MISTER JINNAH:
SECURITIES
MISTER JINNAH: SECURITIES
Donald J. Hauka
A Castle Street Mystery
Copyright © Donald J. Hauka, 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency.
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: Webcom
Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data
Hauka, Donald J.
Mister Jinnah: securities
A Castle Street mystery.
ISBN 0-88882-231-6
I. Title.
PS8565.A774M57 2001 C813’.6 C2001-930612-1 PR9199.4.H38M57 2001
1 2 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01
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Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on recycled paper.
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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