Tiong stared at me for a long moment. Then he folded his hands on top of the papers in my file and said patiently, “You will please explain how you came by this information.”
I told him about Marla King’s visit to the godown the previous afternoon, and about the talk I had had with Van Rijk in my flat. I said then, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the girl will get in touch with me sooner or later. When she does, I’ll set up a meeting with her, just as Van Rijk wants me to do. Then I’ll wait for him to call, and tell him the location of the meeting, and you can be there waiting to catch the two of them together. That way, you ought to be able to get one or the other to incriminate himself.”
Tiong sat in silence, studying his folded hands in a speculative way. At least two minutes had crawled away before he raised his head to look at me again. “Why have you told me all of this, Mr. Connell?”
“Because I want to be left alone. Everyone keeps trying to involve me in this thing, and I don’t want to be involved.”
“That is the only reason?”
“Yes.”
“You realize, there is no reward for the recovery of the Burong Chabak.”
“I’m not interested in rewards or jade figurines, or even that a great amount of justice gets done,” I said. “I don’t like Van Rijk and I don’t owe anything to Marla King. The way I see it, one of them killed La Croix-and because he was a friend of sorts, I’d like you to have his killer. That’s the sum total of my motivations.”
“I find it somewhat difficult to believe that a man of your background would turn his back on twenty thousand Straits dollars. That is the sum you said Van Rijk offered you, is it not?”
“That’s it. And it doesn’t interest me in the least.”
“Why not?”
“Money doesn’t mean much to me these days.”
“Money means something to every man.”
“In varying degrees.”
“You would have me believe that a man such as you, a man who smuggled arms and contraband for high prices, a man who once cast money about Singapore as if it were leaves on a pond-you would have me believe that man has no interest in money?”
“Why do you think I gave up my villa on Ponggol Point, and the Eurasian women, and the parties, and the smuggling? Why do you think I live in a Chinatown tenement and work coolie labor on the river?”
“Primarily because your commercial license was revoked, and you were forced to sell what remained of your possessions after the government seizure. It is also my theory that you had a falling out with certain of the men with whom you dealt, that you came into their disfavor.”
“Bullshit,” I said.
“Yes? What is your version, then?”
“Pete Falco is my version, though I doubt if you’d understand. But you can understand this: I don’t work the black market any more, I don’t fly any more, I don’t play games with the government any more. Those are facts, and because they are you can’t discredit them. It’s also a fact that I don’t give a damn for money, except what I need for food and shelter, and that’s why Van Rijk’s twenty thousand Straits dollars is so much sawdust as far as I’m concerned.”
Tiong’s eyes searched my face and found nothing he wanted. His own features were completely expressionless, but behind the mask lay doubt and suspicion. He was certain, in his one-track Asian cop’s mind, that I had some kind of underlying monetary motive for coming here as I had done. Once a penjahat, always and forever a penjahat — his philosophy was as simple and unyielding as that. And that righteously implacable certainty made him a dangerous man where I was concerned. If I had been trying to con him in any way, I would have been worried; as it was, even when he finally realized that I was being completely open and honest with him, his insular beliefs wouldn’t allow him to apologize to me, or to judge me in any different light. In his eyes I bore the indelible mark of Cain.
He said finally, his mouth thinner than it had been, “Van Rijk is a man who cannot be trusted-a vicious man behind a genteel facade. Perhaps you fear him, Mr. Connell, and rightly so after his alleged attack on you the other evening. Perhaps you thought that your payment for helping him locate the girl would not be the twenty thousand Straits dollars, but a death sentence instead. That would be a good reason for coming to me, would it not? A simple matter of self-preservation.”
“All right, there’s a little of that involved too-but not as much as you’d like to think. Van Rijk could be a snow bunny and I wouldn’t take a cent from him.”
“Self-preservation,” Tiong said again, as if he liked the sound of the words. Then abruptly he leaned forward, and I knew even before he spoke that he had finally succeeded in dredging up an underlying motive for my visit. “If you had murdered the French national in order to obtain the Burong Chabak, and you found the others involved in the theft beginning to apply pressure, what would you do, Mr. Connell?”
“You tell me,” I said thinly.
“You would want to eliminate them,” Tiong answered. “And the simplest method of doing that would be to turn them in to the polis. Then you would be free to dispose of the figurine at your leisure.”
“You’re forgetting that you didn’t connect me or La Croix to the theft of the Burong Chabak until I came into this office and told you he and Marla King had stolen it. Now wouldn’t I be a damned fool to make that connection for you, with the reputation I’ve got, if I’d committed murder to get the thing in the first place?”
“Shrewd men often adopt the guise of a fool.”
“Not in the Lion City.”
“The Burong Chabak is worth the chance.”
“For men like Van Rijk, maybe. Not for me.”
“Ah yes, you no longer care for money or material riches.”
I made an effort to control the anger mounting inside me. “Listen, Tiong, do you want my help in getting Van Rijk and Marla King, or don’t you? I’m tired of your goddam insinuations, and if you keep twisting things around so you can satisfy yourself that I’m up to something, I’ll walk out of here and you can go to hell after Van Rijk and King and the jade figurine before you’ll get any more co-operation out of me.”
He tried to stare me down, failed, and got to his feet and came around his desk to stand over me. I sat still, watching him without blinking; if he thought the psychological advantage of looking down on me was going to get him anything, he was sadly mistaken. “Very well,” he said, “I will assume for the moment that your intentions are as you stated them. We will question Van Rijk and Maria King, but I warn you, Mr. Connell, that if it develops you are more deeply involved in the theft of the Burong Chabak and the death of the French national than you profess, I will personally see to it that you spend the rest of your life with bars separating you from the decent citizens of Singapore.”
I said, “Okay, you’ve made your point.”
“I hope I have.”
“Do you want to work a setup the way I suggested?”
“It would seem to be the best way,” he agreed grudgingly.
“Then I’ll call you when Marla King makes contact.”
“And when do you think that will be?”
“Maybe tonight.”
He put a forefinger to his upper lip. “She denied knowing Van Rijk, is that correct?”
“She said she’d never heard of him.”
“How do you explain that?”
“I can’t explain it. Unless she’s a damned good actress, for reasons of her own.”
“Van Rijk obviously knows her.”
“Obviously.”
“How is that possible?”
“Maybe La Croix double-crossed the girl and, in spite of her assurance to the contrary, made a deal on his own for the sale of the figurine to Van Rijk. If so, La Croix could have mentioned his partner in the theft; that would answer your question. It would also define his part in this business.”
“Do you believe he killed the French national?”
“I like him for it more than Marla King.”
