Thicker Than Water (A Leo Waterman Mystery)

by G. M. Ford

  Worse yet, the scope and audacity of Billy’s operation had turned him into a national folk hero. Hargress reckoned it was the tunnel that pushed Billy’s image over the top. The minute he brought it up, I recalled the headline: Border Breached. Seems Billy and his minions had excavated a tunnel beneath the international border. A tunnel big enough to drive pickup trucks through. Had a nasty winter storm back in 1998 not exposed the south end of the tunnel to the U.S. Border Patrol, it would undoubtedly still be in operation today. Not one, but two National Geographic specials had documented Billy’s colorful and meteoric rise to prominence.

  As if to rub salt into the wound, Billy Bailey then morphed into the face of a national movement advocating the legalization of marijuana, appearing in an assortment of omnipresent television ads, eventually making himself the most recognized face in British Colombia. Another, angrier, rumble of discontent filled the room.

  And then, after nearly twenty years of interagency detective work, just at the point where the authorities thought they might make a case against Billy for conspiracy, he did the unthinkable. He went straight. Bought a couple of small businesses and turned them into gold mines. Seemed his knack for commerce proved every bit as successful in the legal sector as it had in the drug business, so he bought a couple more, and then a couple more until he was making more money in his legal endeavors than he was from trafficking drugs, at which point he parceled out the drugsmuggling operation to his underlings, and became a legitimate businessman of national repute.

  “Cheeky bastard’s running for Provincial Parliament,” somebody added.

  “Cheeky bastard’s going to win,” another voice answered.

  Hargress laced his fingers behind his back and looked directly at Marty and me.

  “The man has been making a monkey of us for twenty-five years, so I’m certain you gentlemen can imagine why any potential opportunity to do battle with Billy Bailey has our undivided attention.”

  Marty cleared his throat and picked up the conversational thread. He explained that Rebecca Duval was a vital and much-respected force in the Seattle law enforcement community, explained why the SPD had not gotten involved until now and then deferred to me.

  I’d jotted down a few notes, so I was reasonably well prepared. Thirty seconds into my little recitation, however— the first time the words “Jordan Koontz” left my lips—the room came unglued.

  “That’s gotta be Junior,” Hargress said.

  Crosstalk buzzed like an angry hornet.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jordan Koontz and Lui Ng are Junior’s little playmates,” he said.

  “Guess we’re a bit behind the curve here,” Marty admitted sheepishly.

  Hargress nodded toward the Vancouver PD contingent sitting on my left. “Roddy,” he said. “A little background perhaps.”

  Roddy levered himself to his feet. Roddy was 180 pounds of sinew stretched over a six-foot frame. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find out that he ran marathons in his spare time. He swept his close-set eyes over the assembled masses and explained that Junior Bailey was Billy Bud’s only child. Seems Junior had grown up as heir apparent to the drugsmuggling operation and had more or less geared his career expectations to a life of crime. As luck would have it, however, just about the time Junior reached the age of majority, his father had the unmitigated gall to go straight, dashing the poor boy’s criminal hopes on the rocks of respectability.

  Not to be denied what he considered to be his birthright, Junior Bailey used his multimillion-dollar trust fund to finance his own life of crime, mostly pimping and loan-sharking operations.

  Unlike his famous father, however, Junior showed precious little criminal acumen. Only his father’s influence and a crack legal team hired expressly for that purpose had thus far managed to keep him out of jail.

  “Junior the Genius,” someone muttered.

  Hargress pinned us with his gaze. “I assure you gentlemen the designation is purely ironic. Junior Bailey is as dumb as the proverbial bag of rocks.”

  “Thinks he’s a gangster,” Roddy added disgustedly. “Keeps Billy Bud busy trying to keep him under wraps and out of the lockup.”

  “I looked Koontz up on the Internet,” I said. “What about this Ng guy?”

  “Lui Ng,” Hargress explained. He spelled it. “Former leader of the Golden Dragons street gang. Half Laotian, half Chinese. Mr. Ng likes to shoot people.”

  “He’s Koontz’s lover,” Roddy threw in.

  “No kidding?”

  “And not the way you imagine, either,” he said with a bob of his eyebrows. “Ng’s the top. Koontz is the bottom.”

  My mind offhandedly rejected any image of those two coupling in any manner whatsoever, once again confirming survival as the first instinct of human nature.

  “Ng’s a person of interest in at least five murders,” Hargress added. “Junior uses them as his personal body-guards, his entourage, as it were.”

  “So…not to belabor the obvious, but what you’re telling me is that whatever is going on in Seattle is connected to Junior Bailey, rather than his father. Is that right?”

  “Almost surely,” Hargress said. “Billy doesn’t break the law anymore. He’s too worried about his image and his political future.”

  I mentioned the black Hummer.

  “ST Emtman’s company trademark,” Hargress said.

  “Billy’s got fifty of them,” someone said disgustedly.

  “Fifty-three,” one of his colleagues amended.

  I segued to what I knew about the boat repo where the owner had pulled a gun on Brett Ward and the Canadian cops, hoping that somebody sitting there at the conference table could throw a little light on the subject, as, somehow or another, that was the moment when things had begun to unravel for Brett Ward and I needed to know the hows and whys of it.

  I wasn’t disappointed. Seemed that no matter which side of the border you were on, taking shots at police officers was considered extremely poor form.

  “On the island,” somebody said.

  “Dashwood,” one of the cops amended. “Out at CrossCurrent Marina.”

  “Local guy named Trevor Collins. Took a nick out of one of our constables,” the provincial cop added.

  Hargress nodded. “We thought the most interesting aspect of the matter was how quickly Mr. Collins was free on bond. Hard to imagine why someone would put up one hundred thousand dollars to get a lowlife like Mr. Collins back on the street.” Seemed like there was a punch line waiting somewhere in the weeds, so I kept my mouth closed and waited for it to arrive.

  “We can’t be sure…,” Roddy began cautiously. “…privacy laws being what they are regarding bonding agencies, but we managed to trace the bond to a law firm. Teglow and Murphy from down in Surrey.”

  Another murmur of interest swept over the conference table. Seemed the name was familiar to them. Hargress once again pinned Marty and me with his gaze.

  “Teglow and Murphy regularly represent Junior Bailey’s legal interests.”

  “How’s this Collins guy connected to Junior?” Marty asked.

  “They went to high school together. Quite chummy we’re told.”

  “You know,” said the other Provincial Police officer, “I’m thinking that Billy Bud might be interested in hearing what Mr. Waterman has to say.”

  “He does dote on that boy,” Roddy noted with an ironic twist of the lips.

  For our benefit, he explained. “Junior thinks he’s defying his father by being in business for himself. In reality, Billy runs his show for him. Behind the scenes, of course, but they’re his old suppliers and cronies. He just lets Junior think he’s in business for himself.”

  I could see where they were going with this. They were thinking they might be able to get to Billy Bailey through his son, and they were hoping I might serve as a handy catalyst to do so. They were quite rightly assuming that leverage on Junior was the next best thing to leverage on Billy Bud himself, especially if they h
ad the likes of Marty and me to run interference for them. Anything went wrong and they could just say, “Oh, you know how crude those Americans are.”

  Roddy leaned over the table and looked me in the eye.

  “Would you like to talk to him?” he asked.

  “Is that possible?” I asked.

  “Billy loves to talk. Mostly about himself. I’m sure he’d be glad to bandy a few words with you.”

  I thought about it. The sense of urgency that was churning my insides wanted to go back to Seattle. To…to…that was the problem, to what I didn’t know; I didn’t have a plan anymore. Maybe find the stripper and see if there was anything there. Maybe start all over again. Other than that, I was pretty much at a dead end.

  “We’ve gone to Rome,” I said with some reluctance. “Guess we might as well see the pope.”

  Roddy turned out to be his last name. Detective Sergeant Tony Roddy said it would probably take an hour or so to put together the meeting with Billy Bailey. He explained that Billy always insisted on having his attorney present and to just hang in there, they’d make the arrangements as quickly as possible.

  Faced with a delay, we asked if he would kindly point us toward a restaurant where we could catch a bite. He recommended the greasy spoon across the street from Provincial Police headquarters. What I had presumed to be a comment on its menu, in fact, turned out to be its given name, the Greasy Spoon. Needless to say, the bill of fare more than lived up to the signage.

  It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon before word came and we finally got under way. By that time, the bacon and eggs were doing backflips in my tract, and I would have gladly walked back to Seattle on my hands, just to feel like I was doing something useful. Mercifully, the drive to Billy Bud’s place was short.

  Fifteen minutes after we crossed the Burrard Street Bridge, we were rolling through what the locals called Kitsilano, a little village-like area on the far side of English Bay. Billy Bud’s manor house stood gray and imposing on a dramatic outcropping of rock, offering a sweeping view of both the Vancouver skyline to the east and the ominous Strait of Georgia to the west.

  I don’t know why. Maybe I watched too many gangster films, but I was expecting a Godfather scene, where you pull up to a locked gate guarded by sixteen fat guys in fedoras, and, after being inspected like a week-old eggplant, you’re reluctantly allowed inside the family compound. Not so with Billy Bailey. The gate was open and the massive circular driveway empty as we rolled to a halt. What I imagined had once been the stable and the carriage house was now a ten-car garage.

  “Used to belong to William Cornelius Van Horne,” Roddy said as we stood looking out over the dark, roiling water toward Vancouver Island. He sensed we didn’t recognize the name and helped us out. “Former chairman of the Canadian Pacific Railway,” he explained. “Same fellow who built the Banff Springs Hotel.” He swung his hand in an arc. “This used to be Corny’s little urban pied-à-terre.”

  Looked to be about twenty thousand square earth feet in the Scottish baronial tradition. A great chunk of concrete, faced with stone, standing sentry over the water. Were it not for the trio of security cameras chronicling our every move, it would have been easy to feel as if we’d somehow been transported back to the early twentieth century.

  The front door swung open on massive wrought-iron hinges. A brunette in her midthirties stood holding the door in one hand. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” she said. “Mr. Bailey is expecting you.” She spoke with an air of detachment, as if, as far as she was concerned, our visit held scant appeal. Great cheekbones and the kind of blue eyes that made men forget about what happened the last time they’d looked into eyes like that more than compensated for whatever she lacked in warmth.

  She wore one of those soft, fuzzy sweater suits so popular in the 1950s and 1960s. The sort of clothes that suggested rather than shouted. The robin’s egg–blue wool skirt was a couple of inches longer than current fashion but looked real good on her. A single strand of pearls completed the look and accented the firmness of her throat. Albeit retro, all in all a very put-together and alluring package.

  We followed the swaying blue skirt down a seemingly endless expanse of flagstone, past what they probably called “the great room,” with its panoramic view, soaring ceiling, and stone fireplace large enough to roast an ox with the hair on. All very tweedy and heath and moor and calls to “let loose the dogs.” I felt like I was in a Basil Rathbone movie.

  If Billy Bud had once been the prince of the counterculture, he’d gotten over it in a big way. No hookahs or patchouli incense. Nary a paisley shirt or Birkenstock sandal in sight. No, this was strictly lord of the manor stuff, all oak-paneled walls and glassy-eyed animal heads staring down at us as we doggedly trekked through the house.

  After what seemed like a mile and a half, our tour guide stepped aside and shepherded us inside an expansive room. I glanced over my shoulder as we crossed the room. Rather than going back to whatever she’d been doing prior to our arrival, she remained standing in the archway. I got the impression she didn’t think our visit was going to last very long and was saving herself a couple of thousand steps.

  The room was a gorgeous Victorian library, floor-to-ceiling beautifully bound books, with a rolling brass ladder to provide access to the more lofty tomes. One of those rooms where the books were all gold-embossed matched sets and you couldn’t imagine that anyone had ever pulled one out to read.

  Billy sat behind a half-acre mahogany desk with his fingers laced in front of him like an attendant schoolboy. He was a good-looking man. A little older than me. Fifty-something with a thick head of hair parted neatly in the middle and swept back over his ears. Big brown eyes and a little bow of a mouth that made him look thoughtful and perhaps even a bit sensitive. He pushed himself to his feet as we entered the room.

  “Ah…Inspector Roddy. So nice to see you again.” “Sergeant,” Roddy corrected. “Detective Sergeant.” Billy Bailey waved a dismissive hand. “By all means consider yourself promoted,” he said magnanimously. “A man of your talents and obvious charisma…”

  Billy rambled on at some length. I had to swallow a smile. Having had vast personal experience annoying the authorities, I could see right away why Billy Bud was so unpopular with Canadian law enforcement. Not only had Billy made them look inept for a quarter of a century, but he’d had a good time doing it as well. The kind of guy who kicked your ass and then made sure you didn’t forget about it. Just the sort of attitude guaranteed to piss off serious-minded authoritarian types. Trust me, I’ve been there.

  Interrupting Billy’s monologue, Roddy introduced us as “detectives from Seattle.”

  Billy smiled a welcome and then gestured expansively toward the man standing on his right. “You remember Mr. Spearbeck,” he said.

  Spearbeck was another matter altogether. Looked like they’d flown him in from Las Vegas. The kind of guy who looked good in a sharkskin suit and narrow tie, both of which he probably wore to bed. He stepped out from behind the desk, as if running interference for his client. He rested a bony hip on the front corner of the desk, leaned back and inquired whether or not this was an “official visit.”

  “No,” Roddy said immediately. “These gentlemen have a bit of a problem…a missing person’s problem. They were hoping you might be of assistance.”

  “Always glad to be of assistance,” Bobby said affably.

  “Who’s missing?” Spearbeck wanted to know.

  I told him. The ramifications of a missing member of the Seattle law enforcement community were lost on neither Billy nor his attorney. Not only wasn’t it the kind of case that would eventually go away, but it was the sort of case that made for particularly bad public relations in a civic-minded society such as Canada.

  “And how is it you imagine Mr. Bailey might be of assistance?”

  I jumped in. “Because the events surrounding Ms. Duval’s disappearance involve a couple of characters named Jordan Koontz and Lui Ng.”

&n
bsp; Amazing how those names seemed to stop conversations. Billy Bailey wiped the corners of his mouth with his thumb and forefinger. He noticed that I’d noticed, looked away and folded his arms protectively across his chest.

  Billy’s politician’s smile never wavered, but the corners of his eyes tightened slightly. I’d seen that look before, seen it in my father’s eyes more times than I could count. The look of parental disappointment. The sad expression that said I hadn’t quite turned out to be what he’d been hoping for, and thus, for my old man anyway, the even sadder certainty that his predator genes were about to skip a generation.

  It was almost as if he’d have preferred I’d had some sort of disability. Had I been a dimwit, well, that just would have been the luck of the draw; he could have lived with that. That I was reasonably articulate and in full control of my faculties, and still didn’t have any interest in carrying on the family fleecing business, was beyond his most fevered imaginings.

  A thick and awkward moment passed before Spearbeck broke the silence. He chose his words carefully, as lawyers are paid to do. “We have no connection to either of those gentlemen.”

  “Mr. Bailey’s son, Junior, certainly has,” Roddy said.

  “Young Mr. Bailey handles his own affairs,” Spearbeck said.

  They went back and forth for several minutes, debating what sort of involvement and therefore what responsibility could reasonably be laid at Bill Bailey’s door.

  “Do you recall a provincial policeman being shot in Dashwood?” Roddy segued.

  “When was that?” Billy asked.

  “Several months back.”

  “We might,” Spearbeck interjected quickly. “What of it?”

  “A gentleman named Trevor Collins wounded a constable in a dispute over a boat repossession.”

  “And this has what to do with us?”

  “We take attacks upon our officers quite seriously,” Roddy said.