I shrugged. “Old enemies, maybe.”
“They didn’t hurt you?”
“No.”
“How did you get away from them?”
“I’m good at climbing fences.”
“I heard gunshots…”
“Yeah.”
She shivered. “I guess I shouldn’t have run away, but I was really very frightened. I just didn’t know what was happening.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Well, I began thinking after I got back here that I should have tried to help in some way.”
“There was nothing you could have done.”
“I suppose not. But I was… well, concerned for you.”
“I didn’t know I’d made that strong an impression.”
“Oh, you did,” she said. “I should have called you last night, but there’s no telephone here and I didn’t want to go out again. I was pretty shaken up. This morning I looked up your name in the directory and it wasn’t listed-but when I called Information they said you had a phone and gave me the number. Then, when I couldn’t reach you, I sent a boy around with that note…” She stopped speaking and bit at her lower lip for a moment, as if she were arranging in her mind what she was about to say next and was embarrassed by it. Finally, in a rush, “Oh damn, I’m a selfish person, Dan, it wasn’t just that I was concerned about you that I asked you to come here tonight, there’s another reason…”
I waited, and when she didn’t go on I said, “What would it be, this other reason?”
“Well… you said you were once a smuggler, and I thought… I mean, I told you about the series of articles I’m planning to do on this area and how I want to use them to get on with one of the U.S. magazines. But people are always doing travel pieces and you have to have some kind of different slant or fresh human interest topic to interest an editor these days…”
“So you thought you’d do one on smuggling.”
“Yes. It would be perfect, Dan! I mean, you said last night that it was an ugly, dirty business and you know what’s going on inside it from your past experiences and you could name names and quote figures and things. Maybe you could even introduce me to some of those men who are smuggling now, right here on Singapore, on some pretext or other, so that I could get some sort of firsthand impression…”
A pair of louvered doors stood open across the room, beyond which was the private balcony for this apartment. I got up and went there and looked out at the lights of Singapore silhouetted against a black tropical sky. I could feel Tina’s eyes on my back, and after a time I turned and faced her again.
“Look, little girl,” I said, “most of the people I used to deal with would cut your heart out for a hundred Singapore dollars-and mine for nothing at all. Remember what happened last night; that’s the way these people play. I wouldn’t expose you to them, in any way, shape, or form-in the first place because I couldn’t guarantee your safety; and in the second place, Singapore is my home and I like it here and if I wanted to stay alive I’d have to move, fast and far, long before any article like the one you suggest came out in print.”
“But I wouldn’t use your name.”
“You wouldn’t have to.”
“Dan, if this article sells it could mean a lot of money-and half of it would be yours.”
“I had a lot of money once,” I told her. “It doesn’t mean much to me any more.”
She spread her hands in an exasperated way. “Won’t you at least give me the name of someone I can interview on my own?”
“No. And I’ve already told you why.”
“Dan, I can take care of myself.”
“Sure you can.”
“Then won’t you-?”
“No, I won’t. Look, forget about it, will you? That’s the best thing you can do. Just forget about it.”
“But I can’t!” She took a deep breath, and her eyes lidded slightly and she drew her shoulders back, so that her breasts arched in sharp relief against the samfu blouse. Oh Christ, I thought. She came toward me in a loose, sensual walk. “Dan, an article like this could mean a great deal to me, to my career. I… I’d be willing to do anything for the kind of help I need…”
I stepped away from her. “You can turn off the sex, little girl. I don’t want your fair young body, at least not for something I can’t and won’t deliver in exchange. I’ll tell you again, flat out, in plain English: I won’t help you write an article on smuggling on Singapore or anywhere else in Southeast Asia, and if you try it on your own, a little girl like you, the jackals will very probably pick you apart and fight over one another doing it. Take my advice, Tina: write something nice and innocuous on Singapore as the Pearl of the South China Sea, and then go home where you belong.”
She stared at me for a long moment, her small jaw trembling, her gray eyes flashing with emotion, and then she turned and fled the room through a doorway beyond the settee. I stood by the louvered doors, and I could hear her in the bedroom. I wanted to get out of there. There was no point in staying, no point in facing her again. I had said what had to be said, and it was up to her from here on in; nothing else I could do or say would matter much.
I walked to the door and let myself out and walked down to the street. The night was cooler now, and the scent of frangipani was thickly fragrant on the still air. I found a taxi after a couple of minutes and rode back to Chinatown with the rear windows rolled down to enjoy a little of the temperature drop.
When the Tamil driver let me out, two blocks from Punyang Street, I debated walking over to the Seaman’s Bar for an Anchor Beer or two. I decided against it; I was tired, and I wanted some quiet relaxation for the balance of the evening. So I walked home through the conglomerate of night shoppers and strolling street vendors, beggars and clown-painted whores, little brown boys with trays of shoe polish crying, “Soo sine! Soo sine! Hey, ten sen, Joe, looky here!”
I reached my building and climbed the stairs and went down the hallway to my door. The feeling of wrongness settled coldly and immediately on the back of my neck when I put my key in the lock and found it wouldn’t turn. That meant that the door was unlocked, and I distinctly remembered using the key on it when I’d left to see Tina Kellogg. Anger made my temples throb in sudden tempo, and I pushed the latch handle down and kicked the door open, hanging back, half-turned so that I could either go through the door or up against the hallway wall.
The lights were on inside and I had company, all right.
Just one visitor, as far as I could see, but that one was too damned many.
Jorge Van Rijk.
Chapter Eight
He was sitting on a batik-covered rattan chair, smoking one of his English cigarettes and wearing his gingerbread-boy smile. His suit was the color of cultured pearls this time around, and he had substituted a blue-silk ascot for the tie he had worn the previous day; he looked painfully out of place among the shabby possessions of a man he undoubtedly considered to be one of Singapore’s profanus vulgus.
I stayed where I was, outside the doorway, and looked the room over. It seemed otherwise empty. Van Rijk said, “I’m quite alone, Mr. Connell. You needn’t fear.” He spread his arms in a relaxed, corroborating gesture.
I took a couple of steps forward, cautiously, poised. Nothing happened. I decided he was telling the truth, but I left the door open just the same. “How did you get in here?”
“The locks in these Chinatown tenements are flimsy at best,” he answered and shrugged. He tapped his cigarette out daintily in the shell ashtray on an adjacent table; light from the overhead bulb reflected brightly off the jade lion’s head ring on his little finger. “I have damaged nothing, I assure you.”
“You’ve got a lot of balls after what happened last night. Or don’t your boys confess their mistakes?”
