“You need to get here ASAP! That’s all it says.” Mr Zhang showed Hemi the message on his phone. “It’s from Sef.”
“He’s so jumpy,” Hemi said. “What’s buggin him now?”
“I don’t know. I suppose we better go and see. Just relax,” Mr Zhang said, raising his hand. “We just finish our lunch and finish our wine and go.”
“Cool,” said Hemi, affecting the same professional demeanour he admired in Mr Zhang. He’d even started wearing a suit.
When they arrived at Sef’s, they found him not just nervy and jumpy but strangely spooked. “We have to move everything out,” he said, pacing around the workshop. “We need a new location.”
“Why, what have you done?” Mr Zhang said.
“I haven’t done nothing. Come have a look at this.” Sef brought up CCTV footage on the computer screen and they watched a car with a kayak on a roof rack drive up to the house. The driver gets out, has a look around, gets back in the car and turns around and drives away.
“When was this?” Mr Zhang said.
“Last night.”
“How did he get in?” Hemi said.
“That’s just it,” Sef said. “I checked the gate this morning. It’s still locked. No damage. You saw it for yourself.”
“He must have had a key,” Mr Zhang said.
“No way,” Sef said. “Not unless you gave him one.”
“Well, who is he?” Hemi said. “I can see the licence plate. Did you follow it up?”
“’Course I did. He’s a cop. It’s his own car. He must’ve been off duty.”
“How the fuck did he get past the gate?” Hemi still wanted to know.
“Never mind that,” Mr Zhang said. “Start packing up. Put all the gear in the van. Take it to the warehouse.”
*
Baza watched his rod tip twitching and jerking, waiting for a decent bite. Bloody annoying little snapper stripping his bait. He reeled in the line and rebaited again with cut pilchard. Too soft to stay on the hook, they’ve got to be tied on. He slipped the hook through both eyes and wrapped the body onto the shank with bait elastic, round and round, and flicked the line back into the water. Straight away, more little bites, then a tug. He reeled in a twenty centimetre snapper and tossed it back, still waiting for that legal sized one. It had been a long wait since he paddled his kayak out along the channel to the point and dropped anchor, further out than he’d planned, but it looked like a good spot. That was a few hours ago. Now he was running low on bait. No food. No water. Too much haste to get away after work. Not enough prep.
It was just about full tide, calm sea, and the sun going down. Change of tide and change of light should bring the big fish out to feed. Out with the berley. Make the most of the window of optimum conditions. Another bite. Just a little kahawai this time. Kahawai – strong in the water, and it did put up a good fight. No size limit on kahawai and it’d do for cut bait. Tough skin. At least it’ll stay on the hook. More waiting. All quiet and tranquil. Getting dark. A gibbous moon rose and splayed on the sea. The stress of a tough week at work gave way to calm repose and Baza was lulled almost to sleep by the gently soporific rocking of the kayak on the water. Suddenly the rod dipped and the line zipped off the reel. That was more like it. He flicked on the drag and jerked the rod to set the hook. Line still running out. He tightened the drag, reeled in, let it run, reeled in, grabbed the net and landed a good forty centimetre snapper. He switched on his head light to deal with his catch and his rig. More snapper followed onto the line and into the kayak.
With five in the bag, the rewards of patience and perseverance, Baza weighed anchor and set off, back to the reserve where he’d parked his car. Exploring new fishing spots along the coast didn’t always work out but this one would be worth returning to. He paddled back long and hard against the current of the outgoing tide, paddled up a side channel into some mangroves and doubled back. Hard to get your bearings in the dark in a new place. Hard to concentrate when you’re tired, hungry and dehydrated. It was late and it was dark and raining when he finally got back to his car. Back and shoulder muscles aching. Couldn’t even see straight and he still had to wrangle the kayak onto the roof rack. He was moving a lot slower than when he started out but he got all his gear packed away and his catch into the chilly bin.
Baza drove off and soon came to a gate. He must have come down a private road. The gate wasn’t shut before. Not just shut but there was a big padlock on it. Some bastard had locked him in. You’d think there’d be a note on the windscreen under a wiper, a note with a phone number. Pay a fee to release your car. How the hell was he gonna get out? In the headlights of the car and with the headlight on his head, he looked for a way. He fiddled hopelessly with the lock and gave it a kick. A long night was getting longer. Think man. There has to be a way. The hinges. He turned his light on the hinges and pulled the split pins from the pintles, which ruined the forceps he used for removing stuck hooks from fish. Tricky with double vision. Then he lifted the gate off the gudgeons with his car jack. He drove through and replaced the gate behind him. He drove on and came to a dead end. Security lights clicked on, illuminating a house and a big shed or workshop of some kind. He got out of the car and looked around. What the hell? He’d gone the wrong way and broken into a private property. He turned the car around and repeated the whole procedure with the gate, eventually found his way out and arrived home, exhausted but with a decent harvest of fish.
*
Back at work, Baza gets a call from his old mate Bernie Collier, who owns a panel beating shop in the Greenfields industrial estate. Bernie says he saw three guys: “a Chinaman, and a big Māori guy, both wearing suits, and a weird looking Pākehā dude in a boiler suit, moving a lot of gear into a warehouse across the road: drums of chemicals and stuff, and a chemistry lab by the looks of it. They were in a big hurry and looking over their shoulders while they were moving the gear in, looking suspicious. They were in a big, white van, a Ford Transit. I’ll text you the rego number.”
“Okay, a Chinaman you say.”
“Yeah, an Asian anyway.”
“And a big Māori guy.”
“Yeah, or could of been a Islander.”
“And a weird looking Pākehā in a boiler suit.”
“Right.”
“How was he weird looking?”
“Like the mad scientist guy in Back to the Future.”
“Christopher Lloyd.”
“Yeah, him. Hey, it sounds like the start of a joke, eh,” Bernie says. “A Chinaman, a Māori and a Pākehā walk into a warehouse…”
“Yeah, I wonder what the punch line is,” Baza says.
“Anyways, they looked pretty suspicious to me,” Bernie says.
“Yeah, smells a bit fishy, all right,” Baza says. “Thanks for the tip off. We’ll look into it, for sure.”
Baza investigates the activities of a Zhang Xiao Wei, who is the lease holder of the warehouse in question, and has a previous conviction for importing a Class A drug. He applies to the higher-ups for resources to place the warehouse under surveillance and an interception warrant to monitor Zhang’s phone calls. His request is approved with certain conditions: a time limit of one month and arrests of those involved in the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine.
All Zhang’s phone calls are routed from Telecom to National Organised Crime Group computers in Auckland, where Baza listens to hours of conversations, and he notes: Zhang issues instructions and threats to a local dealer. Zhang asks an underling if he’s seen that nosy cop again, the one who drove up to the house, with a kayak on his roof rack. Zhang takes terse orders from someone called Blackie, who appears to be a boss over a number of distributors. Zhang negotiates with an importer of merchandise, which Baza suspects is heroin. At the end of the month, Baza is assigned a team to execute search warrants and the arrests of Zhang and his associates. Results are expected. Baza instead requests an extension of the investigation and a deferral of any arrests because, as he tells the District Commander, “there are bigger fish to catch.”
“Put a proposal in writing and send it in by the end of the day,” the DC says. “We’ll consider it and get back to you.” Which Baza does and the response comes back: “We’re going to take the case higher up the food chain, get Interpol involved, widen the net and go after the bigger fish, as you put it. Thanks for your work on this case. Send all the files in and we’ll take it from here. You’ll be assigned to other duties but we’ll get you to continue surveillance of the warehouse and keep an eye on the local action.”
We’ll take it from here. Where have I heard that before? Baza wonders. Oh yeah. Men in Black. Special Operations. Then the neuralizer wipes the memory. Baza is uncertain at first how he feels about other duties, keep an eye on the local action and continue surveillance of the warehouse, but decides to just let it go. Fine by me, he decides. I’ve got some coastal waters to surveil.