153.1 of the Criminal Code.”
“What section is that?” asked Connie.
“Having sex with a person with a mental disability.”
***
Corporal Jack Taggart and Constable Laura Secord took several sophisticated and deadly weapons out of the hands of criminals. The catch-and-release program of the justice system saw several more offenders retagged and held again. At least for the moment.
Neither Jack nor Laura knew that the next night, a person using a cheap pistol would commit a murder that would ultimately carve permanent nightmares into their brains for as long as they each lived.
This murder involved someone not known to the police. A dedicated professional who was known only to a select few of Vancouver’s top organized crime figures. They privately referred to him as The Enabler. His real name was Kang Lee.
5
Kang Lee checked his watch as he arrived at the Avitat Lounge at the South Terminal of the Vancouver International Airport. The northern windows offered a view of the runway generally utilized by private aircraft. I’m right on time. As it should be. Punctuality is a window to a man’s character and integrity.
He adjusted the Thai-silk handkerchief in the breast of his Liana Lee cashmere silk suit: a suit he’d had tailored for himself last year after a visit to Lee’s store on New York’s Lexington Avenue. It was a gift to himself for his fiftieth birthday. With a price tag of over eight thousand dollars, it was his favourite suit. Displays elegance and grace. He knew he was partially persuaded to purchase it from Lee, because she, like himself, was originally from Korea. That they coincidentally shared the same surname was not important, as Lee is the second most common name in South Korea.
His shoes, made by Salvatore Ferragamo, were a mocha crocodile with a price tag of fifteen hundred dollars. His watch, the Leman model made by Blancpain, with its crocodile strap and eighteen-karat-gold clasp, cost considerably more than his suit and shoes combined.
His head was shaved, further accenting the one-karat diamond stud protruding from one earlobe. Although he was short by Western standards, barely reaching the height of many men’s chests, his confidence and manner exuded a strength that caused most people to instinctively make way for him.
His ensemble helped to make him feel powerful amongst men. Is it wrong to dress in a manner that demonstrates my real power? Of course not!
As he waited, he thought of the reason why his boss was coming to meet him. The number two man in their organization had recently died of a heart attack while being entertained by two women in a thermal hot springs. Not a bad way to die … if you must die. And so it comes to pass that one man’s loss is another man’s gain.
He knew he was being considered as a replacement. His only real competition was a man who worked out of their office in Palermo. Like me, he lords over a few of that country’s top crime bosses. Of course, they don’t realize it. They think we only enable them in their pursuit for wealth and power … when will they realize that we also control the strings that decide their very existence?
He brooded when he thought about his competition. In some ways, it wasn’t fair. Italy had been established with the appropriate networks dating back hundreds of years. Some families there have become multi-generational in their acceptance of graft … or the knowledge of what will happen should you refuse. It is natural that Italy would produce higher revenue. By comparison, Vancouver is brand new … I have only been here four years …
He paused to look out the window and take in the dynamics of the airport. But the potential is astronomic! He smiled. Surely it has been recognized that I have done well? I have seen that our interests are well established with smuggling immigrants, protection, heroin, ecstasy.… It is more challenging to set up new pathways. Any accounting clerk could run Palermo. My assignment demands tact and presence of mind. Convincing local syndicates that I am not competition, but someone with the connections to greatly enhance their revenue by lowering the risk of police or customs interference. It takes time. The boss must understand that?
He glanced out the window and saw his boss’s executive jet touch down on the runway. The jet was a Falcon 50EX. Its three powerful engines were capable of reaching intercontinental destinations while travelling at Mach .80. It was also designed to use backcountry airfields with shorter runways when necessary. Lee had been on the aircraft when his business called for such a backcountry rendezvous — places where customs officials were often no more than hired peasants with uniforms — people who could be bribed for as little as a bottle of whiskey or a carton of cigarettes.
He knew that his boss’s bodyguards; Da Khlot and Sayomi, would be on board the jet. I should have such people. Lee smiled, recalling Da Khlot’s nickname for his boss: The Shaman.
Da Khlot, born into a mountain tribe in Cambodia, really believed that their boss had mystical powers. Control of the spirits. Either for the good of a community … or to wreak terror. Control of anything he desired. Lee knew that shamanism was still popular in Korea as well. Usually a shaman was a woman, but not always. Perhaps Khlot is right …
The jet rolled past, its three engines screaming like banshees, as if protesting their shackled entities to the jet and their subservient existence to the man inside.
Lee caught his own reflection in the glass superimposed over the jet. Having to live in Vancouver … am I really only a big fish in a small pond? When will … The Shaman … allow me to return home and fulfill the destiny that is surely mine to —
He lurched forward as a duffle bag connected with the back of his head. A heavy-set woman hurrying past with the bag slung over her shoulder stopped.
“Sorry, kid. Are you okay?” she asked apologetically, turning around. Realizing her second blunder, she said, “I mean … sir. Sorry, I thought you were … I just caught you out of the corner of my eye. Are you okay?”
“I am quite all right,” replied Lee tersely, while straightening the neckline of his suit jacket. “Perhaps if you were more punctual, you wouldn’t have the need to rampage around the airport like a fat cow with cataracts!”
***
Da Khlot glanced out the window of the Falcon 50EX as it approached the terminal. He was a long way from his birthplace in the jungle of Cambodia.
Life had not been kind to Da Khlot. His fourteen-year-old orphaned mother was raped and he was an unwelcome outcome of that atrocity. He was eleven years old in February 1975, when his mother died after stepping on one of an estimated 5 million landmines left in Cambodia from a host of warring factions. It was the same year the Khmer Rouge came to power and he was promptly taken in as a soldier for that regime.
Over the next four years, the Khmer Rouge, under the command of Pol Pot, were responsible for an estimated 1.5 million deaths of their fellow citizens. A large number for a country that had a population of only 7.5 million.
Along with other newly recruited soldiers, Da Khlot was taken to open pits containing bound and captive people who had been deemed enemies of the country. He and other newly recruited children were given pickaxes and made to kill the prisoners before they were buried in mass graves. Some of these enemies were Da Khlot’s neighbours. People who fell into the category of professionals and intellectuals … or anyone wearing eyeglasses, for that matter, as they were deemed by the Khmer Rouge to be literate and thereby a threat to the new regime.
Da Khlot was told that by using pickaxes
