possession of it yourself, it would be most unwise for you to consider a double-cross. The grass may seem of a greener hue elsewhere, but green grass ofttimes conceals a shallow grave. Do I make myself clear?”
“The pointed homilies aren’t necessary, Van Rijk. I don’t underestimate you in the slightest.”
The gingerbread smile. “I am glad we understand each other.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Now how do I get in touch with you?”
“I will call you tomorrow evening at seven o‘clock,” he answered. “And each evening after that at the same time, should it be necessary. When Marla King contacts you again, you will arrange to meet her at an isolated location — Bukit Batok Hill, perhaps-at nine o’clock that same evening.”
“And then you keep the date.”
“Certainly.”
“Suppose she balks at the meeting place and wants it public?”
“Then it will be up to you to put her in my hands as best you can.”
“I get the feeling you don’t trust me much, Van Rijk.”
“No more than you apparently trust me.”
I shrugged. “Such is life in Southeast Asia.”
He liked that. He let me hear his burr-edged laugh. “Indeed,” he said. “Oh yes, indeed, Mr. Connell!”
“All right,” I told him. “We’ll do it your way. There’s just one thing.”
“Yes?”
“Keep your boys off my tail and off my neck. I wouldn’t want any more ‘mistakes’ like last night.”
“There will be no further difficulties, I assure you. Unless, of course, such measures are warranted.”
“You don’t have to beat it into the ground, Van Rijk. I told you I’ve got the message.”
“Yes, so you did.” He stood up. “I believe we have discussed everything of mutual interest, Mr. Connell. I will bid you a good evening.”
I made a gesture with my left hand and tilted the bottle of Anchor Beer. Van Rijk moved across the room, trailing curls of cigarette smoke, and went out without looking at me again and without saying anything else; you didn’t observe the amenities with hired rabble.
I said, “Up yours, chubs,” to the closed door and drank off the last of the beer. I was beginning to feel a deep fatigue. The work I had done for Harry Rutledge had been physically exhausting, and it had been a long day in several other respects. Tomorrow promised to be an even longer one. I didn’t much care for the prospect of setting foot inside the walls of the Central Police Station, but that was the one sure way of getting out from under this whole goddam thing and I knew that I didn’t have much choice if I wanted to keep on living clean in Singapore.
I was even going to enjoy it a little, the way the knitting ladies must have enjoyed the public guillotine executions during the French Revolution.
Heads were going to roll, all right.
And Van Rijk’s would be first in line.
Chapter Nine
The lettering on the pebbled door glass said:
KOK CHIN TIONG
INSPECTOR OF POLICE
It was located at the end of a long, narrow corridor in the Central Police Station, one of several similar doors with similar lettering. I opened it and walked in without knocking. Tiong had kept me waiting for better than a half hour in an anteroom before he had consented to see me, and I was in no mood to observe the proprieties.
The office was small and spartan and meticulous. There were a metal desk and two metal visitor’s chairs and a wooden table with a gently whirring fan on its top, set under the only window. Venetian blinds were drawn against the glare of the early morning sun, but the fluorescent ceiling lights which illuminated the cubicle made it seem as hot and bright as noon in there.
Tiong looked up from where he sat behind the desk, and a small frown dipped the corners of his brown mouth. I shut the door and went to one of the chairs and sat down without being invited. He watched me and said nothing, but I could feel his dislike as if it were something tangible created by his small, hard, alert eyes.
I lit a cigarette and blew smoke a little to one side of him. He kept on watching me. There was a file folder open in front of him, and I knew without looking at it that it was my file. There were a lot of papers there-too many papers.
Tiong said at length, “I have just been refreshing my memory as to your past activities, Mr. Connell. I am not enjoying what I read here.”
I shrugged. “There’s nothing I can do to change what I once was.”
“Once was?”
“Once was.”
“Leopards seldom change their spots, Mr. Connell.”
“Listen, Inspector, I’m clean. I’ve been just another citizen for two years and you know it.”
“I know nothing of the kind.”
“If that file is half as complete as you’d like me to believe, you damned well do know it.”
“The file is most complete,” he said. “There is very little about your past of which I am not aware.”
I wondered how much truth there was in that statement. I wondered if he knew, or cared to know, about the scared young kid who had gone to Korea in 1954 to fly an F-86 sabrejet, and of the things he had seen and done that had too quickly, too cynically, turned him into a man; about the girl who had promised to wait for that boy-man in San Francisco, his home-and the three trite paragraphs on a single sheet of scented pink stationery received in Inchon, South Korea, that had shattered what idealism remained in him and destroyed all his desire to return to the place of his youth; about the aimless wandering for two years following his discharge, looking for something, for roots, for peace of mind, looking and never finding; about the Belgian who ran a small air freight line out of Kuala Lumpur, and who had offered excitement and the fast dollar flying weapons into Indonesia during their struggle for independence with the Dutch; about the substitutes of easy living and big money for the things that should have counted in his life over six years and seventy-nine nighttime runs across the Straits of Malacca, dodging bullets, soldiers and himself during Sukarno’s konfrontasi with the Federation of Malaysia; about the prospect of even more of the bitch goddess Money, and the graduation to the black market smuggling of contraband and illicit art objects, and the contacts this lucrative hauling made for him; about the move to Singapore and the purchase of a couple of DC-3s and his own freight line in partnership with a quiet, honest young guy named Pete Falco, whom he had known in Korea — simply because Pete had a solid reputation with the government, and it had seemed like a very good idea to bring him in on the legitimate end of things; about the warm and genuine friendship that had grown and prospered between him and Pete, and the way he had thought he would be helping his friend by bringing him in on the smuggling angle he had so carefully concealed previously; about Pete’s refusal, and the way he had kept after him and finally convinced him to make that one run to Penang with the load of contraband silk; about Pete’s protests and the crash and the waking up in a hospital in Wellesley Province three days later with a broken leg and a few minor burns, hearing Pete’s scream of terror echoing in his mind, finding out that Pete was dead; about dying a little inside, and understanding what he was, what he had become, and giving it all up because the bitch goddess meant nothing to him any more-there was not much of anything that was meaningful in his life any more…
I realized Tiong was speaking to me, and again I pushed the memories back into the dark corners of my mind. “What did you say?”
“I asked you, Mr. Connell, why you came here this morning.”
“To get you off my neck, that’s why.”
“I do not believe I understand.”
“I can put the principal suspect in the death of the Frenchman, La Croix, right in your lap,” I said. “And in the process, I can tie Van Rijk into it-and into the theft of the Burong Chabak from the Museum of Oriental Art.”
Tiong’s back stiffened into a regimental pose. “What do you know of the Burong Chabak?”
“I know that La Croix was one of the ones who stole it,” I told him. “The other was a woman named Marla King. Your friend the tobacco merchant was involved, too-I’m not sure how.”
