Umbrella Man (9786167611204) (35 page)

“Your father died in Vietnam a long time ago.
You have that much right. But he didn’t have a heart attack. Vince
Ferrero shot him.”

“Why would Ferrero do that?”

“Vince and Johnny had already left the agency
and started Paraguas Ltd. They were freelancing in areas the agency
didn’t want to touch and making some real money at it. Your father
had a share in the company and handled most of the financial
stuff.”

“In other words, he was a money
launderer.”

August shrugged. “It’s an expression.”

“Where are you going with this, John?”

“Your father was in love with a Vietnamese
woman. He knew it was just a matter of time before South Vietnam
fell. Everyone knew it. He tried to get this woman out, but he
couldn’t. Somebody high up in the South Vietnamese government who
she had offended blocked her exit visa. Your father couldn’t do
anything about it. So he told Vince and Johnny he was going to stay
with her.”

“Stay with her?”

“In Saigon. After the North Vietnamese took
it over.”

“That’s crazy. He would have been arrested.
At the very least he would have been labeled an American spy,
thrown in prison, and tortured.”

“That’s what Vince thought, too. And that’s
why he killed him. Your father knew too much about what Vince and
Johnny had been doing, who had been paying them, and where their
money was stashed. Vince didn’t want the North Vietnamese finding
out.”

Tay turned away from August and looked out
the window, seeing nothing.

“Vince did everything he could to convince
your father to leave with them,” August continued, “but he wouldn’t
because he couldn’t get this woman out. So Vince killed your
father. It was the only way to make certain he didn’t tell anyone
else what he knew.”

“Ferrero killed my father over some
money.”

“It was a
lot
of money, Sam.”

Tay gave August a sharp look, but August
didn’t appear to notice.

***

Neither August nor Tay spoke again until
August had turned off the expressway, driven a short distance south
to Dunearn Road, and stopped in front of the Botanic Gardens MRT
Station.

“I think it would be best if I dropped you
off here.”

Tay nodded. He unbuckled his shoulder strap
and got out without saying a word. But before he closed the door he
turned around and leaned back into the car.

“What happens now, John?”

“That’s pretty much up to you, Sam. I have a
job to do and I’m going to do it. I just wanted you to understand
why you ought to let me do it. And that you should be happy
somebody’s going to get it done.”

“You going to kill Ferrero.”

“Would that bother you?”

Tay chewed on his lip and looked at August
for a while, but he said nothing.

Then he straightened up, closed the car door,
and walked away.

IT WAS ONLY one stop on the MRT from the
Botanic Gardens Station to Farrer Road, and from there it was a
five minute walk to Gallop Green. Less than fifteen minutes after
closing the door of August’s car, Tay was ringing Mei Lin Lee’s
doorbell.

When Mei Lin answered the door, she looked
genuinely surprised. Tay gathered this time the security guards
hadn’t called up to warn her he was there. Perhaps the word had
spread about the man from ISD who had a quiet word with Rahul, the
man who didn’t want Miss Lee and her patron to know about his
interest in them.

“You didn’t tell me Vince Ferrero owns this
apartment,” Tay snapped, brushing past Mei Lin into the living
room. “I assume that means he owns you, too.”

Tay watched Mei Lin while she closed the
door. She seemed an equal mix of shock and fury, which was exactly
how he wanted her. She would be thinking less clearly now about
what she said to him, which meant she might actually say something
that was true.

“You let me think he was just a customer of
the bank,” Tay said. “Someone you had only met a few times.”

Mei Lin was wearing a plaid shirt that looked
like flannel with the sleeves rolled up over her elbows and a long
red skirt that fell almost to her ankles. She wrapped her arms
around herself and stood glaring at Tay in silence.

“And now I find out you’re living with
him.”

“I’m not—”

“What else did you lie about, Mei Lin? What
else are you hiding from me?

“If you would—”

“Maybe you’re part of this, too.”

“Part of
what
?”

That was actually a pretty good question, Tay
thought. But since he was making all this up as he went along, he
ignored it and kept talking.

“We have good reason to believe Vince Ferrero
was involved in the bombings.”

That was stretching a point, of course. Tay
did believe Ferrero was connected to the bombings, but he had no
idea exactly
how
he might be connected, and saying he
actually had a good reason for what he believed pretty much took
him straight into the realm of science fiction.

“Since you lied about living with Ferrero,
Mei Lin—”

“I am
not
living with him.”

“But he owns this apartment. Are you saying
you’re renting it from him?”

“No, of course not. I’m just—”

“Then he’s loaning you the apartment? Just
out of the generosity of his heart? You don’t expect me to believe
you’re not living here in return for services rendered, do
you?”

“For services—”

“Come on, Mei Lin. I know how this kind of
thing works. He pays for the apartment, and he comes around when he
feels like it, and you—”

“Vince Ferrero is my
father
, you
asshole!”

***

Tay had already survived enough surprises in
the last hour or so to last him a lifetime. One more was simply one
too many. All at once Tay felt weightless, almost untethered from
the earth, so he quickly sat down on the couch right behind him. He
felt like, if he hadn’t, he would just have floated away.

Mei Lin sat right across from him and watched
with what Tay thought was a degree of curiosity. Maybe she was
thinking he was about to float away, too.

“Maybe I should have told you,” she said
after a moment. “But the truth was I didn’t think it was any of
your business. And I didn’t see what difference it made.”

That was enough to snap Tay out of it.

“
You didn’t see what difference—”

“I don’t know what my father is doing, not
exactly, but I know he’s in danger. People like him aren’t arrested
for what they’ve done. One day they just disappear. I decided when
I met you that you are an honorable man, a policeman who really
believes in the law. I thought if I pointed you toward him you
might find out if he had done anything wrong. If he had, you would
arrest him, of course. And I’d rather see him in prison than
dead.”

Mei Lin was Vince Ferrero’s
daughter
?
That possibility had never crossed Tay’s mind.

“What do you think he’s done?” Tay asked.

“You just said it yourself. You said you had
good reason to think he was involved in the bombings somehow. So do
I.”

Since Tay thought Ferrero was involved in the
bombings without actually having any evidence of it, he was awfully
glad to hear someone else thought so, too. But he couldn’t help but
wonder
why
she thought so. What did Mei Lin know that he
didn’t?

“Okay,” Tay said. “You’ve got my attention.
Tell me what you’re talking about.”

“I know how my father makes his money. Well,
maybe not exactly, but I know he and Uncle Johnny provide support
services for intelligence agencies. When I saw him right after the
bombings, I just knew immediately they had been involved in some
way, but I think what actually happened was a complete surprise to
him. I even started wondering if he and Johnny might have been
tricked into whatever their involvement was.”

“Tricked?”

“You know, somebody told him they were doing
one thing while they were actually doing another? I’ve been trying
to reach Uncle Johnny to ask him — I don’t think he’d lie to me —
but he hasn’t called me back.”

“He won’t.”

Mei Lin tilted her head in puzzlement. “Why
not?”

“He’s dead.”

Mei Lin’s mouth opened and her hand flew to
cover it. It was a gesture that might have looked stagey and
artificial on anyone else, but on Mei Lin it somehow contrived to
look innocent and winning.

“Where?” she stuttered. “How?”

“His body was found in an apartment in the
Woodlands a few days after the bombings. His neck was broken.”

Mei Lin sat silently thinking about that. Tay
just watched her.

“Okay,” she said after a moment, taking a
deep breath. “You have to find him before they do.”

“
They?
Who’s they?”

“Whoever killed Uncle Johnny. Now they’re
going to kill my father, too. You know that! You’ve got to find him
first!”

Things were already so tangled Tay decided
not to tell Mei Lin he thought her father was actually Johnny’s
killer. And that now he was on the run, both because of the murder
and because of whatever he had hoped to cover up with the
murder.

Mei Lin wanted Tay to find Vince Ferrero. And
Tay wanted to find Vince Ferrero. What did it really matter that
they had considerably different motives?

MEI LIN SAID she needed a moment to pull
herself together and went into the kitchen to make a pot of Earl
Grey tea.

She came back a few minutes later with a
silver tray on which she had arranged a teapot and two china cups
so delicate Tay was almost afraid to touch them. Placing the tray
on the table between them, Mei Lin served them each a cup of Earl
Grey and offered Tay milk and sugar. He declined both. Tay hated
tea with milk and sugar, and he especially hated Earl Grey tea no
matter how it was served. But right then he would have happily
drunk a big cup of hemlock if that would help him find Vince
Ferrero.

When Tay thought a decent enough interval had
passed for him to prod the conversation back to the subject he
wanted to talk about, he cleared his throat.

“How long have you and your father lived
here?”

“My father doesn’t live here.”

“Where does he live?”

“I think he lives in Hong Kong, but I’m not
sure.”

“You don’t know where your father lives?”

“He was never what you might call a
conventional father. There are a lot of things I don’t know about
him.”

Of course, that caused Tay to think about the
things he had recently discovered about his own father. Apparently
he didn’t know much about him either. Tay shook off the empty
feeling that came with the thought and continued.

“How much do you know about what he does for
a living?”

“Not much. I don’t want to know much. He owns
a company that has something to do with providing support services
to intelligence agencies. But then I’m sure you already know more
about that than I do.”

“When did you last see your father?”

“Two or three days after the bombings.”

“Was it here?”

“No, at the bank. He came in to open his
safety deposit box.”

“Was he taking something out or putting
something in?”

“I don’t know. He was carrying a briefcase
that he took into the vault with him. I unlocked the box and then
waited outside. When he left he was carrying the same case, of
course. I have no idea whether he just looked at something in the
box or whether he transferred something between the box and the
case. No idea at all.”

“Why are you working at a bank?”

“Why not? It’s a good job. Why are you a
policeman?”

“I meant…”

Tay paused and looked around at the Mei Lin’s
apartment. Then it occurred to him he had a pretty nice place to
live, too, and it was one his father had paid for as well. So he
supposed it was a fair enough question she was asking him. Why was
he a policeman indeed? The parallels here were becoming a little
uncomfortable for him.

“You meant why am I working in an ordinary
bank job when it looks like I’m rich?” Mei Lin asked when he didn’t
immediately say anything else. “I’m not rich, Inspector. My father
is rich. I live in an apartment he owns, but otherwise I make my
own way. I don’t take money from him. Besides, whether you believe
it or not, I like my job. Everybody has to do something.”

“Did your father get you the job at
HSBC?”

“No, he did not.” Mei Lin’s eyes flashed in
indignation. “Why would you even ask me something like that?”

“I thought because of the safety deposit
box—”

“My father opened that box there
after
I took the job. He seemed nearly as amused as you are at the idea
of me working in a bank. Sometimes I think he came in to open the
box just to see if I was still there.”

“Does he have accounts at HSBC, too?”

“No.” Mei Lin seemed to be thinking about
something, but Tay couldn’t tell what it was. “Not in his own name,
at least.”

There was a silence and they both lifted
their cups and sipped at the tea neither one of them wanted, but it
filled the silence and perhaps that was all you could really ask of
a cup of tea.

“Does your father have another apartment
where he lives when he’s in town?”

“No, he usually stays at Raffles.”

Raffles is to Singapore as the Waldorf
Astoria is to New York, or the Grosvenor House is to London, or the
Hassler is to Rome. Established, emblematic, and ruinously
expensive. It is a sprawling low-rise building painted in such a
brilliant shade of white it hurts your eyes to look directly at it
in the glare of Singapore’s relentless sun.

Tay thought the place looked like a
nineteenth-century Hungarian wedding cake mysterious converted into
a hotel, but it was still part of the fabric of the city. Perhaps
it
was
the fabric of the city. Tay had been to the Grill
Room there a few times when someone had invited him, but otherwise
he knew no more about Raffles than the average New Yorker knew
about the Statue of Liberty. It was there. And everyone had heard
of it. What else did he need to know?