Umbrella Man (9786167611204)

by Needham, Jake

“Why are you working at a bank?”

  “Why not? It’s a good job. Why are you a policeman?”

  “I meant…”

  Tay paused and looked around at the Mei Lin’s apartment. Then it occurred to him he had a pretty nice place to live, too, and it was one his father had paid for as well. So he supposed it was a fair enough question she was asking him. Why was he a policeman indeed? The parallels here were becoming a little uncomfortable for him.

  “You meant why am I working in an ordinary bank job when it looks like I’m rich?” Mei Lin asked when he didn’t immediately say anything else. “I’m not rich, Inspector. My father is rich. I live in an apartment he owns, but otherwise I make my own way. I don’t take money from him. Besides, whether you believe it or not, I like my job. Everybody has to do something.”

  “Did your father get you the job at HSBC?”

  “No, he did not.” Mei Lin’s eyes flashed in indignation. “Why would you even ask me something like that?”

  “I thought because of the safety deposit box—”

  “My father opened that box there after I took the job. He seemed nearly as amused as you are at the idea of me working in a bank. Sometimes I think he came in to open the box just to see if I was still there.”

  “Does he have accounts at HSBC, too?”

  “No.” Mei Lin seemed to be thinking about something, but Tay couldn’t tell what it was. “Not in his own name, at least.”

  There was a silence and they both lifted their cups and sipped at the tea neither one of them wanted, but it filled the silence and perhaps that was all you could really ask of a cup of tea.

  “Does your father have another apartment where he lives when he’s in town?”

  “No, he usually stays at Raffles.”

  Raffles is to Singapore as the Waldorf Astoria is to New York, or the Grosvenor House is to London, or the Hassler is to Rome. Established, emblematic, and ruinously expensive. It is a sprawling low-rise building painted in such a brilliant shade of white it hurts your eyes to look directly at it in the glare of Singapore’s relentless sun.

  Tay thought the place looked like a nineteenth-century Hungarian wedding cake mysterious converted into a hotel, but it was still part of the fabric of the city. Perhaps it was the fabric of the city. Tay had been to the Grill Room there a few times when someone had invited him, but otherwise he knew no more about Raffles than the average New Yorker knew about the Statue of Liberty. It was there. And everyone had heard of it. What else did he need to know?

  “Is your father at Raffles now?”

  Mei Lin pursed her lips and her shoulders moved up and down in the tiniest, most feminine of shrugs.

  Tay took out his cell phone, but he stopped when he realized he didn’t have the number for Raffles and he wasn’t at all certain how to use the phone to go about looking it up. He was probably the last person in Singapore who still looked for a telephone directory when he needed a number, but he knew admitting that to Mei Lin would probably make him look like an old fart so he just pursed his lips, looked at his phone, and did nothing at all.

  “6337-1886,” Mei Lin said.

  Tay looked up, surprised.

  “I work in a bank,” she said. “I have a good memory for numbers.”

  Tay called Raffles and quickly established that Vincent Ferrero wasn’t registered there.

  “Any other ideas?” he asked Mei Lin.

  “Maybe he’s staying there under another name.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because, Inspector,” Mei Lin replied very slowly as if addressing a dimwitted child, “he doesn’t want just any jerk to call up and find out he’s there.”

  “Where else would he be?”

  Mei Lin shook her head and said nothing, but then she stopped and looked at Tay and he knew she had thought of something.

  “What?” he asked.

  “We were being driven home from dinner one night. We’d been to some seafood place on the East Coast Parkway and the driver cut through Geylang. I’d never been there at night before and I couldn’t believe how many prostitutes there were on the streets.”

  Geylang was Singapore’s official red light district, an otherwise unremarkable neighborhood of shophouses about halfway between the central business district and Changi Airport where the authorities tolerated an almost unlimited number of brothels and even looked the other way at street prostitution. It was something they did in return for not tolerating it much of anywhere else in Singapore.

  “Maybe my father had a bit too much to drink. We were making our way slowly thorough the traffic on one of the little streets there when he pointed to a red door and said, That’s my whorehouse.

  I must have looked shocked because he laughed and patted my hand.

  Then he said, I don’t mean I go there. I mean I own it. I have a place upstairs where I meet people who don’t want anyone to see us meeting. What better cover is there than a man going to a Geylang whorehouse?

  “Do you remember the name of the street it was on?”

  “No, I…wait, there was a Buddhist center near it. It had something about karma in its name, and when my father said he owned a whorehouse across the street from a temple that had something to do with karma, I laughed right out loud. I don’t think he got the joke.”

  “This place your father owns is across the street from the Buddhist center?”

  “Yes. It’s the shophouse with a red door. Directly across the street.”

  ***

  As soon as Tay left Mei Lin’s apartment, he did two things.

  First, he shook out a Marlboro and lit it. Then he pulled out his phone and called Sergeant Kang.

  “There’s a Buddhist center of some kind in Geylang that has the word karma in its name. Find out where it is. I’ll hold on.”

  “You could just look up the street directory on your phone, sir. There’s a detailed—”

  “Sergeant, just find out where the damn place is for me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tay stood quietly and smoked, holding his phone to his ear. He hadn’t had more than a few puffs when Sergeant Kang spoke again.

  “There’s a Karma Kagyud Buddhist Center on Lorong 22. Is that what you’re looking for?”

  “Is that inside the prostitution zone?”

  “Uh…I think so, sir. I think the designated zone is that whole area south of Geylang Road from Lorong 2 up to Lorong 28 or 30.”

  That had to be it, Tay thought. How many Buddhist centers could there be surrounded by whorehouses and with the word karma in their name?

  “Meet me there in thirty minutes,” he told Kang.

  Then Tay suddenly thought better of that.

  “No, wait.”

  Standing around on the street in front of Vince Ferrero’s whorehouse waiting for Sergeant Kang to show up really wasn’t all that great an idea, was it? Tay tried to think of someplace not that far from Geylang where Kang could pick him up.

  “Get an unmarked car, the plainer the better, and meet me at Chijmes,” Tay said.” I’ll be just inside the entrance on North Bridge Road right behind Raffles. Just pull over and I’ll get in. Then we’ll go to Geylang together.”

  Chijmes was once the Convent of the Holy Infant, but enterprising developers had converted it into a complex of pubs and restaurants that were thronged at night by the young and self-consciously hip. At this time of day, the place would be deserted other than for a few tourists engaged in the age-old pursuit of trying to find something to do in Singapore.

  Kang wouldn’t have been any more surprised if Tay had asked him to come straight to the prime minister’s house.

  “It’s a little early for you to start drinking, isn’t it, sir?”

  Tay didn’t laugh.

  “Come armed, and bring a pair of field glasses,” he snapped at Kang. “Thirty minutes.”

  Then he hung up.

  ***

  Tay drew deeply on his cigarette and walked out to the street to lo
ok for a cab.

  He was starting to get the same feeling he always did when a case that seemed on the verge of defeating him began coming together. The usual exhilaration was there, of course, but something was bothering him, too.

  If John August were to be believed, Vincent Ferrero had murdered his father to protect his business. Tay trusted August in a moral sense, but he also knew August wasn’t beyond trying to manipulate him for what he thought was a higher purpose.

  Was that what he was doing now?

  Even if August was telling the truth, that had happened over thirty-five years ago and Tay had hardly known his father. He could hardly be expected to rise up now in hot-blooded outrage over either the crime or who the victim had been, could he?

  But still, it was his father they were talking about here…

  Tay firmly pushed his personal musings aside. There might be a time for them later, but this wasn’t it. He wanted his full focus where it belonged: on what he had to do now.

  Johnny the Mover had smuggled in the explosives that had destroyed Singapore.

  Vince Ferrero had killed Johnny the Mover because he was going to admit it.

  John August was going to kill Ferrero and bury the whole mess.

  Tay had to find Vince Ferrero and arrest him before John August got to him.

  It was just that simple.

  And when Tay did find Ferrero, maybe he would simply ask him about his father and find out if it was true Ferrero had killed him.

  If it was…well, he would decide what that meant to him then.

  And what he would do about it.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  THE BROWN TOYOTA slowed. Then it pulled to the curb on North Bridge Road and stopped. Tay glanced around to see if anyone was watching him. He knew he didn’t actually have a clue whether anyone was or not, so he just walked over to the Toyota and got into the passenger seat.

  “What’s going on, sir?” Kang asked.

  “Drive to that place I asked you to find.”

  “The Buddhist Center in Geylang? The one called Karma something?”

  “Yes. But just drive by. Don’t stop. Don’t even slow down.”

  It took ten minutes for them to get there, which was just long enough for Tay to tell Sergeant Kang about Mei Lin, about Vince Ferrero, and about the whorehouse with the red door.

  ***

  When they turned off Geylang Road into Lorong 22, nothing immediately caught Tay’s attention. There was a Chinese temple on the left and rows of narrow three-story shophouses lined both sides of the street, some of which had apparently been converted into small hotels. The Kim Tian Hotel, the Min Wah Hotel, the Char Yong Hotel all sported large neon signs stretching the width of the buildings. Tay assumed these were not the sort of hotels that were listed in tourist guides.

  “Where’s this Buddhist center?”

  “The other end of the street, sir. On the right.”

  After a few moments Tay saw it. It was a two-story cream-colored building behind a low wall with a small parking area in front. He examined it for a moment, then swiveled his head to check the other side of the street for a shophouse with a red door. By then, Kang had already reached a T-junction where the street they were on dead-ended into a much busier street.

  “Turn around somewhere, Sergeant, and drive up the block again.”

  Kang turned into a Shell station, swung around the pump island without stopping, and headed back up Lorong 22 going in the opposite direction.

  The shophouse Tay was looking for wasn’t directly across the street from the Buddhist Center, but close enough. It was no more than twenty feet wide and three stories tall, and it was painted an unattractive institutional green with dirty white grill work around all the windows. An open carport with a red plastic roof and a closed metal gate stood in front of it. Next to the red front door was a white box about a foot square with the number 38 painted on its glass front. It looked to Tay like the box was probably illuminated at night so the number could be read from the street.

  Tay saw no sign of life at number 38. The door and windows were all closed and the carport was empty.

  “What now, sir?” Kang asked as they rolled by at a steady rate of speed.

  “Drive around to the street behind. I want to see if there’s any other way in or out.”

  ***

  There was.

  The next street to the east was Lorong 24 and a narrow alleyway ran out from between two green metal garbage bins from a narrow rear door to number 38.

  They drove around the block again and Kang pulled into an Esso Station and around to one side where they could stop the car without blocking the pumps. Tay looked at his watch. Just after four o’clock.

  “Put the car over on the other side of the station so you can see the alleyway that runs up to the back of number 38. Where are those glasses I asked you to bring?”

  Kang pointed at the glove compartment and Tay opened it and fished out a pair of field glasses not much bigger than a paperback book.

  “I’m going around to the front and find a hotel where I can watch the other side of the building. We’ll sit on it for a while and see what happens. Call me if Ferrero shows.”

  “Who, sir?”

  Tay pulled out his phone and found the picture of Vince Ferrero he had taken the day Ferrero came to Emerald Hill to intimidate him into abandoning his investigation into the dead man at the Woodlands.

  “You remember what Ferrero looks like, don’t you, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. But what makes you think he’s coming here now?”

  The answer to that, of course, was Tay had no reason at all to think so.

  But he was full of hope.

  “Just do it, Sergeant.”

  ***

  A half hour later Tay was seated in front of the partially-opened drapes of a room on the third floor of a place called the Hotel Compass that was just a few doors down from the Buddhist Center. He had an almost straight-on view of number 38 and he lifted the glasses and examined its windows one by one without seeing any sign of life. He hit the speed dial on his telephone.

  “Are you in position, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. I can see almost the entire alley.”

  “Call me if anyone at all goes in or out of number 38, whether it’s Ferrero or not.”

  “Will do, sir.”

  Tay lit a cigarette and settled back to watch.

  ***

  Except for one quick trip to the toilet, Tay stayed in front of the window, smoking and glancing occasionally into the field glasses for the next several hours. By seven it was dusk, and by eight it was dark.

  No lights came on in number 38 and Tay had seen no one come near the place.

  He hit the speed dial on his phone again. “Nothing at all, Sergeant?”

  “No, sir. It’s too dark in the alley to see the back door any longer, but there’s no way anyone could go in or out of it without walking through the alley and I’d see them then.”

  “Then just stay on it.”

  “How much longer are we going to do this, sir?”

  “Until I tell you we’re through, Sergeant.”

  Tay cut the connection and lit another cigarette.

  ***

  When he saw it, he first thought that his eyes must be tired. But he rubbed them and looked again and it was still there.

  A dim glow from somewhere in the back of the carport.

  But even as Tay stared at it, it was gone.

  Had he been mistaken?

  No, it was a light. He was sure of that. Not the full-on illumination from someone flipping on a light switch, but something dimmer. Something like a flashlight that had been flicked on, then quickly flicked off again.

  Tay telephoned Kang again.

  “Sergeant, were your eyes ever off that alley?”

  “No, sir.”

  “No breaks to get coffee? Nothing like that?”

  “No, sir. I haven’t even been to the bathroom, but now that you ment
ion it—”

  That was when Tay remembered he had gone to the bathroom. He had been away from the window only a minute or two, but it was at least possible someone had approached number 38 while his eyes had been off it even for just that short a period of time.

  “Never mind, Robbie. I want you to walk up the alley and cover the back door. Have your weapon ready and hold anyone who comes out.”

  “What are you going to do, sir?”

  “Just do what I tell you, Robbie.”

  Then Tay hung up and headed for the street.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  TAY ALMOST NEVER carried a gun. He had never been much of a shot anyway so he figured it didn’t much matter.

  But for the first time in years, he found himself rethinking his policy as he took the elevator downstairs. Going into a dark shophouse looking for Vincent Ferrero without any kind of a weapon wasn’t a particularly appealing proposition, but what else was he going to do? Kang was armed, but Kang was covering the rear. Tay could hardly ask him to give up his weapon. No, he would just have to make the best of it.

  The elevator doors opened and he crossed the lobby, but just as he passed the reception desk he had a thought.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” he asked the clerk on duty.

  The clerk was a young man with a high forehead and a square, Chinese face. He seemed to find the idea of a policeman using the hotel for surveillance exciting. Obviously, Tay thought, he had no idea how boring surveillance really was.

  The clerk bent down and fished around under the counter. When he straightened up he was holding a black five-cell Maglite.

  “Will this work for you, sir?”

  The irony of being handed a flashlight just like the one Dr. Hoi theorized had felled Johnny the Mover and started this whole mess wasn’t lost on Tay. Maybe it was even an omen.

  He flicked the Maglite on and off just to make sure it worked, and then hefted it in one hand. It wouldn’t trump a gun, of course, but in the right circumstances, it was a fine weapon all the same.

  “Thanks,” Tay said. “I’ll take good care of it.”

  The young man snapped to attention and saluted. He actually saluted. Tay felt ridiculous doing it, but he offered a half-hearted salute in return and hurried into the night.