Mister Jinnah Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Donald J. Hauka
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gulped dryly, squirming in Blacklock’s mental grip, feeling his vital fluids of free will and daily assignments being sucked from his body and replaced by the pure adrenaline of fear and dread of a special project.
“Church’s office?” he whispered feebly.
“Yes,” Blacklock smiled, licking his lips, enormously pleased with his feed. “We have a special project that requires your unique talents.”
Blacklock lumbered off, leaving Sanderson to fall back into his chair, helpless as a squashed bug. A special project! His unique talents!
“It cannot, nor shall it come to good,” he said.
Jinnah drove down Oak Street towards South Vancouver, smoking non-stop as he navigated the satellite-guided Love Machine through the traffic. A trick of the light! Smoke and mirrors! Jinnah would prove there had been someone there. He was headed for the crime scene on Marine Drive. Pray God it hasn’t been messed up too badly, he thought. But Jinnah’s musings were interrupted by the ring of his cellphone. Cursing, he struggled to wrench the thing out of his jacket pocket with one hand while maintaining control of the van with the other.
“Y’ello!” he said.
“Jinnah. It is Mister Puri here.”
“Mister Puri!” Jinnah said with mock enthusiasm. “How are you, sir?”
“I am well, God be thanked,” said Puri. “I am at the Punjabi Market.”
Jinnah was no more than five minutes drive from the market. He didn’t hesitate.
“I will meet you there,” he promised.
Jinnah got into the left-hand lane and turned east towards Main Street. The Punjabi Market was the heart of Vancouver’s Little India. It was with no great joy he drove south and east, however. Jinnah was from Africa first and foremost, and he felt vaguely ill at ease in the vibrant heart of the Indo-Canadian community of the West Coast. He was really no more at home here than he was in the European enclave that was the Vancouver newspaper industry. It was his fate, it seemed, to be a man apart in his adopted home. Try as he might, Jinnah could not fit entirely into either world.
He could not fit Mister Puri’s moral scruples into with his own business interests either. The discussion over coffee did not go well from the start.
“How are you today, Mister Puri?” Jinnah asked solicitously as the older man settled into his chair, puffing.
“Troubled, Jinnah, very troubled,” Mister Puri, a devout Hindu, replied, peering at Jinnah over the top of his glasses.
Jinnah swallowed hard and forged ahead.
“Sanjit was telling me you have some concerns over our little share offering. I wish to assure you —”
Mister Puri held up a slender hand, silencing him.
“Jinnah, it is not just I who have reservations. Many respected citizens are concerned that it will reflect badly on the community.”
“In what way?”
“Jinnah, we do not deal in selling women to men. This pyramid scheme of yours —”
“It’s not a pyramid scheme! It’s a multi-level marketing strategy.”
“Ah! I have heard that phrase used before in relation to gold coins. Please explain the difference.”
“A pyramid scheme is where you sell people,” Jinnah said, growing a little impatient. “Multi-leveled marketing is where you sell services. We are selling services.”
Mister Puri leaned forward, his brown, square hat almost in his coffee, and whispered discreetly.
“It is exactly the nature of the services to be sold that concern me,” he hissed.
Jinnah groaned inwardly.
“We are not selling women to men, Mister Puri. We are selling an introduction service to women from Russia who may wish to marry single men from China. There is nothing untoward about it. There are similar schemes in Canada.”
“I believe you, Jinnah, but you know how these things look to people who wish us ill. People in the press, for instance — yourself aside,” Mister Puri said. “May I suggest that you and Sanjit find some other, less venal, investment vehicle.”
Jinnah decided to play what he considered his trump card. He played it badly.
“Listen, Mister Puri, I am in a position to offer you a special price on shares —” he began.
Mister Puri straightened up in his chair, glaring.
“This is not about money, Jinnah! It is about principles! Appearances! Morals!”
“What’s immoral about hooking up a bunch of Christian women with a load of Confucian-Communist men?” Jinnah snapped, losing his temper.
Mister Puri rose stiffly with the assistance of his cane and stood in front of Jinnah, shaking a finger at him in front of the entire marketplace.
“Hakeem Jinnah, their faith and nationality do not matter! They are people who deserve to be treated with dignity! If anyone asks my opinion, I shall not be recommending your venture as either safe or honourable. Good day to you, sir!”
He limped off, huffing puffing. And blowing Jinnah’s hopes down.
Jinnah was left feeling sick and to top it off, he realized that Puri had stiffed him with the bill. Cursing his stupidity, he drove off towards the Marine Drive vacant lot where Sam Schuster had met his end. The day had started badly and become worse. He hoped things were about to pick up.
At first, things seemed to have progressed from worse to catastrophic. Jinnah parked his precious van at the side of Marine Drive and walked along the broad, unpaved shoulder to the narrow, dirt driveway that led down to the sawmill site. From this vantage point at the top of the bank above the river, Jinnah surveyed the crime scene and felt his raw, tender, red heart drop like stone into the churning acid-bath of his stomach. It was a mess. The car, of course, had been removed long ago. He could see the black, oily square that marked its spot. Emanating out from it were two deep, wide tracks: the signature of the huge flatbed truck the forensic guys had used to haul away the burned-out shell of the Caddy. Cutting across those tracks at an angle were a set of narrower ruts made by the ambulance. And all around the cross of treadmarks with the square, black head were footprints: hundreds of them, it seemed, all in crazy circular patterns radiating out from the spot where the car had once sat. It looked like something out of the Battle of the Somme. Jinnah very nearly turned around and left in disgust, but his pride wouldn’t let him. If he left now, he would have no story at all. As it was, there was only the most slender possibility of finding what he was looking for in the chaos below, but a slender chance was better than no byline at all.
Jinnah walked stoically down the drive, kicking up little clouds of dust into the warm, dry air. As they rose the particles danced and shimmered in the sun, but Jinnah was blind to their understated beauty. He had his eyes firmly on the ground. He followed one of the deep furrows plowed by the flatbed to the charred rectangle and avoided adding his own footprints to the confusion. The sun had dried the tracks made in the moist mud since the night of the fire and Jinnah was relieved: it preserved the evidence.
Heartened, he arrived at the edge of the fire-blackened area and paused, orienting himself. He stared at the footprints. Most of them were to his left. Ahead of him, to the south, was the river. To the north and behind him, Marine Drive. It was almost certain, therefore, that the car had been facing the river with its driver-side door to the left. He squatted down and stared hard, but there was no obvious outline to mark the spot where Sam Schuster’s body would have been. All indications of that had been obliterated by at least three sets of footprints. Two of them appeared to be of individuals wearing heavy boots — a firefighter and a paramedic, likely. Two of the cast of dozens who had responded to Kathy Chan’s 911 call and who had been all over the site, tromping in the soft, damp earth with their boots, fouling the trail. The third was a lighter shoe