bedroom drapes and listening to the thunder rumbling off in the distance.
He realized after a while that he had woken at such an unusual hour because of a thought that had been born in his mind while he slept. There, in the gray half-light of the beginning of the day, Tay examined his thought with the caution of a bomb squad cop inspecting an abandoned package.
Eventually he got up and opened the curtains. It had rained in the night and moisture gleamed from the long, drooping leaves of the banana trees outside his bedroom window. The sky was dull and gloomy, sucking up the morning light as quickly as the sun produced it.
A bird, Tay did not know what kind, sat on top of the brick wall at the back of his garden. The bird seemed to be looking straight at him, turning its head very slowly back and forth as if waiting for him to do something. But he did not know what he was supposed to do. Finally, the bird flew away, apparently bored with Tay’s indecisiveness. Tay knew exactly how the bird felt.
He put on a robe and went down to the kitchen to make some coffee. He wondered if his new-found thought would shortly fly away just like the bird, bored to death by his failure to act on it. But it did not fly away. So he drank a cup of coffee and examined it some more. Then he made two pieces of toast, buttered them, and ate both while standing over the sink and drinking another cup of coffee.
After he finished the toast and coffee, he realized nothing had changed. The thought remained clear in his mind and was beginning to burgeon into a fully-grown idea. It even seemed as if it had taken on a life separate from his and was watching him to see what he would do. He thought again of the bird on his garden wall and how it had been watching him when he opened his curtains.
Going back upstairs, Tay shaved, showered, and dressed. He walked up to Orchard Road and almost immediately found a taxi. Asking the driver to take him to the Cantonment Complex, he sat back and watched the city come to life around him. It was then, while he stood solitary watch over his city, that he at last allowed himself to contemplate his idea plainly. When he did so, when he reflected honestly on the enormity of what he was thinking, he was amazed to discover how little weight it placed on his soul.
And that, right there, told him all he really needed to know.
TAY had never been happy to be in his office early in the morning. In fact, in his entire life, he could not remember ever being happy to be anywhere early in the morning, other than of course at home in bed with the duvet pulled over his face.
This day, however, was different. Tay was glad to be in his office regardless of the hour. He could feel his adrenalin rising. He was coming to the end of the story, although he was far from certain what that end would turn out to be.
Closing his door, he made a few calls and left a few messages. There was not much more he could do until Sergeant Kang came in, so he leaned back in his chair and swung his feet up onto his desk. Stifling a yawn, he turned his head toward the window and contemplated a gray-brown patch of hazy sky. It was a posture he could only hope would somehow aid in the production of constructive thoughts.
He was still sitting there an hour or so later in exactly that same way when someone brought him a cup of coffee and a copy of the
It was nearly ten before his telephone buzzed. He took the call and had been speaking only briefly when Sergeant Kang knocked softly and stuck his head into the office.
“Sorry, sir. Didn’t realize you were on the phone.”
Tay covered the mouthpiece with his free hand. “Where did DeSouza go last night?”
“Straight home, sir. Didn’t leave again until this morning.”
“And the…girl? What happened with her?”
“Sergeant Lee said she came out about an hour after you left, sir. Went to another hotel over in Geylang where he found out she’s been living. She was alone.” Sergeant Kang hesitated a moment. “Should I be saying
Tay ignored Kang’s question.
“Why would she do that?” he asked instead. “A hooker and a john go to a hotel. The john leaves in ten minutes, but the hooker stays another hour. Does that make any sense to you?”
“Not really, sir. No.”
Tay sat for another moment, his hand still covering the telephone mouthpiece.
“Have you printed out those photographs from last night yet, Robbie?”
“I didn’t realize you were in any hurry, sir.”
“I didn’t realize I had to tell you to do it right away.”
Kang started to say something else, then thought better of it and merely bobbed his head and closed the door. When he came back twenty minutes later with eight 4x6 color prints, Tay had finished his telephone conversation and returned to contemplating the patch of sky outside his window.
“Here you go, sir,” Kang said as he put the photographs down on Tay’s desk. “This is all there were in the camera.”
Tay turned away from the window and picked up the photographs. Kang remained standing in front of the desk and tried his best not to yawn since he hadn’t gotten nearly enough sleep the night before. Tay slowly shuffled through the photographs once, and then he did it again, going more slowly the second time.
Kang couldn’t imagine what Tay was doing. There was nothing in any of the pictures that he could see other than the outside of the Hoover Hotel looking as dim and cheerless as it no doubt always looked in the middle of the night.
Tay made a third careful inspection of the eight photographs, then selected two and held them out to Kang.
“Can you do these over for me, Sergeant? I need them bigger, and can you brighten them up a little at the same time?”
“I imagine so, sir.”
Kang took the pictures and glanced at them. They were just as he had remembered: nothing but the outside of the Hoover Hotel. Both the front entrance and the side street were visible in the two photographs. There was even what looked like a dark and indistinguishable human figure walking next to the hotel, but nothing else.
“Our printer here can do up to 8x10s,” Kang said. “Will that be large enough, sir, or would you like me to send the camera to the lab and-”
“That’s fine. One copy of each please.” Tay handed Sergeant Kang the other six photographs. “Then get rid of these. I don’t want them left lying around.”
“Yes, sir. Anything else?”
Tay just shook his head and went back to studying the sky.
FORTY-FOUR
“This is the best I can do with them, sir,” Kang said when he returned fifteen minutes later. He put the two photographs down on Tay’s desk. “If you like, I could get one of the computer guys to take a look. They know a lot more about this stuff than-”
“No, I don’t want anyone else involved.”
Tay turned away from the window and picked up the photographs. He examined them carefully, comparing one to the other, and then he put them back on the desk.
“They’re fine,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“One other thing. Please thank the men for me and terminate the surveillance on DeSouza.”
“But, sir, I thought-”
“Do it immediately, please, Robbie. I want everyone pulled off right now.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you. That’s all.”
