Umbrella Man (9786167611204)

by Needham, Jake

  When Tay finished his coffee and apple fritters he wanted a cigarette, of course, but he didn’t particularly want to go stand outside on the sidewalk, which was the only place he was allowed to smoke. He was trying to quit — well, at least he was thinking about trying to quit — but the more difficult the government made it for him to smoke the more determined he became to keep doing it. And this was yet one more time he wasn’t going to let the bastards stop him.

  He swept up his empty cup and his paper plate and dumped them in a trash bin, then he went outside and found a spot in the cooling colonnade that separated the row of shops where the Coffee Bean was located from the bottom of Orchard Road. Concrete archways every twenty or thirty feet, a wide tiled walkway, and two or three steps under every arch to trip the unwary.

  Taking a new pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket, Tay felt the cellophane between his fingers and listened to it crinkle as he rolled it into a ball between his thumb and forefinger. He slit the package with his thumbnail, tore back the top, and inhaled the sudden whiff of tobacco that emerged. It was all part of the process, all part of what he loved. Tay shook out a cigarette and lit up. After taking a deep draw, he leaned back against one of the archways, exhaled, and looked around him.

  There were three other smokers near him, all male, and all of them to his eye looking vaguely guilty. A black plastic sign on a chrome stand sat in the colonnade near the entrance to the Coffee Bean. It issued its crisp orders in white, block-printed type that read, It Is Illegal to Smoke Beyond This Point.

  Tay looked at an elderly Chinese man not far from him who was just finishing his cigarette.

  “I blame the Americans for this,” Tay said. “I really do. The pricks.”

  The man glanced at Tay, dropped his butt, and hurried away without replying.

  Tay shrugged and went back to his own cigarette.

  By the time he had finished it and ground out the butt on the sidewalk, he had decided exactly what he was going to do.

  He hurried to a taxi stand about fifty yard east down Orchard Road where the line was mercifully short. Within ten minutes he was in the back of a taxi and on his way to the Cantonment Complex.

  ***

  “We’re going to reopen the Mayling Aw case,” Tay told Sergeant Kang.

  Kang shifted his weight in the uncomfortable chair in front of Tay’s desk, looking every bit as puzzled as Tay had expected him to.

  “But, sir—”

  “Just hear me out, Robbie.”

  Tay told Kang about his summons to ISD, Goh’s pronouncement that the Woodlands case was being closed as a suicide, and his subsequent meeting with their boss at which the SAC seemed to say he would look the other way if they continued investigating the case anyway.

  He did not tell Kang about his trip to JB or the message from one of John August’s people about him being under surveillance by ISD. And he certainly didn’t tell Kang the reason August claimed he was under surveillance by ISD. It wasn’t a matter of trust. It was just that he couldn’t tell Kang any of those things without telling him who John August was, and he wasn’t going to do that.

  Tay had never told anyone about August, and doubted he ever would. His boss had guessed that he knew someone who knew a lot of things, probably someone in American intelligence, but he had no idea who it was. Actually, to be honest, Tay wasn’t sure he knew who it was either. He didn’t know who August worked for, could only guess at what he did, and didn’t even know if John August was the man’s real name. He didn’t know much, but he did know he trusted August. That was just the way it was. He wouldn’t have had the first idea how to explain it to Kang so that it made sense, so he wasn’t going to try.

  “We’ll tell anyone who asks what we’re doing that we’re investigating the Mayling Aw case. It’s a decent enough cover for staying on the Woodlands case since she lived near the Woodlands. We can get away with it for at least a few days.”

  “But, sir, there’s nothing to investigate in that case, nothing even anything to say we’re investigating.”

  “We’ll claim we have reason to think she was smuggled in by a human trafficking ring.”

  “Human trafficking ring. Sir, that’s really—”

  “That will give us a reason to keep looking at movements through the Woodlands checkpoint. There’s something there CID doesn’t want us to find. We’re going to find it.”

  “We don’t even know who the dead man is, sir. The prints have never come back from Interpol and we don’t have anything else.”

  “Actually…” Tay paused.

  How was he going to tell Kang this without bringing August into it?

  “I do know who he is. I have a photograph of him. I haven’t told you about it yet.”

  Kang’s face clouded up, but he said nothing.

  “I’m sorry, Robbie. I found the picture in some old things of my father’s.”

  Now Kang’s face creased in puzzlement, as well it might have.

  “You found a picture of the dead man in things that belonged to your father?”

  Tay nodded. “Yes. And my father was in the picture with him.”

  “The dead man and your father?”

  Tay nodded.

  “Together?”

  Tay nodded again.

  “But your father died when—”

  “I was a child. More than thirty-five years ago.”

  Kang looked away and consulted a spot in the air. “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Neither do I, Robbie. But I’m going to get to the bottom of whatever is going on here and I need your help to do it.”

  Kang still wouldn’t look at him. Tay couldn’t blame him. He knew he should have brought Kang into this before. He just hoped it wasn’t too late to do it now.

  THIRTY-THREE

  “YOU KNEW ALL along who the dead man was, didn’t you, sir? You just didn’t want to tell me.”

  “No, I didn’t know, Robbie. I thought there was something familiar about him when I saw the body, that’s true, but I didn’t know who he was. Even when I found the photograph, I still didn’t know who he was.”

  “So how did you find out?”

  “I showed the photo to someone and he put a name to the face. Well, sort of a name.”

  “Who did you show it to?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Robbie. I’m sorry. I just can’t tell you. But it’s someone who knows a lot of people and someone I trust.”

  Kang’s face clouded, but at least he shifted his eyes back to Tay.

  “I’m listening, sir.”

  “The only name my source could give me was Johnny the Mover,” Tay said.

  Kang laughed in spite of himself. “You’ve got to be kidding me, sir.”

  “No, I’m completely serious. Our dead man is an old-time smuggler who has worked as a freelancer over the years for American intelligence. They called him Johnny the Mover.”

  “So your source is this American spook buddy everyone knows you have,” Kang grunted. “You showed your CIA connection the picture and he IDed this guy for you.”

  Tay didn’t want to lie to Kang. Not directly at least. So he settled on a response that was literally true, even if somewhat misleading.

  “I don’t have a CIA connection, Robbie. The SAC thinks I do, but I don’t.”

  Kang looked away, not sure whether to believe Tay or not, and even less sure whether it mattered if he did.

  An uncomfortable silence fell over Tay’s office. Tay knew Kang was completely disgusted with him. He wouldn’t have blamed Kang if he had just stood up and walked out right then.

  But Kang didn’t stand up and walk out.

  “Are you going to let me see this photograph now, sir?” he asked instead.

  Tay opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a thin manila-colored file. Opening it, he removed the picture of his father and Johnny the Mover and handed it across the desk to Kang.

  “It’s him all right,” Kang said almost immediately. “H
e’s gained weight and looks a lot older, but that’s him right there in the center.”

  Tay didn’t say anything.

  “Is your father the man on the right?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. You look a lot like him.”

  As far as Tay knew, there was no one alive who had known his father and who knew Tay now so he had never heard anyone say that before. And now that Kang said it, he didn’t know what to make of it. Tay’s father had been born in America, but his grandparents had both been ethnic Chinese. In the pictures Tay had seen of his father, Tay never thought his father looked particularly Chinese, and Tay certainly didn’t think he looked very Chinese either. He wondered now if Kang was saying his father did look Chinese, or that he didn’t. He considered briefly asking Kang exactly what he meant, but quickly decided that would make him look foolish and vain, so he said nothing.

  “Who’s the other guy in the photo? The one with the umbrella?” Kang asked, cutting off Tay’s ruminations before they spun him away somewhere he would be better off not going.

  “No idea.”

  “So whoever you showed the photo to didn’t recognize the other man or your father?”

  “No.”

  “Or at least that’s what he told you.”

  Tay wasn’t sure what to say to that. Tay didn’t think August lied about recognizing either of them, but he might have. Tay couldn’t deny that. Maybe August knew exactly who the umbrella man was and just didn’t tell Tay for reasons too complicated and obscure even to guess at.

  ***

  “The umbrella that other guy is holding up looks pretty strange,” Kang said.

  “It doesn’t make any sense to me either.”

  “It can’t just be a coincidence, sir.”

  Coincidence? Tay couldn’t see what Kang meant.

  “What are you talking about?” he asked.

  “The umbrella. Didn’t you say the deposit box where you found the ledgers with your father’s initials belonged to some company called Paraguas Ltd?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well…Paraguas is the Spanish word for umbrella.”

  Tay’s mouth slowly opened. He didn’t know whether he was more dumbfounded at what Kang was telling him or that Kang apparently spoke Spanish.

  “How did you know—”

  “My wife and I went to Spain on holiday two years ago, sir. I don’t really speak the language, but I remember a few words.”

  Tay closed his mouth and tried to get his mind around what he had just heard.

  The name of the company that owned the safety deposit box meant umbrella in Spanish. He had a photograph of three men taken thirty-five years ago in which one of the men was holding up an umbrella on a sunny day and making the other two laugh. Another of the men in the picture had the key to that box and in it Tay had found ledgers with the third man’s initials on them.

  What did all that mean?

  Tay had no idea at all. But Kang had to be right. It wasn’t a coincidence.

  It meant something.

  ***

  “My father was an accountant,” Tay said. “But…well, things keep coming up that suggest he was involved in a lot more than accounting.”

  Kang said nothing.

  “I know now my father was somehow connected with Johnny the Mover. Not only because he was photographed with him at least this once, but because ledgers with his initials on them were in a safety deposit box that Johnny had access to.”

  “But those ledgers would have to be at least thirty-five years old. What could they have to do with why this man was killed now?”

  “I don’t know,” Tay admitted. “I really don’t, but there’s something else, too.”

  Tay told Kang the story of Laura Anne Zimmerman and her memory of her father having told her once her mother was a spy.

  “And she worked for my father, so—”

  “What are you saying, sir? That your father was also a spy thirty-five years ago? And this Johnny the Mover was a spy back then, too? Even if you’re right, how does knowing all these people were spies get us any closer to finding out who killed this guy last week?”

  It was a good question, of course, and Tay had no answer for it.

  But he did have an idea where to start looking for one.

  “When I found that photo, Robbie, I also found a lot of other old ledgers in the same trunk and some of them also had my father’s initials on them. You understand accounting a lot better than I do. I want you to have a look at them and see if anything jumps out at you. If we can figure out what my father was actually doing, maybe we’ll see what the connection with Johnny was.”

  “I still don’t see how that helps us find his killer, sir.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” Tay conceded. “But I’d like to see where it takes us anyway.”

  “Fine with me, sir,” Kang shrugged. “When are you going to bring the ledgers in?”

  Tay hadn’t planned that far ahead. He stopped and thought a moment.

  “What are you doing today?”

  “Well…nothing that can’t wait.”

  “Okay, let’s go to my house and I’ll get the ledgers out for you. You can look them over right there.”

  “Fine, sir. Just let me return one call. Five minutes?”

  ***

  Kang was almost out the door when he stopped.

  “I almost forgot, sir. One other thing. You remember the FMB report said they had found traces of flour on the dead man’s shoes?”

  Tay honestly didn’t. So many things had happened since Kang had brought him the FMB report he didn’t even remember it saying the dead man was wearing shoes. But he didn’t want to admit that so he nodded.

  “Well, they took another look at what they found. It was flour, all right, but not just flour. They were traces of HMX mixed in with it. HMX is a military grade explosive that’s used as a nuclear detonator and—”

  “I know what HMX is, Sergeant, but what was it—”

  Abruptly Tay leaned back and slapped his forehead with his open palm.

  “For Christ’s sake, I’m an idiot! Why didn’t I think of that before?”

  “Think of what, sir?”

  “Aunt Jemima!”

  “Who’s Aunt Jemima, sir?”

  “Not who, Sergeant, what. Aunt Jemima was a brand of pancake mix that used to be sold in America.”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do—”

  “During World War Two, HMX was mixed with flour and smuggled into China to use in guerrilla operation behind the Japanese lines. The mixture looked and tasted just like ordinary flour so it was easy to get it past checkpoints and inspections. You could even cook the stuff into pancakes without it exploding and eat them without poisoning anyone. So they started calling it Aunt Jemima.”

  Tay slapped the desk with one hand.

  “Get on to one of your friends who’s involved in the bombing investigation, Sergeant! I’ll bet you a year’s salary the explosive the bombers used was HMX!”

  “I already know it was, sir.”

  That stopped Tay.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, sir, there’s always a lot of gossip around here and I hear most of it. That’s what they’re saying. That the explosive was HMX.”

  Tay slapped his desk again. “So there you go. There’s our connection. Johnny delivered the HMX mixed with flour and it passed right through customs without making a ripple. A package must have broken wherever they had it stored. That would explain the traces on his shoes.

  “Do you want me to—”

  “I sure as hell do. See what you can find out from customs about large shipments of flour into Singapore over the last couple of months. I need to know where they came from and who they went to.”

  “They’re going to want to know why I’m asking, sir.”

  “I already told you. Use the Mayling Aw case.”

  Kang looked puzzled at that, and Tay didn’t really blame him
.

  “Look, Robbie, just make something up. Be creative. Say…maybe traces of flour were found in her apartment and the lab tests showed them to be contaminated…with rat droppings. Since neither she nor her sister ever worked in a bakery that we know of, it’s a loose end we’re trying to tie up.”

  “Rat droppings, sir?”

  “You can say it was moose shit for all I care, Sergeant. Make up anything you like. Just tie whatever it is to the Mayling Aw case.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t be long about it. I want you at my house by three to start going through those ledgers.”

  Kang rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded and went to work.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  “YOU’RE LATE,” TAY said when he opened the door for Kang that afternoon.

  “Sorry, sir. I’m trying to get something from customs on the flour shipments, but it’s going slowly. They’re not really being very helpful. Maybe we’re just not a very high priority, considering everything that’s going on.”

  Tay often wondered if policemen in other countries had as much difficulty getting help from other government agencies as they did in Singapore. Somehow it hardly seemed possible.

  “Leave it for now, Sergeant. If they haven’t come back to you with anything by tomorrow, I’ll go after them myself. This afternoon I want you to concentrate on these ledgers.”

  Tay led the way into his kitchen where he had stacked the ledgers from the trunk. There were six piles, each about a foot high and containing about a dozen books.

  “Good Lord, sir, I thought you meant there were two or three books. This could take me all night.”

  “Then, if I were you, Sergeant, I wouldn’t waste a minute.”

  Kang sighed and pulled out a chair.

  “I’ll need a pad and a pen, sir.” He shot a baleful glance at the six piles of ledgers. “Maybe a whole box of pens by the look of it.”

  ***

  Two hours later, Tay was smoking in the garden when Kang came outside carrying one of the ledgers.