Mi Mundo was a paper company, incorporated by Tabitha Sorenson in March before she disappeared. It held no assets and the corporate headquarters was a post office box in a Shoppers Drug Mart. No company taxes had ever been filed.
At eight o’clock I walked home to my flat on East Broadway. I cooked a veggie patty and served it over rice with a can of green beans, smothering the mess in sriracha. After choking that down, I poured a tumbler of Bulleit bourbon and spun a Muddy Waters record. Drinking TNT and smoking dynamite. When it was time for the shift change, I phoned Sonia and told her I needed to see her.
She still had her key and she let herself in. I took her coat and offered her a drink.
“Food first, if you have any.”
“I’ve got cereal, corn bran and generic Rice Krispies,” I said. “The milk’s still got a day or two on it.”
“What a gourmet,” she said, choosing the corn bran. As she ate I told her about Chambers.
“He’s moonlighting as muscle for Anthony Qiu,” I said. “I watched him bust up the hand of a guy named Miles. Definitely a beef over money.”
Sonia nodded, continuing to eat.
“Not quite the reaction I expected,” I said.
She set down her bowl. “I looked up Anthony Qiu when you mentioned him. He’s the son-in-law of Vincent Leung. Leung has all sorts of gang connections, especially heroin and guns. But Qiu seems limited to loan-sharking. His place is a front to wash Leung’s money.”
“I had a run-in with Qiu a while back,” I said. “He could’ve made things much more difficult than he did. Got the sense he was playing it safe.”
I took Sonia’s bowl to the sink and brought back the bourbon and another glass. I stared at the bottle.
“I should be mad you’re lying to me,” I said. “I wish you didn’t feel you had to.”
She stared at me. I mimicked the demure expression on her face: “‘Lying?’ she intoned, with wide-eyed innocence. ‘Moi?’”
Sonia didn’t smile.
I changed tack. “How can I do what you want, Sonia, how can I help you, when you’re holding back on me?”
“I told you you didn’t have to,” she said.
“So it’s either trust you implicitly and question none of this, or forsake you completely?”
“You know how the job is,” she said. “I don’t have a lot of channels open to me.”
I said, “What do you want me to do about Chambers? Let’s start there.”
“What are the options?”
“Ignore him.”
“No.”
“Turn him in.”
“No.”
“Talk it through with him.”
“I can’t,” she said.
“Can you stay on him for another week?” she asked. “I know it’s asking a lot. I need the time to work something out.”
“Another week,” I assented. “With two provisions. You run Sabar Gill through CPIC. He’s on a flight itinerary with my missing girl.”
“I’ll try. And second?”
I poured. “Some time in the future, we sit down over a bottle not unlike this one, and we tell each other everything.”
“I’d like that.”
We finished our drinks and she left. Her kiss before she wended her way through the patio to the street was one part whiskey, one part something else.