Julian (15 page)

Out on the sidewalk the harsh noontime sun hammered the pavement, and the baked air smelled of car exhaust.

“Hungry?” I asked.

She nodded. “Should we go to that Chongqing place?”

“If you’d like.”

In the unforgiving light of a hot afternoon, Ninon’s clothing, although clean, looked well worn. The hem and collar of her T-shirt had been restitched, the thread colour not a perfect match, and an odd button had been sewn onto the left leg of her capri pants where there was a small V on the cuff at mid-calf. She had learned a lot from her seamstress mother, all right.

Mama Zhu greeted us with a stern mini-lecture on the theme of staying away too long before she took us to the back of the little restaurant and set us up at the table I had used on my first visit there. She shouted, “
cha!
” at the kitchen door, then said to Ninon, “You got to eat more. You got no colour.”

Mama Zhu was right. I hadn’t noticed it so much at first sight that morning or in the muted lighting of the gallery, but Ninon seemed pale, with the beginnings of
darker circles under her eyes. She looked tired. Maybe it was hard to get a good night’s sleep at the mission, surrounded by strangers coughing, mumbling, crying out in their sleep.

Our tea arrived and I poured us each a cup of the green jasmine-scented liquid.

“
À votre santé
,” Ninon said, clinking her cup against mine.

“Got something for you,” I announced, handing her a piece of paper. “My cell number.”

“Okay,” she replied, and stuffed the paper into her satchel.

Food arrived: steamed rice, oval plates of beef in black bean sauce, chicken with cashews, heaps of green vegetables, curried shrimp.

“I don’t remember ordering these,” Ninon said, drawing in the fragrances with deep breaths.

“I think Mama Zhu decided for us.”

“Well, I’m not complaining.”

We did our best to make a dent in the feast. We took our time, talking all the while. I got up the nerve to ask her how she supported herself, recalling the pickpocket skills she had demonstrated the first time I met her at the gallery.

“I work when I can,” she replied vaguely.

“Where?”

“Here and there.”

Wherever “here and there” was, Ninon must have been putting in long hours, because fatigue hung over her like a fog. I told her about my job at the store, and was equally unspecific when I mentioned I did “odd jobs” for a businessman I knew. We had shared our pasts during our picnic on the Islands, but we were still vague about the
present. We were like a couple of spies, hiding more than we gave away.

Mama Zhu came by, topped up our teacups, thumped the pot onto the table and said to me, “You change phone now. Remember?”

“Oh, yeah. I mean, no. I forgot.”

She held out a small, chubby hand. I fished my Chang phone out of my jeans and gave it to her. From her cardigan pocket she drew a different cell and a slip of paper and plunked them on the table beside my cup.

“New SIM inside. New number on paper,” she said, moving off.

“What was all that about?” Ninon inquired, balancing her chopsticks on her rice bowl and dabbing at her perfect mouth with a paper napkin.

“It’s a long story.”

“So the number you gave me is out of date already.”

“That number is for a different phone.”

“A diff—?”

“That’s a longer story.”

She gave me her lopsided smile. “And you say
I’m
mysterious. Anyway, I guess I should go soon.”

“Do you have to? No, forget I asked.”

“I had a nice time today.”

“I wish we could be together more often.”

“Maybe—”

“Like, every day.”

She stifled a yawn. “Sorry.”

A busboy descended on the table and began dumping our dishes into a plastic tub, setting up a racket that made conversation impossible for a few minutes. Then he heaved
his burden to his chest, pirouetted, and backed through the swinging doors into a kitchen ringing with the high-pitched voices of people struggling to be heard above the clatter of pots and pans and dishes. As he passed through the doors I had a clear view inside. At the back of the room two women were chatting as they stacked dishes into trays for the automatic washer. One threw back her head and laughed. Turning, she glanced momentarily in my direction just as the door swung shut. White apron, white rubber gloves, white hair net, and a white bandage across her nose.

She was the young woman I’d glimpsed through the curtain at my house.

Ninon was getting to her feet. “I don’t see a bill,” she said.

“We don’t pay,” I told her, my eyes still on the kitchen doors.

“We didn’t pay last time. How do you manage that?”

“Oh, I did someone a favour once.”

Her eyebrows rose but she let it go.

Outside in the street I tried to think of something to say, to keep her with me a few minutes longer. The best I came up with was “So you have to go?”

“I’ll see you soon.” She patted her satchel. “I’ve got your number.”

“Okay.”

She moved closer and put her arms around my waist, resting her head on my chest. I held her against me, her hair soft against my chin, breathing in the odour of her skin and hair. The pedestrians on Spadina flowed around and past us as if we were a rock in a stream. I wanted to stay like that all afternoon.

But Ninon leaned back, kissed me quickly on the mouth, turned and joined the stream of shoppers flowing south. I watched her until she was out of sight.

Back at the house I cleaned up my apartment, then spent the rest of the afternoon mowing and raking the lawn, trimming the edges of the gardens and sweeping out the garage. Putting my tools away, I thought about the face I had seen in the downstairs window a few days before, then today in the restaurant kitchen. When I had cleaned the rooms there had been no evidence of the temporary occupants. There never was.

But now there was a link. I had the sense that some small part of the riddle surrounding Mr. Bai was coming into focus. One of the previous guests was working at the Chongqing Gardens. A coincidence? No. She had only had a quick look at me that morning when I was snooping around outside her window before she flicked the curtain closed, and I was pretty sure she hadn’t recognized me when I saw her working the dishwasher in the restaurant.

Assuming the Chongqing Gardens belonged to Mr. Bai—and I didn’t know that for a fact—sneaking hired help in and out of the house where I lived was suspicious, not to mention bizarre. If the woman with the bandaged nose was working for him, maybe some or all of the other “guests” were, too. Moving workers in the middle of the night like that strongly suggested something illegal was going on. But what?

They were all Asian. Bai was Chinese. Was he smuggling people into the country to use in his businesses? And
if he was, did that explain the stakeout? Were the non-cops really immigration officers of some kind?

“Whoa!” I said out loud. “Slow down, Julian! You’re going too fast.”

I sat down and went on line, typed “human smuggler” into the search engine, punched Return and sat back. The websites that scrolled onto the screen included news reports, and sites representing governments, women’s groups and human rights organizations. I opened a few at random and read the first page of each. It was depressing reading.

The illegal moving of people from one country to another seemed to fall into one of two categories, smuggling and trafficking. The smugglers’ human cargo was poor, desperate people. Migrants were promised safe passage to another country where a better life, including jobs and a decent place to live, was waiting—or so they thought. Both the promises made and the fees charged by the smugglers were outrageous. Once the journey—by overcrowded boat, shipping container, a terrifying scramble across unfamiliar terrain in the middle of the night—was over, the smuggler pocketed his fees, disappeared and left the migrants to their fate. Often, people perished on the journey, drowning within sight of their destination or dying of thirst in the back of a truck. Often they were jailed by Immigration as soon as they arrived.

The second group, traffickers, was even more detestable. They seemed to be modern-day slave traders who provided bodies for the sex trade or forced labour. Some victims were even drugged and certain organs were removed and sold on the international black market. Victims of any
age and either gender were tricked, kidnapped or hauled away at gunpoint to a fate they could never escape.

I shut down the computer. It made me sick to my stomach to imagine Bai was involved in the kind of thing I was reading about. He couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. Maybe I didn’t know people very well, but I didn’t believe that the soft-spoken man in the office above the restaurant on Spadina trafficked in human beings. Okay, he wasn’t in the slave-trader group; that was certain. The smuggler group? I admitted it was possible, but the woman in the restaurant kitchen, chatting away with her workmate, laughing, hadn’t seemed exploited to me. I wished I could tell myself that I had no doubts at all.

I put on my gear and went for a long hard run, telling myself the whole time that my imagination was out of control. None of it was my business. My job was to clean the rooms.

Period.

A
FTER DINNER
S
UNDAY NIGHT
I fired up the laptop, propped my notebook to the side and began to write a summary of my week’s activities for Curtis. It was a report telling him that I had nothing to report. I logged my hours, detailed Marika’s movements, included a list of my expenses and e-mailed the statement to him.

I had stacked up a lot of time with nothing to show for it—which was a good thing. Marika’s parents wanted Plath to steer clear of her and that was what he had been doing, at least in the afternoons when I was on the case.

The next day, Monday, Marika varied her habitual journey home from the university. When she left the old stone college building she didn’t turn left as usual and pass the Soldiers’ Tower. Instead, she crossed Hart House Circle and took the few steps down into the Arbor Room café. I hung outside for five minutes before going in, tagging
onto a trio of athletic-looking types, then breaking off to get in line for a coffee. The café wasn’t busy but there were enough customers scattered around the room to give me cover. I took a table opposite the door, behind Marika and to one side. She sat alone, a cup of steaming liquid and a sticky bun on a paper disc in front of her, a thick textbook open on the table next to her cell. From the side I watched her marking the textbook here and there with a pink highlighter.

I fished a few library books from my backpack and stacked them on my table, opening one at random and pretending to read. There was a quiet, relaxed buzz in the room, low-level conversation, the shuffle of feet, broken by intermittent pings when the woman in the green smock rang up a sale at the food and beverage counter.

It was obvious that Marika was about as interested in her book as I was in mine. She sat quietly, head down, idly turning her untouched drink round and round. Her eyes repeatedly moved from the book to the cell as if she was willing it to ring. She let go of the cup and turned a page, used the highlighter in her other hand, then reached for the cup again.

And knocked it over. The dark liquid raced to the edge of the table and cascaded onto the floor. Too late, she stretched frantically across the table, reaching for the cup. The movement pulled her shirt cuff from her wrist, revealing a vivid bruise on the white skin of her forearm.

She recovered quickly, snatching at her shirt cuff, yanking it into place. She darted to the self-serve area and returned with a wad of napkins, then soaked up the liquid from the floor and table. Her phone rang. She grabbed it
and held it to her ear as she carried the sodden napkins to the trash receptacle, then returned and began to pack up her belongings, radiating a sense of urgency.

While she was distracted I gathered my books and left the café before she did, stopping outside on the grass, my back to the door. I slung on my backpack and, taking a guess, ambled in the direction of Queen’s Park. Marika hustled past me and turned north. At Bloor Street she crossed with the lights, walking briskly. I followed for ten minutes or so. Then, in the distance, I saw her slip into a movie theatre.

I quickly bought a ticket and entered just in time to see her pull open the door to one of the screening rooms, allowing a surge of music to spill into the lobby. It was the smallest of three theatres, showing a retrospective of Steve McQueen, whoever he was. I lagged a bit to allow Marika to find a seat, then stepped in myself. I stood at the head of the aisle, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the dark while images of a car chase flashed across the screen to the roar of engines and the squeal of tires. There were a few dozen seated patrons scattered in the darkness. I took a seat at the back and scanned the room, taking my time.

Marika was about halfway down, a few seats in from the aisle. Someone was sitting beside her, a tall guy. They kissed, came up for air, kissed again.

It was Jason Plath.

An hour or so later, I stood across the road from the theatre next to a bank machine. A few women gave me suspicious looks as they hurriedly used the ATM. I’m not a robber, I wanted to say to them. I’m an ace private eye, and I just made a big score.

Marika and Plath emerged from the theatre, blinking in the late afternoon light. I was ready for them, snapping photos as fast as the phone camera would repeat. When they kissed goodbye I had them in the frame.

Then they went their separate ways. I went mine.

Seeing a young woman with an ugly welt on her arm necking with the abusive ex-boyfriend who was under a peace bond she had brought against him because of mistreatment was enough to confuse anybody. I wondered if someone would write a song about them someday. Then I tried to put it all out of my mind. It was my job to document Plath if he broke the bond so Curtis could go to the cops, acting for Marika’s parents. I had fulfilled the assignment. End of story. But the whole situation certainly was strange.