by Sam Wiebe
“Ryan telling you about the number?” he asked.
Martz introduced us. “Bobby Feng, another dedicated servant of the people. This is Dave Wakeland, who used to be on the job.”
We shook hands. “What made you give it up?” Feng asked.
“I don’t have Ryan’s way with people.”
“Few do,” Feng said.
“We’re a rare breed.” Ryan put the paper with Tabitha’s particulars atop his in-box tray. “If I can wrangle a free minute or two I’ll run the description. That it?”
“You know anything about the Hayes brothers?” I asked.
“Know I wouldn’t want to be caught on the fourteenth floor with those boys. Why, your girl mixed up with the League of Nations?”
“All I know is she went to high school with Cody Hayes out in Abbotsford.”
“Doesn’t mean much,” Martz said. “We all know shitheads from school. Even me. I went through the academy with you.”
Feng spun his chair away from his keyboard. “I did a stint on the anti-gang task force,” he said. “The League is definitely on our radar.”
“Being so close to the border, they’d have to be into drugs.”
Feng nodded. “Big time. The more states where weed becomes legal, there’s less demand for B.C. bud. Which means the gangs are moving more into coke and synthetics, which means more risk, more deals with the bikers. Not everyone’s happy kicking up to the Exiles.”
“Dave knows all about the Exiles,” Martz said.
“I’ve had a couple run-ins.”
“And you’re still here,” Feng said, impressed. “That’s something. But don’t think just ’cause the Hayes brothers are small-town, they’re punks. They’re desperate to prove themselves. The tower killings weren’t just about wiping out their rivals. That was them sending a message—the don’t-fuck-with-us kind.”
I thanked them and walked to the elevator alone, punched the down button. A pair of plainclothes detectives passed by. Neither returned my nod.
As the doors opened I saw Martz jog toward me.
“Dave,” he said, looking serious.
“You hit on something?”
“I just forgot to tell you.”
“What?”
He grinned. “Four thousand three hundred and fifty-eight,” he said. “Dollars. And seventy-eight cents.”
Eleven
By nine that night I was back in Burnaby, parked with a view of Chambers’s townhouse. He’d repeated yesterday’s movements: left work on time, raced home, hadn’t left the house since. Whatever was going on with Chris Chambers wasn’t interfering with his home life.
I considered phoning Sonia, threatening to quit if she didn’t take me into her confidence. I knew how she’d respond. The same way I would—never mind, it’s nothing, I’ll deal with it myself, apologies for wasting your time.
Courage is a finite thing, and it takes so much to ask for help.
What was another night of pointless surveillance, anyway? I had the Sorenson case to occupy my thoughts. Indifferent parents, a school mired in scandal, a childhood spent living next door to future killers—Tabitha had ample reason not to trust the people around her. Maybe reason enough to hide.
Tabitha was twenty-four. At her age I’d been snugly enfolded within the structure of the police department. I’d had the job, had Sonia, had a sense of the person I wanted to be. A year later I was adrift from all of those. Had a similar rupture occurred to Tabitha? Caused by what? Had the lure of that money led her to do something rash?
All I knew for certain was that beneath what Tabitha Sorenson presented to the world was a different person. More cunning, maybe more afraid.
Lights clicked on and off in the Chambers home.
Quarter to ten, Chris Chambers emerged wearing sport coat and jeans, hair slicked and repositioned. Trailing behind him, pausing to lock the door, was the woman Martz had shown me on his computer. She was model-thin and wore a sleeveless strapless white dress, lace-up sandals with platform heels. She carried a clamshell purse and paused beside the Lexus to wrangle her white-blonde hair through a scrunchie.
The Lexus rocketed back downtown, clinging to Hastings this time. Just past the fairgrounds, I ended up behind them at an intersection. Through the glass I could see the waif playing with Chambers, slapping his free hand, dropping her head onto his shoulder only to kiss him and reel back. The manic, incomprehensible gestures of love and absolute comfort.
East Hastings turned to West. The Lexus made a left and cruised into the glass-fronted high-rises of Yaletown. Chambers slowed, looking for a break in the succession of cars parked along the curb. I dropped my speed so I’d fall an intersection behind, giving them time to park. The Lexus gracefully paralleled into a space between SUVs.
I made a right and circled back to see Chambers approach a restaurant called the Monte Carlo. He held the door for his date. It was an elegant building: elongated windows, a roof of orange slats in a vaguely oriental arch. The menu was posted on a lectern by the door, along with an enticement—Asian Fusion Cuisine and Vancouver’s Best Cocktails!
An early evening rain had chased the patrons off the heated patio. I stood and stared through the door as if trying to make up my mind.
The Monte Carlo was doing good business. I saw couples crowded in candlelit booths. Adult contemporary music, Sarah McLachlan and the like, filtered out to the street.
I’d been in the place once, to meet the owner, Anthony Qiu. He ran the restaurant and two others, and did some loan-sharking, and laundered some money, and had some vague association with a Chinese gang connected to the ports.
One of his low-level employees had been implicated in a custody case I’d worked. Qiu and I had shared a bottle of astonishingly good bourbon, and he’d ordered me to keep my fucking distance from him and his people.
The next week Qiu’s employee paid up what he owed in child support, and swore to me he’d obey my client’s court order. I found out later Qiu had instructed him to do so. The instructions had been hand-delivered via an aluminum Easton softball deluxe.
That Chambers and his date chose the Monte Carlo for dinner could be coincidence. They didn’t seem out of place. The maître d’ seated Chambers by the window and held the chair for his date. I withdrew to the other side of the street, found an unobstructed vantage point to watch them, and tried to look preoccupied with my phone.
After the wine and tapas were delivered, a familiar figure in an ivory-colored suit crossed the floor toward Chambers’s table. Anthony Qiu’s weathered face seemed incongruous with his silk shirt and immaculate grooming. I trained my cell’s camera on the window and zoomed in.
Qiu greeted Chambers with a palm on the shoulder. He took the waif’s hand and kissed the knuckles. Turning to Chambers he lowered his head and spoke into the cop’s ear. Chambers nodded. Qiu smiled and left them to their meal.
I backed under an awning as the rain intensified. Soon the street was glimmering from the reflection of the streetlights.
Chambers and his date lingered over coffee and a postmodern sculpture of tiramisu. When the couple finally left, they snuggled under a wood-handled umbrella furnished by the Monte Carlo. They zig-zagged through the slow foot traffic, back to Chambers’s car.
No-Frisk Chris Chambers and Anthony Qiu. A longtime cop and longtime crook talking with familiarity. It did happen. Every cop knows criminals who never pay for their crimes. Some cops liked to intrude on their world, remind them that while the justice system had forgotten them, the police hadn’t. My father’s partner had told me about a college student who’d raped and murdered a fifteen-year-old, then went free when the evidence was washed away by an overzealous coroner’s intern. Every year the killer received a Hallmark card on the kid’s birthday, signed in the dead boy’s name, courtesy of the cops who’d worked the case.
Chambers and Qiu didn’t seem to be trading threats. Qiu had been cordial, even charming. Some people can veil a threat in a remark about the weat
her. But those two seemed to respect each other professionally.
Which meant what?
And what of this did Sonia know?
Twelve
The next morning Kay and I returned to Surrey. Kay drove. I sipped from a London Fog that was already lukewarm when we left Vancouver. I didn’t think about Chambers or Qiu. I especially didn’t think about Sonia. Instead I blasted Mad Season’s Above through the van’s cheap speakers and looked out the window at a city I no longer recognized.
In the last decade Surrey had done its level best to rehabilitate itself. It was no longer the car theft capital of Canada. Many of the grimy, gray storefronts had been cleaned up or bulldozed in favor of more reputable franchises. Money had been poured into the city center, and the meth dealers and petty criminals pushed back from the Skytrain stations and bus loops. The Fifties Diner, which on Sundays had hosted Drag Queen Night—gone. Skyscrapers and a brand-new civic center moved in. The major highway had been rechristened King George Boulevard, enough stoplights installed to slow down traffic and give the impression that Surrey could be a destination rather than a waypoint between Vancouver and Seattle.
South of the city center, in a cluster of professional buildings near Bear Creek Park, was the office of Martinez, Burrows & Chatwood, the accounting firm that had performed the forensic audit on Surrey Polytech. Since the school had made the results public, the auditors had agreed to entertain questions, though they regretted they might not be able to answer them.
Kay and I were shown into a small meeting room on the second floor. Large windows provided a dazzling view of sights that didn’t warrant a dazzling view. A coffeemaker burbled.
After eight minutes, a woman joined us, introducing herself as Jaswinder Pahwa. She wore a green double-breasted suit with matching skirt, silver bracelets on her wrists. I put her age around forty.
“Mr. Baker is running a little late,” Pahwa said. “I can perhaps help you with some things.”
“You prepared the audit findings report,” I said. When she nodded: “We’d like to know what didn’t make it into the report.”
“We pride ourselves on being thorough,” she said.
“Not challenging that, only asking if there were other avenues you didn’t have time to explore.” Levelling with her, I said, “Like Tabitha Sorenson.”
“Right,” Pahwa said. She poured a coffee and added various powders to make it white and sweet. She seemed to use the time and the ritualistic movements to decide something.
“What is your concern with Ms. Sorenson?” she asked.
“No one seems to know where she is. I’d like to find her.”
“So this isn’t for legal purposes?”
“Well it’s not for illegal purposes,” I said.
She didn’t smile. “You know what I mean. I can tell you my opinion, but as far as using any of this—”
A man stepped in, offering apologies. He wore a short-sleeved dress shirt and a tie covered in explosions of orange and green. Hair rimmed his gleaming pate like the petals of a sunflower.
“Ray Baker, senior auditor. You’ve met Jas already.”
His hand patted her shoulder, his thumb over her collar and brushing her neck. He sat down at the head of the oval table. “Don’t let me interrupt, Jas.”
Kay was sitting next to me, but the window occupied her gaze.
“I was just telling them we stood behind the report,” Pahwa said. She stirred her coffee with a metal spoon that made a sandpapery sound as it scraped the edges of the Styrofoam.
“Absolutely,” Baker said. “Wouldn’t put our names on it if we didn’t. Accurate to the best of our abilities.” He tapped a duo-tanged copy of the report. “It’s all in here.”
“Tabitha Sorenson’s not mentioned much.”
Baker looked at Pahwa.
“Interim events coordinator,” she reminded him.
“Right, right. Our feeling was she was on the outskirts. Not a player.”
“Based on what?”
“Lots of various factors.”
“Race?” I asked. No response from Baker. “Only white person on a predominantly South Asian government.”
“If you want to play that game,” Baker said boldly, “you go right ahead. But the fact is, she was appointed after and wasn’t part of the original slate of candidates. She was never issued a cell phone. Never drew a check on her account that wasn’t co-signed, even though Atwal dumped the three-signature rule.” He touched Pahwa’s stockinged knee. “Jas examined her accounts just like the non-whites’. No different treatment. All in the report.”
“Either of you aware that she and Ashwin Dhillon were a couple? Or that they went to high school with the Hayes brothers?”
Both looked suitably startled. Baker’s stray hand went back to rest on the tabletop.
“There are time and budget constraints to every investigation,” he began.
“All I care about is finding Tabitha,” I said. “You investigated her. You must’ve come across something that didn’t make the final draft. Something you couldn’t prove—given your timing and budget constraints.”
“I hope this girl’s all right,” Baker said, “but us sharing unsubstantiated rumors won’t help anyone.”
Kay turned away from the window and said to Pahwa, “Do you mind it when he touches you?”
Flustered, Pahwa said nothing for a moment. Baker looked eager to respond but paused and listened for her response. “I hardly notice,” she finally said.
“She doesn’t like the way you touch her,” Kay said to Baker. “You shouldn’t do that.” And she stormed out.
I’d had a few ruses and end runs planned, but Kay’s speech ruined them all. I lingered a second to see if the interview could be salvaged.
Baker gestured at the open door. “Unbelievable,” he said. “Five minute interview, I’m called a racist and a sexual harasser. Un-god-damn-believable.”
I wanted somehow to reach out to Pahwa, to get back to where we’d been before Baker’s entrance. He wanted me out, and she wasn’t going to fight him. I left them each one of my cards.
In the parking lot Kay leaned against the hood, grinning. I stalked past her to the driver’s side. When we were both inside and I’d slammed my door, I said very, very quietly, “Don’t bring personal shit to an interview. How many times we go over that?”
“Dave, listen—”
“You listen,” I said. “He knows something we need. You want to right wrongs, you do it after we get what we came for. And you never leave a talk so you can’t go back.”
Calming down, I added, “But I understand where you’re coming from. Guy’s a creep, you got emotional. Happens to me sometimes. Don’t make it a habit. Now. Would you like to drive or should I?”
As we were changing seats I saw Jaswinder Pahwa exit the building, spy us, and head in our direction. She was clutching something small in her hand. I rolled down the window.
“I talked to Ms. Sorenson,” Pahwa said. “In that same room. She seemed very withdrawn. But every dollar of every event she oversaw was accounted for. That’s why we excluded her.”
“So nothing amiss?”
“The exactitude. The fact that she could recall those transactions despite the records being removed, and her personal computer suffering a hard drive failure. The interview felt wrong, but the problems we had with the others overshadowed our doubts about Tabitha. My doubts,” Pahwa added.
“Putting the evidence aside, and going on your gut.”
“My feeling is, there were two scandals,” Pahwa said. “Call them above and below ground. Above is flashy and wasteful, taking what it wants, disregarding the paper trail or what might happen later.”
“And below?”
“Quiet, patient, playing her cards—its cards, sorry—close to the vest. Above draws all the attention. Below, no one really sees what she’s doing. By the time they catch on, she’s gone.”
“You’re saying Atwal and the others didn’t suspec
t what she was up to.”
“Right. The cell phone bills and overpayments, even most of the loans—it’s all amateurish. Spoiled rich kids writing each other unencrypted e-mails on a public server about how they should be careful the next time they take a few thousand. It’s really quite funny.”
“Tell me about the second scandal,” I said.
“From what I reconstructed of the bookkeeping, funds had been transferred between student-government-controlled accounts with no signature. For instance, we found a hundred and sixty thousand dollars of the operating budget dumped into the elections account. That’s in addition to the three hundred and seventy thousand that somehow ended up in the dental fund. Only Inderveer Atwal should have control over large transfers from those accounts, but with no written authorization needed, it’s unclear who moved it. Or when.”
“What’s the significance of when?”
“Well, what if that money was withdrawn and invested for six months and then deliberately misplaced? The accounts would match, more or less, but whoever did that would have access to the interest earned off that money. A hundred and sixty thousand at ten percent would yield eight thousand.”
“Not much,” I said.
“That’s eight thousand that exists nowhere, and isn’t missed, provided the principle is returned. Now say it was more, half a million, and say the person got an exceedingly high rate of return, twenty-five or even thirty percent. That could very quickly add up to something significant.”
“Enough to run away on,” I said.
“Right. If the scope of our audit had gone beyond the student government, who knows what we might have found? As it is, this is speculation.”
“So there could be someone out there with a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Or millions. The right investment, or something less than legal.”
“But you uncovered nothing to prove that.”
Pahwa shook her head. “Ray wasn’t fibbing about deadlines and limitations. The school wanted it done, but done quickly and cheaply. Hopefully your client wants it done right.”
