The Snakeheads Page 6

  “That’s a big loss of profits. I assure you they’re all here legally. All have working papers. Why close down the club if I can prove this? What you’re doing isn’t good for business. Everyone has paid good money …”

  “Mr. Loong, we’ve heard enough,” snapped Kappolis, impatiently.

  “Mr. Sui is with the immigrant investor program. You can’t do this to him. He’s a very important man. Immigration Canada promised him lots of help if he invested in this country. That is what he is doing. The club needs to stay open.” Loong was still protesting as the uniformed cop escorted him out of the room.

  Nick and Kappolis carved up the interviews with the eight police officers from backup, but kept Loong for themselves. Saved him for last. It was a tactic they learned early in their careers.

  The first entertainer was a pretty and petite woman going by the name Niin Tran.

  “What documents do you have to confirm your immigration status in this country?” Nick asked, scanning her documents which gave her age as twenty-four. However, the girl in front of him looked no more than seventeen. Nick made a notation in the side margins to look into the matter. Sexual exploitation of female minors was a very serious offence in his book.

  The second entertainer looked nothing like her photo. In the photograph she was wearing spectacles and a white blouse. Whereas the woman before them had dark, kohl-rimmed eyes, no glasses, and spiked hair the colour of a flaming sunset. Her lipstick was a dark shade, almost black, a colour they had not seen on lips before, and her skimpy sequined outfit barely covered her body. Kappolis and Slovak could not stop staring until they noticed that her stage companion was dressed in an even skimpier costume that left nothing to the imagination. It was not every day that they came across big-breasted Orientals.

  “Implants,” whispered Kappolis to Nick.

  Nick stared harder. He had never seen a woman with breast implants. Could this be the real reason why men paid such stiff initiation and membership fees? After the two girls, they interviewed two young males who could easily have passed for the opposite sex.

  “Nick, it took me a while to figure out they were guys.”

  “Yeah. Let’s not linger longer than necessary with these people. There’re too many of them and I don’t wanna pull an all-nighter.”

  Nick retrieved his laptop from Kappolis’s car, and started banging out notes with mathematical precision. Full names, nationality, dates they entered the country, the dates their foreign authorizations were due to expire, visa numbers, the whole shebang. When he lifted his eyes from the keyboard, he noticed that the woman sitting in front of him had legs that were far too thick for a dancer. He didn’t believe that she had ever danced a day in her life before coming to Canada. He was trying to keep an open mind, but the only thing believable about these girls was that they all came from backward economies.

  “How did you learn about getting a job here if you’re from Thailand?”

  “Advertisement in newspaper in Thailand.”

  “Who’s your employer? Who pays you?”

  “The general manager, Mr. Loong, looks after us. He pay us once a month. Put money in our bank accounts.”

  By the time they finished interviewing all the girls, Kappolis and Slovak were immune to halfnaked bodies.

  “Even the bouncer’s an import. It doesn’t take a lot of brains to be a bouncer. We got unemployment at ten percent and we’re bringing in Third World thugs to be doormen?” asked Kappolis.

  “I’m going to have one of my officers look into these work authorizations.”

  When Andy Loong sat down, he asked for permission to smoke, and lit up a cigarette with trembling hands. Nick registered the man’s nervousness without looking up from the pile of witness statements. “Are you a landed immigrant, sir,” he asked, “or here on a work permit? Please produce your documents for verification.”

  “I am a landed immigrant.”

  “May we see your landing card?”

  Andy Loong pulled a dog-eared piece of paper from his billfold.

  “Tell us about the club’s relationship with the Flying Dragons triad,” asked Kappolis.

  Loong’s face became noticeably paler. “Some who come aren’t respectable people, but there’s no way to deny them entry when they’re paid up in full. As long as they abide by the rules, we have no problems. I know nothing about triads.”

  “Don’t fuck with us,” said Nick. “We weren’t born yesterday.”

  Nick studied Loong as he closed his eyes, trying to pull himself together.

  “Okay. This is Dragon roof, but we don’t pay protection money.”

  “We hear the club’s giving free services to the Dragons.”

  “Where did you hear that?” he asked defensively. Nick shrugged.

  Loong’s hands were trembling. “Please, you don’t understand. I’m not involved in these things. This is a job for me. I don’t want my employer to think I’m not doing a good job. I could be in trouble because good jobs are scarce.”

  “Knowledge and involvement are two different things.” Nick tried his best to sound sympathetic and intimidating at the same time. “Tell us what you know. Your cooperation will be rewarded. So far, you’ve committed no offences.” Nick allowed the emphasis to sink in.

  “We’re under a Dragon roof. The Flying Dragons started getting in for free when Lo Chien triad tried to roof in on the club. Mr. Sui wasn’t interested in paying protection money to Lo Chien. Lo Chien attempted to kidnap Mr. Sui one night, and some Dragon gang members who were drinking at the club helped foil the kidnapping attempt.”

  “Did you report the kidnapping to the police?”

  “I didn’t. I don’t know if my boss did or didn’t.”

  “Why did the Dragon gang members help Mr. Sui? Tell us about his relationship with them?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not my place to ask questions. I only know that he allows the Dragons the use of the club. They come for drinking and karaoke.”

  “Does anyone else get free membership to the club?”

  “Not that I can remember.”

  Nick produced mug shots of Gee Tung and Shaupan Chau. He also showed Loong a sketch of Li Mann. “Recognize any of these guys?”

  Loong looked at the pictures blankly. Nick repeated the question.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “The drugs on the third floor, who supplies them?”

  “What drugs?”

  Kappolis glared at the general manager. “Don’t fuck with us. We ain’t stupid. You’re already down on charges of prostitution, association with criminal elements. You don’t need drug trafficking and soliciting. The way I see it, you’ve already racked up about seven years’ worth of charges.”

  “We don’t supply drugs. The clientele bring their own and we look the other way.”

  “This is a copy of your membership list? Everybody’s name is on here?”

  “Yes.”

  “It better be.” Nick stuck the list in his notebook computer case. He stood, and nodded briefly to Kappolis, who pulled out a pair of handcuffs from behind his back.

  “Okay, Loong,” said the detective. “Let’s go down to the station. I gotta book ya.”

  A few minutes later Nick and the detective were outside the building, leaning against the railing as they compared notes.

  “In my opinion, tits and ass is nothing more than a cover to run a human smuggling operation. When you get beyond the girls without underwear, you’re dealing with the same bullshit of moving bodies here from the Third World,” said Nick.

  Flipping the pages of his notebook, Nick wasn’t thinking about the street scene, but he registered a brief flash of white in his peripheral vision as the Chrysler sedan with the tinted windows came towards them. Out of sheer reflex they hit the ground at the sound of gunfire. Thank God for Kevlar vests, Nick thought, as he struggled to get his gun.

  Then, as quickly as it began, it was over. Nick picked himself up, put his hand to his head,
and felt the stickiness. Blood. His left temple above his eye was bleeding — he’d been hit by flying debris. It took another moment to realize it was nothing serious. Kappolis, too, was in one piece. But Loong was dead. He was lying flat on his back, eyes open, blood pouring from holes in his head and stomach. Another bystander was also dead, and half a dozen were shot and bleeding. The officer beside him had been shot, but was alive. Nick, being the closest, did what he could to staunch the flow of blood from the man’s wounded leg.

  They spent the next hour loading bodies into ambulances and seeking out eyewitnesses.

  chapter six

  “… the death toll from last night’s drive-by shooting in Toronto has gone up. A third person has died in hospital. The incident is the fifth drive-by shooting in that city in the past three months. Crime in this city seems to be way up. And a good proportion of it is committed by foreign elements who’ve managed to elude your department for almost a decade. Would you care to comment on the situation?”

  A television camera crew had caught Nick trying to flee through the back doors of the Immigration Building.

  “What situation are you referring to? If it’s the drive-by shooting, the police and the RCMP Organized Crime Task Force have apprehended several gang members from a competing triad. Warrants have been issued to do search and seizure of their premises. Everything’s under control.”

  “What are you going to do about criminals from other countries coming here illegally?”

  “I’m glad you asked me that,” said Nick. He looked anything but glad.

  Grace hadn’t seen or spoken to him in seven months, but from the televised image she could see that his face was bruised and bandaged up as if he’d been in a bar brawl. She felt her eyes tearing up. She couldn’t help it. The sight of him filled her with tenderness and yearning. Just about every case he worked on had left its mark on him, like a soldier in a nasty war.

  “Unfortunately it takes an incident like this to get the public’s attention. I don’t want to alarm anybody, but sometimes people wilfully destroy their passports and claim asylum. When that happens we really don’t know who the hell they are. And once they leave the airport, there’s virtually no way we can police them. Unless of course they commit a crime and get caught. I’m sorry I can’t talk further. I’ve got to run to a meeting.”

  There was a two-second shot of Nick diving into an unmarked police cruiser.

  Grace turned off the television. Nick Slovak and his department were in deep trouble, and not just from a public relations angle. Suddenly, a case about a botched human smuggling operation had taken a 360-degree turn. One dead immigration officer and a drive-by shooting that had claimed the lives of innocent people. She wished she could help him out. But she couldn’t just call him up out of the blue.

  She sighed. Once upon a time she had had two men in her life. Now she was dancing solo. She was a woman alone, without the benefit of husband or children. She had a nice house, but it was devoid of photographs of a handsome husband and laughing bambinos. All she had was her career, her ambition, and her mortgage. There were days when life looked pretty hollow.

  The phone rang, startling her out of her thoughts. The call display on her kitchen phone showed her workplace number. Couldn’t they leave her alone even for one day? She wasn’t scheduled for any cases.

  “This is scheduling. The deputy minister would like you to sit as second chair on a case, the one that’s in the news about that snakehead.”

  “Which one would that be? There seem to be so many.”

  “Gee Tung, the one implicated in the murder of an immigration officer. Maybe last night’s drive-by shooting, too. The deputy minister wants to expedite the case. Speedy deportation. Mark Crosby’s presiding and they want a second chair. Your name came up.”

  “Can I think about it? I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Just talk it over with Crosby. We called him at the Vancouver office. He should be back on the eight o’clock flight tomorrow. All you’ve got to do is secure his consent.”

  She mulled it over as she cleaned her kitchen. Cases like this didn’t come along every day. It had all the ingredients of a good movie plot: immoral alien smugglers, Asian triads fighting over gang turf, drive-by shootings, nightclubs where dancers doubled as prostitutes, raids on seedy rooming houses packed with young illegals. Not to mention a handsome immigration officer in charge of the investigation.

  She narrowed her eyes in thought as she opened a tin of cat food. Face it, Grace. You want the case. It’s a reputation maker. Whoever hears the case will be queen of the heap.

  And not only that, it was the perfect bridge to meeting Nick again.

  She called Crosby at home and left a voice-mail message. After cleaning up the kitchen, she decided that it was to too nice a day to waste in front of a monitor and keyboard banging out legal reasons. She would bike down to Chinatown and pick up a few grocery items for dinner; she was out of sesame oil, soba noodles, and green tea.

  A stroll through Chinatown was like a stroll down memory lane. The hanging barbecued ducks in the window and boxes of fish and dried goods displayed on racks on the sidewalk reminded her of her many childhood trips to Vancouver’s Chinatown with her mother. Stopping in front of a shop window full of spices and dried herbs, she stared momentarily at her reflection in the glass. While she had inherited her father’s thick wavy brown hair, her facial features were a composite of her parents, a blend of West and East.

  She made a mental note to call her parents on the weekend, when they were back in the country. Now that they were retired they spent their summers travelling, and for the past month they had been visiting her mother’s ancestral village of aging aunts, uncles and cousins. It was no holiday of pleasure. It was more a pilgrimage of guilt and obligation to those left behind the Bamboo Curtain.

  Last year they had spent a month in Israel. It had been William Wine’s second trip to the Red Sea in his sixty-nine years. His father, Grace’s paternal grandfather, had been born Aaron Weinstein, but changed the family name when they emigrated to Canada. Aaron Weinstein had opposed Hitler at a public rally, and was jailed as a political enemy of the Nazis. In 1941, he, his wife and their children escaped from Germany with the Gestapo on their heels. Only after they had arrived safely in England did they learn that Hitler was deporting Jews to the death camps. Their entire families were gassed at Auschwitz. After the war they sailed for Vancouver. But it was not a happy tale of survival and immigration. They were never able to cope with the fact that they had left parents, brothers, sisters, and cousins behind in Germany to perish.

  In very British Vancouver, with their German accents, they tried to pass themselves off as the English Mr. and Mrs. Wine. But their son William, Grace’s father, knew the act was wearing thin. When he married Kim Wang, he abandoned his adopted English name, assumed her family name and converted to Buddhism. He tried hard to erase his past, because he was ashamed to be Jewish; it humiliated him that he came from a race of people that were despised and hunted down. Completing school forms for Grace and her sister distressed him; he could not bear even to write the word “Jew”. When Grace turned sixteen, he had confessed to his daughters that they were half Jewish. He explained that he had renounced his Jewishness to protect them. The story of how he and his two brothers, sister and parents had left Germany tumbled from his lips. For the first time, he talked about the remorse and shame he still felt because he had been unable to save the lives of his cousins, his grandparents, and his aunts and uncles.

  It was ironic, really, Grace reflected, as she surveyed the traditional medicines displayed on the shelves of a Chinese drugstore. Her father was a physician, who had practised medicine as a family doctor for over thirty years. He had helped others, but was unable to help himself. He never got over his nightmares or his distrust of people.

  When she was seventeen, without asking her father’s permission, Grace took the original name of her paternal grandfather as her own, hyphenating
it with her Chinese name. She was who she was; she was proud of her Jewish ancestry. Her father told her he admired her courage, but he himself would never acknowledge his background. Fifty-eight years after fleeing Germany, he had never gone back.

  But he and Kim had been to China several times. Kim Wang’s family was less dysfunctional, but they too had a history of political persecution. Grace’s grandfather, Rei, had served the last emperor in the Forbidden City, and in 1925 the warlords who were controlling Beijing had put him under house arrest. Then during the Japanese invasion Rei’s past with his emperor employer brought him under the scrutiny of the Japanese, and he was imprisoned. His daughter, Kim, spent her childhood in various labour camps until she escaped in a bold act of defiance. She was sixteen, and had been sent to a farm commune between Canton and Hong Kong. One day when the Revolutionary Guards were absent from their post, she decided to make a break for freedom.

  The way Kim remembered it, she had walked until she found herself in a village with a train station. When the train pulled in, she sneaked aboard and rode it to the end of the line. From there she walked in the dark to avoid the checkpoints and the border control guards and their dogs. It was a starless night when she finally reached the ocean with the bright lights of Hong Kong beckoning to her. There was no one with a boat to take her across, and so, being young, strong and fearless, she decided to swim. She was in the water for many exhausting, despairing hours before reaching the city, but in the end she made it to shore.

  She found work in the sweatshops and managed to learn English on the side. It was in the textile factory that she met and married her first husband, a Shanghanese. After their marriage, they emigrated to Canada where he was sent to manage a China-sponsored retail operation in Vancouver. The marriage was difficult, and Kim enrolled in a nursing program to learn a trade, in order to support herself. After her graduation she and her first husband separated amicably, and a year later she met William Wine at the Vancouver General. They married, and two years later Grace was born.