Читать книгу Mister Jinnah Mysteries 3-Book Bundle - Donald J. Hauka - Страница 9

The satellite-guided Love Machine crawled through the mid-morning traffic on manual pilot. Jinnah was headed for a section of town he hardly frequented and this certainly wasn’t one of the routes pre-programmed into the guidance system. Broadway is a curving, twirling artery that runs east to west through Vancouver and, like the Milky Way, contains completely different galaxies at either end of its arms. At the western end is fashionable Kitsilano and Point Grey, havens for the well-heeled and comfortable. But East Broadway beyond Main Street is run-down with crumbling sidewalks and corrugated streets. The facades of the commercial buildings are faded, their awnings torn and drooping. Just north of Broadway lays one of the poorest neighbourhoods in B.C. It was not the sort of area you’d expect to find an allegedly wealthy businessman’s offices. But Neil Thompson’s company had its headquarters on the eastern extremity. The low, three-storey office strip Jinnah parked in front of was typical of the urban decay around it. Once white, it was now dirty grey, stained by weather, wear, tear, and exhaust. The bottom floor was taken up by an adult-video store with iron bars on its windows. Much of the second floor was occupied by a tattoo parlour and the small section that wasn’t was home to something called “Rosie’s Bodysage.” The third floor retained several tiny offices for small firms struggling to grow larger or stay alive. To Jinnah, the building had only one obvious virtue: cheap rent.

Jinnah took out his cellphone and dialed Thompson’s number. Normally, he would not bother calling ahead, but it seemed sensible to determine if the bastard was actually at his office before he went to the trouble of plugging the parking meter, for an hour. If he was going to be thrown out, a quarter to the Metro Parking Authority would be more than enough money wasted. The call was answered by a woman’s voice.

“Thompson Enterprises, how may I direct your call?”

Jinnah grinned at this. He suspected Thompson and his secretary were crammed into an office so small that, as Dorothy Parker had put it, if there were any less room it would be adultery.

“I wish to speak with Neil Thompson, please,” said Jinnah brightly.

“Whom may I say is calling?” asked the secretary in a crisp voice with a deeply submerged English accent that was still detectable to Jinnah’s sharp linguistic sonar.

“Jinnah. Hakeem Jinnah.”

There was silence at the other end of the phone. Jinnah was just about to ask if the secretary was still there when the woman said: “One moment, please,” and put him on hold. Nearly two minutes elapsed before the secretary came back on the line.

“I’m sorry, Mister Thompson’s out,” she said abruptly. “May I leave a message?”

“Are you sure he’s out?” said Jinnah. “It’s rather important.”

“Yes, he is out and he asked me to take a message.”

The voice had become curt, tight — like an offended school marm’s. Jinnah pursed his lips. What exactly had Thompson told her?

“Perhaps if you could tell me where I might find him —” Jinnah began.

“Mister Thompson is not to be disturbed by people like you!” snapped the secretary. “If you don’t want to leave a message, fine.”

The line went dead. Jinnah sat astonished for a moment. Not to be disturbed by people like you? Meaning what? Well, that was immaterial: whether she had insulted Jinnah’s race or his profession made little difference to him. She was about to feel the full fury of a Jinnahad. He undid his seatbelt and reached over to the passenger seat. A thick, brown manila envelope was nestled on the plush, purple seat cover. Written on it in neat, tidy letters was the name of Neil Thompson. He had done his homework. Inside were all the stories from the database on Thompson, as well as a few photocopied prospectuses from his checkered business career. He wanted it handy for reference. Hefting the envelope, he crawled out of his van, locked it, plugged the meter and found the stairs to the third floor at the far end of the building.

Cheeks burning, Jinnah huffed and puffed his way up the stairs. Please, Allah! Not another asthma attack! he prayed as he reached the top floor and paused to catch his breath. To the left at the far end of the corridor was Thompson’s office. The door was chipped around the bottom edges, showing the inexpensive particle board it was made of. The lettering was also the cheap glue-on kind: black with a tinny gold background. Jinnah threw the door open without knocking and stepped inside. He had rather expected to see more evidence of tawdriness, but the sight that greeted his eyes rendered him speechless. The secretary was much as he had imagined: a plump, middle-aged woman with horn-rimmed glasses sitting behind the sort of insubstantial desk that bespoke of a company more concerned with cutting fiscal corners than impressing clients. But instead of the tatty wall-hangings and tacky posters he’d envisaged, Jinnah found an office in transition: heaps of papers and piles of cardboard file boxes were everywhere. Thompson, Inc. was moving out. Jinnah looked at the secretary mutely, his eyes wide and his envelope held out in front of him. The secretary looked over the rims of her glasses with disdain.

“Couriers are supposed to knock first,” she said dryly.

Jinnah flushed and he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He searched for words adequate to convey his disgust. But in this case, hesitation was a blessing, for it gave time enough for a blinding flash of inspiration to hit him square between his dark eyes. He forced himself to smile, abashed, and wave the envelope in front of him up and down urgently. He adopted his “fresh off the boat from Bombay” accent.

“Begging your pardon Madame,” he said, trying his best to be nearly incomprehensible. “But I am having an envelope here for Mister Thompson.”

Jinnah was no more than three feet from the desk in this crowded little space. The secretary rose, revealing a pleated, plaid skirt that had seen better days. She reached out to grab the envelope.

“I’ll make sure he gets it —”

Jinnah snatched the envelope back, clutching it to his chest and assumed a wild-eyed expression.

“No, no, no, no, no! Is for Mister Thompson, person to person only or returning to sender am I!” he cried.

The secretary looked exasperated. She shook her extended hand twice.

“Give it here! I’ll get it to him.”

“Signing personally is he or not getting it, see?” Jinnah insisted, holding the envelope up to his chest with both hands. “See? Is having his name on it.”

The secretary squinted through her glasses at the handwritten lettering.

“I must say, it doesn’t look very professional. Just who sent it anyway?”

That was a question Jinnah’s inspiration had not prepared him for. He flipped the paper rectangle over and stared at its edges. They were devoid of any suggestions. Fortunately, his muse had not entirely deserted him, for a name formed itself clearly in his mind after only a second.

“From a Mister La-vir-too, Cosmos, person to person or return to sender and too bad,” said Jinnah. “Payment being pre-made,” he added.

The secretary, looking harried, decided not to argue. She dropped her arm.

“Okay. You can take it to Mister Thompson at the new office.”

Ahah! Allah be praised! thought Jinnah. He whipped out a pen from his jacket and held it poised over the front of the envelope.

“Please to be giving me the address?”

The secretary shuffled through some papers and found new letterhead with an address on it. Jinnah noted it was gold-embossed and bore some sort of medical emblem.

“Are you ready?”

She said this needlessly slowly, as if addressing a very slow, very stupid child. Jinnah could see she was in a hurry. Well, he wasn’t. He decided to have some fun.

“Pardon me? What is ready?” he asked, eyes all innocent.

“Ready. As in … set?”

“Set?” smiled Jinnah lewdly. “You want have set?”

“Here is the address,” said the secretary, her cheek-bones turning crimson.

“The address where we have set?” asked Jinnah.

“Mister Thompson’s address!”

Jinnah affected a confused look.

“I no want have set with Mister Thompson. Me straight as Islamabad pimp I.”

Veins were standing out on the secretary’s forehead.

“Mister Thompson’s address,” she said, voice trembling. “Is two —”

“Two,” repeated Jinnah, writing it down.

“— two —” continued the secretary.

Jinnah lifted his pen from the paper, feigning befuddlement.

“Pardon me, Madame, but is being the same two or another two, please?”

“ — two —” persevered the secretary, closing her eyes.

Jinnah now looked utterly baffled.

“Begging Madame’s considerable pardon, but is now three twos or the same two three times where we are having set?”

The secretary opened her eyes, uttered a strangled cry and came around to the front of the desk. She seized the envelope and pen from Jinnah, hastily scrawled down the address, then held it up in front of his face, her hands trembling.

“It’s Hermes Products, two-two-two West Pender Street, suite two-twenty-two. Got it?” she cried.

Jinnah took the envelope gently from her hands and glanced at it. Hermes Products. No mention of its president in the title. He’d never have found Thompson without this woman’s help. He felt almost grateful and bowed low.

“I am humbly thanking you Madame and my family also too,” he said. “Good day to you and yours.”

Jinnah opened the door. The secretary could not resist a parting shot.

“When are they going to insist you people learn proper English before they let you into this country?”

Jinnah turned around and held the woman in his suddenly tightly focused eyes.

“Pardoning me, Madame, but Immigration Officer was saying that we speak proper English on coming to Canada when English here learn proper manners. Good day to you and up yours.”

Jinnah left the secretary with her mouth open, regretting she hadn’t asked the name of Jinnah’s courier company so she could file a complaint. Jinnah noted on climbing into the satellite-guided Love Machine that he still had two minutes left on the meter. He glanced down at the address on his envelope and smiled. He turned his computer on.

“Ensign! Set a course bearing two-two-two West Pender!” he cried, punching the co-ordinates into the keyboard.

The computer chattered happily as it accessed the data, enabled the satellite hook-up, pin-pointed Jinnah’s position to within a metre and then, as Jinnah had custom programmed it to do, responded with Ensign Sulu’s voice.

“Engaged. Warp Factor Ten, Captain!” it chirped.

Jinnah pulled out and looked for the first opportunity to turn around. He was headed for the opposite end of the galaxy.

Neil Thompson’s new office was just off Howe Street, the financial heart of Vancouver where the bank towers, brokerage houses, insurance companies, and other institutions clustered around the stock exchange. So concentrated was the mass that reporters like Grant used the phrases “B.C. business interests” and “Howe Street” interchangeably. Jinnah was impressed as he cruised past Thompson’s new digs. They were in one of the looming, black glass towers that did their best to obscure the mountains and the sea around them, sucking up the view like Thompson’s eyes sucked up light. The view was reserved for the people on the upper floors of such buildings and number two-twenty-two on the twenty-second floor had a magnificent panorama of False Creek and the Fraser River beyond. The carpeting was deep and rich, the paneling mahogany and the musak classical. So it came as a considerable shock to Jinnah that the first thing he noticed upon entering the offices of Hermes Products was an erection.

It was a massive organ, Jinnah realized after his initial start, a good three feet in length despite having been apparently cut in half. The spongy interior tissue glowed pinkly and the blue of the veins was breathtaking. The impressive phallus was actually an artist’s rendering immortalized on a large, four-foot long by three-foot wide colour poster hanging in the outer office. It bore large, black letters proclaiming: “Chubby — your friend for life. TM.” Widening his field of vision slightly but still retaining the poster as his central image, Jinnah noted the whole of the outer office that wasn’t in the process of being unpacked from the dozen or so boxes scattered about it was devoted to similar images. Chubby? Was Thompson now dealing in penile implants?

“May I help you?” asked a voice.

The voice was young, pleasant, and utterly unlike that of the secretary at Thompson’s East Vancouver office. Jinnah tore his eyes away from the penile poster and was rewarded with the soft gaze of large, brown eyes belonging to a secretary Thompson obviously felt was more in tune with his high-powered surroundings. She was tall, slender and her long, reddy-brown hair framed a creamy white face and a dazzling smile. She wore a brown velour dress and platform heels that Jinnah estimated at six inches in height and weighing about five pounds each.

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” said Jinnah. “I have a package for Mister Thompson —”

Jinnah held out his now-battered envelope. The young secretary held out a hand. It was all Jinnah could do to stop himself from seizing it and smothering it with kisses.

“I’ll take it,” she said sweetly.

“Ah,” said Jinnah, withdrawing his package with regret. “I am supposed to give it to him personally.”

“Oh, yes,” said the secretary, abruptly turning on her considerable heel. “The old office called. You’ll find Mister Thompson through there.”

The old office was not what Jinnah would have called the rude woman he’d left behind on Kingsway, but he bowed low and mumbled how enchanted he was and pushed past the reception desk and into the inner office. Behind a rather more substantial desk than in his old office, Thompson sat, crammed into his suit, sweating and hammering away on his laptop while yelling into the phone.

“No, I said move it now!” he barked. “Don’t give me any thirty-day notice shit!”

Thompson glanced up at Jinnah and waved a hand at the edge of the desk.

“Put it there. I’ll sign for it.”

Jinnah smiled and slapped the envelope down right in front of Thompson with a considerable smack. Thompson looked up, startled, and finally recognized him.

“I’ll call you later,” he said, hanging up while simultaneously closing his laptop.

“Your package, Mister Thompson,” said Jinnah with satisfaction.

Thompson turned his light-sucking eyes on Jinnah, a blank look on his face.

“Is this your idea of some kinda joke?” he asked quietly.

“No. It’s actually your secretary’s idea of some kind of stereotype. She’s the one who mistook me for a courier.”

“Yeah, she called. Well, what the hell is this shit anyway?” asked Thompson, lifting up the envelope. “It ain’t from Lavirtue.”

“Your dossier, Mister Thompson,” said Jinnah gravely. “I would like to ask you a few questions about Sam Schuster.”

Neil Thompson did something Jinnah had not previously seen him do. He laughed. It was a hollow laugh devoid of warmth or humour. Jinnah sat down.

“He’s dead,” said Thompson. “Wanna know anything else?”

“Yes,” said Jinnah, calmly taking out his notebook and pen. “I want to know if you had anything to do with his death.”

Jinnah had been hoping to provoke some kind of reaction, but Thompson remained unmoved. He was his usual, blunt self.

“I wouldn’t have paid for the match, let alone the gas. Sam Schuster and I are ancient history.”

“You can account for your whereabouts on the night in question then?’

“You a reporter or a cop?”

“A bit of both, Mister Thompson.”

“I got about five-hundred witnesses saw me at the Rotary dinner. My wife can vouch for my presence at home that night. You want more detail, Diedre out there can give you an hourly itinerary. If that’s all you need, you can get the hell outta my office.”

Jinnah’s eyes searched the room for a conversation-prolonger. Another penis poster was hung right behind Thompson’s desk. It seemed a good place to start.

“What the hell is Chubby anyway? Some sort of penis enhancement operation?”

“It’s the next big virility thing. It’ll give a ninety-year-old priest a boner that’ll bend his back or his money refunded,” said Thompson.

Jinnah looked at the posters with new appreciation.

“This is your new line? It’s a bit of a change from the oil patch, is it not?’

Thompson’s features twisted into something approaching a smile.

“Diversification’s the mantra of the Millennium. My new line and my next big score. Stop asking so many stupid questions, I might let you in on the ground floor.”

He thinks I can be bought, thought Jinnah. Play along.

“I don’t know, Neil,” said Jinnah, sinking a little more comfortably into his chair. “I mean, is there money in something like this?”

“Does the name Viagra have any resonance for you?” Thompson snorted derisively. “There’s a fortune in boners, buddy.”

“But something so private, so delicate —”

“Listen, Jinnah — build a better hard-on and men will beat a path to your door, if you know what I mean.”

Jinnah smiled and twirled the end of his moustache.

“No one ever went broke over-estimating the gullibility of the public. Is that it?”

“I’m not selling gullibility. I’m selling fear and anxiety.”

Jinnah was struck by this. A man who deals in emotions, not commodities.

“I don’t understand that,” he said, doubtfully.

Thompson flipped his laptop open again and started fiddling with it impatiently.

“You and your cousin are selling love, right? I’m selling fear and anxiety. It’s the old joke: anxiety is the first time you can’t get it up for the second time. Fear is the second time you can’t get it up for the first time, capice?”

“But getting the rights to a new drug is one thing. Getting it approved —”

Thompson waved his hand dismissively.

“Jesus Christ, Jinnah, you think I’m crazy? You got any idea how much time and money it costs to get a frig-gin’ drug approved in this country? Goddamn government red tape is killing business in this province, I’m telling you. Nope — this is no drug. It’s a purely natural vitamin mixture. That way, almost no regulations and fast approval.”

“What’s it got in it? Not rhino horn, for God’s sake!”

Thompson shook his head, disappointed.

“Jinnah, you’re a piker. Of course there’s no god-damn rhino horn in it. The goddamn friggin’ environmentalists and endangered species types would be on my ass so fast it would make your head spin. This is purely organic — terrific selling point. You gotta think of these angles.”

“I was thinking you should simply sell the assets of your secretary out there,” said Jinnah. “If I may say so, she too could cure your nonogenarian priest.”

This time, Thompson did smile. Jinnah knew he’d been crass, but he’d been looking for an opening in this man’s armour. He didn’t appear to have found one.

“Ah, but that would be illegal, Jinnah and I know the difference between legal and illegal. That would be more in your line, wouldn’t it?”

Why was Thompson obsessed with his business venture? Was he jealous? Just trying to upset him and throw him off his guard?

“As you yourself say, Mister Thompson, we are selling love, not bodies.”

“Same difference,” Thompson shrugged. “Your Russian babe don’t climb aboard your Chinese bachelor, no sale. What’s the difference between that and a bordello?”

“You’re wrong,” said Jinnah quickly. “All they have to do is agree to meet. It’s an introductory service —”

“And an escort agency will claim what happens once one of its ladies closes the hotel room door with one of their customers is between the escort and the horny businessman. But they still get a cut.”

Yes, he was trying to upset him. Jinnah went on the offensive.

“What sort of cut did you get of Sam Schuster’s seed money for IIP? Was it you who sent the thugs after him two weeks ago?”

“What thugs? I don’t need thugs in my line of business. I just need my noodle.”

Thompson tapped his greasy forehead with a thick, fleshy finger, sending a small avalanche of dandruff down his greying sideburns and onto his lapels.

“You have surely read my story today,” said Jinnah, his voice not betraying the considerable hurt he felt that someone, somewhere in the English-speaking world had not read his prose that morning — especially someone so closely associated with the story.

“Oh, that piece of crap — yeah, I read it,” said Thompson. “Nice touch you have there. You should write detective novels.”

Jinnah was finding it very hard to control a mounting anger. The only thing that kept him from getting uncontrollably upset was the realization that Thompson was being deliberately provocative. A good cop and a good reporter ignored personal insults and plowed ahead, trying to establish facts, find contradictions, let the suspect dig his own grave. But right now, Neil Thompson hadn’t even picked up the shovel.

“Two men threatened to burn Sam Schuster alive unless he gives them access to the millions he’s raised to buy IIP. You can’t tell me you didn’t know about the deal.”

“Everyone on Howe Street knew about the deal,” said Thompson. “He was asking everyone and his dog for seed money. Shit, he even hit me up for some scratch.”

“And what did you tell him?”

“To go take a flying leap at a rolling donut. I lost enough money thanks to that stupid son of a bitch and his Peace River scam.”

Jinnah decided to hit Thompson with some of his research.

“Almost as much as you lost on your own in the Houston deal. All the more reason to try to get some of it back, hmm?”

Thompson stared at Jinnah with those black-hole eyes of his. Jinnah realized he was holding his breath. He felt almost as if Thompson had the power to suck his soul clear out of his eye sockets.

“I washed my hands of Sam Schuster over a decade ago, Jinnah,” said Thompson, uncustomarily slowly and carefully. “You get a stack of Bibles or Qurans or whatever it is you hold sacred and put ‘em on my desk, I’ll swear to God I had nothing to do with his death. God can strike me dead right now if I’m lying, understand?”

Jinnah stopped fiddling with his pen. This was quite the denial. He almost sounded sincere. He didn’t really expect Jinnah to believe such theatrics, did he?

“You do not strike me as an overly religious man, Mister Thompson,” he said.

“You’re right,” Thompson shrugged. “But it’s the truth, the same way it’s the truth we’re over-taxed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I got money to make —”

“You appear to have made a considerable sum of money in a short time, Mister Thompson,” Jinnah cut in. “There’s a marked contrast between your old and new offices.”

Thompson’s expression betrayed nothing. Neither did his voice.

“I don’t make a lot of money, Jinnah. I raise money from other people for business ventures. The resource industry is flat-lining. So I diversify and here I am. Maybe you should take a few notes on that — it might help your cousin.”

Jinnah did not like the way the interview was proceeding. It was time to unsettle his subject. He returned to his research, tapping the Thompson portfolio on the desk.