Chasing the Dragon: a story of love, redemption and the Chinese triads (Opium Book 2)

by Colin Falconer

  “Speedboat.”

  Mac had told Keelan about the speedboats. The boats had a bank of outboards on the stern, and could travel at sixty knots, easily outrunning the Navy and police patrol boats. The gangs used them to get into the Territories and transport brand-new top model cars. They would steal them, drive three or four Mercedes or BMW’s onto the back of a custom built speedboat in Tai O and have them on the China side inside fifteen minutes. They made huge profits every time. On the return leg the lighters could land and hide in any one of Hong Kong's two hundred and thirty five islands to wait for the next shipment.

  It would be easy for Eddie to get himself in and out of Hong Kong the same way.

  “We want him, Ruby.”

  “Cannot. Do not know where he is today, tomorrow. When he come to Hong Kong, just come.”

  “How do you stay in contact?”

  She reached into her bag and took out her mobile phone. “Call him up. Shenzhen side.”

  “And he can call you?”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me how he operates.”

  Ruby picked up her thick shake. “Do not know, okay.”

  “You don't know. What does that mean?”

  “Do not know. No shit.”

  “You must know.”

  “Just a cut-out, okay? Eddie say go there, Ruby go. Eddie say do this, Ruby do it. Eddie Lau not stupid.”

  “Tell me what you do know. Don't screw me around, Ruby-'

  '-not screw you around, okay!” she hissed. “Think this is just some street gang, heya! Eddie sell a lot of chicken. Don't get to be big boss being stupid!”

  “Just tell me how it operates.”

  “First I go to America, okay. Always Golden Mountain, San Francisco. Maybe regular customer, maybe Eddie say you talk to this guy for me, give me a name. I cut a deal. I tell Eddie, he say okay. Tell me where to get chicken. I make the deal, fly back to Hong Kong.”

  “You bring the money with you?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Go to Chinese bank, maybe travel agent. They give me receipt. They make phone call, Shenzhen side. Give money to Vincent Tse.”

  The underground banking system; Keelan had heard of it. It was a maze of international Chinese banks, travel agencies and bullion dealers using secret radio stations and scrambled telephone lines to move billions of narcodollars within a few hours and leaving no traceable records. Keelan knew that one leading Thai bank routinely used the system to transfer five million dollars a day out of Bangkok. The whole shadowy tangle was beyond their reach.

  This is like punching air, Keelan thought. So far all he had was a phone number in China and an S&L in San Francisco. Dead ends.

  “We need to set up a deal,” he said. “You have to get Eddie into the US.”

  “Never happen.”

  “Why not?”

  “Eddie is not stupid.”

  Keelan thought about it. There had to be some way, if they had Ruby as the bait. “When's the next deal, Ruby?”

  “Fly to Golden Mountain tomorrow night. If Ruby doan get chopped first.”

  “Who are you meeting?”

  “Regular customer.”

  “What's his name?”

  “Name is Frank Bertolli,” Ruby said and took another bite of her hamburger. She held it between the finger and thumb of each manicured hand, as if she was sipping juice form an oyster. “You all right, John? Look like you see ghost, heya.”

  “Frank Bertolli?”

  “You know this guy?”

  “Maybe'

  “Give you big tip, John. Very big customer. Ten unit every three month. No shit.”

  They would need wiretaps, he thought, the dope right there on the table. Ruby would have to get in front of a Grand Jury and spell it all out. They could put him away under RICO, and he'd never see the light of day again.

  Then Anna and Caroline could rest in peace.

  Was Ruby really scared enough to go all the way with them on this? “I want you to set this deal up, Ruby. I'll contact you again in San Francisco. Where are you staying?”

  “Mandarin Oriental.”

  “How long will you be there?”

  “Three, four day.”

  “Better plan on a week. But don't step out of line. We'll be watching every step of the way. Change a tampon there'll be one of our people holding the other end of the string.”

  “Told you, finish with that life.” She smiled. “Trust me, no shit. Okay?”

  Keelan wasn't listening.

  He was thinking about a wet evening in Berkeley, and he was thinking about Frank Bertolli.

  ***

  The phone rang in Lacey's office. She picked it up.

  “Lace? It's John.”

  “Hello yanqui. How’s things?”

  “I can't make dinner tonight.”

  “Got a better offer?”

  “I have to fly to San Francisco. Work.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Maybe a week.”

  Lacey felt a stab of disappointment. “Okay. Well, take it easy.”

  “I'll see you when I get back.”

  He hung up.

  Lacey stared at the phone. Don't fool yourself, she thought. This is going nowhere.

  Chapter 70

  San Francisco

  THEY met in the coffee shop of the Hyatt on Union Square. The sounds of guests arriving and departing echoed around the lobby as if they were inside a vast cavern. The atrium lobby rose all the way to the ceiling and glass elevators beetled up and down one wall like a scene from a Wellsian fantasy. She crossed the carpeted foyer and found Bertolli in the coffee shop with two other men.

  They were carrying, Ruby noted.

  Bertolli rose to greet her, the other two stayed where they were. “Ruby,” he said and took her small hand in both paws. “Looking great. Siddown. Want a drink?”

  She shook her head, no thanks. They exchanged small talk about the weather and politics, then Bertolli brought the conversation abruptly around to business. “So what can I do for you, Ruby?”

  “Got deal for you,” she said.

  “What kind of deal?”

  “No more ten unit. From now, smallest order is fifteen.”

  Bertolli shook his head. “Jesus fucking Christ. You people are unbelievable.” Bertolli stroked his jaw. The stubble rasped under his nails. “Let me think about this.”

  “For fifteen unit I can give you thirteen.”

  Bertolli made a quick calculation. These days there was a lot more competition from cocaine, but the heroin buyers were still there, and Bertolli had been steadily increasing his orders by one unit every six months.

  “You saying you ‘ll cut me off if I don't take fifteen?”

  “Got to factor in risk,” Ruby said.

  Bertolli looked as if he had a sudden pain in his gut. “Twelve and a half.”

  Ruby shook her head. “Thirteen. Fifteen units. Best I can do.”

  Bertolli dumped four sugars into his espresso. She knew he was thinking whether to look for another supplier. But working with new people was how you got burned in this business. “I'll think about it,” he said.

  “Be at the Mandarin. Wait for your call, okay.” Ruby said, and she walked out.

  ***

  The Chevy Malibu was illegally parked just across the street. The man behind the wheel wore a dirty leather bomber jacket and jeans, his brown hair in a long pony tail at the back. There was a clipboard on the seat beside him with a photograph of Ruby Wen stapled to a time sheet. He saw her jump into a taxi in the crowded forecourt of the Hyatt and he noted the time on the clipboard.

  It was a hot day and the Chevy's air conditioner wasn't working. His shirt felt as if it was glued to his back and the sweat made his psoriasis itch. What a way to make a living. Still, Lucien Baptiste’s money was as good as anyone else’s.

  Chapter 71

  KEELAN checked into a room at the Holiday Inn. He sat with his feet on the sofa making notes in pencil on a
yellow legal pad, his feet propped on a chair. Mayhew, the San Francisco bureau chief, sat at the writing table by the window reading The Village Voice and eating peanuts from a small tinfoil pack. There were files scattered on the table around him, and a faxed link analysis.

  There were two gentle taps on the door. Keelan jumped off the sofa, went to the door and threw it open. “Ruby,” he said.

  Ruby walked in and looked around. “No money in being policeman,” she said. “Seen better rooms in Bangkok prison, no shit.” She threw her bag on the bed, and noticed Mayhew for the first time. “Who's this guy, okay?”

  “He's a cop, like me,” he said.

  Ruby shrugged and threw herself on the bed, bounce on it a couple of times. “How much you pay for this?” She patted the pillows. “Got a drink for a girl or you don't have expense account?”

  “What would you like, Ruby?”

  “Whatever is most expensive. Take lot of risk for you.”

  Keelan found a miniature in the bar fridge and splashed it into a glass with some ice. Mayhew chewed peanuts and said nothing. She made a face at him.

  “Your friend deaf and dumb?” Ruby said. “Got to talk hand signals to him?”

  “He lip reads,” Keelan said, and sat down. Ruby was wearing a scarlet wool dress with a hemline an inch below her crotch. There were diamonds on her fingers and her ears. Some piece of work. “So, how did it go, Ruby?”

  “Okay.”

  “What's okay?”

  “Just okay. He is very nervous guy.”

  “What is he nervous about?”

  “Just nervous, okay. Going to call me. We make deal then.”

  “It's going ahead?”

  “Sure,” Ruby said, “one hundred per cent guarantee.”

  Keelan knew there was something wrong. He had never seen her so twitchy. He wondered if she had taken speed. “We can't protect you if you don't do this deal, Ruby. You can't jerk us around on this. This is your last chance.”

  “Don't jerk you around, okay.” Ruby drank her brandy and the ice rattled in the glass. “I think this time he take fifteen unit.”

  “Doesn't matter. Ten units, fifteen units, as long as we have some dope to put on the table. We're going to bust him on RICO.”

  Ruby glanced at Mayhew.

  Keelan leaned closer. “Next time you meet Bertolli, we want you to wear a wire.”

  “Yau moh gau chor! You crazy?”

  “You'll have to dress a little more conservatively. Get him to say what we want to hear, what juries likes to hear, get them on tape, we're done and dusted.”

  “You know what he will do if he find me with a wire?”

  “Up to you, Ruby.”

  Mayhew spoke for the first time. For a slightly built man, he had a voice like gravel. “We are relying on you Miss Wen. If, for any reason, I think you are not telling us the complete truth, then I will recommend that we do not waste the limited resources of this department on you, and we will cut you loose immediately.”

  “Go to go to bathroom,” Ruby said.

  Keelan pointed to the door in the entry hall. “Through there.”

  The door closed behind her. Keelan looked at Mayhew.

  “What do you think, John?” Mayhew said, softly. “She could be in there flushing an ounce down the toilet. Or doing a line.”

  “She could just be taking a pee.”

  “I don't even trust her to pee straight.”

  “Neither do I. But I figure she needs us right now. If we give her nowhere to turn, she has to help us. She's got no choice.”

  The toilet flushed. Mayhew shrugged, not convinced.

  Ruby came back into the room, was met with silence. “Feel better now,” she said. “Shit that was good coke.”

  No one laughed.

  “Just a joke,” Ruby said and she smiled sweetly at Mayhew. “What's wrong with you guys? Nobody like to laugh anymore?”

  Chapter 72

  “YOU know what they say,” Mayhew said, chewing on a piece of T-bone, “all agents marry their informants sooner or later.”

  They were in a steak house just off Union Square. Ruby Wen would be in Silks in the Mandarin Oriental, Keelan thought, eating off Wedgwood Kutani Crane dinnerware, her dinner prepared by Howard Bulka. Keelan remembered what his father always told him: Crime doesn't pay. Oh, yeah?

  “I know what they say.”

  “I been wondering if you have perspective on this.”

  “In what way, sir?”

  “Well, maybe you didn’t notice, but she's not an unattractive girl.”

  “She doesn't affect me that way.”

  Mayhew laughed. “What way, John?”

  “She scares the hell out of me.”

  “Yeah? Sure you’re not getting blindsided?” Mayhew gulped down his beer. “You slept with her?”

  “I'd rather go to bed with a pit viper.”

  “Yeah but this pit viper’s got a pussy.”

  “I am not being blind-sided.”

  “I hope not, John.”

  “She's in the hole for several hundred thousand dollars to her own syndicate, and God knows how much she owes to the casinos in Hong Kong and Macao. This is not the sort of person I see as a future love interest.”

  “But you still have a vested interest in believing what she says, don't you?”

  “Sir?”

  “Bertolli.”

  “I didn't know about the connection to Bertolli when I recruited her as a CI. I knew she had links with Eddie Lau and Louis Huu, that's all.”

  “Yeah, but you know about Bertolli now, don't you?” He finished his steak and signaled the waitress for two more beers. “Not hungry, John?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “You're not smoking?”

  “I gave up a few months ago. These conversations make me want to start again.”

  “Got to keep a close eye on this one, John. Next time this girl takes a pee there'll be one of my people standing there ready to hand her the tissues.” He leaned back and stretched. “John, I'm not trying to bust your balls on this. But we've got to be careful. What if this story she fed you is all bullshit? She walks through Customs with ten keys in her suitcase, then if she gets caught she says, hey, I'm working for the DEA. She calls you in, throws up her little fluttery hands in horror, says all I'm doing is putting together this deal for you. No shit.”

  “She can't run away from the Eddie Lau and the triads.”

  “Maybe that's all bullshit too. How do you know? She's only good to us while she plays straight. This girl, she only lies when her lips move, you know that, right?”

  “But if it plays out, we take out one of the biggest bosses on the west coast.”

  “Just be careful, John. We look the other way for just a second, I can guarantee there's going there's going to be another card in this deck.”

  ***

  Louis Huu arrived on China Airlines flight 804 from Bangkok. His name was a permanent fixture on the Immigration Watch List and the official at the desk immediately picked up the telephone and advised his supervisor.

  Louis Huu was detained for almost an hour before a visa was issued. In that time the San Francisco bureau of the Drug Enforcement Agency was informed of his arrival and when he climbed into the black Mercedes limousine that was waiting for him outside the terminal, a taxi, driven by a DEA surveillance officer, swung into position behind him.

  An undetected surveillance on a single unit in heavy traffic can take up to six skilled and co-ordinated police units. That evening Mayhew's officers managed to succeed with just three. A van advertising itself as a home dog wash took over from the taxi, and a single motorcycle rider followed the Mercedes to its eventual destination in Palisades Drive in Daly City.

  ***

  While Louis Huu was being trailed across the city by DEA officers, a Chevy Malibu drew into a loading zone a block from the Mandarin Oriental, one wheel on the curb. The driver, who had a bomber jacket and a greasy ponytail, got out and walked int
o the lobby of the Mandarin. The house detective was alerted immediately.

  But he did not attempt to ride the elevators. Instead he was greeted by one of the guests in the piano bar, and they spent half an hour in whispered conversation. They exchanged envelopes and then the man left.

  Shortly afterwards the guest retired to his room, the envelope folded into his suit jacket.

  Chapter 73

  MAYHEW met Keelan at the Holiday Inn for breakfast.

  “Got some interesting news,” Mayhew said. “Guess who's in town?”

  “Frank Sinatra?”

  “I hope not, got enough mobsters already. I'm talking about Louis Huu.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. We followed him to a house in Daly City. Your girl's got connections with this guy, right?”

  “She was ready to give him up in Bangkok.”

  “We've put a Pen register on the line at the house, see who he calls. I've asked Bangkok to send us everything they have. Meanwhile we have to talk to your Ruby Wen and persuade her it's in her best interests to stand in front of a Grand Jury and give us enough to indict him. You think she'll do it?”

  “First, let's get Bertolli,” Keelan said.

  ***

  Keelan held out the recorder. It was the size of a paperback novel, with a wire leading to a small microphone. “This is it,” Keelan said.

  Ruby made a face. “What is this? CD player?”

  “We could use a Kel transmitter,” Keelan said. “It’s smaller. But they're unreliable and we only have one shot at this.”

  “This supposed to be secret? My stereo system not this big! Got VCR and cassette player too?”

  “Ruby ...”

  She looked at Mayhew. “Where is a girl going to hide this, heya?”

  “You wear a long coat and you don't take it off. Tape the recorder to the small of your back, run the wire around the front of your chest.”

  Ruby raised an eyebrow. “You want to tape the front of my chest, Mister Never Smile?”

  “We figured you could manage that, Miss Wen.”