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

by Jake Needham

  “Be honest with yourself, Samuel. Ever since I died, our relationship has been so much better than it used to be. We have these little chats occasionally and then each of us simply goes our own way. Why would you want to screw up such a good thing?”

  “I think we should say good night now, Mother. I haven’t been sleeping all that well, and I’m very tired.”

  “You want my advice about that, Samuel? Lay off the Marlboros and don’t eat chili crab before you go to bed.”

  “Good night, Mother.”

  “Good night, Samuel. Don’t forget what I said. You do have a weapon somewhere, don’t you? After all, you used to be a policeman.”

  “Good night, Mother.”

  But his mother didn’t reply. She was already gone.

  There was no drama to it, no swirling of lights or slow dematerialization. She was simply sitting on the end of his bed one moment, and the next moment she wasn’t. Tay was a bit disappointed, to tell the truth. He figured a visit from the other side was worthy of a more theatrical ending than that.

  He stretched out, pulled the duvet up under his chin, and went back to sleep.

  When Tay got out of the shower the next morning, he put on a cotton bathrobe and picked up his wristwatch from the bedside table. Lying next to it was his old .38 and suddenly everything from the night before came flooding back.

  He was a rational man if he was nothing else, and he knew perfectly well his mother had not appeared to him during the night and warned him to carry a weapon. Although he had to admit that these occasional conversations with his mother always had a ring of authenticity to them, he fully understood they were not authentic. The warnings and advice he imagined his mother giving him were simply manifestations of stomach gas, not communications from beyond the grave.

  Tay buckled his watch around his left wrist. What he needed was coffee. A lot of coffee.

  He hesitated, glanced back at his .38 lying on the bedside table, then scooped it up and carried it downstairs with him. He wasn’t doing it because of some entirely imaginary warning from the ghost of his mother, he told himself sternly, but purely because it was a sensible thing to do. After all, he did have enemies and he seemed to be making a few more every day. Having a weapon within reach just made good sense.

  Yes, that’s all there was to it. It had nothing at all to do with his mother.

  Of course it didn’t…

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  TAY TOOK A package of Marlboros, his coffee, and the .38 out into the garden and put them all down on the teak table. He briefly thought about clipping the holster to the belt of his robe, but that would have looked so ridiculous he refused to consider it even if there wasn’t anyone else in the house to see him.

  After drinking half the coffee, he lit his first cigarette of the day and thought about what to do next. He was running out of time, and he didn’t have much to go on. He had hardly anything at all to go on, if he were being completely honest with himself.

  He had two dead bodies, of course, Tyler Bartlett and Emma Lazar, and he had a disk drive with what appeared to be a copy of the data from Tyler’s laptop on it. He was certain that data would tell him a great deal if Julie could break the encryption, but that might take weeks. And he didn’t have weeks. He just had a few days if he was going to get this nailed down before he returned to his job on Tuesday.

  The bastards were trying to bribe him to walk away from the case by giving him his job back in return for dropping his investigation. He understood that. He just didn’t yet understand why somebody wanted him to walk away so badly they would bribe him to do it. Regardless, he was pretty sure he could have it both ways. He could find out who killed Tyler and Emma, and why, and still get his job back. He just had to get answers before Tuesday. Then the joke would be on them. Whoever them was.

  He was willing to bet the answer to everything was right there on Tyler’s disk drive. All he had to do was figure out how to read it. Well… not him. Julie had to figure out how to read it.

  But what if she couldn’t?

  All he would have then were his instincts, and his instincts told him that both Tyler and Emma had stumbled on something about The Future and Zachery Goodnight-Jones that got them killed. But what?

  Tay stubbed out his cigarette, drained his coffee, and walked into the kitchen to pour another cup.

  He made two slices of buttered toast and ate them standing over the sink while he drank more coffee. It was somewhere between the first and the second slice that the idea came to him.

  He had no doubt that Zachery Goodnight-Jones knew exactly what tied all this together. If he confronted Goodnight-Jones and made him believe they had already decrypted Tyler’s drive, it might spook him. Maybe Goodnight-Jones would panic and give up the game.

  Tay knew he was being unreasonably hopeful, and he understood that his hope was coming from frustration rather than from good sense. He had looked Goodnight-Jones in the eye and he hadn’t seen a man likely to panic. If Tay made Goodnight-Jones think he had decrypted Tyler’s backup drive and had learned something from it he could use to take him down, it was more likely that Goodnight-Jones would methodically bury whatever it was so deep that Tay would never be able to put his hands on any real evidence. And he would get away it, whatever it was.

  Tay knew none of that really mattered. He had only two cards to play. One was the data on the disk drive. The other was baiting Goodnight-Jones.

  Pulling something out of the disk drive was entirely in Julie’s hands. He liked Julie and he thought she was a smart kid, but he didn’t like the idea of leaving his success or failure in the hands of somebody else. If he confronted Goodnight-Jones, that play would be entirely in his hands. That was the way he liked to work. To rely on himself, not somebody else, particularly when they were using technology he only half understood.

  Walking in on somebody and trying to bait them into panicking was a desperation tactic, of course, Tay understood that full well, but what better time to use a desperation tactic than when you were… well, desperate.

  Tay brushed the toast crumbs off his hands and went upstairs to get dressed.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Tay remembered the receptionist at The Future from the day he accompanied Emma to interview Zachery Goodnight-Jones. She was an altogether pleasant young woman, and back on that occasion she had quite competently shown them where Goodnight-Jones’s office was. He no longer required her services to find it.

  “No,” Tay said, “I know where I’m going.”

  And with that he breezed right past the receptionist and walked down the hall.

  It was a bold move, but the hallway was so quiet the sound of Tay’s right shoe squeaking was clearly audible as he walked. Left, right, squeak. Left, right, squeak. Tay was embarrassed, but there wasn’t anything he could do to make it stop, other than take off his shoes, and he certainly wasn’t about to do that. So, as he had done so often before in his life, Sam Tay raised his chin, ignored the humiliation, and kept walking.

  When he got to Goodnight-Jones’s door, he opened it and went in without knocking.

  Goodnight-Jones was sitting behind his desk talking on the telephone. He was wearing a dark gray, three-piece suit with a white shirt and a pearl gray cravat. He looked like he was dressed to usher at somebody’s wedding. Tay wondered if Goodnight-Jones always wore such silly get-ups or if he had just encountered him on two days when he felt particularly flamboyant.

  In front of Goodnight-Jones’s desk were two straight mahogany-framed chairs with green leather seats. Tay selected one and sat down. It was more comfortable than it looked.

  “Hello,” Tay said. “What’s new?”

  “I’ll have to call you back,” Goodnight-Jones said into the phone.

  Goodnight-Jones didn’t look particularly surprised. That was a disappointment to Tay, although he tried not to show it.

  Goodnight-Jones put his phone down and stared at Tay without expression for quite a long t
ime. Finally he said, “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought we should have a chat.”

  “About what?”

  “Oh… shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings. And, of course, remote disk drives that mirror the contents of Tyler Bartlett’s laptop.”

  Goodnight-Jones nodded slowly. Tay’s reference to the disk drive didn’t seem to surprise him either. So far, Tay was batting zero.

  “I wondered how long it would be before I saw you again, Tay.”

  “I hope you told yourself it wouldn’t be long.”

  “I did, Tay. That was exactly what I told myself.”

  “And what did yourself reply?”

  “That I probably ought to take care of you before it happened.”

  “Like you took care of Tyler Bartlett and Emma Lazar?”

  Goodnight-Jones said nothing, but the corners of his eyes wrinkled in what he apparently thought of as a smile.

  “Sorry,” Tay said. “Too late.”

  “Oh no, Inspector. It’s never too late. I can still take care of you most anytime.”

  “Was that a threat?”

  “It sure sounded like one to me,” Goodnight-Jones said.

  The smile that slid over his face looked like a crack moving across a pane of glass, then all at once the light seemed to leave him. It disappeared from his expression, his eyes, even the sound of his voice. And Tay saw the man beneath the disguise. Not the regular guy in the two-thousand dollar suit with the two-hundred dollar haircut, but the man who could have killed two people and was obviously thinking of making it three.

  Tay had expected Goodnight-Jones to protest when he burst into his office, perhaps to bluster and threaten to throw him out, but here the man sat smiling at him and lamenting that he hadn’t yet killed Tay. He hadn’t reacted to Tay’s mention of a remote hard drive mirroring Tyler Bartlett’s laptop at all. Did he already know about that?

  He had counted on unnerving Goodnight-Jones enough that at least some part of the truth might slip out. But his plan, if you could call it that, was looking very much like a pile of crap.

  Tay shifted his weight in the chair and felt the .38 he had clipped to his belt before he left home brushing against his side. He was almost angry enough to take it out, cock the hammer, and put the muzzle up against Goodnight-Jones’s forehead. But what good would that do? He wasn’t going to pull the trigger, and he was certain Goodnight-Jones would know that. Goodnight-Jones would probably just laugh at him if he pulled something like that, and Tay would end up feeling even more helpless than he already did.

  “What are you really doing here, Inspector? You’re not a policeman anymore. You have no legal authority at all. What’s your game?”

  “I want to know what really happened to Tyler Bartlett.”

  “Emma Lazar wanted to know what really happened to Tyler Bartlett. And look what happened to her.”

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Oh come now, Inspector, why would you waste your breath asking a question like that?”

  Goodnight-Jones leaned back in his chair, swung his feet up onto the desk, and clasped his hands together behind his head.

  “You can’t stop us, Inspector. You’re on a hopeless quest.”

  “What makes you so certain of that?”

  “We have a great many friends, friends who would like for us to succeed.”

  “Succeed at what?”

  “At what we are doing.”

  “And what are you doing?”

  Goodnight-Jones’s face shaped itself into an unpleasant grin. “We’re creating the software necessary to put driverless cars on the streets of Singapore.”

  Tay’s eyes slid off of Goodnight-Jones and he gazed out a large window that looked down into Robinson Road. Through the forest of buildings, Tay could see one of the three towers of the Marina Bay Hotel and, beyond it, hundreds of ships lying at anchor in the Singapore Strait. The haze had lifted and the sky looked like the inside of a glazed ceramic bowl.

  “Why is an Australian solicitor working for the Chinese army?” Tay asked.

  Tay’s eyes shifted back to Goodnight-Jones, and he was pleased to see a different expression on his face even if he wasn’t quite sure what this one meant. Perhaps he had finally landed a blow.

  “What are you talking about?” Goodnight-Jones asked.

  “I would’ve thought that was obvious. The Chinese army owns The Future. Therefore, you are working for the Chinese army.”

  Goodnight-Jones opened his mouth as if he was about to speak, but then immediately closed it again. Instead, he sat looking at Tay for a moment in silence and then a small smile spread across his face.

  “Where did you get an idea like that, Tay?”

  “I have sources.”

  “I gather you must. So these sources told you the Chinese army owns The Future? And you believed them?”

  “I trust my source.”

  Goodnight-Jones smiled again, and he made a gesture with his hands as if he was tossing an invisible ball back and forth.

  “Perhaps I judged you too quickly, Inspector.”

  “It’s not necessary for you to apologize.”

  “I wasn’t going to apologize.”

  Tay had a talent for reading people, and he could see exactly what Goodnight-Jones was thinking. Goodnight-Jones knew the sensible thing to do was to say nothing about anything, to throw Tay out of his office and be done with him. But a part of him wanted to talk a bit longer. Tay might have caught him off guard knowing whom he was really working for, but he was still winning and he liked seeing Tay losing.

  “I’m a bureaucrat, Tay. I manage complicated organizations and run complicated projects. I make the trains run on time. I’m good at it. You can’t touch me.”

  “You’re telling me you’re protected?”

  “Of course I’m protected. Why do you think you were told you could have your job back if you stop sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

  “I thought you might be behind that.”

  “I am behind a great many things that might surprise you.”

  “What are you really doing here? What is the Chinese army doing here in Singapore that everybody is protecting?”

  “Ah, well.” Goodnight-Jones spread his hands. “You don’t really expect me to answer that, and I won’t. But I will say this. Take the deal your boss offered you, Tay. Walk away now. You’ll get your job back, which I understand you want very badly, and you have my word I will not pursue you any further.”

  “What are you so afraid I’ll find out?”

  “It’s not really a question of—”

  “Tyler Bartlett found out, didn’t he? Emma Lazar found out, too, didn’t she?”

  Goodnight-Jones smiled again.

  “Found out what, Inspector?”

  Tay said nothing. Instead, he turned his head and gazed out the window again. If he kept digging, was he going to end up standing alone against the entrenched power of the men who ran Singapore and maybe the whole goddamned Chinese army, too?

  “Just tell me this,” he asked. “Why did you have to kill them?”

  “They became a threat to some very important people, Inspector. Those people could have them removed. And so they did.”

  Tay continued to stare out the window in silence.

  “Right now, Tay, you’re making yourself into the same kind of threat. I urge you to take the deal your boss offered you. Walk away.”

  Tay shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Then God help you.”

  Tay got to his feet. He said nothing, and he didn’t look at Goodnight-Jones. He just walked out of the office and closed the door softly behind him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  TAY WAS IN front of the building waiting for a taxi to come down Robinson Road when the dirty brown Toyota stopped at the curb and the driver lowered the passenger side window.

  “Get in,” Philip Goh said.

  Tay bent down and looked at
Goh through the open window. “So you lied when you said you weren’t watching me.”

  “Get the fuck in the car.”

  Tay straightened up and thought about it. What did he have to lose? He kept talking to people, and after every conversation he knew a little less than he had before. The more he talked, the less he knew. It was like trying to grab smoke. How much harm could one more useless conversation do him?

  He got in the car.

  Goh drove north on Robinson Road and made a right on Marina Boulevard. He took the on-ramp to the East Coast Parkway. It wasn’t until they crossed Marina Bay that he cleared his throat and spoke.

  “We’re not watching you, Tay. I told you we’re not interested in you, and we’re not.”

  “You’re watching The Future?”

  Goh laughed. “Everybody thinks he’s watching the future, and as far as I can tell almost nobody really is.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Come on, man, lighten up a little. That was funny. You know that was funny. Can’t you ever laugh at yourself?”

  Tay said nothing. He just sat in the passenger seat looking straight ahead.

  Goh shook his head and snorted unpleasantly.

  “You’re a strange one, Tay. Sometimes I think you’re the smartest man I ever met, and sometimes I think you’re the dumbest.”

  They passed the Marina Bay Golf Course and settled into a cruise along the East Coast Parkway toward Changi Airport.

  “Tell me we’re not about to get on an airplane, Goh. I was planning to rearrange my sock drawer tonight.”

  “If I thought I could get away with throwing you on a plane and sending you ten thousand miles away from here, I’d pay for it out of my own pocket.”

  “I hear Bermuda is nice.”

  “You in a bathing suit? That’s downright scary, man.”

  “Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer as soon as I find out why Tyler Bartlett and Emma Lazar were murdered.”

  “You’re not going to find out.”

  “You don’t think I can?”