by Ted Wood
I took out my handkerchief and handed it to him. "I admire your balls, Kennie. Where you're going, you'll need to hang tough." He wiped his mouth and gave me back the handkerchief. There was respect in his eyes, but it didn't change his mind about what he should do. Mentally he was already in the pen, telling tall tales of how he'd made me beg. I didn't begrudge him the dream. He would have very little else to groove on.
In the end I went back to the local station with the detectives. They were young and aggressive, busy playing games with one another, finishing one another's comments, laughing loud and long. They were in no hurry to take a statement from me. One of them said, "You sure seem to attract a lot of bad asses, fella."
I nodded and waited for the other Bobbsey twin to take over. "Yeah, kind of makes a guy think you may be part of this bullshit." They both laughed, hard, loud, meaningless laughter. Then the first one said, "Waddya say to that?"
That was my cue. I told them, in a very few words. "You're a pair of amateurs who ought to be out writing parking tickets. If you're not going to do anything productive, call the Metro Homicide squad. Otherwise let me out of here, you're wasting my time."
One of them said, "Now just a minute, fella," and I cut him off.
"You call me Chief or Mr. Bennett. I was a detective while your mommie was wiping your nose for you. Face up to your limitations. Let me talk to a real policeman, right away."
They blustered some more but neither one of them could meet my eyes and when clown A made a joke, clown B didn't laugh. In five minutes I was free of them, giving a statement to a sergeant who was old enough to see what was happening.
It took half an hour and then I was dropped back at my car and I sat there, trying to work out what to do next. By now Willis was listed as wanted, his description circulated by teletype and radio. Any policeman might find him and I wondered where I might look. He hadn't been at the rendezvous point. Where else did that leave? He might have headed home, but a detective would have been sitting across the street, waiting to talk to him. It made no sense to go there. But where else was there?
The only contacts I could think of were Cy Straight and Su.
At the thought that he might go back to her apartment I felt rage break over me with almost physical force. I could see her face again, dazed with horror, as it had been at her apartment and in that instant I could have killed Willis, barehanded.
I shook my head, that wasn't the answer. I had to find him and he would not be at Su's apartment. One place to look might be in the company of Cy Straight. They had something going between them, otherwise the little man wouldn't have shown at Willis's house. It was thin but I hadn't talked about Straight to the police. He was all mine, for whatever that was worth.
First I called the law office and found that Mr. Straight was not in. Fine. Next thing was to look for his private address. He must have had a clear conscience because it was in the phone book, Cyril Straight, barrister, and an address in Rosedale, which turned out to be half a million dollars' worth of house. It deserved to sit in five acres of private park, but instead was stuffed into a row of others, just the same, behind a narrow green lawn with century-old hard maples growing in it.
I parked a few doors away and considered my approach. There was no way I could bully Straight into helping. He knew the law and would stomp all over me if I started suggesting deals for help. No, it would have to be more direct, I would have to bring some moral pressure on him, coupled with a suggestion of physical threat. Basic terrorist tactics that would have made me vomit if I hadn't been looking for the man who had raped Su.
I checked the driveway as I walked up to the house. Straight's DeLorean was parked out back. He was home. The big thing was getting past the front door to see him. I rang and waited and after a moment a tall fair woman who looked as if she should be in a diamond advertisement opened the door for me. She was a step above me, which made her tall enough to look down her nose slightly. "Yes?" she said.
I was all charm, I smiled and nodded amiably. "I have an appointment with Mr. Straight. My name is Willis."
She frowned and I wondered if I'd blown it, that Willis was already inside and this would trigger her alarms. But all she said was, "He told me he wasn't to be disturbed."
"I imagine he meant during our meeting," I volunteered, and she frowned again. By the lines in her forehead she did a lot of it. "You could be right," she said in a voice you could have used to write on slate. "You'd better come in, I suppose."
I followed her, through a hallway bigger than my living room and on to a library. It had a good, used look. These books were friends, not wall paper. She went to a door in the far side and tapped. A faint voice said, "Now what is it?" in an angry hiss.
"Man called Willis, for you. Has an appointment," Her own voice hadn't changed. I could see there wasn't a nickel's worth of affection in that whole million-dollar household. No wonder the books looked so well cared for. They were all the company Straight had.
A chair scraped and the door was opened by Straight, his face eager. He saw me and tried to shut the door but I was too quick for him. "Hi, Cy, good of you to see me." I held the edge of the door and beamed a big stupid smile at his dragon lady. "Thanks ma'am. What I have to tell your husband is legal, confidential."
He was trying to speak but I overrode him as I moved into the room. "I really appreciate your seeing me at short notice, Cy." I closed the door and raised one finger at him, like an admonishing mother. "You're in real trouble."
He said, "I want you to leave," but he didn't open the door, and I knew he was whipped. I let him sweat for a moment while I looked around. The office was a copy of his downtown place, only smaller. There were a few rows of legal books but no file cabinets. On the desk were a couple of big manila envelopes. He sidled towards them as I looked around but I moved faster and picked them up. He grabbed but I just looked at him sternly and he pulled his hands back, like a greedy child caught reaching for the cookies without leave.
I glanced into the top one. It contained photographs and as I reached in to see what they were I caught a flash of pure anguish in Straight's eyes.
I pulled them out, glanced at the top one and realized what was going on. "How long has he been blackmailing you?"
He sat down behind his desk and put his hands over his face. I felt sorry for him, but that wasn't going to do anything for either of us. "How long?" I asked again, my voice toneless.
"Two years," he said through his fingers. "Ever since I went to Hong Kong. I was there for a convention. He was a police officer."
I laid the pictures down on the desk top. They were the standard stuff of blackmail, grainy, badly composed snapshots of this bent little man on a couch with a girl of about eleven, a Chinese girl. I spread them out with one fingertip. "Is pedophilia big with you?" He said nothing. I could see tears running out between his clenched fingers.
He shook his head. "Just one time," he said croakily. "It wasn't as if she was a little innocent. She was a tart. Her father sold her in infancy, I guess."
"Who took the photographs—Willis?" The rest was unimportant. The girl was ten thousand miles beyond my ability to help, an indentured prostitute in Wanchai, keeping 10 percent of her earnings, if she was lucky, another nameless casualty, out of reach. I needed Willis.
He nodded again, and then took down his hands and looked at me out of his tearstained face, like a mourner. "He got hold of them, I'm not sure whether he took them."
"He's the man I want," I said. "I'm not interested in your past. Willis attacked Yin Su this morning."
Straight flinched. "No." He mouthed it, almost silently. "No, not that."
I hate the delicious horror so many people feel about rape. They shudder but can't let go of the thought, toying with it, fantasizing about it. "She'll be fine. I took her to the hospital. Now I want to know where he is because . . ." I read the look in his eyes and I let the sentence dangle. I had been about to say, "because he's going to jail," but I could see
hope in his face. I would kill Willis, would take the menace away and let him live in all the peace his handsome, hateful wife would allow him. His thoughts were vivid in his eyes.
"I don't know. He was supposed to come and see me this morning. When he didn't arrive, I went up to his house."
"Did you have money for him, what?"
Straight sniffed, a long, deliberate noisy breath that calmed him. "It's not important," he said at last.
"Look." I leaned down on both hands so my face was close to his. "Unless you help me, I'll pick up those photographs and take them down to a friend of mine who knows where to have them circulated. Now I don't want to. All I want is information, I don't want your ruin on my conscience." It was brutal but I had to know everything I could find out about Willis.
Straight made a half-hearted snatch for the photographs but I leaned my weight on them and he pulled his hand back. "I helped him with some contacts," he said quietly. "There were people he wanted to deal with, people he didn't want to reveal himself to."
"What people?" Now I was getting warm. Maybe one of these contacts knew where he was, now that he was running.
Straight took out a Kleenex and wiped his face, scrubbing it, trying to remove the tear marks. "Tony Caporetto for one."
"He's dead. Did Willis do that?"
Straight shrugged, a gesture that made his bent spine even more pitiable. "I suppose so. It said in the newspapers that he was attacked by a martial artist. That fits, Willis knew lots of Chinese. Not the usual law-abiding ones, the trouble makers, including some enforcers."
"Let's handle this the easy way." I sat down on the edge of his desk, something I knew he would hate. Office-bound people all hate it; their desks are their egos. "Suppose we stop fencing and you just tell me everything you know about Willis."
He opened his mouth and I knew he was going to make the "By what authority?" kind of speech so I tapped the envelope. He dropped his eyes, cleared his throat again and began.
"It started after I got back from the conference in Hong Kong. I was in my office, he made an appointment in the normal manner, then came in, shut the door and showed me these."
"When was that?"
"Two years ago next month. I remember because it was just one month after I got home."
"And what did he want, in return for silence?" I was filled with a hunting lust. Once I knew this man's pattern I could find him.
Straight squirmed his back. I wondered if it hurt or if he had the itchy tension that comes with interrogation. "He wanted me to work for him, making contacts with people whom he wanted to impress."
"Names?" I snapped it out but he shook his head at me. "They wouldn't mean anything to you, they were people in Hong Kong."
"Why would he have to blackmail you to get that kind of help?"
"He wouldn't have needed me if his aims had been legitimate, but they weren't. He was extorting, trying to take over a space that had grown up among the Chinese gangs in Toronto."
"You mean the Triads?" I asked impatiently.
Straight looked at me in surprise. "I'm astonished that you've heard about them. It's not common knowledge."
"Where does Willis fit in?" I kept the pressure on him, no point explaining that I'd found out about the Triads the hard way, just a day before. Let him talk. I could always go back over the facts for explanations if they were needed.
My comment didn't speed him up any. He just nodded and said, "You understand the Triads hold the real power in the community. They exist by extortion, exclusively of Chinese businesses. Their methods are similar to those used by the Mafia. They provide services such as cleaning or advertising, at extortionate rates. If you don't pay, your restaurant burns down."
"Tell me about Willis. What void is he trying to fill?" I kept the pressure on in my voice, forcing him back to the reality of why I was there.
The thought of Willis brought a frown back to his face but he went on in a calm voice. "What has happened recently is that some Viet Namese groups have moved in. They have started extorting. Under the old, Triad deals, restaurants and gaming houses paid their money under the heading of 'protection.'" He allowed himself a smile at the thought. "Well, the Viet gangs started wrecking places that were supposed to be protected. And as a result, these places stopped paying tribute to the Triads and they lost face, lost prestige, and most important of all, lost money."
He paused, as he might have done in his summation to the jury, but I pressed him. I didn't want him taking control of the conversation. "So Willis decided to become some kind of warlord."
"More than that. He wanted to break new ground, to reach the companies which were coming into Canada from Hong Kong. He had contacts in the Crown colony so he could apply pressure back home if they gave trouble here."
"And where do you fit into all this?" I phrased the question crudely so he couldn't hide behind his legal credentials.
For a moment he looked at me, going pink in the face, then he realized I was there to stay so he explained. "I think Willis must have been involved with crime in Hong Kong. What he did was give me the names of people to contact there. I put some carefully worded suggestions to them without revealing the identity of my client."
"Did any of the people you contacted make any comments, try to bargain, or did they roll over and play dead, what?" I wanted to find how much power Willis had. It sounded as if he was some kind of WASP figurehead for Triad activity in Toronto. And yet he was cunning enough to hide himself behind Straight. Obviously he was a man with a lot of people at his command. If he decided to take me out, I would be killed, no question. I had to find him and either kill him or put him away for keeps.
"Nobody said a word in protest. I was to ask for the money to come in under the heading of insurance and they all paid, heavily. One company, opening a restaurant here, paid five thousand dollars a month. That must be close to the profit they'll make for the first few years."
"And the Heavenly Lotus corporation refused to pay?" It figured, I just wondered if he would remember that it was the outfit which owned the construction site and so far it was the only one in trouble.
"Yes." He nodded. "They sent me a letter stating that the insurance companies they have in Hong Kong could provide all the protection they needed."
I said nothing, just thinking things through and he blurted, "I had no choice. I had to do what he told me. One mistake, and he owned me."
He was going to continue but I held up my hand. "That's enough. A guy like Willis would have kept some cash for emergencies. Maybe we can get him by finding out where his deposits are and staking them out. Did you have any ideas about that?"
Straight shook his head. "He told me nothing more than what I had to know. He received money, a lot of money, but where he put it I couldn't tell you."
I stood up, grabbing the envelope of photographs spilling them into my hand. I heard him gasp but went on riffling through the shots as if they were family snapshots. I have seen too much crime to be sickened by them. I just wanted to remind him of the hold I had over him. I would never have used it, but he wouldn't believe that. His guilt was choking him.
"Okay, I need help." I put the pictures back into their envelope and tucked it under my arm, like a commuter with his morning paper.
He looked at it, hungrily. There was more than fear in his eyes.
I realized it as I watched him. He wanted his pictures back. That practiced child, a miniature woman, smaller and more frail than he was, she had made him feel invulnerable. He wasn't whipping himself for his guilt when he riffled through those pictures. He was reliving the one time his life had matched his fantasy. It was something else to use in my own struggle to solve this case. I put away the threat I had been contemplating and promised him, "You get these back when you're through helping me."
He flushed and I knew he recognized my knowledge of him. That was a start. Now he had to help.
"You must have had fallback plans with Willis. If he had you by the short hair, he
wouldn't have bothered coming to your office. You must have seen him. The question is, where?"
He answered automatically. "I went to his house usually."
"But that wasn't all was it. Where else did you see him?"
He stared at me blankly. He looked catatonic. I guessed it was some kind of trick he used on witnesses in court, lulling them for a second before lashing out with the exact question that tripped them up. He spoke at last in a soft voice. "I used to meet him, by appointment, at the Palace Gates in Chinatown."
I stood up. It was coming together. Willis's enforcer worked there. It must be one of his points of contact with Chinatown. And besides, Lee was an important man. That could mean he had the clout Willis needed to get things done in Hong Kong. It wasn't likely but there was at least a possibility that Lee was in the scam with him. I shoved the telephone to Straight. "Call Lee and tell him you want to talk to Willis."
He flinched. "That would be irregular, I've never done that."
"These are highly irregular times. Get on with it."
He didn't have to look up the number. He dialled from memory and a moment later said, "Mr. Lee, this is Captain Hook. I would like to reserve a table with Dr. Smith." He looked up at me, over the phone, just as blankly as before and waited for about half a minute. Then he nodded. "I'm sorry you are so booked up. I will wait for your call."
He hung up and I put my hand on his wrist. "Now what? It sounds like you've done all that a lot of times before."
"Only as necessary." He was coming to life, still as frail, but his eyes were burning with excitement. Whatever else crime did, it certainly gave him something to live for. He looked up, a bland, self-assured lawyer's expression. "Now I wait and Mr. Lee calls back and tells me where the meeting will be."
Chapter 28
We waited for the call, me in the only comfortable chair in the room, Straight at his desk, turning the envelope of photographs over and over in his smooth little hands. At last I pretended to close my eyes and he slid the shots out and went through them slowly. There was a sensuous hiss as he rustled them and I could feel his excitement in the air like the tension that grows before a thunderstorm.
