THE GOLD FIGURE
A Phillip Gold Mystery
By Mark Walma
Chapter One
It was a Monday morning in the depths of February and
business had been quiet. Too quiet. For too long. I needed
a client, any client, for anything. As long as it was
legal. Cuz I’m a lawyer.
I let myself into my unlocked reception room with all the
expectations of a late-round draft pick joining a
championship team, 20 minutes late for the opening bell,
the key to my inner office in one hand and a Raymond
Chandler novel in the other. I had planned for another day
of foot dangling, reading and watching the winter play
itself out on the streets below.
The first thing you noticed was her hair – long, straight
and jet black, parted down the centre as if with a razor,
with a sheen that could make a movie siren weep with envy.
Then you’d see her legs, long, slim and luxurious in sheer
black hose, sliding down from a brief, black skirt that
clung snugly to her narrow hips.
Before I had a chance to notice anything else, she was up
on her feet and stepping forward, her manicured hand
extended, her exquisite face set in a business mode. “Mr.
Gold,” she said, her voice deep-toned and strong.
I shook the hand, made note of the smell of sandalwood, and
smiled into the dark, clear eyes. “Ms. Kyle, what a
pleasure.”
I fumbled my way through the lock and the connecting door
and ushered her to a seat in the inner office. Sharon Kyle,
Crown Prosecutor extraordinaire, filled about half of the
plush client chair I offered her but still managed to
dominate the room.
“I’m not sure I buy the ‘pleasure’ business but I’ll put it
down to professional courtesy,” she told me, waving away my
offer of coffee from the machine on the sideboard. “I’m
here because I need your help.”
I leaned back in my own leather-bound chair and silently
tickled fate for its tricks and turns. Not three months
before, this same Sharon Kyle had made a fool of me in the
court room, turning my case-busting bomb-shell into a puff
of smoke and sending my legal career into the toilet.
And now she wanted my help.
I looked her up and down, letting my thoughts run a few
laps inside my head. She was a super-model in miniature –
no more than five-feet tall, maybe five-four with her usual
spikey heels; 95 pounds soaking wet, which was a condition
I still had not had the pleasure of witnessing first hand;
dressed in the best cuts the designers could offer, black
all around but for a shockingly white blouse and her
alabaster skin. Her lips were bright red slashes beneath an
aquiline nose and her dark-brown eyes sparkled in the
overhead lights.
She bristled under my inspection. “I didn’t come here to
feed your salacious appetites, Mr. Gold.”
I shook my head, pulling a pad of yellow paper in front of
me and clicking a click pen. “No appetite here,” I said to
her, jotting the date and time at the top of the sheet.
It made no dent. She stared at me unblinking, her features
betraying nothing.
“Listen, let’s put away the swords,” I said after a minute.
“You’ve come to me needing help and, thanks to you, I have
a lot of free time right now. What can I do for you?”
Kyle ran delicate fingers through her hair, pushing it back
from her face. “I will not apologise, Mr. Gold, for what
happened in court. I was doing my job and you…” her face
went blank as she ran the scene through her mind, “you
were…” She stopped, tapped a finger on the desk in front of
her and the frowned. “Quite frankly, I have no idea what
you thought you were doing.”
I bit back a dozen responses, gave her an encouraging
smile, and underlined the date on my note pad.
“I have come because I am told that, whatever your legal
skills and your legal ethics, you are something of an
investigator,” she said finally, sizing up every word
before it came out of her mouth. “And I am in need of an
investigator right now.”
“For professional reasons?”
“No. For personal reasons.”
We sat for another couple of minutes, listening to the
clock ticking on the wall, the hum of the elevator in the
distance, the snow-dampened sound of traffic on the street
below, not liking each other. Maybe not liking ourselves.
“Who gave you this hooey about me being an investigator?”
Her lips smiled; her eyes didn’t. “Constable Stacey McLean,
actually, and Eunice Ballard.”
Names I knew. A cop, as attractive as she was frustrating,
and a former client.
“I’m a lawyer,” I said, with more conviction in my voice
than I felt. “My skills and ethics aside, I’m a lawyer.”
Kyle nodded. “I thought you would be unwilling to help.”
She pushed her tiny frame up from the chair. “I had hoped
you would at least hear me out and consider my offer.” She
glanced pointedly at my barren desk, my empty day-timer.
“And I thought you might need the business.”
“Why don’t you use the police? Or pull one of your usual
PIs out of your pocket and use him?”
She took a couple of quick steps toward the connecting
door. “I can’t involve the police in this. And my
colleagues at the Crown’s Office must never know about it.”
“Why?”
She shook her head, not turning. “It is a private matter.”
I almost let her go. Business wasn’t good but my bank
account wasn’t starving, at least not yet. And, as swell as
she was on the eyes, I wasn’t expecting much pleasure from
her in any other way. Still…
“Alright, Kyle, alright. I’m interested,” I said as the
manicure met the metal door handle. “At least enough to
hear you out.”
For a minute, I thought she’d just keep on going. But the
hand drew back and the fabulous head turned.
“I expect absolute confidentiality,” she said, words
falling like bricks. “And I expect commitment and honesty
for the duration.”
I gave her the hundred dollar grin, the one that showed all
the teeth in the top row and maybe even a sheen of moisture
on the lip. She managed to stop herself from falling down
at my feet but dropped her precious little bottom back in
the chair.
“Okay,” she said, as if jumping off a cliff, “I’ll trust
you.”
I twirled my pen and wondered at her. Waited.
“My family is in trouble.” She stopped, as if stunned by
the words.
“Which family?”
“The Kyle family – my grandfather, my parents, my sister,
my brother, me. Our children.”
“What kind of trouble?”
“We’re being blackmailed.”
The word hung there like an misshapen balloon. We both sat
for a moment, looking at it, wondering at it.
Then she continued. “My grandfather – my father’s father –
was a Colonel in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the
Second World War.” She stopped, gave the office another
once-over as if just waking up in a strange place.
“Go on.”
“My grandfather was an officer in a unit in BC. Its
assignment was to round up Japanese Canadians who resisted
transportation to internment camps after the attack on
Pearl Harbour. Those his unit rounded up were sent to a
prisoner-of-war camp in Ontario.”
Kyle’s fingers were locked on her lap in front of her. Her
gaze continued to meander around the office, never lighting
on anything in particular, never landing on me. After
another long, breathless pause, she said, “A group of
Japanese Canadians is now accusing my father of stealing
priceless treasures from their ancestors, including a set
of three solid-gold statuettes.”
“What’s their proof?”
She shook her head, a glint of tears forming in the corners
of her eyes, threatening the delicate line of mascara.
“Supposition, rumour, hearsay, stories passed from one
generation to the next. But…”
She stopped there, finally turning her eyes on me. They
were wide and even darker than before.
“But?” I asked.
“But,” she paused, as if for effect, “we do have one of the
gold figures.”
I dropped my pen. It bounced twice, loud in the sudden
silence. I left it there on the desk and leaned forward in
my chair. “You have…”
She nodded. “Yes. We have a gold statuette that matches the
description they have sent. It is in my parents’ parlour.”
“But?”
“I know. It raises a lot of questions.”
“It does more than that, Ms. Kyle, it suggests some
answers.” My voice was bitter, brutal. “Answers you don’t
want to hear.”
She got to her feet again, her face troubled, a tremble
running through her frame. “I know. I know. It looks bad.
But just because we have it does not mean…”
“That your grandfather stole it?”
She nodded, standing by the window now, looking out into
the street.
“What else could it mean?”
She spoke quietly, her voice low, toneless. “It could mean
many things. It could mean that this group of people found
out we have the statuette and concocted this plan to take
it from us. It could mean my grandfather acquired it by
other means.”
She turned, her face pale. “I know it looks bad but there
are other explanations. The BC Supertintendant held
auctions to sell the property of the Japanese at that time.
Maybe my grandfather bought it.”
“Well, that raises a whole series of other questions,
doesn’t it?”
She dropped back into the chair, her head bowed, her
luminous hair covering her face. “I know. That’s why I need
you.”
“And your grandfather?”
“He’s an old man. Ninety-six this year. His memory is no
longer good. And he never talked much about those times.”
“What does he say about the allegations?”
“He won’t answer. He goes blank and won’t answer.”
I started twirling my pen between my fingers again. Quite a
story. What I could do about it, I didn’t know. But quite a
story.
“I need you to look into this, quietly, discreetly.”
“Why the QT?”
“If the figure and other heirlooms were stolen, we want to
be able to return them to their rightful owners as soon as
possible, before anything becomes public. I am something of
a public figure – my sister is even more vulnerable.”
“Who’s your sister?”
“Sylvia Kyle-Thornton.”
The name rang no bells.
“She’s a Judge on BC Supreme Court,” Kyle explained, “said
to be first in line for the Court of Appeal when a vacancy
opens up this summer.” She smiled, no hint of envy showing
itself beneath her long, dark lashes.
“She’s said to be on a fast track to the Supreme Court.”
“And these allegations…”
“These kinds of appointments are delicate creatures. Even a
hint of scandal can cost a candidate the job. And in BC,
with such a large Japanese community, this would be a major
scandal.”
I nodded, jotted down a couple of words on the pad, and
watched the emotions that battled it out on her fine
features.
“Well?” Now that she had taken the plunge, I could see
there was a lot riding on my agreement.
“World War II?”
She nodded.
“You need a historian, not an investigator.” I saw her
flinch. “And I’m neither.”
Kyle gave a tired smile, then slid her feet to the floor
and got up out of the chair. “Fine.”
“Can’t your sister hire someone out there?”
“They told her not to get anyone else involved. They say
they’re watching her. And anyone from out there might be
recognised.”
“So this group has been communicating with your sister?”
“They sent a letter to every member of the family but,
since then, contact has been through Syl.”
“How long have they given you?”
Her eyes gleamed when she finally looked up at me and a
tear slipped out onto her cheek. “Two weeks.”
“Christ.”
Every bone in my body told me to say no, to go back to The
Big Sleep and an afternoon of watching snow drift and keep
my nose out of it.
“What kind of money are you offering?”
She stopped, put a little life into the smile. “We couldn’t
afford your hourly rate for this.”
“No,” I agreed, “but I can’t say I’ve ever billed a full
day’s work at my hourly rate.”
The smile grew deeper. She showed a nice white line of
pearlies and a bit of a sparkle in the eyes. “I believe we
could afford to offer, say, $500 per day plus reasonable
expenses. With weekly itemised reports and a full review
once we reach $10,000?”
She seemed ready to spend some money. “What’s this statue
worth?” I asked.
“We haven’t had it valued but in gold alone it must be over
a hundred thousand.” Then she gave a tiny shrug. “But my
sister’s career, and mine, are worth a lot more than that.
And my grandfather’s reputation, well…”
“Okay,” I said into the silence that followed, “I’ll bite.
But it’s going to involve a trip to BC, for at least week.
Hotel, car rental, flight.”
She smiled. “Holiday Inn, subcompact, economy class?”
I nodded.
“That seems acceptable.” She was pulling a cheque book out
of her tiny black purse. “How much do you need to start?”
I shrugged. “How about a grand as a retainer and another
grand to handle the initial start up costs.”
Kyle wrote out the cheque and handed it across to me. “Can
you start immediately?”
“Well, I have an appointment with Raymond Chandler this
afternoon but I think I can postpone it.”
“Client?”
“Writer,” I said, nodding in the direction of the book.
She let out a gentle laugh, the first of the day. It was a
nice sound. I could get used to it. And then I remembered
the court room and the clouds returned.
“What do you need to get started?” she asked, already
starting for the door.
How did I know? This was all new to me.
“I guess I should start by interviewing members of the
family, looking over any records, paper work, letters,
photo albums, that kind of stuff, maybe getting a list of
friends and colleagues, past and present, who might have
info that would help.”
“I’ll talk to the family and get back to you by tomorrow
morning. Hopefully, you can start work then.”
And she was gone. I was left alone with the hum of traffic,
the lure of the Internet and a faint scent of sandalwood.
I flipped on the computer, made a pot of coffee while it
whirred to life, then logged onto the web for a brief tour.
A search using the words “Japanese” “internment” and
“Canada” brought more than 660,000 hits . The
University of Washington, of all places, had a full website
on the issue with lots of great information. Except the
answers I needed.
I did confirm that, in 1943, a person known as the
“Custodian of Enemy Aliens” had literally sold off all of
the possessions of Japanese Canadians in British Columbia.
But no specifics.
I also confirmed that the RCMP had been in charge of
pursuing Japanese Canadians who resisted being transported
to internment camps. These persons were treated as
prisoners of war and shipped to a prison camp in Angler,
Ontario.
I confirmed a bunch of other stuff that didn’t give me any
more clue on the two basic questions I was stuck with:
1. Did the elder Mr. Kyle steal the statuette and other
artifacts?
2. How was I going to find the answers to question number
one?