THE DEAD AMERICAN (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 3) (8 page)

“I’ll be a lot more dangerous to them if I start poking my nose into a case that has nothing to do with me.”

“Yes, you will,” she nodded. “But you’re going to do it anyway, aren’t you?”

Tay didn’t know what to say to that. He wanted to light another Marlboro instead of saying anything at all, but he knew that would make him look weak so he didn’t. Instead he just turned his head and studied the floodlit façade of the Fullerton Hotel on the other side of the bay.

Why was he even considering getting involved in all this?

Maybe it had something to do with his age. He had expected for everything to begin to crumble in his fifties. His hair, his knees, his waistline, his vision. Maybe even his judgment and his optimism. Well… not his optimism. Tay never had enough of that to crumble.

There were all sorts of things in his life he regretted, things he would do differently if he could do them again. He could do nothing now about any of those things. All he could do was to make this his fiftieth birthday resolution: there would be no further additions to his list of regrets.

“Do you know anybody at The Future, Emma?”

“No, not really.”

“So how would we go about finding out more about it?”

“We could start by asking somebody what the hell they really do there.”

“Yeah, but who?”

“I’m thinking we should go right to the top. To the chairman. Ask him.”

“We’d never get in to see him.”

“Sure we will.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Because I have an appointment tomorrow at eleven o’clock to interview Zachery Goodnight-Jones, the chairman of The Future. Want to
come?”

Tay smiled, but he didn’t say anything.

Emma winked. “Not bad for a girl, huh?”

“Why do I have the feeling you’re one step ahead of me?”

“I’m not really. I’m just trying to make it seem that way.”

Emma slipped her arm through Tay’s.

“Why don’t we go back to the lounge? I could use another drink and you probably could, too. You wouldn’t happen to have another cigarette, would you, Sam?”

Tay took out his pack of Marlboros and gave her a cigarette. Then he took one for himself and lit them both. It no longer felt like a gesture of weakness. It was only a cigarette.

They left the bridge and strolled slowly back to the Ritz-Carlton together, saying little, just savoring their cigarettes. The humid, smoky air made Tay feel like he was walking into a spy movie.

And maybe he was.

THE FUTURE WAS
located in a building at the cheaper end of Robinson Road, down where the banking to
wers thinned out.
Tay had arranged to meet Emma a couple of blocks north at the Lau Pa Sat market where generation after generation of Singaporeans had eaten street food. The place was almost a national monument.

Lau Pa Sat market is a Victorian structure that was built in Glasgow in the mid-nineteenth century, shipped out to Singapore in pieces, and reassembled on a full block between Robinson Road and Shenton Way. Delicately filigreed trusses capped dozens of huge, cast-iron columns, and an orange-tiled roof sheltered sixty or seventy separate stalls offering all kinds of Singaporean and Malaysian food.

Tay arrived first, bought a cup of coffee, and strolled through the vaulted walkways. He hadn’t been in Lau Pa Sat market in years, and he missed the feeling he got in places that had the kind of connection it did with Singapore’s past. There weren’t many left.

For more than four decades, ruthless government redevelopment programs had relentlessly ground away at Singapore until it had been thoroughly homogenized. The drive to turn Singapore into a modern, international city within a single generation required the bulldozing of anything that was old, and the bureaucrats kept bulldozing until they had completely pulverized Singapore’s rather sketchy past. To avoid the charge they were destroying Singapore’s history, which of course was exactly what the bastards
were
doing, the government occasionally decreed that reproductions of the old structures they tore down were to be built in their place. But the sanitized recreations were never quite the same somehow. They were never quite anything really, other than new.

Now Singapore looked like Dallas with palm trees. To be honest, Tay had never been to Dallas, and for all he knew Dallas had its own palm trees, but he had heard other people make the comparison between the two cities and it had stuck in his mind. He did not think the point of the comparison was to flatter Singapore.

Lau Pa Sat market had been renovated and rebuilt more times than Tay could remember, but the original ironwork remained and it linked the structure irrevocably to a life more than a century now gone. The market had outlived the bureaucrats. Tay gave one of the old iron columns a friendly pat and murmured his admiration.
Well done, friend. Well done
.

It was too late for breakfast and too early for lunch, so the market was largely deserted. Tay carried his coffee to one of the round tables along the western edge of the pavilion and pulled up a stool. A few minutes later he saw Emma getting out of a red and white Toyota taxi on Robinson Road. He got to his feet, flipped his half-finished paper cup of coffee into a green trash barrel, and walked out to meet her.

“How do you want to do this?” Tay asked.

“Let’s keep it simple. I’m a writer for the Wall Street Journal working on a piece about the development of driverless cars. You’re my researcher.”

“Are you working on a piece about driverless cars?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, but I can’t tell this guy I’m writing about the death of Tyler Bartlett, can I? He’d throw us out before the coffee was served.”

“No great loss,” Tay shrugged. “I’ve already had coffee.”

Emma wasn’t certain whether Tay was kidding her or not. She eyed him for a moment, but his face gave nothing away.

“I’m open for suggestions, Inspector, if you have any.”

“I do have one.”

“Yes?”

“Stop calling me Inspector.”

“Good idea,” Emma chuckled. “What do you suggest I call you?”

“How about introducing me as Sam Tay and just calling me Sam? Unless, of course, you’d like to introduce me as Sigmund Freud. Then you could call me Sigmund.”

Emma burst out with a throaty laugh. Just as he had the last time that happened, Tay felt unreasonably pleased with himself to have raised a laugh in a beautiful woman.

“You don’t look like a Sigmund to me,” Emma said.

“I don’t look like a researcher for the Wall Street Journal either.”

They crossed Robinson Road and walked south along the sidewalk, past mostly indistinguishable buildings packed together on both sides of the street.

“Zachery Goodnight-Jones is the chairman of The Future,” Emma said. “He’s an Australian solicitor who had a lot of corporate clients back in Sydney, mostly foreign ones.”

“Funny name, Goodnight-Jones.”

“Brits and Australians come up with these double-barreled names for themselves. I guess they think they sound classy. I think they sound ridiculous.”

Tay wasn’t sure that was entirely fair, but he could imagine how Americans might think so.

“How did Goodnight-Jones get involved with this company?” he asked, bringing the conversation back to more substantive matters.

“I’m not sure. About two years ago, he closed his practice in Sydney, then he turned up here in Singapore as chairman of The Future.”

“Because he knows a lot about driverless cars?”

“More likely because he knows a lot about companies and how to hide their real ownership.”

“What do you think of Goodnight-Jones?”

“I’ve never met him. Never even talked to him. I made the appointment through his secretary.
I’m a writer with the Wall Street Journal
is a magical phrase. It opens every door.”

“So you don’t know how cooperative he’ll be.”

“I’d guess wonderfully cooperative as long as we’re talking about the company. No doubt considerably less cooperative when I ask him about Tyler Bartlett.”

“Then that’s why you wanted me here? To ask him about Tyler Bartlett?”

“Yeah,” Emma chuckled. “When I give you the signal, beat a confession out of him.”

Tay cleared his throat. “Believe it or not, it was a serious question.”

Emma cut her eyes at Tay, but she said nothing.

“I need to know what you expect me to do, Emma.”

“Look, you’re an experienced detective. You’ve probably interviewed thousands of witnesses, and hundreds of victims and perpetrators. I have no doubt you have a sixth sense for when people are lying.”

Tay said nothing.

“I just want you to listen to the guy, Sam. Watch him. If you see a way to push him, do it. Jump in any time. Whatever you do, I’ll just go with it.”

“What if he realizes I’m a policeman?”

“My God, are you
that
famous?”

“Not famous, no. But I ask questions like a policeman, not like a researcher for a newspaper. And it’s obvious I’m a local. He’ll put it together.”

“No, he won’t. He’ll be so flattered at being interviewed by the Wall Street Journal that he’ll never think of that.”

Tay wasn’t so sure.

They walked past a pub that was open to the sidewalk. Tall tables surrounded by high stools spilled out into the sunlight. Although it wasn’t even eleven yet, a few of the tables were already occupied by young men, mostly Caucasians, their sleeves rolled up and their ties loosened, with pint glasses of beer in front of them. A sandy-haired kid Tay figured for a Brit working at a local stockbroker smiled at Emma and tried to catch her eye. When she didn’t appear to notice him, he half rose from his stool to approach her. Tay gave the kid his deadeye cop stare and the kid sat straight back down.

Tay didn’t think Emma had noticed, but then she gave him a little shove with her shoulder.

“Damn it all, Sam, how am I ever going to meet a nice fellow if you keep doing that kind of thing?”

The Future was located in a building that looked more like the past.

It was a bland, unremarkable structure of about a dozen stories with a concrete facade, large panes of bronzed glass, and a Jet Airways office on the ground floor. Ta
y followed Emma across the small lobby into the elevator. On the sixth floor, there was a pair of glass doors that opened into a reception room.
THE FUTURE
was emblazoned across the far wall in bright purple script.

Zachery Goodnight-Jones kept them waiting, of course. Twenty minutes was the standard period to show a caller the importance of the person they were calling on. Sure enough, exactly twenty minutes after Tay and Emma took their seats, the receptionist’s telephone buzzed and the young woman escorted them back to the chairman’s office.

Goodnight-Jones came around the desk to greet Emma. Tay lagged a few steps behind to give himself a chance to size the man up. Goodnight-Jones was of average height and build with a high forehead and thinning, sandy-colored hair brushed straight back from his slightly pink face. He wore a long-sleeved white shirt, a gray waistcoat, and black trousers. Instead of a necktie, the folds of a gray and black checked cravat billowed below his chin and disappeared down behind his waistcoat. Tay couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a man wearing a cravat. It looked like Goodnight-Jones was wearing a silk towel wrapped around his neck.

Emma and Goodnight-Jones shook hands, and Emma handed him her business card. “This is Sam Tay,” she said. “He’s a researcher who’s helping me with our story.”

Tay and Goodnight-Jones shook and nodded at each other the way men do when they first meet. Tay thought Goodnight-Jones hesitated just a beat before they shook, but he wasn’t certain about that. Perhaps it was only his imagination.

Goodnight-Jones studied Emma’s business card, glancing back and forth from it to her face a couple of times. The way he did it made Tay think of an immigration officer examining a passport. When he had exhausted the card’s potential, Goodnight-Jones slipped it into the breast pocket of his shirt.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing someone else to this interview,” he said to Emma.

“Your secretary didn’t ask me. You don’t mind, do you?”

Tay saw what he thought was that beat of hesitation again. This time he was sure of it.

“No, of course not,” Goodnight-Jones said. “I’m happy to meet you both.”

The three of them took seats around
a small conference table. After the coffee and tea ritual was complete, Emma removed a notebook and pen from her purse and launched into a spiel about the imaginary article the Wall Street Journal was supposedly thinking of doing on driverless cars.

“Please understand,” she finished, “Sam and I are only scouting the story, and we’re just collecting general background at this point. If our proposal interests my editor, we’ll return for an in-depth interview with you and ask to meet with some members of your staff.”

Goodnight-Jones leaned back, rearranged the set of his face into a look that Tay thought was both skeptical and slightly greasy, and said, “I’m happy to help in any way I can.”

Emma flipped open her notebook. “Perhaps we could begin with you giving us a general explanation of your driverless car project.”

When Goodnight-Jones began talking, Tay paid absolutely no attention to what he said since doubtless it would be well-practiced patter without much substance. Instead, Tay focused on the sound of his voice and the set of his face.

Zachery Goodnight-Jones had a voice so smooth and mellow Tay could almost hear ice clinking against a whiskey glass when he talked. Tay had no trouble imagining him as a high dollar solicitor. In fact, he couldn’t imagine him as anything else. They had barely begun and Tay was already certain they would learn nothing from Goodnight-Jones that would be helpful or even particularly interesting.

Still… there was something beyond the words Goodnight-Jones was saying that bothered Tay in a visceral way. There was darkness in the man’s eyes, and Tay wasn’t sure what to make of it. He had never been able to decide whether men were born evil or they made themselves evil in return for getting something they wanted, but Goodnight-Jones looked like a man who
did
know. Watching him, Tay felt the presence of something big and foul that tainted the very air he was breathing.

“When can we expect to see the first driverless car on the streets of Singapore?” Tay heard Emma asking when he tuned back in to the conversation.

“It’s much too soon to say,” Goodnight-Jones answered.

“Are you in touch with Google about the work they’re doing with the same technology?” Emma asked.

“Why would you say it’s the same technology?”

“It isn’t?”

Goodnight-Jones just smiled.

“Have you had any contact with Google about the concept of driverless cars?”

“No.”

Emma busied herself for a moment writing in her notebook. Tay assumed it was mostly for show since he couldn’t imagine what Goodnight-Jones had said that was worth writing down.

“How many people do you employ here in Singapore?” she asked when she stopped writing.

“About fifty.”

“Doing what kind of work?”

“Mostly software design. There’s support staff, too, of course.”

“And how many people in your other facilities?”

“This is the only facility.”

Emma paused a moment and glanced at Tay. He couldn’t imagine why she had.

“How did you become chairman of The Future?” she continued.

“I was offered the position, and I accepted.”

“Offered the position by who?”

“I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be specific about that.”

“Do you have an engineering background?”

“No.”

“Do you have a background in the automotive industry, or perhaps in software design?”

“I have the feeling you already know I don’t.”

“I’m not trying to be difficult, sir. I’m simply trying to understand why a high-tech start-up like The Future would hire an Australian solicitor and bring him to Singapore to become its chairman. How do you fit in around here?”

“I fit in around here very well.”

“I meant, sir, what do you do here?”

“I manage the company.”

“Who are the major shareholders of The Future?”

“This is a privately held company. We don’t disclose who our shareholders are.”

Emma put on a puzzled expression, although Tay knew very well she had been expecting Goodnight-Jones to say exactly that.

“Couldn’t you at least give me the names of the largest ones?”