Umbrella Man (9786167611204)

by Needham, Jake

  “Why is that?”

  “Johnny and Vince were into some stuff that got out of control. It caused a lot of problems.”

  “Do they both work for the CIA, too?”

  “Good God, no. I think they did once, but that was nearly forty years ago. They’ve been private ever since.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Logistics and support services mostly. They arrange deliveries of materials, set up financial structures, collect and disburse money. Like that. They’re not involved in intelligence operations, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “So they’re contractors.”

  “Well…” August seemed to think about that, although off-hand Tay couldn’t see what there was to think about. “They’ve done some stuff for the Agency, it’s true, but their clients are mostly non-government. Paraguas Ltd is actually pretty well known in some circles.”

  “Did Ferrero kill Johnny?” Tay asked.

  It was a shot in the dark, he knew, but even in the dark you occasionally hit something if you just kept shooting.

  “Yeah, he did.”

  Bullseye.

  “Do you know why?” Tay asked.

  “Johnny screwed up. He was the one who got the explosives into Singapore that the bombers used. But then you’d already guessed that, hadn’t you, Sam?

  “Aunt Jemima. HMX mixed with flour.”

  “Very good, Sam. Very good indeed.”

  “But why would Johnny smuggle explosives for people who wanted to attack Singapore?”

  “Johnny thought it was a transshipment to Iran, to an insurgency movement there. He didn’t know it was actually meant to be used here.”

  “That’s pretty hard for me to believe.”

  August shrugged. “Believe what you want, but it’s the truth.”

  “And you think Ferrero killed him because of what he had done?’

  “Oh no, nothing like that. I think Ferrero killed him because he was about to go public about what he knew and that would have been the end for them both.”

  “You mean some sort of public mea culpa?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. You see, the thing was…Johnny was dying. It was some liver thing. He didn’t have much time and he was worried because he didn’t have a lot to leave his kids. So he took the Aunt Jemima job because it paid so fucking much. But he didn’t tell Vince about it.”

  Tay said nothing. He just waited for the rest, and he had no doubt there was a rest coming.

  “Then when Johnny realized he’d been scammed, that there was no Iranian insurgency and that a few Paki’s pissed off over Singapore’s loyal support of the United States had actually used the stuff he had brought in to blow up half of your country, he was pretty distraught. He decided almost immediately to admit what he’d done and lead us to the people he had done the job for.”

  “And Ferrero killed him to keep him from doing that.”

  “Yeah, that’s about the size of it. Johnny may have been dying, but Vince wasn’t. And spending the rest of his life either in a prison cell or on the run wasn’t particularly appealing. So Johnny had to be silenced.”

  “But you said Ferrero had nothing to do with bringing the Aunt Jemima into Singapore. That Johnny did that on his own.”

  “Doesn’t matter. After forty years of doing the kinds of things Paraguas did, Ferrero and Johnny had a lot of enemies. A lot of people would have cheerfully hung the whole thing right around Vince’s neck, too. He couldn’t claim not to know about it. What happened here is too ugly and everyone wants to nail people for it. Vince would have been a big, fat sitting duck.”

  “So why are you telling me all this?”

  “Because you deserve to know the truth. You’ve been the biggest threat to Vince. That’s why he’s been trying to force you to walk away from the investigation. He’s even had his people keeping tabs on you to see how close you were getting.”

  “Okay, so now I know. Thank you for telling me. But I’m sure you want something in return. What is it?”

  “I want you to forget about everything I just told you and let us handle it.”

  “Us?”

  August gave a little shrug and let a half smile slide across his face, but he didn’t say anything.

  “What are you going to do, John?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “What good will killing Ferrero do?”

  “It will roll up Paraguas with all the shit inside. Then we’ll dump it in a hole so deep nobody will ever find it.”

  “And you think that’s a good thing.”

  “I know that’s a good thing.”

  They drove on in silence for a while after that. When they reached the Singapore Night Safari Park, August swung off the BKE, U-turned back over the freeway on the bridge that led to the safari park, and then reentered it going in the opposite direction.

  Tay knew that was it. August had come to the end of his pitch. Now it was Tay’s turn.

  ***

  Tay knew August well enough to understand that now he was waiting for Tay’s response. And he would drive in silence until they ran out of gas if it took that long for Tay to give him one.

  It didn’t take Tay nearly that long.

  “I can’t do it, John.”

  August nodded slightly, but he didn’t say anything.

  “Ferrero committed a premeditated murder here in Singapore. I can’t just look the other way and let you kill him to even the score. What kind of a policeman would that make me?”

  “You’ve done it before.”

  Tay knew, of course, that eventually August would get around to mentioning that.

  “Only when there was no hope of getting justice any other way,” Tay said. “This time there is hope.”

  “No, there isn’t.”

  “You don’t think I can find him and take him down for Johnny’s murder?”

  “Maybe you can and maybe you can’t. But that still wouldn’t be justice.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because of the part I haven’t told you yet. The part I didn’t want to tell you.”

  Tay cocked his head and waited.

  August scratched his nose and seemed to reconsider for a moment. Then he gave a little shrug and just said it.

  “Vince Ferrero killed your father.”

  ***

  They were just five simple words. Tay knew what all of them meant. But arranged as they were in the sentence August had just spoken, they made no sense to Tay.

  “My father died of a heart attack,” he said after a moment. “In Vietnam. Nearly forty years ago.”

  “Your father died in Vietnam a long time ago. You have that much right. But he didn’t have a heart attack. Vince Ferrero shot him.”

  “Why would Ferrero do that?”

  “Vince and Johnny had already left the agency and started Paraguas Ltd. They were freelancing in areas the agency didn’t want to touch and making some real money at it. Your father had a share in the company and handled most of the financial stuff.”

  “In other words, he was a money launderer.”

  August shrugged. “It’s an expression.”

  “Where are you going with this, John?”

  “Your father was in love with a Vietnamese woman. He knew it was just a matter of time before South Vietnam fell. Everyone knew it. He tried to get this woman out, but he couldn’t. Somebody high up in the South Vietnamese government who she had offended blocked her exit visa. Your father couldn’t do anything about it. So he told Vince and Johnny he was going to stay with her.”

  “Stay with her?”

  “In Saigon. After the North Vietnamese took it over.”

  “That’s crazy. He would have been arrested. At the very least he would have been labeled an American spy, thrown in prison, and tortured.”

  “That’s what Vince thought, too. And that’s why he killed him. Your father knew too much about what Vince and Johnny had been doing, who had been paying them, and where their money was stashed
. Vince didn’t want the North Vietnamese finding out.”

  Tay turned away from August and looked out the window, seeing nothing.

  “Vince did everything he could to convince your father to leave with them,” August continued, “but he wouldn’t because he couldn’t get this woman out. So Vince killed your father. It was the only way to make certain he didn’t tell anyone else what he knew.”

  “Ferrero killed my father over some money.”

  “It was a lot of money, Sam.”

  Tay gave August a sharp look, but August didn’t appear to notice.

  ***

  Neither August nor Tay spoke again until August had turned off the expressway, driven a short distance south to Dunearn Road, and stopped in front of the Botanic Gardens MRT Station.

  “I think it would be best if I dropped you off here.”

  Tay nodded. He unbuckled his shoulder strap and got out without saying a word. But before he closed the door he turned around and leaned back into the car.

  “What happens now, John?”

  “That’s pretty much up to you, Sam. I have a job to do and I’m going to do it. I just wanted you to understand why you ought to let me do it. And that you should be happy somebody’s going to get it done.”

  “You going to kill Ferrero.”

  “Would that bother you?”

  Tay chewed on his lip and looked at August for a while, but he said nothing.

  Then he straightened up, closed the car door, and walked away.

  FORTY-FIVE

  IT WAS ONLY one stop on the MRT from the Botanic Gardens Station to Farrer Road, and from there it was a five minute walk to Gallop Green. Less than fifteen minutes after closing the door of August’s car, Tay was ringing Mei Lin Lee’s doorbell.

  When Mei Lin answered the door, she looked genuinely surprised. Tay gathered this time the security guards hadn’t called up to warn her he was there. Perhaps the word had spread about the man from ISD who had a quiet word with Rahul, the man who didn’t want Miss Lee and her patron to know about his interest in them.

  “You didn’t tell me Vince Ferrero owns this apartment,” Tay snapped, brushing past Mei Lin into the living room. “I assume that means he owns you, too.”

  Tay watched Mei Lin while she closed the door. She seemed an equal mix of shock and fury, which was exactly how he wanted her. She would be thinking less clearly now about what she said to him, which meant she might actually say something that was true.

  “You let me think he was just a customer of the bank,” Tay said. “Someone you had only met a few times.”

  Mei Lin was wearing a plaid shirt that looked like flannel with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows and a long red skirt that fell almost to her ankles. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood glaring at Tay in silence.

  “And now I find out you’re living with him.”

  “I’m not—”

  “What else did you lie about, Mei Lin? What else are you hiding from me?

  “If you would—”

  “Maybe you’re part of this, too.”

  “Part of what?”

  That was actually a pretty good question, Tay thought. But since he was making all this up as he went along, he ignored it and kept talking.

  “We have good reason to believe Vince Ferrero was involved in the bombings.”

  That was stretching a point, of course. Tay did believe Ferrero was connected to the bombings, but he had no idea exactly how he might be connected, and saying he actually had a good reason for what he believed pretty much took him straight into the realm of science fiction.

  “Since you lied about living with Ferrero, Mei Lin—”

  “I am not living with him.”

  “But he owns this apartment. Are you saying you’re renting it from him?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just—”

  “Then he’s loaning you the apartment? Just out of the generosity of his heart? You don’t expect me to believe you’re not living here in return for services rendered, do you?”

  “For services—”

  “Come on, Mei Lin. I know how this kind of thing works. He pays for the apartment, and he comes around when he feels like it, and you—”

  “Vince Ferrero is my father, you asshole!”

  ***

  Tay had already survived enough surprises in the last hour or so to last him a lifetime. One more was simply one too many. All at once Tay felt weightless, almost untethered from the earth, so he quickly sat down on the couch right behind him. He felt like, if he hadn’t, he would just have floated away.

  Mei Lin sat right across from him and watched with what Tay thought was a degree of curiosity. Maybe she was thinking he was about to float away, too.

  “Maybe I should have told you,” she said after a moment. “But the truth was I didn’t think it was any of your business. And I didn’t see what difference it made.”

  That was enough to snap Tay out of it.

  “You didn’t see what difference—”

  “I don’t know what my father is doing, not exactly, but I know he’s in danger. People like him aren’t arrested for what they’ve done. One day they just disappear. I decided when I met you that you are an honorable man, a policeman who really believes in the law. I thought if I pointed you toward him you might find out if he had done anything wrong. If he had, you would arrest him, of course. And I’d rather see him in prison than dead.”

  Mei Lin was Vince Ferrero’s daughter? That possibility had never crossed Tay’s mind.

  “What do you think he’s done?” Tay asked.

  “You just said it yourself. You said you had good reason to think he was involved in the bombings somehow. So do I.”

  Since Tay thought Ferrero was involved in the bombings without actually having any evidence of it, he was awfully glad to hear someone else thought so, too. But he couldn’t help but wonder why she thought so. What did Mei Lin know that he didn’t?

  “Okay,” Tay said. “You’ve got my attention. Tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “I know how my father makes his money. Well, maybe not exactly, but I know he and Uncle Johnny provide support services for intelligence agencies. When I saw him right after the bombings, I just knew immediately they had been involved in some way, but I think what actually happened was a complete surprise to him. I even started wondering if he and Johnny might have been tricked into whatever their involvement was.”

  “Tricked?”

  “You know, somebody told him they were doing one thing while they were actually doing another? I’ve been trying to reach Uncle Johnny to ask him — I don’t think he’d lie to me — but he hasn’t called me back.”

  “He won’t.”

  Mei Lin tilted her head in puzzlement. “Why not?”

  “He’s dead.”

  Mei Lin’s mouth opened and her hand flew to cover it. It was a gesture that might have looked stagey and artificial on anyone else, but on Mei Lin it somehow contrived to look innocent and winning.

  “Where?” she stuttered. “How?”

  “His body was found in an apartment in the Woodlands a few days after the bombings. His neck was broken.”

  Mei Lin sat silently thinking about that. Tay just watched her.

  “Okay,” she said after a moment, taking a deep breath. “You have to find him before they do.”

  “They? Who’s they?”

  “Whoever killed Uncle Johnny. Now they’re going to kill my father, too. You know that! You’ve got to find him first!”

  Things were already so tangled Tay decided not to tell Mei Lin he thought her father was actually Johnny’s killer. And that now he was on the run, both because of the murder and because of whatever he had hoped to cover up with the murder.

  Mei Lin wanted Tay to find Vince Ferrero. And Tay wanted to find Vince Ferrero. What did it really matter that they had considerably different motives?

  FORTY-SIX

  MEI LIN SAID she needed a moment to pull
herself together and went into the kitchen to make a pot of Earl Grey tea.

  She came back a few minutes later with a silver tray on which she had arranged a teapot and two china cups so delicate Tay was almost afraid to touch them. Placing the tray on the table between them, Mei Lin served them each a cup of Earl Grey and offered Tay milk and sugar. He declined both. Tay hated tea with milk and sugar, and he especially hated Earl Grey tea no matter how it was served. But right then he would have happily drunk a big cup of hemlock if that would help him find Vince Ferrero.

  When Tay thought a decent enough interval had passed for him to prod the conversation back to the subject he wanted to talk about, he cleared his throat.

  “How long have you and your father lived here?”

  “My father doesn’t live here.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “I think he lives in Hong Kong, but I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t know where your father lives?”

  “He was never what you might call a conventional father. There are a lot of things I don’t know about him.”

  Of course, that caused Tay to think about the things he had recently discovered about his own father. Apparently he didn’t know much about him either. Tay shook off the empty feeling that came with the thought and continued.

  “How much do you know about what he does for a living?”

  “Not much. I don’t want to know much. He owns a company that has something to do with providing support services to intelligence agencies. But then I’m sure you already know more about that than I do.”

  “When did you last see your father?”

  “Two or three days after the bombings.”

  “Was it here?”

  “No, at the bank. He came in to open his safety deposit box.”

  “Was he taking something out or putting something in?”

  “I don’t know. He was carrying a briefcase that he took into the vault with him. I unlocked the box and then waited outside. When he left he was carrying the same case, of course. I have no idea whether he just looked at something in the box or whether he transferred something between the box and the case. No idea at all.”