He stands and shows me that dead smile of his. “Goodbye Mr. Rogan. Die hard.” I’m pretty sure that’s not a reference to the Bruce Willis movie. Ho must have given the truth to my lie and told them about the Instagram communications.
“Don’t hurt the girl,” I blurt out.
His smile broadens but still doesn’t reach his eyes.
Without a word, he turns and leaves.
His men uncuff me from the bedpost.
Steroid man stands behind me and holds my arms in vice-like grips.
Fat man opens a drawer in the bedside table and takes out a leather mask. He slips it over my head. There are holes around my mouth and nose for me to breathe through but no holes for me to see through.
Steroid man marches me out of the room.
Waiting may be hell but what comes after may be worse.
31
Nick
Rogan’s starting to piss me off. It’s over twenty-four hours since his last email. It’s ten in the morning over there. He can’t still be sleeping, so why the hell isn’t he answering my calls? When you’re partners with an addict, you always worry they’ve gone off to get high. Since he’s been seeing Tina, he’s been doing real good but I wonder if her getting stabbed has pushed him over the edge, like Em’s death did.
“You OK Nick?” Adry’s voice cuts into my thoughts.
“Yeah, I guess. Just worried about Rogan.”
“I know, I have this creepy sensation something’s wrong.”
I nod. “It’s six-thirty. Why don’t we call it a day. I left a ton of emails and messages for him. If I don’t hear back from him by the morning, I’ll call Phil Jiang. Maybe he’ll know what Rogan’s up to.”
“Why don’t we—ˮ Her phone pings. She checks it. “Zelena’s made another post. That’s odd. It’s morning over there. She usually posts late in the evening.” She makes a couple of taps, looks and frowns. “It says, 'Would someone please tell my stupid parents to stop trying to find me. Call off the private detective. I want to be left alone. Hey, everyone likes privacy.’” She hands me her phone. “What’s that all about?”
“Assuming the people who have her are still making her post, it must mean they’re worried about Rogan. He must be getting close.” I read the post again and hand her back the phone. “Look at the last sentence again.”
“'Hey, everyone likes privacy.’ It’s a bit— wait a minute, H E L P. Way to go Zelena! And way to go Nick. I think I would have missed that.”
“Nah. You’d have got there in the end,” I tell her.
“Thanks Nick,” she smiles for a moment and then gets more thoughtful. “Do you think we should reply to it?ˮ she asks.
“Normally Rogan does that but with him going AWOL maybe we should.”
Before she can answer, my phone starts pinging. Please God it’s Rogan.
It’s not.
“Stammo,” I say.
“Hi Mr. Stammo, it’s Connor McCoy. I just came out of the meeting. We’re on.”
“Great!” The grin on my face almost hurts. “How much?”
“Five.”
“The full five million?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Day after tomorrow.”
“That was quick.”
I hear him chuckle. “You don’t get to build a company like Dark Energy without being a fairly decent salesman.”
We say our goodbyes and I update Adry.
She smiles and crosses her fingers for good luck. We’re probably going to need it, it’s all going a bit too easy for my liking.
“You look worried Nick,” she says.
“Something doesn’t add up,” I say. “He scammed five million from Marly but he had to have paid Roland McCoy and Lee Linsky at least fifty grand each, probably more. So how come he still has the full five million to invest in Dark Energy Systems?”
“Maybe he put some of his own money into his investment company.”
That brings a smile to my face. I like the idea of him losing his own money as well as Marly’s. It has a good ring to it.
Now if Rogan would just call back, we’d be firing on all cylinders.
32
Cal
I’ve lost all track of time. I’ve been handcuffed in this van all day. The leather mask has me in inky blackness but I’m guessing it’s after sundown because the stifling heat is slowly waning. I can smell the stink of my own sweat and urine. After a drive of about an hour, they stopped the van and left me here, wherever here is.
In the distance I can hear what I think is the hum of traffic but I can’t be sure.
Earlier, I spent some time shouting for help. It’s left me with a sore throat and I am getting to the point where I would give just about anything for a drink of cold water. Maybe they’ve just abandoned the van and are leaving me here to die of thirst. There are worse ways to die. But that’s not compatible with Leo’s parting shot. 'Die hard.’ They aren’t going to just let me die.
To keep myself from dwelling on it, I’ve been working the case in my mind. Something doesn’t add up but I can’t work out what it is. There’s something missing. I wish I could talk it over with Nick and Adry. I’m sure that between us we could figure it out.
For the hundredth time I think of Ellie. She’s coming back to Vancouver and I won’t be there for her. With Sam’s MS, what will become of her? If Sam doesn’t make it, Ellie will probably grow up with her grandparents.
And I won’t need to think about how to answer the email from SFU.
And Tina. Will she be able to forgive me.
With a screech of metal on metal, the van door opens. I hear a stream of Cantonese. There is disgust in their voices. It’s their own fault, if they don’t like the smell they shouldn’t have left me here all day. Rough hands drag me out of the truck. One of them unlocks the handcuffs from behind my back. They push me to the ground and, amid the clanking of chain, I can feel metal on my wrists, then on my ankles. They pull me to my feet. The mask is pulled off and I get to take in my surroundings.
I look down. I am manacled like a prison inmate. My feet are connected by a one-foot length of chain. My hands have a bit more freedom of movement but a length of chain runs between the hand and foot manacles. I feel like I’m in The Green Mile. On the ground by my feet is a spade.
It’s night. We are on what looks like an area of scrubland. It’s fenced in. I look around. In the distance I can see the lights of high-rise apartments. Steroids and Fats are standing in front of me; the latter holds a gun with a silencer trained at my chest. He nods toward the spade. “Dig,” he says.
Now I really feel like I’m in a movie. A bad movie. Do they really expect me to dig my own grave? “You’ve got to be joking,” I say.
Fats smiles without any semblance of humour. “You dig, I shoot,” he says. “We dig, he…” He gestures towards his partner. Steroids has a knife in his hand. He mimes removing body parts: eyes, ears, lips, tongue. A smile creases his face as he points the knife below my waist.
Fats nods. Sounding like a good friend offering advice, he repeats, “You dig.”
I crouch down and pick up the spade. As I straighten up, I see he’s taken a couple of steps back and is keeping his gun trained on my chest. He’s a pro.
I look around. Just in front of me is a patch of land that looks softer than what’s underfoot. I shuffle forward as fast as the manacles allow and plunge the spade in. The ground gives a little but it’s not going to be easy.
My guards go and squat on the edge of the van’s back bumper. They are about five metres behind me and to my right.
I dig.
It’s slow and back-breaking work. I do the math in my head. I’ll need to make a shoulder-width hole just short of two metres long and a metre deep. At the rate I’m working it will take an hour. At the end of it I’ll be exhausted. I’ll appreciate the chance to lie down and have a nice long sleep. Gallows humour. And in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, when we
have shuffled off this mortal coil. Dreams… huh… I remember the dream.
It gives me an idea.
The idea becomes a plan.
And I dig.
33
Nick
I snap out of the dream and check my phone. Five AM. I’m not going to sleep any more tonight. I push off the covers and sit up. Stewart’s on nights, so I don’t have to worry about waking him up. My chair’s right beside the bed so I slide my rear onto it and pull up the armrest behind me. I dial Rogan again but it goes to voicemail. Something’s seriously wrong.
I scroll through the numbers he gave me and dial.
A Chinese voice answers.
“Hi, is this Phil Jiang?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, it’s Nick Stammo calling from Vancouver. I’m Cal Rogan’s partner.”
“I am so glad you called Mr. Stammo,” he says. “I was going to call you. Do you have any idea where Cal is?”
My heart sinks. “No,” I say. “I was calling you to see if you knew.”
There’s a moment of silence and then he asks, “Does Cal often… what’s the phrase? Go off the radar?”
Swallowing the worry about him using again, I just say, “No.”
“The last time you spoke to him, did he give you any idea of what his next step might be?” he asks.
“The last thing we got from Cal was an email telling us he’d found Aleksander. He said he was going to try and track down Zelena by following Leo, the owner of that nightclub The Golden Dragon.”
He’s silent for a while. Then says, “OK, I’ll see what I can do to track him down. It’s eight PM here, I’m going to see what I can find out at the Golden Dragon.”
“I’d really appreciate that.”
“And there’s nothing else you can tell me about where he might be Mr. Stammo?”
“Please call me Nick,” I say. I agree with Rogan. I get a good feeling about this guy but my worry about the drugs issue sets my heartburn going. Rogan started using after Em’s death about a year ago. Maybe Tina getting stabbed has pushed him over the edge again. I don’t know what to think here. Maybe I should—
“Nick, you still there?”
“Yeah, sorry Phil. I was turning something over in my mind.”
“Anything I can help with?”
I think it through and make my decision.
“Maybe,” I say.
“There’s a Mr. Young on line one,” Lucy calls out. I look over at Adry. She’s giving the thumbs-up sign.
I pick up the phone. “Good morning Mr. Young,” I say.
The Brit accent comes through strong. “Just wanted to tell you that Mr. Pridmore is very keen on having us invest in his new company. He and I are meeting later today.”
“That’s great,” I say, returning Adry’s thumbs up. “Thanks for calling and letting us know.”
“My pleasure,” he says and hangs up.
“Pridmore’s all over it,” I say.
She grins. “You were right. You said he’d go for it like a seagull at a landfill.”
I nod. “So there’s just one duck we need to set up.”
She laughs now. “What is it with the bird metaphors?”
I roll backwards from my desk.
“Let’s go get high as a kite,” I say.
Still chuckling she follows me out of the office.
I hate the smell of pot. Back in the day, it was the worst part of making a drug bust. He looks up as we enter the store. “What the fuck do you losers want?” he says.
I look up at Adry. “Do you want to explain the situation to Mr. Linsky?” I ask her. She nods.
“Pretty nice store you’ve got here Lee,” she says.
His eyes go to slits. “So?” he says.
“You’ll miss it when you lose your licence to operate it.”
“What are you talking about?” he says with an uncertain laugh.
“When the police arrest Bob Pridmore for fraud, your name’s going to come up. You were the guy who got Roland McCoy to cheat Marly Summers out of five million dollars,” she says.
His eyes go wide. “Five million?” he says.
Oh, it just keeps getting better. Big Bob must have lied to him about the size of the scam.
Adry ignores his interruption. “And you got young Roland to transport a briefcase containing a quarter of a million bucks of heroin to our office.”
“Heroin!” he literally gasps. “I had no idea what was in that briefcase. Pridmore said it was documents, he said—ˮ
“I’m not interested,” I interrupt. “You can tell it to the police when they come here to revoke your licence to operate this place.”
His face takes on a lighter shade of pale. I can almost hear the calculations going on in that brain of his. He’s no fool, he’ll get there. His eyes go all slitty again. “So why are you here telling me all this?”
He got it.
“Good question,” Adry says.
She can’t keep the grin off her face as she gives him the answer.
34
Cal
A phone rings behind me. Probably someone calling to check if I’m dead yet. I’m not. The grave is not yet deep enough to bury me but it is just about deep enough for me to execute my plan. I keep digging while I wait for the phone call to end. I don’t want the caller to hear what happens when I turn the tables on my captors. I listen to the short bursts of Cantonese from Fats as he responds to the caller. I hazard a look when he stops talking and see him put the phone back in his pocket.
Game on.
Now to test the acting skills I learned as part of my Masters in English Lit.
I push the spade into the soil. “What the…?” I shout.
I push the spade in twice more.
“Oh my God,” I shout and scramble out of the grave. I throw a quick glance at the thugs and then stare back into the hole. “How the hell did that get there?” It’s not good enough for an Academy Award, but it should get them running.
As I hear movement behind me, I firm up my grip on the spade. I’m hoping Steroids will be quicker to act than Fats. I want to take him out first.
My muscles tense as someone moves fast into my peripheral vision. “What?” It sounds like Steroids.
I take a small backswing.
A hard, round piece of metal presses into the back of my head.
“Drop spade,” Fats says.
Crap. He moved fast for a man of his epic proportions.
“Drop,” he repeats.
I drop the spade at my feet.
I will not be offering effusive thanks to the Academy tonight.
I grit my teeth waiting for Fat’s gun to fire.
I tense up and close my eyes.
Will I hear it?
Silence. A grim form of torture.
Finally, “Change of plan. Get in truck,” Fats says.
My breath comes out in a whoosh.
I open my eyes as Steroids grabs my bicep and hustles me towards the van. The manacles limit the length of my pace and I shuffle forward as fast as I can.
He bundles me into the back and slams the doors behind me.
Within seconds, we are moving again, leaving me to wonder what earned me the reprieve.
Unbidden, Shakespeare comes to me.
No, you are deceived;
therefore, back to Rome, and prepare for your
execution: you are condemned, our general has sworn
you out of reprieve and pardon.
I fear that, as usual, the Bard is right.
The van comes to a halt and the engine is switched off. They open the doors and drag me out into an alleyway. Steroids pushes me towards a door, which Fats opens for me. I shuffle inside and they follow. I am in a dingy hallway with a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. Fats levels his gun at me while Steroids unlocks my shackles.
They hustle me along the hallway, up a flight of stairs and into an apartment. It shows no sign of habitation. The furniture is faded and shabby, the ca
rpets look like they haven’t been cleaned in an eon, and it smells. A frightened old woman is standing beside a rickety table. The black bruise on her chin washes a feeling of guilt through me.
Fats waggles his gun at me. “Take clothes off.”
“What?”
He repeats his order.
I look from him to Steroids to the woman. She averts her eyes.
“Now!” he commands.
I strip down to my underpants, aware of the stink of sweat and urine on my garments as I drop them to the floor.
“Everything,” he says.
I take off my underwear. Now all I’m wearing is my watch.
Fats fires off an order and the old woman shuffles forward, takes my things and hurries into another room, slamming the door behind her.
“Sit.” He gestures towards a decrepit sofa, the pattern of the fabric being formed by a variety of dark stains.
“You’re kidding,” I say.
His eyes tell me otherwise.
Squirming inside, I lower my naked rear onto the seat and sink deep into the filth.
Fats and Steroids take seats on wooden dining chairs.
And we wait.
I don’t know what we are waiting for but I’m guessing it’s nothing good. However, it does give me time to think. Through the apartment’s one grimy window, I can see neon lights and hear the noise of traffic. We are in the city. If I can find a way to escape, maybe I can get help somehow. Although the sight of a naked, fleeing man would only get me into the hands of the police and, if we are in Mongkok, that will inevitably put me under the control of the corrupt Inspector Ho.
I sneak a look at my captors. Steroids is cleaning his nails with something metal and Fats is sitting, cradling his gun in his lap. His eyes are fixed on me. He has obviously been given orders not to kill me, not just yet anyway. If I made a charge at him, would he obey orders and hold off using his weapon? He’s a professional. Getting me to sit on this sofa was brilliant. The springs are wrecked and I have sunk so deep into it that my knees are at chest level. It would take an extra second to get up. Also the broken bones in my hand, courtesy of Leo, will be a huge impediment in any fight.
Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set) Page 68
