Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (30 page)

“Look, Goh. I’m under surveillance by a team
of professionals. Well…semi-professionals, at least. In Singapore,
that means ISD.”

“You’re wrong. We don’t give a shit about
you. We certainly don’t have you under surveillance.”

“Then who is it?”

“I’ve got no fucking idea. But if I were you,
I’d start trying to figure out who I’d pissed off recently.”

Tay studied Goh’s face. Tay had always prided
himself on having a nearly infallible sense of when people were
lying to him and when they weren’t, and his shit detector wasn’t
making a sound.

Tay began to wonder if he could have this
wrong.

If he did, that introduced an entirely new
and genuinely unpleasant element into his calculations. Who had the
capability of mounting a complex surveillance operation in
Singapore other than ISD? And, whoever it was, why would they be
running it on Tay? How could there be anybody out there who cared
that much about where Tay was going and what he was doing? Most of
the time,
Tay
didn’t even care.

Tay changed tacks with Goh just to see where
it took him.

“Why did your people push their way into my
house and take those ledger sheets? If you’d asked nicely, I would
have given you copies.”

Goh laughed right out loud, and he didn’t
strike Tay as a guy who did that very often.

“Whatever you’re drinking, Tay, I think you’d
better stop. I’ve still got no fucking clue what you’re talking
about.”

“ISD jumped me at my own front door and
grabbed the ledger sheets I took out of the safety deposit
box.”

“
What
ledger sheets?
What
safety deposit box? Have you completely lost your mind, Tay? What
in the everlasting
fuck
are you talking about?”

Still not even the tiniest blip out of Tay’s
shit detector. Could Goh really be telling the truth? And if he
was, what the hell did
that
mean?

“Just answer one question for me, Goh.”

“Why should I do that?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do.”

Goh stared at Tay for a moment as if he
wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Then he made a rolling gesture
with one hand, leaned back, and clasped his hands together behind
his head.

“Did you know Vincent Ferrero came to see
me?” Tay asked.

“No. What for?”

“He threatened to kick the shit out of me if
I didn’t stop investigating the Woodlands case.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

Tay said nothing and Goh gave him a long
look.

“You’re serious?”

Tay nodded.

“Vince threatened you?
Physically
? You
must have misunderstood him, Tay.”

“You think? A guy who’s the size of a bus
puts a hand in my chest and tells me he’s going to teach me a
lesson if I don’t let the Woodlands case go? Yeah, I can see how
that could just be a misunderstanding.”

Goh sat for a long while eyeing Tay in
complete silence.

Tay said nothing. He would have liked to say
something, but he didn’t have a clue what it might be. He’d dumped
all the crap he had right in the middle of Goh’s desk, and Goh’s
reaction hadn’t been at all what he had prepared himself for. So
where did he go from here?

Abruptly Goh leaned forward and rested his
forearms on his desk.

“You like coffee, Tay?”

“Yeah, I like coffee.”

“Then let’s go downstairs and have some,” Goh
said, standing up. “Maybe we can help each other after all.”

When Tay decided to barge in on Goh, it
occurred to him his impulsiveness might lead to a lot of things,
although a cup of coffee certainly hadn’t been on his list.

Regardless, right now coffee sounded pretty
good to him. He wasn’t going to solve his case without some help
from people who knew things he didn’t, and John August had
apparently done a runner on him. He had no doubt Phillip Goh knew a
lot
of things he didn’t. What would it hurt to listen to
whatever he had to say?

“Is the coffee here any good?” Tay asked as
he stood up, too.

Goh didn’t answer, which struck Tay as a
really bad sign.

He followed Goh out the door and they walked
down the hallway to the elevator. Then they stood there waiting for
it without speaking.

THE COFFEE WAS awful. Worse than awful
really, if that was possible. It tasted sour, burned and
vinegary.

“How can you drink this stuff?” Tay
asked.

“I don’t. I just give it to policemen I’m
trying to poison.”

Tay mimed a laugh and glanced around. He and
Goh had taken seats at a table far enough away from the few other
people in the cafeteria not to be overheard. It looked like that’s
what everyone else had done, too. Tay knew he could never even
imagine the things that had doubtless been whispered about in this
room. And he didn’t even want to try.

Goh tore the end off a packet of sugar and
dumped it into his coffee. Tay didn’t think it would help very
much, and he watched as Goh gave the cup a quick stir with a
plastic spoon, then picked it up and took a hit. To Tay’s surprise,
Goh not only swallowed it, he smacked his lips and then drank some
more.

Tay didn’t know how Goh could get the stuff
down. Maybe working for the Internal Security Department required a
stronger stomach than being a policeman. Yes, now that he thought
about it, he could see how that well might be.

“So what do you have to tell me?” Tay
asked.

“Nope. You first. I bought the coffee.”

“You show me yours and I’ll show you mine?”
Tay asked

“But no hands below the waist.”

***

Tay sketched out the basics. He told Goh
about the key to the safety deposit box, he told him about the
ledger sheets in the box with his father’s initials, and he told
him about the picture tying his father to the dead man. He even
told Goh who Johnny the Mover was and about his connection to
American intelligence a few decades back. But he didn’t tell Goh
how he knew that, and he certainly didn’t mention John August. He
didn’t tell him about Kang’s conclusion that his father had been a
money launderer either. Candor has it limits.

“You have a source in the CIA,” Goh said as
soon as Tay finished his story.

Tay shrugged.

“I’m not going to ask you who it is. I know
you wouldn’t tell me and I don’t blame you. But if you have a
source in the CIA, then I’m guessing you probably also know…”

Goh stopped talking and just looked at
Tay.

“That blaming JI for the bombings is complete
bullshit and you really think it was an act of domestic terrorism?”
Tay asked. “Yeah, I heard that somewhere.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“My guess is it’s
exactly
that
simple.”

Goh pursed his lips and thought for a
moment.

“And you’ve told this to other people at
CID?” he asked when he was apparently done thinking. “Your boss?
Your sergeant, maybe?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely
sure.”

“Look, Tay, you got to understand that the
security of the country may—”

“Spare me, Goh. I’m not trying to save the
country. I’m not even sure I
care
about saving the country.
I’m just trying to do my job here and solve a murder case.”

Tay noticed Goh’s scar was less red now than
it had been when he had first burst into his office. Maybe that was
a good sign. On the other hand, maybe Goh’s body was just too busy
fighting off the coffee to deal with anything else.

Goh shifted his weight in the chair. A moment
passed, then he folded his arms and leaned forward.

“Congratulations, Tay.”

“For what?”

“It looks to me like you’ve won. You’ve got
yourself a chip in the big game now.”

“I don’t want a chip in any game. Big or
small.”

“Then what
do
you want?”

“I just told you. I want to close this murder
case. I want to do my job.”

“And that’s it?”

“Well…” Tay made a show of thinking about it.
“Maybe world peace and a date with Angelina Jolie, too. But right
now I’ll probably settle just for finding the guy who killed Johnny
the Mover.”

***

“You want some more coffee?” Goh asked.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Suit yourself,” he said. “I’m getting
some.”

“And then what?”

“And then we’ll have a conversation.”

“Isn’t that what we’ve
been
doing?”

“Well, Tay, the way I see it, on the one
hand, there’s talking. And that’s what we’ve been doing. Then, on
the other hand, there’s having a conversation. I may regret it
later, but I think we ought to try that, too.”

“In that case, you better bring me some more
coffee. I’m probably going to need it.”

“There you go. You’re learning, man.”

***

Goh returned and placed a fresh cup of coffee
on the table in front of Tay. He dumped three packets of sugar into
it, stirred quickly, and sipped cautiously. It tasted exactly the
way it had before. This stuff was a black hole of skunkiness. Three
packets of sugar in it and they were just gone. The coffee tasted
as sour as it had without any sugar in it at all.

“So let me make sure I understand this,” Goh
said. “You’re telling me your dead guy was connected to American
intelligence.”

“No, I’m telling you I understand he worked
for American intelligence once, but that may have been some years
back.”

“He worked as a transporter.”

“Yes.”

“But your source told you he’d retired.”

“Yes.”

Goh smiled slightly. “And you believed
him.”

Tay said nothing. It had never occurred to
him not to believe John August, but suddenly he felt like an idiot.
What else was August
going
to tell him? He certainly wasn’t
going to finger Johnny as an intelligence asset now, was he?
Certainly not after Johnny had been killed in Singapore on the day
the city was blown up. That could have led to some embarrassing
questions, like…

What was an American intelligence asset doing
dead in Singapore immediately after the bombings? Did him being
dead have any connection to the bombings? And, if it did…well, Tay
didn’t want to think about where that might lead.

Those were all questions Tay should have
asked August, of course. But he had taken August’s information at
face value and he hadn’t asked any of them.

Goh must have seen the embarrassment in Tay’s
eyes.

“Don’t worry about it. You trust your source.
I know how that works. Maybe he was telling you the truth. Why
don’t you go back and push him a little?”

“I can’t find him.”

Tay could see Goh didn’t like the sound of
that, so he changed the subject as quickly as he could.

“You know where to find your spook pal
Ferrero,” Tay pointed out. “Why don’t you ask
him
if Johnny
was still connected when he was killed?”

Goh shook his head. “Vince isn’t CIA.”

“But you said—”

“I told you Vince was with the American
embassy. And I could see your lip curl when I said it.”

“Because that’s a common expression for—”

“Yeah, it’s a common expression for the local
Agency guys. That’s why I used it.”

“You thought it would impress me.”

“I thought it would shut you up. Little did I
know.”

“So who is Ferrero, really?”

“Vince is a contractor. He’s strictly private
enterprise.”

“But he
was
CIA once?”

“I’ve always assumed he was, but I don’t know
that for a fact. He’s been private as long as I’ve known him.
Probably a lot longer.”

“What does he do?”

“Support and logistics stuff. Nothing very
sexy really.”

“Who does he work for?”

Goh hesitated. “I can’t tell you that,
Tay.”

“Why not?”

“Well…I’m not absolutely sure, to be honest,
but it’s restricted information.”

“You and I are on the same side.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re still just—”

Goh suddenly realized what he was about to
say and abruptly stopped talking.

“Just a policeman? Is that what you were
going to say, Goh? That I’m just a cop?”

Goh looked for a moment like he was about to
claim he wasn’t going to say anything of the sort, but then he
shrugged.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Tay. I meant
you’re not ISD and the details of the people we work with are
internally restricted. I don’t make the rules.”

“But you break them when you feel like
it.”

Goh shrugged again, but he didn’t say
anything else.

THE IDEA CAME to Tay while he slept just like
most of his best ideas did. He wasn’t sure how that actually
worked, but it worked for him all the time so he wasn’t questioning
it.

It went like this. He got into bed at night
not knowing something, and then when he got up the next morning he
did
know it. Tay didn’t want to think too much about why it
happened. He figured it wasn’t a good idea. If he asked too many
questions about it, maybe it would stop happening. And then where
would he be?

Tay poured himself another coffee and took it
out to the garden where he sat down and lit a cigarette. He held
his idea up like a shiny bauble he had just discovered on the
discount table somewhere. He turned it this way and that, examining
it from every angle for the flaws he assumed it must have. But he
found none. His idea appeared as sound as it had when he had first
waked that morning and found it waiting patiently for him in a
corner of his consciousness.

So he finished his cigarette, drank the rest
of his coffee, and went upstairs to shower and dress. Then he took
a taxi to HSBC.

***