Live Bait

by Ted Wood

  "And this protection, what did it entail?" I knew the information might be painful but I had to know.

  "He helped me to find this apartment and to find work in a law office. I was trained, in Hong Kong, and Mr. Willis knew a lawyer here. He said Mr. Straight owed him a favor." She was looking at me calmly, there was no deception in her eyes and as we stood, holding hands, I felt more peace than I have known since the month in my life when I was with Li in Saigon.

  "Su. I have to ask this, forgive me for it, but it's important. Were you under any obligation to Willis?"

  She gave a tiny frown and I expanded the question as far as I was prepared to. "Any sexual obligations."

  She shook her head, puzzled. "Not at all. That is why my father asked him to look after me. He does not . . ." she paused and waved awkwardly. "He does not get excited over women. He prefers young men."

  I had a sudden recollection of the looks that had passed between Willis and Kennie in the construction site shack. They had been charged with reciprocal power and fear, I thought. But perhaps Kennie, the jailhouse victim, and Willis, the strutter, had a relationship going already. It could have been. But a more important question was still unanswered. "What happened this morning? Can you tell me now?"

  She stiffened and let go of my hand, moving into the kitchen. I did not follow, I can tell when people need space. She spoke at last, again it was over her shoulder, in a voice so low I could hardly hear it. "Today it was different. He was excited. He said so. After he had . . ." she paused and waved one hand low at her side, a gesture of defeat. "Afterwards he said that it was not bad, perhaps he had found a new thing."

  My fists clenched and unclenched. I wished I hadn't pulled that punch at Willis. I wanted to go back to the hospital and pound his face, as I had once wanted to track down the man who killed Li and kill him, over and over again.

  Su turned and gave me a tiny smile. "Sit," she commanded, "I will bring the tea."

  I sat, staring sightlessly at the screen across the other side of the room. A guy I knew when I was first a policeman in Toronto was a Tai Chi expert and he taught me the secret of breath control, for inner peace. At the time, just back from Nam and with the anger over Li's death still burning in my memory, I had thought him naive. But, over a few nights in the patrol car, I had practiced with him and found it worked. Now I tried it, slowing my breathing down and counting each breath with an inner mantra. I am breathing in, in tranquillity. I am breathing out, in tranquillity.

  When Su joined me, carrying the tray, I was calm again. She sat on a low stool, across the little table from me and poured tea into two tiny cups. She handed one to me and I raised it to my lips in the same instant that the window shattered.

  I dropped the cup and sprang to my feet, batting Su behind me with one flick of my left hand. And then Elmer Svensen reached through the broken pane, opened the casement and let himself in off the fire-escape.

  "Hold it right there," he said, and his service revolver was rock steady in his hand.

  "Listen Elmer, it won't wash. Give it up right now," I told him but he just laughed, the same square-mouthed, mirthless laugh I had seen every time we met.

  "You stupid sonofabitch," he said. "When are you gonna wise up. I got no beef with you, it's her that's all the trouble. One sip of that witches brew and you'd've been tits up in the bay."

  "What the hell are you talking about? Are you drunk?" I looked back at Su who was straightening herself, slowly. She was as bewildered as I was.

  "Take a look in the kitchen, behind the spices on the lower shelf of the rack. You'll find the bottle that I'm taking with me down to forensic," Svensen said. He was beaming happily and I could detect no trace of booze in the air around him.

  I looked at Su, and back at Svensen, and turned towards the kitchen just as the bedroom door opened and a man charged me.

  I reacted automatically, side stepping and slamming out a straight right hand that caught him high in the chest. He reeled back and I jumped for him as I heard Svensen swear behind me. My man fell on his back, bracing to kick me away. But I stood back, out of range of his feet, grabbed a wooden chest from the table top next to me and slammed it down at his face. As he covered himself, catching it, I kicked hard at the side of the right knee. He howled and I dived and smothered him, lying over him, cracking his head side to side with elbow smashes to the chin. It took three before he quit struggling and then the bullet slammed past me into the floor a foot from my back.

  Without looking I rolled sideways, towards the bullet, figuring the next one would correct on the other side, and scrambled to my feet. Su was standing over Svensen who was holding his stomach, retching. She had his service revolver pointed at my head. I saw the hammer go back as she pulled the trigger and I dived under the muzzle, knocking her feet from under her and bringing her down in a tangle on top of me. She kicked and as I turned face up to grapple with her she beat at my head with the pistol but I didn't hesitate. I sank a solid punch in under her ribs and she went limp.

  I turned to Svensen. He was dead white. "I'll call the ambulance."

  "Later," he whispered. "Cuff that bitch first. She's a black belt in kung fu."

  I reached around his belt for the handcuffs and snapped them on Su's wrists. She was powerless, winded, but the hatred in her eyes was vivid enough to etch metal.

  Then I reached for the phone, calling emergency for an ambulance and police backup. When I turned back, Svensen was looking a little less ghost-like.

  "Damn you, Reid Bennett," he said. "Am I never going to get straight with you?" But he was grinning.

  Chapter 30

  I had hardly hung up the phone before the knock came at the door. I was cagey enough to take Svensen's gun with me when I answered it, keeping the piece out of sight behind my back but ready to shoot first if I had to.

  Outside I found the woman who had come to Louise's house that morning. I waved her in, using the hand with the gun. "I've been wanting to talk to you, lady. Step inside and tell me just who the hell you really are."

  She laughed, then whisked out an ID card. "Policewoman Harris, Metropolitan Toronto police," she said. "Elmer's my partner. We're in Intelligence."

  "Intelligence?" I shot a look around at Elmer who was managing a weak grin. "So that's why you were hanging around, every which way I turned on this case. You're working on organized crime."

  Elmer nodded, and spoke, painfully. "Investigating the Triads. That's what bugged me about you. I figured you'd spent time in Nam, you had to be part of the operation. It made me sad to think my ex-partner was a grifter."

  I shook my head a couple of times. Then, acting automatically, we both stuck out our right hands and shook like a pair of kids who know they've been dumb. "Once a copper, always a copper," I said. "Sorry I got you worried, Elmer."

  "Sorry I didn't trust you," he said.

  The policewoman was looking around the apartment. "And I'm sorry about giving you that line of bull this morning. I wanted to get a bug on your telephone. It's not kosher, but I figured you wouldn't mind. It was for your own good so we could keep tabs on you if these guys sucked you in with some story." I started to say something but she wasn't listening. She was bending down to get a clear look at the man I had stopped.

  "Lee Hop," she said to Svensen. "Right again, Elmer. It's Mr. Nouveau Riche Chinatown himself."

  Svensen sniffed. "I always knew he was Triad. Sonofagun arrives from Hong Kong and takes over Chinatown in a year. I knew he was bad." Moving painfully he stood up and went over to Lee who was lying dazed, trying to move his jaw. I think it was unhinged from my elbow work and he was learning something new about injuries. I hoped it would discourage him from getting back into the pain business.

  Elmer administered the caution, on a charge of conspiracy to murder me, and then sang the new Charter of Rights song for him and Lee ignored both and went on counting his teeth so Elmer did the same for Yin Su who lashed out at him with her foot. Then we all sat and waited for th
e ambulance.

  More detectives arrived, but Policewoman Harris took charge of the situation like a veteran, handcuffing herself to Yin Su for the ride to Headquarters. I went with them and she gave me the rest of the story on the way. It wasn't what I wanted to hear, but I've been hit with bad news before so I said nothing.

  Lee Hop was from Hong Kong. He'd been a sergeant in the police there, and was the kingpin of the local Triad. Yin Su was his mistress.

  Somehow that hurt me worse because she was so classically Chinese than it would have if she'd been some gum-snapping blonde. It didn't dim any of the emotion I felt for her, it just dulled the whole way I looked at life. In a different way I felt as bereaved as I had done over the death of Soon Li. But I'm older now and my heart isn't on my sleeve any more so it wasn't so hard to cover up. It wasn't her I'd seen die, just my outdated illusions. There are people around who still find that kind of action a real hoot.

  Back at Headquarters for what they promised was my final questioning, everyone was kind to me and didn't step on my soul any more than was absolutely necessary. It took an hour and at last I was free. I drove home and poured myself a long shot of Black Velvet and watched some TV movie until dawn. Why, it was practically painless. Until I woke up again, anyway.

  Chapter 31

  The next morning I called to tell Louise she could move back into her house again, then spent the day doing chores and watching the TV and reading the papers when they came in, with photographs of some of the people in the case. Yin Su looked like a princess from some Asian legend. And Elmer and his partner both looked a credit to the basic blue they wore.

  I didn't think anything of all this, but that evening over dinner out with Louise and her kids she said, "Why don't you have a barbecue for everyone? It would be nice to see them all socially now this case is closed." Innocence itself, nobody would have known she has a black belt in match-making.

  The following Saturday evening saw me with a barbecue fork in one hand and an open Labatt's Classic in the other, standing over the steaks. Fullwell was there with his wife, Barbara, Irv Goodman, with his arm in a sling, along with his wife, Dianne, who was exchanging crab dip recipes with Louise. Elmer Svensen was there, holding a glass of orange juice.

  Fullwell had a beer on the go and we were all standing around the barbecue while Elmer filled us in. I couldn't tell if he was a touch high already, or whether he had recaptured the good spirits he used to have back before he was jumped that time. Anyway, he was holding forth.

  "It's coming out, a bit at a time as we talk to all these clowns, but the pattern seems to be that Lee Hop came over from Hong Kong a couple of years ago. He had papers, they could have been phony, but the amount of clout those Triad guys have at home, they could be real. Anyway, he had no problem getting into Canada. And with the money he had along, he soon finagled his way into being the big wheel in Chinatown."

  "He took over the restaurant right then?" Fullwell asked. "I remember that place has been there for years."

  "Yeah, seems he made the owner an offer he couldn't refuse," Elmer said and we all laughed. "Anyway, there he is, all legitimate and starting to assemble a gang of roughs to enforce the Triad extortion nonsense here in town."

  Goldman said, "That must've been kept pretty quiet, I never heard a thing about it, except at work, off the record."

  "That's because we were on top of it," Elmer said with a touch of real pride. "There were incidents, remember, suddenly there were murders happening in Chinatown. One guy found with his throat cut down there on Spadina Avenue. And that club shooting."

  Louise chimed in then. "I remember that one. Some men were robbing the place. They shot the owner and then an off duty policeman saw them and nailed one of them."

  "Shot him dead," Elmer said cheerfully. "Only he wasn't off duty, he was one of our guys, acting innocent, just happened to be there on cue. We knew there was going to be trouble, a Triad robbery, but we nipped that one in the bud." He stopped and took a sip of his orange juice, a small one. I liked that. He didn't have the driving thirst for any fluids that you find in a lot of exboozers. I figured he might stay dry.

  I pitched in a question, to keep things rolling. "Where did Willis fit in? Was he part of Lee's gang, what?"

  Elmer nodded, glad of the chance to hold center stage. "That's the way it looks. He was inspector at the station in Hong Kong where Lee was a desk sergeant. That was the way it worked—the white guy had the rank, the Chinese had the real power. Anyway, the pair of them quit Hong Kong at the same time and came to Canada. Maybe Willis was going to go legit. He didn't really need any more money. He'd made a pile in graft in the Colony. But Lee got in touch with him and suggested a way to make some extra money."

  "Extorting money from Hong Kong people coming to Canada?" I asked, turning the steaks.

  "Right," Elmer said, finishing his juice with something like relief. "Lee Hop knew he had to break out of the Chinatown circuit if he was going to make the real money, the way the Mafia makes money. So he had some kind of a grip on Willis. It could have been just the old Hong Kong connection, but we figure it was Willis's thing for guys that made him vulnerable. Sure it's legal but a security firm executive doesn't want to be known as a fairy. And Willis liked working Security, it gave him a chance to set up robberies."

  "Is that why Willis was tied in with Tony Caporetto? or did Lee set that up?" Fullwell asked, finishing his beer and reaching down for another from the cooler beside the table. "Anybody else?" he asked. I nodded and he looked at Elmer's glass, which was empty. "How about you Elmer, want to switch?"

  I watched Elmer but he didn't even hesitate. "Not me." He checked his watch. "I had my last drink three days and eight hours ago, a mouthful of smooth cognac that tasted lousy when the boy scout here came back into the room." He waved his empty glass in my direction. "You did me a favor, Reid."

  "You did it yourself, Elmer." I winked at him. "Good luck with the new routine."

  He grinned, awkwardly. "Yeah, well so far, no pain. And I've already joined AA so we'll take it one day at a time."

  I raised my beer to him and he winked. We went back a long way and it was good to see him on the rails again. He turned to Louise, "How's the juice jug holding out, Louise?"

  "Stay right there. I'll bring it out," she said. She turned away and I gave Fullwell the fork, asked him to turn the steaks while I got some water to splash on the coals, and followed her in. I caught up to her in the kitchen, getting the juice. "You've got a fan," I told her.

  She looked up and beamed. "I noticed and I'm glad. He's kind of cute. But the real reason I suggested this was to bring his partner over here."

  I groaned. "When will you give up? I've told you before, I'll screw up my own life without help, thanks."

  She laughed. "I took the trouble to read up on her in the Star. She's a university graduate, master marksperson, if that's the term, and she lives with her widowed mother."

  "Never mind lining me up, I have my dog to give me all the devotion I need," I told her. "You just look around for a replacement for that horse's neck who walked out on you."

  "Bossy," she said and got more juice concentrate out of the freezer.

  I went back out with water in a beer bottle to splash on the blaze that had sprung up around my steaks. Elmer was going on with his tale.

  "The way I read it, Willis got antsy. He wanted a piece of the action for himself. They'd given him the big house and all the Chinese boys he could handle, but he wanted the kind of clout he'd had in. Hong Kong. So he got connected with Tony and was going to get into the more legitimate kind of crime—straight, honest-to-God theft from warehouses, he liked that."

  "Well why was Tony killed?" Goodman finished his own beer but shook his head when I offered him another. "I've had two already," he said.

  Elmer was enjoying himself. Untangling a case is the best part of it. When all the facts are known, you're still not sure how they fit, and finding the connections is often the key to getting
the conviction. "They all got tangled up in a web of politics," he said. "Willis advised Lee to do his enforcing with local hoods, to keep the kung fu crowd out of it. He figured that would be something the Hong Kong people couldn't handle. They were dealing with Cy Straight, a Westerner. Their trouble was coming from Westernstyle heavies. They wouldn't know where to put the pressure on to stop the problem. It was a good move."

  "Right, so Willis asked Tony to get him some heavies. Which he did. The only thing was, Tony got to think he was important. He started getting greedy for more of the action. So Willis had to put him away. The only question was, how to do it without leaving any mess."

  Elmer nodded. "That's why Willis set up the phony investigation. He didn't want the police in on it. And when he heard you had killed a couple of guys barehanded, he figured he could kill Tony and get you suspected of the murder."

  Fullwell finished one of his cigarillos and was about to drop it on to the charcoal when he saw me looking alarmed. "Ooops. Sorry about that." He walked to the flower plot and forced the butt out of sight in the dirt. When he came back he said, "It all makes sense. He got Kennie to give you Tony's name, looking reluctant. We chased Tony and there was that fight. It established both contact and some kind of motive for Tony's killing when it happened later."

  Elmer nodded, "I think that's right. But before that could happen, Tony got cute. He figured it should be him who was getting paid by the Hong Kong companies. So he got smart, he thought, and told you about Cy Straight."

  Dianne Goodman tutted. "I'll see if Louise needs a hand in the kitchen. This is too complicated for me."

  She left and Irv immediately helped himself to another beer. "The way I see it, Reid, he figured you would pressure Cy Straight right out of the game and leave a neat little space for him to fit into, collecting those enforcement payments from Hong Kong."

  The coals were cooling and I gave the steaks a final flip.