Taboo raced down the hall.
Full of surprises, Willy called to say he’d arranged a meeting for me with Reynolds. “He wants to hire you for a job, Charlie.”
Ok. Willy was sucking up. He was sorry for stealing from me but had a strange way of apologizing. So, pardon me for being skeptical. “What kind of job?”
“Can’t say. It’s a surprise.”
“Thanks.”
“Lunch today. Twelve sharp. And don’t let the door hit you on your way upstairs.”
He met me at the door to Reynolds’ suite where he shooed the humorless guards away. I held out my hand. “William, I presume.”
He punched me in the gut. “Just do your fucking job, ok? And no goofy stuff.”
I coughed my way behind Willy down the hallway and into the living room where Reynolds sat reading GQ. He hopped up when he saw me. “You must be Charlie!”
Good guess, since he’d invited me to lunch at noon and it was. We shook hands, his disappearing into mine.
“A pleasure to meet you, Reynolds.” In person, I almost blabbed.
“The pleasure is mine.” A fine spread of sushi lay on the coffee table. “I’ve heard a lot about you over the years. From William. And I understand that you like fish.”
I salivated. “You understand correctly. Sushi I like. A lot.”
He handed me a plate with red poppies on one corner and when I finished loading it up I plunked down on the sofa across from my host to gorge. Delicious.
Reynolds plucked a handful of cashews from a small red bowl and started to crunch away.
“You don’t like sushi, Reynolds?”
He made a sour face. “I never eat sushi! Yuk. Sushi is Japanese!”
I bit my tongue.
“You’re probably wondering why I asked you here today, Charlie.”
I nodded.
“You are a private investigator, are you not? William says you’re very good. But I didn’t take his word, naturally. I went online and researched you myself. Your website needs an update.”
I nodded. “It’s on the list.”
He narrowed his sharp brown eyes. “William says that you’re the best in town.”
I nodded. Well, I was on a good day and bad days slipped through the cracks.
“There’s someone I need to have followed.”
I nodded. You can’t feed a guy sushi and expect him to talk.
“It won’t be easy getting near this man,” Reynolds continued. “He has many guards so you’ll have trouble getting close to him. But that’s not important right now. What I need is information. Information on his routine, like what he does, where he goes and when. And if there’s any change at all to this order – like if his guards suddenly pile into vehicles and take off at the same time, well. That would be extremely important to know. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“It would be around the clock. Twenty-four seven. Do you have the manpower for that kind of operation?”
“I do,” I lied. “Consider it done. I assume William quoted my fee.”
It was his turn to nod. My regular fee plus twenty percent for William. That Reynolds understood.
Having polished off enough sushi for a village of Samurais I wiped the corners of my mouth with a napkin. “Am I being too curious in asking who it is that you want tailed?”
“You’ve heard of him, I’m sure. He’s very big in China and is known here too in certain circles. I used to work for him, in fact. Before things went sour. His name is Richard Chang.”
I coughed for quite a while.
Talk about coincidence! While I was gobbling sushi, Tony was busy arranging a tennis match for that very same afternoon with guess who? Richard the Cleaver, Jack’s new son and my surrogate brother. Might Reynolds be the one person on the planet in the dark about this new family relationship? Obviously, Willy hadn’t talked, although Willy was known to keep a lot of secrets for his own protection.
It was to be a doubles match, naturally, since Richard never did anything alone. And apparently he was anxious to show off his new partner, Jackie Chan, stolen from me. Can you believe it? In my alcoholic absence my Jackie had been bought. With real money. I drove up the treed driveway to Richard’s West Van beach house feeling betrayed. After all we’d been through together Jackie had chosen Richard, our kidnapper, over me. I was justifiably depressed. And although Tony had promised to deliver a brave new partner to save me from disgrace I was down bad. I climbed out of my Beemer, grabbed my tennis racquet, and started to fan the air. The early October sun shone, the birds sang, and the peppery scent of pine needles stung my nose. Life sucked.
Tony Chan pulled in behind me in the big Phantom IV honking the horn. He hopped from the car, straightened his chauffeur’s cap, and with great ta da opened the big back door. And before my astonished eyes out popped a second Jackie Chan - a little smaller, a little younger, but no less enthusiastic. He came running towards me waving a familiar wooden tennis racquet, still in its press, and fresh out of Tony’s museum. He hoisted the yellow basketball shorts off his shoes.
Tony came chuckling behind him. “He’s all yours, Charlie. Treat him well. He just arrived yesterday.”
Oh great. There were two of them now, two of Tony’s illegal-alien nephews, Thing One and Thing Two. Well, obviously Thing Two belonged to me now so I was stuck. And to think that Richard had stolen Jackie from me by actually paying him. What a dirty trick!
Richard and Jackie were already hard at work when we arrived at the tennis court out back, after successfully making our way through a jungle of artillery. Money had done things to Jackie. Clearly he’d moved up in the world and was now Nike from head to toe – shirt, shorts and shoes, even a white headband with a little black checkmark. Richard looked dashing in his Union Jack duds, still, and he called to me in the pleasant English accent he’d acquired at Oxford.
“Charlie! How awfully good of you to come!”
Hmm. He hadn’t changed much in the past few weeks. He was still the tall, handsome Asian with chiseled features and with the sharp eyes of a falcon. And he was still as phony as a three-dollar bill.
“I’ve brought my cheering section, old boy.”
He certainly had. On the sidelines, in three striped deckchairs, sat Richards’s goons: King Kong Chin, Fat Freddie Fong, and Sweet Shorty Poo, the little bad guy.
Jackie was hopping up and down. “Amster!” he said excitedly. “Do you wike my new cwothes?” His hair stood straight as a brush atop his head.
“Dashing!” I hollered. “Just fucking dashing, Wildman!”
He beamed. “Sank you, Amster! Sank you wery much.”
Only two people in the world got away with calling me Hamster: Jack, who christened me the day he became my owner and Jackie because he could only say Chow-we, which Tony said was very bad in Chinese. And oops! Now there were three.
Billy smiled a big-teeth smile. “Amster!” He hauled up his shorts. “This is going to be fun!”
On our way to the other side of the net Billy and I passed by the boys. “Hey, Shorty,” I said in a soft pleasant voice. “Learned any new words? Other than ‘Don’t move, Chow-we’ while holding a gun to my head?”.
Shorty snorted. Just try something, he implied.
I took Billy aside. “You’re better than Jackie, right?”
He grinned. “On what you pay I can be.” His brown eyes sparkled. “Or I can be wousy. Take your pick.”
I should have known. “How much?”
“Two hundwed.”
“Forget it. That’s scamming.”
His grin went right around his face. “You fink? What about half for me and half for my brover. For frowing the game.”
I smacked my chops. “Deal. I’ll write you a check.”
Billy waved to Jackie who frantically waved back. Deal.
Jackie was terrible. He hopped, he limped, he dragged his carcass around the court like it weighed a ton. He complained about blisters from his new shoes and t
he bumpy court causing him to trip, all to Richard’s chagrin. In the middle of the second set Jackie sat right down.
Richard poked him with his racquet. “Get up, you lazy coward!”
Jackie put his head between his knees.
The Cleaver rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re just going to give up.”
Jackie didn’t move.
Richard looked over at me. “Would you mind awfully telling me what’s going on, old boy? We’ve been whipping everyone at the club in the past few weeks and suddenly Jackie goes lame? Quite frankly I don’t get it.”
I tossed Richard my innocent look. “I figure that Jackie has bonded with me. Since the time you had the two of us kidnapped and were planning to bump us off. Surely you remember, Richard. It was the day you married your sister.”
Richard coughed. And Shorty coughed because Richard did. King Chin and Fat Freddie Fong rose to their feet. The gentlemen were starting their engines.
I turned to Billy. “I figure Jackie doesn’t want to beat me. What do you figure?”
Billy hopped up and down. Not everyone got to play tennis alongside Richard Chang. “I figure same. Let’s change partners.”
Jackie jumped to his feet. And with a few long strides of his little legs he skirted the net and leapt into my arms. “I’ll show you tennis!”
Hmm. I wondered just how far I could push Richard before Jackie and I ended up back in burlap.
Richard narrowed his hawk-like eyes. “You’re dumping me then, Jackie?”
Oh, oh. The Cleaver was not a man to quit. There were reasons why the son of Genghis Chang had risen to the top of the mafia ladder by age thirty-three. Maybe I should smarten up. Or maybe I wouldn’t bother.
“Yep!” said Jackie with no fear. “I’m stickin’ with Amster. I’m Amster’s man now.”
Shorty Poo snorted. Although he didn’t understand English his nose could smell a rat.
Richard picked up his racquet. “Well, then, Billy. Show us your stuff.”
For the next two hours we battled away like pros. This was grim stuff for Jackie and Billy who seriously hogged the ball. On our last break I said, “We have to lose the last set, Jackie. We have to let them win.”
“What?” His eyes grew wide. “We wose? Why?”
“Don’t ask questions. It’s bad enough that you dumped Richard for me. He can do bad things to us, in case you’ve forgotten. Really bad.”
Jackie giggled. “He can. But he won’t. Cow Gong will eat his balls for bweakfast.”
A vivid picture of Tony Chan munching Richard’s testicles crept into my cranium. “Your uncle’s revenge won’t matter a fat rat’s ass if we’re dead.”
Gears went grinding in Jackie’s head. “Ok, Amster. They can win. Billy will get respect. He can get job with Wichard and I’ll work for you.” He sat down on the court. “If you pay me. You have to pay me big.”
What could I say. “Name your price.”
“Wots. You have to pay me wots.”
“Agreed.”
Jackie took off a shoe and started to rub his foot. “You guys win,” he called across the net. “I’m pooped out.”
Well, that was Jackie. With the outcome predetermined he saw no point in wasting energy.
Richard gave the thumbs-up to his entourage. All three nodded. All three smiled. It was about winning, after all. They gave him the thumbs-up back.
Jackie stood up and dusted himself off. “No checks either, Amster.”
“What? I whispered that to Billy. You couldn’t possibly have heard about the method of payment.”
“I didn’t have to. I know you, Amster. Billy doesn’t. He’d take a check not knowing it’s fake. You tried that one on me. But you won’t again. Because next time I’ll break your fucking neck.”
Jackie and I laughed for quite a while.
Tony arrived on the scene to collect his nephews, and to sort things out, I figured. Who would be working for whom and exactly why. Naturally, it would be the godfather’s decision in the end. I followed Richard into his luxury beach house anticipating a frosty beer. His great room was a great room, all right. I knew it well since I’d been tied up there waiting to be shot. I remembered the Bolivian rosewood flooring, the mahogany billiards table, the bar of booze, silver shakers, and crystal decanters… Yes, it was a really nice place to die.
Richard poured us a Guinness on tap. “Billy is better than Jackie. He has a stronger serve and a better backhand.”
I nodded. “He’ll fit nicely into your organization. He’ll make a good mugger.”
Richard tried not to laugh. “You just can’t give it up, can you Charlie?”
“I guess it’s about your having me kidnapped etcetera. I guess it kinda stuck in my craw.”
“We need to move past the past, don’t you think? Since we’re brothers now?”
“Easier for you than me, I think.” I raised my frosty mug. “But just so you know I never wanted a brother.”
Richard leaned on the bar. “That’s what I mean, Charlie. You just can’t give it up. You just have to be a wise-ass.”
“And?”
“And I have a proposition for you. A business proposition. I asked you here today for more than tennis.”
Right. “Is this one of those you do the crime and I do the time propositions? You’ve laid that one on me before.”
He actually laughed. “Not exactly. There’s someone I need to locate. I’ve been unable to track him down and neither have you. But since you do that sort of thing for a living, well, there’s a chance you may have recently honed your skills. And I’m willing to give you a second chance.”
Ouch. Trust Richard to remind me that I actually had to work for a living. But to be honest I was tired of being the good guy and poor, since I was surrounded by everybody bad and rich. Things were about to change.
“You know of this man, this computer-hacking genius. He used to work for me and now he wants to take over my business. It’s a pity, really. He was once an invaluable employee and now I have to hurt him.”
I choked on my beer. “Reynolds Woo?”
He nodded. “Reynolds the Wrap.”
Chapter Four
LIKE I SAID BEFORE I was going bad. In my own defense, I hadn’t worked in a while so anyone for triple-dipping? Client Jack. Client Reynolds. And client Richard. While slightly unethical it wasn’t illegal and almost doable with the services of Jackie and Billy Chan, whom I planned to hire for cheap. The big picture? A piece of cake with Billy now working for Richard and Jackie working for me. What could possibly go wrong? What? Try everything.
Along came Jillian on her activist horse, riding high. After receiving the call from Tony I locked up my Denman Street office and headed out in my Beemer, top up. It was a grey afternoon with intermittent showers slowing rush hour traffic and causing drivers like me to curse and holler. It wasn’t a great day for a protest, but then again, what would a ‘normal’ guy know? Bad weather didn’t deter zealots like Jillian, oblivious to the elements. No, they had big trees to save.
It didn’t take long to spot her among the group of radicals brandishing signs. She was standing on the top step of Rosecam Metals while the others rallied below. Dressed in a little yellow slicker, with a ball cap securing her long blond curls, she bravely wielded a sign. NO MORE EXPLORATION OF CLAYOQUOT SOUND. Soon the protesters were joined by anti-protesters and curiosity-seekers alike, as traffic slowed to a crawl… a lot of hollering and cursing going on.
The yappy activist, loud speaker in hand, seized the moment. “They’re going to destroy Catface Mountain!” she screeched as the crowd went crazy. “They’re planning on mining copper there and are about to destroy the top third of the mountain. Is this not egregious?”
The protesters cheered. A chorus of boos from the cheerless bystanders spurred the picketers on.
“Where’s the stripper?” I hollered.
A straight-faced veteran of the streets turned to face me. He had shaggy white hair and was
missing a couple of teeth. “Just a bunch of whacky activists,” he said in a disgusted tone. “They need to get jobs.”
I grinned. “Maybe you could hire them, fella.”
Now, if I kept a diary of dirty looks his page would receive a star. Had he weighed more than fifty pounds he might have slugged me.
“That’s that Jones whacko.” A woman in a red raincoat shook her silver head. “She’s a nut bar! A head case. She’ll do absolutely anything to get attention.”
“I’ll tell her you said that,” I shouted back. “She’s my wife.”
The woman visibly cringed.
A cameraman zeroed in on Jillian who was pretty much focused on herself. “Do you not see the irony in this?” she ranted. “Clayoquot Sound is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Because of its intact pristine valleys. Yet Rosecam Metals plans to destroy those valleys with waste rock rubble and a toxic pond. Is this not criminal?”
Fierce cheers rose above the throngs of a rousing round of boos. The crowd had spilled out onto the street and motorists with murder on their minds were leaning on their horns.
“Rosecam is also planning to build an ore-processing plant. There will be sulfuric acid drainage and heavy metal leaching into the soil. We have to stop this environmental disaster before it happens and we have to stop it now. Now!”
Angry employees - some trying to leave for the day and others trying to arrive for work - began elbowing their way through the crowd. Sirens in the distance stayed there, unable to plow through the jam. But Jillian wasn’t finished yet. “Please, please, please flood Rosecam with emails!” she screamed. “And tell your government to help the Ahousahts First Nations people so they don’t have to sell out. Bombard your MPP with emails and phone calls. We implore you!!”
Someone who didn’t exactly appreciate an elbow in the gut threw a punch and others jumped in. Fists punched, women kicked and pulled hair, men kicked and pulled hair. Donnybrook.
Red-faced Jillian screamed into her loud speaker. “Stop it! Stop fighting! This is supposed to be a peaceful demonstration!”
I eventually managed to elbow my way to her side. “We have to scram, Jillian. The cops can’t get here, unless by helicopter, and you’re in danger.” Dragging her behind I forged my way through the crowd.
Jack in a Box Page 19
