The Ambassador's wife ist-1

by Jake Needham

  He was very tall. His face was deeply tanned and he wore round eyeglasses with what looked like steel frames. His dark brown hair was quite long and brushed straight back against his head in such a way that it made him appear a bit old-fashioned.

  The man looked like he might have been a university professor on vacation. Tay gathered he probably wasn’t.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Cally reached the table first and the man put his arms around her and kissed her on both cheeks. Tay tried not to evaluate the technical aspects of the hug too closely, but he couldn’t help it, nor could he help the conclusion to which he came when he did. It was not at all the way former colleagues hugged, at least not former colleagues whose relationship had been purely professional.

  Then, before Cally could say anything, the man broke off the hug, stepped around her, and offered Tay his hand.

  “Welcome to Pattaya,” he said.

  Tay noticed as they shook that the spot where they stood was quieter than the rest of the bar for some reason and he could hear the man quite clearly. His voice was warm and resonant.

  “Thank you. I’m Samuel Tay.”

  “I know. Inspector Samuel Tay. Singapore CID-SIS.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m John August.”

  “Is that your real-” Tay, embarrassed, abruptly stopped talking when he realized what he was about to ask.

  John August didn’t seem embarrassed at all.

  “Yes, Sam, it’s my real name.” He tilted his head toward Cally.

  “Ask the kid here.”

  Tay didn’t look directly at Cally although he wanted to. It would have been far too clumsy a thing to do. Still, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod.

  They sat down and Cally ordered a beer. Tay asked for a whiskey. He figured he was probably going to need it.

  Cally and August made small talk for a while about people they had apparently known when they were both at the embassy in Bangkok. Tay didn’t even try to follow them. He did notice August seemed to be paying more attention to him than he was to what Cally was saying. He was being sized up. Tay had no doubt of that. August was looking him over as if he was appraising him for auction and thought his provenance somewhat dubious.

  While they were talking some of the girls from the stage came upstairs and mounted the tabletops and they were now dancing very near them. One particularly arresting girl was wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of black leather boots with a card bearing the number 81 pinned to the top of one of them. After a minute or two she jumped up on the table where they were sitting and spun around once to make certain they all got a good look at her. Then she bent backwards with surprising grace, grasped the chrome rail that edged the balcony, and writhed between it and the table in rhythm with the music. The overall effect, Tay thought, was quite remarkable, although perhaps less erotic than gynecological.

  After the girl finished her dance, if that was the appropriate expression for the bodily movements which she had been displaying, she straightened up, bent down and gave August’s cheek a little tweak, then jumped to another table and started in again. Tay shot a quick glance at Cally and saw her face was devoid of all expression.

  August was trying to goad Cally by bringing them here. Tay had no doubt of that. It was none of his business, of course, but he couldn’t help but be proud of Cally. She was giving August absolutely nothing at all for his trouble.

  Cally leaned toward August, but Tay could hear her easily enough.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “What are we doing here, John?”

  August put both hands flat on the table and tilted his head slightly to one side. He smiled thinly. “It’s my place. I thought you might like to see it.”

  “You own this place?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  It was plain August relished his surprise.

  “Everybody needs something to do in his old age, Cally. Some kind of retirement gig.” August raised his hands, palms up, and gestured to the room around him. “This is mine.”

  Cally studied August for a moment, looking at him as if he were a safe to which she had forgotten the combination.

  “You’re not going to get to me, John.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “This won’t do it.”

  “Maybe not, but something will. Everybody can be gotten to, darling. Even you.”

  Cally watched August for a while, nodding slightly for some reason, but saying nothing.

  “Could we go somewhere else?” she finally asked. “What I came to talk to you about is important.”

  “There’s a blow job bar up on Soi Post Office just behind the Pizza Hut. It’s pretty quiet. They don’t have any music and nobody talks much for some reason.”

  “No thanks,” Cally said. “I don’t much like the idea of drinking next to some German with a hard-on.”

  August grinned hugely at that.

  “You haven’t changed a bit, have you, kid?” he said.

  “Sure I have, John. I’ve changed a whole lot.”

  There was an entire conversation going on in front of Tay that made no sense to him at all, although of course he could guess easily enough what it was about. Cally and August had once been lovers. Tay couldn’t tell for how long or why it had ended or who had left whom; nevertheless, he had no doubt it was true, and August was reminding Cally of that in his own way.

  Against all logic, Tay felt a frisson of jealousy. It was ridiculous, he told himself, downright stupid. But still, reason aside, there it was.

  Soon after that August stood up and led them downstairs and outside without comment. Just across the street from Baby Dolls was a large open-fronted bar with wicker chairs, round tables, no music, and no girls. Tay wondered how it stayed open in a place like Pattaya.

  They ordered coffee and August took out a pack of Camels and offered them around. Cally declined, but Tay nodded his head. He had intended to buy a carton of Marlboros at the airport in Singapore, but he was in such a hurry he forgot and then Cally whisked him away in Bangkok before he could buy any there either. Ending up in a place like Pattaya without a couple of boxes of Marlboros in his pocket was a deeply unhappy thing. A Camel was hardly the same, but it was going to have to do.

  “I’m surprised,” August said to Tay as he tipped a cigarette out of the pack for him. “You don’t look like a smoker.”

  “You can’t always judge people by their appearance,” Tay replied. “For example, you don’t look like a pimp.”

  Tay wondered almost immediately why he had said that. Did he think he was standing up for Cally in some way? Or was he just getting sucked into a routine bout of masculine preening, a couple of good old-fashioned rounds of mine-is-bigger-than-yours, cowboy.

  August didn’t seem to hear Tay’s remark or, if he did, to register it. He just lit his cigarette with a wooden match and then flipped the box to Tay who lit his. Soon after, the coffee came. It was unexpectedly good, not at all what Tay expected to get on a Pattaya sidewalk.

  Cally took only a sip or two and then pushed her cup aside. She leaned toward August, resting her elbows on the table and folding her hands under her chin.

  “We need your help, John. You’ve heard about the murder of Susan Rooney, of course.”

  August nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

  “We’re here because she wasn’t the first.”

  August drew on his cigarette. As he exhaled, he took it out of his mouth, turned it around, and inspected the lighted end. What he might have been looking for mystified Tay completely.

  “I didn’t know that,” August said after a moment.

  “Last Tuesday, Elizabeth Munson, the wife of Arthur Munson who is-”

  “I know who Art Munson is,” August interrupted.

  “Elizabeth Munson was found at the Singapore Marriott. She was murdered. It looks very much like both women were killed by the same man.”


  August glanced briefly at Tay, then looked back at Cally.

  “So that’s what he’s doing here,” he said. “I wondered why you were hanging around with a Singapore cop.”

  “But you didn’t want to ask why he was here with me because you thought he was my lover, didn’t you?”

  August seemed to shrug with his eyebrows, but the rest of his body remained motionless.

  And what would be so flipping outlandish about that? Tay wondered to himself.

  He didn’t say anything of the sort out loud, of course. He just smoked his Camel quietly and watched as the conversation between Cally and August continued.

  “I thought Munson’s wife was a suicide,” August said.

  “That was a cover story,” Cally replied. “The police in Singapore put it out when they found the body because they wanted to keep the interest down until they had a firm ID. But it was a homicide. There was never any doubt.”

  August glanced at Tay again and Tay didn’t like the expression on his face one bit. It was plain August was expressing a measure of contempt for the suicide story, and maybe it was more or less justified, but it was none of August’s goddamned business regardless. Tay was about to say something along exactly those lines, but Cally started talking again before he could make up his mind exactly what it was going to be.

  “That doesn’t matter anymore,” Cally said as if she knew exactly what Tay was thinking. “The problem now is that Munson says they may stick to the suicide story.”

  “They’ll never get away with it,” August said.

  “Not now they won’t.”

  Tay finished his cigarette and ground it out in the glass ashtray in the center of the table. He wanted another one, but he wasn’t about to ask August for it.

  “Do you have any idea who you’re looking for yet?” August asked Cally.

  “The FBI in Singapore is working on the theory Munson was the victim of terrorists and I’m sure they’ll have the same theory with respect to Rooney.”

  August snorted.

  “Of course they will,” he said. “These days those dickwads think everything has something to do with terrorism. First they couldn’t find any terrorists and now they can’t find anybody else.”

  Cally didn’t react to that, although Tay had the impression August was expecting her to.

  “Anyway,” August asked Cally when he got tired of waiting, “what do you think?”

  “I think they’re wrong.”

  “That’s usually a pretty safe bet when you’re talking about the FBI, isn’t it?”

  “Don’t be glib, John. You’re good at it, but after a while it gets really boring.”

  August nodded very slowly as if Cally’s remark meant something to him. Tay wondered what it was.

  A young girl wearing a shapeless green dress and yellow flipflops brought them fresh cups of coffee without being asked. When she left, August took out his Camels again. Tay gratefully accepted another, although he tried to keep his face expressionless when he did. He hated the thought that August might see how much he wanted it.

  “You’re here to ask me if I know anything?” August made the comment sound half question and half statement.

  Cally nodded.

  “Okay, so here is your answer. I don’t know anything.”

  “Will you at least look at what I’ve got so far and tell me what you think?”

  “Sure.” August took a long drag on his cigarette. “How do I get the case files?”

  “I brought you the file on Elizabeth Munson. There’s no file yet on Susan Rooney, but I have some crime scene photos for you to look at.”

  August nodded slowly several more times, then smoked in silence for a bit.

  “When are you going to give them to me?” he asked when he was good and ready.

  “You could walk back to the Marriott with us tonight. I have them in my room and I can give them to you now.”

  Tay’s first thought was he hoped that was all Cally was going to give August in her room at the Marriott tonight. Then, as quickly as the thought had come to him, he pushed it away. That was absolutely none of his business. What Cally and August did at the Marriott, or any place else for that matter, was completely up to them, wasn’t it?

  Yes, absolutely. It was. It was their business entirely.

  August seemed to think the possibility over, then tilted his head back and yawned. The yawn looked phony to Tay and he wondered why August had bothered with it. Tay examined the man curiously. He couldn’t decide if he was more than he seemed to be, or less.

  “Okay,” August said after he finished his unnecessary yawn.

  It seemed to Tay he was trying hard to infuse the word with a measure of reluctance.

  “I’ll look at whatever you’ve got tonight.”

  “When do you want-”

  “We can have breakfast tomorrow and I’ll tell you then what I think.”

  “Where?” Cally asked.

  “How about Shenanigan’s? It’s just-”

  Now it was Cally’s turn to interrupt. “I know where it is. Seven o’clock?”

  August gave Cally an amused look.

  “You must still be on Singapore time, kid. We stay up late here. We get up late, too. The place doesn’t even open until nine.”

  “Nine then. We’ll be there.”

  Cally’s use of the plural must have reminded August that Tay was still around because just then he glanced over at him. Tay resisted the impulse to wave. Instead, he smiled as insincerely as he knew how and gave August a big thumbs-up.

  “I’m looking forward to it already,” Tay said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The ringing of Tay’s cell phone pulled him from a deep and dreamless sleep. It was very dark and he couldn’t remember where he was. He sat up and fumbled around until he found the switch for the bedside lamp. When the lamp came on, he blinked and then for a few moments stared in total amazement at the strange room in which he was sleeping.

  Then everything about where he was and what he was doing there came back to him in a rush and he picked up his telephone.

  “Hello.”

  “Is this Samuel Tay?”

  It was a man’s voice, someone with an American accent.

  “Yes,” Tay said. “And by the way, it’s the middle of the goddamned night.”

  He looked around for his wristwatch wondering if it really was the middle of the goddamned night. He couldn’t find the watch, but it felt like the middle of the goddamned night so he thought hewas more than justified in making the claim anyway.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” the man said with a note in his voice that sounded like genuine contrition. “I must have miscalculated the time change.”

  “Look, who-”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Tay. I really am handling this badly. This is Arthur Rosenthal.”

  The name sounded familiar, but Tay couldn’t immediately place it so he said nothing.

  “I’m a lawyer,” the man added helpfully. “In New York.”

  And then Tay realized who it was.

  “I’m sorry to wake you, Mr. Tay,” Rosenthal went on, “but I thought-”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Tay interrupted. “I’m glad you called. How is my mother?”

  The man didn’t respond right away, and all at once, just like that, Tay knew.

  “I’m sorry,” Rosenthal said.

  He said something else after that, too, but Tay didn’t register what it was. It didn’t matter anyway. Rosenthal had delivered his message and that, more or less, was that.

  Tay’s mother was dead.

  That was very much that.

  She had died in her sleep, peacefully, the previous night. At least that was what the lawyer named Rosenthal said. He also said that her husband was making the funeral arrangements.

  “Why would he do that?” Tay asked.

  “I don’t quite understand what you-”

  “I’m her son. I can make the funeral arrangements.”

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nbsp; “We just thought that…well, you’re a long way away, and naturally we assumed…”

  Rosenthal trailed off into silence, apparently not certain what to say next. Tay could understand that. He didn’t know what to say next either.

  Why in God’s name was he starting an argument over who would make his mother’s funeral arrangements? He didn’t have the first idea how to make funeral arrangements in New York, and even if he had he was halfway around the world, it was the middle of the night, and he was over his head in an investigation of the most brutal murder he had ever seen.

  “Never mind,” Tay murmured. “Forget it.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I said, never mind. Her husband can make the funeral arrangements. That’s fine with me.”

  Could they assume then that Tay would be coming to New York for the funeral, the lawyer named Rosenthal asked?

  Of course they could assume he would be coming to New York for the funeral. It was his mother, for Christ’s sake. Or maybe he wouldn’t be. Later he couldn’t remember how he had answered Rosenthal’s question. After that there were some other words, too, but later Tay couldn’t remember what they were either. As soon as he could he thanked the lawyer for calling and hung up.

  Tay shut off the light, pulled the sheet around his neck, and rolled over with his face to the wall.

  Feelings came and went, flickering in and out of his mind like an unreliable signal on a faulty television set. Sadness, abandonment, the loneliness of the forsaken child, regret for time gone by, for things undone and unsaid — and most of all, sorrow for his inability to share or even acknowledge in any real way the pain, perhaps even the humiliation of the way his mother’s life had ended.

  Every thought dislodged feelings deep within Tay and they rained down around him like bombs, setting off little explosions of recognition, remembrance, and regret. When he could take it all no longer, he got up to have a cigarette, but then he remembered he didn’t have any. That left him nothing to do but go back to bed where he laid absolutely still, breathing in and out, counting every breath. It took him quite a while to get back to sleep, but eventually, somehow, he did.