by Jake Needham
On the second day they drove around past the monuments and, when they were lucky enough to stumble onto an empty parking place in East Potomac Park, they got out and walked up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and stood for a while in front of the famous marble sculpture of Abraham Lincoln seated in a huge chair and peering resolutely up the Mall, past the Washington Monument, and all the way to the dome of the Capitol. To Tay’s surprise, he found it unexpectedly moving for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Perhaps it was simply the majesty of it all, or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was its testimony to the conviction that belief in the ideal of your country was enough to transcend time. Maybe it really was. He wished at least a little that he could feel that way himself.
He and Claire were sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the sunshine enjoying the view over the city when her phone buzzed. She pulled it out and looked at the screen.
“John wants us to meet him for lunch,” she said.
“I can’t imagine why. He knows I’m not happy about how all this ended.”
“He wants to ask you something.”
“Couldn’t he just ask me on the phone?”
Claire shrugged, but she didn’t offer an opinion.
“I don’t guess we have anything that important to do anyway. Where does he want us to meet him?”
“At Bob and Edith’s.”
“Who in the world are Bob and Edith?”
“Not a who, a what. Bob and Edith’s is a diner. It’s over in Arlington not far from the Pentagon. John loves it, but I’ve always thought it was kind of crummy.” Claire thought about it for a moment. “But I guess it’s crummy in a homey way.”
Tay wondered what crummy in a homey way was supposed to mean, but he didn’t ask.
“John drags us there at least once every time we’re in Washington. Always eats the same thing. Soft-boiled eggs and corned beef hash.”
And that was how, at just after one o’clock on an otherwise ordinary Thursday afternoon, Samuel Tay found himself sitting next to Claire at Bob and Edith’s looking across the table at John August and Woods sitting on the other side.
Chapter Forty-Four
Bob and Edith’s was about the most American place Tay had ever been. It had a yellow linoleum floor, four ranks of blue-painted booths with white Formica-covered tables and benches, and a line of blue and yellow plastic covered stools in front of a white tiled counter. On every table there were squeeze bottles of catsup and pancake syrup, salt and pepper shakers, and a rack of those little packets of jam and jelly that you can never get open without splashing some on yourself. If Washington was a theme park for America, then Bob and Edith’s was the theme park’s featured restaurant.
The lunch rush had apparently come and gone and only a few people were left scattered around the room. The four of them had a booth off to themselves near the back.
The waitress was a skinny middle-aged woman with multi-colored tattoos peeking out of both sleeves of her uniform. Tay figured she had enough facial piercing to set off the security alarms at an airport before she even walked inside. Maybe she never flew anywhere.
Claire ordered first, then August, then Woods.
“And what you want, honey?” the woman asked Tay.
When Tay ordered a club sandwich and coffee, she stopped writing on her pad and stared at him.
“Why, don’t you have the cutest accent, baby? Where you from?”
“Singapore,” Tay said.
“Where?”
“Singapore,” Tay repeated. “It’s—”
“Oh, I know where Singapore is,” the woman said. “It’s one of them islands around Florida, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” Tay said. “Yes, it is.”
“Well, sir, I gotta say you talk real nice even if you do come from Florida.”
The food appeared promptly and Tay once again tipped his hat to America’s ferocious efficiency. Nobody said much of anything while the food was served or even while they ate. August didn’t seem inclined to make conversation and neither did Tay. Claire was equally quiet and, as for Woods, Tay had gotten used to his highly effective imitation of a wooden Indian.
The difference in feelings between August and Tay about what had happened here over the last few days ran deep. Tay was a policeman, and a policeman viewed the world in reasonably straightforward terms. You do the crime, you do the time. It had been Tay’s job for twenty-seven years, his calling really, to do everything he could to make certain that always happened.
Maybe that was justice, and maybe that was only revenge, but either way it carried with it a sort of moral balance, a recognition that life might be unfair, but it was his duty to make it as fair as he could. That was the house in which Tay had lived for all of his life, and he was far too old to think about moving now.
Tay had no idea how someone like August saw the world, but he knew it wasn’t nearly that straightforward. He imagined that August’s world had so many shades of gray that it looked like a fantasy of some alien civilization. Which, now that Tay thought about it, was exactly the way he thought of the world in which August lived.
A policeman had no business getting involved with people in the spy business, Tay told himself for at least the hundredth time. Justice had nothing to do with foreign policy or intelligence gathering or, God forbid, politics. Justice was… well, justice. Everyone knew what it was even if they couldn’t give you a definition of it, and everyone knew when it had been delivered. And when it hadn’t.
In this case, it hadn’t.
Two men had killed people to protect their own positions in the Washington power structure and they had been allowed to walk away. August had let them get away with what they had done. Even if that was good policy for somebody, it wasn’t justice. And Tay didn’t know how to get past that.
August polished off his eggs and corned beef hash, pushed his plate away, and drank some coffee. Then he cleared his throat.
“We’re taking the plane back tonight, Sam. Are you still going with us?”
“Is that what you brought me here to ask?”
“Not really.”
“Then whatever it is that you want to talk about, let’s get to it.”
August nodded slowly.
“Did you read The Washington Post this morning?” he asked after a moment.
“I don’t read newspapers.”
“Not ever?”
“No. Not ever. And I’m a happier man for it.”
“I can understand that, but you probably ought to read this one today.”
“Why? What happened? Has Singapore been wiped out?”
Woods picked a copy of the Post up off the seat next to him, carefully folded it over to a story on the front page, and laid it on the table. Tay pushed his plate away and pulled the paper toward him.
It was hard to miss the big headline over the three-column story right beneath the fold.
CIA Director and Aide Killed in Accident on Dulles Access Road
Tay glanced up at August, then shifted his eyes to Woods. They were both expressionless.
He turned to Claire. “Did you know about this?”
Claire said nothing, and she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
Tay glanced back down at the newspaper and began to read the story.
The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Adrian Small, and his executive assistant, Zac Reed, were both killed late last night when a car apparently driven by Mr. Reed was sideswiped by a truck on the Dulles Access Road, causing it to run head-on at high speed into a concrete retaining wall.
The truck was later found abandoned at Dulles Airport and sources say it had been stolen from a freight terminal in Richmond, although the theft had not yet been reported. It is not known why Mr. Small was being driven to Dulles Airport by an aide without his security detail.
The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged the Post’s story and has confirmed the deaths of the Director and his executive assistant in a brief
statement, but it has provided no other details. The White House released a statement saying…
Tay stopped reading. He picked up the paper, folded it over, and handed it back to August.
“Your handiwork?” Tay asked.
August tilted his head slightly toward Woods, but when Tay glanced at Woods his eyes were fixed somewhere just over Claire’s head.
“You and I sometimes have different ideas of justice, Sam, but it seems to me we generally get to pretty much the same place in our own separate ways. Eventually.”
The waitress returned just then carrying a stainless-steel coffee pot. While she refilled their cups one by one, they all waited in silence. After she was done, Tay smiled and thanked her.
“Sure thing, honey. You think one of these days maybe I could come visit you in Singapore?”
Tay didn’t know what to say to that and his eyes darted frantically from August to Woods to Claire looking for help. He got none.
“I could listen to your accent forever, baby,” she added and cut Tay a huge wink. Then, to Tay’s immense relief, she walked away without saying anything else.
Claire was making little choking noises next to Tay, and he wouldn’t look at her. If he did, he knew he would laugh right out loud, and he really didn’t want to do that.
“So, how about it, Sam?” August asked again. “You coming back with us?”
Tay drank some coffee and thought about his alternatives. They weren’t particularly exciting.
“Might as well,” he finally said. “You going to drop me off in Singapore or do I have to fly back there from Bangkok?”
“Well…”
August hesitated and made a show of thinking about that, but Tay knew it was all bullshit. August already knew exactly what he was going to say. Whatever it was, he had been leading up to it the whole time they had been sitting together in this booth at this diner.
“I’ve been thinking about changing the way we operate a little, Sam, and I’ve got a couple of things going that you could probably help us with. That is, if you want to.”
What the fuck? Tay thought.
But that wasn’t what he said. What he said was, “I thought this was just going to be a temporary job.”
“It was – is – more or less. But I think we work together pretty well. Besides, you’ve got nothing else to do right now, have you?
“I’m flattered, John, really I am, but that’s ridiculous. I’m a cop, not a spy.”
“You’re not a cop anymore, my friend, and I’m not a spy either.”
“No? Then just tell me in one simple sentence. What is it that your little group really does?”
August hesitated. He picked up his coffee mug and sipped absently from it while he considered the question. The expression on August’s face almost made Tay laugh.
“You don’t like philosophical questions, do you, John?”
“I guess I’m just not a very philosophical guy.”
“Then forget the philosophy. Just give me the truth in one simple sentence.”
“Okay, then I’ll say this. We do things that need to be done.”
“You kill people,” Tay said.
“Sometimes that’s what needs to be done.”
“You know I can’t do stuff like that, John. Maybe I’m not a cop anymore, but I still feel like one. It may sound corny to you, but I believe in law. I believe in justice. All that stuff.”
“And I believe in what’s right.”
“A lot of people claim to believe in what’s right. Then they do whatever they want to and say it was okay because they’re the good guys.”
“Yeah, Sam, but we really are the good guys.”
Tay sighed and looked at his hands. But then he said something that not only surprised August a little, it surprised him as well.
“Tell me more about this job you’re offering me.”
Out of the corner of his eye Tay saw Claire shoot August a look, but he wasn’t sure what it meant.
“I just want to have someone with your skills around occasionally.”
“To do what?”
“Investigate things.”
“So, you’re talking about an investigation job?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Not a killing people job.”
“Uh-uh.”
When Tay didn’t immediately say anything else, August went on.
“Look, it’s like this. The Conductor is willing to give us some latitude to expand the scope of our operations a bit and I’ve been thinking that we might freelance some here and there, take on a few things that somebody ought to be doing.”
“What kind of things?”
August pursed his lips and seemed to think. Tay wondered if he was thinking about what the right answer to that question was or merely deciding what answer he ought to give.
“Okay, here’s an example. Last year two British kids in their early twenties were backpacking around Thailand. The girl was brutally raped and then both she and her boyfriend were beaten to death with hoes. It was an awful crime. Utterly savage. The local cops immediately picked up two young Burmese boys who were working illegally in Thailand. They got a quick trial and were sentenced to death. It was a travesty.”
“You don’t think they did it?”
“Nobody does, but they’re going to be executed anyway. When tourists are attacked in Thailand, somebody’s got to pay, and it’s not going to be a Thai if the locals can help it.”
“What’s any of this got to do with you?”
“Nothing really. But it bothers me that the real rapists and murderers are still out there somewhere. They got away with it. I don’t like people who get away with it.”
“Do you have any idea who was really responsible?”
“Most people think it was somebody too important for the cops to mess with, or maybe a member of some well-connected family and now the cops are protecting him. I think that’s possible. In Thailand it’s more than just possible, but I don’t like it at all.”
“You mean the way you didn’t like important people in Washington getting away with killing Rebecca Sternwood to keep her quiet and protect themselves?”
“Yeah,” August said, “exactly like that.”
Tay looked at August and after a moment August shrugged slightly and looked away. Tay could have sworn he even appeared a little embarrassed.
“We’ve got time between assignments,” August continued. “We’ve got considerable resources, and we’ve got good contacts. Best of all, we’ve got a lot of experience in putting things right when there are no other alternatives.”
Tay knew perfectly well what August meant by that, but he decided to let it go and offered no comment.
“The problem is, Sam, I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about finding the people who really did the things they should go down for, like the people who killed these kids. You could do that. If we work together, I think we could add a little justice to the world.”
When Tay remained silent, August tilted his head first toward Woods and then toward Claire. “These two figure it’s a worthy cause,” he said. “They’re in.”
Tay shifted his eyes to Claire and raised his eyebrows in a silent question. She answered with a single tiny nod, one so small that Tay wasn’t absolutely certain whether he had seen it or not.
Incredible, Tay thought. He felt as if he had walked into a tornado and been deposited in the Land of Oz.
Maybe if he went back to the safe house and slept, he would discover none of this had ever happened. Maybe when he woke up he would be back in Singapore, lying in his own bed in his house on Emerald Hill Road, and he would still be a senior detective with the Singapore Police.
No, probably not.
Tay turned his head and looked out at the street through the big windows at the front of Bob and Edith’s. He watched the cars passing in both directions, people going somewhere with something to do they thought was important. People who had a purpose that they thought mattered.
<
br /> Once he’d had a purpose he thought mattered, a purpose that did matter, but that was all gone now. He was no longer a policeman and it was unlikely he ever would be again.
And that left him… well, exactly where did that leave him?
It was true he had never really had anything in his life but his work. August had told him once that being a homicide detective hadn’t only been his job, it had been who he was. If that were true, then who was he now? Now that he didn’t have his job anymore, did that mean he wasn’t anybody?
Tay cleared his throat.
“What does this job pay?”
“Nothing. Not a cent.”
“Can I smoke while I do it?”
“Sure. Foreigners can do pretty much anything they like in Thailand.”
“Would I have to live in Pattaya?”
“God, no. Nobody lives in Pattaya unless they’re on the lam from something. Live where you want. Move to fucking Malibu for all I care. I just need you to be available when and where I need you. I’m going to turn Secrets over to Woods anyway, and Claire and I will operate mostly out of Bangkok. Sometimes I miss life in a real city.”
Although we usually don’t notice them until long after they have passed, there are moments in life when everything hangs in the balance. There are moments when we really can change the future. When those moments come, either you lift your arms and fly, or you don’t. There’s nothing in between.
Some people fly anytime they get the chance simply because they can. They just do it, even if they don’t know why the hell they’re doing it. Perhaps especially if they don’t know why the hell they’re doing it.
Sam Tay was not one of those people.
Just breathe, he told himself. In and out. Slow and steady. That’s the ticket.
That’s how life happens. That’s how you become whatever it is you become. Just breathing in and out, choosing whether or not to fly.
