The Scottish Banker of Surabaya - By Ian Hamilton Page 0,5
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“Theresa says she can’t talk to us inside the casino. Employees aren’t allowed to mingle with customers,” Jennie said. “There’s a Tim Hortons coffee shop on Highway 12 just before Rama Road. Why don’t we go there?”
Ava tried to contain herself. If Theresa knew they couldn’t talk in the casino, why ask them to meet her there? Why not go directly to Tim Hortons? And second, her mother knew she didn’t like Tim Hortons; her choosing it was her way of making Ava pay for being grumpy in the parking lot.
“I’m so sorry to put you to this trouble,” Theresa Ng said.
Ava looked back at Theresa’s round face: pale lips; no makeup; hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, highlighting eyes that were nervous and timid. The woman smiled, flashing beautiful white teeth, and her right hand tugged at the bottom of her red silk blouse.
“No problem,” Ava said.
Tim Hortons was peculiarly Canadian, like curling and like donning shorts as soon as the spring temperature reached ten degrees Celsius. The country was in love with the chain, a fact reinforced when her Audi A6 came within sight of the store on Highway 12. There was a line outside the drive-through window that snaked almost all the way to the main road. This was hardly a phenomenon; it was probably happening at every Tim Hortons in Canada at that very minute.
She found a space in the crowded parking lot. She got out of the car and walked quickly to the coffee shop, her mother and Theresa trailing behind, deep in conversation. Ava could hear Theresa apologizing to Jennie for putting her to all this trouble. The apologies were misdirected, Ava thought, but they did seem sincere, and the woman seemed nice enough.
Theresa insisted on paying for Ava’s bottle of water and Jennie’s tea. They found a table at the back of the shop and wiped off doughnut crumbs and splashes of coffee with a napkin.
“Theresa is Vietnamese Chinese; her mother is originally from Shanghai,” Jennie began. “They came here in the 1970s when the communists invaded the south — she, her mother, and three sisters.”
“My two brothers came later,” Theresa said.
Jennie said, “They are all Catholic, like us.”
Catholic and part Shanghainese. Little wonder my mother wants to help, Ava thought.
“We all live in Mississauga, on the same street,” Theresa said. “At first we lived in the same house, my sisters, my mother, and me. We all got jobs, paid off the house, and then bought another one, which my older sister moved into with her new husband. When we got that one paid off, we bought another, and so on and so on. We now own six houses on the street. Everyone is close by, so it’s perfect.”
“You’ve done very well.”
Theresa lowered her head, worry lines bracketing her mouth. “We were doing a lot better.”
Ava waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Jennie tapped the back of Theresa’s hand. “Don’t be embarrassed,” she said.
“Yes, tell me what happened, and take all the time you want,” Ava said.
Theresa looked up, anger showing through the onset of tears. “My family invested money in a fund run by a guy who was a friend of a friend of my oldest brother. It was supposed to be safe, with returns of around ten percent a year.”
The word Ponzi flashed into Ava’s head.
“For the first two years the cheques came to us like clockwork every month, so we put more and more of our money into it,” Theresa continued. “Then the trouble began, and it all happened so fast. The fund was late with a payment one month — maybe by two weeks — and people were starting to panic. But then the payment came in and we got a note saying there had been a small technical problem at the bank. But the next month it was late again. My brother went down to the company’s office to complain and found the office closed. That was it. Gone. Finished.”
“What was the name of the company?”
“Emerald Lion.”
Ava searched her memory and came up blank. “I don’t remember reading or hearing anything about this.”
“It was mentioned in Sing Tao and the other Chinese newspapers,” Jennie said.
“And the Vietnamese ones,” Theresa added.
“When?”
“About six months ago now.”
“And what did the papers have to say?”
“What do you mean?”
“How was it reported? As a scam?”
“They sort of hinted at that, although they were being careful because none of them had talked to Lam Van Dinh.”