Tiong sat in silence, studying his folded hands in a speculative way. At least two minutes had crawled away before he raised his head to look at me again. “Why have you told me all of this, Mr. Connell?”
“Because I want to be left alone. Everyone keeps trying to involve me in this thing, and I don’t want to be involved.”
“That is the only reason?”
“Yes.”
“You realize, there is no reward for the recovery of the Burong Chabak.”
“I’m not interested in rewards or jade figurines, or even that a great amount of justice gets done,” I said. “I don’t like Van Rijk and I don’t owe anything to Marla King. The way I see it, one of them killed La Croix—and because he was a friend of sorts, I’d like you to have his killer. That’s the sum total of my motivations.”
“I find it somewhat difficult to believe that a man of your background would turn his back on twenty thousand Straits dollars. That is the sum you said Van Rijk offered you, is it not?”
“That’s it. And it doesn’t interest me in the least.”
“Why not?”
“Money doesn’t mean much to me these days.”
“Money means something to every man.”
“In varying degrees.”
“You would have me believe that a man such as you, a man who smuggled arms and contraband for high prices, a man who once cast money about Singapore as if it were leaves on a pond—you would have me believe that man has no interest in money?”
“Why do you think I gave up my villa on Ponggol Point, and the Eurasian women, and the parties, and the smuggling? Why do you think I live in a Chinatown tenement and work coolie labor on the river?”
“Primarily because your commercial license was revoked, and you were forced to sell what remained of your possessions after the government seizure. It is also my theory that you had a falling out with certain of the men with whom you dealt, that you came into their disfavor.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Yes? What is your version, then?”
“Pete Falco is my version, though I doubt if you’d understand. But you can understand this: I don’t work the black market any more, I don’t fly any more, I don’t play games with the government any more. Those are facts, and because they are you can’t discredit them. It’s also a fact that I don’t give a damn for money, except what I need for food and shelter, and that’s why Van Rijk’s twenty thousand Straits dollars is so much sawdust as far as I’m concerned.”
Tiong’s eyes searched my face and found nothing he wanted. His own features were completely expressionless, but behind the mask lay doubt and suspicion. He was certain, in his one-track Asian cop’s mind, that I had some kind of underlying monetary motive for coming here as I had done. Once a penjahat, always and forever a penjahat—his philosophy was as simple and unyielding as that. And that righteously implacable certainty made him a dangerous man where I was concerned. If I had been trying to con him in any way, I would have been worried; as it was, even when he finally realized that I was being completely open and honest with him, his insular beliefs wouldn’t allow him to apologize to me, or to judge me in any different light. In his eyes I bore the indelible mark of Cain.
He said finally, his mouth thinner than it had been, “Van Rijk is a man who cannot be trusted—a vicious man behind a genteel façade. Perhaps you fear him, Mr. Connell, and rightly so after his alleged attack on you the other evening. Perhaps you thought that your payment for helping him locate the girl would not be the twenty thousand Straits dollars, but a death sentence instead. That would be a good reason for coming to me, would it not? A simple matter of self-preservation.”
“All right, there’s a little of that involved too—but not as much as you’d like to think. Van Rijk could be a snow bunny and I wouldn’t take a cent from him.”
“Self-preservation,” Tiong said again, as if he liked the sound of the words. Then abruptly he leaned forward, and I knew even before he spoke that he had finally succeeded in dredging up an underlying motive for my visit. “If you had murdered the French national in order to obtain the Burong Chabak, and you found the others involved in the theft beginning to apply pressure, what would you do, Mr. Connell?”
“You tell me,” I said thinly.
“You would want to eliminate them,” Tiong answered. “And the simplest method of doing that would be to turn them in to the polis. Then you would be free to dispose of the figurine at your leisure.”
“You’re forgetting that you didn’t connect me or La Croix to the theft of the Burong Chabak until I came into this office and told you he and Marla King had stolen it. Now wouldn’t I be a damned fool to make that connection for you, with the reputation I’ve got, if I’d committed murder to get the thing in the first place?”
“Shrewd men often adopt the guise of a fool.”
“Not in the Lion City.”
“The Burong Chabak is worth the chance.”
“For men like Van Rijk, maybe. Not for me.”
“Ah yes, you no longer care for money or material riches.”
I made an effort to control the anger mounting inside me. “Listen, Tiong, do you want my help in getting Van Rijk and Marla King, or don’t you? I’m tired of your goddam insinuations, and if you keep twisting things around so you can satisfy yourself that I’m up to something, I’ll walk out of here and you can go to hell after Van Rijk and King and the jade figurine before you’ll get any more co-operation out of me.”
He tried to stare me down, failed, and got to his feet and came around his desk to stand over me. I sat still, watching him without blinking; if he thought the psychological advantage of looking down on me was going to get him anything, he was sadly mistaken. “Very well,” he said, “I will assume for the moment that your intentions are as you stated them. We will question Van Rijk and Maria King, but I warn you, Mr. Connell, that if it develops you are more deeply involved in the theft of the Burong Chabak and the death of the French national than you profess, I will personally see to it that you spend the rest of your life with bars separating you from the decent citizens of Singapore.”
I said, “Okay, you’ve made your point.”
“I hope I have.”
“Do you want to work a setup the way I suggested?”
“It would seem to be the best way,” he agreed grudgingly.
“Then I’ll call you when Marla King makes contact.”
“And when do you think that will be?”
“Maybe tonight.”
He put a forefinger to his upper lip. “She denied knowing Van Rijk, is that correct?”
“She said she’d never heard of him.”
“How do you explain that?”
“I can’t explain it. Unless she’s a damned good actress, for reasons of her own.”
“Van Rijk obviously knows her.”
“Obviously.”
“How is that possible?”
“Maybe La Croix double-crossed the girl and, in spite of her assurance to the contrary, made a deal on his own for the sale of the figurine to Van Rijk. If so, La Croix could have mentioned his partner in the theft; that would answer your question. It would also define his part in this business.”
“Do you believe he killed the French national?”
“I like him for it more than Marla King.”
“Then you think he is the one who has the Burong Chabak?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“The girl, then, in spite of her denials?”
“It could be. But she seemed to think I’ve got it.”
“And Van Rijk did not.”
“No. According to him, King has it and she killed La Croix to get it. That’s the reason why he tried to get me to sell her out to him—or so he wanted me to think.”
“It is also possible that neither of them has it,” Tiong said.
“Meaning me again?”
He shrugged.
I said, “There’s another angle too: La
Croix might have hidden the figurine somewhere before he was killed, and his killer was unable to determine the location. If that’s the case, you’re going to play hell finding it.”
“The Museum of Oriental Art would not like that,” Tiong said. “And neither would I.”
“It isn’t my problem either way.”
“That remains to be seen.”
“God damn it, Tiong—”
He turned away from me and walked behind his desk again. “Is there anything else you wish to tell me?”
“I don’t know anything else.”
“Very well. I will expect to hear from you again shortly. Selamat jalan, Mr. Connell.”
I stood up. The muscles in my neck and shoulders were bunched tightly with anger. Tiong was sitting now, peering at the papers in my file; he had dismissed me, and I was simply no longer there. I wanted to say something to him, but I was afraid that if I opened my mouth I would make things worse than they already were. I turned and went to the door and through it, slamming it shut behind me just hard enough to rattle the pebbled glass.
When I came out of the building, into the hot bright glare of morning, I paused to light a cigarette. The meeting with Tiong had not gone at all as I expected, and I wondered if I hadn’t made a mistake in coming to the Central Police Station today. But what choice had I had, really? I wanted nothing to do with Van Rijk, or Maria King, or the Burong Chabak, and since each of them had kept insistently touching my life the past couple of days, my only alternative had been to dump the whole thing in Tiong’s lap.
It would work out all right, I thought, if he forced a confession out of Van Rijk or Marla King and recovered the jade figurine intact. He would have no recourse, then, but to let me off the hook. If he didn’t get a confession—and more importantly, if he failed to recover the Burong Chabak —I had the uneasy feeling that he would focus his attention entirely on me, that I would end up the scapegoat. I was marked lousy in his book, and there was just nothing I could do to alter his fixed opinion.
The irony of it all was bitter: I had gotten myself into what could be the deepest trouble of my life simply by trying to stay out of trouble, by trying to do the right thing.
Chapter Ten
THE TELEPHONE began ringing immediately after I let myself into my flat a few minutes past three that afternoon.
I answered it on the third ring, and it was Tina Kellogg. She said in the eager, faintly petulant voice of a child, “Oh, Dan, I’ve been trying to reach you all day! Why did you walk out on me last night?”
“There was nothing more to say.”
“It was still a cruel thing to do.”
“Life is a cruel thing, little girl.”
“Dan, please, won’t you reconsider about helping me with my article? It means so much to me . . .”
“I told you what I thought about your article,” I said. “Take my advice and forget it. Before you get hurt.”
“I can’t, I just can’t. Dan . . . won’t you come by and let me talk to you one more time? Please?”
“No,” I said. “Goodbye, Tina.”
I put the handset down and went over to open the shutters and let some air into the stifling room. Then I switched on the ceiling fan and got an iced Anchor Beer out of the cooler and sprawled out with it on the settee. I was damned tired. The cargo for offloading at Harry Rutledge’s godown today had been heavy containers of raw pepper from Sarawak in North Borneo, and the six hours I had spent jockeying them in the broiling sun had left me feeling drained and dehydrated.
The call from Tina Kellogg had not helped matters any. She was a nice kid, if far too naïve when it came to simple evil and the men who embraced it. I could have gone to see her again, as she’d asked, and tried to lay it all out bright and clear for her to understand; and if it had seemed necessary I might have done so. But as it was I didn’t think she could get very deeply involved on her own, without contacts, and after a while the idea would seem less appealing to her. She would forget about it, in favor of the kind of innocuous articles I had suggested, and she would forget about me too. That was just as it should be.
I drank my beer, listening to the street sounds filtering in through the open window, the languid rotations of the fan overhead. I had hoped that Marla King would make some kind of effort to contact me at the godown today, but there had been no visitors and no telephone calls. The ramifications if she failed to get in touch with me at all were not pleasant. Van Rijk could conceivably locate her without my help, and if that happened I would be able to deliver neither one to Tiong. Too, there was the possibility that she would decide I didn’t have the figurine—or, if she had had it all along, that I couldn’t help her. In that eventuality, I could deliver only Van Rijk by setting up a dummy meeting, and that seemed rather pointless since Tiong undoubtedly knew where to find Van Rijk, as a local merchant, if he wanted him badly enough. My position with Tiong and the Singapore police, in any of those instances, could only be worsened.
I went into the half-bath, stripped, and stood under the tepid shower for several minutes. Then I lay down under the mosquito netting on the bed and tried to sleep. It was useless. The beer didn’t seem to co-exist particularly well with the shashlik and rice I had eaten before returning home, and there was a heavy sourness in the pit of my stomach. The omnipresent heat did nothing to alleviate that or the tautness of my nerves.
After a while I got up again and put on a pair of shorts and padded out into the front room to smoke a couple of cigarettes. In one of the neighboring flats a Chinese woman screamed at her husband in shrill Cantonese, and in another someone was playing a tinny melody on a Chinese flute. Outside, Punyang Street was in its usual state of bedlam—voices raised into a jumbled cacophony, like a recorded tape played two speeds too fast. The intermittent explosions of firecrackers added a discordant accompaniment. Every day is Chinese New Year in this section of Singapore.
I looked at my watch: 4:05.
And the telephone rang.
I crossed to it, thinking that it had to be either Tina Kellogg calling to plead for my help again, or Van Rijk checking in early, or Marla King. I seldom received social calls. I had no real reason for keeping a phone at all, except that I had always had one and long-standing habits of convenience are hard to break; too, a telephone is considered a luxury in Southeast Asia, and it was one of the few luxuries I could afford or maintained a degree of pleasure in having.
I caught up the receiver, said, “Connell.”
“This is Maria King.”
I released a soft breath. “It’s about time you decided to get in touch, lady.”
“I wanted to give you time to get the figurine. Do you have it now?” Her voice was breathless, excited, nervous—and yet she still sounded vaguely uncertain of herself.
I said, “It’s where I can put my hands on it.”
“How soon?”
“Tonight.”
“Good! How long will it take you?”
“A few hours.”
“Can’t you make it sooner?”
“No,” I said.
“Well, what time then?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“All right.”
“When do we see the buyer?”
“As soon as we can figure a way to get the figurine out of Singapore. We’ll have to smuggle it into Thailand.”
“I can handle that part of it.”
“Just remember—the three of us go together.”
“You, me, and the Burong Chabak.”
“That’s the deal, Connell.”
“Fair enough. Where do I meet you tonight?”
“I’ll be at Number Seven Tampines Road. Do you know where that is?”
“Out by the New World Amusement Park, isn’t it?”
“That’s right—just off Lavender Street.”
“I’ll find it.”
“Don’t be late, Connell,” she said, and the line clicked and began to buzz emptily in my ear.
I called t
he Central Police Station immediately and asked for Tiong. He was still there. When he came on the line I said, “I just heard from Marla King. She’s expecting me at nine tonight, at Number Seven Tampines Road. I don’t know if that’s a private residence or not—I didn’t want to press her—but judging from the area it probably is.”
“What else did she say?”
“Not much. I’m supposed to be bringing the Burong Chabak, and we’re to work up a way to get it—and us—out of Singapore and into Thailand to the buyer.”
“She apparently does not have the figurine, then.”
“That’s how it would seem.”
“Has Van Rijk called you as yet?”
“No. He said seven o’clock.”
“You will tell him nothing more than the time of the meeting.”
“Of course not.”
“Very well. Please present yourself at my office at nine tomorrow morning. We will talk further at that time.”
“I’ll be there. But just remember, Tiong: I’m co-operating one hundred percent on this.”
“For your sake, Mr. Connell, I hope you are.”
I dropped the receiver into its cradle. The room had grown darker, muggier, and I went over to the window to look at the sky. The near horizon was thickly restless with black-veined clouds. The smell of heavy rain permeated the air, and thunder rumbled faintly in the distance like angry native drums.
I returned to the bedroom and put on a fresh change of clothes and went out for a walk. I had better than two and a half hours until Van Rijk’s call, and it would be considerably cooler in the streets following the impending thundershower. The rains came down in a cascade of water for a while, as if the sky had been cracked open like an egg, and then abated as quickly as they had come; the heavens would be a hot and shimmering blue again within an hour, and the sidewalks and streets would dry like a shirt under a steam press twenty minutes after the sun reappeared.
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