The Chairman's Toys

by Graham Reed

  “Alright, alright. Have it your way.” None of this was proving to be as easy as pulp fiction had led me to believe. As I stood up, the windows began to strobe with a flashing blue light.

  “Attention crew of The Chairman, this is the Coast Guard. Your vessel is being operated in an unsafe manner due to lack of proper running lights, as required by the Canada Shipping Act. Present yourselves above-deck immediately and prepare for boarding and inspection.”

  Thaddeus froze like a deer in the headlights. Or a goon in the spotlight, as a powerful beam of light swept across the deck of The Chairman, its glare briefly flooding the cabin around us.

  When he squinted toward the window in confusion, I hurled my glass at him. With surprising speed he brought his arm up to block it, yelping in pain and dropping the pistol as the tumbler deflected off his wrist and shattered on the wall behind him. Thaddeus snarled and lunged toward me. I barely managed to kick the coffee table into his legs as he came on, sending him sprawling.

  I dove onto him, hearing the air go out of him as I landed. I followed up with a fast right hook but got nothing more than his ear and rugburn as he writhed beneath me. His arms flailed with a purpose I recognized only belatedly.

  Thaddeus hugged himself to me, trapping my left arm. I tried another punch with my right, but he anticipated it and torqued hard, rolling me onto my side so I couldn’t swing effectively. Next thing I knew he had his legs wrapped around me as well. After that, he just lay there, pinning me and squeezing with all his strength. Which was considerable.

  “This is stupid,” I managed to grunt. Thaddeus’ nasty grin suggested that he disagreed. I soon understood why. The seconds ticked by and dizziness began to overtake frustration as I pined for oxygen.

  The sound of our laboured breathing was suddenly drowned out by another—the outboard on the Zodiac firing up. We both froze, listening as the motor revved briefly before starting to fade away.

  “There goes your ride,” I wheezed.

  Thaddeus relaxed his grip slightly as he twisted around to look toward the stern with a befuddled look on his face. I pushed hard with my leg to try to roll him onto his back. When he braced against it, I rocked back sharply in the other direction, managing to pull my right arm free. I began to hammer my forearm into the side of his face. It was like pummeling a cinderblock. The stubble on his jaw was giving me more rugburn, but I was reasonably confident that he was getting the worst of it.

  The next time I hit him, he bit my arm. My jacket saved me from needing a rabies shot but it still hurt. When I pulled my arm away, he shimmied up me like a lumberjack climbing a tree and wedged his shoulder into my throat.

  I hammered weak blows onto his back as my air supply was once again cut off. An attempt to yank his hair availed me nothing more than a greasy handful of Brylcreem. I grabbed at his shirt next, but the material was just as slippery as his perm.

  Finally, I got hold of the chain around his neck. It bit into my fingers as I twisted it so I knew it must be doing the same to Thaddeus’ neck. And sure enough, the pressure on my throat started to ease slightly. Until the chain snapped and came away in my hand.

  On the edge of blacking out, I couldn’t initially comprehend why Thaddeus abruptly changed his method of attack to squealing and flopping around like a freshly caught tuna. It was undeniably bruising, but not nearly as incapacitating as his python routine. With little more than an encouraging nudge from me, he finally threw himself clear altogether.

  Newly unencumbered, I managed to raise my head enough to see a pair of black leather boots. Smartly creased navy pants protruded from the top of them and continued all the way up to a blaze-orange bomber jacket. Sandwiched between that and a beret was Barb’s stern face. In her hand was my TV remote control. Or possibly Wendy’s stun gun. Or maybe even her own.

  “Hey, great to see you,” I gasped, stuffing Thaddeus’ chain, along with the safety-deposit box key, into my pocket.

  Barb looked dubious.

  “No, really. How’d you find me?”

  “Wendy called. Said you texted to tell her that Dante and Richard were on a yacht owned by a guy named Mickey Wu.” Her frown deepened as she surveyed the scene. “And that you were going out to rescue them.”

  I took the high road and ignored her sarcastic tone. “How did you know which boat was Mickey Wu’s?”

  “She told me which marina he uses. I called, identified myself, and asked for the name of his vessel. Simple,” Barb said with a shrug. “We located it on AIS. That’s the Automated…”

  “Identification System. Yeah, I know.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot. You’re already familiar with what we do.”

  Again with the sarcasm. Only recently re-oxygenated, my brain struggled to come up with a suitably cutting retort.

  “So where are they?” Barb asked at last.

  “I don’t know about the pilot of this tub, but Mickey Wu and The Norwegian took off in a Zodiac. I take it they got away?”

  “I mean Dante and Richard.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I don’t think they’re onboard.” I lay back on the floor and stared up at the ceiling, feeling tired and beaten as the adrenaline drained out of me. “I don’t know where they are.”

  The next thing Barb said made me feel even worse.

  “Captain Constable, sir!”

  I rotated my head painfully to witness the arrival of a second pair of boots. From there, my eye reluctantly travelled up an even sharper set of trouser creases, past more blaze-orange, and stopped just south of the owner’s grey brush cut.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  Things had been tense between us for the past few years. Ever since her patrol vessel responded to the distress call I put out when I ran aground transporting a harvest back from Hornby Island one night. I’m not sure which had been the more mortifying discovery for her—the bales of marijuana bobbing up out of the back of my granddad’s boat as it sank, or the fact that I couldn’t read a tidal chart properly.

  She scrutinized me with a clinical eye. “Are you injured?”

  “Not really, I just…”

  “Good. In that case, why don’t you tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Where to start? The party? Mickey Wu? The Norwegian? Definitely not the dead guy. We had barely spoken since the night she found out I was a pot dealer so maybe it would help to start with a bit of context.

  “Well, Mom, you’ll be happy to hear I got a new job…”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Moments before the VPD Marine Unit arrived to take custody of The Chairman, my mom ordered me to disappear below deck in a rare display of maternal protectiveness. Or maybe she had done it simply because she couldn’t send me to my room. Either way, I was relieved. After hearing my heavily edited explanation of how I had come to be on Mickey Wu’s yacht, my mom seemed to be seriously considering handing me over to the police. To my amazement, Barb spoke up in my defence, pointing out that I was only trying to save my friends.

  As soon as the Coast Guard patrol vessel pulled away from The Chairman, I texted Mickey Wu:

  the cops have Thaddeus. i have the safety deposit box key.

  I received his response almost instantaneously, though it took me a moment to recognize the photo of the bank from the dead guy’s phone. By the time I had, his second one had arrived:

  The documents in exchange for your friends.

  Perfect. Now all I had to do to get Richard and Dante back was break into a bank.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  It was past midnight by the time I was back on dry land and heading home. I was sitting in the passenger seat of Barb’s Subaru Forester, watching the halo of light in the sky slowly grow brighter as we approached Vancouver at precisely the speed limit. The only thing stopping me from grabbing Barb’s leg and pushing her foot down on the accelerator was the fear that she would think I was making a
pass at her.

  “Thanks for smoothing things over with my mom back there.”

  Barb continued to watch the road, both hands on the wheel, prudently placed at the ten and two positions. “I did it for her sake, not yours.”

  “Okay, then, thanks for tracking down The Chairman and bringing in the cavalry.”

  “I was looking for Dante and Richard, same as you.”

  I sighed. “Thanks for the ride?”

  “Wendy made me promise to give you one.”

  I gave up, content to let the rest of the trip pass in silence.

  “You could be nicer to your mother, you know.”

  A few mile markers later, Barb tried again. “Did you hear what I said?”

  I nodded.

  “Well?”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s none of your business.” Screw silence. And politeness. “And for another, what the hell do you know about it, anyway?”

  “I know you haven’t called her in years.”

  “Not true. I called her last year on her birthday.”

  “To borrow money.”

  Okay, so maybe Barb knew a little about it. “But at least I called, which is more than she can say. What’s that about? A mother not speaking to her son?”

  “Maybe she’s waiting for you to thank her. Or at least apologize.”

  “For what?” I asked in a tone that I hoped would pass for innocent.

  Barb snorted. “Responding to your S.O.S., obviously.”

  Blame it on fatigue, but I couldn’t help but blow a raspberry. “She was doing her job. You know how I know? Because she told me so that night.”

  “What she was doing was putting her career on the line to save your butt from going to jail. Just like tonight. I didn’t hear you thank her for that either.”

  “Ah, yes, her career. Don’t worry, I’m very familiar with its importance.” I didn’t really care that my mom had revealed that I used to drive around in boats filled with weed, but I was a bit perturbed that she would complain about it to a colleague instead of to me.

  “Second only to you.”

  My laughter caused Barb to take her eyes off the road for the first time. When she looked at me, I couldn’t hide my surprise at seeing hers.

  “Don’t you know how important you are to her?” she asked.

  “Not really, no. Remember the part where she and I haven’t spoken for years?”

  “Did it ever occur to you that she might be hurt?”

  “Yeaahhh, no. Again, not really.”

  “Well, I assure you she is. Deeply.” Barb weighted the ensuing silence with disapproval.

  “Mmmmm, I think you’re confusing embarrassment with being hurt.”

  Barb snorted again and shook her head.

  I studied Barb suspiciously. “She told you she was hurt?”

  Barb looked uneasy. “Not in so many words. But I can tell.”

  I laughed again, this time with genuine relief. For a moment, she almost had me convinced that stoic, stiff-upper-lipped Captain Constable felt hurt. Or any emotion other than pride in her own career and shame in mine. Such a bizarre and unexpected turn of events could only lead to unwelcome surprises. Like feelings of my own—e.g., guilt.

  “She’s an amazing woman, you know. Strong, intelligent, professional. Captain Constable has been a real mentor for me.”

  Barb’s usual tone of voice made it sound like she was reading heavily redacted wartime announcements. Come to think of it, maybe she was, when speaking to me. But her estimation of my mom’s character, which I was unable to confirm or deny from firsthand experience, sounded like a schoolgirl whispering into a telephone on a Sunday morning in May, circa 1958. When I glanced over, the dreamy expression on her face provided the confirmation I needed. “Aw, crap. You’ve got a crush on my mom, don’t you?”

  Her cheeks flushed red and she made a strange sound, something between a cough and a yelp.

  I sighed from deep down within. “Don’t worry. I won’t tell Wendy.”

  Neither the wartime announcer nor the schoolgirl had a reply, but Barb did manage to shoot me a look like I was crazy. I grinned back at her to show her that I knew a pathetic attempt at denial when I saw one.

  When the emotional dust settled, I noticed that we were headed for the Granville Street Bridge, presumably because it led toward her home. “My car’s parked down by Granville Island, so you could drop me off anywhere along here.”

  “Wendy wants to see you,” Barb grumbled.

  I decided my car could wait.

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Wendy gave me a big hug as soon as we walked through the door. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” Before I had a chance to reciprocate, or even appreciate, her embrace, she pushed away and looked past me into the empty hallway. “Where are Dante and Richard?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “They weren’t on Mickey’s boat.”

  I gave her a rundown of the night’s events and revelations. We shook our heads over the sordidness of the blackmail angle. Both she and Barb were suitably wowed by the gloss of international espionage the agents of Operation Fox Hunt brought to the whole affair. When we got to my failure to liberate Richard and Dante, the declining value of my stock was obvious from their facial expressions. I knew exactly how they felt.

  The brief bump it received during my description of how I had heroically subdued Thaddeus was rudely undermined by Barb’s tedious obsession with the facts of the matter. In the end, though, even she was grudgingly impressed that I had come away with the key to the safety deposit box, once I explained its significance.

  “But Mickey Wu still has Dante and Richard,” Wendy concluded pointedly.

  “What an asshole,” Barb opined.

  “Sure, but remember, he is between the sword and the wall.”

  “Only because of his own malfeasance,” Barb retorted.

  “But what about the malfeasance of the Chinese government in all this?” I pointed out.

  Barb harrumphed. “What has it done wrong, aside from attempting to bring criminals to justice? Which I suppose you might find unpalatable.”

  Wendy had begun pacing like a tiger in a modestly sized condominium. “Whose side are you on, Jake? Mickey Wu kidnapped Richard and Dante.”

  I held up my hands in surrender. “You’re right. We have to nail this guy.”

  To bolster everyone’s spirits, I vowed to retrieve the documents from the safety-deposit box and deliver them to Mickey Wu in exchange for the safe return of our beloved Buff boys.

  Barb looked dubious but Wendy gave me a hopeful look. “Great,” she said. “How?”

  “Simple. Mickey Wu sent me a photo of the bank where they’re being held. And the box number is conveniently engraved on the key right here.” I held it out for their inspection.

  “What was the dead guy’s name?” Wendy asked.

  I shrugged. “Who cares?” I had already sat through the Nancy Drew routine with Nina and didn’t feel like wasting more time wondering about irrelevant details.

  “I don’t,” she replied. “But the bank will.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve never had a safety deposit box, have you?” Wendy asked.

  I shook my head. “Up until today I wasn’t aware they still existed outside of Hollywood movie sets.”

  “Well then, maybe you recall from those movies that you have to sign for access to the box. And show some ID.”

  Setback. Not for the first time, I found myself regretting that I hadn’t committed more fully to a life of crime. I’d had the chance to take the dead guy’s wallet along with his phone, but like some kind of Boy Scout trying for a merit badge in Postmortem Etiquette, I had foolishly left it in Mickey Wu’s bathroom.

  Which meant he should still have it.

  “Hold on a min
ute.” I pulled out my phone and texted Mickey Wu. A moment later, I received a response in the form of a photo of the dead guy’s driver’s licence. I held up my phone to show it to Wendy and Barb, who for some reason looked less than impressed.

  “Great, so now we know his name. But the bank isn’t going to accept that photo as ID,” Wendy said. “Plus, that dude is Chinese.”

  I nodded glumly. “Did I forget to mention that part?”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  We drank bottles of Gypsy Tears and tried to figure out what to do. When the beers were gone, we switched to tequila. Serious work required serious drinking, was the thinking, which became steadily less cogent as the night wore on.

  “Why don’t you trade the key for Dante and Richard? Mickey Wu has the ID, so let him impersonate the dead man,” Barb suggested.

  Wendy nodded. “Even if Mickey Wu doesn’t want to risk impersonating the dead guy, once he has the key, he can at least be sure that no one else can get the documents to blackmail him again.”

  “It’s tempting,” I admitted. “But I don’t trust the guy. Look what happened when I showed up with the phone. Rather than handing over Richard and Dante, he tried to give me to Thaddeus as a snack.”

  Barb hooked her thumbs in her belt like a sheriff in a Spaghetti Western. “And where’s Thaddeus now?”

  “That’s right.” Wendy’s tone was mischievous as she put a comforting hand on my arm. “Your mommy didn’t let the bad man hurt you.”

  “Hold on, Wen. Let’s be fair. Jake didn’t need his mom to save him.” Barb reached over and gave my other arm a squeeze. “I was the one who did that.”

  Unable to come up with any pithy comebacks, I took the high road and ignored them. “Mickey Wu sees me as a loose end. Richard and Dante, too. If I hand over everything he wants, there’s no way the three of us are walking out of there.”