Umbrella Man (9786167611204)

by Needham, Jake

  The Caucasian man looked back at Tay, but he didn’t introduce himself. It was Goh who handled that.

  “This is Vincent Ferrero,” he said. “Vince is with the American Embassy.”

  In Tay’s experience, with the American Embassy was the euphemism normally used to identify the local CIA guys.

  Wonderful. An ISD man and an American spook waiting for him in his office. And the afternoon was young. There was still a chance it might get even worse, wasn’t there?

  So what the hell was going on here? He’d had a perfectly nice lunch, was looking forward to an afternoon of relaxed contemplation about the state of the Woodlands case that would no doubt lead him straight to a blinding insight of some kind, and…well, he hadn’t figured on Phil and Vince here ambushing him in his own office.

  Tay still hadn’t spoken a word since he had walked into his office and found the two men waiting on him. That policy seemed to be working out just fine, so he leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and awaited developments.

  ***

  “What progress have you made in the investigation of the dead man found at the Woodlands?” the ISD man asked.

  The question took Tay by surprise, but he tried not to show it. Instead, he consulted a spot on the wall just over his visitors’ heads and tried his best to look reflective.

  “I thought you guys would be busy enough with the bombings,” Tay said after a moment or two. “Why are you interested in that case?”

  “I don’t really need to tell you that, Inspector.”

  “No, that’s true, you don’t. But — and this is just a guess — I’m thinking you’d probably get a more helpful answer to your question if you answered mine first.”

  Neither of Tay’s visitors had anything to say to that, so Tay gave it a moment and went on.

  “Let’s try it again, shall we? Why is ISD interested in a simple homicide, particularly one in which the victim is a foreigner?”

  Goh looked annoyed, which was good because Tay really wanted to annoy him. Annoying people was about the only real fun he had anymore, and having the opportunity to annoy an ISD man scored bonus points. Tay flicked his eyes at the muscle and saw that Ferrero was expressionless. It would be fun to think of some way to annoy him, too.

  Goh cleared his throat. “Your investigation may be connected to another investigation we’re running.”

  Since there was only one investigation in Singapore that anyone gave a damn about right at that moment, Tay had no trouble now working out where this was going.

  “My case has something to do with the bombings?”

  “I can’t answer that.”

  Which, of course, meant Yes, it has something to do with to the bombings.

  Christ, maybe he hadn’t been hallucinating. His mother’s ghost had told him there was a connection between the dead man at the Woodlands and the bombings. Or at least what he had imagined his mother’s ghost had told him. He had to keep in mind here that there was no such thing as a ghost.

  “My guy was a Caucasian. How could he possibly be connected to your investigation of the bombings? Everyone seems to think that was a JI operation.”

  Neither Goh nor Ferrero said a word. They both acted as if Tay hadn’t even spoken.

  “If I tell you what I’ve got,” Tay said when he got bored with waiting for them to say something, “are you going to tell me what the connection between my case and the bombings is?”

  “We’re not negotiating here, Inspector,” the ISD man said. “I’ll tell you as much as I can simply as a matter of professional courtesy, but that’s all I can promise.”

  Which, of course, meant, No, I’m not going to tell you shit, you insignificant little policeman.

  Tay concocted a quick narrative of his examination of the corpse and the apartment and tried — he thought with admirable success — to make it as useless and free of information as possible. Somehow it slipped his mind altogether to include Dr. Hoi’s theory about the blow from behind having come from a Maglite. It did not slip his mind to mention the safety deposit box key the dead man had in his ass. He just decided not to tell Phil about that.

  “You don’t even know who he is, do you?”

  The question came from Ferrero, which was the first sign of actual life he had shown.

  “Do you?” Tay snapped.

  But that was apparently the end of his meaningful dialogue with the spook. Ferrero said nothing else.

  Which, of course, meant, Obviously I do, tiny policeman, and I just wanted to see if you did.

  “Inspector,” the ISD man continued, “I’d like to be kept informed of the progress of your investigation. It is a matter of national security even if I’m not permitted to tell you exactly what the circumstances are.”

  Goh removed a business card from his shirt pocket and laid it on the edge of Tay’s desk. Then he stood up and offered his hand. The CIA man stood up, too, but he did not offer his hand.

  “Will you give me a call if you get an ID on the dead man, or if anything else turns up in connection with your investigation that you think is unusual?”

  “Of course, Phil. I’d be more than happy to.”

  Which, of course, meant, No, you can go fuck yourself, you arrogant prick.

  ***

  When the two men had gone, Tay sat back down behind his desk. He swung his feet up, crossed them at the ankles, and knitted his hands together behind his head.

  Did he know something now that he hadn’t known fifteen minutes ago?

  Yes, of course he did.

  For starters, he knew for certain there was a link of some kind between his dead guy at the Woodlands and the bombings.

  That’s what his mother’s ghost had said. Exactly what she had said.

  Had he really been talking to his mother’s ghost that night in the garden of his house? Surely not. Ghosts weren’t real. They didn’t exist. And yet…if he hadn’t been talking to his mother’s ghost, if the conversation had all been just a hallucination, how in the world had he managed to hallucinate something that later turned out to be true?

  Tay didn’t want to think too hard about that. It might take him to all sorts of places he would just as soon not go.

  So he turned his attention to the second thing he knew now that he hadn’t known fifteen minutes ago.

  Both ISD and the CIA knew exactly who his dead guy was. And they weren’t telling him. Tay didn’t much like the sound of that either.

  Then his thoughts drifted back to his mother again. Somehow, unconnected with anything in his life for ten years and dead for two, she had come to occupy center stage in the drama that was now swirling around him. She would have loved that, Tay thought. Center stage was where she loved to be. Even as a child he could remember how she had loved attention and how she knew so many people who…

  And just like that Tay remembered something useful.

  SIXTEEN

  TAY HAD KNOWN Henry Lee ever since he was a boy, although not particularly well. Mr. Lee had been a friend of his mother’s and Tay remembered meeting him several times during his mother’s increasingly infrequent trips to Singapore after she moved to New York. Tay only realized years later that Lee and his mother had been doing far more together than going to art galleries and restaurants. But as a child, of course, that had never occurred to him, and as an adult he hadn’t cared one way or another.

  Mr. Lee was an executive with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, which was where Tay’s mother had kept her local accounts. And the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank had safety deposit boxes, didn’t it? So Henry Lee would probably know something about safety deposit boxes, or at the very least he would know someone who did.

  Tay hadn’t seen him in years, but his own bank accounts were also at HSBC and he had a vague memory of calling Mr. Lee — he still called him Mr. Lee since that was what he had called him as a child and such habits, once engrained, were hard to break later in life — to straighten out some screw-up with his own accounts about eight o
r ten years back. Mr. Lee had done so willingly and had urged Tay to join him for lunch one day, but Tay had never bothered.

  If Lee hadn’t retired by now, he would probably be pretty high up in HSBC. Surely he wouldn’t mind telling Tay something about safety deposit boxes and how you matched up keys to the boxes they opened, even if Tay had ignored his lunch invitation once upon a time. What was more important, he probably wouldn’t ask too many questions. Tay was both a customer of the bank and a detective with CID. Taken together, that should earn him enough deference to get some answers about his safety deposit box key without too much being asked of him in return.

  Tay telephoned HSBC and was pleased to discover Mr. Lee was still working for them. He asked for Mr. Lee’s title and was told something he promptly forgot, but it sounded very important and offered no clue at all to what Lee’s actual function might be. That was pretty typical of most corporate titles as far as Tay was concerned. It was easy to give out titles based more on connections than competence, and far cheaper than giving out money which, come to think of it, was pretty much the same way the Singapore police force worked, too.

  He also established that Mr. Lee’s office was at the main HSBC branch on Collyer Quay and got his direct telephone number. He telephoned and asked for an immediate appointment. When he identified himself as a CID detective, Mr. Lee’s secretary gave him one without hesitation. That was exactly what Tay was counting on. The traditional response of Singaporeans to any show of authority: strict obedience.

  It was a start.

  ***

  It took Tay less than twenty minutes to find a taxi and get himself to the HSBC Collyer Quay office, then another five minutes to go inside and present himself to Mr. Lee’s secretary. He was sent straight in.

  The two men shook hands and Tay got the impression Mr. Lee hardly remembered him. Which was fine with Tay since he wasn’t looking to start up a conversation about the old days. He just needed some information. Lee was a small, very elderly man in a rumpled suit and he smelled funny. Tay wasn’t one to condemn any man for an occasional episode of flatulence, but Lee was pushing the envelope.

  Tay quickly sketched out why he was there, saying only that a safety deposit box key had come into his possession and that he needed to find the box the key opened.

  “I am engaged in a national security investigation of the highest priority. We may not have much more time before…well, I really can’t say any more than that, Mr. Lee. I’m sure you understand.”

  Lee’s eyes grew wide. “Are you investigating—”

  “I can’t tell you specifically what I’m investigating, Mr. Lee, but I assure you it involves the greatest threat to Singapore in the history of our country.”

  Suddenly Tay had a mad impulse to fling both arms into the air and scream BOOM! Fortunately, he fought it down.

  Lee was already nodding. Singaporeans were good at that, nodding when they were given authoritative-sounding instructions.

  Still, Tay’s hopes fell as fast as they had risen when Lee spoke again.

  “Do you have the envelope?” he asked.

  “Envelope?”

  Lee’s fingers formed a small rectangle to illustrate the size and shape of an envelope just in case Tay was unfamiliar with the word.

  “Most safety box keys come in small envelopes of some kind,” he said, “and both the name of the bank and the box number are usually on the envelope, not on the key itself.”

  Tay shook his head. “I just have the key.”

  “Pity,” Lee said. “Then I doubt I can help you.”

  Tay pulled the key out of his trouser pocket and gave it to Lee anyway, who turned it in his fingers and inspected it. Then suddenly he stopped turning it and looked up at Tay.

  “May I ask where—”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m not at liberty to give you any details.”

  At least that much was true enough, Tay thought. He couldn’t very well give anybody any details about the key without wedging his own ass firmly in a crack from which he might never be able to extract it.

  “Well, regardless, I’m happy to tell you I can help you. This is one of ours.”

  Lee bent toward Tay and held out the key, one finger pointing to its head.

  “See that?” he asked. “The small letter D in front of the number?”

  Tay nodded, although he wasn’t sure he did see it. It was engraved in such tiny lettering that he could hardly make it out under a strong light let alone in the dim light of the office and with Lee’s finger covering up half of it.

  “That indicates the key is to a box manufactured by a company called Diebold. This must be your lucky day, Sam. HSBC is the only bank in Singapore that uses Diebold boxes.”

  “Then you can tell me what box this key opens?”

  Lee swiveled toward his computer and tapped out something on the keyboard. Then he reached back, picked up the key, peered at the number engraved on its head, and tapped some more.

  “Good Lord, Sam, this really is your lucky day. The box is A386, and it’s right here at this branch.”

  “Who rents it?”

  Lee hit a key and scrolled down.

  “A company called…” Lee squinted at the screen. “Paraguas Ltd. That’s spelled P-A-R-A-G-U-A-S.”

  That name meant nothing to Tay, of course, but he nodded thoughtfully as if that made perfect sense, took out his notebook, and wrote it down.

  “Do you have an address for them?”

  Lee read out an address in Hong Kong that meant as little to Tay as the name of the company, but he wrote that down, too.

  “Has the box been accessed regularly?”

  “Yes, regularly.” Lee glanced up from the screen. “I can print out a list of the recent accesses for you, if you like.”

  “Can you go back, say, three years? And better give me whatever you have on Paraguas Ltd, too.”

  Tay sat silently until Lee had finished, taken several sheets of paper from a printer, and handed them across the desk.

  “We’re always ready to cooperate with the police, Sam, but…well, you understand this is all a little irregular.”

  “I want to open the box, too.”

  “Oh my,” Lee said, rubbing at his forehead with one hand. “That’s going to be difficult. Couldn’t you get a court order, and then of course we’d be happy—”

  “You know what I’m investigating, Mr. Lee. And I’ve already told you we don’t have much time before…well, let’s just say we don’t have much time.” Tay accompanied the lie with a facial expression he hoped conveyed the right sense of urgency. “The contents of that safety deposit box could be the key to stopping it.”

  Lee shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “You’re putting me in a difficult position here, Sam.”

  Good, Tay thought. That was exactly what he intended to do.

  “Well…under the circumstances, I suppose I can overlook normal protocol, but naturally I cannot allow you to remove anything from the box without proper authorization to protect the bank.”

  Tay nodded and immediately stood up. He wanted Lee to open that box before he had any more time to think about it.

  ***

  The safety box room was less impressive than Tay had expected. It was just a rectangular room, really, one lined on three sides with stainless steel boxes rising in even ranks all the way to the ceiling. On the fourth side, where the entry door was, there was a long steel table with a computer terminal at one end.

  “A386 is one of our largest boxes,” Lee said. He moved around the room checking numbers until he found it.

  Tay handed over his key and Lee produced a master key from a ring in his pocket. Lee first inserted his master key, then the key Tay had given him. He turned both at the same time and opened the door, leaving it standing ajar without removing the box.

  Lee stepped back and cleared his throat. “I’m happy to cooperate, Sam. I know these are dangerous times. But I have to repeat that I cannot permit you to take any o
f the contents—”

  “I understand perfectly, Mr. Lee. I have no intention of removing anything. I merely need to inspect the contents of this box in connection with…well, I’m sure you understand by now what it is in connection with.”

  Lee looked considerably relieved. And he began nodding vigorously as he backed toward the door.

  “I’ll be right outside if you need me, Sam.”

  When Lee had closed the door, Tay bent down and tugged box A386 out of its slot. It was a large box just as Lee had said. About twelve inches wide by twelve inches high and at least twice as long, it was made of dark gray steel. Tay lifted the box up, swung around, and put it on the table that stood against the opposite wall. The box was heavy and it made a metallic clunk when Tay put it down.

  ***

  Tay had been a detective for a long time, but he still felt a little fission of excitement as he stood there looking at the lid of the box. He figured he would have to have been pretty much dead not to. All he knew for certain was that his dead guy had left the key for someone to find and Dr. Hoi had found it and given it to him. There could be almost anything in the box. Money, weapons, even another body. Well, that was ridiculous, of course.

  “Okay,” Tay murmured, “let’s see what we’ve got here.” He pulled the lid open.

  What he saw was perhaps the least romantic thing he could have imagined: a large stack of files.

  He got his hands underneath the whole pile, lifted it out, and put it on the table. At a glance, it looked like there were twelve or fifteen separate file folders, each thick with paper. He flipped through the pile and examined the tabs.

  Each folder was labeled with a year and the labels began with current year and went backward. He lifted the top folder off the stack and opened it. The folder contained spreadsheets tracking financial data of some kind. The horizontal rows were identified with numbers that looked to Tay like they could have been account numbers and the vertical columns contained dollar amounts. But the columns were labeled with numbers, too, not names, so it wasn’t immediately obvious what the sums were or what they were connected to.