I think about this for a moment. On the paper she gave me is the name of the restaurant. “Aren’t you working a casino angle at the moment?” A few of her recent articles touched on some kind of money-laundering scheme.

She gets a gleam in her eye that I’m well familiar with from working with Seb. A kind of passion that’s hard to fake. “Heard of whale gamblers?” she asks, then continues before I have the chance to respond. “It’s the high rollers from Asia who want to gamble but don’t want to deal with the red tape of bringing money. So they have arrangements with private lenders over there who they pay and then they show up in Vancouver, pick up the cash in restaurant parking lots here—parking lots, for Christsakes—and they’re good to go. Casinos themselves are in on it. They don’t even make them go to the high-value windows. It’s a mess.”

“I’m not sure what to do with all that. I just need to find out how Fang disappeared and where he might have gone.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she says, as though I’m a particularly bad intern she’s been assigned. One with potential but who can’t focus on the real issue. “Australian intelligence is calling this the ‘Vancouver Model’ of money laundering. You don’t need soldiers on the street when money moves like this. I’m saying that these guys are so well-connected and rich that they can go anywhere they want. They’re into all of the respectable institutions in this city, but they’re also into the shady ones, too. Not just money laundering. Human trafficking, human smuggling? Drugs? Et cetera.”

“Human smuggling?”

It sounds like a wild conspiracy.

She can see how doubtful I am. “Yeah, but that’s not how Fang left. He got on a plane, even though he was on bail. It was a failure of the justice system. Remember, this was twenty years ago. But if you’re interested in human smuggling, it’s as simple as forged papers, falsifying immigration documents—that sort of thing. Basically, if you want to get something or someone into or out of the country, there’s an underground infrastructure for that. Just like there’s an underground banking infrastructure.”

“Through those private lenders.”

“Exactly. I could send you some information, if you want. I was never able to find Fang, but I wish you luck. Honestly, you look like you could use some.”