The Dark Root

by Mayor, Archer

  He looked up at the windows above us, even backing up into the street slightly to get a better view. They were as lifeless as before. “They are watching us now.” He shook his head and resumed walking.

  “So how do you get your information?” I asked.

  “People we arrest. Not because they talk to us, but because they brag. Their machismo is very big, and we use it to help us. Sometimes, if we can make them feel small, they tell us things to make themselves bigger. Sometimes they are lies, but if we get two stories that are the same, then we know we have something. We have tried other methods—wiretapping, intercepting their mail—but they change dialects and write in code. And putting one of our Asian officers undercover would be like killing him. It is not easy.”

  “What about playing one race off the other?” Spinney asked. “Like the Vietnamese and the Chinese?”

  Lacoste gave one of his trademark wide smiles, expanding his mustache to even greater lengths. “Ah—interesting question. Again, it is like with the Sicilians—you guys and us guys—it makes things easier for us policemen.” Then he shook his head sorrowfully. “But the Asians are more complex. The Chinese are very conscious of race, it is true—but they also think back to all the generations before. If you have any Chinese blood in you, even hundreds of years ago, then that makes you okay—sort of. Same thing if you marry into their families. Regardless of race, that can be very important.”

  “So the Vietchin are acceptable?” I was thinking back to previous conversations I’d had on this subject, when I was hoping the race angle might help me identify how the players were aligning themselves.

  “To do business with, yes. But that is all. To have Chinese blood does not make you Chinese…”

  “It just makes you more trustworthy,” Spinney finished for him.

  “Sometimes,” Lacoste agreed, “but they are trying new things. Last year, we had twenty home invasions of Asian homes, but they were done by blacks. We found out the Asians and the blacks were getting to know each other in prison, and starting to work together.”

  “That ought to make every cop I know properly paranoid,” Spinney muttered.

  I pulled the enlarged copy of the receipt we’d brought with us out of my jacket pocket and handed it to our host. “Do you know where this store is?”

  He read it carefully. “Yes. It is in Brossard, on the south shore. That is one of our residential Chinatowns, where a lot of the rich people live. Da Wang lives there, too. Do you want to go?”

  We returned to the car and he drove us through the center of town, heading toward the Champlain Bridge, giving us biographical tidbits about himself and pointing out the sights as he went. He was a remarkably cheerful man, a lifelong Montrealer, a dedicated believer in a “free” Québec, a happy father and husband. He spoke of his job as such, discussing its benefits and retirement package, and never once strayed into the routine war stories that all cops and firemen and emergency medical people seem to think is interesting conversation. Just as I’d been struck by his generosity with the pompous Antoine Schmitt, so now was I impressed by his self-deprecating urbanity. Considering the job we all shared, albeit from different angles, he was the gentleman of the three of us.

  In that way, he reflected the city we were touring. As I looked out the window, watching the people and the constantly inconsistent architecture, I was struck not by an outright jaundiced image—like New York’s concrete jungle or LA’s smog-shrouded sprawl—but rather by a spirit of enterprise and determination, a combination of style and liveliness. Aside from the downtown skyscrapers and the idiosyncratic Mt. Royal, both of which seemed to leap unexpectedly from the earth, the rest of the city was less demonstrative, more sure of itself, content to be the conglomeration that it was—the Montreal Urban Community, consisting of some thirty-two separate entities, some so distinct unto themselves as to seem hundreds of miles apart.

  Living in an environment where all the signs were in at least two languages and sometimes totally incomprehensible, where every race and culture seemed to have ample representation, and where two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old buildings shared the same sidewalk with glass and-steel modern icons, I could understand why this confederacy of two and a half million people yearned to be part of a nation unto itself. Caught between tradition-bound France, which was less than half its size, and a stiff-upper-lip Great Britain, this alienated province had good reason to feel restless.

  Brossard, hanging off the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River, reflected none of this. As bland as the most boring American suburbia, it was a collection of two-story, residential, pod-like blocks, crisscrossed by shopping mall–decorated boulevards. The only immediately obvious distinction was that several of the malls were filled with Oriental businesses.

  Lacoste pulled off Pelletier, the main drag, and drove us by block after block of undistinguished, pleasant homes. “Brossard has about seventy-five thousand people, from sixty-seven different ethnic groups. Ten thousand of those are Asians. Most of the Chinese are from Hong Kong.”

  That comment reminded me of something he’d mentioned earlier. “Didn’t you say Da Wang came from China to San Francisco first?” I asked.

  “Yes. That is where he began his business. But some ten years ago he came to Montreal, we think because of the bigger opportunities. Back then, our Chinatown was not much—and Da Wang is a persuasive man.”

  “You mentioned earlier that there had been several attempts on his life here. Is there any evidence those attempts date back to things he might’ve done in San Francisco?”

  Spinney gave me a quick look, but Lacoste shook his head. “We don’t know. It is possible. At the time, it fit that it was a gang problem local to Montreal—a power struggle—but of course, we have to guess at many of those things.”

  A few more turns at the wheel put us suddenly in a neighborhood so oddly artificial, it made me think of a Hollywood prop room. But instead of dozens upon dozens of hats or cowboy boots or potted plastic plants, this entire area was filled with brand-new compact mansions, each only slightly different from its neighbor, parked right next to one another like limousines in a car lot. There was no visible room around any of them for lawns, swimming pools, swing sets, or even fences. They were pale pink, gray, white, and made of brick, rock, stone, or wood. Each looked chosen as from a catalogue of limited choices, and most of them appeared fresh from the box.

  “These are in the three-hundred-thousand to a half-million-dollar range. Some of them are bought sight unseen by people in Hong Kong, just so they have somewhere to move in 1997.” Lacoste suddenly stopped the car and backed up. “See that license plate?”

  We both looked at a late-model, Japanese luxury sports sedan. There were four 8s on the plate.

  “Eight is a lucky number to the Chinese. The owner worked very hard to get a license like that.”

  “Christ,” Spinney mused. “Looks like a trailer park, but with million-dollar trailers.”

  Lacoste agreed. “They like being close together. That’s what makes them strong.”

  “Is Da Wang’s house around here?” I asked.

  Lacoste emphatically shook his head. “No, no. A few of these might be owned by triad people, but most belong to rich businessmen still in the old country. People like Da Wang do not live in houses like this. We find that the gangs like cars, sometimes clothes and pretty girls, but they don’t care where they live, and they like to live with lots of other people. La Cosa Nostra, they get a big mansion, much land, a fence, guard dogs. Asian criminals mostly do not like that. It would keep them apart from the people they need to survive. Da Wang lives in East Brossard, where there are lots of apartment buildings that look like motels.”

  We’d left the ritzy neighborhood from Oz and returned to one of the main commercial strips. “There is your place—up there.” He pointed to a large gas-station/food-store combination, with flying-buttress roofs over the pumps and a steady stream of traffic filing through. He parked off to the side and we got
out and crossed over to the store.

  I handed Lacoste the receipt. He discreetly flashed his badge at one of the clerks, who abandoned his customer with a murmured apology and came over to us.

  After a quick conversation, the clerk went back behind his counter and picked up a phone. Lacoste explained. “He has to call his boss. We may be lucky today.” He pointed to a camera that was mounted over the cash register. “There have been robberies here, so last year they put in those. They keep the tapes for a long time, he says.”

  “How long?” I asked, even now doubtful we could get that lucky.

  Lacoste spread his arms out expansively. “That, we will find out.”

  Fifteen minutes later, a short, fat, blotchy-faced man arrived, irritable and out of breath. He led us into a small, windowless back room, one wall of which had several closed-circuit television screens mounted near the ceiling. On a counter beneath them was a large console with a touch-pad keyboard mounted on its surface. The man took the receipt from Lacoste, read the time and date, and punched some numbers onto the playback machine. The TV image directly above us suddenly went haywire, streaked by the effects of a tape in fast rewind. About four minutes later, the tape stopped, paused, and then suddenly came to life.

  Before us was the same scene as before—the counter, the cash register, the back of a clerk in his smock—but we could tell from the reflections off the distant windows that it was night. We watched as a line of people took their turn in front of the camera.

  “There,” I suddenly said, both stunned that such a long shot had paid off and unsure of what it meant.

  The store owner hit a button and froze the image.

  “Who is it?” Spinney asked about the middle-aged man standing alone with his wallet in his hand, a small pile of candy and soda spread out before him.

  The image was made doubly odd in that it so closely matched what we had back in Brattleboro—on the tape I’d made of the traffic stop on the interstate. “His name’s Edward Diep.”

  22

  UNFORTUNATELY, EDWARD DIEP DIDN'T APPEAR in any of Jean-Paul Lacoste’s reference files. He cross-checked with RCMP and the Québec Provincial Police, and even with the American NCIC, as we had done that night so long ago. But now, as then, all we got for our efforts was the record of a Pennsylvania driver’s license and an address in Philadelphia.

  Using my hard-won new connections as a federal agent, I called Walter Frazier on Lacoste’s phone and asked him to have the address checked by someone in the Philadelphia office. I also requested a thorough background search of Wang Chien-kuo, alias Da Wang. In exchange, Walter asked me to stop by his office on our way back through Burlington. He had some new information on Truong Van Loc.

  After that, Spinney and I took advantage of our freshly minted alliance with the MUC to introduce Lacoste to our entire rogues’ gallery, from the largely unlabeled photo album my squad had assembled of Brattleboro’s transient Asian population, to the mug shots, fingerprints, and arrest file of Nguyen Van Hai, the only man we had under arrest, who was awaiting trial for the torture-murder of Benny Travers.

  Running them all through his own data bank, Lacoste came up with several cross-references. Nguyen, Henry Lam, Chu Nam An. At this early stage, all we could easily locate was some basic information on each man, but it was enough to transform Lacoste from an amiable and generous host into a committed participant. The possibility that we might have handed him something his department could use to its own benefit was enough to guarantee their continuing cooperation, long after Spinney and I had headed back over the border.

  We parted company much later that day, with promises to keep in close touch. There, I was not just being polite. I had high hopes that the more he dug, the more connections Lacoste would uncover—connections that might prove crucial to the whole case.

  · · ·

  An hour later, we were back among the flat fields of southern Québec, heading home.

  “What do you make of Diep on that video?”

  I paused before answering. “When we stopped them on I-91 last winter, none of those three seemed to know each other. I played the what’s-your-buddy’s-name routine on Truong, and he flunked—called Diep ‘Jimmy.’ Normally, that would actually make sense. From what I’ve researched, when a hit is ordered, the contract goes out to a jobber—like a middleman. He calls on his usual people, or others who’ve been recommended to him, and he names the rate—five thousand, fifteen thousand… I read a cop can go for fifty. Once he selects the team he wants—each member of which comes from a different part of the country—the deal’s done. The team comes together once, the target’s whacked, and the team disperses. They do not trade names or addresses, they keep the small talk to a minimum, and they’re only in contact for a few hours.”

  “Except that this time Truong was contractor, jobber, and hit man rolled into one, so he should’ve known who everyone was,” Spinney concluded.

  “Not only that, but Lam and Diep both have links to Montreal, and Truong and Lam originally lived in California…”

  “And Diep and Lam also lived on the East Coast, and Truong and Lam showed up in Brattleboro to aggravate the hell out of you. In every case, Lam is the common denominator.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “But if Diep was the newest member, introduced to Truong by Lam, what was he doing in Montreal with Truong, for what we assume was a hit on Da Wang’s snakehead? And why was that receipt Diep collected found in a Canadian car that was used to kill Benny Travers?”

  Spinney turned both his hands up in resignation. “All right, so the hit team couldn’t have been made up of people who didn’t know each other.”

  “Then why didn’t Truong know who Diep was when I asked him?”

  Spinney didn’t answer.

  · · ·

  Walt Frazier dimmed the lights and hit a button on his remote. The VCR across the room stirred awake, and the television set above it lit up with a ragged nighttime camera shot of a decrepit one-story bungalow, glistening in the reflected glare of several bright lights. Police in bulletproof vests scurried back and forth, getting into position. After a moment’s telling pause, they rushed the building’s front door, the cameraman in hot pursuit. There was no sound track.

  “This is a drug raid in Berkeley, California, eighteen years ago,” Frazier explained. “The occupants had been ordered to come out. One shot had already been fired from inside.”

  The first officers at the door swung a two-man metal battering ram against the doorknob, busting it open at the first crack. They then flattened themselves against the outside wall and let the others, assault rifles ready, scramble by them. The cameraman followed and led us through a central hallway, the image jittery, bouncing badly, sweeping to either side as the operator went by open doorways through which officers could be seen fanning out. The camera was moving too fast for me to focus on any of the occupants’ faces, but I could clearly see they were all Oriental.

  “The cameraman’s a cop,” Frazier went on. “They were experimenting using videos on raids for training films, and maybe in court. I don’t know that it’s any improvement. This gives me a headache.”

  Finally, the lead cops reached the kitchen at the back of the house, joining the team that had entered through the rear. They all stood around a small group of shirtless young men with their arms over their heads, crouching in a corner. The camera lens calmed down enough at this point to pan the group so we could actually see who was being videotaped.

  Frazier hit the pause button. “Recognize anyone?”

  I leaned forward in my chair, squinting. The tape quality wasn’t great, and being in pause mode didn’t help, but in the upturned face of one of these young men, I could clearly recognize the hard-eyed malevolence of Truong Van Loc.

  “What was his role in this?” I asked, sitting back.

  “Just one of the boys. He was arraigned with the rest of them, treated as a minor, kicked loose in short order. But this wasn’t his first arrest. Our
office in San Francisco dug up quite a bit on him—the DEA was a big help, too. Interesting story, actually. Truong’s an unusual guy. Came out of Vietnam when we closed shop in ’75, age around ten or twelve—birth date’s a little vague, along with his family history. He arrived here with a little brother and was absorbed by the Vietnamese community. The brother was taken on by a family named Phan, while Truong got sucked under by the gangs. Difference was, he kept coming back to the brother—visiting him, getting after him on his homework, arranging for private tutors. He paid the Phans for his upkeep, and seemed bent on making sure the kid flew straight.”

  “So he was in the gangs just to make ends meet?” asked Spinney.

  “That’s the funny thing,” Frazier answered. “He was ambitious—a natural leader. Not that anyone had proof enough to ever make a case. But our intelligence has it that he was organizing smash-and-grabs right off the boat, extorting with the best of them, and hell-bent on climbing the ranks. By the time he was about twenty he was a wealthy man, running a small group of his own.”

  “Then he quit. Paid off his soldiers so there were no ill feelings, made sure they got relocated with other gangs, and went into the import business.”

  “Import, as in drugs?” I asked.

  “No. Legitimate goods—rugs, fancy foods, yarn, the kind of crap you find in Pier One—hammered-brass spittoons from Burma—junk like that. Customs checked him out, IRS, DEA, Interpol, the Hong Kong Police—you name it. He went straight. But it wasn’t like some tear-jerker movie. He was just as ruthless as before. And it’s not like he got any closer to his brother, either. If anything, they saw less of each other as time went on. But On Ha kept to the straight and narrow, so I guess Van Loc’s efforts paid off.”

  “Was Van Loc’s business a success?”

  Frazier gave me another ambivalent expression. “Not particularly. Our sources suspect he probably socked away a pile from his gang activities. He certainly didn’t lose money as an importer, but considering the good life he was used to, the switch didn’t make much sense.”