The Golden Mountain Murders (20 page)

F
ong listened to the report on his cell phone as he looked at the overly ornate painted gate to Old Chinatown at the corner of Main and Cobalt. If this was Old Chinatown, what would these folks call places like Xian, he thought. Then he heard something on the phone that snapped him back to the task at hand. “That’s it? No more calls to or from Chiang?”

“Not a peep, Inspector, except for the older son calling one of his mistresses,” the Tong leader reported.

“And they know about the spoiled blood?” Fong pressed.

“They know, but just now they’re doing nothing. We’ll keep monitoring their phones.”

“Good,” Fong said but he was troubled. The spoiled-blood shipment should have sent the Chiangs into a flap of phone calling – hopefully leading him to the silent partner. “Keep me posted,” he said, then hung up and turned to Robert. “So have you managed to pierce the heart of white darkness, Robert?”

“I did. My contact is very well connected. It didn’t take too long before my story of representing an eastern syndicate that wants to invest in the blood trade got me the appropriate meeting.”

“And it was at Henderson, Millet, Cavender and Barton, Attorneys at Law?”

“It certainly was.”

“And what did you make of the lawyer you met there?”

Robert paused and did his best to put aside his natural prejudice but couldn’t. “I hated him.”

“Naturally, but what else?”

“He claimed that he represents the major investor behind the blood trade but that he has never met the man or his representative. That all his dealings are through blind trusts and Swiss bank accounts. Then, of course, he added that even if he could, he wouldn’t reveal who his client was – lawyer/client privilege exists in this country, Fong.”

“Do you believe him?”

“About not knowing who he represents? I don’t know. It’s possible but . . .”

“But what, Robert?”

“I can’t tell. He pissed me off the moment I met him. So my judgment was clouded to say the least.”

“Maybe he and his law firm are the source of the money behind the blood trade.”

“I doubt it.”

“Why?”

“Business – good business, bad business – all business takes balls. You’ve got to put something out – you’ve got to risk. Lawyers go to law school so they don’t have to risk. They are risk-averse. The blood trade is dicey. These guys are lawyers. They make a killing without having to stick out their necks. It’s just not in the genes of a lawyer to take a real chance. They’ve seen lots of businesses fuck up.”

“But he might be lying to you. Robert, we have to know if he is lying.” Fong’s vehemence surprised Robert. “Listen to me. This lawyer could be our only access to the money behind all this.” Robert turned away. “What?” Fong demanded.

“You remember I said I had a second contact out here?”

“Yes, but you weren’t sure about him.”

“I’m not. But he might be able to help us. But he’s such a weird guy.”

“How do you mean, weird?”

After a pause Robert looked Fong in the eyes and said, “He’s a lie detector.”

For a moment Fong didn’t know if he’d heard Robert correctly. Robert nodded, “Yeah, you heard me right.”

“He’s a what?”

“A lie detector. We use him at my Toronto firm. He listens to tapes of final vettings of executives and then tells us if he thinks the guy is lying or not. He’s better than a résumé-checking service and he’s beaten every polygraph and eye-scan comparative study we’ve ever done. It’s quite amazing. In fact, he’s never been wrong in our experience and you can believe that we checked and then re-checked before we trusted him.”

“And he’s here in Vancouver, now?”

“He has a girlfriend who writes for a local paper so he takes any job out here he can get.”

“What kind of jobs?”

“Theatre stuff mostly. He directs, whatever that means.”

For a moment Fong didn’t know what to do, then he asked, “Is he in rehearsal now?”

Because of his first wife, Fong knew a lot about the theatre. He’d seen a lot of plays and had heard endless hours of Fu Tsong’s tales from the rehearsal hall. But nothing prepared him for what he saw when Robert pushed open the door of the lower-level rehearsal hall of the Vancouver Theatre Centre.

Twelve men in business suits, extremely conservative business suits, were around a large table, some seated, others standing, with scripts in hand – nothing terribly unusual about that – but these men were clearly not actors – egotists yes, actors, no. One middle-aged balding man delivered a two-line speech without referring to his script, then actually stood to receive a “high five” from the man beside him.

“What is this?” Fong asked.

“A rehearsal for a benefit.”

“A benefit for whom?”

“This theatre.”

“But there already is a theatre here, why does it need a benefit?”

“Let’s not go into that. Suffice it to say that arts institutions in this country have trouble carrying their own financial weight so they have to do things like this.”

Fong watched a little more and made a face, “Like this? Really? Like this? But these are not actors.”

“True, Fong. They’re lawyers. Actually these men are the top lawyers in the city, four of them from the firm that handles the blood contracts out of China.”

Fong watched a little more of the “performance.” Finally he couldn’t resist asking, “If they are lawyers, what are they doing on the stage?”

“Preening.”

Fong gave him a look. “I don’t know that word.”

“Like a bird does when he puffs up its feathers.”

Fong gave him an even stranger look. “These lawyers are doing some sort of sexual display for prospective mates?”

Robert thought about that and concluded that lawyers trying to be actors was pretty close to them being involved in some sort of sexual display. At least a notion of “mine’s bigger than yours.” So he said, “Close enough.”

“And this theatre lets these lawyers do this on their stage?”

“Once a year. It is a performance for heavy hitters. Donors. Vancouver’s social elite pay good money to come and see some of their own strut their stuff.”

“In this play, is that what you mean?”

“Yeah, the audience’ll have an expensive dinner with lots of wine and roll on over to the theatre all gussied up to eyeball their divorce lawyers and tax lawyers and bankruptcy lawyers make appropriate fools of themselves.”

“And the audience pays for the privilege of seeing this?”

“Through the nose. It’s actually one of the more successful benefits that theatres have found to do over the years. The lawyers themselves buy up the entire house and then resell the tickets.”

“And can these lawyers do this play any justice?”

“Probably not, but at least it’s a play about justice. It’s called
Twelve Angry Men.”

The director, a curly-haired olive-skinned man in his middle to late thirties, was a real youngster in this crowd, although Fong noted his incredibly old eyes. He was trying to get one of the lawyers to make even basic sense of one of his lines, but the lawyer wasn’t buying it.

“Henry Fonda didn’t do it that way in the movie.”

“This isn’t the movie, it’s the play,” the director replied.

“Yeah, but the movie was great; why don’t we use that script? I can make a call to Levine in Toronto right now,” he said, whipping out a cell phone, “and he’ll get us the rights, no trouble.”

“Mr. McKintyre, can we please just do the play as it’s written. We only have two rehearsals, then you guys are on.”

“Park your ass, Mac,” said another lawyer, “You ain’t no Henry Fonda and I’m no Lee J. Cobb. Let’s just do this.”

“What’s your hurry? Got a date?”

From the man’s extensive girth Fong thought that unlikely.

An extremely thin, almost puny lawyer stepped forward and said, “Why do I have to play the E.G. Marshall role? He’s such a dink.”

The lawyer beside him said, “Dink? I haven’t heard that word used in the new millennium. Actually I only heard it twice in the previous millennium.”

“Was that in reference to your private parts?” asked another lawyer.

Fong couldn’t believe it. These powerful, wealthy men were just boys trying to out-piss each other.

“I’ll trade you for the Ed Begley role. I can be really mean.”

“Yeah, like you were in that Pinson case, really mean,” he said, putting up his hands in mock fear.

A tall blond-haired lawyer riffled through his script then tossed it on the table. “Hey, I hardly have anything to say in this play.”

The oldest of the lawyers leaned close to the man beside him and said in a whisper loud enough to carry to the back of the rehearsal hall, “And who says there’s no justice in the world?”

The razzing continued, but Fong wasn’t watching the stage. He was examining the young director – Robert’s lie detector. The young man was taking in the interaction of his would-be actors, deciphering codes and sorting out complex hierarchical structures. Then, suddenly, as if a page had turned, he smiled and forged into the piece with an accuracy that surprised Fong. As he did, the man’s face lit with joy. The inherent old age in his eyes disappeared and was replaced by a surprisingly youthful glee. It was a joyousness that Fong had seen before but he couldn’t recall where. As Fong watched, the young man lifted his head and tilted back – as if he were sniffing something above him.

It reminded Fong of the skateboard park. How exactly he didn’t know. But for sure it reminded him of those talented boys flying on their boards.

Rehearsal continued. The young man’s cadence was interesting. He found an instance of momentum and pursued it, then backed off when inertia set in. Then he shepherded his troops to a new section of the play. Before long they were waiting for him to guide them and the text took shape. The kid in the jeans was leading the twelve men in the expensive suits. Fong smiled.

“That’s a miss,” the young man said.

“A what?”

“A miss. The way you said that line was accurate to you but not to the character you spoke to. Look, if you were trying to get me to leave you alone, you would approach your line one way, but if you tried to get the man beside you to leave you alone you’d have to say the line another way. Truth is accurate to the person you’re addressing, not to yourself.”

“That’s why it was a miss?”

“That’s why.”

“That’s interesting.”

“Yes it is, and if you’re really interested in this, come on down and audit my master acting class – you might find that interesting too. Now, try the line again and be accurate to your acting partner, not to the words in the line itself.”

Very impressive – almost Geoff-like, Fong thought. “What’s your lie detector’s name?” he asked.

“Charles Roeg,” Robert said. “He specializes in doing these benefits. He’s apparently raised substantial sums of money for the theatres in this country with this little parlour trick of his.”

“He’s teaching now.”

“So he said. Why?”

“Just a thought.”

Later that day Fong sat at the back of the open studio and watched Charles Roeg tear apart a scene on the video monitor. The packed room of actors hung on his every word.

The actors were clearly impressed with Charles. In fact, Fong might have been impressed as well but he found himself in the throes of an absolutely visceral response to this younger man.

“Because it’s not in present tense,” Charles said to the actress. The handsome woman made a “whatdya’mean” face and Charles launched into an explanation. “You have to see and hear like the narrator in a Great Russian novel.”

A shiver of recognition moved up Fong’s spine. He knew these words.

“Only when you’re present – when you really see everything that’s in front of you – when you hear not only the words your acting partner speaks but also the implication of the words and then the implication of the implication and allow all that data in your eyes and ears and pull it down with your breath to your heart, unencumbered with politics – unfiltered – unfettered with connotation – only then are you present – are you ready to act.”

These words were slightly different but the “implication” of Charles’s words were terribly familiar to Fong. He shifted in his seat to get a better look at the lie detector. Dark, not squat but not long either, but alive in his centre – molten – and quick, very, very quick. Beautiful hands. And those old, old eyes.

When the class ended, an older black actor and a young Italian set to dismantling the camera equipment as Charles talked with three actors in a corner.

Fong stood and stretched. The class had started promptly at 6:00 and it was almost 11:00. Charles had taken a two-minute “half-time” break but was clearly present himself for the entirety of the fivehour class.

The confab in the corner broke up. An older actor with bushy eyebrows smiled and promised to bring coffee to the next class. The young actress turned away from Charles and headed towards the door, clearly hiding tears. A slender woman who parted her straight hair in the middle, evidently made some crack about the crying girl and Charles rolled his eyes. The slender woman rested her fingertips on Charles’s forearm for just a moment too long.