Live Bait (21 page)

"What happened?" I let the flowers drop, ignoring any chance of danger, stepping forward to cup her elbows in my hands. She slumped into them like a rag doll. "Mr. Willis was here," she said. I moved her back a step into the apartment, pushing the door closed behind me with one foot, checking around for anybody else present in the room. There was no one. "What happened?" I asked her again, lowering her on to the couch.

She looked at me, slowly bringing me into focus. Her face was bruised on the left side. I noted it, remembering in the same instant that Willis was right-handed. I reached out to touch the bruise and she blinked like an injured child. There were tears in her eyes now. "Oh, I am so ashamed," she said in a whisper.

"You have to tell me." I touched her unbruised cheek, filled with an anger so powerful I could barely breathe. "What did he do to you?"

She lowered her eyes and as I bent to listen she whispered it.

"He raped me."

 

 

 

Chapter 25

 

 

I
could hardly breathe. I wanted Willis there, in front of me, so that I could hurt him, could transplant some of the agony from my heart into his body.

"Su, I will find him and I will make him sorry," I promised her. She said nothing, quietly overcoming her horror and shock, gathering her resources as only a woman can. I moved my head down closer to hers, brushing her cheek with my lips as I held her like a baby. "You have to go to the hospital."

She stiffened suddenly and I slackened my hold and moved back almost to arm's length from her as she composed her face and pulled the tattered cheongsam around her. "I do not wish anybody to know," she said.

I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, a spell to disperse the demons. "He must go to prison," I told her. "To do that, you must charge him with assault. You won't be named in court."

She looked at me out of eyes filled with ten thousand years of wisdom. "Many people will know my shame," she said.

I kissed her again, "All right. You don't have to charge him.

I'll find him and show him you're angry." I said it very formally, making it a sentence, pronounced by a judge. "But first, you must tell me whatever you know about him and then I will take you to the hospital for treatment. You won't have to tell them anything you don't want to."

She looked at me for a long, slow moment, then she said, "I will do it."

"Good." I patted her on the shoulder, wanting to do more, wanting to bury her head against my chest and hold her until the hurt went away, but knowing better as a policeman than a lover what had to be done. "Now can I ask you to forget that we're friends and that I'm a man. Please let me see what he's done."

She said nothing but lowered her eyes and covered them with her left hand in a gesture so graceful I could have wept.

Gently I moved the torn cheongsam aside. She was wearing a brassiere but no panties. The insides of her thighs were stained with blood. The sight made my pulses hammer, drowning out everything else until I got control of myself and drew a long breath to cool myself out. When I knew my voice would be calm I asked, "What happened, Su? Tell me everything."

She was more calm than I, dignified as she told me a story I have heard in different versions perhaps a hundred times before. "I stayed home today. Mr. Straight said he would not be coming to work and I could have the day off if I wanted. So I stayed here. At nine o'clock I hear a knock on the door. I think it is you because you have not called me since yesterday. So I open the door and it is Mr. Willis."

I waited, saying nothing and she composed herself and went on, "I have seen him before at the office. He's a client. But I am surprised to see him at my house."

"Did he push his way in?" The scene was playing itself out in my brain. Willis, the criminal, betrayed by his own man, looking for ways to avenge himself on me. Maybe afraid to tackle me face to face, coming here and assaulting this girl. My voice was too thick to continue and I stopped and waited for Su to go on.

She nodded first. "Yes, he take me by the arms, here." She indicated a spot high on her biceps. I noticed there were bruises on both sides where fingers had pinched in, agonizingly, just above the bone. "Then, the next thing he say 'bitch, you tell that bastard Bennett where to find Wing Lok.' I tell him, What are you saying? but he hit me. He threw me across the room. I fell here. Then he said 'Bitch, I'll teach you a lesson.'" Her voice stopped and she sat very still. My blood was roaring in my ears but I waited until she went on, only keeping a gentle pressure on her fingers with my own, letting her know she had a friend. At last she said, "And then he tear my clothes. He tear off my underwear. He cover my mouth and he . . ." her voice failed her. I just sat and stroked her hand. "I'll find him. Su, I swear it. Please try to remember anything that might tell me where to look for him?"

She said nothing and I sat almost without breathing as I waited, feeling her tremble as she wept, silently. My head was ablaze with hatred for Willis. I remembered every word he had said in my presence, his readiness to hit my prisoners, his comment when he saw me with Su, the easy way Kennie had betrayed him as an arranger of beatings. And now this. I waited perhaps a minute before I spoke.

"Did he say anything at all, after he had, after he'd hurt you?" My arms were around her shoulders and she had let herself mold to my shape, but now she stiffened and stopped crying. She looked around blindly and I pulled out my handkerchief and gave it to her. She wiped her eyes and handed the handkerchief back to me, slowly drawing in a long breath.

"After it was finished, he say to me, 'Tell your friend Bennett that I will do the same to him when I see him again. Tell him he is nothing.'"

I patted her back and waited. She was recovering well. She didn't need a cross-examination; she needed space in her life so her own strength could bring her through the shock. After a moment or so more she went on. "Then he stood up and closed his trousers and said, 'Remember me, doll-face. Remember me to Bennett.'"

The policeman portion of me took over. "Did he say anything to let you know where he would be? Did he say he was going home?" I had an image of him driving the opposite direction from me as I came away from his house, perhaps passing me on the same street. I wanted him but I kept all the anger out of my voice, I was only a conscience, prodding to be heard. "Anything at all."

I waited again, and slowly her head came up from her chest and she looked up at me. There was the beginning of animation in her face as she spoke. "He said 'I've got work to do. I've got a business to run.'"

That made me frown, it was an unusual choice of words and I guessed it meant that he was still involved with crime as a business, but which crime? I forced myself to stop thinking about Su and concentrate on what crime Willis might have been talking about. And then I remembered the warehouse robbery. Maybe he was talking about disposal of that truck full of liquor. Which meant he might be with it right now. The question was where.

She pulled gently out of my arms and stood up. "I will take a bath," she said. "I was going to when you came."

I touched her arm. "Don't, please, not for another minute or two, I'll take you to the hospital as you are."

She looked at me, then down at the floor, embarrassed. I held back from putting my arms around her. It was time for something constructive. Sympathy is only the first step in any investigation. And then she slowly looked up at me, her face lifting as gracefully as a flower turning to the sun. "I remember," she said and her voice trembled with excitement. She walked over to the low table and picked up the tiny table-top phone that stood flat on it. "He used this telephone."

I came over and took it out of her hands. It was a custom phone, the kind they sell for twenty bucks in grocery stores, the kind that has no cradle but lies flat on the table top. No doubt Su had chosen it because it was small and had an attractive ring. But it had one other feature as well.

"This redial button. Is that the one that remembers the last number called?" I could hardly speak for excitement.

She nodded. "Yes, it remembers until you dial a different number. To call again, you just have to press the button."

I glanced around. She had a ballpoint pen and a scribble pad on a shelf below the phone. I brought them out and punched the redial button. The numbers clicked and tumbled in my ear. I counted and scribbled, stopping the phone before it rang the last digit. It took me five tries but at last I had the number. By the look of it the source was up north of Toronto, in the area called Agincourt, the area immediately north of the warehouse that had been robbed.

I thought about it for a few seconds and made my decision. This wasn't Murphy's Harbour. I couldn't go it alone. I had to call in the local guys. I needed their firepower for one thing, and on top of that I had no police rights beyond those of any citizen. Toronto was not my patch. If I picked a fight with Willis I would end up in jail. I made up my mind what to do.

I turned to Su who was standing, holding her side, studying me. "You must go to the hospital. It's important. You're hurt." She lowered her head, but I didn't back off. "There's nothing else for it, Su. I'll call the police and they'll bring a policewoman in and you can talk to her and meantime you get the treatment you need. He hurt you, you're hemorrhaging."

She did not answer but I waited, agonized, helpless but determined to do things right for her. I wanted to catch Willis and break him, but her welfare came first. At last she looked up.

"I will go with you, but you must not wait. I would like you to find Mr. Willis for me," she said.

I patted her shoulder. "I will. believe me Su, I will." I was acting as soothingly as a nursemaid but inside my mind was racing, forming the plan that would catch and keep Willis, even if Su refused to press charges. One of the details in my head was the way she was dressed. Her appearance had to be preserved so the examining doctor would see what had happened, but she could not go out on the street without a coat. I went to the closet and dug through it until I came up with a raincoat. "Put this on over your cheongsam," I told her. "You must keep those clothes on until you've been to the hospital."

She looked at me and then away, a sad glance. I patted her again and helped her into the coat. She stood, like a guest at a party, reluctant to be the first to leave, and I touched her elbow and steered her to the apartment door. Then as she stood there I went back and looked around the room, checking over the floor until I found what I was looking for. It was a pair of bikini panties, torn almost beyond recognition. The sight of them was the final evidence of the rape. As I bent to pick them up a jolt of animal ferocity raced up my arms from my fingertips and seemed to explode inside my brain. In that instant I wanted Willis dead. But I did not say anything. I rolled the piece of ragged nylon up small and pushed it into the pocket of her raincoat. Then I led her down the stairs and out on to the street.

We were about ten minutes from the hospital. In the time it took to drive there, Su said nothing. She sat staring ahead in a daze. I kept glancing across at her but there was nothing I could have done beyond what I was doing. She was in shock and needed help. Willis would have to come later, and so would sympathy and a slow readjustment to the fact that not all men were brutal, not all of us cause pain.

I parked in the circle at the side of the emergency entrance. Some fussy little East Indian guard came rushing out to tell me to move but I told him "Emergency." He didn't take the hint but jogged after me into the reception area.

"I am sorry. You cannot stay there," he said fussily.

"I'm sorry you're having so much trouble understanding me," I said. "This lady is hurt. I will move the car in a couple of minutes. For now, make yourself useful, get her a wheelchair."

He opened his mouth to protest but I turned and smiled right down his eyes until he bustled to get a chair. A Chinese nurse caught sight of us and came over, anxiously. She looked sternly at me and fired off a clatter of Cantonese at Su. Su answered in the characteristic singsong and the nurse took her arm. Su turned to me and with a frightened little smile said, "I will be looked after. Please find him," and went away through double doors with no glass in them.

I looked around for a phone and saw one on the wall in one corner. I went and fed it a quarter and called the Metropolitan Police Department. I had to speak to four people in all before I reached Irv Goldman.

"Irv, this is Reid Bennett, looking for help, and offering you a nice pinch."

"I give at the office," he said automatically and when I didn't laugh, "What's up, Reid?"

"It's a rape case. I need a make on a Toronto phone number. Do you have the 'somebody called you' book?"

"Right here." The phone clattered on a desk and I could hear the echoing activity of the detective office. Typewriters were clicking, people were talking, a door slammed. And then Irv was back. "What's that number?"

I told him and he checked the backwards directory. "Yeah, it's a body shop on Sheppard Avenue in Agincourt, close to the intersection of Kennedy. What's it mean?"

"I promised you a pinch." I said, "I'll fill you in later, but for now, that's the probable location of that hijacked truck disappeared from the Bonded Security warehouse the other night."

His voice was gentle. "Where does the rape fit in?"

I cleared my throat. "The guy I want, name of Willis, he attacked a girl called Yin Su, at her apartment. I want him inside."

Irv was professional. "This Yin Su a friend?"

"Yes." I didn't have to draw him any pictures. "So okay, what I'll do is get the plainclothes guys up in that division to stake the place out till we get there. Then I'll pick you up somewhere and we'll go in. Tell me, this guy Willis, what's he look like, in case he tries to leave while the guys are watching the place?"

I gave him Willis's description, then remembered to add, "Thanks Irv. Don't let them show any uniforms up there, and don't move in on this guy until I get there. Please."