The Water Rat of Wanchai

by Ian Hamilton

  He was awake, his eyes opening and closing sporadically from the lingering effects of the drug. She sat him up. He motioned for her to remove the tape from his mouth. “No, it has to stay on,” she said. He looked panicky again.

  “Now listen to me carefully,” Ava said. “I have to go out for a little while. The big guy you saw — Mr. Clean — he’s in the next room, so if I were you I wouldn’t make too much noise. Nod if you understand me.”

  He nodded.

  “This is going to be over by tomorrow. I’m leaving then, and so is Mr. Clean. We’ll call the staff after we’re gone and tell them where to find you. So until then, you behave yourself.”

  He nodded.

  “The last thing, and maybe the most important, is that you have to forget about me, about Andrew Tam, and about this entire affair. It never happened. You say one word and we’ll find you and we’ll hurt you. Do you believe me?”

  He nodded.

  Ava patted him on the cheek. “And if I were you, I’d find another business. There are enough creeps peddling fish without you and that fat pervert of a friend of yours in the mix.”

  As she left the apartment Ava took one last look back at Robbins. He still wasn’t moving. Ava thought about dragging him into his bedroom but wasn’t sure she was strong enough, and besides, what difference did it make where they found him? From the doorway she couldn’t tell if he was actually breathing. Was he alive? She tiptoed close and reached down to feel the pulse in his wrist. It was racing along, maybe too fast. Well, it wasn’t her problem anymore.

  Downstairs, Doreen was in the lobby behind the desk. “I’m leaving today, heading for San Juan,” Ava said. “My friends are still in the apartment but they don’t need any maid service until tomorrow. Could you make a note of that, please?”

  “That will be three days.”

  “Just doing what they can for the environment,” Ava said.

  She walked to the charter office and paid the man in cash, showed him her passport, and at five minutes to ten was aboard a Bavaria 35 heading out to sea. Ava looked back at the Guildford Apartments as the boat powered its way out of the harbour. She felt bad for the room maid who would stumble across Robbins and Seto next morning. Hopefully it wouldn’t alarm her too much.

  Road Town began to shrink into the distance. It was a pretty city, the white stucco buildings nestled against the greenery of the mountains encircling the deep blue harbour. She doubted she’d see it again. Revisiting old job locations was never a good idea.

  She went below into the cabin when Road Town had become just a dot. About an hour and a half later the boat engines eased and Ava climbed back on deck to watch as they pulled into St. Thomas.

  The U.S. Customs officer in St. Thomas hardly glanced at her passport. She took a cab from the pier to Charlotte Amalie and boarded American Airlines flight 672 at two fifteen. At six o’clock she was eating a bowl of gumbo in the TGIF restaurant at Miami International.

  She waited until seven to call Uncle. He was up already. Ave could hear Lourdes, his Filipina housekeeper of more than thirty years, asking if he wanted another cup of tea. “I’m in Miami,” she said. “I’ll be in Toronto by midnight.”

  “Thank goodness you are out that place. I didn’t sleep well.”

  “I told you, no worries.”

  “Between you and Tommy Ordonez it has been a hard two days.”

  “Don’t mention Tommy Ordonez,” Ava said. “I’m not home yet. I need to get home and I need to rest for a few days. So please, Uncle, not another word about Tommy Ordonez until I feel I’m ready.”

  “All right,” he said, his reluctance obvious, but he knew how superstitious she could be.

  “I just want to finish the Tam job, and it won’t be finished until I’m in my own bed again.”

  “Speaking of Tam, call him, will you? He wants to thank you personally.”

  “He left me a voicemail already.”

  “Ava, please. The man just wants to say thank you. You saved his business, his family’s capital. Let him be appreciative.”

  She reached Tam at his apartment. “It’s Ava. I got your voicemail. I’m just calling to tell you that I’m pleased things worked out.”

  There was a long silence from the Hong Kong end. “Andrew, are you there?” she asked.

  “Sorry, Ava, I’m still in a bit of shock from yesterday. I was only a couple of hours from total disaster when the money came through. I had no idea it had been sent. I mean, you didn’t communicate with me.”

  Was that a complaint? she thought. “I wasn’t in a position to communicate directly. The best I could do was give Uncle at least an indication that the money was on its way.”

  “He didn’t pass that on.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Ava asked. “You got your money — what else matters?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry if I sound unappreciative.”

  “In a day or two I’ll send you our bank information. You can remit our commission then.”

  “Yes, yes,” he muttered.

  She felt another flash of irritation. They were always eager to agree to pay the fee when they thought it was their only chance to recover their money. Then when they had the money back, they tried to cling to every dollar of it. “The fee is only half what we normally charge. Uncle waived his portion out of respect for your uncle.”

  “We’ll pay the fee, and Uncle’s part as well, if you want,” Tam said quickly.

  Ava knew she’d overreacted. Her nerves were still on edge; she needed to get home. “No, just pay my part, but you should understand that Uncle did more than just waive his fee for a friend. At one point he advanced $300,000 U.S. without any guarantee he would ever see it again,” she said, knowing that Tam would tell his uncle, knowing that the uncle would be forever indebted.

  “They swam from China together,” Andrew Tam said, as if that explained everything.

  Maybe it does, she thought.

  ( 43 )

  IT WAS A MISERABLE NIGHT IN TORONTO. AS THE PLANE approached Pearson Airport from the west, Ava looked out and saw a sea of white slashed here and there with ribbons of highway that were struggling to stay black. As they started the final descent, the plane’s windows became wet with sleet; the lights lining Highway 401 illuminated falling snow.

  She coasted through Customs and Immigration, flashing her Hong Kong passport, and grabbed a limousine. The highways were slushy and the driver was being careful, not talking, focused on the road. The only time he spoke was when they hit a pothole pulling onto the Don Valley Parkway. “Sorry about that,” he said.

  She thought about Guyana and smiled. “No problem,” she said.

  Jack Robbins’s phone had been turned off since she left Road Town that morning. She had thought about calling the Captain from Miami and quickly dismissed the idea as foolhardy. She needed to be on home ground, as far from him and his influence as she could get. She turned it on as the limo headed south on the Parkway, and was greeted by a barrage of messages. Ava checked the incoming numbers. All except one were from the Captain.

  She opened the Shanghai Tang Double Happiness bag and took out her notebook, then hit CALL RETURN on Robbins’s phone. “Where are you?” he screamed.

  “I’m riding in a car . . . in a snowstorm actually.”

  He paused. “I don’t believe that.”

  “I’m in Toronto, in a limo, trying to get home from the airport. I figure I’m about ten kilometres almost directly east of Olive Street.”

  Ava could hear ice clinking on glass. He was drinking, his nighttime ritual. She waited for him to speak, waited for him to acknowledge the Olive Street reference. When he didn’t respond, she began to read from her notebook.

  “Ellie and Lizzie live in apartment 816 at 1415 Olive Street, about two blocks from Havergal. Ellie is in grade twelve, Lizzie in grade eleven. Ellie drives a blue Honda Accord, licence plate number BDAC 685. They leave for school at eight in the morning and are normally home by four thirty. M
y friend Derek, who, you might remember, did not meet me in Road Town, has been keeping an eye on them. If you need to know about their social lives, boyfriends and the like, sexual experiences even, he can find out. They seem like nice girls, Captain. It would be a tragedy if anything unfortunate were to happen to them. There isn’t any reason for that to occur that I can think of, unless of course I find my life disrupted in any way . . .”

  She could hear him breathing as he absorbed this new reality. “Where are you?” he said deliberately, the rage tempered.

  “As I said, I’m in Toronto, and I really am only about ten kilometres east of Olive Street.”

  “How did you get out of Road Town, and —”

  “What does it matter?” she said.

  She could hear liquid pouring, the clang of ice swirling around his glass. Then he sighed as if he was giving in to something inevitable. “There’s no reason to involve my girls in any of this,” he said.

  Ava said, “That’s my preference and, in my absence, Derek’s. We don’t want any reason to act otherwise. Although we would if the need arose, and you need to believe me when I say we would.”

  “Leave my girls alone and you will never have to fear any action on my part.”

  “You’ll need to pass that message along to your brother too.”

  “When he’s functioning again, I will.”

  “They found him?”

  “Oh yes, they have him. When I didn’t hear from you by nine, I sent in some of his men.”

  “Is he okay?”

  There was a long silence. “He may be blind in one eye.”

  “Yes, perhaps,” Ava said.

  “He can’t hear out of one ear.”

  “That may pass.”

  “And he’s not going to be walking for a while.”

  Ava thought about Jack Robbins standing over her with the belt and the baton, and moved on. “How was Seto?”

  “Groggy, confused. He says he can’t remember how he got there or who brought him.”

  “What do the police think happened?”

  “They can’t get anything out of him that makes sense.”

  “Captain, I think it’s best that your brother be equally confused. I don’t want to have to deal with long-distance police enquiries.”

  “My brother won’t talk to anyone unless I tell him to, and then he’ll be following my advice.”

  “And what kind of advice do you think you’ll give him?”

  “Seto has set an example that I think he should emulate.”

  Ava looked out the limousine window as they exited the Parkway onto Bloor Street. The snow was falling harder now, the wind picking up. “It seems we have an understanding, Captain.”

  “Yes, I think we do, Ms. Lee . . . But tell me — humour me, please — where is the money that was supposed to have been sent?”

  “There is no more money, you know that. You were paid $300,000 for services rendered. Be content with that.”

  “Did you ever intend to send it?”

  “You know, there was a chance that it would have been sent,” Ava said slowly. “I honestly hadn’t decided what to do until your brother tipped the scales. In effect, he — in reality, you — made that decision for me.”

  “You were never going to send it. It was always a game with you,” he said.

  “I don’t see any value in second-guessing each other, Captain. You are $300,000 richer and I have a happy client. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Yes, Ms. Lee, maybe we should.”

  “There is one last thing, Captain. I would very much like to have my Canadian passport back. I hate the idea that it’s in someone else’s possession and could be used for mischief.”

  “Give me your address and I’ll —”

  Ava laughed. “Yeah, sure. Look, have it sent to the bank in Kowloon to be held for pickup. And considering that I’ve already paid you $300,000, don’t send it COD.”

  Robbins hesitated and then said slowly, “Ms. Lee, I have to tell you that I wish our business relationship had ended on a more congenial note.”

  “The only way that would have been possible from your end is if you had gotten your two million dollars. Me, I’m happy enough with the result as it is,” Ava said.

  “You aren’t entirely wrong about the money —” he began.

  “Goodbye, Captain.”

  “Ms. Lee, if you’re ever back in my neck of the woods —”

  “Not a chance, Captain. Not a chance,” she said, closing the phone.

  Ava saw the limo driver looking her in his rear-view mirror, and she realized that her end of the conversation must have sounded strange. “What’s the weather forecast?” she asked him.

  “More of this,” he said.

  She opened the window far enough to be able to stick her hand out. It was turning colder, the snow sticking to the ground. She tossed the phone out onto Bloor Street. It bounced twice before the back flew off. Traffic would take care of the rest.

  COMING SOON

  From House of Anansi Press in July 2011

  Read on for a preview of the next thrilling Ava Lee novel,

  The Disciple of Las Vegas

  (1)

  WHEN AVA LEE WOKE UP, THE FIRST THING SHE FELT WAS A sharp pain shooting through her neck and shoulder. She stretched, causing the pain to become more intense, and then slowly relaxed her muscles. She knew from experience that the lashing she had endured wasn’t going to cause any long-term damage.

  She turned her head to look at the bedside clock. It was only 6 a.m. She had flown home to Toronto around midnight and had been in bed for less than five hours. She had thought that two melatonin capsules and a glass of Pinot Grigio would see her through the night, but the pain and a mind that was still a jumble of emotions were gnawing at her.

  She lay quietly, hoping she could drift off again. After ten minutes she gave up and pulled herself out of bed. She kneeled to say a short prayer of thanks to St. Jude for her safe return, and then headed for the bathroom. Pulling off her black Giordano T-shirt, Ava turned so she could see her back in the mirror. The belt had hit her on the side of her neck and across her right shoulder, and then again on the same shoulder and partway down her back. The marks were a deep black and blue, yellowed at the edges. They actually looked worse than they felt, and in a few days they would start to fade.

  Ava went into the kitchen, made herself a Starbucks VIA instant coffee, and sat down at the small round table set against the window overlooking Cumberland Street and Avenue Road. She lived in the heart of Yorkville, the ritziest neighbourhood in downtown Toronto. Despite the early hour, the traffic below was barely moving while the January weather tried to decide if it was raining or snowing.

  Normally she would have the Globe and Mail newspaper spread across the table, but she had been away for more than a week — travelling to Hong Kong, Thailand, Guyana, and the British Virgin Islands, tracking down and retrieving more than five million dollars that had been stolen from a client — and had cancelled the paper until further notice. So she opened up her laptop and turned it on so she could read the news online. That was a mistake.

  After she signed on, Ava opened her email program, expecting to see messages from friends, a bit of spam, and not much else. She froze when she saw Uncle’s name in her inbox. Uncle was her Hong Kong–based partner, a man in his seventies whose idea of high-tech communication was a Chinese knockoff iPhone he had bought for less than forty dollars at the Kowloon nighttime street market and used strictly for making calls. He had sent her two messages in the past eight hours; she couldn’t remember receiving that many from him in the past year. She opened them. They were identical, simply stating that he needed her to call him. He didn’t say it was urgent. He didn’t have to — that he had sent two emails conveyed that fact well enough.

  Ava groaned and went over to her hot-water Thermos and made another coffee. She knew what he wanted to talk about. While she was in Guyana they had been offered a job by a Filipino-Ch
inese businessman named Tommy Ordonez. Ordonez was the wealthiest man in the islands. They had put him off so they could finish the job they were on. Ava had hoped he could be put off longer, because that job had turned nasty, with unforeseen complications. What was supposed to have been a straightforward tracking and retrieval of misappropriated funds had turned into extortion. She had prevailed, but not without difficulty, as the bruises and welts demonstrated, and not without stress, some of which still lingered.

  Ava had turned off her cellphone the night before and thrown it into the bottom of her purse. She had intended to leave it there for a few days, or at least until she felt her head was in the right place. She went to retrieve it and saw that Uncle had called as well. She sighed. She had to call him back. She couldn’t ignore two emails and a phone message without insulting him. Insulting Uncle was something she had never done — and never wished to do. It was just past six in the evening in Hong Kong, and Ava knew she’d probably catch him at a massage, an early dinner, or his Kowloon apartment.

  “Wei,” Uncle said. Ava could hear his little dog yapping and his Filipina housekeeper, Lourdes, telling it to be quiet. He was still at the apartment.

  “It’s Ava.”

  “You are in Toronto?”

  “Yes, I got in late last night.”

  “And you are okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Good, I was worried about you . . . It is early there.”

  “I couldn’t sleep, and then I turned on my computer and saw your emails.”

  “We need to talk.”

  Ava wondered if he thought she was being critical of his persistence, and felt a bit uneasy about being perceived as even mildly rude. “No problem, Uncle. Is it about Tommy Ordonez?”

  “Yes, he and his closest adviser, Chang Wang, each called me twice yesterday, after calling me twice the day before. I have been telling them they need to be patient.”

  “And how did they react?”

  “Impatiently.”

  “Uncle, you did tell them we never do two jobs at the same time, and that I was still working on one?”