Woody felt good driving downtown. He was tapping his hands on the steering wheel and bopping his head to Britney Spears. He was even on key with the chorus when she demanded her baby to hit her one more time. He was back on his game. He pulled off Barton, onto Mary, and found Pho Mekong at the end of the street. Woody had never heard of the restaurant before, and now he knew why. The restaurant was tucked in behind a Food Basics grocery store at the end of a cul-de-sac and next to invisible from the main road running perpendicular to Mary a few hundred metres away. Pho Mekong didn’t look like much from the street. The sign was spattered with holes from rocks or bottles that had gone through the display. The g in Mekong was blown out, and whatever had gone through the plastic had wrecked the light bulbs in the last quarter of the sign. Woody pulled into the lot and took the handicap spot right outside the door. Several of the customers eating at the tables in the restaurant had no trouble reading what wasn’t written on the unmarked sedan, and they nudged their companions and gestured towards the car. When Woody got inside, the atmosphere in Pho Mekong was downright frosty. No one was talking at all as he stood on the entry mat and scanned the room. Ramirez had gotten quiet at the end of the meeting, but Woody had gotten him to speak up about Tony Nguyen. Apparently, he would stand out in the restaurant. He would be the only pudgy guy with a mullet and pencil-thin facial hair.
Woody’s gaze crossed the room once, then checked back on what he saw. The dining room was half full with the lunch crowd. It looked like a conscious decision was made to only use the right half of the dining room for lunch. The patrons were all Vietnamese, all of them were quiet and most looked to be labourers of some kind. On the left side of the room, two tables were occupied. One table had all four seats filled. Four teenagers sat staring hard at Woody. They each had spiked hair and colourful shoes. They each also had a jacket with a fur-lined hood over a t-shirt. Two tables away from the kids sat Tony Nguyen reading the newspaper.
Ramirez had been right—there was only one pudgy guy with pencil-thin facial hair in the restaurant. Tony Nguyen had a foot up on a chair, and Woody could see he was wearing Chuck Taylors. He had loosened the laces enough to let the thin strip of fabric underneath loll like the tongue of an overheated dog. His jeans were tight, and one of Tony’s hands was resting on his gut, tapping a tune with his index and middle fingers. Woody walked towards him, and one of the kids said something in a language Woody didn’t understand. The kid who spoke was closest to Tony and sat with his back to the window. His proximity and his warning made him the senior of the four. Woody gave the kid a once over and then looked back at Tony. The boss of the Yellow Circle Gang was no longer looking at the newspaper.
Woody took a seat in the chair next to the one Tony was using as a footrest so that he was diagonal to the man.
“If you want lunch, that side is for customers,” Tony said. The voice had very little accent behind it.
“You know I’m not here to eat, Tony.”
“You should try the soup. It’s delicious.”
“Maybe next time.”
“You know my name, but I don’t know yours.”
“Detective Woodward.”
“Maybe I should call my lawyer.”
“I’m not arresting you. I just want to talk to you. But if a lawyer would make you feel safer, by all means, call.”
Tony put the paper down and pulled his foot off the chair. His posture immediately improved and his gut stuck out less.
“So talk.”
“How’s business?”
“Working four clubs a week. Got a few gigs in Toronto next month. You and the missus should come out.”
Woody wanted to flinch at the mention of his wife, but his face stayed as still as a poker player bluffing on a pair of twos.
“I meant the other business.”
“Business is good all over, detective.”
“That true, guys?” Woody said, tilting his head so that he could see the eight eyes looking at him.
“They don’t speak English.”
Woody nodded. “I hear not many in your employ do. Makes it hard to keep tabs on a man when everything is done in another language.”
“Ain’t a crime.”
“No, it’s not. They legal?”
“You could ask. They won’t answer.”
“If I took them downtown they would.”
“You’d have to catch them first, and you don’t look to be in any shape to be running.”
“You’re probably right, Tony. You seem like a sharp guy. You really do. So tell me something. If the police were going to go after you, where would they start?”
“What, you want tips? Seems like cheating, no?”
“The kids are illegals, and they don’t speak English, so we couldn’t flip one of them. Where would we go? Any ideas?”
Tony shrugged, but Woody could tell that he had his interest.
“We can’t plant anybody in your crew because you use immigrant kids for most of your day-to-day work. Means we’d have to get someone higher up. Someone who’s been around you for a while.”
“Good luck with that,” Tony said.
“Alright, let’s play hypothetical. Let’s say I’m a lucky guy. Real lucky. The kind of guy you take to Vegas with you. I use my luck to flip one of your guys. What happens next?”
“Hypothetically? Nothing. You might be a lucky guy, but, me, I don’t bet on anything that ain’t a sure thing.”
“But we’re speaking hypothetically, Tony. Imagine the situation.”
“No.”
Woody nodded. Tony wasn’t rattled by a sit-down with a cop, and he didn’t seem freaked out about a detective asking about a snitch. He didn’t seem to mind taunting Woody either. Telling him he couldn’t catch one of the kids was as good as a dare, but Tony wasn’t going to get sucked into anything serious.
“Fine, forget hypothetical situations. How are things with your girl?”
“Which one?” Tony seemed pleased with his answer.
“The one carrying your baby.”
Tony laughed from deep inside his soft belly. “Which one? I got girls all over. And kids—I got more kids than girls.”
“How many?”
Tony shrugged. Woody put his hands behind his head and leaned back in the chair. The stretch exposed the butt of the Glock in the shoulder holster. Tony glanced at it then looked away. The four at the table were all eyes. One of the kids, the one sitting next to the talker with his back to the window, looked over his shoulder at a green Honda Civic. The kid across from him saw him look and kicked him under the table. Woody couldn’t see the kick, but he heard the impact and the saw the result on the kid’s face.
Tony looked at the table next to him and said something in Vietnamese. It didn’t sound nice.
“How many kids do you have?”
Tony said nothing.
Woody put his hands on the table and leaned in. “I could make a call and find out. We’re the fucking police. That means we know everything about you down to your shoe size. I’m here asking you because I want to hear what you have to say rather than read it in some report. You don’t want to talk, call that lawyer and kiss that green Civic goodbye.”
“I got eight kids,” Tony said.
“Fertile son of a bitch, aren’t ya?”
Tony nodded and smiled wide. He had a gold tooth where a white canine should have been.
“You know their names?” Woody asked.
Tony nodded. You ask most people if they know the names of their children and they’ll say something like, “Of course.” The nod meant Tony probably didn’t know.
“What’s the oldest kid’s name?”
“Tony.” The response was fast. Tony threw out the name like he was solving the puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. It was loud and fast to show Woody that he knew what he was talking about.
“What’s Tony’s birthday?” Woody asked.
Tony had no loud, fast answer, and there was no way to nod himself out of the question.
“Second oldest, what’s his name?’
“Her name is Lilly.”
“When’s her birthday?”
No answer again. Tony just gave his newspaper a blank stare.
“When was the last time you played a gig in Toronto?”
“Two months ago,” Tony said.
“First song?”
“‘Love Sick’ by Mura Masa. Awesome track.”
“Last song?”
“Fugees, ‘Fu-Gee-La.’ I do a remix with it that people never see coming.”
Woody nodded. “Last question. Little Tony’s mother, where is she?”
“Fuck, I don’t know. Last I heard, she took the kid to Toronto with her.”
Woody stood up and put a hand on his chair. “Thanks for the sit-down, Tony, it was . . . informative. Now come outside with me and pop the trunk of that green Civic.”
“You said you’d leave it alone if I talked to you.”
“I lied,” Woody said, putting his other hand on the butt of the pistol.
“Not my car,” Tony said.
“Your lawyer can sort that out. Let’s go.”
Tony said something in Vietnamese, and the kid who had been looking at the Civic bolted from his seat. He ran around several tables on his way to the door. From there he would have to run across the lot to the car. Woody took his hand off the Glock and picked up the chair he had been sitting on. The legs were flimsy, but the seat was heavy. The chair shattered the window behind Tony. Woody stepped through the hole he made and pulled the Glock. He met the kid halfway, the gun pointed at his face.
The kid put his hands up, and Woody motioned with the gun for him to get on his knees. He cuffed the kid and walked him back inside using the empty window frame instead of the door. The other three kids had run away, but Tony was still in his chair.
When Woody sat the kid down at Tony’s table, Tony spoke to him in rapid-fire Vietnamese. The kid’s head bent low, and Woody knew what message was being sent. The kid would be arrested, convicted, and deported, and he would shut up and like it. The diners seated in the restaurant were either looking for the cheque or pretending the loud one-sided conversation wasn’t happening.
“Not my car,” Tony said. “You’ll never pin that on me.”
“You told him to run for it.”
“Did I? I had no idea you spoke Vietnamese.” Tony smiled. “Doesn’t even matter if you actually do. I’ll say I didn’t,” Tony nodded toward the kid, “and so will he.”
“Don’t care,” Woody said. “Think of today as a sign of things to come. Things are going to change. We don’t like you and we’re going to start fucking with you every day until you find somewhere better to be.” Woody decided that bullshitting Tony would keep him ignorant about why he was really here. It would keep Bertha out of it, too, preserving whatever work Julie did. Tony was a gangster—small time, but still a gangster. And gangsters liked nothing better than to think everything was about them.
“I knew you wouldn’t crack, Tony. You’re a pro. But, I knew one of the kids would give it away. I just had to keep you talking.”
Tony looked pleased with himself. Woody had just given him one hell of an ego boost.
“I’m going to ruin the kid’s life unless he gives me you. And if he doesn’t, I’ll find someone else. I’m going to find your kids too. Something tells me you don’t pay child support. I’m going to make sure your bank account pays for all the fun your dick has ever had—unless, of course, you get out of town.”
Tony laughed in Woody’s face. “Good luck, pig,” he said.
*
Ramirez wasn’t happy when Woody called him. “You said you were just going to check things out. You said pay a visit. A visit!”
“That was the plan.”
“And what happened?”
“Things escalated.”
“Who did the escalating?”
Woody glanced back at the shattered window. “Fifty-fifty.”
“Did he do it? Did he kill Julie?”
“We didn’t get around to that.”
“Fucking great! So you blew my case and you have got nothing to show for it. I let you in on Nguyen because I was told you were a professional. This is not how a professional works.”
Woody got up from the table. “This is how a murder case works, Ramirez. I ask questions and get answers. Then, I ask more. The only thing Nguyen knows is that the cops are after him. He knew that already. I picked up Tony and one of his people because that was what he would have expected would happen. I played the asshole, so that he would see me that way.”
Ramirez’s anger had dulled to petulance. “You think you’re not an asshole?”
“Sure I am, but I’m an asshole who solves murders.” Woody looked at the kid with his hands cuffed behind his back. It was clear that Tony had told him to keep his mouth shut and he was getting a head start. “Tony and the kid were pretty interested in keeping me away from a car in the lot. If you want the collars and the car, it’ll cost you.”
“Cost me what?”
“I want the girlfriend’s address.”
“You want me to turn over my informant after what you pulled?”
“It’s not like I can hurt your case by talking to her, Ramirez. She already switched teams. Now you can tell me where I can find her, or I can find out on my own. Do you really want me talking to Tony again?”
Ramirez showed up in the lot twenty minutes later with two patrol cars and another unmarked. Ramirez could barely look at Woody when he settled the bill.
Woody didn’t care about Ramirez; he was too busy keying the address into his phone. When he had the directions, he left the scene to the GANG unit and the unis to clean up.
The address Ramirez provided belonged to a high-rise apartment building. The high rise was one of five erected inside a wide square block. The buildings were all similar in size and wear—well past their prime. Woody rounded the block and drove into the rear parking lot that serviced the complex.
Both sets of entry doors leading into the building were broken, and they opened without a key. Woody walked inside and passed a group of kids conspicuously doing nothing. One kid, in a sideways hat, had a Sharpie in his fist. Woody glanced to the left of the group and saw an almost finished message.
“If you’re trying to say she’s a whore, you might want to consider putting a ‘w’ in there. The way you’re doing it makes Melissa look more a gardening tool than a girl with a habit of dating losers.”
“Uh, okay,” the kid said. “How do you spell fuck off?”
“C-O-P,” Woody said, showing the butt of his gun.
All four kids turned and booked it out the broken doors.
On the sixteenth floor, Woody knocked on the door of apartment 1620. The door was answered twenty seconds later by a hugely pregnant Vietnamese woman. Woody took one long look at her and said, “Sorry, I got the wrong apartment.”
Bertha nodded and closed the door without saying anything, and Woody got back on the elevator.
Outside the building, Woody saw the kid in the sideways hat had learned to spell whore correctly. He wrote it perfectly on the unmarked car’s side mirror. Now the warning read, “Whores in mirror may be closer than they appear.” Arrows pointed at the word so that he wouldn’t have been able to miss the graffiti. Clever kid, Woody thought.
Woody was about to get into the car when Ramirez’s car pulled in behind him.
“I’m going up with you,” Ramirez said as he got out of the car.
Woody sat sideways in the car so that his feet could rest on the curb. “Too late.”
“What? You already talked to her?”
“Looked. I looked at her.”
Ramirez shook his head. “What does that mean?”
“She had nothing to do with it. Neither did Tony.”
“Just like that?”
Woody shrugged.
“A couple of minutes ago, you said you hadn’t got around to asking Tony about the murder. Now, you say he didn’t do it. What changed?”
“I saw his girl.”
Ramirez threw his hands up in disbelief. “A conversation with Tony, a look at his girl, and you have it all figured out. I gotta tell you, you’re wasting your time as a homicide cop. You should be a judge. We’d never have a backlog again. You could just look at everybody and sentence them.”
“You think she did it?” Woody asked.
“Maybe not her, but she could have tipped Tony off.”
“That how you see it playing out?”
Ramirez gave it a few seconds’ thought. “Look, I loved Julie. Loved her. But she could be a real hard-ass. She turned the screws on Bertha. Maybe Bertha decided to turn them herself.”
“Using the man she was screwing as her screw,” Woody said.
“This isn’t a joke.”
Woody ignored Ramirez’s hurt feelings. “What’s the M.O. of the Yellow Circle attacks?”
“Machetes,” Ramirez said.
“Yep. Machetes and numbers are the way they operate. A bunch of kids with knives surround and hack at a victim right?”
Ramirez nodded.
“Didn’t happen to Julie. Someone cut her up, but it was done with purpose. I doubt from the cuts that a machete was used. And it wasn’t a swarm; there’s no way a group of kids would leave a crime scene that clean. There was no blood on the floor or the walls. I’ve seen messier slumber parties. I’m guessing one doer with a knife from the kitchen.”
“Tony could have gone himself and done it, or sent one guy over.”
“Alright, let’s go with that for a second. Tony goes after Julie. Why?”
“He finds out his girl was ratting him out to her.”
“So he kills a cop. No, scratch that. He butchers a cop.”
Ramirez nodded.
“How’d he find Julie’s apartment? She was on the girl, not him. Bertha never went to Julie’s place so how would he know where to go?”
Ramirez said nothing.
“Tony Nguyen seemed like the kind of guy with enough juice to have dirty cops on his payroll? I met him, and his personal security all looked like they were new to shaving. But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Tony has more clout than we know, and he found out about Julie and tracked her down. Do you think he would have just let Bertha slide?”
“She was pregnant with his kid.”
“You’re thinking like you and not like him, Ramirez. Tony has eight kids with several women already. He doesn’t know anything about any of his children or their mothers. My guess is he couldn’t give a shit about Bertha. There’s no way he’d let her walk without at least slapping her around. I just saw her, and she looks fine.”
“She’s pregnant.”
Woody sighed. “She’s ratting out her mob boyfriend. A man she’s already scared of. Do you think she’d have told him about it voluntarily? He’d have had to get it out of her. It would have been physical—it always is. And you can’t tell me he’d be mean enough to cut Julie up, but too nice to hit his girlfriend. You can’t have it both ways. He’s not my guy. He’s still yours, though.”
“We won’t be able to hold him on anything,” Ramirez said.
“I know. I wanted it that way. I made him feel like Scarface. Right now, Tony’s in a cell thinking about how he’s a badass gangster who’s going to outfox the cops. He has no idea what I wanted was about Bertha and neither does she.”
“Great. Except Julie’s killer is still out there.”
Woody nodded.
“What are you going to do?” Ramirez asked.
“I’m going to start looking for that cop.”
Ramirez nodded. “If he’s out there.”
“You and I think he is.”
“Hey,” Ramirez said, “you okay? You look a little pale.”
Woody leaned forward and looked at himself in the side mirror. He skin had lost most of its colour and some of his hair was damp against his forehead.
“I’m fine.” Woody pulled his legs into the car. “Just a little tired. I gotta go, Ramirez.”
“You need something, you let me know,” Ramirez said.
Woody nodded and closed the door. When he was back on King Street he dry swallowed two of the pills Joanne had given him without even thinking about it.