Live Bait (26 page)

When the homicide men had finished questioning him, and as a special favor. "Because you started this goddamn mess" as Cooper put it, they let me have a private minute with Willis. It wasn't confidential. The standard issue shiny-faced young constable was on duty in one corner of the room, but at least he didn't know the story of the case and he pretended to be doing the Globe and Mail crossword while I spoke to Willis.

I had only one question for him. I no longer cared about Bonded Security, that was Fullwell's job. He could take the evidence I'd uncovered for him and use it as he saw fit. I was concerned only with Yin Su, so I asked Willis why he had attacked her.

He glared at me over his Band-aids. "What're you talking about?"

I repeated the question, not changing my words or the inflexion. He glared at me some more and then, slowly, his face split into a grin. "Hey, yeah. I forgot. You're big on her, right?" He stabbed his unbound hand at me. "That's right, eh?"

"Why did you attack her?" I asked again. He didn't answer for a few seconds, just kept up his grin, luxuriating in it, tasting its sweetness in his cut mouth. "Yeah, I forgot about you having big eyes for her."

I leaned a little closer. "If you need reminding, I can always give that bad hand a twist, just to get your attention," I said, and smiled so sweetly that the policeman looked up from his crossword puzzle and beamed at us both like an indulgent mother with two saintly children.

Willis sniffed, contemptuously. "You could," he allowed. "But I've been worked over by experts. I was a prisoner in Korea; you couldn't show me any new tricks."

My anger boiled up inside me and I snapped out the question again. "Why did you rape her?"

I was expecting rage, pride, anything except surprise. But Willis put his head on one side and looked at me for a second the way early birds look at worms. "Rape her?" he almost whispered it. "Rape her?" I thought he was going to deny everything but instead he threw back his battered head and laughed, loud and crude and strong. "I don't have to rape her. She's mine. She does what I say. You wanna lay her, I tell her lay down, you lay her."

My fists clenched convulsively but he suddenly dropped his laughter and leaned forward to hiss the words at me. "She's mine, body and soul. She's bought and paid for, right in Hong Kong."

Before I could stop myself my hand lashed out but the brain outstripped the reflex and I pulled the punch, an inch from his laughing face. He ignored it, laughing again, safe and sound with the years of prison ahead of him. "Bought and paid for," he said again. "If you got the hots for her, tell her I said it was okay."

I stood up and nodded to the young policeman. "Keep this bastard safe and sound, it's dangerous for him on the streets."

He pushed the pencil back into the tab of his notebook and folded the paper shut around his uncompleted crossword. "Sure thing, Chief," he said and pulled out a fresh stick of gum.

Cooper was standing outside the door, drinking coffee and admiring the bottom on a big blond nurse. He heard me come out and asked without looking around, "Learn anything?"

"Enough. Thanks. You need me any more?"

He turned reluctantly away from the nurse who was bending over the counter at the nursing station, projecting the line of her panties through the tight white uniform. "Yep," he said amiably. "One more time through the whole screwed up story, from top to bottom. Shall we go down the station?"

It was eleven at night before I got out and went to collect my car from the pound where it had been towed during the rush hour. I got a dispensation from the homicide men to avoid paying the ninety dollars in towing charges. The old time-serving copper in charge was impressed. "Don't get many guys getting away with it like this," he told me.

"Special rates for visiting police chiefs," I said. He laughed politely and even went to the trouble of waving as I left, with Sam sitting up beside me in the front seat.

The drive let me unjangle my thoughts. It was a painful process. I didn't believe anything Willis said, about Yin Su or anything else. He was a chronic liar. But I was uncomfortable. She was just too close to the source of the action to be entirely legal. For one thing, she had a brother who was working for Willis as a thug. And even if he was not her brother, she had claimed he was, so the connection was there. And she was strategically placed in Cy Straight's office, close to whatever dealings Willis was conducting with the people he was trying to pressure. No matter which way you looked at it, she was not the girl I had thought she was. That was no fault of hers, just a mistake in my judgment, but it saddened me. I'm getting a bit long in the tooth to find true romance but she was the most exciting woman I had met in a long, long time. I wanted to trust her. And besides, the attack this morning had been genuine. I had seen her injuries myself, the bruises, the blood.

I switched on the car radio, drowning out my personal thoughts with a cheerful blast of country music. John Conlee was twanging away at "Rose-colored glasses," and I sang with him, no closer to the melody than I ever get. Sam glanced at me, then ahead, the way a weary wife might have done and I laughed and scrubbed behind his ear with my free hand.

The song ended and the DJ broke in with the usual time-filling patter they use to dilute the music in the evenings when there are fewer commercials. He rattled away about the Eaton Centre incident and quoted the man who had overpowered Willis as saying, "I just lost my head. I was dumb, I should've waited until somebody was in place to catch my baby. I believe the policeman was right." I nodded approval, a little smug. And then the DJ gave the kicker: the man, who was a rookie linebacker with the Toronto Argonauts, had added, "But it was sure good to get my hands on the sonofabitch." It was perfect and I laughed along with the DJ, remembering good buddies from the South Bronx who had fought beside me in the monsoon mud and leeches in Nam, angry black men who just wanted to kick ass and get home safe.

Then in his patter, the announcer made a comment that catapulted me right back into the middle of the case I thought was over. "Sad news tonight for the legal fraternity in Toronto. One of the most respected lawyers in town, Cy Straight, died suddenly at his Rosedale home. Not many details, but the police report says that Mr. Straight was cleaning the family shotgun when it accidentally discharged and caught him full in the chest. A member of the law firm where he worked said his death will be a tragic loss to a number of provincial and national organizations for crippled children. Apparently Cy Straight was a tireless worker for them. One of his partners described him as a small man with a big heart. A real loss for Toronto." He paused and then gave the time and announced the next record.

I stared at the radio in disbelief. This case was supposed to be over. We had Kennie and Willis and the two Chinese hoods in the slammer. Who else was there to have driven in to Straight's big driveway and fed him his own shotgun at short range? I didn't think he could have done it himself. Maybe, out of guilt and shame and the knowledge that his secret had passed into my hands. But he must have known, when I told him to get lost after helping me, that he was clear. He could have dealt with Willis from strength, acting as his lawyer at the trial, plea bargaining for him. He was safe, except for some unknown person or persons who were proving to him and to me that the case was not yet closed.

The light on Davisville turned red and I sat there through two changes, blind to everything but my worry about who could have killed Straight. I knew it wasn't suicide. He wasn't the type. He'd lived with a handicap all his life, with a bad marriage for however long that had been, with shame since Willis first walked into his office. He hadn't killed himself now.

A car came up behind me on the green and blew me away with a long hard blast on the horn. I let in the clutch and drove on, still wondering. I had been over the whole case with the guys from homicide. I had told them about Willis, about Kennie and the Chinese youths. I had told them my suspicions of Lee, the oh-so-important restaurant owner who employed hoodlums in his kitchen and served as a clearing house for Willis, the man pressuring the Hong Kong developers. They knew about everybody involved, even the unimportant bit players in the case, guys like George, Caporetto's chauffeur, and Hudson, the nebbish who had been with Tony the first night. As I drove on, slowly, I wondered who was left.

The only connection I could think of was Yin Su. The idea hurt me, but I gave it full and fair consideration before dismissing it. Maybe Willis had been telling the truth when he said she was his possession, but if so, she was a doll, a plaything, not a moving force. Even though that was a painful realization, I could handle it. I'm a second-hand man myself and don't expect to be the first or even the most important person in some woman's life. How's that for pragmatism? It comes easy when you've just heard somebody say things about your girl that you might otherwise read on a wall in a garrison town. But it still hurt me, so I kept on thinking about the case instead of myself.

And then I remembered the one other name that had cropped up too many times to be pure coincidence. When I thought of him I slapped the wheel and let out a bellow. Elmer Svensen. Of course. He had turned up wherever this case had taken me. And I hadn't even mentioned him to the detectives.

I turned at the first cross street to head back downtown but even as I did, I realized what my priority had to be. If I was right and Svensen was clearing up loose ends on the case, the next one he reached would be Yin Su. I had to keep her safe. I could call the detectives from her apartment.

There was a phone box on the corner. I went in and dialled her number. She picked it up at once. "Hello."

"Su, it's Reid Bennett. How are you?"

I expected a pause, and the remote, detached tone of a survivor, the chill that takes over when the tears stop. I thought it might be intensified in Yin Su. She would have the polite remoteness of her race. Instead she responded like any anxious Western girl. "Oh Reid," she said, her voice full of despair.

"I'm in the neighborhood. That's why I phoned. Is it too late to come up and see you?"

"No." She snipped out the syllable so promptly I wasn't sure whether she meant "No, don't come" or "No, it's not too late." Then she explained. "No, it is not too late. I would like it."

"Five minutes," I promised, and hung up.

Sam was lying in the front seat and I bumped him on the back and told him, "Make yourself comfortable, old buddy. You may be there a while."

I still had all the questions in my mind, I remembered all of Willis's comments, but there is a part of me that has never been a policeman, the young part, and it wanted to be with Su, to comfort her and keep her safe.

All the street parking spots close to Su's apartment were taken up but I stuck my car against a fire hydrant, leaving the window open on Sam's side and telling him "Easy." That relaxed him and meant he wouldn't wake the neighborhood if some drunk stopped to tell him he was a good dog.

The inner door of her building was unlocked and I went through to the elevators and rode up to her floor. Somebody had picked up the roses I had dropped there but a petal lay trampled in front of her door. I stooped to retrieve it, then tapped her door. Her voice asked "Reid?" softly.

"In person," I told her and stood back. She opened the door and stood, formally, smiling. It was the most courageous thing I had seen in years.

"Come in," she said gently.

I nodded and stepped inside. Her radio was tuned to some soft classical station and there was a smell of flowers. I glanced around. Part of me, the cynical policeman function, wanted to check the bedroom and bathroom to be sure we were alone, but I took another look at her and knew there was no need. She was wearing a soft silk dress, not long like her cheongsam. It was peacock blue and it made her hair as rich as jet. She had circles under her eyes and there was a sadness in her expression, even though she smiled at me. "It is good of you to come," she said.

I have seen my share of rape cases and I know how victims react, shying from contact of any kind with any man, so I didn't reach out to her. I just smiled and said, "If there's anything I can do, I'd like to hear it."

She pointed to the couch and I went over and sat down. It had its back to the wall so my inner cop relaxed a little. She said, "I was going to have some tea. Would you like some?"

I nodded and she went out to the kitchen. I heard the gas pop then she came back in and said, "Two policemen came to see me."

"Was it about your going to the hospital today?" I couldn't bring myself to put it any more bluntly.

She shook her head. "No, Reid. I hope you will not be angry. I could not do what you said. I told the nurse what had happened and she gave me precautions but she did not report it."

I sighed. "You should have gone ahead. What he did was a crime. And what the nurse did was wrong. She should have notified the police."

"She is like me. She understands," Su said. "This man is in prison now. It does not matter that he is not there because of me." I held up my hands. "It has to be your choice. Su. I respect that, but tell me, who came to see you?"

"Two men called Hooper, something like that." She moved back towards the kitchen door and checked the kettle. She kept her back to me as she spoke. "They say that he is saying I am his girl."

I stood up and went over to her, aching to put my arms around her, but instead only standing close enough that I could speak in a voice that was almost a whisper. Somehow it made the words less bruising. "He made it sound as if you belonged to him, Su."

She said nothing, for a moment and her shoulders bent a little as if she was about to cry. Then, without turning, she said, "And you believed him. Is that why you came?"

"I've never heard one word of truth out of the man, so why would I believe him about this?" I said.

She turned to me, and when I raised my hand, to touch her cheek, she intercepted it with her own and pressed it to her face.