by Nick Spill
John went back to the car and lay down in the back seat. In the darkness he relaxed even though his neck hurt. He waited to hear from Terry. He could only wish that his victim, greedy for the American car, would appear. He hoped it was the person who had assaulted him. In his hands was a thin strand of high tensile wire that had a small wooden handle at each end.
What a bonus, Terry mused as he looked through the peephole glass to see Plum Blossom sitting on her unmade bed, running her hands through her unkempt hair. John had not only burnt down her house, but he had scorched a Maori, Wiremu Wilson’s brother. What luck! A war was brewing between Maori and Chinese. How did that fat Maori get into the house when he was already dead? Could Maoris do that sort of thing? No. John had told him he had seen the two cops do it as he was hiding around the corner, waiting and listening for Terry to appear. One of the cops was Inspector Grimble, John recalled.
“Oh lovely!” Terry had explained. “That’s all we need. That bugger on our backs!” Since when were they in the business of moving bodies from the scene of the crime? What was Grimble up to? Perhaps Terry should complain to the police commissioner through one of the Samoan neighbors, an independent witness coached and paid for by Terry. Then he thought better of it. You could be too smart. Grimble was one cunning cop. The police were a law unto themselves. Terry shook his head. What was the country coming to? Who could you trust these days?
And what luck to have Hei Hei call at precisely the right moment to tell him of Hone’s plan to steal the car. Terry could not have gone wrong. He had ordered John to grab the keys and to get out of the car as soon as he had finished with Hone and wait around the corner. Terry circled around the block to make sure there were no police staking out the house, then he got John to walk back around the corner and pick up the black Lincoln. Right under the cops’ noses, he found out later from John. The cops were inside the house! Probably playing with the dead body. Maybe Grimble was dancing with it or measuring its prick! And they hadn’t spotted the candles in the closet! And these were their smartest cops!
Terry had the Town Car broken down into spare parts that night, in his Ellerslie garage, to be shipped to Australia where it would fetch more than it would in one piece in Auckland.
Acquiring Plum had been a stroke of luck. One of John’s older masseuses had spotted Plum Blossom at the new Women’s Clinic in Ponsonby. Knowing that John and Terry would pay a high price for information about her appearance back in New Zealand, the girl had found out Plum’s address from the doctor’s front office. Her file had been left on the counter. Terry gave her fifty dollars with the promise of another fifty if she tested negative for any sexually transmitted disease.
He dispatched John to scout around Plum’s house. He found her at home with the doors locked. He caught a glimpse through a window of a large Maori. John had waited in his car for hours until a BMW drew up and a tall woman and a red-bearded man walked into the house. Later, he followed the car to a side street off Mount Eden. In fact, it was the other side of Mount Eden from Terry’s house. He had seen Plum Blossom, the red-bearded man, the tall woman, another man and Wiremu Wilson slip into the house.
“Curiouser and curiouser. Now why would she come back after all this time? Does she think I’ve forgotten? I never forget or forgive. Hah! And she’s got protection of some Maori gang? What is going on?” he thought aloud, after John delivered his report. “The trouble with cops is they don’t think creative. When I go to work, I have a plan, then I have another plan, and then I have a backup. It’s not that things go wrong as they go different. The universe is a weird place, and it would be foolish if you thought it always conformed to the way you think it should.
“Now take this. It’s a miniaturized handheld radio that uses a radio frequency unused in this country. It’s from Aussie. They can’t listen in on us. But we can listen in on them with this older scanner.”
John smiled. He enjoyed the performance more than the substance. But it was better if he played dumb.
Chapter Six
Wednesday
Henry rolled over onto his side. He looked at his watch in the light of the bedside lamp. Five A.M. He did not feel tired. He turned to kiss Mel who was flat on her back. Her eyes were wide open as she stared at the ceiling. She could not move. The bed linen had been pushed onto the floor. The light made her skin pink.
He put his other arm around her and held his lips to her right cheek. His pendant swung over her shoulder and tickled her. She playfully bit him. Why was she so happy, yet so afraid?
• • •
Terry started his business every morning at the breakfast table with John. The house, made of stone and native timbers, was on a cul-de-sac, surrounded by a seven-foot-high wall.
“Goddammit! Look at this. Will you look at this!” Terry put down his bone china teacup and stuck his right index finger at the front page of the New Zealand Herald, which showed Plum Blossom’s photograph.
John carefully lifted the last two pieces of toast out of the pop-up toaster. He knew Terry would yell at him if he made too many crumbs. He moved his sore neck to scan the front page. His body ached from the assault two nights ago.
“Saw it on the way over. All the cops have her picture, Terry.”
“Really? Who told you?”
“That new joker at your burger place. Told me last night, after I dropped you off. Went over there to check on the place and get a Hawaiian.”
Terry drained his cup and eyed John.
“You’re going to get fat. All those late night calories and no exercise.”
John grinned as he helped himself to more marmalade.
“You haven’t been back to that doctor’s house, have you? I thought we agreed that revenge would come about in a different way. The idea is to eliminate the opposition. Yes?” Terry stared at John to make sure this had sunk in.
“How is she?” John asked, to break the silence.
“Oh, fine.”
“Did she say anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you think I should go in and talk to her a little?” John grinned. “You know. The good cop, bad cop routine.”
“No, John. It’s very sweet of you to offer your services. Even if they give up their crop, we might have to dispose of her, because of this.” Terry pointed to the front page again. “This has complicated everything.”
“Then it doesn’t matter then, does it? What I do?”
“Save it. We might need her yet. In one piece. There’s no knowing what they might do. They’re amateurs, and they’re desperate. Don’t look so glum. Make us some more tea.
“Tomorrow we’ll go down to Pukekohe and check out those greenhouses. They couldn’t possibly do it all by Sunday. If they haven’t started packing, we’ll have to get creative.”
John Eustace put the kettle on. He knew exactly what his boss meant by the word creative.
• • •
Sergeant Cadd reported to Inspector Bernie Grimble’s office promptly at 8:00 A.M.
The inspector’s office was an organized mess. Computer printouts, fingerprint cards and thick manila folders were piled up on his grey metal desk. The inspector had his own terminal on another small table that gave him direct access to the centralized police files at the Wanganui Computer Center.
A giant map of Auckland filled the other wall. Different colored pins were stuck in key locations.
Grimble was engrossed in the late edition of the New Zealand Herald. He was frowning. Large photographs of Hone Wilson and Plum Blossom were on the front page with the banner headline: MAORI ACTIVIST BURNT TO DEATH. STUDENT BEAUTY MISSING. Thank heavens the Herald’s editor, also a Mt. Albert old boy and a friend of Bernie’s, had assigned an alcoholic to this case, a reporter who, close to retirement, would be content to read police reports and be hand-fed shreds of information labeled exclusive.
“There you are, Cadd.” Grimble peered over his paper.
• • •
“The thing about Gri
mble,” Cadd had said to his girlfriend, Donna, whilst they were reading in bed the other night, “is that he’s invariably right. He doesn’t give a hoot about public opinion or what that liberal Jew mayor says.”
Grimble would have been surprised to know Cadd read. His current book was about tunnel warfare in Vietnam. He regretted not having volunteered to go over. It would have been good on his record, more so than playing rugby for the Auckland First Fifteen.
“What about the Three Kings murderer, you know, whatshisname.” Donna looked up from her book. They were a respectable couple, squeezed shoulder to shoulder in his double bed.
“Well, that might’ve been the wrong man. But he got a conviction. That’s what counts.”
“You admire him, don’t you?”
“Of course. He might not be perfect, but…”
“Do you want to be like him?”
“Yes and no. I mean, no. He’s like a warning. What not to become. Sometimes he goes too far. You know?”
“No. I don’t,” Donna replied, worried.
• • •
“Look at this!” Grimble motioned Cadd to take a seat as he flung down the paper. “They’re playing up Wilson as a peaceful intellectual. What tripe. They’re growing dope up north. I’ve talked to Wally in Vice, and he reckons with the short supply right now, the Wilsons, I mean Wilson, will try to sell it down here for top prices. Wally also thinks this is a sure sign a major drug war is brewing.”
“Who’s the source on that?”
“Wally wouldn’t say. You know how they are over there. Wally’s a good cop, but he’s always two steps behind. Anyway, he wants in on this. Which is good because we need all the manpower we can get now. And he talked about Terry the Turk.” Grimble’s voice trailed off.
“Oh him.” Cadd had no idea who Terry the Turk was.
“Plum Blossom filed a tax return before she left the country and got a refund based on her earnings from the Flamingo Paradise.” Grimble tapped a computer printout next to him. He had accessed this information himself last night after finishing his interview with Dr. Johnson and Clovis Tibet. Simply by dialing up and entering his password, he was able to call up the Inland Revenue Services tax records on all three of them.
“Do you think it’s a coincidence they came in with that lawyer Crispfeldt? Him representing the Wilsons.”
“Good question.” Grimble knotted his eyebrows. “Could be. Maybe Wiremu will turn up at the tangi. I doubt if he’ll come to collect the corpse from the morgue. The report came in from South. A police dog could have done a better job. Plum Blossom’s grandfather did not know she had come back from New York. But he wasn’t exactly loquacious. We’re going to go down there ourselves. We can pick up some cheap vegetables as well. Does your girlfriend cook?”
• • •
“No. Like this.”
Ricky Wong threw the five-pointed ninja star at the wall. It sunk into Bruce Lee’s black hair.
“Sorry, Bruce.” He saluted the poster. Fifteen other throwing stars were stuck in the poster, eleven in Bruce. The rest were on the floor.
“Okay. Let me.” Martin Wong took the remaining star, made it disappear in his right hand, flung his hand back and flicked his wrist. The star pierced Bruce Lee’s right ear.
“Hey! Bruce Van Gogh!” Martin shouted.
Boxes of martial arts supplies shipped from Hong Kong by an uncle were stacked in the room. The Wong brothers had overcome a new law that required that these weapons be used solely in a dojo. They supplied a preprinted and signed letter from a martial arts instructor stating that such weapons would never leave the dojo. They had sold hundreds of these letters for $14.95. A new shipment of twelve-inch long nunchaku had arrived.
“How many Maori boys in Mangere have knocked themselves out spinning chucks over their heads? Er?” Ricky broke open another carton.
“Bruce is really going to get nailed with that dope he’s growing down there,” Ricky added.
“Why? Why are you saying that now?” Martin squatted by the poster and picked up the stars. They had acted merely as a conduit between an eccentric plant geneticist and the Looks. The geneticist had graded all the seeds at the University with a new electron microscope.
“There’s word out that a war’s brewing between Maoris and Terry Turner. Something to do with a fire Monday night. One Maori got burnt to death.”
“What has that got to do with Bruce and Chuck?” Martin flicked a star at the poster. The point connected to the wall then fell out.
Ricky had unwrapped a nunchaku and checked the swivel. He held a chuck in each hand then slowly started to rotate one.
“They’re going to be drawn into it whether they like it or not because of what they’re growing and who they are.”
Ricky held the chucks aloft.
“Stand back,” he muttered. This was unnecessary, as Martin had moved to the farthest point in the room.
The chuck moved so fast in the air that Martin could not see it. He did hear the deadly whooshing sound as it swiveled and twirled around Ricky’s body.
Ricky caught the spinning chuck above his head and bowed to Martin.
“Let’s spar,” Ricky countered. “Only, no contact.”
Ricky threw the chucks back into the box and went into a side double-fist pose. There was a loud knock at the front door. Martin peeked through the curtains to see Chuck Look holding his helmet in his hands. “Shit,” he muttered. “Something must be wrong.”
The Wongs listened in silence as Chuck told them what happened to Bruce’s Volvo, the disappearance of Plum Blossom, the police visit to Sam, how Sam had summoned Bruce and the threatening phone call.
“You sure Bruce recognized that Maori voice?” Ricky asked. They sat at the kitchen table drinking green tea out of bowls.
“He says so.”
“Why would they take Plum?” Martin could still remember how he had put his hand up her skirt when he sat next to her at a New Year’s Party in Pukekohe, ten years ago. She had been a precocious eleven.
“I didn’t know she was back.” Ricky sighed. “Didn’t she leave the country because it was too hot for her to work at that massage parlor?”
“Yeah.” Chuck bowed his head.
“Then why did she come back?” Ricky asked.
“We have to help find her,” Martin filled in the silence. “Maybe we can do something. I heard something tonight, in fact.” Martin raised his eyebrows at Ricky.
• • •
Sam stood on his back veranda and watched the rain water the rows of parsley and spring onions. An unmarked police car drew to the edge of the gravel driveway.
The car reminded him how he had allowed Plum’s parents to grow opium poppies on such a big scale. The second larger crop was what had killed them. Sam was certain of that. But he was not sure who the killers were. There was a septic tank nearby. The septic tank did explode and covered a wide area with foul smelling shit. But the parked car had exploded as well. An expert from the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research had surmised that a leaking carburetor and the hot engine had caused the methane, then the petrol in the car, to ignite. There was never a full investigation into the cause of the explosion. There was never any conclusive evidence regarding the possibility of a bomb because no one had looked for a bomb.
But the police did have Sam as the prime suspect. Sam could not understand such logic. They had accused him of blowing up the septic tank. But it was his tank. Why would he blow up his own tank? He never told them his suspicions nor did he tell them about the poppy plants at the other end of the family property. Back then the police did not know opium came from poppies.
Inspector Grimble and Sergeant Cadd stood on the veranda and introduced themselves to Sam Look. The old man spoke of the weather, the rising costs of fertilizer and how it was difficult to do everything he wanted to each day. He knew nothing about Plum Blossom returning to New Zealand, and he could give no reason why she had come back and not called him. “T
he young generation. They don’t listen to the old ones anymore. They think they know it all.” Sam, being talkative, had given them what they had wanted to hear, but he had not told them anything they wanted to know.
As they drove back, Grimble turned to his sergeant.
“He wouldn’t say anything,” Cadd stated the obvious.
“Not for all the tea in China.”
• • •
Bruce towed the remains of his Volvo to a junk heap at the edge of their farm. He left the burnt out chassis and wheels next to the rusted remains of Plum’s parents’ car. He did not think about the juxtaposition at the time.
Chapter Seven
Thursday
Chuck called at ten o’clock. He had camped out at the Wongs’. He recounted to Bruce what they had told him.
According to Martin, there was a large shipment of marijuana about to come down from up north courtesy of a Maori gang. They hoped to capitalize on the current shortage and the resulting high prices. A huge Pakeha with pale blue eyes had told them this at their shop. They believed him because they knew he was well connected in the underworld. Ricky had also heard that there was a lot of Maori pot about to appear soon. “Everyone tells us little bits and we piece it all together,” Martin had told Chuck. “Like our spring rolls. The whole is greater than the parts.”
“So it could be possible that these Maoris have kidnapped Plum in return for, whatever?” Chuck had asked Martin.
“We know it’s about the pot in your glasshouses. That’s okay.” Ricky nodded. “We’re going to find her. You just tell us what you know and we’ll fill in the missing pieces.”
“Yeah! And if we don’t, we’ll have something worked out where we will,” Martin added.
Chuck Look told Bruce that he would stay in the city. The Wongs were to talk to some of their Maori friends and report back to him.
