six months. He would have had to put his local address on the customs entry form. It could be entirely bogus, of course, but you never know.”
“I will look after it.”
“Thanks.”
He paused, then said slowly, “Ava, I really was worried that you might have had enough of our life. I would not have blamed you if you had gone to work with May Ling.”
How does he know about May? Ava thought, though the fact that he had mentioned it surprised her more than the fact that he knew about it. “I thought about it,” she said.
“And so you should have.”
“I guess I’m just not ready for that kind of change.”
He paused again and she felt he wanted to add something. Instead he simply said, “I’ll call you when I have the informatio
n.”
It was a cool night, and Ava found herself shivering as she walked back to the condo. It wasn’t her imagination anymore — summer was gone.
She phoned Maria to chat but just got her voicemail. She left a message, then turned on the television and found a Chinese soap opera set in the seventeenth-century Ching Dynasty. It was a guilty pleasure of hers. Her mother had been watching this soap for more than twenty years, and it had somehow caught and held Ava’s interest. The court intrigue was timeless. This was the soap her mother had most missed when they were at the lake, and although Ava was loath to admit it, she had kind of missed it too.
The show was so predictable that Ava was able to get caught up in ten minutes, even after a two-month absence. As it turned out, it was a marathon night, and Ava was into her third episode when her cellphone rang, just as the provincial governor was trying to explain to his distraught and angry wife why a young woman had been seen draped around his neck. “Where were you?” she said, thinking it was Maria.
“Wei,” Uncle said.
“Ah, Uncle, I was expecting another caller.”
“Do you want me to call back?”
“No, of course not.”
“I have the information on the car and on Lam.”
“Already? It’s been less than three hours.”
“I told you we had good contacts in Ho Chi Minh.”
“Obviously.”
“The car generated quite a bit of interest from that end.”
“How so?”
“It is registered to Lam Duc Dinh.”
“A relation?”
“Yes, his older brother . . . and perhaps the leading neurosurgeon in Vietnam.”
“That’s interesting.”
“Our friends think so. They are very curious why I would be asking about a car owned by such a distinguished man.”
“And you told them?”
“I explained that our main interest was the brother.”
“Did they have anything on him?”
“He landed in Ho Chi Minh about five months ago, and from all accounts he is staying at his brother’s house.”