Fall Guy

by Scott Mackay

  “You didn’t mention Tony when I talked to you last week,” he said.

  She turned to him. A calico cat with orange, white, and black fur jumped up on her lap and she gave its head a careless stroke. The cat moved on, up onto a high side table, where it stepped over a broken Chinese fan.

  “Tony left us when he was sixteen,” she said. “That was seven years ago. The only reason he ever comes around these days is to ask for money. I took care of him for eight years, but he’s never really thanked me for it. If it hadn’t been for the money Foster Sung gave me to look after Tony, I think I might have tried to place him elsewhere. But when he first came to Canada he spoke no English at all, and to place him with another Chinese family, especially after what had happened with the Kwons, would have been difficult. Also, I needed the money.”

  “He’s been in a lot of trouble since he was sixteen,” said Gilbert.

  “I know.” She smiled, but it was a melancholy smile. “And he was in a lot of trouble before he was sixteen.” Her smile disappeared and she picked up the broken fan, pink roses on black silk, the weave of the silk shredding near the edge, two of the bamboo supports cracked. “I tried to love him.” Her face hardened, as if loving Tony Mok had been nothing but bitter effort. “I thought the reason he acted so badly was because maybe he thought no one loved him. I tried my best. But I naturally loved my own son more. Tony would compete fiercely for my attention. He would break things to get my attention. He thought he could make me love him as much as I loved Edgar. But I was often angry with him.” Her voice took on a resentful tone. “And he was so ungrateful. He never did what he was told. I thought the refugee camp in Hong Kong might have made him that way.” Under her big square glasses, her eyes narrowed in speculation. Then she looked at Gilbert, a serene smoothness coming to her brow. “I can’t say I was sorry to see Tony go.” She pressed her lips together. “I couldn’t find any natural feeling for him.”

  “We think he might have been involved in Edgar’s murder,” said Gilbert. He felt he had to nudge her.

  “I wouldn’t know,” she said. She stared at him. She moved the fan up and down a few times. “He was a difficult boy.” On the mantelpiece she had a stick of incense burning around a small shrine to Edgar, with some of Edgar’s things up there, and an old school photograph with Edgar in a school blazer and tie. “He was more trouble than he was worth.”

  He continued to nudge. “And if he was always competing with Edgar for your affections—”

  She held up her hand, stopping him. “Tony would never kill unless he had something materially to gain from it,” she said. “He might have competed for my attention when he was a boy, but he stole from me as well. He stole from Edgar. I used to lock my jewelry in a closet. Edgar had a hand-carved ivory mah-jongg set. Tony stole that from Edgar. Tony denied it, but we both knew he did it. His denials were always so obvious.”

  Gilbert wondered what could have made Tony that way. “Any idea who his real parents were?”

  Outside, rain blew against the window, blurring the pane, obscuring the decrepit Victorian brownstones across the broad truck-congested street.

  “His mother’s name was Fang,” she said. “She was on our boat.” May Lau put the fan down, looking distressed by these memories. “I don’t know if Fang had a husband.” She shook her head. “She came alone. She was terribly pregnant. All the ladies on the boat fussed over her constantly.”

  “And she gave birth on the boat?”

  “No,” said Mrs. Lau. “She gave birth three or four days after we reached Hong Kong. In the refugee camp. And then she died. We had an outbreak of diphtheria in our camp. Fang contracted it and she died from it.” May folded her hands on her lap. “Foster took responsibility for the child. We didn’t even know if Fang’s family name was Mok. We just picked a name out of a hat for the boy. Foster helped the child as much as he could. Foster did well in Hong Kong. He already knew people there. He helped dozens of children who were orphaned during that outbreak of diphtheria. We didn’t have enough medicine. There were just too many of us.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to Tony?” asked Gilbert.

  Her eyes narrowed. She shook her head. “I can’t remember,” she said. “I try to forget Tony.” She looked at him, pleading. “I don’t like to think about him.” She glanced at a flimsy dress pattern draped over the end of the couch, a rat’s nest of lines and instructions. “Whenever I think of Tony, it always reminds me of all the bad things that happened to us. And I’d just as soon forget all those things.”

  Gilbert got back to headquarters on College Street around six. Lombardo had just returned from the airport. Without Pearl Wu.

  “She had Peter Hope waiting there to pick her up,” said Lombardo.

  “Peter Hope?” said Gilbert.

  “It turns out he’s her personal assistant. Wouldn’t you know it? He wouldn’t let me talk to her.”

  Peter Hope, Foster Sung’s unmentioned tablemate from the night of the murder. “Were you able to talk to her at all?” he asked. He wished Hukowich would get back to him about Hope.

  Lombardo arched his brow. “What was I going to do?” he said. “Twist her arm? Hope didn’t let her say a thing. He was pushy. I tried to talk to Pearl as she came out of Customs but he took her by the arm and pulled her away. He said she was much too tired to talk to me, that she had just spent the last twenty-two hours on an airplane, and if I thought it was really necessary I could phone him in the morning and make an appointment to see her.”

  “So you saw her walk through the airport?”

  “I saw her.”

  “And?”

  Lombardo glanced at the overhead fluorescent lights, pondering, then looked at Gilbert. “Try to imagine the most beautiful Chinese woman you’ve ever seen,” he said, as if he were setting the scene for a dream come true, “then multiply it by a hundred times.”

  Lombardo so often got dreamy over women. And it was beginning to bug Gilbert, especially because of Jennifer. His eyes narrowed with skepticism. “You know, I don’t mind you dating witnesses, Joe, but try to stay away from suspects, okay? It’s like sleeping with the enemy.”

  “Who said I was sleeping with her?”

  “Should we start taking bets around the squad room?”

  “I don’t even know her,” said Lombardo.

  “When has that ever stopped you?”

  “And besides, she’s married.”

  “When has that ever stopped you?”

  “Hey!”

  “Did you see her scar?”

  Lombardo looked down at his Italian leather shoes, then picked a piece of lint from his expensive pleated pants. “I saw her scar,” he said.

  “Is it bad?”

  Lombardo put his hands on his hips, thought about it, then nodded tentatively. “It’s bad,” he said. “But it’s bad in a good kind of way.”

  “You speak in riddles, my son,” said Gilbert.

  “It…I don’t know…it elevates her beauty.” Here he went with his dreamy stuff again. “It gives her…character. It goes right down here, diagonally along her left cheek, the color of cream, and it’s…it’s like a tribal scar, like some of the tribesmen in Africa have, nearly looks as if it were put there on purpose.”

  Gilbert stared at Lombardo, his jaw sinking. “You’re hooked,” he said.

  Lombardo shook his head. “I would never get near her,” he said. “Not the way Hope hovers around her. He might be her personal assistant, but I think there’s a lot more to it than that. Think chaperon, and that’s the impression I got. He gave me his card. He was like a pesky old nanny around her, yanked her this way and that, talked to her sternly, like he was scolding her, treated her like a child. She didn’t look too happy about it. You think she would be the one giving the orders to Hope.”

  “But he gave you his card,” said Gilbert.

  Lombardo pulled out Peter Hope’s card and showed it to Gilbert. “It’s got a little fake emerald up in the corne
r,” said Lombardo. “Have you ever seen a card like that before?” He handed it to Gilbert. “It has his name in both Chinese and English, plus telephone numbers for here and in Hong Kong.”

  Gilbert gazed at the card. He raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t that something?” Gilbert gave the card back to Joe. “So do you think the pesky old nanny will let us talk to her?”

  “He told me to phone tomorrow,” said Lombardo.

  “Does he know we want to talk to him as well? Because if he was sitting at Foster Sung’s table on the night of the murder, we definitely want to talk to him.”

  Lombardo nodded. “He knows,” he said. “He’s going to try and set some time aside.”

  Gilbert shook his head. “This is the end of Western civilization as we know it, Joe,” he said.

  “Why’s that?” asked Lombardo.

  “Interrogation by appointment only. Have you ever heard of such crap?”

  Lombardo went home but Gilbert stayed an extra hour to write reports on everything they had done that day on the Edgar Lau case. He was just shutting down his computer when Roger Pemberton, from Missing Persons, walked in. Gilbert was surprised to see Pemberton. Pemberton was a tall meek-looking man with stooped shoulders.

  “I thought you were off all week,” said Gilbert.

  Pemberton, wearing a loosened tie around his neck, his shirtsleeves rolled up, shook his head despondently and shambled forward, his long arms hanging ape-like at his sides.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said, his voice barely audible.

  “What’s up?” asked Gilbert.

  “I just did a search through your case files,” he said.

  “How’s that working out?” asked Gilbert, remembering the initiative taken by Security and Information to link the Missing Persons database to Homicide’s database.

  “It’s okay,” said Pemberton, as if he were talking about a healing canker sore. “The search time is a little slow, but Dave says we’re getting upgrades in February. Our hard drives, they have only one hamster apiece inside them.”

  “And did you get a hit?” asked Gilbert.

  Pemberton nodded disconsolately. “We’re looking for a Garth Surrey,” he said. “I got a hit in your Edgar Lau file. I thought I’d better tell you. I know you’ve got other agencies involved. The more the merrier, huh?”

  “Garth Surrey?” said Gilbert.

  Pemberton flinched. “Rosalyn Surrey’s husband,” he said, as if he wondered why Gilbert had to talk so loudly.

  Gilbert leaned forward, felt the blood rush past his temples. “He’s missing?” he said. He couldn’t help thinking of Playmate-of-the-Month Rosalyn Surrey, how the cameraman had been none other than Edgar Lau, and how that might mean a jealous husband somewhere in the picture. Now the jealous husband was missing. Maybe the jealous husband was running. Maybe the jealous husband was Edgar’s killer.

  “She filed the report with us on the twentieth,” said Pemberton, oblivious to Gilbert’s excitement. “He’s been missing since the day of your murder.”

  Outside, the rain and the wind played a chaotic tattoo against the windowpane. “So you followed up on all the leads?” asked Gilbert.

  “Until the leads ran out,” said Pemberton. As if he believed the whole universe was running out of leads, slowly, surely, dying toward a state of coma-like leadlessness.

  “And you checked our case file?”

  “To see if he’d been murdered.” He shrugged, an embarrassed twitch of his shoulders. “As a last resort. I wasn’t going to. I was hoping to put it off for as long as I could. And when I finally went ahead, I was hoping for a dead end so I could go home and spend the rest of the week with my family. But now I guess I’ve got to talk to Rosalyn Surrey. A woman like that makes me nervous. I don’t know how they ever let her on the Police Services Board. She might start blaming me for something. Even if I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Gilbert glanced at Roger Pemberton’s shoes, about as big as shoes could get, then looked up at his small gray eyes. “Look, Rog, just bring your missing persons file on Garth Surrey down here,” said Gilbert. He got up, patted Pemberton on the shoulder. “I think we better handle it from here.”

  Pemberton raised his blond eyebrows. “Really?” he said, the decibel level of his voice for the first time reaching the normal range.

  “We’re working some angles, and your case file might help us.”

  Pemberton managed to hoist the corners of his lips into a weary smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’ve got the case file right here.” He handed Gilbert a manila folder with his long arm.

  Gilbert took the file and glanced through it. His eyes immediately stopped at Garth Surrey’s description: tall, six feet four, 280 pounds, long brown hair, a beard and mustache, small round glasses. Exactly the same description Dock Wen had given them. Gilbert looked at Pemberton.

  “Thanks, Rog,” he said. “Thanks a lot. You have a Happy New Year.”

  “Is there anything in there you can use?” asked Pemberton.

  “Everything,” said Gilbert.

  Ten

  Gilbert went back to New City Hall the next day. The large concrete arches spanning the skating rink had iced over and a frigid north wind blasted Nathan Phillips Square, snaking through the half-arches of the two towers and seeming to concentrate its full bitter force on Gilbert’s face. The wind moaned through all the towers of the financial district south of City Hall and the piped-in Top 40 skating music at the rink could hardly compete. Three large articulated streetcars were backed up behind a traffic accident at Queen and Bay, stuck in their tracks, unable to move around the mishap, while bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks fought contentiously to squeeze through the one open lane. He wondered why people still brought their cars downtown; there was no place to park, and hardly any place to drive. The few people he saw walking across the square had to bend into the wind, collars or scarves up, hanging on to their hats. Toronto was bracing for its first blast of winter.

  Despite a possible match on bullets in the Toronto and Vancouver shootings—physical evidence that at least partially implicated Tony Mok as the killer—Gilbert couldn’t rule out this new possibility of Garth Surrey, especially now that he had Roger Pemberton’s missing persons report. He hurried to the podium office block, passing a sullen blond woman in a yellow rain slicker working a hot-dog stand. With the Vancouver bullet badly mashed, affording only a limited comparison, he couldn’t eliminate anybody yet. Gilbert opened the big pine door and entered the welcome warmth of New City Hall. Tony Mok and Pearl Wu might be their strongest suspects. Gilbert climbed the broad stairs to the second level. But Garth Surrey, because his physical description matched the description given by Dock Wen of the white man seen behind the restaurant at the time of the murder, came a close second.

  Rosalyn Surrey was with one of her constituency volunteers when Gilbert arrived. She came out and told Gilbert to wait.

  “No Cindy today?” he said.

  “She’s on holiday,” said Rosalyn. Rosalyn looked exhausted. “She’ll be back after the New Year.” She waved to the waiting area. “Take a seat. I won’t be long.”

  He sat down as Rosalyn went back to her office. He glanced out into the hall. No one here today. He again looked at the photographs on the wall.

  He had to admire Edgar’s handiwork; he had been a gifted photographer. Up in the corner Gilbert saw a photograph of Metro Councillor Rosalyn Surrey shaking hands with Chief of Police Michael K. Moore, a stone-faced man who had once been Gilbert’s captain in patrol. In another photograph, she cut the ceremonial ribbon at the opening of the Bedford Heights Community Center with a girls’ broomball team gathered round her. In another, she celebrated the Chinese New Year, stood on a platform in front of the Art Gallery with some dignitaries, clapping her hands as she watched a dragon parade go by. He grew suddenly still. He stared harder at the parade picture. He got up and had a closer look. She wore gloves. Beige Isotoners, much like the one he had
taken from the tree, like the one that had tested positive for barium and antimony. They looked a little big on her. Men’s gloves? Compositionally, the photograph focused on Rosalyn’s hands, the way she applauded, as if to stress her appreciation of Chinese culture; a hallmark of Edgar’s photography seemed to be the conscious use of symbolism. Gilbert examined the photograph carefully, detected a stain on the right glove similar to but more apparent than the one on the glove he had in the evidence locker back at headquarters. He heard the meeting break up. He couldn’t be certain of the glove. But now it looked as if even Rosalyn Surrey might be a suspect. He returned to his chair.

  Rosalyn came to the door, wished her volunteer, a pudgy young Chinese woman in a faded Rodeo Drive sweatshirt, a Happy New Year, sent her on her way, and turned to Gilbert. Her expression was at once hard and fretful, her lips pressing together, her eyes narrowing, her brow pulling toward her nose. Again, it was a game of silence between them. The emptiness out in the corridor seemed to echo, caught stray sounds from the lobby, magnified the scant traffic noise from outside. Whether she thought he was here about Garth, or Edgar, or both, he couldn’t be sure.

  “Your husband is missing,” he said.

  More silence. A look of quick calculation crossed her face, the politician regrouping. But then her burden crushed the politician right out of her. She turned away, took a few distracted steps to the functional-looking sofa against the wall, and sat down, her green skirt riding up over her knees, her knees demure and girlish in her nylons.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  For her to ask such a question about her husband raised several startling possibilities. Was Garth Surrey suicidal? Was he in trouble with the wrong kind of people? Was he the kind of man who might find himself in a situation where he might wind up murdered? Or did she just think that because he was a homicide detective there could be no other explanation?

  “We don’t know,” he said. “But I wish you’d tell me what’s going on.”