Cal Rogan Mysteries, Books 4, 5 & 6 (Box Set)

by Robert P. French

  This morning in his office, Lee stood up and Phil made him sit down. Phil got the file Lee wanted. Why would he do that? The answer comes instantly. I told Phil how the gang kidnapped me on Tuesday night, I told him about the man with the limp walking beside Leo. Phil would know I’d recognize Lee’s limp, so he stopped Lee from walking the three paces from his desk to the filing cabinet.

  The disappointment sinks like cement into the pit of my stomach.

  The problems I’ve been blaming on Inspector Ho have been caused by Phil Jiang. Then again, maybe Ho and Jiang are both dirty.

  Phil misdirected me to investigating IF. It must have been Phil who tipped them off at one-oh-five Temple Street

  Phil knew I was going to stake out the Golden Dragon on Tuesday night. He orchestrated for the gang to take me. I think about the fear I had digging my own grave. And then the change of plan to pump me full of heroin. The idea that Ho contacted the VPD and found out about my addiction was a bit tenuous even when Phil suggested it. It was Phil who told Steroids and Fats about my addiction.

  And when I realize how Phil knew, the cold wind of betrayal hardens the cement in my gut to concrete.

  Then a worse thought coalesces: I told Phil how we have been communicating with Zelena.

  When Leo learns that, what will he do to her?

  I have to find her fast.

  But how?

  I have no clue where she is.

  I have no way of finding out.

  And I have no friend to help me.

  Sometimes stuff just pops into your mind. So often for me, it’s Shakespeare. As I leave the restaurant via the back door, silently bemoaning my bad luck, Claudius’ words from Hamlet pop into my mind: That sweepstake you will draw both friend and foe. And the words trigger something. I’ve drawn several foes in this case but just maybe I can turn a foe into a friend, albeit an unwilling one. As a plan starts to form in my mind, I think perhaps I can turn two foes into friends.

  In the taxi back to the Hilton, I think through the plan.

  By the time I get into my room, I have the details worked out. It’s shaky as hell but it’s all I’ve got. I make a list on a piece of hotel stationery of the things I need to do. It’s a long list but doable. Now for step one.

  I still have his business card in my pocket unless the old woman took it out before she cleaned my clothes. I feel a crumpled mass in my pocket. I pull it out. I straighten it out carefully and for the first time I really look at it. I am such an idiot. The name of Harvey Lim’s company leaps out at me. I knew I’d seen this name before. It’s one of the company names painted on the door of Phil Jiang’s office. If I had really looked at it before, I would have made the connection and it would have saved me a lot of trouble. But it’s water under the bridge now. His number is just legible. I dial it.

  “Lim Jian Xun.”

  “Good afternoon Harvey, it’s Cal Rogan.”

  Silence. The silence of the guilty methinks.

  “Yes?”

  He doesn’t know what to think. If he has been kept up to date with the rest of the gang, he will be expecting that in five minutes I will walk into Phil’s office and into the trap, which has almost certainly been prepared for me.

  “Did you know Phil Jiang is screwing you over?”

  Silence again.

  “What exactly do you mean?”

  “You mean you can’t guess?”

  I can almost hear the gears turning in his mind.

  “No, why don’t you tell me.”

  “At seven-thirty this evening, I want you to leave your hotel and get the Hung Hom ferry. When you are on the ferry, call me on this number for further instructions on what to do when you get to North Point. Do you understand?”

  “Why should I bel—ˮ

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, bu—ˮ

  I hang up. I don’t know a lot about the gang but they may very well be able to track me through my phone, so I power it off.

  I wonder if he bought my assertion that Phil Jiang is cheating him in some way.

  I don’t care one way or the other.

  Slinging my carry-on bag over my shoulder, I wheel my suitcase out into the hallway. I have a hell of a lot to do after I’ve checked out of the Hilton.

  There is a bus terminal under the Kerry hotel. I park the rental car right by the pedestrian exit that gives onto the seawall. At weekends this area is taken over by young immigrants who sit in the sun, play music, chat and picnic. At this latitude the sun has set and, fortunately, there are not a lot of people around. I take the sawn-off baseball bat off the back seat and slide it up the sleeve of the oversized jacket I purchased in the market. I pull the peak of my new baseball cap down over my eyes and get out of the car. I didn’t have time to reconnoitre the area so I have no idea where the cameras may be.

  I walk onto the seawall and move to where I have a decent view of the concrete stairway that leads down from the hotel to the seawall and the ferry terminal. I squat on the edge of a planter and try to look like I belong.

  The wait is short. I can see Harvey Lim is coming down the steps. I see he didn’t buy my story about Phil Jiang cheating him because he’s not alone and his companion is Steroids; won’t he be pleased to see me. I have to execute the riskier Plan B. I slowly get to my feet and, affecting a slight limp, I cross the seawall and move into the shadow of the concrete stairway, out of their line of sight.

  I let my weapon slide down my sleeve into my hand, then conceal it behind my back. Soon enough they step off the bottom stair and I see their backs as they walk toward the ferry terminal.

  “Hey, Harvey!” I call out.

  He turns and I wave. He barks an order to Steroids who also turns. He sees my face and grins.

  They come towards me.

  So far so good. They are walking side by side. Harvey is not a warrior in this scenario. He has taken out his phone and is tapping at the screen.

  He stops about three metres from me but Steroids keeps on advancing.

  Timing will win the day.

  At two metres, I wait a split second, genuflect, and with every bit of strength I can muster, swing the foreshortened bat in a wide arc and smash it into the side of Steroids’ knee.

  I snap back up to my feet and cut off his bellow of pain by cracking the bat across his skull. It’s a glancing blow, which won’t kill him but will raise a goose egg to make a nice match with the one I gave him yesterday.

  Before his body hits the ground, I make a beeline for Harvey. Definitely not a warrior, he does exactly the wrong thing: he turns and runs. But I have the momentum. I jab the bat hard into his back, making him stumble and fall. His cellphone shatters into several pieces.

  I kneel on his back and cuff his wrists behind him with the toy handcuffs I also bought in the market. I open my jacket, peel off one of the strips of duct tape I secured there earlier, and slip it over his head and across his mouth.

  I get up and drag him to his feet and within ten seconds, I am bundling him into the back of the rental car. Taking a moment to secure his wrists with more duct tape—just in case the toy cuffs are as shoddy as I suspect—I put my last strip of duct tape over his eyes, throw the cheap blanket over him, get in the car and drive off.

  We are heading for the one place they will not think to look for us.

  39

  Zelena

  There was no auction this evening. At least, there wasn’t for me. I hope there wasn’t one for the other girls either. I don’t know whether that’s good or bad. It’s good that I don’t have to be abused by some pig of a man, but changes in routine are never good. Maybe they are going to move us back to that awful place where I was so cold at night. At least the rooms here are decent. It must be late. Leo will be here soon to make me do another post. I wonder if 'Matt Standish’ will have commented on my post. I can’t think of any way to give him a clue as to where I might be. From the post Leo made me send, he must be some sort of private investigator. If he reads t
he post, he will have seen the help message I added. 'Hey everyone likes privacy.’ That was pretty good. Hey, I’m smiling. It’s the first time I’ve had a genuine smile on my face in a while. Maybe it’s a good omen. Maybe the detective is going to find me tonight. I get a surge of hope, which I thought had abandoned me. He is going to be here soon. He’s going to free me and all the girls here. The weight of the last however-many days lifts from my shoulders and the smile is back.

  When I’m free of this place I’m going to start thinking more seriously about stuff. I’m kind of over the whole party-til-you-drop thing. Maybe I’ll switch to law. I could use it to help kids caught up in the slave trade. I don’t quite kno—

  The door opens.

  Leo.

  I force a smile to my face. This smile is definitely not genuine. “Hi,” I say.

  He just stands there glaring at me. And he doesn’t have the cellphone in his hand. This cannot be good.

  He quietly closes the door behind him and walks slowly over to me. I stand up and face him. I’m almost as tall as he is.

  He stops in front of me and looks hard into my eyes. I return his stare. There’s no way I’m going to let him see how scared I am. I see him tense up then feel a stab of pain as he slaps me. The whole side of my face feels like it’s on fire. He shouts something at me in Cantonese. I turn my head back to face him and although I feel the tears running down my face, I don’t make a sound.

  “You tried fool me,” he says in his broken English. “Bitch.”

  I just stand there looking at him but this seems to make him even more angry.

  Before I can look away, his hands reach out and he starts tearing off my clothes. No! Not this time. I reach up and scratch his face with both hands. He flinches as one nail rakes over his eye. I bring up my knee as hard as I can but it just hits him in the thigh. He pushes me hard and I fall over backwards onto the wood floor. Before I can react he pounces on me and kneels on my legs.

  Now he has a knife in his hands. I can’t suppress the scream that rises to my lips. He uses the knife to cut away the remnants of my clothes then holds it to my throat.

  “Don’t move bitch,” he says.

  I can feel the tip of the knife penetrate my skin.

  I don’t move.

  But he does.

  40

  Cal

  He winces as I rip the duct tape off his eyes. “Recognize this place, Harvey?” I ask. He looks around and shakes his head. He’s lying. “Sure you do,” I say but he still shakes his head. He tries to sit up but he is bound tightly to the bed. I take the newly-purchased knife from the newly-purchased holdall and slide it out of the sheath. His eyes go wide. “I’m going to remove the tape from over your mouth so we can have a conversation. If you yell or scream, I will ruin your face so that no girl will ever look at you again, let alone allow you to sell her into slavery. Do you understand?”

  He nods.

  I rip away the tape. He grunts at the pain of his facial hairs being torn from their follicles but makes no other noise.

  “Where is Zelena being held?”

  “I don’t know. Why would I know? She’s my girlfriend, I love her. I want to find her as much as you do.”

  “Oh, that is so heart-warming,” I say. “But you lied to me about leaving here and going to California. A lie of omission perhaps but a lie nonetheless.”

  “But you don’t understand—ˮ

  “Can it Harvey,” I interrupt. “Your cousin Leo is holding Zelena captive somewhere. You need to tell me where she is.”

  “I told you I don’t know,” he says.

  “When we sat in the bar at the Kerry, and I told you I was working with a private detective named Phil Jiang, you omitted to tell me you know Mr. Jiang and know him well.”

  “I’ve never heard of him,” he protests. He sounds so genuine, I could almost believe him.

  “When I called you, I had to check your business card for your phone number. I recognized the name of your company.” His face tightens. “I knew I’d seen it before somewhere. Then I remembered: it is one of the companies whose names are painted on the door to Phil Jiang’s office.”

  “It must be a different company with a similar name,” he says, but the tone of his voice belies his assertion.

  “Really Harvey?”

  He pauses a beat.

  “Ok, so I know Phil Jiang, so what?”

  “Come on Harvey, I know everything. Phil Jiang is in the same gang as you and Leo. You find the beautiful girls, they take them captive and put them into slavery, auctioning them off to perverts, and you all make big bucks doing it.” As I speak all the assurance slides from his face.

  “How did you find out?” he asks.

  “Because I’m good at what I do. So believe me when I tell you, unless you tell me where Zelena is right now, you are going to regret it very much.”

  He drops the façade. “Go take a flying fuck, Rogan. If I read you right, you’re not going to slice me up with that knife of yours. It’s not your style.”

  I remember my earlier thought that I can turn two foes into friends. I can use one against the other. I rummage in my holdall and pull out the paper bag containing my other foe.

  “Phil Jiang made a big error,” I tell him as I start to remove items from the bag and put them on the bedside table. “He talked to my partner in Vancouver who, out of a misguided worry for me, must have told Phil I used to have a problem with this.” I wave the baggie at him then put it down. “Phil realized if I was found dead of an overdose, it would be treated as a tragic error in judgement. If I went missing, the police might get off their fat asses and start investigating the things I had talked to them about. So he called the guys who were about to shoot me and bury me, and told them to pump me full of smack instead. Unfortunately for them, I had other plans.”

  I pour all the powder into the little metal container and add some water, all the while watching Harvey with a smile on my face. There’s no reciprocating smile on his but there is a sheen of sweat on his brow. I fire up the butane lighter and heat up the solution.

  “There’s enough here to kill a stable full of horses. When I inject it into your vein you are going to get the most unbelievable high, which you will really, really enjoy for the few seconds before your heart explodes.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he almost gasps.

  I say nothing and take out the syringe. His eyes go wide. “Oh, do you have Trypanophobia by any chance?” I say conversationally.

  “What the fuck?”

  “Trypanophobia,” I repeat. “It’s fear of needles.”

  I get a stream of expletives back.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” I fill the hypodermic from the metal container. No need for any sanitary precautions here. He tries to thrash about but the duct tape has both arms firmly attached to the frame of the bed. “That’s good,” I say. “The more you strain against the duct tape, the more your veins will swell and the easier it is for me.” He goes limp and with the ease of long practice, I slide the needle into a vein in the crook of his arm.

  “No, please, take it out, take it out.”

  As much as I want to get the information, I long to ram the plunger home and watch his reaction.

  “Please don’t. I’ll tell you, I promise. Just take it out of my vein.” There is a rising panic in his tone.

  “Meum opium, meae leges,” I say with a grin.

  “What the fuck is—ˮ

  “It’s Latin. It means my heroin, my rules,” my grin gets wider. “And here are my rules. You tell me where Zelena is being held and I remove the needle. If you lie to me, I will come back, reinsert the needle and send you to heaven or wherever it is you’re bound. Then I’ll track down Leo and make him the same offer. I’m sure he’ll be happy to cooperate.”

  “All right, I’ll tell you.” His words come tumbling out. “There’s a small hotel that Leo owns. Just before this place was raided, he took all the girls there. It’s called the Bright Sun in
English, it’s in Wan Chai. Now, take the needle out please.”

  “What’s the exact address?”

  He gives it to me and I write it down.

  “Now, please take out the needle.”

  I take out the duct tape and tear off a new strip, which I stick over his mouth and wrap twice round his head.

  “Thanks for your help Harvey,” I say. “You know, in my career, I have met some of the real dregs of humanity: murderers, drug dealers, child kidnappers, a serial killer, gang bosses and perverts. But you guys take the cake. It has got to be a better world without you in it.” I can smell the fear on him. “So have a nice trip,” I conclude.

  His eyes go like saucers as I push home the plunger on the syringe, pick up my holdall and leave. I am followed by the sound of his bowels voiding.

  41

  Zelena

  At last it’s over. He rolls off me and lies on his back beside me, smelling of sweat. I managed to get through it without fighting or crying or screaming, though God knows I wanted to do all of those things. I can take a little satisfaction in knowing I spoiled it for him.

  “You are useless bitch,” he says as he gets up.

  I get off the floor, pull the quilt from the bed and hug it around me.

  “Thought you talk to detective.” His words fire through me like electricity. He sees it and smiles. “Oh, yes. Thought you give him message. Detective told us everything. Silly gwáilóu girl. No one never gonna find you now.”

  All my hopes of twenty minutes ago shatter and I feel a volcano of heat rise up in me. I hate him for telling me. How stupid was I to believe I would be rescued? Leo will never let me go. I will be here until I die. Living the same nightmare every day.

  He took away my one dream.

  I have never hated like this before.