THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3)

by Jake Needham

  Tay didn’t either.

  “You just can plug it into any laptop with that USB cable,” Emma spoke up again. “Then you mount it on your desktop and access it like you would any other drive.”

  Tay looked at Emma as if she had begun speaking in tongues.

  “What?” she asked. “It’s just standard computer stuff.”

  Tay shook his head and began returning everything to the plastic bag. He still had the stack of clothes in his hand when he looked up at Betty.

  “Can we borrow all this for a couple of days?” he asked. “I’d like to examine it more carefully.”

  “Will it help you show that Tyler didn’t commit suicide?”

  “I don’t know,” Tay said. “Maybe there’s something here, maybe there’s nothing here. I promise you’ll get everything back undamaged.”

  Betty sat for a moment without speaking, and then she nodded.

  “Can I go now?” she asked. “I’m really tired.”

  Tay and Emma stood, and Betty pushed back her chair and stood, too. Emma offered her hand.

  “Thank you for doing this. I know it was hard for you. I promise to be fair and honest in everything I write about Tyler.”

  Betty said nothing. She just shook Emma’s hand, nodded at Tay, and walked slowly away across the courtyard.

  They stood there watching her until she had passed through the doorway into the hotel and disappeared. Tay was disappointed in himself for not saying something comforting to her before she turned away. He simply had no idea what it might have been.

  The courtyard was quiet and dark. Tay looked at his watch. It was just after eleven.

  “Let’s walk for a while,” he said, and Emma nodded.

  They left Raffles through a back entrance next to the Long Bar and emerged on North Bridge Road. Tay offered Emma a Marlboro and she accepted it without hesitation. He took one for himself, lit both their cigarettes, and they strolled slowly along the east side of the street.

  Tay loved nothing more than walking the streets of the city late at night. They were right in the middle of the city, on one of its busiest thoroughfares, and yet there was very little automobile traffic and no foot traffic at all. Singapore went to bed early. Sometimes Tay thought that was one of the best things about it.

  There was something almost unbearably romantic about Singapore when it was quiet and empty. Off to their left, the floodlit columns of the old general post office building gleamed in the night like a movie set lit up and waiting for the actors to appear. Beyond it, the huge Singapore Wheel looked like a full moon rising over the city. It all somehow conspired to put Tay in a strangely forgiving and deeply sentimental mood, which profoundly irritated him.

  At night, the city felt haunted to Tay. Not by the spirits of the dead, but by the presence of a whole culture that had been systematically ground into dust by people claiming to speak for the future. What did exchanging old buildings for new ones do to the soul of the city? All that was left now was the spirit of the life that had once been lived in them, and on nights like these, when the silence was deep and the breeze was soft, Tay was certain he could hear that spirit whispering to him still.

  “That was an interesting conversation,” Emma said.

  “I wouldn’t make too much of it.”

  Emma turned her head toward Tay and waited.

  “I just meant it doesn’t sound like Tyler told her all that much,” he said.

  “He told her he had discovered something about the company. He told her it frightened him. That sounds like quite a lot to me.”

  “I’m not sure how much of that he actually said and how much she was reading between the lines. Did you notice she said nothing about going back to California with Tyler?”

  “Maybe he didn’t ask her.”

  “Exactly.”

  Emma puffed a couple of those smoke rings she did so well.

  “And something else,” Tay continued. “She said she only saw him once or twice a week and she had never heard him mention any friends he went out with when she wasn’t around. A twenty-something guy sitting around his apartment in Singapore doing nothing five or six nights a week? I don’t think so.”

  Emma took a long, deep draw on her cigarette and exhaled slowly.

  “So, Sam, what do you do five or six nights a week?”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with it. I’m not twenty-something.”

  “You could have fooled me.”

  They crossed over North Bridge Road and walked past the National Library Building. Tay had always hated the National Library Building. It looked to him like a capable and creative architect had started out to create a truly iconoclastic cultural monument out of a traditional building, but then a committee of government bureaucrats had taken over, dumbed down the design, and turned it into… well, neither one thing nor another. What Singapore had ended up with was a building that looked like it couldn’t make up its mind.

  “Are you saying you didn’t believe her when she told us Tyler had found out something about the company that frightened him?”

  “I believe that’s what she thinks she heard him say. I’m just not certain he really told her that, at least not in exactly those words.”

  Emma pointed at the plastic bag Tay was swinging in his left hand as they walked.

  “Maybe something on that drive will clear it up. If Tyler went to the trouble to set up a wireless backup drive outside of his apartment, he must have wanted to make copies of something important enough to store in a secure place. If he did find something that frightened him, I’ll bet you it’s on that drive.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to be that easy.”

  “Probably not. Tyler was a computer security guy. I’m sure the drive is encrypted. Maybe he even put other kinds of security on it. We’re going to need somebody who knows about stuff like that to get into it.”

  “Can’t you do it?”

  “Look, Sam, I know enough to keep my own gear doing what it’s supposed to do, at least most of the time, but crack an encrypted disk drive? Forget it. Don’t you know somebody here? Surely the cops have a few computer security experts on their books.”

  Tay didn’t know anybody who could crack an encrypted disk drive. Sam Tay and technology were not pals. They weren’t even on speaking terms.

  “I think my sergeant might know somebody,” Tay finally said, mostly because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “Robbie handles most of the computer stuff around our office.”

  Tay had no idea if Robbie Kang knew a computer security guy or not, but he was the only person Tay could think of to ask.

  They both finished their cigarettes at about the same time. Emma flicked her butt into the gutter and Tay winced. No one littered in Singapore. No one even thought about littering in Singapore.

  Tay quickly glanced both ways up and down North Bridge Road to see if anyone had noticed her doing it. He saw no one and, remarkably, the world looked exactly as it had before she did it. Emma had tossed a cigarette butt into the gutter and nothing happened. The sky had not fallen.

  Tay thought about that for a moment. Then he flicked his own cigarette butt away and it came to rest right next to Emma’s. Tay contemplated the sight of those two cigarette butts just lying there in the gutter on North Bridge Road.

  It was exhilarating.

  “Why are you doing this, Sam?”

  “Why not? It’s a nice night for a walk.”

  Emma laughed that throaty laugh that had so enthralled Tay the first time he heard it, and he felt exactly the same way all over again.

  “I wasn’t talking about the walk, Sam. I was talking about you helping me look into Tyler’s death. You said you wouldn’t do it, but you’re doing it anyway. What happened?”

  It was a beautiful night, he was with a beautiful woman, and they were walking the empty streets of the city where he had grown up. Tay could not remember when he had felt more comfortable and relaxed.

  So, before h
e realized what he was saying, it just slipped out…

  “My mother told me I ought to help you.”

  “Does your mother live here in Singapore?”

  Oh Christ, why did I say that?

  Emma stopped walking when she saw the stricken look on Tay’s face.

  “What’s wrong, Sam? Did I say something I shouldn’t have?”

  “No,” Tay stammered. “It’s not that. It’s more like…”

  Tay trailed off. He didn’t have the slightest idea where to go from there.

  “You certainly look very disturbed about something.”

  Perhaps, Tay thought, he could simply tell Emma the truth. They were getting along well. She seemed comfortable with him, even perhaps to understand him a little. And it wasn’t as if having an occasional conversation with your dead mother was all that big a deal, was it?

  Oh for Christ’s sake, I can’t tell Emma I talk to my dead mother. She’ll think I’m a complete nutter.

  “Is it difficult for you to talk to your mother?” Emma prodded gently.

  Okay, Tay abruptly decided, the hell with it. So he took a deep breath and he just told her.

  “Yes,” Tay said, “it’s difficult. Because my mother is dead.”

  Tay held his breath. He had no idea how Emma would react to that. He was pleasantly surprised that she didn’t seem to react at all. She just looked, at most, slightly thoughtful.

  “I’m not absolutely sure what you’re telling me, Sam.”

  “My mother died three years ago.”

  “And a few days ago she told you to help me?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  Emma nodded her head slowly a couple of times.

  “Can I have another cigarette, Sam?”

  Tay didn’t know what he expected Emma to say but it hadn’t been that. He pulled the box of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket so quickly he almost dropped it. He held the box out to Emma, took one for himself as well, and lit both cigarettes.

  Crossing North Bridge Road, they walked west behind the Intercontinental Hotel. They had reached Victoria Street and turned north before Emma spoke again.

  “My mother died when I was seventeen,” she said. “But I talked to her almost every day until I was at least twenty-five. I still talk to her now and then. When I need to.”

  Tay glanced at Emma. Was she making fun of him?

  “We talk to whoever we need to make sense out of our lives, Sam.”

  “I felt very foolish when I blurted that out.”

  “You needn’t have.”

  “I thought you might think I was crazy.”

  “Tell me about your mother, Sam. Was she a good mother?”

  “I don’t know. I never really thought about that. She was just my mother. You only get one.”

  “Were you close?”

  “Not really. I talk to her more now that she’s dead than I ever did when she was alive.”

  “And I’ll bet you take her advice a lot more now than you did when she was alive.”

  Tay nodded. How did Emma know that? he wondered. He wanted to ask her, but he had said far too much already.

  “Whatever your mother said, Sam, I’m grateful to her. I really needed your help.”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “That I needed your help?”

  “Yes, but she also said it was something I needed, too. That I needed to do this for myself as much as for you.”

  Emma considered that. “Do you? Need to help me?”

  “Yes, I think I probably do.”

  “Then we’ve made a good bargain, Sam. No one can ask for more than that.”

  Tay tried to read Emma’s expression out of the corner of his eye. It would be humiliating if she were just humoring him until she could flee into the night.

  “I’m not humoring you, Sam,” Emma said suddenly as if she could hear him thinking. “I don’t humor people. I say what I mean. You should know that by now.”

  Tay nodded, but he didn’t say anything.

  They walked on, and a companionable silence enveloped them. The intimacy of it both exhilarated and frightened Tay at the same time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EMMA AND TAY walked on through the nearly silent city until they arrived at what Tay thought surely had to be the ugliest building in Singapore. He would be the first to admit the competition for that title was intense and that there were a great many deserving candidates for the honor, but he had always thought this building stood pretty much in a class by itself.

  It was a massive, full-block office tower sheathed in undulating waves of aluminum so shiny it glittered even at midnight. What really bothered Tay was that the building’s skin was entirely covered in giant, metallic blotches. He supposed it was possible to describe the gleaming eruptions as resembling rows of silver Christmas tree ornaments jammed up together. At least it would have been if he had been feeling charitable, but he wasn’t feeling charitable. What they really looked like were skin lesions. They made the building look like it was suffering from leprosy.

  A little north of that monstrosity, they came to a narrow, one-way lane called Cheng Yan Place that was lined with small shophouses jammed tightly along both sides. It was one of the few places in that part of Singapore that hadn’t yet been bulldozed to make room for one more soulless office tower. Tay wondered how long it could hold out before it too succumbed to what the government insisting on calling progress.

  When Tay heard a vehicle coming toward them, he looked left up Cheng Yan Place and saw a white Toyota van moving way too fast for the confined space of the little lane. It was coming hard, and he threw out his left arm to prevent Emma from stepping off the curb. For a moment he felt like a hero.

  Then the van reached the corner and the driver slammed to an abrupt stop. The sliding door in the side of the van flew open and three men leaped out. Tay barely had time to register that they all were dressed in black and wearing black balaclavas over their faces before the men were upon them.

  Two of them went for Tay, and the third man got behind Emma and hooked her arms to prevent her from moving. One of the two men on Tay tried to hook his arms the same way while the other man tried to grab the plastic bag Tay was carrying.

  “Get the fuck off me, you asshole,” Tay heard Emma scream.

  He twisted toward her and saw her stamp down with the heel of her right shoe into the right foot of the man trying to hold her.

  “You bitch!” the man howled.

  Turning loose of her arms, he spun Emma toward him and hit her hard across the side of the head with his open hand. The hollow thunk of his hand against her skull echoed in the silence like a bat on a ball. Emma staggered, but she didn’t go down.

  The slap moved the man close to Tay, and Tay lashed out with his foot. He got lucky and the toe of his shoe caught the man squarely in the balls. He bent nearly double and Tay kicked again, aiming for his head. But he missed completely.

  The man yelled and straightened up enough to launch a flurry of wild swings at Tay’s face. The first few punches ricocheted off Tay’s head without doing much damage, but then a punch caught Tay on the side of his jaw and he tumbled headfirst into a swirling snowstorm of flashing white lights.

  Stunned, Tay staggered and his feet got tangled with the feet of the man trying to hold him. Both men lost their balance and fell against a tall rubber garbage bin standing at the curb. The bin was loaded to the top and for a moment it resisted the weight of the men, but the man behind Tay shifted his feet to try and get a better grip and his hips swung into the bin. It went over, and Tay and his attacker went over with it.

  The man holding Tay’s arms landed on top of the rubber bin, but Tay was less fortunate. His shoulder crunched into the sidewalk and the jolt of pain that coursed through his body was so severe it brought him to the edge of nausea. Then his head hit the concrete even harder than his shoulder had, so hard that he heard the thunk and felt his neck snap as it rebounded like a badly kicked
soccer ball.

  Tay was done. His vision narrowed abruptly into two tiny tunnels, and then the tunnels closed and he could see nothing at all.

  “Get the fucking bag and let’s get out of here!” Tay heard somebody scream.

  He tried to look around to see who had screamed, but nothing worked. He told his head to turn, yet his head remained exactly where it was. Tay was just starting to get annoyed about that when the darkness came and he stopped thinking altogether.

  The last thing he remembered was feeling the plastic bag that held Tyler’s things being ripped out of his hand. After that, he remembered nothing at all.

  Many people say the first thought they have when they wake up in a hospital is to wonder where they are. Tay didn’t have to wonder. The face of the man bending over him swam into focus and he knew all too well where he was.

  “Hello again, Dr. Gupta.”

  “Good day, Inspector.”

  “We’re going to have to stop meeting like this.”

  Tay thought that might have been a whisper of a smile cross Dr. Gupta’s face, but he was probably mistaken. He had never actually seen Dr. Gupta smile and doubted he would recognize it if he did.

  Dr. Gupta pulled up Tay’s left eyelid and pointed the beam of a silver-barreled penlight into his left eye. Then he did the same with his right eyelid and his right eye.

  “Is this the third time you’ve been brought in with a concussion, or is it the fourth?” he asked.

  “Third. Don’t make it worse than it is.”

  “I can’t make it worse than it is. Do you understand how serious a concussion is? And you’ve had three in… what? Less than a year?”

  Tay automatically started to nod, but then he thought better of it and kept his head still.

  “None of them were my fault,” he said.

  “And what difference does that make?”

  “None, of course. I was just trying to be funny again.”

  “Again? You were never funny.”

  Tay said nothing. Engaging in witty banter with a doctor was near the bottom of Tay’s personal list of preferred pastimes. It ranked somewhere just above golf.