Mister Jinnah: Securities

A Mister Jinnah Mystery

Donald J. Hauka

• Publisher: Dundurn Press
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780888822314
• eBook ISBN: 9781554885749
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

Hakeem Jinnah enjoys an ordinary life of working the Vancouver Tribune's crime beat, flirting with women, seeking interested investors in a mail-order-bride scheme, and driving around in his sattelite-guided Love Machine. But when he and another Tribune reporter begin competing to cover the story of a shady stock promoter's death, he finds himself embroiled in a murder investigation.

This entertaining and suspenseful debut introduces us to an unforgettable lead character. Mr. Jinnah, a politically incorrect but resourceful reporter, proves to be a wily and relentless investigator. Hindered in his pursuits by the police department, Mr. Jinnah searches out the truth in an increasingly bizarre investigation. Meanwhile, he and his cousin seek their fortune in a scheme to marry Russian peasant women to wealthy Chinese men.

Chapter One

“If you think you’re going to gamble with our future like that, forget it.”

“It’s not a gamble! It’s a safe bet.”

“A bet is a wager or gamble and I said forget it.”

It was at times like this that Robert Chan forgot about the long, flowing silk tapestry of his wife Kathy’s hair and the dark, deep chocolate wells of her eyes and remembered the sharp, steely mind encased in her slender body. As newlyweds, Kathy and Robert Chan never argued about much except money. And when they did, Kathy won by using the same cold, maddening logic that had driven her through Business Administration at the University of British Columbia. Robert had also taken business, but he had finished well behind Kathy in the class standings. He was finishing dead last in this argument. Nevertheless, he persevered.

“Look, we won’t have a future unless we take a few calculated risks,” he insisted. “That’s why they call it risk capital.”

“They call it uninsured investor’s funds, which is a polite term for sucker-cash,” said Kathy patiently. “Watch out for the puddle.”

Robert jumped over the muddy pool of brown-green water, a reminder of the morning’s rain. It was May and the evening air was cool and damp, gently enfolding them in a growing mist as they walked down the winding, tree-lined sidewalk of Marine Drive in South Vancouver. Above, new leaves on the maple trees arched over them, branches bending, forming an uneven green umbrella. Kathy liked this walk. Here, the road was close to the river and despite the growing number of condominiums lining its banks, there were long stretches of wild woods and grassy clearings where you could almost imagine there was no Vancouver behind you, crowded and bursting at the seams with tens of thousands of families — many of them like the Chans: young, just starting out, and trying to make all the right financial moves.

“It’s not as if this is some shady resource stock listed on the Canadian Venture Exchange,” said Robert, mounting another assault. “It’s out of Toronto. And highly rated.”

“That’s what they said about Bre-X.”

“I know lots of people who did great out of Bre-X. You just had to bail out at the right time.”

“Like the geologist?” asked Kathy, giving her husband a piercing look with those eyes.

The gathering darkness matched Robert’s mood perfectly. Like the light of day, any hope of convincing his wife that his get-rich-quick scheme was worthwhile was fading fast. Still, he had won Kathy over and convinced her to marry him by bull-headed persistence and perhaps if he found the right tack, he could sell her on the virtues of dabbling in the stock market with the money they had set aside to start their own business. He was, after all, a young husband with much to learn.

“Listen,” he said, waving a hand at the row of condos they were passing. “This deal is as safe as those houses over there.”

Kathy laughed.

“Those? Those are the most notorious leaky condos in Vancouver! The buyers lost their shirts.”

Robert looked more closely at the low line of blue-grey buildings in the uncertain light. Only now did he pick out here and there the tell-tale orange tarps and metal scaffolding that signaled the end of someone’s dreams of real estate success.

“Yeah, well, anyway,” coughed Robert, swiftly abandoning his analogy. “We’re not talking condos or real estate here. It’s a pension fund thing.”

“Those condos were built with union pension funds.”

“I give up. We’ll live in desperate poverty for years before we get enough cash to open the store.”

“Robert?”

“Yes, darling?”

“Shut up and hug me.”

“This a joint-venture thing?”

They were by a thicket of woods, at the head of a dirt road leading down to what had once been a riverside sawmill. As he hugged his wife, Robert was keenly aware of her scent and the softness of her waist. It was dark now and there were only a few lights across the river to reflect off the dark cascade of Kathy’s hair.

And then, the night lit up as a ball of fire exploded on the riverbank and Robert was temporarily blinded by the fierce, yellow light. He gasped and blinked, instinctively turning Kathy around to shield her from the blast.

“Robert!” said Kathy. “What —”

Less than twenty metres down the road in the middle of the overgrown sawmill site, Robert saw a large car engulfed in flames.

“Wait here,” he said and before Kathy could protest, sprinted towards the blazing vehicle.

The heat was intense and thick, acrid smoke was beginning to pour out of the car as Robert looked to see if there was anyone trapped inside. It appeared to be a Cadillac and the fire was centred in the front. To Robert’s relief, there was no one visible inside and the driver’s door was open. The feeling lasted less than an instant, for as he glanced down at the ground beside the open door, he saw the unmistakable form of a person laying on his back. The figure’s clothes were already smoldering and licked by flame.

“Jesus!” barked Robert.

“Robert!” Kathy shouted from the top of the road. “What are you doing?”

“There’s someone here!”

Robert dropped to his knees and tucked his face into his jacket up to his eyes. He crawled towards the prone human form ten metres away. Later, in the hospital, he would find the details he remembered strange, like how the body had its hands up, as if surrendering to some unseen foe and how he’d wondered why the person appeared to be wearing sunglasses.

“Robert! Don’t!” shouted Kathy, starting down the road.

Robert stopped and turned. He was about to shout at his wife to stay put when a movement to his right near the river caught the corner of his eye. As he twisted around to see what it was, there was a second eruption from the car. The gas tank had exploded and Robert was knocked flat by a wall of heat, flames, and fumes. Knocked unconsciousness by the searing shock wave that slammed into him and roared past, he did not feel his eyebrows and lashes being singed off. Nor did he feel Kathy desperately dragging him away from the blaze by his collar. His last thought was how lucky he was not to have invested in that pension fund scheme. There wasn’t much likelihood of him needing a pension now.

Kathy, possessed of a strength she never suspected she had, managed to haul Robert to the top of the driveway without realizing she had in the process torn a shoulder muscle and sprained her left ankle. The adrenaline masked all pain and the urgent need to get help for Robert overrode any other sensation. She grabbed Robert’s smouldering jacket and yanked out his cellphone. She dialed 911.

“Police, fire, or ambulance?” asked the despatcher.

“All three,” said Kathy. “My husband and I are in the 3000-block of Marine Drive, by the old sawmill site. There’s a fire. I think someone’s dead. Please hurry.”

A part of Kathy’s mind was quite detached from the scene before her — blackened frame of a car, the stench of burned plastic, fabric, and flesh. The part of her mind floating above the havoc wrought by the fire complimented her on how swiftly she had acted to save her husband and how remarkably calm she was now, talking quietly on the phone to the dispatcher as sirens wailed in the distance. It was only later — much, much later — when they played the tape of the 911 call at the inquest into the bizarre death of Sam Schuster, that Kathy Chan realized she had been screaming.

“Ronald, Ronald, I’m telling you, my friend — get in on the action while you can, buddy.”

“Not on your life, Hakeem.”

“I’m letting you in on the ground floor, for God’s sake!”

“Yeah — the bottom of the pyramid scheme.”

“It’s not a pyramid scheme! I’m Kenyan, not Egyptian!”

Ronald Sanderson looked at his friend Hakeem Jinnah and slapped his forehead in exasperation. Jinnah often provoked this response. He sat at the desk next to Sanderson and they had to share a computer terminal that swiveled back and forth. His slender, brown face framed by gold glasses could often be seen leaning out beside the computer screen as Sanderson tried to work. Today however, Jinnah sat back in his chair, feet calmly planted on his desk, stirring a cup of coffee with four creams and four sugars in it, head angled to one side alternately begging and berating Sanderson in an attempt to coerce his friend’s life savings out of his RRSPs. Around them, most of the Vancouver Tribune news room staff were silent. They were watching the daily Jinnah-Sanderson show with amusement and wondering how today’s battle would turn out.

“You don’t have to be Egyptian to build a pyramid scheme and I doubt Cheops could have come up with a bigger shell-game than you have,” replied Sanderson. “I ought to set the law on you.”

Jinnah snorted into his coffee.

“Ronald, it’s an introduction service, nothing more.”

“Most introduction services don’t get listed on the Canadian Venture Exchange.”

“This one does,” said Jinnah, calmly sipping his coffee. “It is, as you know, international in its scope. It requires a great deal of capital.”

“The capitals being Beijing and Moscow. Pairing lonely Chinese bachelors with Russian women desperate to immigrate? Are you nuts?”

“No, just logical, my friend. Think of it — because of Beijing’s one-child policy and the Chinese preference for male babies, within the next ten years, there will be over one hundred million Chinese men looking for wives that aren’t there! The Russian women are already on the market. I say strike while the iron is hot, buddy.”

“It’s immoral,” said Sanderson. “You’re selling Chinese men and Russian women in batches of twenty —”

“Units, Ronald, units,” Jinnah chided his friend. “Let’s be professional about this thing. And use the proper name for my venture: The Orient Love Express.”

“It’s dishonest.”

“It’s a legal way to make money, Ronald.”

“There’s more to life than money, Jinnah.”

“Tell the Aga Khan — he gets 10 percent.”

“To think you work at a newspaper that just won the city’s humanitarian award!”

Jinnah took a long sip of his coffee and pointed a long, dark finger at his friend.

“Ronald, don’t blame me when I make a fortune and you remain a destitute hack working at this Godforsaken rag until they wheel you out the door when you’re sixty-five — first, of course, they will have a security guard search your desk for stolen stationery. I am offering you riches.”

“You are offering me a one-way ticket to a medium-security facility for fraud.”

“Think of it as an early-retirement package.”

“Jinnah —” Sanderson started.

And stopped. He had been about to sharply rebuke Jinnah when he saw the smile creep around the edges of his friend’s mouth, eyes glinting like the heavy gold jewellery he wore on his chest and wrists. Jinnah had done it to him again, baiting him and playing him like some cut-throat trout, pulling on the line until he roared with the hook in his mouth. It was now Jinnah’s turn to roar, the laugh shaking his long, slender frame.

“What is it your Jesus said about gaining the whole world?” he laughed.

Sanderson snatched the paper off his desk and unfolded it with a snap. His face was burning red behind the pages. He did not turn around to see the smiles and grins on his co-workers’ faces, but he knew they were there. He could hear them chuckling and chortling as Jinnah looked over at them with that grin of his. Really, one day Hakeem was going to go too far. Even now, his voice floated over top of the newspaper to Sanderson’s ears.

“Ronald, Ronald, seriously — are you in or out?”

“Don’t you have any work to do, Hakeem?” said Sanderson, keeping his round, rubicund face behind the protective shield of newsprint.

“Things are slow on the crime front,” said Jinnah, reclining back into his chair.

“There was that sudden death in South Vancouver last night.”

“The Cadillac crispy critter? Bah!” snorted Jinnah. “A man dies in a car fire. Big deal. I wouldn’t go near it. Let a junior reporter cover it. Yourself, perhaps. I have other fish to fry. Although,” said Jinnah, grinning wickedly. “I hear this guy’s last words were to his father.”

“Oh?” said Sanderson, sounding disinterested. “What were they?”

“Hey, Dad! Can I borrow the keys to the char? Get it?”

Sanderson remained with his newsprint shield up, fuming. How could Jinnah be so calm and detached about these things? How he could be so passionless about such an awful death by fire? It was the same outer coolness with which he greeted all violent crime, whether it be murder, assault or worse. Sanderson supposed it had a lot to do with Hakeem’s childhood. He was the son of a Kenyan police chief and he thought more like a cop than a reporter.

“I see we have combined our customary callousness with a certain juvenile humour,” said Sanderson loftily.

“Come on, Ronald! Lighten up! No pun intended. Mind you, that would take a really twisted mind, hmm? Burn someone to death in their own car.”

“You take an indecent delight in thinking these things out. I think you almost identify with these murderers, Jinnah.”

“As it should be,” said Jinnah, twirling the ends of his thick, black moustache. “To catch a killer, my friend, you have to get inside his head. You must put yourself in the shoes of a killer. Know his mind and all will make sense by his rules, not ours.”

“I must say that most killers’ logic is a mystery to me.”

“That is why you are on general assignment, Ronald, and I am a beat reporter, hmm? Your mind is capable of flitting from story to story. Me? I obsess. I work myself up into a fury and, if the story merits it —”

“I know, you launch a Jinnahad,” sighed Sanderson, who had heard this spiel perhaps a thousand times before. “I wish you luck, Sherlock.”

Jinnah’s face assumed a twisted grin.

“Oh, ho, Bernstein! And what’s your great story today, eh? Another lost dog tale, is it not? Call the Canadian Association of Journalists! We ha...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Chapter Seven
• Chapter Eight
• Chapter Nine
• Chapter Ten
• Chapter Eleven
• Chapter Twelve