The Ambassador's wife ist-1

by Jake Needham

  DeSouza snickered.

  “Let’s see your back,” he said.

  Tay shifted his feet and without taking his eyes off DeSouza lifted his shirt and twisted his upper body enough for DeSouza to see his back.

  DeSouza’s gaze went straight to Tay’s.38.

  “Lose the gun,” he said.

  “The gun stays where it is. Take the deal or leave it. But the gun stays where it is.”

  Tay started to rebutton his shirt.

  “Okay,” DeSouza said, “then drop your trousers.”

  Tay sighed heavily, but he removed his revolver from its holster and held it loosely in his right hand. He unbuckled his belt, unzipped, and let his trousers drop around his ankles.

  “Huh,” DeSouza grunted. “Boxer shorts. I should have fucking guessed.”

  “Satisfied?”

  DeSouza didn’t say anything, but after a moment he nodded.

  Tay pulled his trousers up, returned the.38 to its holster, and put his shirt back on. When he sat down again, he took out another Marlboro and put it between his lips, but he didn’t light it.

  There was a half-smile on DeSouza’s face now and Tay knew something had changed. He didn’t know what it was and he couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad, but DeSouza was doing nothing to conceal it. It seemed as if he was looking forward to whatever was coming next.

  “Do you have any idea how much I hate you, Tay?”

  “You don’t know me well enough to hate me.”

  “I know plenty of self-righteous little pricks just like you and I hate the whole fucking bunch of you.”

  Tay couldn’t see exactly where this was taking them, but he was willing to let DeSouza talk. As little as he had going for him right then, it certainly couldn’t do any harm.

  “Guys like me…” DeSouza tapped himself on the chest with his forefinger, “come midnight, we’re everybody’s fucking daddy.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I do what has to be done, pal. I do whatever is needed to protect whatever’s worth protecting. Guys like you don’t have any idea what it means to put everything on the line. You don’t have any idea how it feels to be out on the edge.”

  DeSouza stared at Tay as if he expected him to say something, perhaps to register a protest of some sort. But Tay just watched DeSouza without saying anything at all.

  “I think you’re pathetic,” DeSouza said.

  Tay wished he could argue with DeSouza’s conclusion, but he didn’t know exactly how. In some ways, he even thought DeSouza had him pretty much dead to rights.

  “Let me give you some advice, Tay. If you’re considering a second career as a blackmailer, better hang onto your day job. I don’t know if you really did set me up or not, but if you did I owe you one, pal. She was the best fuck I’ve had in a long time. And as far as your pictures go, I’ll take a set of glossies in 8x10s for my memory book. Hell, why don’t you make it two sets? We only live once, huh?”

  DeSouza eyed Tay and unveiled a vicious grin.

  Tay wondered if that was just a show of bravado on DeSouza’s part. He told himself it probably was, but DeSouza was the very picture of a man who sincerely didn’t give a shit. Actually, since Tay didn’t actually have any pictures, it occurred to Tay that whether DeSouza did or didn’t give a shit was more or less beside the point anyway, wasn’t it?

  Tay didn’t say anything else. He didn’t know what else he could say. He had rolled the dice and he had crapped out. If he started talking again now, he would probably just sound desperate, which made sense since he was desperate.

  “But hey, don’t give up, Tay. Even if you’re a fuckwit, I’m going to make this real easy for you. You listening?”

  Tay just looked at DeSouza and said nothing.

  “I’m going to tell you who killed Munson and who killed Rooney, and I’m even going to tell you exactly what happened to your girlfriend. Do you know why I’m going to tell you all that?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t think it has anything to do with your stupid pictures, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Well, good for you, asshole. At least you’ve got that one right. Your pictures don’t mean a damn thing to me.”

  Tay watched as DeSouza’s face grew taut with contempt.

  “I’m going to tell you for one reason, Tay. Because it will cut your fucking heart out.”

  Tay didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean, but the look in DeSouza’s eyes frightened him. He was on a steamer sailing into the River Styx and there was a madman at the helm.

  Abruptly, DeSouza stood up. He poured more whiskey into his glass, then went to the window and stood staring out into the darkness. Tay started to light the Marlboro in his mouth and was surprised to discover he was sick of smoking. His mouth tasted filthy. Was it from all the cigarettes? Maybe, but perhaps it was just from sharing the same air DeSouza was breathing. Tay kept the cigarette in his mouth, but he didn’t light it.

  DeSouza continued silently staring out the window for a long while, although at God only knew what. Tay couldn’t see a thing out there.

  All at once, DeSouza’s voice dropped to a husky, confidential whisper.

  “I confess,” he said.

  Tay wasn’t sure he had heard right. “What?” he asked.

  “I said I confess.”

  “Confess to what?”

  “To everything.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  DeSouza turned away from the window and looked at Tay.

  “I killed Elizabeth Munson.”

  Tay had half expected it, of course, even if he couldn’t say exactly why he had. Still, the suddenness of DeSouza’s confession left him stunned. He felt like a man who had been pitched from the safety of a boat into a dark, cold ocean. He fought to stay afloat, but felt himself sinking.

  DeSouza never took his eyes off Tay and his expression never changed.

  “I killed Susan Rooney,” he said.

  Tay sank deeper and deeper. He could feel the icy waters closing over his head.

  “I killed Cally Parks.”

  Abruptly, DeSouza went back to his chair and sat down. He took a long drink and barked a laugh.

  “I killed them all, and I enjoyed it.”

  Tay couldn’t say anything for a moment. He could hardly even breathe.

  “But you’re a policeman,” he finally stammered. “How could…” he trailed off into silence. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured.

  DeSouza sloshed the whiskey around in his glass. “So what the fuck are you going to do about it, little man? Arrest me?”

  DeSouza put down his glass and held out his hands, his wrists together.

  “You going to hook me up? Read me my rights? I’m not sure what rights I have in Singapore. I probably don’t have any. But, hey, let’s not worry about it. I waive them all. So come on.”

  He shook his wrists at Tay, but Tay didn’t move.

  “No? Well…” DeSouza leaned back. “That’s probably a smart call, Tay. Nobody’s going to believe you without a scrap of evidence, and you and I both know you don’t have any. Then, too, with the kind of friends I’ve got, it wouldn’t matter if somebody did believe you. I could fuck a donkey on the fifty yard line of the Super Bowl and nobody would ever admit they’d seen a thing.”

  Tay watched DeSouza carefully, but he kept silent.

  “So there you have it. I confess and you’re just going to have to sit there and do nothing about it. Just like I said, cuts your fucking heart out, doesn’t it?”

  “I didn’t know people like you exist,” Tay said.

  “You know people like me exist,” DeSouza snorted. “You probably even wish you were a little like me.”

  “You’re mad.”

  “No more than you, little man. Just in a different sort of way.”

  Tay didn’t know what to say to that. He reached automatically for his matches and lit the cigarette in his mouth, cupping the match with his free hand so D
eSouza wouldn’t see the flame shaking.

  “Why did you kill them?” Tay heard a voice asking, a voice much like his own but yet not really his own.

  “What do you care?”

  “I’m a police officer. I care about the truth.”

  As soon as he had spoken the words, Tay wanted them back. They sounded unbelievably detached, even priggish. What kind of a man was he? A man confesses to Tay that he murdered three women and what does he say to the man? I care about the truth.

  Tay felt like he should be lunging across the room and smashing DeSouza’s fucking face in. Instead, he was just sitting there murmuring platitudes. A world already drowning in platitudes, and he has to add one more. I care about the truth. Maybe DeSouza was right. Maybe he was pathetic.

  Tay cleared his throat. “Why did you kill them?” he repeated doggedly.

  DeSouza tossed off a little shrug and his eyes drifted away. It was almost as if he had gone somewhere else for a moment, but then he returned and resumed his story.

  “I went to the Marriott to fuck her, of course,” DeSouza said. “I had access to a security card and we used it to get in.

  Tay waited.

  “But she…” DeSouza shrugged. “I got a pair of plastic cuffs on her and held her down on the bed. One shot was all it took. She deserved it. She was a slut and she deserved it.”

  “But why beat her after she was dead?”

  DeSouza didn’t say anything. Maybe he didn’t know what to say.

  “Why did you pose her body that way?”

  Now Tay thought DeSouza looked distinctly uncomfortable. Killing the women apparently didn’t bother him at all, but he appeared embarrassed at everything else he had done.

  “She deserved it,” DeSouza said again after a while. “She deserved more than that.”

  “Where did you get the flashlight?”

  “It was in the table by the bed.”

  There was a bling somewhere in the back of Tay’s mind. He wasn’t sure what had caused it, but in the silence it was almost audible.

  “And then after you posed her you stripped the room?”

  “I put her clothes into a laundry bag. Put the sheets and towels into another. Who notices a man leaving a hotel with two laundry bags?”

  “What about Rooney?” Tay asked.

  “The Marriott was too closely connected to the embassy. I needed to create a diversion or eventually somebody would start looking at the people in the embassy who had access to our safe houses in Singapore. I couldn’t be sure how that was going to work out.”

  “You mean you killed Rooney just for a diversion, just to throw us off?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why her?”

  “She was easy enough to set up. All I had to do was call her and say I had confidential information about the Munson killing. I needed somebody who was outside Singapore and somebody more important than Munson to take the heat off.” DeSouza hesitated. “I never liked the bitch anyway. Fucking high-and-mighty dyke.”

  “You were the anonymous caller. You tipped off the Thai cops yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. I wanted the body discovered quickly. I wasn’t going to just wait around until it started to stink.”

  Tay didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. After a few moments DeSouza began talking again anyway.

  “I didn’t know exactly how it would all play. Maybe the terrorism thing, maybe a crazed sex killer preying on American women. Who knew? Either way, a dead ambassador in Bangkok would take the heat off a dead ambassador’s wife in Singapore. All the attention would shift to Rooney’s murder and Elizabeth Munson would be yesterday’s news. That was what mattered.”

  “And that was why the two crime scenes were so much alike.”

  “They were identical,” DeSouza snapped. “That was the whole idea.”

  Bling. There was that sound in the back of Tay’s mind again.

  “You shot Rooney and then beat her just for the effect?” Tay asked. “You displayed her body that way just to make us think the two crimes were done by the same person?”

  “They were done by the same person. I just wanted to make sure you knew it.”

  “But why kill Cally?”

  “She’d worked some of it out. I wasn’t sure how much she knew, but she was getting too close. I couldn’t let her get any closer.”

  “So you set her up. You lured her into a raid to take down a phony suspect and you killed her. Is that what happened?”

  “Dadi wasn’t a phony suspect. Don’t you read the papers, Tay? Just before he died he confessed to killing both Munson and Rooney because of his undying hatred for the Great Satan and the sexual perversion of women.”

  “Answer the fucking question. Did you kill Cally?”

  “Yeah, I did. I shot her. Right in the head.”

  DeSouza lifted his free hand. He made a little gun out of his thumb and forefinger and placed his finger against the center of his forehead.

  “Bang,” he said, dropping the hammer.

  A roaring sound filled Tay’s ears. He felt bile rising in his throat. All at once he was on his feet with his.38 out and pointed at DeSouza.

  “What are you going to do with that little pop gun, Tay? You going to shoot me?”

  Tay could hear the blood rushing in his head.

  “You’re bluffing again. And it’s fucking pitiful.” DeSouza shook his head in disgust. “You’re not going to shoot me.”

  “No, probably not.”

  Then Tay lifted the muzzle of the revolver and gestured with it to the doorway behind DeSouza.

  “On the other hand, he might.”

  DeSouza didn’t want to look over his shoulder; he didn’t want to give Tay the satisfaction. But DeSouza saw the half-smile on Tay’s face and his curiosity got the better of him. He took a quick glance anyway.

  John August stood in the doorway to DeSouza’s study. He had a revolver dangling from each hand. A very large one in his right and a very small one in his left.

  “Did you hear all that, John?” Tay asked.

  “Every word of it.”

  DeSouza turned his head very slowly from August to Tay.

  “So what’s this all about?” he asked. “You two lovers going to beat me up or something?”

  “Yeah,” Tay said. “Or something.”

  Tay returned his.38 to its holster. Without another glance at DeSouza, he stood up and walked out of the room.

  August stepped aside as Tay passed through the doorway, then he reached out and closed the door behind him.

  TAY sat outside in his car for a while without starting the engine. He heard no sound. The air was soggy and heavy with moisture. It muffled the earth like a snowfall.

  He looked up and down the street for the car in which August had come, or perhaps a motorcycle, but he saw nothing at all. He had looked around when he drove up, too, and there was nothing then either. Why should that surprise him? Nothing else about August surprised him anymore, so why that of all things?

  In a few minutes — or it could have been longer, Tay had no idea how long he sat there — it started to rain. The drops were big and fat and they thudded against the car like acorns falling from a tree. Tay looked at DeSouza’s house again. He thought he saw a shadow flit across the light in the front portico, but perhaps it was only the rain.

  He had been a policeman all his adult life. He had served justice all his adult life. That was what he did. That was all he had ever done.

  Was he serving justice now, or was he confusing justice and revenge? He didn’t know. He really didn’t.

  God help him, he wasn’t even certain anymore there was all that much difference.

  Tay started the car and drove away.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Tony DeSouza’s suicide didn’t rate a lot of space in the Straits Times, only a couple of inches below the fold in the Case File column, which ironically was exactly where Elizabeth Munson’s death had been reported. According
to the paper, DeSouza’s maid had found him dead when she came to work in the morning. He was lying on the floor next to his pool table, shot once in the head. The gun that killed DeSouza was a.22.

  Tay doubted anyone else had noticed the coincidence since it wasn’t commonly known that Elizabeth Munson, Susan Rooney, and Cally Parks had all been shot once in the head with a.22 as well, but it didn’t really matter. The gun was next to DeSouza’s hand and there was no sign of forced entry into the house. A determination of suicide was never in any doubt.

  There were a few days after that when Tay was seized by uncertainty, but not many. He occasionally thought about whether what he had done was right, but not often. Mostly he wondered what would come next, and when it would come. Tay would be patient. It was one of the things he did best. He would be patient.

  NEARLY three weeks after DeSouza’s death, early on a Saturday morning, Tay found the note pushed under his front door.

  It was a single piece of white paper, folded over once. When Tay went downstairs in the morning to make some coffee and saw the paper on the polished hardwood of the entry foyer, he had no doubt at all what it was. Picking it up, he carried it into the kitchen without unfolding it and put it on the counter.

  He scooped some beans from the coffee jar and put them in the grinder. Pouring the freshly ground coffee into a filter and filling the reservoir of the coffee maker with water, he flicked the switch and walked over to the window while he waited for the coffee to brew.

  It was a nice morning, the sky clear and perfectly blue. Maybe it wouldn’t rain today, he thought to himself, or was that entirely too much to hope for? There were no birds on his garden wall this morning. He wondered if that meant anything.

  The coffee maker made little spitting sounds when it was done. Tay turned away from the window and filled a heavy, white mug.Then he picked up the folded sheet and took it with his coffee to the small, round table by the window. He sat down, placed the folded paper on the table, and took a long sip from the mug. It was so good he took another. Then he put down his coffee and drew the paper toward him. He unfolded it, spread it flat, and read the two lines laser-printed on it:

  Singapore Airlines to London at 1240.