Fall Guy

by Scott Mackay

  “I just want you to know that no matter what happens,” he said, “I love you.”

  She kept shading her drawing.

  Twenty-two hours on an airplane. His knees started to hurt halfway to San Francisco. At first he tried to alleviate the ache by walking up and down the aisle, but by the time they landed in San Francisco to change planes, his knees hurt so badly he dosed himself with two of his enteric-coated aspirins and ordered a double Scotch and soda, hoping to concoct his own improvised goofball to send him to sleep.

  At ten in the evening, the flight attendant dimmed the lights and handed out blankets and pillows. Gilbert put his seat back but the steady hum of the aircraft kept him awake. He kept thinking about his family. He stared at the little air nozzle on the ceiling while Joe snored quietly. He wondered what he could do to make Jennifer like him again. He glanced across the aisle where an overweight Chinese man no more than five feet tall, with a paunch the size of a basketball, slumped a good way over his armrest. His mouth was open, his eyes closed, and his tongue, moist and purple, was making unconscious forays over his lower lip. Gilbert felt alienated from his own family, as if he were an outsider, as if, because he was the father—the traditional authority figure—he could never quite belong to his own family, at least not the way the girls and Regina belonged to one another. That gave him a great big ache right in the middle of his chest.

  By hour eighteen, he felt as if he were in a surreal dream. His knees were numb and the only thing he felt happy about was the prospect of apprehending Tony Mok. He felt as if the jet somehow traveled outside of time and space, that it was a jet that would never land, one that would fly forever through the dull gray void of the pre-dawn sky. A flight this long was a test of endurance. Because they were racing away from the rising sun, the night seemed to stretch on forever.

  He thought of Jennifer and Nina swimming up at the cottage, how Jennifer liked to take the snorkel and goggles and swim along the sheer rock face of the south point, where the granite was pink, and minnows schooled in groups of twenty or thirty. As the sun finally caught up with them from behind, he smelled coffee brewing. This revived his spirit. He thought of coffee up at the cottage, thought of Regina in her big soft white terry-towel bathrobe, of her fair skin, skin so fair it shone in the morning light. He lifted the recessed window shade and looked down at an unbroken layer of cloud below. It looked like a carpet of cotton, tinted purple, gold, and pink by the rising sun. The tilt of the jet was nose-down now. He was lucky to have his family. The lights came on and flight attendants emerged to take away pillows and blankets. Sometimes he forgot just how lucky he was. Passengers drifted to the washrooms. Gilbert got up and stretched his knees in the aisle. He went to the washroom, noting how over half the passengers on the jet were Chinese, and splashed some water on his face. He’d gone on several homicide-related overseas flights in the past—to India, Ireland, South Africa, one even to Hawaii—but this was by far the longest. He’d never brought back presents for Regina and the girls. This time he was going to. Desperate measures, he thought, something to get in his family’s good books again, but that’s what he was going to do.

  Once he got back to his seat, the flight attendants wheeled breakfast down the aisles. Lombardo was up, rubbing the thick dark growth on his chin with his palm. He looked bleary-eyed and his hair was disheveled.

  “How are the knees?” Lombardo asked him.

  “They hurt like God’s own judgment,” said Gilbert.

  Lombardo lifted his wrist and looked at his watch. “Christ, I guess we’re almost there,” he said. “That’s a long haul.”

  “Another hour and we should be landing,” said Gilbert. He looked at his hands. “I think I’m going to call Jennifer when I get there. Things were a little shaky when I left and I want to see if I can fix them up.”

  A doubtful expression came to Lombardo’s face. “You know what?” he said. “I’d leave it alone for now if I were you. I’d give it some time.”

  Lombardo’s advice bothered Gilbert; Joe seemed to know Jennifer better than he did. He stared at the cover of Discovery, Cathay Pacific’s in-flight magazine. “Maybe you’re right,” he said.

  Lombardo glanced out the window and ran a hand through his hair. “Let her cool off.”

  Gilbert was grateful to Lombardo. Grateful for reminding him that no matter what he tried with Jennifer right now, nothing would work. The man was only thirty-three, but he had a lot of common sense. Even if he occasionally did spend up to seventy-five dollars on a haircut.

  They got their breakfasts. The coffee made Gilbert feel better. One of the best airline coffees he had ever tasted, as a matter of fact. A short while later the seat-belt warning rang and the captain made his pre-landing announcement. He reported the weather in Hong Kong as balmy and overcast, with a temperature of 72 Fahrenheit, 24 Celsius, and rain expected by evening. The jet’s nose dipped down and the rosy clouds came up fast. They went into the clouds.

  After a few minutes, the clouds shredded, and Gilbert saw the South China Sea. The pilot said a few words about the new Chek Lap Kok Airport, opened in July 1998 to replace the old Kai Tak Airport in downtown Kowloon. Gilbert saw rocky islands now, and fishing junks. As they rounded a few final mountains they came upon Metropolitan Hong Kong. Tall financial towers clustered thickly on the north shore of Hong Kong Island, jammed against the peaks and hills of the interior, while across Victoria Harbor, on the south shore of Kowloon Peninsula, smaller buildings, no taller than twenty stories, congregated shoulder to shoulder in a toy-like collection of cubes and monoliths. Ships, freighters, ferries, sampans, and junks crowded the harbor. Gilbert glimpsed a double-decker bus driving on the left-hand side of the road.

  They continued west toward Chek Lap Kok Airport, banking over Lantau Island, getting ready to come in for their final approach. Lower and lower they flew. Gilbert saw a profusion of tiny islands everywhere. The runway got closer and closer. Finally, the landing gear touched down and the jet engines squealed. The jet slowed; they came to a halt next to the terminal.

  Their liaison officer, Inspector Ian Dunlop of the Hong Kong Island Region Administrative Wing of the Hong Kong Police Force, greeted them at the airport. He was about forty, had deep-set blue eyes, a narrow aristocratic nose, and blond hair cut in a Mersey-Beat style. He wore a gray pinstripe suit, a maroon shirt, and a black tie. Dunlop told the detectives a little about himself. Though of British ancestry, Dunlop was a longtime Hong Konger, born and raised here, and had been recruited at the age of twenty-one into the then Royal Hong Kong Police Force.

  “My dad was a surgeon,” he told Gilbert and Lombardo on the twenty-five-minute train ride via the Tsing Ma Bridge from Lantau Island to the city. “He worked out of Princess Margaret Hospital for thirty years, saved more lives than I can possibly count, but finally left in April of 1997, just before the handover. Went back home and bought a farm in the Cotswolds, where he plans to read the complete poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins and make stained-glass windows as a hobby. Me, I could never leave here. This is my home. I might have blond hair and blue eyes, but I feel like a bleeding Chinese most of the time.” He glanced out the window, where workmen laid concrete for a new overpass. “I’m one of three white officers left in the force’s HKI Administrative Wing. That doesn’t make any difference to me. But some of the new PLA officers regard me with a certain degree of suspicion. Of course, they’re born to suspicion, aren’t they?”

  “PLA?” said Gilbert.

  “People’s Liberation Army. We now have over five thousand PLA officers in the Hong Kong Police Force. And they’ve sent down about five hundred new vehicles from Shenzhen. That’s good. We could use them.”

  “So there’s been a lot of change,” said Lombardo.

  They passed through a corridor of densely populated government-subsidized high-rise housing. Gilbert had never seen streets so crowded, congested with trucks, cars, double-decker buses, pedestrians, and hundreds of bicycles.

  “There
has been and there hasn’t been,” said Dunlop. “We’ve had an overall reduction in crime, and certainly the way in which we police the place has been more stringent since the Communist takeover, but oddly enough our homicide rate is going up. So is our suicide rate. I can’t help reading something into that. We still allow peaceful demonstrations, and people are still allowed to make huge piles of money, and to spend huge piles of money, and we still have all our so-called hostess clubs, and the seedier side of our nightlife, and we can partake freely of our nastier habits. Hong Kong’s still very much an island of the Gucci Chinese, and everybody still wears designer clothes. But there’s an overall sense that our civil liberties have been curtailed. You’ve got to watch what you say now, and that’s truer for me than for most because of the position I hold in the Administrative Wing.”

  Despite Gilbert’s excruciating jet lag, he was interested in what Dunlop had to say.

  “Just before the handover,” continued Dunlop, “the Chinese introduced some amendments to our various ordinances.” He glanced out the window, where a man walked along the street with five dead roosters slung over his back. “For instance, if I were to say or do anything to advocate the independence or sovereignty of Taiwan, Tibet, or Hong Kong, I would lose my job instantly and probably be jailed for sedition.” Dunlop raised his eyebrows. “And that’s taken some getting used to. I like to say what I like without anybody telling me otherwise. My dad always taught me to speak my mind. But I can’t do that anymore. Not if I still want my paycheck.”

  They stayed at the Ritz-Carlton on Connaught Road in the Central District, a narrow finger of a hotel squeezed next to the landmark Furama Hotel. The American Government had an expense account with the Hong Kong Ritz-Carlton, and because Gilbert and Lombardo were acting under the partial auspices of the Drug Enforcement Administration, both were given account cards. This allowed them free dining at the hotel’s main restaurant, Toscana, as well as access to the Executive Business Center, with its Internet, e-mail, and fax machines. From an architectural standpoint, Gilbert liked the building because of the way its exterior recalled Art Deco New York. The interior was refined in an Old-European style—reproductions of Gainsborough, Constable, and Turner hung on the walls. From their window they had not only a view of Victoria Harbor but also one of the Peak. On the opposite corner rose the Bank of China, a colossus of glass and steel, with its two radio antennas pointing skyward, the most recognizable building in Hong Kong. The whole city seemed squeezed into the meandering corridor of land between the harbor and the various sparsely populated peaks of the interior.

  They reached the hotel at ten o’clock in the morning local time—ten P.M. Toronto time—and made arrangements to meet Ian Dunlop later that afternoon, after they’d had a chance to rest and clean up. Before they went up, Gilbert asked Dunlop if he could send someone to the Prince of Wales Hospital in the New Territories to retrieve the original and any related blood phenotype records on Tony Mok or his parents.

  “Be happy to,” said Dunlop, “if you think it will help your case.”

  When Dunlop was gone, Lombardo turned to Gilbert. “What was that all about?” he asked.

  Gilbert hadn’t yet told Lombardo about his theory. He knew his theory was a long shot. Just as the glove had been a long shot. No point in getting ridiculed about it until he had to. Now was the time. Gilbert explained his theory to Lombardo.

  When he was done, Gilbert said, “Blackstein assured me that this particular blood phenotype had to be done for paternity testing only. I’m hoping to find the corresponding parental phenotypes at the Prince of Wales Hospital.”

  Lombardo shrugged doubtfully. “I don’t know, Barry,” he said.

  Gilbert pressed his point. “If Foster Sung turns out to be Tony’s biological father,” he said, “it might explain why he was trying to protect Tony when he told us Tony took off in a taxi on the night of the murder. And if we can bolster that particular angle with a phenotype record, proving their blood relation to each other, our case against Tony grows stronger.”

  Lombardo shook his head. “But what about Tony’s case file from the Children’s Aid Society?” he asked. “They have Tony documented as an orphan. They have Foster Sung documented as his legal guardian, not his father. Why would Foster Sung go to all that trouble to hide his biological connection from Tony?”

  Gilbert stared at the rainy harbor. “I have no idea, Joe,” he said. “But I think it’s an angle worth looking at.”

  At four o’clock, they went outside. The doorman gave them complimentary umbrellas as they left. The rain that fell was more like a summer rain, warm and silky, glossing everything with a satiny coating of wetness. The temperature was balmy—Hong Kong was about as far south as Cuba and enjoyed subtropical weather. Ian Dunlop waved to them from a parked police van across the street. The driver was a uniformed police constable. He opened the sliding side door and Gilbert and Lombardo got in. Sound equipment packed the back of the van: a Mitsubishi broadcast-quality tape recorder as well as a lot of receiving apparatus.

  “Have a seat,” said Dunlop. “It’s going to take us a while to get through this traffic.”

  At this time of day, gridlock always slowed traffic in Hong Kong to a crawl. They inched west along Connaught Road, turned left up Jubilee Street, edging higher into the hills, then right on Queen’s Road Central until they came to Bonham Strand East, the tall buildings flashing with hundreds of neon signs, the sidewalks crowded, dance clubs beckoning, stalls offering everything from Calvin Klein knockoffs to stuffed baby crocodiles, buskers playing strange Chinese instruments Gilbert had never seen before. At Bonham Strand East, they pulled up to the curb.

  “This is the heart of the Western District,” said Dunlop. “The Yellow Moon Tea Room is just up there on Tung Loi Lane.” Gilbert glanced up the street where he saw several open-air fruit markets. “The Western District is a veritable warren of alleys and lanes too narrow for this van, and not exactly safe for pedestrians either.” Dunlop glanced at Gilbert and Lombardo questioningly. “You’ve got your guns?”

  Both detectives nodded. Outside, the light faded quickly. The weatherman called for the rain to clear by midnight.

  “Right,” said Dunlop. “Here’s a little map I’ve drawn.” He gave the map to Gilbert. “Walk up here to Wing Lok Street, then turn left. That’s Tai Street. Follow Tai Street until you reach Tung Loi Lane. Turn left again. The Yellow Moon Tea Room is about five doors past the Post Office. Can we check the microphone to make sure it’s working?”

  Gilbert spoke into his body bug. “Testing, one, two, three.”

  The needle on the sound meter jumped. “It’s working,” said Dunlop. “If you get into trouble, all you have to do is call. I’m sure your weapons will be taken away from you at some point, but you might as well take them along for now. Good luck.”

  Twenty

  Gilbert and Lombardo got out of the police van and ventured into the rainy night. They passed a temple from which Gilbert smelled the aroma of heavy incense. Looking inside the open door, he saw several devoted worshipers burning paper prayers in a giant urn, the flames leaping as high as a good-sized bonfire. The buildings in the Western District were old, shabby, and the streets so narrow and crowded, he and Lombardo at times had to squeeze their way through. Following Dunlop’s map, Gilbert and Lombardo walked farther into the thicket of streets. Through front windows they saw fan-makers, jade carvers, and fortune-tellers. Gilbert saw shops selling snake wine, ginseng, funeral wreaths, and hundred-year-old eggs—dingy shops where the shelves were stocked with bags and chests of goods exuding the fusty smells of dried mushrooms, shark fins, and abalones. He saw as many shopkeepers using modern computerized cash registers as he did old abaci. As they turned left onto Tung Loi Lane, a man tried to sell them a knockoff Rolex but instantly grew annoyed when he found they couldn’t speak Cantonese. He moved off quickly.

  The Yellow Moon Tea Room was on the fourth floor of a low mean structure five stories tall, had
its own neon sign extending on a pole over the street. Mini-skirted Chinese women hung around outside waiting for customers. Gilbert and Lombardo climbed the few steps to the building and entered a dim lobby. The place smelled of cooking oil and, faintly, of marijuana. The cracked tile floor was strewn with rubbish. People had set up vending stalls in the lobby. One man sold live squid from an aquarium tank. Another sold stuffed birds. Through a glass door to the left, Gilbert saw several bamboo mats spread out on the floor—the place was a low-cost hostel of sorts and was packed with Chinese men. He looked at the stairs. A mush of impenetrable garbage covered the steps.

  “I guess we take the elevator,” he said.

  “Do you think it’s safe?” asked Lombardo, peering at the cage-lift doubtfully. “It doesn’t look safe.”

  Gilbert pointed at the stairs. “Do you want to climb through that?”

  “No,” said Lombardo, scrutinizing the garbage in bewilderment. “I guess I don’t.”

  They rode the lift to the fourth floor.

  Once there, Gilbert looked down the hall and saw a neon sign at the end blinking off and on, big Chinese characters, smaller English letters underneath—the Yellow Moon Tea Room. The smell of mildew and fish hung thickly around them. The two detectives walked down the hall, Gilbert noting how the floorboards sagged beneath his feet. A mouse, dark and quick, bolted along the baseboard and disappeared into a hole under the quarter-round. Gilbert went into the tea room first the Chinese money envelope ready in his hand.