Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  Bennett was Singapore born and bred, coming into this world when the island was still a British Crown Colony, and he could still remember the three moments of great national celebration during his schooldays, when he and all the other children filled the streets with tiny waving flags. Independence in June of 1959, then joining the Federation of Malaysia on September 16, 1963, and then leaving the Federation to declare itself a republic on August 9, 1965. By the time he was grown and ready to join the workforce, the desperate economic conditions of that republic in its early days had been successfully overcome, and Singapore was ready for the explosive growth that quickly made it a financial powerhouse among nations.

  It was that growth which had first attracted Richard Curtis to Singapore, long before the question of the Hong Kong takeover. Thirteen years ago he’d opened the Singapore branch of RC Structural, with Colin Bennett among his first employees. A hands-on man, Curtis had met Bennett several times in the next years, and Bennett was sure Curtis had had a lot to do with his rapid advancement. Curtis had trusted him, and until Belize, Bennett had deserved and repaid that trust.

  Belize. Well, it’s over now. Has a page been turned? Has a new day dawned?

  When the phone rang this afternoon, in his shabby little apartment off China Street, Bennett had been hopelessly studying yet again the help wanted ads in the Straits Times. These days, he had one part-time job as a messenger, and another unloading trucks at a lumber yard, but the work was dispiriting and the pay meager. Still, without references…

  Then the phone rang. Not knowing what to expect, and not expecting very much, he’d answered, and the astonishing voice had said, “Colin, this is Richard Curtis.”

  “Mr. Curtis!” It was like getting a phone call from God, it was that impossible.

  “I’m calling from an airplane,” the astounding Mr. Curtis said, “and I want to make this fast.”

  “Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”

  “I’m wondering if you’re a more controlled person these days.”

  “Oh, I am, sir! Honest to God.”

  “If you do a little job for me, Colin, it might make me think better of you.”

  “Oh, yes, sir. Just tell me what it is, sir.”

  “There’s an annoying fellow from Planetwatch on this plane. Remember Planetwatch?”

  “Oh, do I. Right buffoons.”

  “Worse than buffoons, Colin. They can make trouble. This fellow, Jerry Diedrich, is determined to make trouble. Write that name down.”

  “Yes, sir!” He already had the pen in his hand, hoping to find job offers to circle, and he wrote the name on the margin of the newspaper.

  “When we hang up,” Curtis went on, “call Margaret, at my office there, tell her I said she should fax you whatever photos of Diedrich we have in the files. I’m sure there’s some, from newspaper pieces about us.”

  Bennett had no fax himself, nor much of anything else, but the chemist out on China Street did, and would handle it for him. “Yes, sir.”

  “Diedrich is traveling with two other people, a blonde girl in her twenties and a tall blond man of about thirty.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Our plane is to land at Singapore at six forty-five. Be outside the terminal. Find Diedrich and his friends and follow them, find out where they’re staying. Be sure it’s where they’re staying, so you’ll be able to find them again tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then come to my office at nine-thirty in the morning.”

  “Yes, sir, I will. And…thank you, sir.”

  So here he was, at crowded but efficient Changi, waiting in the little Honda Civic, watching those glass doors over there. In the sky, westward toward the city, the last of the rose daylight receded, and here, so close to the Straits, the air was softening, cooling from the day’s heat and humidity. The Honda’s air-conditioning had given up years ago, so Bennett sat here with the windows open, feeling the day’s sweat gradually rise from his face and the back of his neck, while over there the people kept streaming out, streaming out.

  It was Curtis he saw first, the well-remembered solid bulk of the man, moving forward with that determined focused stride, following a Malay chauffeur laden down with a large suitcase and a thick garment bag, both in soft-looking tan leather. They crossed not far from Bennett, toward the line of limousines, but Curtis never looked away from the direct path of his progress, making a much straighter line than most of the pedestrians around him.

  “A lesser man,” Bennett told himself in admiration, “would look around for me, want to know was I on the job. Not Richard Curtis. Richard Curtis knows what he wants to be done will be done, and that’s all there is to say about it.”

  He looked away from Curtis, reluctantly, to concentrate again on the exit doors. Such a variety of persons came through those doors, a dozen races, speaking a hundred languages. Western clothing predominated, but there were saris and caftans and turbans and kaffiyehs as well, a great colorful sweep of people on the move.

  Diedrich. Yes, that was him, and there was the blonde girl, “A damn pretty blonde girl,” he commented, feeling a brief wince of longing for Brenda, and saw the other one, the tall blond man, bony and angular, and said, “Now what the hell kind of boyo is that one?”

  The three traveled light, the girl with no more than one fat shoulderbag, the two men each with vaguely military-looking shoulderbags and small gym bags. They joined the taxi line, and Bennett shifted into gear as he took note of the number of the cab they climbed into.

  He led them out of the airport. There was only the one road, the one destination, and it seemed to Bennett he’d be less noticeable if he wasn’t behind his quarry the whole way. He had no idea, of course, if they knew about Curtis’s interest in them, but it was better to mind the details, all in all. “Mind the details, boyo,” he told himself, and felt another twinge of memory; the dam in Belize.

  Airport Boulevard ran almost south out of Changi, and flowed smoothly into East Coast Parkway, the big new road built to service the big new airport. Now they curved westward, and the brightly lighted towers of Singapore stood out ahead of them, a crystal island on an island, shimmering with light that at times looked hot, at times looked very cold.

  Bennett slowed, dawdling in the left lane, the evening breeze a noisy but welcome rush through the Honda’s open windows. Two minutes, less, and that taxi rushed by, the three in lively conversation in the back seat.

  “Well, they aren’t suspicious of anything, are they?” Bennett commented, as he pulled in behind the taxi, three vehicles back. “Not worried, not looking around, not checking their back trail. Not concerned about a thing. Now, that makes it easier, doesn’t it?”

  2

  In his world, Richard Curtis moved from one tower to another. Everywhere he went, it seemed, there were plate glass views of sky and land and city and sea, sprinkled with the tiny unimportant dots that were human beings; barely to be noticed.

  This Tuesday morning, Curtis was in his office, with its two walls of huge windows high above Marina Bay, by ten past nine. Margaret, his long-time secretary, an efficient selfless woman who was twenty years older and thirty pounds heavier than when she’d first come to work for him back in Hong Kong, was waiting for him with a variety of briefings and updates on RC projects in half a dozen parts of the world, but they’d barely gotten underway when the internal telephone on Curtis’s desk made its nasal buzz.

  Margaret, standing beside the desk, answered the phone, spoke briefly, then told Curtis, “It’s reception. There’s a Mr. Bennett here, he says he has a nine-thirty appointment with you.”

  “And so he has,” Curtis said.

  He was pleased with himself. Yesterday on the plane, he’d gone methodically through the filing system in his brain and he’d come up with the perfect man to do what needed to be done. Colin Bennett would do anything to prove himself, redeem himself in Curtis’s eye, and Curtis knew it. A blank check, that’s what Colin Bennett was, for Curtis to spend
as he saw fit.

  “Tell them,” he said, “to put him in the small conference room. I won’t be long with him, and then we’ll get back to all this.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, and relayed the order, as Curtis got up from the desk and left the office.

  By the time Curtis got to the small conference room, an interior space without the usual panorama of windowed view, Bennett was already there. He didn’t look good. He was hangdog for such a big man, and shabby. The last few years hadn’t been good to him.

  He was eager, though. He stood next to the free-form teak conference table, and when Curtis entered he fairly leaped to attention: “Good morning, sir! Good to see you after all this time.”

  “And you, Colin.” First, Curtis shut the door, then he extended his hand.

  Clearly, Bennett hadn’t known if he would be considered worthy of a handshake, and was hugely grateful that the answer was yes. He pumped Curtis’s hand, not too long, not too hard, then said, “I’ve got them, you know. I’ve got them right now.”

  “Good man.”

  “They’re in Little India,” Bennett reported, “in a place called Race Course Court Hotel, on Race Course Lane.”

  “What kind of place?”

  “One of these redone ones,” Bennett said. In addition to all the new hotels built in Singapore the last few years, a lot of the older seedier places had been given facelifts, with new plumbing and new wiring and the luxury of air-conditioning. “It’s mostly Americans there, I think. Young, not a lot of money.”

  That sounded right for Planetwatch people. Curtis said, “Would there be phones in the rooms?”

  “Oh, I should think so.”

  “Good. Did they take a suite?”

  “No, two rooms,” Bennett said, and his large flat face wrinkled in confusion. “I thought it would be man woman in one, man in the other, but it isn’t.”

  “They’re fairies,” Curtis said.

  “Oh.” Laughing at himself, Bennett said, “Thick, I am. And that’s a pretty girl to be wasted like that.”

  You have no idea how she would have been wasted, Curtis thought, and said, “I’m going to send you to a shop in Sim Lim, called Vanguard Electronics.”

  Bennett, apparently remembering Curtis’s instruction yesterday to write down Jerry Diedrich’s name, now whipped out a small notepad and pen from his pockets and repeated, “Vanguard, in Sim Lim.”

  “You’ll ask for Charlie.”

  “Charlie,” Bennett echoed, and wrote it down.

  “I’ll have rung him,” Curtis said. “He’ll give you equipment for bugging their phone. The room where the men are, not the other one.”

  “Oh, sure,” Bennett said.

  “I’ll want you to check into this hotel— What is it?”

  “Race Course Court Hotel.”

  “Unattractive name,” Curtis decided. “You’ll check in there for the next few days, try to get a room near them. The phone bug is a radio, and its range isn’t very far.”

  “Will do,” Bennett said.

  “I’ll be paying for the bug,” Curtis told him, “but you should put the hotel and other expenses on your credit card, and I’ll reimburse you.”

  Looking sheepish, Bennett said, “Mr. Curtis, I don’t have any credit cards just at this minute.”

  So things are that bad for you, are they? Curtis said, “We’ll have to give you cash, then.”

  “Wouldn’t it be better, sir, if I used a corporate card?”

  It would not; Curtis didn’t want Bennett connected to RC in any way. He said, “I know what you mean, hotels don’t expect cash, but I wouldn’t want it to get to Diedrich somehow that someone from RC Structural was staying in the same hotel.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” Bennett said.

  “You’ll have a story for them,” Curtis suggested.

  Bennett looked surprised, then smiled. “Well, I’m a local citizen,” he said, “with a Singapore passport, so I’m moving out of my house because the entire building is being fumigated and repainted, and the owner’s reimbursed us all in cash.”

  “That’s very good.”

  Bennett preened under the praise. He’d kill for me, Curtis thought, surprised to realize it was true. And that he might have to.

  Turning away, Curtis said, “Let me just ring Margaret.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Curtis rang Margaret from the phone on the long sideboard, saying, “Have someone bring me five thousand dollars,” meaning the Singapore dollar, worth slightly more than half the U.S. dollar. Hanging up, he said, “Colin, the situation here is this. This fellow Diedrich has a mole somewhere in these offices.”

  Bennett looked both astounded and offended: “How could that be?”

  “Maybe we’ll answer that when we find the mole. And that’s your job.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The reason Diedrich is here,” Curtis explained, “and I know the only reason he’s here, is to find out my future plans, so he can disrupt them. That means he’ll be making contact with the person here who’s been feeding him information.”

  Bennett said, “Excuse me, Mr. Curtis, but are you sure? When I worked for you, sir, everyone I knew was loyal.”

  “A week ago today,” Curtis told him, surprising himself by how much had happened within the last week, “I performed an experiment at an island off the Australian coast. There had been no public announcement, there was no information about that experiment released outside these offices. But Diedrich and the Planetwatch ship were there.”

  “Mm,” Bennett said, and shook his head. “You’re right, someone must have told them. Sir, I honestly can’t think why anybody’d act that way.”

  Curtis shrugged. “As I say, I’m hoping you’ll have the opportunity to ask the fellow in person.”

  “I’m to find him.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  Bennett said, “I’m to move into their hotel, bug their telephone, follow them when they go out. But, sir, I don’t know the people working here, how would I recognize the right fellow? I mean, if I hear a conversation on the phone, all well and good, but what if it’s just a meeting out on the street, or lunch, or whatever? It could be the right man, or it could be the wrong man.”

  “Buy yourself a Polaroid camera,” Curtis told him. “You’re just a tourist, snapping photos, only the photos contain anybody Diedrich talks to.”

  “Right, sir,” Bennett said, smiling. “That’s good.”

  “Bring the pictures here, show them to me or, if I’m not here, Margaret. We’ll know if it’s one of our people.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Curtis,” Bennett said, and there was a single knock at the door.

  Curtis crossed to open the door, and it was one of the clerks, a young man named Hennessy, holding a thick white envelope, saying, “Miss Kembleby told me to bring this round, sir.”

  “Thank you, Hennessy.”

  Handing over the envelope, Hennessy gave Bennett a quick look of curiosity before Curtis closed the door. Curtis gave the envelope to Bennett and said, “If you need more, phone Margaret.”

  “Oh, I won’t need all this much, sir.”

  “Colin,” Curtis said, “I want you to buy yourself some fresh clothes. You know, to look a little more like an affluent tourist.”

  Bennett, of course, understood that Curtis was actually saying, to look less defeated and shabby. His grateful smile was as much for Curtis’s tact as for his money.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said. “From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You can count on me.”

  3

  Jerry couldn’t help his impatience, but it would be folly to call Mark during the day, at work. So they’d have to wait till the evening.

  They were staying at an acceptable hotel in Little India, and they spent the morning familiarizing themselves with the area, which was mostly Hindu temples. The Veeram Kali Amman Temple, dedicated to Kali, the goddess of death and destruction, was the most dramatic, with its garish illustration
of the black-skinned four-armed goddess ripping apart a human being who’d gotten too close. She was flanked by her sons, Ganeshi the elephant god and Murugan the child god, but she didn’t seem to Jerry particularly maternal.

  At lunchtime they chose one of the handy vegetarian Indian restaurants. The meal was very good, in fact delicious, but it finished Jerry off. “No more,” he said. “If you two want to wear yourselves out, go ahead. I’m going back to the hotel and sleep for an hour. Maybe two.” Luther wanted to keep going but Kim sided with Jerry, and they separated outside the restaurant, Luther off to the local subway while Jerry and Kim limped homeward. A shower, Jerry kept thinking. That’s all I want, a shower, and then lie down and wait for Luther to come back.

  The hotel facade had been given a gaudy overlay on the ground floor during a recent remodeling, large rectangular panels of golden plastic around a wide pair of dark-tinted glass doors. As Jerry and Kim neared the doors, Jerry already sensing the coolness within, smelling the clean water of the shower that awaited him, he heard an odd familiar sound, a kind of ripping or crinkling, and thought, I know that sound, and turned to see a man with a Polaroid camera, standing out at the curb, facing the hotel. The picture he’d just taken extruded even now from the camera, still formless and gray.

  Jerry, not liking the idea, said, “Did you take our picture?”

  “No, no,” the man said. “The front of the hotel.” He was a big burly man in a short-sleeved white shirt and pressed tan chinos. Filipino or Samoan, maybe, in his forties.

  Jerry found the man intimidating, mostly because of his size, and he didn’t feel like forcing the issue. Still, privacy mattered for them right now. He said, “You’re sure we aren’t on that.”

  “Well, I don’t know,” the man said, and looked down at the not-yet-developed picture. “It’s just for me,” he said, “the hotel where I’m staying.” The man shrugged. “If you’re in it, I’ll throw it away and take another one.”

  Jerry sighed and decided it was good enough.

  Kim had already gone in, drawn by the hope of air conditioning, and stood waiting for him in the lobby. She said, “What was that all about?”