Chapter 32

Chapter 32

Having got all the documents and the sure answer I wanted at the agency, I headed straight that way to the city-jurisdiction police station.

To write the victim witness statement Sergeant David had spoken of yesterday.

Stepping into the station, David, moving busy holding a mountain of document bundles, found me and waved glad.

He made two cups of cheap instant coffee steaming from the pantry, sat opposite at the narrow interview-room table, and handed me one.

"The face is more a mess than yesterday. Did you rest solid overnight?"

"Even empty words, I can't say so. Still no place hurt big, so it'll heal soon."

Sipping coffee and shrugging the half-cast arm, David smiled satisfied and set a thick file on the interview-room desk.

"Thanks to the information you let slip yesterday, the investigation is very smooth. That Park Ji-hun and the gang, in front of the sentence there's no family or loyalty or whatever. We pressed taking out special injury, possessing a weapon, and the forced-deportation card, and they're confessing smoother than I thought."

"Well, from the root they're third-rate thug bastards."

"I cross-checked the statements from their mouths and the seized phones and account records... wow, this jumped well past a simple assault case."

David clicked his tongue and tapped the file.

"The man 'Andy Hong' in Brisbane you mentioned. With him at the peak, a very huge, organized syndicate was formed."

"An organization?"

"Yeah. This isn't just neighborhood-gang level. Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, no exception, brokers laid like cell organizations across Australia's major cities."

David went on explaining, pointing the air with a finger as if drawing an organization chart on a board.

"They took as the main target working-holiday people or students just entered, English clumsy and not knowing Australian ways."

"But may I ask one thing?"

"Say it."

"How could those guys, Park Ji-hun or the one called Tae-sik, be in the agency share house?"

"Ah, there. The young friend managing there wasn't the same contractor, and it seems he received a fee in part. Tied with the lodging fee."

I laughed bitter and nodded.

Still, the fortunate point, from the way he spoke, there seemed no feel of touching the agency.

If a sign had shown I was going to say I helped this matter.

"In the end, money."

"Their method was fairly vicious. Forcibly pushing kids into farms or tile and cleaning sites, then skimming money little by little in the middle as a fee. And against illegal stayers past visa expiry, they threaten to report to Immigration and work them almost like slaves."

I shook my head.

Just hearing, I could imagine how they did it.

On this strange, huge Australian land, a terrible parasite that cleverly sticks a straw only in the weak set in the blind spot of the law and sucks blood.

A bedbug.

"Uuuu!"

I shuddered.

"Haa..."

To the point of regretting not splitting Park Ji-hun's head with a club in the lot yesterday.

"Really no vicious bastards separate. So, when do you catch that Andy Hong, the head?"

Asking in a edged voice, David downed the remaining coffee and grinned at ease.

"Don't worry. The tails all talked, so catching the body is a matter of time. The moment we secured statements and account records related to Andy Hong, this morning we transferred all the investigation material to the Brisbane police and put in a cooperation request. That neighborhood was suffering over illegal-contractor organizations too, so they welcomed it very."

David tapped my shoulder and said in a voice full of certainty.

"Brisbane police are already grasping his fund flow and hideout and narrowing the net. No hole to run, so a contact that they arrested him there will come soon."

* * *

The same hour, Queensland Brisbane police, serious-crime investigation.

Inside the office it was turning leisurely, no different from usual.

But the moment one 'urgent cooperation investigation request' flown from the Sydney-jurisdiction station through the fax and the internal police messenger fell, the investigation chief's roar tore the office air sharp.

"Everyone stop what you're doing and arm right now! Sydney handed over a big fish. The target is Andy Hong, boss of a Korean illegal-contractor organization! Trafficking and large-scale tax-evasion charges. We barge into his office right now! Assemble in the lobby within five minutes!"

"Yes! Understood!"

When the detectives answered all at once and began putting on vests and equipment.

The face of Detective Mark, sitting in a corner seat, went white like paper in an instant.

'Andy Hong? Shaken down from Sydney?!'

Mark was an informant who regularly received payments from Andy Hong and watched his back.

His gaze went to the cooperation request up on the investigation chief's monitor.

There, Andy Hong's real name of course, his face, hidden borrowed-name account numbers, and even the broker list of the farm cells, material shaken to the soul, was written whole.

'Crazy, it really seems all shaken down!'

If Andy Hong gets caught like this, his own neck that took bribes flies, of course, and it was a situation of having to face in a prison solitary the criminals he himself had caught.

It meant 100 percent death if he goes in.

"Mark! What are you standing blank! Gear up fast!"

"Ah, yes! I'll just go to the toilet urgent!"

Mark poured cold sweat and hastily left the office, and hid his body in the emergency stairs where the landing turned and people were rare.

He locked the iron door firm and took out a disposable phone hidden in his arms with a trembling hand.

A number used only for illegal work.

Ring ring— ring ring—

One second felt long like an hour.

'Please, please answer fast!'

Click—

"Yes. Andy."

Andy Hong's languid voice beyond the receiver.

Mark watched the movement outside the stairs and poured words like a machine gun in a suppressed voice.

"Andy! It's me! Get out of there right now! From the Sydney side your name and borrowed-name account records were shaken whole! A cooperation investigation request just fell to our Brisbane jurisdiction! Our strike team armed right now and left for your office! Ten minutes at most. Run no question!"

The moment Mark's desperate warning fell, the languid air beyond the receiver was felt freezing cold in an instant.

Andy grasped in one go that this situation was real.

"Fuck, understood. You did the meal money I looked after proper. I'll contact again soon."

Click.

The call cut, and Mark panted rough, separated the battery of the burner phone, threw it on the floor, and crushed it ruthless with a shoe and smashed it.

Mustn't leave evidence.

Now he only hoped Andy would burn the books all with sense and run safe.

"Mark! Where are you! We leave right now!"

"Coming! I'm coming out now!"

Mark stuffed the smashed burner-phone pieces in his pocket and wiped the cold sweat on his face as if nothing had happened.

And he opened the emergency door and mixed, shameless face, into the strike-team crowd that would hit Andy Hong's office.

* * *

When Andy Hong cut the phone nervous and spat curses, James, sitting on the sofa organizing the labor books, startled and stood.

"Hyung, what is it? Sydney side?"

"That idiot Park Ji-hun seems to have caused an accident. He seems to have told the police my name and the farm cell line all. A contact just came from the police line. Within ten minutes the cops barge in this way."

"Yes?! No, ten minutes! We have to avoid right now, don't we?!"

James's face went white like paper.

The two got up in a flurry and looked around the office.

The problem was the vast traces left all over this wide office.

Even documents investing black money done illegal, laundered, in real-estate development around Brisbane and the Gold Coast were spread.

They could not take all this.

While Andy was sorting what to take and what not to take, James was only flustering.

On the desk and in the cabinets, farm labor books that had ground countless working-holiday people, passport copies of illegal stayers, and real-estate investment contracts and paper-company documents with money in the billions moving were piled like a mountain.

If these documents went whole into police hands, it was a situation of asset seizure of course, and rotting in an Australian prison for life.

"Hyung! What do we do with all these documents?! The money invested here isn't one or two coins, too much to gather right now!"

James, fallen into panic, shouted, sweeping paper bundles into a big duffel in a rush.

But trying to gather documents in a urgent mind and spilling them on the floor, James's hands were trembling.

Annoyed at that look, Andy Hong brought down on James's head, puk!, and roared.

"Throw that trash, stupid bastard!"

"Yes?! But hyung, this is all money...!"

"The moment it goes to the cop bastards, this isn't money, it's a noose on our necks. If we can't take it all anyway, rather erasing the trace so no one can see is right."

Andy Hong walked with long steps and opened the large safe hidden in the office wall.

And he picked only the choice documents that could be money right away, untraceable bearer bonds and cash bundles, forged passports, and title deeds of core real estate inside, and stuffed them in a small document bag.

Even taking only this much was enough seed money to hide the body a while and rise again.

"Pack the bag."

Andy Hong threw the document bag gone heavy to James, then took out a Zippo lighter oil can and a strong liquor bottle stuck in a corner of the cabinet.

Glug glug glug—

"H, hyung! Surely...!"

"Don't leave even one receipt to the cop bastards. Burn it all."

Andy Hong, with a cool gaze, poured oil and liquor without sparing over the pile of farm books and real-estate investment documents stacked in the middle of the office.

The base of a business built sweating for years running an illegal labor market, but in his touch there was not a trace of hesitation.

If the tail is stepped on, give your own flesh without mercy and run, that was the way Andy Hong had survived on this floor.

When oil soaked the desk and even the carpet, Andy Hong took a Zippo lighter from his pocket.

Click—

A flame rising with a cold metal sound.

Andy Hong tossed the lighter on the document pile without regret.

Whoosh—!!

The paper piles holding strong alcohol and oil began burning, raising explosive flame.

A red fire pillar shot to the ceiling and swallowed in an instant the books recording their evil into black ash.

The fire alarm began ringing like mad, and the sprinkler prepared to burst, but the sprinkler already broken was spraying water strange.

With a flame this much, even if the police barged in, the certainty came that not one meaningful piece of evidence could be salvaged.

It was then.

Puk!

"Ukeuk!"

Andy Hong turned his head back with a face that could not believe it.

There James, laughing cold, was stabbing Andy's back with a knife.

"Idiot bastard. How long did you think I'd stay your errand boy?"

"You······ you dog······ bastard."

James pulled the knife stuck in the back without mercy.

Then without hesitation he stabbed deep again.

"Keueok! S······ save me."

"Fuck off, bastard. Anyway my name is nowhere. People know me as James. I'm Lee Gi-hong. You bastard."

James laughed twitching, pulled the knife again, and kicked Andy over.

"Ike. I'd better go. Andy. You worked hard. Live well in heaven."

Leaving the office burning bright behind, James hugged the heavy document bag and turned his body to the emergency stairs.

Andy Hong, eyes gone bright red, reached a hand toward the back of the leaving James and trembled.

"Keueuk! Keueuk!"

Fire began catching from under his feet.

Andy Hong crawled the floor to a place without fire, to survive somehow.

And only a few minutes later, noisy police-car and fire-truck sirens began ringing toward the office building.

The black sedan James rode had already slipped out as if sneering at the police net, and soaked without a trace into Brisbane's pitch-dark night street.

* * *

The next day, the content of the call from Sergeant David was quite flustering.

"Yes?! Burned?"

[Yeah. Seventy percent of the body is second-degree burns, and of that 30 percent is third-degree, they said.]

"Huh, really. How?"

[Seems betrayed by a subordinate.]

"Somehow the finish is uneasy."

[Nothing to be done. For now finding that subordinate doesn't seem easy. No clue. The identity is James, they say, and no one knows the surname.]

"Wow. A tremendous guy."

[Right. You never know, so you be careful too.]

"Understood. Thank you for telling me."

[Then good work.]

Hanging up, I sat blank a moment.

Then Dong-myeong approached and asked.

"What is it?"

"Andy Hong's office burned clean, they say, and betrayed by a subordinate he took burns in that fire and it's today or tomorrow."

"Heok! Cr······ crazy bastards."

"Right, what kind of guys are there all?"

"Wow. Gives me chills."

"Enough, let's do our work."

I carefully stroked the cast left arm and said to Dong-myeong.

"I'll do it all, hyung! Just tell me the method!"

Dong-myeong, wearing the new tool belt bought, answered overflowing with will.

I gave a short laugh and looked around the house once.

Before, this house was a tin house with no insulation at all between the outer wall and the inner wall.

Surely when winter came the chill would have been no joke.

The inner studs were stood in advance, so now it was the turn to fill the empty space between careful with insulation.

I pointed at the polyester insulation piled on the floor and opened my mouth.

"Insulation we'll install today. Not prickly like glass fiber and light, so you can handle it enough alone. Sydney isn't weather that drops below zero like Korea, so we'll put only one thin 50-millimeter. Cutting is all done, so you only have to stick it right away."

"Yes, hyung."

Dong-myeong, whether strength remained, lifted the insulation flashy and set it on the workbench.

"Good. Now shoot urethane foam on the back of the insulation and the edge. Raise the foam gun steady following the insulation. This expands two or three times later, so careful not to apply too much."

At my explanation Dong-myeong carefully pulled the foam gun's trigger.

With a hiss, cream-like urethane foam sprayed at a steady thickness.

"Spray some water on it with the sprayer."

"Why spray water?"

"Urethane foam has to meet moisture to swell wide and harden fast. A kind of chemical reaction. If you've sprayed all, press it straight between the studs and stick it."

Dong-myeong scattered water, then pushed the insulation firm between the empty wall.

"Stick it like that and the foam gradually expands and holds the insulation tight to the wall, and fills even the fine gaps between the studs itself. It does the bond role and the airtight role blocking drafts at the same time."

"Oh... completely amazing. Then the foam that swells out later, what do we do?"

"That, after it all hardens, cut it with a cutter. And fill the gaps under the windows, and the gaps between insulation, tight with urethane foam. A bull wind comes in through one needle hole, so sealing the gaps at the source is the core of insulation."

"Yes, understood! Hyung!"

Dong-myeong bustled glad at learning the skill.

The eye wasn't bad either, and shooting foam a few times he soon caught the feel of controlling the amount and moved skilled.

I stood beside and helped with one arm when sticking insulation high.

Speed stuck to the work enough to make the gap of the half-cast arm colorless.

Working concentrated a long while like that.

"Oh~! My God!!"

At Daisy's freaked voice I startled and looked at the entrance.

"Are you serious!? Are you serious!?"

Hm? What?

© Log1#13yd6

Author's note

Originally Andy Hong was planned to come out again a few chapters later, but I revised the story.