by Jake Needham
“I need your help, Sam.”
That was unexpected. August had never asked him for any kind of help before, and Tay noticed that August hadn’t looked him in the eye when he asked this time. Tay doubted that meant anything good was coming.
“You know I’ll give you whatever advice I can.”
“It’s not advice I need.”
Tay chuckled. “Don’t tell me you want to borrow some money?”
August didn’t even smile at that.
“Okay, I’m all ears,” Tay said. He stretched his arms out on the armrests of the chair and arranged his face into what he thought was a polite expression of interest. “Tell me how I can help you.”
“I need you to investigate a homicide.”
“A homicide?”
“Yes.”
“Here in Singapore?”
“No. In Hong Kong.”
“Who was murdered?”
“I was.”
Chapter Two
Tay studied August’s face for some sign he was joking. He found none.
“I don’t understand, John.”
“It’s simple enough. Somebody tried to kill me and they think they succeeded. I need you to find out who it was.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Ah, well,” August’s eyes roamed the room, “that’s where things start to get a little complicated.”
Tay’s living room was high-ceilinged with the air of an expensive men’s club, which it was, more or less, although a club with the number of members strictly limited to one. At the back of the room, a pair of French doors and two traditional sash windows overlooked Tay’s small garden. The other walls were shared between rosewood bookcases so tall that one of them had an old-fashioned library ladder attached to the front of it and a few oil paintings of remarkably dour-looking men and women that appeared to be vaguely nineteenth-century.
The floor was lightly colored hardwood polished to a high gloss, and in the center of the room was a very large rug, an antique Tabriz, woven in reds and blues so rich they made the rug glimmer as if it were somehow illuminated from within. Arranged on the rug were a low coffee table, square with a reddish-brown granite top, and a U-shaped grouping of a dark green leather upholstered couch and the two matching wingback chairs where August and Tay sat facing each other. Brass floor lamps with oversized cream-colored shades flanked both chairs, and the table was clear but for a heavy glass ashtray the size of a hubcap and two stacks of books.
“I can’t just drop everything I’m doing here, John, and dash off to Hong Kong.”
“You’ve got nothing to drop. You’re not doing anything here. You retired a couple of weeks ago.”
Tay had told no one about that. No one at all. Regardless, August knew. Just like he always seemed to, August knew. Tay protected his privacy by reflex, so whenever anyone said anything about him that had something to do with his personal life his first instinct was always to deny whatever it was, whether it was true or not.
But what was the point in claiming to August that he hadn’t retired? August obviously already knew he was no longer a homicide detective in Singapore. However he knew it, he knew it, and that had something to do with why he was sitting in Tay’s living room right now.
Tay shifted his weight in the chair and crossed his legs. He hated talking about any of this, but he owed August a straight story, he supposed. What was it going to be? The long version or the short version? He chose the short version.
“They offered me a promotion,” Tay eventually said. “Deputy Superintendent in charge of traffic enforcement. They told me that remaining a detective in CID wasn’t an option. I had to take the promotion or retire.”
“They’ve wanted you out for a long time, haven’t they, Sam?”
Tay hesitated, started to say something, but then settled for merely nodding.
“You were a cop in Singapore for… what? Twenty-five years?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“And you were a homicide investigator in the Criminal Investigation Department for—”
“Sixteen years.”
August exhaled heavily. He paused, seeming to contemplate the significance of that span of time, but Tay doubted that was what he was thinking about at all.
“I know it probably doesn’t feel like it right now, Sam, but I think you’re better off.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t feel like it.”
“You’ll find another way to use your talents.”
Tay said nothing.
“I might even have a few ideas,” August added.
Tay had no idea what August meant by that, but something stopped him from asking.
“You never fit in here, Sam. It’s as simple as that.”
“I never tried to fit in.”
“Yes, exactly. And good Singaporeans always try to fit in. They don’t cause trouble, they don’t rock the boat.”
Tay gave a small shrug, but he didn’t say anything.
“You have your own money so you didn’t need the job,” August went on. “They couldn’t control you.”
That wasn’t exactly it, Tay knew.
Men in Singapore who rose to power, and it was always men in Singapore who rose to power, didn’t control others with money and jobs. They controlled them with social pressure. Most Singaporeans were eager to be members of a common group, people in good standing with society, and they wanted to be seen that way. The group might be political, or social, or related to their employment. Whatever it was, they wanted to be a part of it. They needed its protection and its safety.
American and Europeans, particularly Americans, generally got Asia wrong. In the West, individualism was so much a part of the culture that it was almost a form of religious faith. People wanted to get ahead, to stand out from others, to win the game. Most Americans couldn’t imagine a society that worked any other way.
But Singaporeans generally weren’t motivated to win the game. They were far more motivated by the fear that they might lose it. Individualism wasn’t an ideal Singaporeans had simply not yet found a way to attain, which was the way most Americans looked at it. Individualism was a threat, a cancer Singaporeans wanted to see rooted out before it destroyed them.
Tay had been slightly suspect from the day he joined the police force because his father had been an American. His father died when he was a teenager, but that didn’t matter. Tay’s fellow cops still wondered if his American lineage made him different from them. Maybe he was really an individualist at heart and not a loyal member of the group like a real Singaporean would be. They never said that to his face, of course, but he could see them thinking it.
Tay didn’t tell August any of that, of course. He didn’t feel like having another of those philosophical conversations about the differences between Singaporeans and Americans. He was sick to death of them. So, he settled for shrugging again and waited for August to lose interest in the subject.
“You were the best homicide investigator Singapore CID ever had, Sam. The best they’re ever going to have.”
“Could we talk about something else, John?”
“Sure. How about we talk about what you’re going to do now?”
“I’m not going to do anything now.”
“Bullshit. That’s not you.”
“Just watch.”
“You could go private. They do have private detectives in Singapore, don’t they?”
“Funny you should mention that.”
Tay pointed to one of the stacks of books on the table between them. Three titles were plainly visible on the dust jackets. The Big Sleep, The Lady in the Lake, and Farewell, My Lovely.
“I’ve been rereading Raymond Chandler recently. I think I’m beginning to see myself as Philip Marlowe.”
August’s face crinkled in puzzlement. “Seriously?”
“No, but lend me your trench coat and maybe I can get in the mood.”
August smiled at that, but not much. Tay liked knowing something
he said had pushed August off balance, even if it was only a little. He didn’t remember ever doing that before.
Tay had no idea where August was going with this business about his retirement, and he wasn’t absolutely sure he wanted to know. His curiosity frequently had a mind of its own, however, and it spoke up before Tay could tell it to keep quiet.
“Why is the subject of my retirement suddenly so interesting to you, John?”
“Because that’s why I’m here. I’m here to get you back to doing what you do best.”
Had August somehow engineered a deal with the Singapore Police to reinstate him to the Criminal Investigation Department? Surely not. Still, August had all sorts of shadowy connections that made no sense to him and, if that wasn’t what August was talking about, then what—
And that was when it dawned on Tay what this might really all be about.
“John,” he asked, going very still, “are you offering me a job?”
Chapter Three
“I need an experienced investigator, Sam. I want you.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s easy. Say you’ll help me out.”
“John, I know I owe you more favors than I can ever repay, but right now I just don’t see—"
“There’s no one else I trust enough to ask, Sam,” August interrupted. “It’s got to be you.”
To buy himself some time to think, Tay stood up and walked over to his French doors and looked out at his back garden. He was a little surprised to see that the sun was still shining and the sky was still blue. He sniffed the air cautiously, but there was no odor of rain in it. He had been certain there would be. Perhaps he had been too pessimistic. Then again, his personal experience was that pessimism was the only rational view to take of the future.
Tay had no idea what to say to August. He liked him. He even considered him a friend of sorts, as much as someone he didn’t know very much about could be a friend. And he owed August. There was that, too. He owed him quite a lot.
Still, that didn’t really change anything. Tay didn’t want a job. Not any kind of a job. Not a permanent job, and not a temporary one. Even if he had wanted a job, he certainly wouldn’t consider going to work for some agency of the American government that was no doubt engaged in daily outrages against civilization he would find personally appalling if only he knew what they were.
But how could he tell August that? You couldn’t insult the work a man does and expect him to shake your hand and still think of himself as your friend, could you?
Perhaps the thing to do, Tay thought to himself, was simply to hear August out. Let him make his pitch, whatever it turned out to be, and then politely but firmly tell him no. Maybe he could say he had decided to take up golf or something equally stupid. August wouldn’t believe him, of course, but he would probably be polite enough to pretend he did.
Yes, that’s what he would do. He would hear August out and then say no. But first he needed a cigarette.
Tay opened the top left-hand drawer of a small Regency-style desk that sat just to the right of the French doors in exactly the same place it had been since he was a child living in this very house. He took out a new pack of Marlboros and a box of matches, broke the seal of the pack with his thumbnail, and paused to inhale the odor of fresh tobacco rising from it.
Tay enjoyed smoking. Smoking wasn’t a habit for him, but rather his personal choice of meditative experiences. The whole process had a ritualistic quality that brought him peace. The crinkling of the cellophane wrapper as he peeled it off the pack, the whiff of fresh tobacco when he slit it open, the scrap of the wooden match against the box, and the indescribable feeling of the first wave of nicotine hitting his bloodstream.
He returned to the chair where he had been sitting, shook out a cigarette, and offered the pack to August.
“No thanks. I’m cutting down.”
“Well, doesn’t that make you special?”
Few things annoyed Tay more than the war of feigned morality constantly being waged against smokers. He blamed it all on the Americans, he really did. For some reason, America produced an inexhaustible supply of sanctimonious killjoys endlessly crusading to improve everyone else’s life. He had absolutely no objection to anyone who wanted to improve his own life. What pissed Tay off was the insistence that those presumed improvements be imposed on him, too, whether he wanted them to be or not. And more often than not, the source of that insistence was some self-righteous American prick.
Tay took a match out of the box, lit the Marlboro, and tossed the spent match into the big glass ashtray. The first puff was always the best and then it was all downhill from there. The longer he smoked, the less enjoyable it became because each draw contaminated what was yet to come. Maybe everything got worse the longer you did it. Perhaps that was just the way life worked. Tay pushed the thought aside before he lost his balance and spiraled off into a succession of musings he knew would quickly turn morbid.
Tay exhaled a long stream of smoke directly at August.
“Enjoying that, are you, Sam?”
Tay just smiled. He took another puff on his Marlboro and cleared his throat.
“I’ve never asked you directly what you do or who you work for, John. I thought not asking you was rather like a professional courtesy, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe I just didn’t want you to have to lie to me.”
“I appreciate that.”
“But you understand, don’t you, in order to continue with this conversation, I’m going to have to ask?”
August nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
“Are you a spy, John?”
“No.”
“You’re not CIA then?”
“When the going gets tough, the tough blame the CIA.”
“I always thought you were probably CIA.”
“No, you didn’t.”
August had him there.
Tay took another pull on his Marlboro. This time he tilted his head back and exhaled toward the ceiling.
“You’re going to have to tell me who you really are, John.”
August nodded slowly and sat there for a moment as if he was gathering his thoughts. Tay figured it was more likely August was trying to decide how little he could say and get away with it.
“A long time ago I was Delta Force, and I did some stuff in Afghanistan that I have no intention of telling you or anyone else about.”
“Join the army, see the world, meet interesting people… and kill them?”
“Something like that.”
Neither of them laughed. Neither of them even smiled. Tay made a little rolling gesture with his right hand and August continued.
“After I left Delta, I was a Paramilitary Operations Officer in the Special Operations Group of the Central Intelligence Agency for a while. In Agency jargon, that means I was an operator, which is what the Agency calls—”
“I thought you said you weren’t CIA.”
“I haven’t been in a long time, not since I’ve known you. These days I work for a private company, not the government.”
“Have I heard of this company?”
“No, you haven’t. There probably aren’t more than fifty people who have.” August paused and offered a rueful smile. “I guess now that’s more like fifty-one.”
“What does this company do?”
“We do what the government can’t do.”
“Such as what?”
August said nothing and his eyes drifted off of Tay’s face.
“Then let me guess,” Tay said. “You find people the government of the United States thinks are a threat, and you kill them.”
“Not always.”
“But sometimes.”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
Now it was Tay’s turn to say nothing.
“Look, Sam, there is only one effective way to end a serious and unrelenting threat to your life or the lives of others. You kill it. Whether the threat is a stranger breaking into your home i
n the middle of the night or a madman in some Middle Eastern shithole planning to blow up New York City, the fix is the same. You don’t propose negotiations. You don’t issue a warning. You kill the bastard before he does terrible harm to you or somebody you love.”
“You’re scaring me here, John.”
“Some men are morally opposed to violence, I understand that. But they are protected by men who are not. Do you understand that?”
Tay nodded, but remained silent
“Anyway,” August shrugged, “somebody has to do it. Somebody has to be me. So, it’s me.”
“How do you know who to kill?”
“We act only on instructions from the highest authority.”
“The highest authority? Well, that would be… who? God maybe? You’re a messenger from God?”
August just looked at him.
“Or is that your way of telling me that this company works for the President of the United States?”
August continued looking at him.
“You know the President of the United States personally?”
August bobbed his head in a way that could have meant almost anything.
“But you are telling me, aren’t you, that the President of the United States gives the order to kill people and you kill them?”
August just stared at Tay like he was trying to decide on the best way to dispose of the body.
“I can’t believe I’m having this conversation,” Tay said. “I really can’t.”
“Sure, you can. You know there’s killing being done to protect you. You read about it in the newspapers all the time.”
“The fact remains that—"
“But there’s also killing done to protect you that you don’t know about. The killing you don’t ever hear about. I do that.”
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf?”
“George Orwell.”
“Yes.”
“And Orwell was right about that. I have done unspeakable violence on your behalf and you know nothing about it. Because of me and other men like me, you sleep unburdened by any knowledge of the brutality committed in your name.”
