East of Suez

by Howard Engel

Probably because of the French, the post office and the telephone company are one and the same. It is called the P.T.T. You can recognize the various P.T.T.s around town by the large letters and by the shape of a bottle upside down. Inside the high-ceilinged main room of the nearest P.T.T. were a number of sit-down phone booths. I thought that it might be safer to make my call from here than from my room at the hotel. I might have been fooling myself to think that my conversations might be of interest to the authorities, but it’s never wise to discover such a thing after the fact. When I put in a call to Vicky in Grantham, my coins were collected by a human at a booth on my way out. I spent about twenty minutes on the line with Vicky. I could hear her excitement at my news and was glad to share it with her. She had a million questions for me, and I tried to stick in a few of my own.

  Walking away from the P.T.T., which means “Public Telephone and Telegraph” according to Vicky (that was one of my questions), I felt like I was doing a good job. I had just made my report to my employer and I was to meet her “dead” husband within a very few hours. I deserved a drink or something to celebrate. “Three cheers for old Ben!”

  What I got instead was Colonel What’s-his-name sitting down at my café table without an invitation. “We meet again, Mr Cooperman.” He looked uncomfortable in his uniform. Nylon and the tropics were not mixing in his favor. About ten meters away from me, leaning against the framed bamboo outside of a kiosk, I spotted the man who had tried to steal my camera bag. He was watching the policeman and the policeman was watching me.

  “They haven’t called the Tam-tams on me yet,” I said, trying to grin.

  “Continue to think that and you may be a dead man. Like the man said in the movies, you may have noticed that life is cheap in Takot. This time you are neither picking yourself up from the pavement nor are you dressed for dinner at the Hôtel de Nancy.”

  “I am full of surprises, Colonel. Will you join me?” My invitation followed hard upon his inversion of the usual order. I took that to mean that he was not out for a stroll.

  “How much of what happened last night is known, Colonel?”

  “You mean about the unfortunate Mr Chester Ranken? Nothing yet. It will be in the evening papers. But at the Commissariat! There you have overturned a keg of scorpions.”

  “That doesn’t leave us much time.” The policeman was looking at me in an uncomfortable way. Was it time for the handcuffs?

  “You are a very interesting man, Mr Cooperman.”

  “My parents prefer their older son. They don’t see much future in my being a freelance policeman.”

  “They may be right, especially if you stay in Takot much longer.”

  “Is that a warning or just an observation?”

  “In these latitudes, my friend, time is always running out for somebody. You have already awakened far too much interest. I can see this, but am powerless to do much about it after the fact and there’s nothing I can do before the fact.”

  “So, you don’t yourself represent the trouble I’ve stepped into?”

  “Mr Cooperman, I am, in the words of a policeman in the film I just alluded to, ‘just a poor corrupt official.’ My powers to help you are limited. I must remain here, perhaps find a pension to ease my later years, long after you have gone back to Tomato, Canada. Long after most of the people you have met here have gone. I once dreamed of a visit to Paris, but my part in this comic opera may prevent foreign travel in the future.”

  “By the way, it’s Toronto, Ontario, Canada. And I’m still discovering what the normal level of corruption is. It takes an outsider a while to learn.”

  “I appreciate the problem but suggest that you wind up your inquiries very quickly. You made a very serious mistake the other night.”

  “I had too much to drink.”

  “Most unfortunate. Many a dead man might have said that, my friend. This case has already attracted interest from Government House. The only instance I know of this police force acting efficiently has been when Government House takes an interest.”

  “Okay, what can I do to stop it happening to me?”

  “There is a daily plane to Manila. Another to Tokyo. Except Thursdays. I don’t know why not Thursdays. You should seriously work at not being here long enough to miss too many planes.”

  “I am very glad to have your advice, Colonel, but is it your advice or the department’s?”

  “Ha! My friend, the law here is not a subtle instrument. It acts like a hammer or a steel blade. There are no subtleties. We are not the inscrutable Easterners you put in your movies, Mr Cooperman. Pay us that compliment at least.”

  “Then why are you sticking your neck out?”

  “That’s my affair. I know something of the matters you have been looking into. I have been watching you. It’s funny, my friend, you have books and movies about honest detectives and a few good policemen working in a corrupt world. I enjoy them, I admire them. But you must understand that here in Miranam everybody is corrupt. It’s never a case of finding the rotten apple. All the apples are bad. I am paid off for looking the other way by five or six businessmen who wish to continue doing business with the West. I take my money without blushing. It is the way of the place. And, for the money they pay me, they operate within defined lines. They know that I’m waiting to see one of them overstep the agreed-upon limits.”

  “Does that make you an honest man?”

  “Yes! In this place, yes! I’m like one of those one-star restaurants in the Michelin guide. I get my star for being a reasonably fair man, considering the surrounding territory.”

  “Okay. I’ll buy that. Now tell me about the fat short cop in a khaki uniform. Lots of gold braid.”

  “How did you meet the General? This is worse than I thought!”

  “He came by the hotel, to shake up the search they were doing. He inspired a lot of saluting and braced backs, but they didn’t find me.”

  “Cooperman, there’s no time for delay! You must go and go now!”

  “But apart from the airport, where do we go from here?”

  “You are not leaving? Time has run out.”

  “I’m on my way to the airport. But, on my way, I thought I might pick up a few things. Souvenirs of my holiday.”

  “Even on your way to the airport, you are taking a chance.”

  “Maybe you’ll take a short ride with me, on my way to collect my bag?”

  “I hope you know what you are doing.”

  “That makes two of us, Colonel. Do you want to order some lunch?”

  “Mr Cooperman, I’m sure there isn’t time.” We looked at one another for maybe thirty seconds. He shrugged, then I did.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  CLAY INTRODUCED ME to a heavily bearded Jake Grange and I introduced them to Colonel Prasit Ngamdee. (I had written the name in my Memory Book, knowing what my memory is worth when I need it.) Everybody shook hands and we were off to a good start.

  I had met Clay as we’d arranged and I’d brought him up to date. The surprise of my mystery guest didn’t erase the glamour of his. The four of us weighed one another up while coffee was ordered. Apart from a red-faced European sitting across from a Eurasian beauty and a foursome of assorted businessmen, we had the place to ourselves. Nobody wanted to be the first to speak. But they were all three of them looking at me. So I spoke.

  “Vicky is alive, in case you don’t know it.” That seemed to be enough to start things off.

  “Vicky alive? Don’t mess with me!” So he didn’t know. His face was a study, as they say in books.

  “No joke. She hired me to come out here to find you.”

  “But I thought … I heard …”

  “Nevertheless. She hired me in Grantham. I knew you both at the collegiate.”

  “That’s wonderful!”

  “I didn’t know you that well.”

  “I mean about Vicky. She’s alive right now! She’s doing something. She’s … I knew that the kids were safe, but I thought …”

  “S
ure. The body in the seaweed. Lots of people thought it was your wife.”

  Jake rubbed his eyes and blinked at me. There was a pause again.

  As it happened I did remember Jake from his football days back home. But it was like recognizing an old photograph. He was still a healthy hunk with his tan and sun-bleached hair. The beard he was wearing, along with sideburns, gave an elongated shape to his face. It was as though he’d stepped from a Spanish painting of a bishop or pope. I remembered the sink in the bathroom of the place in the hills. It showed a painful study of someone trying to shave without hot, running water. The beard was a logical way out.

  “I remember you now!” he said, after studying my face closely over his coffee. “You were a senior. You were in plays! At the collegiate back in Grantham. I heard you became a doctor.”

  “That was Sam, my brother. He’s in Toronto. I’m the one who stayed at home.”

  “Well, you’re making up for it now. When did you see Vicky last? Tell me about her.”

  “Glad to.” I sketched a quick version of how Vicky came to see me and what she’d told me about what had happened. He wanted to know more, but I put him off for the present. “First let’s settle what we’re doing here today. You got in touch with Clay, right?”

  “Yeah, I recognized him from seeing him play with his band. I saw you from the bush behind my place in the hills—When I heard you coming in that toy car, I took off to my bolt hole. I’ve had lots of experience in getting away. I couldn’t place you, and had no way of contacting you even if I had. I went to see the last set at the club last night.”

  “Yeah, he was dressed like the Old Man of the Woods. They nearly didn’t let him in.”

  “Why did you pick Clay?”

  “I needed fresh help. And everybody in Takot knows Clay. Everybody who loves jazz.”

  “Except some people,” Clay said, with a look at me, then a glance at Jake, who was now looking at the policeman.

  “Colonel Ngamdee has been saving my bacon in Takot since I arrived. Without him I’d be standing with the naked beggars outside the American Embassy hoping for a handout. He warned me away from the P.T.T. I didn’t know how well it was being watched.” Jake grinned at the cop. “I’ve known Prasit since I first came here,” he said. “We’re old friends.”

  “So let’s cut to the chase here, Ben,” Clay said. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Well, there’s not much to say. We know that there is a dead man and that he was killed last night. From what I know and guess at, Chet Ranken was operating in the exchange of drugs here in Takot. Do any of you know anything about that?”

  “Ranken was making a lot of money over the last year at least,” Jake said. “It didn’t come from offshore and it didn’t come from his job.”

  “There are a few good reasons for killing somebody who has been doing his job for that length of time,” I said. “He wanted out and was threatening to tell the authorities; he was creaming off the profits and got caught with his hand in the pickle jar; or he was ripped off himself. Can you help us there, Jake?”

  “Yeah, I think so. As you know, the Government boys moved into my marina operation, which was, by the way, keeping honest books as long as I was running it. After a few months they brought me back to run the thing, because it didn’t take long for the new people to scare away the trade. It wasn’t easy to coax it back. Needed a real team effort. They’d neglected the advertisements in France, the U.S., and the U.K. They eliminated that little eye-catching ad in The New Yorker. To top it off, they were running a crooked set of books to show the General. Henry Saesui was the only one of them who knew how to run the thing, but there was some other guy making all the decisions. Not Henry. When the business had nearly gone bust, in spite of my best efforts, Henry came to me and warned me to get out of town. They were planning to make it look like the mismanagement was all my fault. They were going to show off my dead body along with some crooked stock manipulations. I got out before they figured out how to do that.”

  “And they reported that you had got away with the money?”

  “Yeah. They didn’t look for me very hard. They knew I wouldn’t surface if I wanted to live.”

  “You think it was the same lot that got to Ranken?”

  “That son of a bitch! He got me into this mess. He was the mastermind behind the drugs exchange at the reef.”

  “He was your only contact with the drug dealers?”

  “Yeah. Then he started making moves on Vicky. And when I had to take to the hills, he was all over her like a tent.”

  “You know about Ranken?”

  “I can’t say I’m sorry. He was a predator. He knew Vicky wasn’t in a position to complain, and he took advantage of that: I was on the run, and she couldn’t go to the authorities.”

  “So, gentlemen? Where do we go from here?” This from the policeman, looking at me.

  Clay scratched his chin with the side of his hand. “How long you been livin’ up there in your old cabin?”

  “Don’t remind me. I’ve been living rough for too long.”

  “But you had help?” I suggested. “You had access to your swimming gear?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I didn’t see your stuff in your flat or up at the cabin, so you must have a place for it downtown.”

  “Do you have to know where?”

  “Saves guessing. I’d put my money on Fiona Calaghan.”

  “Yeah, she’s an old friend. I couldn’t have hidden out so long without her.”

  “She has a boat.”

  “That was only part of it. She put me up. She got me clothes, kept me informed.”

  “You were lucky there.” Clay was rubbing his chin, while I wondered how she managed the traffic in and out of her place.

  “Hey! You guys! I’m a happily married man. Fiona’s a pal. She’s terrific. But I’m still in love with my wife. Remember that!”

  “Vicky could have helped you out at the reef, couldn’t she?”

  “I’d trust my life to Vicky, but not my boat. The currents can be murder out there by the reef. Besides, by the time I needed her, she was dead. Or so I thought.”

  “Where is all this going?” Clay put in. “Stop with the cat and mouse and let the rest of us in on it!”

  “I think I know.” It was the policeman. “You hijacked the exchange!”

  “He what?”

  “Jake—if I may?—went out to the reef and took one of the dropped items. Am I right?”

  “You got it. I knew when they were going to make the exchange—”

  “By the phases of the moon,” I added. I remembered the calendar in the Granges’ apartment. “With an exchange on the night of the new moon, the parties didn’t have to confer about where and when. That was a clever idea. And you knew about it?”

  “Well, yeah. Sure. I’d been in the office while these things were going on. I saw the players every day, but I wasn’t allowed on the field. I just ran the diving, the boats, and the marina.”

  “Did the government boys know what was going on?”

  “No, they were only looking for tourist dollars,” Jake said, with a grin.

  “Am I gettin’ dim in my old age or what?” There was a gleam in Clay’s eye. “You sayin’ that the heavies were dealing drugs under your nose and that they kept it up after the feds moved in on you?”

  “They were that sure of themselves.”

  “A system like that wouldn’t work three days with the people I know,” Clay shrugged.

  “I think we are dealing with a villain who isn’t cut from common yard goods,” I said. “I also think this was a complex operation involving several people.”

  “Where’d that idea drop from, Benny?” Jake was becoming more involved as our talk went on.

  “Well, look at it this way: there was an exchange of money for drugs, right? That means we are dealing with two sides right from the start. Do they trust one another? I doubt it. One side is carrying expensive coke
or crack. The other side is loaded with cash of some kind to cover the agreed exchange price. If one side isn’t on the ball one day, the other side will end up with both the drugs and the cash.”

  Clay nodded. “So they watch each other like a couple dudes with blades.”

  “Are you saying that this exchange is made automatically, without consultation?” The policeman’s voice was almost child-like.

  “I was just going to. What better place? Tide charts read the same for everybody. No need for meetings, and if the supply is always the same, then the money is always the same. The only need to talk comes when prices change or supply runs short.”

  “Cool! No fuzz comin’ round. Nobody sees faces. Yeah, that’s cool.”

  “Where did Ranken fit into this?”

  “The exchange took two sorts of specialists, on both sides. There were the money and drug people on dry land and there were the divers who actually made the exchange.”

  “Benny, are you usin’ a Ouija board, or did you run a scam like this back home in Canada?”

  “Look, Clay, the way I see it is this: Ranken was killed, not because of something he did, but because of something Jake here did. It was a tightly run exchange; everybody played his part. When something went wrong, as it did the other day, the players assumed that the weak link began at home. One of their people dropped the ball. Ranken was the unlucky fall guy.”

  “Are you saying that I’m responsible for his death, Cooperman? You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Easy, Jake! It’s not like you held a gun to his head. His people could as easily have found another explanation for the missing … What exactly is missing, Jake? Is it the drugs or the money?”

  “I just grabbed the first bag I saw and got out of there. When I opened it on the boat, I found that it was the money. One hundred and sixty thousand dollars. In used American bills. Nothing bigger than a fifty.”

  Somebody whistled. It might have been me. “I thought cash wasn’t used for this sort of thing any more. Don’t they use euros or gold or jewels?”

  “Mr Cooperman, Ben, the American dollar is still sterling in Takot. Large amounts of bullion and gems attract too much attention. Wherever they turn up. And the euro is still an abstraction to most people here.”