Umbrella Man (9786167611204)

by Needham, Jake

  Should he go back outside and call Kang? Then guard the front of the shophouse while Kang guarded the back and wait for help to arrive?

  Yes, of course he should. It was obvious that was exactly what he should do.

  But that wasn’t what he was going to do.

  When you decide to do something big, something bold, it’s better not to think about it too much. Examining how scary whatever you are about to do actually is doesn’t help.

  So you just do it.

  With his cuffed hands thrust in front of him, the Maglite in one and the Glock in the other, Tay began to climb the stairs.

  FIFTY

  THE RUSTLING NOISES stopped. Out on the street the sound of a passing motorbike with a broken muffler was clearly audible, but Tay could no longer hear anything from the floor above him.

  The stairs were carpeted with something that looked cheap and nasty and may once have been green. Tay couldn’t say much for its decorative value, but whatever the stuff was it muffled his footsteps as he climbed so he was happy it was there. Tay kept his feet as close to the wall as possible to reduce the possibility of a riser squeaking and giving him away. The light above him was dim and gray. He climbed slowly and deliberately, the Glock and the Maglite leading the way.

  As Tay’s head rose into the second floor space he saw a short corridor at the top of the stairs with two doors opening off it: one to his immediate right and one at the end of the corridor. The door to the right was half open. The door at the end of the corridor was closed.

  Tay stopped and listened again.

  Nothing.

  He climbed a little farther, stopping just before he reached the top. Staying close to the wall, he leaned forward and risked a quick glance through the doorway on the right. The room beyond it appeared to be deserted, so he cautiously moved up the last few steps and took a better look.

  The space was furnished as a meeting room. There was a worn oriental rug in the middle of the floor on which rested a nondescript, rectangular table and six chairs. At the end of the room, three grimy windows looked out over the roof of the carport. Other than the ambient light filtering through, the room was dark. Tay stepped through the doorway, flicked on the Maglite, and swung it from side to side.

  There was no one there. There was no sign anyone had been there. There was nothing to see. It was just an empty meeting room.

  ***

  As silently as he could, Tay moved back out into the corridor and looked at the closed door at the end. If Ferrero was here, that’s was the only place left for him to be.

  Tay crept forward and put his ear to the door. He heard nothing. He examined the crack at the bottom of the door. He saw no light coming from the other side.

  If Ferrero was in there, and he was standing in a dark and silent room, then Ferrero knew he was coming, didn’t he? Well…he knew somebody was coming. He had no way of knowing it was Tay. He probably thought it was August’s backup, whoever that was.

  Now what?

  Suck it up, Sam. This is what they pay you to do.

  ***

  Tay took a deep breath and counted to three to steady his nerves.

  Then before he had the chance to change his mind, he lifted his right leg and smashed his foot into the door next to the knob.

  It sprang open and Tay lunged inside. Staying low and keeping his back to the wall on his left, he twisted the Maglite as far away from his body as the handcuffs would allow. Then he flicked it on and swung the beam quickly back and forth.

  The room was empty.

  ***

  There was another worn oriental rug, and this one held a large desk and an office chair. There was a laptop computer open on the desk and the surface around it was heaped with stacks of files that looked as if they had been hastily collected. Or perhaps hastily abandoned. A black canvas duffle bag lay on the floor next to the desk, but Tay couldn’t tell if Ferrero had brought the files to the shophouse in the bag or was getting ready to carry them out.

  Along the back wall were eight or ten gray metal filing cabinets pushed up side by side. They were the old fashioned kind, one drawer wide by four drawers high, and they all looked old and beaten up. Above the filing cabinets, dim light leaked into the room from three small windows even dirtier than the ones in the front room.

  It took a moment, but then Tay registered that the windows were too far back to be immediately above the filing cabinets. He played the beam of the Maglite over the wall.

  That was when he saw the narrow staircase. It started in the left-hand corner of the room and disappeared downward behind the barrier of filing cabinets. Tay realized immediately that those had to be the stairs leading to the back door he had Kang watching from the alleyway.

  But if Ferrero had escaped that way, why hadn’t Kang called him? Had Ferrero overpowered Kang? Maybe even shot him like he did August?

  Tay walked over to the head of the staircase and played the beam of the Maglite downward. Sure enough, at the bottom of the stairs was a heavy-looking black door with a silver push bar across it. It was closed.

  Tay twisted his cuffed hands to the right side of his body, put the Glock into his right-hand pants pocket, and shifted the Maglite from his left to his right hand. Then he moved his hands back to his left side and dug his cell phone out of his left-hand pants pocket.

  Tay had just pushed a button on his cell phone to light up the keyboard so he could call Kang when he felt the muzzle of a gun against his neck.

  “You’re not very good at this, are you, Tay?”

  Ferrero sounded genuinely amused.

  “Don’t you know you’re supposed to clear a room completely before you let your attention wander? A mistake like that could get somebody killed. In this case, that somebody is you.”

  Tay said nothing. Where had Ferrero come from?

  “There’s a bathroom over there,” Ferrero said as if he could hear Tay thinking. “You didn’t bother to clear it. You should have. Of course, it might not have done you much good. Since you’re not carrying anything but a flashlight and a cell phone, I would have just shot you in the head and finished collecting the stuff I came here to get.”

  Tay realized then Ferrero must not have stepped out of his hiding place until after the Glock had gone into his pocket. Ferrero didn’t know he had it.

  But what good that would do him Tay didn’t really see. He was holding a cell phone in one hand and a Maglite in the other, and both his hands were cuffed together. That made losing a fast draw contest pretty much a sure thing.

  ***

  Tay felt the pressure of the muzzle leave his neck and he heard Ferrero’s feet scrape the floor as he took several shuffling steps away from him.

  “Drop the phone and the flashlight.”

  Tay did. When they clattered against the floor the sounds they made were as loud as explosions in the quiet room.

  “Take two steps straight back,” Ferrero said. “Then turn to your right and walk until you come to the wall.”

  Tay did as he was told.

  “Now turn around.”

  ***

  Ferrero was standing about eight feet away watching Tay with a half-smile on his face. He had moved Tay to the other side of the room and had positioned himself carefully between Tay and both of the staircases just in case Tay suddenly decided to make a run for it.

  “Handcuffs? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You not only kick a door on an armed man when you’re carrying nothing but a phone and a flashlight, but you do it while wearing handcuffs?”

  Ferrero chuckled.

  “My guess is you must have been downstairs somewhere and August tried to keep you out of the way.”

  Tay said nothing.

  “You should have listened to August, Tay. You’re either the bravest man I ever knew or a complete moron. But I’ve got to be honest with you here. My money’s on the moron thing.”

  Tay studied Ferrero’s face and he saw neither fear nor anxiety. Ferrero looked like a man in co
mmand. And since he was holding the gun, Tay had to admit that was pretty much the case.

  “What’s this all about, Ferrero? You broke Johnny the Mover’s neck. You shot John August. What were you trying to cover up? What’s all this really about?”

  “Oh Christ, Tay, where would I even begin?” Ferrero chuckled again. “?Draw up your chair to the edge of the precipice and I’ll tell you a story.”

  “F. Scott Fitzgerald. The Crack Up. I wouldn’t have pegged you for a literary man, Ferrero.”

  Ferrero laughed. It didn’t appear to Tay to be for the effect of it, but genuinely.

  “Damn, Tay, you are just full of surprises. It’s a shame we can’t just hang around here and chat for the rest of the night. We might become real friends.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why not? We’ve got a lot in common. We’re both impetuous men who believe in ourselves. We both read Fitzgerald.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not likely to become friends with the man who killed my father.”

  Ferrero studied Tay with a puzzled expression his face.

  “How could August be your father?”

  “For God’s sake, Ferrero, now who’s the moron? My father was Duncan Tay.”

  “That can’t be,” he said. “You can’t be Duncan Tay’s son.”

  Tay said nothing, which said everything.

  Ferrero stared, the astonishment clear on his face. “Tay is such a common name in Singapore it never occurred to me there might be any connection between you and Duncan.”

  Tay remained silent. He just stood there and stared back at Ferrero.

  “You know,” Ferrero started nodding his head very slowly, “now that you say so, I can see it. That’s just unbelievable.”

  “Why did you kill my father?”

  Ferrero didn’t bother to deny it or even to ask how Tay knew. He rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand. But his other hand, the one holding the gun leveled at Tay, never wavered.

  “Oh man,” he said. “That was so long ago.”

  “Nevertheless, he’s still dead. Why, Ferrero?”

  Ferrero took a breath. Then he exhaled heavily.

  “Duncan, Johnny, and I started this business together in Saigon back in the early 70’s. But Duncan got his dick in a twist over some Vietnamese dolly bird and had it in his head he was going to stay behind when we pulled out of Saigon right in front of the North Vietnamese. I couldn’t let that happen. He knew too much. He would have buried us.”

  “So you buried him first. To protect your business.”

  Ferrero shrugged.

  “And then forty years later, here in Singapore, you killed Johnny the Mover, your other partner. And it was for exactly the same reason, wasn’t it?”

  Ferrero shrugged again. “There are worse reasons for killing a man.”

  “And now you’re going to kill me.”

  Ferrero sighed heavily.

  “I really hate to do it. It’s got to be seven years of bad luck or some shit like that to shoot the son of some guy you’ve already shot. But I don’t see what choice I’ve got. You wouldn’t consider just sitting down somewhere and letting me walk out of here, would you?”

  “No. I wouldn’t.”

  “Well then…there you are.”

  ***

  Propelled by sheer fury, Tay took a sudden step toward Ferrero and Ferrero fired a shot into the floor in front of him. The sound was deafening.

  After Tay’s ears stopped ringing, he said, “What did you do with your silencer?”

  “The silencer is on my gun, the one I used on August. This gun belonged to him. I figured using it on you and then leaving it behind would confuse everybody all to hell. Might help keep me out of this altogether. I guess you never know.”

  ***

  The crash from someone kicking open the back door startled Ferrero. He spun away from Tay toward the staircase, but the line of heavy filing cabinets blocking his view meant he couldn’t get a shot off at whoever had come through the door until they made it to the top of the stairs.

  That gave Tay just enough time.

  He twisted his hands to his right and hauled the Glock out of his pants pocket. He had chambered a round downstairs and the Glock has no safety, so all he had to do was aim at Ferrero’s broad back and pull the trigger.

  That was exactly what he did.

  He pulled the Glock’s trigger and he kept pulling the trigger until the clip was empty and the slide locked open.

  FIFTY-ONE

  WHEN KANG REACHED the top of the stairs he dived to the floor and swept the room with the muzzle of his gun.

  He saw Ferrero down and bleeding. Then, beyond Ferrero, he saw Tay.

  “Are you all right, sir?” he screamed.

  “I’m perfectly all right, Sergeant. Please stop shouting.”

  Kang jumped up, took three quick strides toward Ferrero, and kicked the gun out of his hand. He bent down and put two fingers against Ferrero’s neck.

  “Is he still alive, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then call this in and get an ambulance here as quickly as you can. Make that two ambulances. There’s another badly injured man downstairs.”

  “You shot somebody else, too?”

  “No, Ferrero shot the other man.”

  “Who is it?”

  Tay hesitated. “Just go down and check on him, Sergeant, and get those ambulances here.”

  ***

  Kang disappeared downstairs and Tay bent over Ferrero and checked his pulse for himself. When he laid his hand against Ferrero’s neck, Ferrero’s eyes suddenly popped open and he looked straight at Tay.

  “I would never have thought you had it in you, Tay.”

  “Don’t try to talk. My sergeant is calling an ambulance. You’ll be okay.”

  “No, I won’t be okay and you know it. But don’t blame yourself, man. I’ve had something like this coming to me for a long time.”

  “Just stay quiet.”

  “I don’t want you to feel guilty about this, Tay. You were doing your job. All mankind consists of the pursued, the pursuing, the guilty, and the tired.”

  “Fitzgerald again.”

  “Yeah.”

  A coughing fit shook Ferrero’s and blood sprayed out of his mouth. It spattered the worn rug on which he was lying.

  “I used to be one of the pursuing. Now I’m just one of the tired. I’m ready for it to be over.”

  Tay could hear Kang’s footsteps on the stairs so he said nothing.

  “To tell the truth, Tay, it seems fair to me that it ended this way. You deserved it.”

  Ferrero coughed again, then he fell silent. Tay could see that he was gone.

  ***

  When Tay rose to his feet, he saw Kang standing in the doorway.

  “Where is this other injured man supposed to be, sir?”

  “On the floor, right at the foot of the stairs.”

  “There’s no one there.”

  Tay thought about that for a moment.

  John August really was a ghost. Always there, but never there. And now, even with two bullets in his chest, he was somewhere else.

  Who was that masked man?

  Kang nodded toward Ferrero. “Is he dead, sir?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you wearing handcuffs?”

  Tay wasn’t sure how to answer Kang without talking about John August, and he wasn’t going to do that. Maybe Kang would just assume it had something to do with Ferrero, something he might be embarrassed about, and let it go.

  “It’s a long story, Sergeant, and I’m too tired to tell it. Do you have your key?”

  Kang nodded and fished in his pocket. He came up with a cuff key and it opened the clasps. Tay lifted the cuffs off and stood quietly rubbing his wrists.

  “Can I ask you something else, sir?”

  Tay didn’t say anything. He had no idea how he wa
s going to answer any of the questions he knew Kang and others were going to have for him. No idea at all.

  “What did Ferrero mean?” Kang asked him anyway. “Before he died I heard him say, You deserved it. What did he mean by that, sir? What was it you deserved?”

  Tay looked at Ferrero’s body lying on the dirty rug in that rundown shophouse and he thought for a moment about all the possible answers he could give Kang. But the more he thought, the more certain he became there was really only one answer he could ever give anyone who asked him that.

  “I have no idea what he meant, Sergeant. No idea at all.”

  ***

  Tay pushed August’s Glock into one pocket and the handcuffs into the other. Then he scooped his cell phone off the floor and walked out of the room and back downstairs.

  He went out through the carport and sat down facing the street on a low concrete ledge next to the red front door. He fished a crumpled pack of Marlboros and a book of matches from his shirt pocket, but the first cigarette he shook out was broken so he threw it away and took out another. It was broken, too. He emptied the rest of the cigarettes out on the ledge and sorted through them, but he couldn’t find even one that hadn’t been crushed or broken.

  Maybe, Tay thought, this would be a good time to quit.

  He brushed the mangled cigarettes off the ledge onto the sidewalk, wadded up the empty pack, and dropped it on top of them.

  Then lacing his fingers around one knee, Tay leaned back and waited quietly for the circus to begin.

  THE END

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  ONE

  WHEN HIS CELL phone rang, Inspector Samuel Tay considered ignoring it. But then he always considered ignoring it and he almost never did, so he answered it just as he usually ended up doing.

  The caller was a sergeant Tay didn’t know. He told Tay the Officer in Charge of the Special Investigations Section of CID wanted him to come the Singapore Marriott urgently. Tay asked what was going on. The sergeant said he didn’t know.