Live Bait

by Ted Wood

  I didn't call that a hot newsflash. All the Chinese men I've ever met, in Canada, or Saigon, or Hong Kong where I spent some R & R time from Nam, they lived for their gambling. It made their eighteen-hour work days more bearable.

  "I'll go and talk to this Wing Lok and find out what I can about your brother." I would try anyway, if he spoke any English; it would be good to get an understanding of the nasty little hood Su's brother seemed to be. It might just open up the whole case and then I could finish with it and devote the rest of my time to calling around here.

  Su was seated across the table from me and she put her cup down and looked at me, her eyes spilling over with gratitude. I stood up and set down the tiny cup. "No time like now," I said. She got to her feet, the cheongsam opening gracefully to the thigh. She had good legs, I noticed, without even realizing I had looked. And she was tall for a Chinese girl, perhaps five-three, her forehead reached my chin. On impulse I stooped and brushed her hair with my lips. And of all impossible imaginings she tilted her face to me, eyes closed, lips moist and I bent further and kissed her mouth.

  I don't know what I expected, perhaps the dry scared kiss of a high school girl on a first date. I knew that she would not have the same intensity of emotion that Westerners did when they kissed. She was different, exotic, shy, scared, whatever. But when our lips met, I melted.

  My arms went around the smoothness of her shoulders and I held her close, lifting her to tiptoe height as we clung together. And when our mouths at last parted, she did not open her eyes. You can tell me it was wrong, it was too soon after meeting, that our coming together had been full of too many old memories. I knew all that but I was disarmed entirely. I kissed her again, holding her to me until she opened her eyes and said, "I think you are a bad man, Reid Bennett," and giggled.

  "What can I say?" I tried to chuckle but my voice was harsh with longing. This was not just a woman, something to take into the bedroom and make love to, this was the reincarnation of all I had longed for when I still was young enough to be innocent.

  "I do not think my brother is very important to you," she said, her words formal but her eyes dancing.

  I crossed my heart with a quick sketchy flourish. "Believe me, Su, he's the second most important thought in my head right now," I said, trying not to match her chuckle.

  She laughed out loud and stood at arm's length to look me up and down. "You are very bold," she said. "But I think I know what to do."

  She turned, still holding my hand, and led me through to her bedroom. She had a queen-sized bed covered with a down quilt in some smooth fabric the color of her golden skin.

  She stopped beside it and turned to look me in the eyes, seeking what? I didn't know. I was intoxicated by her nearness. I raised my free hand and stroked her cheek. She rolled her face towards my hand, pinning it softly against her shoulder. Then she pulled her hand free of mine and reached over her back to unfasten the top of her cheongsam.

  We undressed, in pace with one another, not speaking. Her body was lithe and hard, reminding me almost unbearably of the beauty of Li but I pushed that memory out of my mind. This girl was living and strong and lovely and I had survived those old scars.

  I lifted her in my arms, bending my neck to kiss her firm little breasts, feeling the nipples ripen under my lips. She groaned, so quietly it was almost an assault to have heard her, and softened in my arms so that I lowered her on to the bed like a bundle of clothing. I caressed her concave little belly, gently exploring further until she stiffened and clung to me and climaxed.

  "Quickly. Now," she hissed and pulled me down on to her.

  Afterwards we lay, looking at the ceiling. I was out of touch, remembering the straw thatch that covered the mat where Li and I had loved. "You are very quiet," she said gently.

  "That's what beauty does to me," I said, rolling up on one elbow. I bent down and kissed her nose. "If you were ugly I'd be talking your head off now as I grabbed my clothes."

  "I am not beautiful," she smiled a tiny smile. "I know what I see in the mirror. I have a Han face, like five hundred million other women."

  "There is nobody in the whole world who looks like you," I promised her. "You're special." And then she kissed me and we were back where we started.

  Later we showered together and then she made tea and finally we embraced one last, sated time and I left, feeling as if I had just been handed an Olympic gold.

  Chapter 19

  The Palace Gates was a middle-brow restaurant new enough to serve Szechuan cooking instead of the traditional Cantonese food that used to be the only game in town. It had a double frontage and about fifty tables inside. Most of them were empty at three in the afternoon, just a couple of kids who looked like students from the Ontario College of Art around the corner and a pair of good-looking matrons discussing plans for the Bar Mitzvah of one of their sons.

  I seated myself in a corner, remembering the way I'd been outfought the night before. I didn't want efficient little warriors coming at me from behind if Wing Lok decided he didn't like the look of me.

  The manager was a well-dressed man in his fifties. He was Chinese, of course, but close to six feet tall, which was rare, and dressed in a dove-gray three-piece suit. It was a little out of character for the quality of the restaurant and I wondered if he was one of the big wheels in Chinatown. I knew the Chinese had their own internal organization, as rigidly defined as the city council and mayor. I wasn't sure what the significance of the authority was, but it mattered enough for men like this to dress as if they worked the Stock Exchange instead of a restaurant.

  He came across to wait on me personally so I guessed that most of the help would be off duty. Probably Wing Lok with them, but I would try to make sure. I ordered a beer and pretended to be looking at the menu while I waited for the manager to come back.

  He brought it and beamed as if it was the most fun he had had all week. I smiled back and asked "All alone today, no help?"

  He smiled some more and allowed that there were very few people working, just the cooks preparing for the dinner rush.

  "Is Wing Lok working?" I asked him politely. He did not quite start with surprise but I could tell it was unusual for a stranger to be looking for the help.

  "Wing Lok is your friend?" The smile went on but I dropped mine now.

  "Kind of," I said. "Is he here?"

  The smile became even more urgent. "No. He not here until fi' o'clock." I wondered what made him so anxious. Had other foreigners been ahead of me asking for the kid? Was he the boy's father? What?

  "Then I'd better wait." I said, "Maybe I could get something to eat, if the kitchen isn't closed."

  "Of course." He handed me the menu but I just laid it in front of me on the table again.

  "Have you seen him today?"

  He was serious now. "Not today. He not in today. His day off until fi' o'clock."

  "Yeah, well I have to see him. I'm with the government." His concern increased and I guessed I'd hit a nerve. Perhaps the boy was here illegally. There are around twenty thousand visa students attending boarding schools in Toronto. The city is popular, especially with Hong Kong Chinese. Most are legitimate but the occasional one gets in as a student and goes underground. Mostly it means only that they don't want to go home, they find opportunity in some restaurant or laundry but some of them end up in crime. At least, that's the word I heard once, when I attended a Provincial meeting on law enforcement.

  The boss was smiling again, trying to avert whatever evil eye I represented. I put him at ease. "Not Immigration, Revenue Canada, it's about his income tax."

  The sun came out on the boss's face. Income tax was no crime. He would pass my message. But I didn't let it ride there. "Where could I find him? I'm supposed to be off duty at four thirty and I don't want to wait around after that."

  He didn't know, of course. Chances were that if the boy was illegal he was living beneath our feet on a cot among the supplies in the cellar, but this guy would never admit i
t.

  I nodded, dropped money on the table for the untouched beer and stood up. The boss nodded and smiled some more but I didn't leave. Instead I walked over to the big double doors leading out to the kitchen. There was a glass panel in each one so the waiters could see who was coming the other way. I glanced through. Inside was the standard steaming monochromatic room, white walls and stainless steel tables and the big black stove top hot enough to turn water to instant steam as the cook cleaned it.

  There were four men there in addition to the cook. They were younger, fit, talking together at a table in the back. Two of them had tea, one had a bottle of Coke.

  The boss called something but I ignored him, opening the door and taking four strides towards the table before speaking directly at the one with the Coke. "Wing Lok," I said. "Remember me?"

  He spun around and dropped into a kung fu crouch. The others backed off, startled. The show of violence surprised them, almost as much as it worried me because I knew what he could do. In that first instant of recognition I felt like the dog who caught the car. This wasn't what I had planned. I'd wanted to find Su's brother, not go up against a guy who had already bested me once. If I had recognized him earlier I would have called the police. The only way to take him out was to shoot him.

  He had recognized me, too. As I watched, the confidence grew in his eyes. I was a pathetic Lofan, big and clumsy, the typical "backwards-man" that hostile Chinese people find so offensive and ridiculous. He was going to put me away, for keeps. And he could do it. I kept our eyes locked, waiting for the first flicker that would warn me he was coming. Out of the edge of my vision I noted that he had his hands clawed. He was a tiger style fighter and he could kill me with one hand if he chose to.

  Slowly he advanced, along the edge of the long stove. The cook said something to him, but backed away, terrified. There was now nothing between us, no place for me to hide. The stove was on my right, a long counter top on my left. Instinctively I reached out, not looking, and picked up the first thing that came to hand. I heard it gurgle and flashed it a microsecond's worth of attention. It was a can of peanut oil, wide open at the top for easy pouring.

  In the same second his crouch tightened and he began his stalking move towards me. Without waiting I hurled the oil at him, not in his face but in an arc that leaped from him to the stove. It erupted in flame and as he flinched I stepped in and kicked him. I didn't go for the groin. A trained man might have his testicles retracted safely into his abdomen, instead I hit him solidly in the only place that would stop him, under the knee cap.

  He collapsed, blazing and screaming, holding both hands on his broken leg. The other men were all yelling. I looked around and found the fire extinguisher and played it, first on him, then the stove, then the walls. Then I upended it and hit him firmly on the collarbone with the canister.

  I find Chinese ugly to listen to, and with five men screaming at once, the kitchen was bedlam. But they all stayed back, doing their best to keep furniture between themselves and me. I was afraid one of them would go for the meat cleaver, but nobody did. They were all law-abiding. I nodded to the cook and said, "Police. This man is wanted."

  There was a phone on the wall and I punched 911 and told the dispatcher to get a police car over right away. I gave her my full pedigree, Reid Bennett, police chief Murphy's Harbour. It would cut down some of the dumb questions I'd be facing when the uniformed guys got here.

  The divisional headquarters is about three hundred yards up the street and there were two cars at the door in thirty seconds. The uniformed men were first, then the detectives who had been in their office when my call came in.

  The bluecoats were young and keen and anxious to make a name for themselves. I just flashed my Murphy's Harbour badge and told them I wanted the detectives. They came pounding in a moment later. I explained all that was necessary. "This man is wanted on suspicion of the homicide last night, Tony Caporetto. Please keep a close watch on him, he's a kung fu expert and can be dangerous. And notify homicide; they're looking for him."

  Detectives never trust anybody's account of anything. These two were professionally cynical about what I'd been doing. One recognized me from my stint on the force but the other one was more excitable. I could see he was ready to investigate the whole case from scratch. I told him, "Later. First off, get this kid to hospital. I think his leg is broken."

  "Did you do that?" he fussed. "That's wounding, I guess you know that."

  "I'm not going anywhere, we can discuss this later," I told him.

  "Please do as I ask or else the supersnoopers are going to get very annoyed with you."

  He opened his mouth to argue but the first one took over. "Sure thing, Chief. Do I need the cuffs on this guy?"

  "Just watch him, he's seen too many of those chop suey movies."

  Behind him, the boss was coming into the kitchen. He looked anxious; I guess he was wondering how I'd known he was lying about Wing Lok's not being there. I decided it was time to make myself a friend. "Thank you for your help, Mr. . . ." I let it dangle and he supplied the name eagerly, "Lee." I nodded and turned back to the detectives, gravely. "Mr. Lee has been very helpful," I told them.

  The younger one surprised me. He stood up and shook Lee's hand as if this were some kind of award ceremony. "Thank you," he said politely. "We appreciate the help."

  Lee was formal. "Any time, off'cer. Everybody should be good citizen."

  I watched the whole charade carefully. It looked to me as if the police knew Lee. He was a wheel in Chinatown, somebody to treat with special respect. That was fine. But it didn't jibe with the fact that he employed grifters like Wing Lok. I wondered if they realized that, but I kept my questions to myself. At best they would make me look antisocial, and I didn't need policemen peggoing me for a Neanderthal. So I said nothing and went with them to where my car was parked.

  I'll follow you to the hospital. Call homicide on the radio and tell them I'll be in emergency with this guy."

  "Sure thing," the helpful one said, and this time his partner added a respectful, "Right, Chief."

  Chapter 20

  The homicide detectives took an hour to reach the hospital. In the meantime Wing Lok had been treated for a broken tibia and collarbone and was not likely to harm anybody new for a couple of months. I had also been treated to a torrent of verbal abuse from a large Jamaican nurse who had called the department to protest my brutality. On the face of it she was right, a six-foot-one storm trooper beating a defenseless little man. But she hadn't seen Lok kicking that coffee table out of my hands and knocking me colder than mutton with a casual backhand.

  The supersnoopers looked in on him first, telling the uniformed man not to leave the room until relieved by another policeman, and then came to find me. There is nowhere private to chat in Emergency at Toronto General, casualties are coming and going all day and night. So they asked the sister if they could speak to me in the chapel. I guess she was a good Catholic, she gave permission as long as nobody used any bad language.

  We sat down in two of the pews, the detectives behind me so that I had to turn to speak to them. They were both bushed. Cooper kept yawning. Homicide wears out policemen faster than any other duty.

  "So what happened?" Hooper asked me. I told them, starting with my arrival at the Palace Gates.

  "Like, you just happened to fancy some chow mein and picked the place where this guy works. Right?" Cooper said.

  "I heard that he was a buddy of the guy who hit my house last night." This was the piece of information I had not wanted to part with, but there was no way around it.

  "And who gave you the information?" Hooper asked. It seemed they slipped in and out of one another's line of thought as smoothly as a man and wife, there was never a duplication, never a pause.

  "The kid himself. I was at court this morning and he was sprung on two grand bail."

  "Yeah? Who sprung him?"

  "A girl who works at a big law office down town. She's the secretary
for a guy called Cy Straight. A lawyer."

  "And she waltzed down there with two grand, just like that?" Hooper let his eyebrows climb towards his thinning hairline.

  "I guess. She had him out of there in two minutes."

  "And you went over to him and said, 'Hi kid, no hard feelings about last night,' right?"

  "Something like that."

  Cooper choked off a yawn and said, "How come he understood what you were saying. Did he learn English since one a.m.?"

  "The girl who came for him was Chinese. She interpreted for me."

  "Kind of obliging, wasn't it?" Hooper was looking at me the way I've looked at a lot of suspects with a lot of shaky stories. I shrugged. "How else would I have ended up finding this guy?"

  "Beats the hell outa me," Cooper said, then covered his mouth like a boy caught swearing. "Ooops, sorry, sister."

  Hooper laughed, the genuine enjoyment of a partner's sense of humor, one of the bonuses that helps make detective work worthwhile.

  He dropped the laugh and asked me, "So where was the other kid while you were putting the blocks to Bruce Lee? Didn't he try to get between you?"

  "I was interrupted at the court house. He left after I'd spoken to him and the girl. I went to the Palace Gates on my own."

  They bored on, taking me through all the obvious questions.

  Why hadn't I called them as soon as I knew the murder suspect might be found at the Palace Gates? Why did I wait until three thirty to go over there? Why? Why? Why? All of the questions I would have asked in their place. Cooper summed it up at last.

  "What it adds up to is this. You say this kid was at Caporetto's apartment last night. You say he clobbered you and took off. Now you say that a third party told you where to find him and you went over there without backup and kicked him around and brought him in."

  He paused for a yawn and Hooper finished for him. "What it adds up to is you could be framing him for what you did last night. If you weren't a cop yourself we wouldn't listen to you for thirty seconds. Instead, we'd be charging you with assaulting the kid."