East of Suez

by Howard Engel

  “You’re courting your death, Cooperman.” In a funny way, I was. The whole scene was unreal. Something in my dream. And, at the same time, I felt relief that he wasn’t holding a blunt instrument over my head. A knife was quick and tidy. My head still ached occasionally from the blow that had robbed me of my major wits some months ago. Being stabbed or flayed was an unpleasing but fresh prospect. “I won’t warn you again.” He made a sudden movement at the side of the bed. For a moment, I lost sight of him. “Where is the key?” He was leaning over me now. One knee was buried in the mattress.

  “Poets don’t kill people, Thomas, not unless there’s no other way.” His guard slipped a little. But I wasn’t big enough to take him. Still, reflecting on it later, it was interesting to see that his ego was so easily affected. “You mean the key to the safety deposit box, right?” He shot a quick look at me. “I think it’s in the top drawer over there on the wall.”

  “No tricks now.”

  “I don’t perform judo or tae kwon do in my pajamas, Thomas, not even to please you.”

  He gave me a look that was supposed to root me to the spot. It rooted me to the spot. He then went to the dresser. In the drawer he found the key in a box of my formal shirt studs where I’d left it. He eyed it suspiciously, then pocketed it.

  “I came here prepared to kill you, Cooperman.”

  “Well, when you’ve made your mind up, please—”

  “You’re bloody superior for someone in your position. Think you’re a sheriff in a western movie? Silver-handled sixguns and a white hat! Well, the people you’re working for have spotted their hats in the mud. There aren’t any good guys in this little western drama. Take another look at yourself and the people you work for.”

  “It was you and Vicky?”

  “When it suited me. The diamonds were her payoff. She offered a little pleasure mixed with business. Don’t look shocked. You really are pathetic, Cooperman. Go home to your mother.”

  He was out the door and gone before I could get off the corner of the bed. Why hadn’t he killed me? I reached for my socks and climbed into my clothes. He must have known that I could never act quickly enough to stop him. He could be at the bank as soon as it opened. He must have been heading to the airport. No time to risk getting bloodstained. I checked the flight schedule on the back of the hotel’s brochure of “in-house services.” I used a hotel envelope to lead me down the page, line by line, until I found what I was looking for. A flight by way of Tokyo to San Francisco, London, and Paris would be taking off in a little less than an hour and a half.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  PRASIT WAS DRESSED in full uniform. He handled the two cups of chai awkwardly as he moved through the white-topped tables to where I was sitting with a clutch of well-wishers, drinking bottled mineral water. He put the cups down. Clay moved his chair backwards to admit the colonel into the circle. He hardly spilled more than a few drops as he put the cups down. Fiona and Clay watched him hike the creases of his trousers before sitting. “You have all your documents in order?” he asked.

  “Yes. I’ve checked. Fiona supervised everything.”

  He looked at Fiona, who was wearing a pink dress made of several see-through layers. Silk, I thought. Very attractive. She had picked me up in a car borrowed from her oceanographic institute, I think, and driven me through the city and out the Iron Gates for the last time. When we had reached the place where the beached oil tanker used to block traffic, there was hardly anything left of it. The welders were still breaking up the last of the steel plates, and a photographer was adjusting a tripod in front of the wreckage. The ribs remained, looking like a skeleton stripped by piranhas. That was the last visible sign of the tsunami, apart from the empty places at the dinner tables in the houses of the lower town.

  The policeman was studying my face, as though he could discover my thoughts by examining my features. My mind was going over the week behind me.

  “Good,” he said, with a serious smile. I tried to remember what was “good.”

  Fiona was good, good enough for the very best. I thought about her and how she had helped me.

  “It was Fiona who broke this case,” I said, half to myself, when I’d recaptured the earlier part of the conversation.

  “Me? What did I do?” She moved her chair closer to the table. Funny how we all love to hear news of ourselves.

  “You confirmed that Thomas had killed Chester Ranken.”

  “But I hardly knew the man!”

  “But you knew he was dead. You told me you’d been in your apartment all day. You could have learned about the killing only from someone who had been at the scene of the crime, most likely the killer himself: Thomas What’s-his-face.” For a moment, everybody looked at Fiona. I think she enjoyed that.

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute! What about those little notes in code you been workin’ on like a Boy Scout in search of a badge?” Clay was looking puzzled. “Did they turn out to be laundry lists or what?”

  “There’s good news and bad news. I broke the code. One was a simple anagram. The other was a picket-fence cipher.”

  “Play that back again?” Now he was frowning.

  “You write the message out on two levels. Take the word ‘place,’ for instance. You would write every other letter half a line up, and the remaining letters, half a line down. So ‘place’ would read ‘p a e’ on the top line and ‘l c’ on the bottom. When you’ve done that, you write out the two lines, one after the other.”

  “So, what did the notes tell you?”

  “One was to the kids. It said: ‘I love you.’ The other was a note from Jake to Vicky. I don’t think she ever saw it. It read”—and here I consulted my notes— “‘Get away with kids. Don’t worry about me whatever you hear.’ Vicky didn’t need the message. She put the kids on a plane to Mombasa, then got out of here at the first opportunity.” A digestive pause followed this information. Then Clay grinned a wide grin.

  “Like transposing a piano part into brass. That must have been fun to work out, but it didn’t help much with the puzzle.”

  “Well, it held my attention along the way.”

  Clay’s features got serious again: “Your ticket? You got your ticket?” Clay wasn’t going to give up his checklist of what I needed to board the plane.

  I tapped my new silk jacket. “Right here,” I said. There was an awkward pause, the way there always is at stations and airports.

  “You try to stay out of trouble for a while.” I nodded back at Clay, who had seen as much action as I had. Well, almost.

  “I don’t think I bought enough presents for the family.”

  “You’re becoming a real tourist,” Fiona said, laughing.

  “I’m not one hundred percent tourist yet. Tell me, Fiona, why did you try to warn me at the big dinner, before I pulled the rug out from under me. You said I could end up like that poor giant squid. Remember?”

  “You don’t know how innocent you looked on your way to the john. I suddenly got motherly. I do that sometimes. And, besides, Thomas was asking me questions about who you were and what your angle was. You didn’t look like you could play in Thomas’s league. I know better now.”

  “I was sorry that our villain slipped through our net at the airport.” I said.

  “It couldn’t be helped.” The policeman’s Gallic shrug came a moment later than he’d calculated. “The airport police aren’t talking to our lot.”

  “You’re going to have to practice that shrug, you know. This is a French colony, after all.”

  “A former French colony. Yes. We all must begin somewhere. It is a pity about our friend getting away like that. I’m sure that the Central Prison will miss him.”

  “Oh, they may get their chance yet,” I said, smiling.

  “What?” they said together.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t around when he opened the tea tin to feast his eyes on the treasure. Lapsang Souchong tea. It’s the best.”

  “What treasure did he escape w
ith?” Clay asked.

  “Ball bearings, Clay. Ball bearings. They weren’t cheap. By the way, you did give that package to Father O’Mahannay for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “He’ll be able to expand the school, take in more children. That’s what I hoped for.”

  “He told me he was too moved to come to the airport. He’ll write to you.”

  “I understand.”

  “And a little hungover,” Fiona added. “That was some party last night.”

  “The parts I remember, I’ll never forget. It was good to see Beverley smiling again. She wasn’t made for hiding out. She’ll be better off without Thomas Lanier forcing her to make SOS calls in the middle of the night.”

  “You leavin’ without lookin’ back, Ben?” It was Clay, picking up a bundle of magazines and paperbacks. We all got up. It was time for me to head through the security gate. Fiona stood smiling just behind Clay and Prasit.

  “None of you had to come out here.” I shouldered my bag. “We said goodbye last night.”

  “Well, it wore off quick. So I came to wave you aboard.” Clay gave me a bear hug that I could feel well into the flight. Fiona planted a big kiss on me.

  “You didn’t stay long enough,” she said. “There’s still a lot for you to learn about diving.”

  “Next time,” I said.

  “Sure. Next time.” She gave me a hug and began mopping my face with a tissue for the lipstick she’d hit me with on the first assault.

  “You take care now, Ben. You hear? I’ll see you in Toronto or Buffalo someday soon.” Clay handed me his bundle of books and magazines. “I’ll see you, bro. You should have bought a longer ticket. And you were just getting the hang of those chopsticks, too.” And he turned around to go.

  “Clay! I’m going to miss that crazy car of yours.”

  “Yeah? It’s little and it breaks down a lot. What more can you ask of a car? See you.”

  Fiona was looking sad again. I know I didn’t mean that much to her. I held her by the shoulders. “You’ve got more to tell me before I go, haven’t you?”

  “Does it show?”

  “It has to be that or a sudden declaration of undying love. And my memory isn’t that bad. Has to do with Bev, I’ll bet.”

  “She brought that bag of cash to me last week. Said she couldn’t face Chester again. She didn’t want him to beat her up again.”

  “And you passed the bag on to Jake.”

  “Why, yes. But how did you know?”

  “You were the only person in town who knew he was still alive and well. You let him use your boat. You kept his swimming things. You were a good friend. It’s only natural you’d pass on the bag to Jake.”

  “You read cards, too?”

  “Why didn’t you keep it?”

  “The bag? Let me put it this way: I love my life the way it is. More money would only complicate it. I was surprised to discover that about myself, Benny. Scary, huh?”

  I watched them leave as I joined the line going through the gate. A loudspeaker began a distorted monologue in Thai or French. I began assembling my carry-on luggage again. Prasit lingered at the gate. His uniform gave him the needed extra status.

  “Do you think that Beverley and the German fellow, George, will be charged with anything?” The policeman smiled at my rummaging for the name in my book.

  “I don’t see why they would be. They were simply messengers. You don’t put the camel on trial for carrying the loot. No, Benny, they don’t deserve the Central Prison.”

  “So be it, Prasit. You know best.”

  “Now, what’s all this about the Central Prison getting another crack at our villain?”

  “Oh, I was coming to that. But first, let me ask you a question.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “The day we met. The mugging on the street. You just happened to be on the scene. Tell me about that. I know you weren’t picking something up at the drugstore.”

  “You knew that from the beginning? I’m getting careless. Well, I was on the lookout for Canadians coming here after the disappearance of Victoria and Jake. Your name came to my desk from Immigration, here at the airport. I checked the names of guests at the hotels and there you were. The rest was just a matter of staying out of sight until I introduced myself.”

  I nodded. It sounded plausible enough. I took a folded paper from my inside pocket. “I think you’ll have to go after Lanier.”

  “Oh, of course! I can look in Tokyo, San Francisco, London, or Paris. I’m sure my commanding officer will give me leave to do that.”

  “If you think so,” I said. “But I thought it might be simpler to go directly to Labadie, near Bouniagues, just south of Bergerac.” It took me a while to limp over the hard words, but I hadn’t lost my audience. “I got Fiona to look it up in Michelin: there’s good wine in that part of the world. Monbazillac, for one. He’ll be using the name F. Lamont Walker. His identity under that name is well established there.” For all these names I consulted a scrap of paper in my Memory Book.

  “You’re very sure of yourself.”

  “Lanier’s family is in the business of importing frozen seafood. Chester Ranken was in the business of shipping frozen fish. They were in it together, until Thomas thought that Ranken had double-crossed him.”

  “Impossible!” The policeman stood back, examining me as though for the first time. What he said was directed at me, not at what I had said. “You’re joking?”

  “You know, Colonel, I have no sense of humor. Don’t forget to send me a postcard.”

  We shook hands again. It was more than cordial this time. I walked to the rollaway boarding steps. There was a long flight ahead of me. I didn’t know what I was going to do about what I knew when I got home.