The Snakeheads Read online

  Kim Wang had travelled a long way from her days in the gulag, and she had reinvented herself more than once. At the age of fifty-five she had assumed the role of matriarch of the Vancouver Benevolent Society. Grace had always admired her mother, who was in every sense her own person. Long ago, Kim had freed herself from the restrictions that prevented her from living the kind of life she wanted. She had escaped from a prison camp and travelled to a new country. She had chosen the man she wanted. And all in the days before women’s lib.

  Grace could not say the same about her own life. Shame on you, she chastised herself. As a beneficiary of the women’s movement, she had had it easy, compared to her mother. And what did she have to show for it? House, mortgage, career, cat … but no husband. No Nick.

  She sighed. She’d better get over to the office, do some serious work this afternoon. Work late. Get her mind off romance.

  Crossing the park, Grace remembered that Mark Crosby lived a short walk from the office. Now that she’d decided she wanted to work on the case — wanted to see Nick again, truth be told — it occurred to her that she should drop in on him tomorrow. His plane got in at eight, and by nine he’d be home. Then she could tell him she was taking him up on his offer to work on a case together as long as he didn’t think she was taking him up on his other offer. She was eager, now, to speak to Crosby and make sure he didn’t give the second chair to anybody else.

  The drive-by shooting made headlines in all the papers. The public was outraged and the immigration department’s toll-free number was ringing off the hook. Television, print, and radio reporters were calling the investigative and enforcement unit for interviews and updates. One of the support staffers wheeled the television from the conference room straight into Nick’s office. Nick flicked it on with the remote.

  The mayor was quick off the mark, holding a press conference about last night’s shooting. “Our system of deporting undesirables is obviously not working. There are too many people abusing the system. Criminals from all over the globe know Canada has an open door policy….”

  Nick knew exactly where the mayor was going. His remarks about cleaning up crime in the metropolis were very familiar. City elections were two years away, but he was already working on his re-election strategy. Now the mayor was joined by another elected official and the police commissioner himself. They took turns offering sound bites to the press.

  Nick called Rocco Corvinelli into his office.

  Rocco looked sharp in his suit and tie. Nick had hired him fresh out of grad school with a psychology degree, of all things. But then he had always hired people with diverse backgrounds as immigration officers. Creative thinking scored high in his book, and he also looked for tenacity. Given that immigration and customs officers were among the few enforcement officials with the right to search anyone or anything without a warrant, he expected his staff to hold up as witnesses under gruelling cross-examination by a defendant’s lawyer. Rocco was smart, and he was also something of a bulldog — another positive trait, in Nick’s book. In his first few months on the front lines at Terminal 2, Rocco had scored a cold hit that resulted in one of the largest airport drug busts ever.

  “How many calls have we logged?”

  “Over five hundred so far on our toll-free line. Frothing at the mouth, most of them. Want to deport every coloured face out of the country. Scary, actually,” said Rocco, leaning against the door.

  Nick nodded. “Racism flares up when stuff like this happens. This is what we’re gonna do. The press will want to bypass Public Information for the inside scoop. That will be you.”

  For the next half hour, Nick briefed Rocco on what to give to the press on the investigation Immigration was conducting into the drive-by shooting.

  “We pick two reporters. Print and television. The Globe and CTV. I want you to leak to them that we’re running our own checks on the Flying Dragons triad members. We think the shooting wasn’t really about alien smuggling, it was about gang warfare and fighting for turf. That way we toss the ball back into the police commissioner’s lap.”

  “Why are we leaking it to those two reporters?”

  “First of all, we need to buy time. And secondly, we want to put a reporter or two in our debt. That will make the other reporters jealous, and they’ll chase the story that much harder.”

  “I don’t quite follow.”

  “We want the reporters to push the investigation. Any information they find will help us. One of them will be sharp enough to track down the owner of the Mandarin Club. And hopefully we get who we want in the spotlight.”

  Rocco’s eyes opened in amazement. So that was how spin worked. Manipulate the press to get them investigating a few leaks Nick fed them. Massage the message, give them a bagful of half truths, and stand back. With luck, they’d get a lot of new information.

  “We’re buying time until we finish our investigation. Remember, we never lie. We just withhold some information until the time is right. We need time to organize our investigation.”

  “Okay. I follow.”

  “Good. Handle the media scrum this afternoon. Don’t let the reporters trip you. Watch yourself with that reporter from the Times. Jamie Singh. He likes to ask the same question ten, twelve different ways. Then when you give a wrong response he’ll correct you. And you trip yourself by talking too much. Giving out more information than you meant to.”

  Rocco nodded.

  “Jamie’s one of the sharpest reporters around. English is his first language — don’t let that Sikh turban of his fool you. Remember, be very careful with him.”

  After Rocco left, Nick tried to close a few files. But he couldn’t work. He needed to clear his head and think. He needed oxygen. Everything was racing too fast for his brain. Instead of hiding in his office, he dodged out the back of the building and took a walk. Why had Andy Loong been gunned down last night? Who knew about the raid at the Mandarin Club? Just himself, Kappolis and the squad cars waiting in the side street. He didn’t think it was an inside leak. Was he being followed? He looked behind him as he walked along King Street towards Spadina Avenue. Or had someone inside the club made a quick exit when the raid began? That seemed more likely. The police had tried to seal off all the exits, but they didn’t know the precise layout of the building. Supposing this someone knew what was going down, quickly got out, and alerted the head honcho, who ordered the drive-by hit on Loong. Why? To silence him. Whatever Loong knew had died with him. What the hell did he know that was worth his life?

  He power-walked up Spadina. As he crossed the first set of lights, he played back what he knew because too many theories were spinning around his head. The Mandarin Club’s membership list had not turned up Li Mann’s name or anything close to it. Unfortunately, he had no idea if Li Mann was a real name or a nickname. Some cultures, like the Somalis, used nicknames in the place of real names. To Nick, they were all aliases designed to confuse law enforcement officials, nothing else.

  Chinatown was a sea of life, sounds, smells and people. Nick grabbed a bite to eat at a street vendor’s stall. He could remember when Spadina had been the heart of the Jewish community, defined by delis and garment factories. After the Jews had moved up and out, the Chinese had moved in. The Yiddish theatre had been replaced by a movie theatre featuring kung fu movies. The old Jewish synagogue had been converted into the Chinese Community Centre. But in the last few years, immigration had altered the four-kilometre stretch again. Now the Chinese were following the Jews and the Italians in their migration to the suburbs, and the Vietnamese were taking over the area, giving it yet another identity as Little Saigon.

  He detoured around large trucks unloading and delivering boxes of fresh produce and cases of frozen fish to the crowded shops and street markets. Before the crosswalk, he elbowed his way through a throng of shoppers who were busy checking out T-shirts, fake Rolexes, and other knock-off merchandise. Waiting patiently for the streetlights to change, he curiously eyed a pair of young Asian girls on th
e other side, hair bleached reddish-blonde. One of them sported a nose ring, while her companion had a ring through her belly button.

  Crossing the street and walking past the synagogue, Nick noticed that it had been transformed again; this time into a pool hall. He didn’t know why it bothered him but it did. A lot of things were beginning to bother him. Particularly about the case. Officer Philip Wong had left a voice-mail message that he had some evidence that the shooting might have been done by a rival gang, the Vietnamese Lo Chien.

  Maybe. But Nick was far from convinced that Loong’s murder was really about gangs rubbing out the ethnic competition. If so, what about the timing of the hit? Coincidence, or what? Maybe the Lo Chien gang had been hired to take Loong out to keep him from talking to the police. That seemed plausible. But then, who bought the contract hit? He went over and over the facts, trying put them together in a way that made sense.

  All he could do was keep pushing. Stay in touch with Dubois. Maybe Kappolis would have some ideas about where to go next.

  In the back of his mind one persistent, maddening thought never went away: that Walter Martin’s killer was still out there somewhere. So far, the son of a bitch had gotten away with it.

  chapter seven

  “Where’re you now?”

  “I’m calling from the Toronto airport,” replied the General.

  “We’re in trouble,” said a voice on the other end. “Big trouble. Have you read the papers?”

  The words seemed to clear the General’s mind, reminding him of the events of last Friday. They revealed to him the risks he had to take and the limited options that were open to him. Standing at a payphone without his gun, the surprise and fear hit him with a freshness he had almost forgotten.

  “Call me when you get to New York tonight,” the distant voice continued curtly. “If you don’t call, then I’ll know that you didn’t make it. Remember the place in New York’s Chinatown we talked about? Go and stay there for awhile until things cool down. Or until I tell you otherwise.”

  And then the line went dead.

  As he passed through the metal detectors at passport control he was glad he had discarded his weapons before boarding the airporter bus for Pearson International. He stifled his mind not to think anymore. After all, he knew the procedures and route well.

  “The length of your visit?”

  “One week.”

  “Business?”

  The official handed him back his boarding pass.

  “Family. I’m going to visit my niece and her children,” Li Mann Vu lied.

  “Hope you have a good flight.”

  Li Mann Vu nodded his head and smiled as he picked up his brand new, carry-on luggage. In fact, he smiled for the first time in a week. Exactly a week ago he was shot and hunted like an animal. Running through the woods on all fours, swimming underwater like a fish, eating seaweed, sleeping under the stars. He had become an animal. That’s how he had survived, and he was right under their noses.

  So far, so good. He had managed to evade the authorities. They didn’t call him “the General” for nothing. He sat on the deck of the frequent flyer lounge, staring up at the night sky. He felt at home watching the planes flying in and out. The lights from the radar control tower and the aircraft reminded him of flares and tracer bullets arcing across a night sky. It reminded him of another place and time.

  In April 1966, the war machine was in full force and the Communist leaders had drafted him into the army to fight his South Vietnamese brothers. His entire high school class had been drafted and posted to the same reconnaissance unit. They were young and didn’t believe they could die. Until they saw the American death machines swooping down from the sky. He was seventeen then. They promoted him to unit commander and sent him on a mission to destroy the American Black Horse Division. The ambush came when they were crossing the Le Thuy River. Without any kind of warning the American Huey gunships descended. There had not been enough time to run for the cover of the forests. By some accident of fate he alone had survived. He was wounded, but his entire unit lay around him, dead or dying, including Phan, his sister’s husband, who was also his best friend. Young men he had known since childhood. He had had a responsibility to every one of them. They were his comrades, and he had failed them all. He had dug graves for them with his bare hands, but he knew he should have died with them.

  He had bound up the wound in his leg with his best friend’s shirt, and forced himself to trek through the malaria-infested jungles. Days later, when he had reached his village, he found that it had been napalmed by the Americans. Nothing was left but charred ruins. He became a man defined by what he had lost, a man with nothing more to lose. He re-enlisted, volunteering only for the most dangerous missions. Life and death became one.

  He had first made himself known to the Americans in 1969, in an attack on Phnom Khai, an Air America stronghold south of Phnom Penh. When the ten-hour barrage of rocket and artillery fire was over, nineteen Air America commandos were dead. For that, he had been promoted to the rank of general, and sent into Laos to find and destroy a U.S. Air Force radar installation. It took several months of tracking, but he managed to locate it at a mountain site at Phu Phai Thi. He would never forget the explosion of grenades and bombs going off all at once. It had reminded him of celebration fire-works. By the time the Americans had pulled out of Vietnam, he had shot down more than his fair share of the eight-thousand U.S. fighter jets. He was proud of that. The memory brought a smile to his lips.

  The war had ended over twenty years ago, but for Li Mann Vu peace would never come. He hadn’t taken a life in a long time. The ability to kill without hesitation or remorse had merely lain dormant until the night he had shot that immigration officer. He had been shot, too, but the bullet penetrated only flesh and muscle. In spite of the pain, he had managed to swim a couple of miles downstream to the home of one of his mules, Sally Grandfeather. She had sheltered him in her house while law enforcement officials on two continents issued warrants for his arrest. She had paid for the doctor from Detroit, who had made the trip across the border to remove the bullet from his shoulder. On the fifth day when he was better, she had bought him a one-way Greyhound bus ticket to Toronto.

  He gently touched his shoulder. It was still painful to the touch. It was too bad the smuggling operation had failed when they were caught at the border. Sally Grandfeather needed the money she had been expecting to receive for housing the migrants while they were in transit to New York City. He would speak to the boss about paying her anyway. After all, she had kids to feed. It wasn’t her fault the operation had gone wrong.

  The General thought it was hate that kept him alive. The United States government had destroyed his country. A quarter century later, hate still ran deep in his veins. He hated the Americans for the suffering and pain his people had endured during and after the war. And he pitied his South Vietnamese brothers who had believed the lies and empty promises of the Americans. The marines had quickly fed his southern brothers to the dogs when he and his comrades surrounded the walls of Phnom Penh. Thousands tried to flee by boat, but had lived only to be lost at sea or interned in refugee camps around the world. Those who managed to get to the promised land often found themselves forcibly repatriated by Western governments.

  Since he had started in the people smuggling business, he had assisted in over two thousand entries into the United States. It was a kind of revenge. Because the Americans had destroyed his country, he would move people into theirs. He brought them into the U.S. by ship, plane, cars, and trucks. He arranged transportation for them all — the dispossessed of his own and other countries. He was paid huge sums of money, but he didn’t do it for that.

  His flight landed on time at JFK Airport. Li Mann took his place in the queue at customs and immigration. He handed the customs officer a Malaysian passport which he had reproduced himself, carried with his own photograph. He was nodded through without a problem.

  Nick, Kappolis, and Dubois were s
eated at a corner table in a greasy spoon at Bloor and Bathurst. Kappolis was describing the raid his fugitive squad had staged the night before. “We got this informant, good at his work. Not everybody can do it, but this guy’s really cut out to be a snitch. He’s smart and he’s angry. You need nerves of steel to penetrate your own community, betray your people. This guy, Cam, has the nerves. Twenty-four years old, born in Laos, and already served three years for knifing a man to death.”

  “Three years for murder, that’s all he served?” Nick found that hard to believe. “Obviously he had friends in high places.”

  “Nah, nothing like that.” Kappolis paused a moment before going on. “Cam was used by the higher-ups to kill a member of a competing triad. After a year in prison awaiting trial, Cam decided he’d been stupid to maintain his silence, protecting his masters who had hung him out to dry.”

  “So he plea bargained to serve only two years?” Nick whistled to himself as he pushed his chair back from the dining table.

  “Sort of. He signed a contract to become our snitch. Released last year and already did a couple of assignments for us. Wears a wire. Looks like your average Asian guy in the street. So right after the drive-by we sent him to check out a grocery store in Chinatown II.”

  “Oh, yeah. I saw a blurb on some surveillance job in that area that came across my desk,” said Dubois, raising the beer mug to his lips.

  “No one told me or my department about this snitch or the surveillance job.” Nick assumed an indignant look.

  “At that time Nick, it wasn’t an immigration matter.” Kappolis drained back the rest of his malt before continuing with his story.

  “Nick, law enforcement isn’t required to tell Immigration everything,” said Dubois.

  “That’s real comforting to know,” answered Nick, looking anything but.

  Kappolis pushed a handful of French fries into his mouth. “So we had him under twenty-four-hour surveillance for a full day, the works — an inside inspection by Cam, checks on all movement in and out of the store, and a photographic record. We were across the street in a carpet cleaning van, with a telescopic lens. Every visitor was logged. Anybody who spoke to anybody was monitored were listed.”