The Water Rat of Wanchai

by Ian Hamilton

  He nodded. “There’s an alleyway behind the club with an exit leading to it. I’ll park the truck there. There’s no point in drawing more attention to ourselves than necessary.”

  They sat with their eyes fixed on the Nissan. At exactly the ten-minute mark the doors opened and two very large men, one the man with grey hair, emerged. They wore black jeans and black T-shirts. Ava glanced sideways at Patrick — he was dressed the same way. Two nights before, both he and Robert had been in black. They’re cops, she thought.

  She watched as the one with grey hair tapped on the driver’s-side window of the Land Rover. It rolled down. The cop flashed some ID and motioned for Ng to step out.

  Ng didn’t move. She saw the cop’s neck muscles stiffen as he stepped back. He screamed, “Fuck you, you Asian piece of shit,” as he raised a boot and kicked the car door.

  Ng stuck his head out the window and said something. The cop pulled his gun and aimed at him. The door swung open and Ng jumped to the ground. Again she could see him talking, and she could imagine what he was saying. She was sure the word friend was being dropped.

  The Captain’s men outweighed Ng by at least a hundred pounds each, and when one of them grabbed him by the collar and ran him towards the club’s wall, he hit it with a thud. In the light cast by the flashing Eckie’s sign, she could see blood on Ng’s forehead and under his nose. She tried to muster some sympathy for him but came up short.

  The cop yanked Ng’s arms behind his back, handcuffed him, then jerked him backwards, making him fall onto the sidewalk. Then he grabbed him by the hair and hauled him to his feet. Ng’s head was turned towards the Toyota. All Ava could see in his face was confusion and fear.

  “Are you ready to go?” Patrick said.

  “Drive.”

  He cut down a side street and into the alley. On what looked like a fire door someone had crudely painted ECKIE'S. “Our exit,” Patrick said.

  They got out of the truck and walked back to the front door. Ava felt a rush of adrenalin.

  The club was badly lit, but she could make out a circular dance floor surrounded by booths. There was also a bar, two sets of curtains, and an exit. What little light there was, was trained on the dance floor. At best the booths were in semi-darkness.

  “I can’t see a thing,” Ava said.

  “There they are,” Patrick said, heading towards the booth closest to the bar. She trailed behind him, almost unconsciously trying to stay invisible.

  Seto didn’t notice them. He was kissing Anna Choudray, his hand stuck down her blouse, fondling her right breast; the nipple was half exposed. Patrick paused and Ava wondered if he was enjoying the sex.

  “Seto,” Patrick shouted, holding a badge in midair. “I need you and the woman to come with me.”

  “What the fuck?”

  Ava noted that this was voiced as a demand, not a question, and she knew that her hundred-thousand-dollar investment had been well spent.

  “Just get up,” Patrick said.

  “Or what?”

  She could see Seto clearly now. He wore a black suit with a crisp white shirt. She figured he couldn’t weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds. His eyes skittered left and right as if he was trying to figure out if this was a joke. “Don’t you know who I am?” he yelled.

  “I know exactly who you are,” Patrick said. “Now you and the woman get up or I’ll come in there and help you.”

  “Fuck you,” Seto said.

  Patrick reared back and punched Anna on the side of the head, catching her on the ear and driving her into the back of the booth with an audible thump.

  “Fucccckkkk!” Seto screamed. “Don’t you know who I am? Talk to General Swandas, for fuck’s sake. I’m with him. Call him. Call him.”

  “This has gone several levels above the general,” Patrick said. “Now for the last time, get your skinny ass out of there and bring the woman with you.”

  Seto looked at the gun Patrick was now holding in his girlfriend’s face. “You wouldn’t —”

  “You have five seconds.”

  Seto slid sideways, bringing her with him.

  “Turn around,” Patrick said.

  Seto pulled the woman to her feet. She held her hand over her ear, tears flowing down her cheeks. Patrick handcuffed him first. When he put the cuffs on Anna, he had to wrench her hand away from her head. “Sorry to do this, but if your asshole boyfriend was more cooperative this would not have been necessary.”

  “This is a mistake,” Seto insisted. “Call the general.”

  “Here, you call him,” Patrick said, holding out his phone to Seto. “If he answers and agrees to help you, I’ll shoot both you and the woman right here.”

  Seto’s face collapsed, his confidence gone, the fear visible in eyes that darted around the club looking for help — which wasn’t coming. “What do you want?” he said.

  “In time, in good time,” Patrick said. “First we have to get you out of here.”

  He led them to the fire door. Ava couldn’t help noticing that every eye in the club was focused somewhere else. It was as if they didn’t exist.

  She had her kitbag in her hand. “Put them against the wall,” she said to Patrick when they were outside. She took out a roll of duct tape and wrapped it around their eyes. “Turn him around now,” she said. She tore off a small strip and sealed his mouth. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Ava and Patrick helped them get into the back seat. Anna pressed herself against the window as if she were trying to get as far away from Seto as possible. She was sobbing so hard she was having difficulty catching her breath.

  Ava reached back, grabbed the woman’s knee, and squeezed until she had her attention. “Listen to me. When we get to the house, you’re going to tell us the entry code and whatever information we need to get in the front door. I’m telling you this now so you have time to think about it and be prepared when I ask. I don’t want to ask twice.”

  Anna didn’t reply.

  Ava squeezed harder. “I need you to say yes.”

  “Y-yes.”

  To Ava the drive to the house seemed to take forever; she could only imagine how long it felt for Seto and the woman. Neither she nor Patrick spoke. They both knew how intimidating silence could be.

  When they pulled up to the gate, Ava asked, “Anna, is there anyone in the house?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now tell me the code.”

  “Eighty-eight, eighty-eight, eight.”

  “How Chinese,” Ava said.

  “What do you mean?” Patrick asked.

  “Superstition. The number eight in Chinese is pronounced ba, and that sounds like the word for wealth. Two figure eights resemble the way “double joy” is written. Having an eight in your address, on your licence plate, or in your phone number is thought to bring good luck, and the more eights the better. Except, of course, for Seto in this instance,” Ava said as she punched in the numbers.

  The gate swung open. Patrick parked the Toyota next to the Mercedes. “The house code?” Ava asked.

  “The same as the gate,” Anna said.

  They walked to the front door. Ava held the woman by the elbow and Patrick had a firm grip on the back of Seto’s suit jacket. The walkway was uneven, making the blindfolded pair stumble; Ava held her charge steady and Patrick yanked Seto straight.

  The house was remarkable in at least one way: when they entered, Ava saw a staircase directly in front of her, running straight from the door to the second floor. For anyone Chinese it was an unthinkable design. It would take only a minimal understanding of feng shui to know that it would bring the worst possible luck to the owners of the house. She figured that Seto, or most probably the woman, had bought the house as is.

  To the left of the unlucky staircase was a dining room furnished with six chairs and a naked table. No sideboard, no plants, no pictures. It looked as if the room had never been used. The rectangular room on the right was about forty square metres in area, and all it contained
was a cheap-looking leather couch, two beanbag chairs, and a large LCD television.

  Ava walked towards the kitchen at the back of the house, pushing Anna in front of her. The room held a glass table with three napkins on it and a bowl of fruit, plus a counter large enough for a double sink and a prep area on either side. There was a cutting board and a set of knives in one prep area and the other had a substantial spice rack and jars of flour, sugar, and cereal.

  “Bring Seto back here,” she shouted to Patrick.

  Seto scuffled into the kitchen. The house was air-conditioned but there were beads of sweat on his forehead. “Take off his jacket,” she said.

  Patrick undid the handcuffs, removed the jacket, and then put the cuffs back on, adding a hard tug on Seto’s arms for good measure.

  Ava set Seto on a chair, lifted his hands over the chair back, and pulled them down behind. She then knelt down and grabbed his ankles. She spread them until they were aligned with the chair legs and taped his ankles to them.

  “Pass me the jacket,” she said to Patrick. She quickly went through the pockets, extracting a wallet.

  “Now, where is his computer?”

  “Upstairs,” the woman said.

  “Let’s go,” Ava said. “Patrick, stay with Seto.”

  There were four rooms on the second floor. Two were being used as bedrooms, one was empty, and the fourth was a makeshift office. Ava took Anna into the master bedroom, which was furnished with a king-size four-poster bed made of heavy mahogany and matching massive wooden dressers; one wall was entirely mirrored.

  The bed was littered with decorative pillows. Ava pushed them onto the floor and then told Anna to climb onto the bed. Then Ava taped her ankles together and taped her mouth. “Now stay here. Don’t move,” she said.

  Ava walked into the office and sat at Seto’s desk. It had two drawers on each side and a laptop computer on top. Ava turned on the computer, and while it was booting up she went through the drawers. They were mostly empty, except for one, in which there was a copy of a plane ticket and two cancelled boarding passes. Seto had come to Georgetown from Port of Spain via Miami. There were also two passports. One was American, in the name of Jackson Seto, and the other Chinese, in the name of Seto Sun Kai.

  She opened his wallet. There were four credit cards, all in the name of Jackson Seto, and a Washington state driver’s licence in the same name with the address she had visited in Seattle. He also had a Hong Kong ID card under the name Seto Sun Kai.

  The computer flickered to life and asked her for a password. That could wait; she turned her attention to the rest of the room. The only things that interested her were six cardboard filing boxes pushed up against a wall.

  When she opened the first box, she could see that Seto was neat and organized Everything was filed alphabetically, and when she looked in the Barrett’s Bank folder, the paperwork was ordered by date. She took the folder over to the desk and quickly scanned the documents from the oldest — a copy of the signature card from when he had opened his account — to the newest, which included a recent online bank statement. She had her notebook in her kitbag, and the account number on the statement matched the one she had written down.

  The account was in the name of S&A Investments. There was only one authorized signature: Seto’s. She checked the dates. The account had been open for more than ten years but had been almost inactive until three years ago, when deposit activity picked up. The wire transfers of Tam’s money were the largest deposits by far, but Seto had been squirreling other funds away all along, mainly in the range of ten to twenty thousand dollars. Some much larger deposits had been made over the past year; she assumed that was the money Seafood Partners had been scamming from the Indian and Indonesian fish guys.

  The two Tam wire transfers brought the account total to more than seven million American dollars. It was the kind of surprise Ava enjoyed.

  She went downstairs to join the boys. Patrick sat quietly on the kitchen counter, jiggling his legs to some music in his head. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

  She put Seto’s passports, his Hong Kong ID card, and the Barrett’s file on the kitchen table. “I didn’t do badly.” She moved closer to Patrick. “I’m going to speak to him in Cantonese,” she said.

  Seto was slumped in the chair, his chin almost on his chest. She reached for the tape on his mouth and ripped it off. He yelled in pain.

  “Seto Sun Kai, what made you think we would not come after you? And what made you think we would not find you?”

  He shook his head as if he was confused, then licked his lower lip. She wondered if it had sunk in that she had used his Chinese name.

  “Why would you or anyone else come after me? I haven’t done anything.” His voice was hoarse, his mouth dry from stress.

  Ava took a glass from the cupboard and filled it from the tap. The water was a lighter colour than the hotel’s. Must be the neighbourhood, she thought.

  “Here, drink,” she said, holding the glass to his lips.

  He hesitated.

  “It’s your own fucking tap water,” she snapped.

  He took a careful sip. “Where is Ng?” he asked.

  “Gone and not coming back.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe this: You don’t have friends here anymore. No one is going to come to your aid. This is strictly between us now, and how it goes and how it ends is your choice.”

  “Who sent you?”

  “I work for people who are friends of Andrew Tam. You remember Andrew Tam?”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Hong Kong.”

  He became still. She knew he was now fully aware of his situation. She knew he would be thinking about how to extract himself from it. She knew that when he finished examining his options, he would be left with the one she wanted him to choose. But she also knew it wouldn’t stop him from trying other ways out.

  “We did business, just business, Andrew and me. There were some problems with customers and I had to step in and salvage what I could, for all our sakes.”

  “So you’re telling me you were looking after Andrew’s best interests.”

  “We had inventory that was shit. I had it reworked and repacked, that’s all. It couldn’t have been sold any other way.”

  “And you discussed this with Andrew?”

  “There wasn’t time. And besides, he was just the money man. What did he know about the actual business?”

  “Not enough, I guess,” she said. “This product, did you sell it all?”

  “I did.”

  “Did you get paid?”

  He paused. She could almost see his mind whirring away, calculating just how big a lie he could safely tell. “For most of it,” he said.

  “How much did you get paid?”

  His head rolled back as if she were holding a knife to his throat. “About three million,” he said, squeezing the words out.

  “When did you plan to send it back to Andrew Tam?”

  “When things settled. I haven’t had time; we just got paid.”

  “But you do plan to send it back to Andrew?”

  “Of course, of course.”

  “Seto Sun Kai,” Ava said gently, “you are a thief and a liar.”

  She reached into her kitbag and removed the stiletto, flicked it open, and pressed its point into his thigh. It pierced his pants and then his skin. It was a prick, not much more. Still, he jumped, startled. His leg twitched. “Don’t,” he said.

  She moved the knife up his leg and stuck the point into his genitals. He flinched and strained to move back.

  The knife tracked up his chest and onto his face. Ava rested the tip in the soft flesh just above his eye. Sweat from his brow trickled down his nose and both sides of his face. She was about to say something about the knife but realized it wasn’t necessary. Seto understood well enough without the theatrics.

  “Seto Sun Kai,” she said calmly, “let me tell you what I kno
w and then let me tell you what I need to know. I know why you had a problem with the shrimp. I know the games you and George Antonelli played with it. I know how the shrimp were moved, who repackaged them, and where they were sold. I know how much you got for them. I know about the little bank in Texas where the money was sent. I know that the little bank wired the money to an account in the British Virgin Islands. I have copies of the transfers, so I know to which bank they were sent and I know the account in which they were deposited. I know you are the sole signing authority on that account. Now, there are two things I don’t know. Do you want to guess?”

  He shook his head, sweat dripping onto her hand and the knife.

  “I don’t know the password to your computer upstairs, and I don’t know the password for your BVI bank account.”

  Seto grimaced and said nothing.

  She waited. A minute passed, maybe more.

  “Seto Sun Kai, I’m waiting.”

  “It isn’t that easy,” he said.

  She felt her first flush of irritation. “I really don’t want to hurt you, or the woman upstairs,” she said, increasing the pressure on the knife tip.

  “The password for the computer is ‘waterrat,’” he said in a rush.

  “Your zodiac sign?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “And for the bank account?”

  “Eighty-eight, sixty-six, eighty-eight, sixty-six.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It won’t do you any good,” he said.

  She noticed that he was beginning to sweat again and his voice had tightened. This wasn’t where she had thought they were going. “And why not?”

  “There’s a limit to the amount of money I can take out of the account electronically.”

  “You can access the account through the Internet, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “You can transfer money out of the account, yes?”

  “Yes, but like I said, it’s restricted.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can only withdraw up to $25,000 per day.”

  She saw his left foot begin to shake. He was scared, and she began to think he might be telling her the truth. “I don’t believe you.”