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Wai Wan had changed his story from the one he’d given at an earlier hearing. In his previous testimony, he’d left the owner out of the story. It was his way to protect her, and in return she’d promised to stand by him and the others, paying w
hat was necessary to get them released.
She had lied about her side of the bargain. She’d never intended to help him or the others. When he’d found out that he’d been set up as the fall guy, his world had collapsed. He’d wanted nothing more than to get his revenge against the teak wood owner who had double-crossed him. Now he was discovering that not only had he been used, but it was too late to switch stories. The shock was that the court wasn’t interested in the truth but only the discrepancy between his two versions of the story.
The clerk at the typewriter typed as fast as a World War I machine gun, every word like a bullet mowing down an advancing infantryman. Wai Wan got emotional, saying he’d gone through a number of toll-gates without a problem. It was after the ninth toll-gate that the police motorcycle had followed the truck and pulled him over. No one cared that the officials at the other toll-gates must have been paid off. That made the guards in the back finger their amulets and snicker. The case wasn’t about the officials who’d taken a backhand payment; the case was about Wai Wan driving a truck filled with teak wood without a transportation permit. Other people might have been dirty, but that had no bearing on the case.
He told the judge that the owner had promised to get him released if he didn’t mention her name. This was why, for this hearing, he had decided to have his own lawyer rather than the one hired by the teak owner.
“I was hired to drive a job. I didn’t do anything wrong. I drove a truck. That isn’t a crime, is it?”
He’d worked for the same lady before. She would call him from time to time with a job. There had never been a problem. He drove the truck. She paid him for his services. What was in the truck wasn’t his business.
Then it was the Crown counsel’s turn to cross-examine Wai Wan.
“How long have you been a driver?”
“Eight years.”
“What kind of license do you have? Does it permit you to drive a heavy vehicle?”
“Yes, I have a license to drive a heavy truck.”
The clerk called time out, pulled out the pages separated with a sheet of carbon paper, peeled them apart, took out the carbon paper and slipped it between two fresh sheets of paper and back into the carriage. The maneuver was done in one sweeping motion. He adjusted the paper and nodded that he was ready, and the cross-examination resumed.
“Your truck was filled with teak.”
“The owner told me she’d done the paperwork. I believed her.”
“Do you have any proof of what she said?”
“Proof?”
“Evidence?”
A soft hiss of a no issued from his pressed lips.
“When you were arrested, did you communicate with the owner?”
He nodded. “Yes, over the phone.”
“What did she say?”
“That she would come and get me released.”
“And did she come?”
“No. The forestry official held me in a cell. He interrogated me, and I told them what the owner told me to say.”
“Do you have any evidence of what the owner told you to say?”
Wai Wan slowly bowed his head, defeated, boiling with anger, trying not to catch the eye of his sister in the doorway. He wouldn’t want her to see him in utter submission, helpless as a whipped slave.
One of the cops leaned forward on a wooden railing. One hand rested on his chin, and with the other hand he worked a key to the handcuffs to pick at the edge of the Crown counsel’s table, slowly peeling it back as if he were unwrapping a gift.
“Before, you told the court you said that you acted alone. Now you say someone instructed you by phone what to say to the forestry officials. How can the court believe this testimony?”
When a man has been betrayed, his face shows a peculiar pain of shock, disbelief and hatred. Wai Wan had been sucker-punched. The Crown counsel continued to punch, but there was never any contest, as in a prize fight when the fight has gone out of the opponent and it’s only a matter of time before he collapses.
