THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE (An Inspector Samuel Tay Novel)

by Jake Needham

“Is he in?” Tay blurted out the moment he sensed signs of life on the other end of the telephone. “This is Inspector Tay.”

  “Hello, sir, this is Nora Zaini. How is Bangkok?”

  The OC had a new secretary the last time he went up to his office. He remember that, but was Nora Zaini her name? Yes, now that he thought about it, it probably was.

  “Ah…fine. Look, is he there?”

  “I’m sorry, no. Is this urgent?”

  “Yes.” Tay reconsidered. “No, maybe not.”

  “I could probably get a message to him if you like.”

  Tay could only imagine how that would go down.

  “No, don’t do that. I’ll just call back. Do you know when I might be able to talk to him?”

  “He won’t be back until the end of the day, I’m afraid.”

  “Okay.” Tay thought a moment. “Have you seen Sergeant Kang in the last few hours?”

  “He’s taking personal leave, sir. This afternoon and tomorrow. Didn’t you know?”

  Tay wondered if Kang had mentioned taking some leave when he called this morning and that maybe he had just forgotten.

  “Ah, yes, I remember now,” he said, just to be on the safe side. “I was thinking it was next week.”

  “No,” Nora Zaini added helpfully, “this week.”

  Tay thanked her, mumbled some pleasantries without being too specific just in case he wasn’t talking to the woman he thought he was, and hung up.

  He walked to the windows and looked outside, although he had no idea what he hoped to see. He glanced at his watch again, although he already knew the time. Where the hell was Cally? He picked up his cell phone and tried her again, but her number still didn’t answer. Tay sat down on the bed and then immediately stood up again.

  All right, stop jumping around like a fool and think this thing through.

  Tay got a Coke out of the minibar, turned on the television for company, and sat down again on the bed. He pulled two of the pillows out from under the bedspread, propped them against the headboard and sank back against them. He tilted the Coke up to his lips and, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t entirely upright, poured a big slug of it straight down his shirt front.

  “Shit,” Tay mumbled as he stood up and wiped the Coke away with his free hand. He went into the bathroom and studied the stain in the mirror. Judging it too big to wash out, he pulled off his shirt and dumped it on the floor. Opening a drawer in the bureau, he took out the last fresh shirt he had brought with him and put it on. He sat back down on the bed and shook a Marlboro out of the box on the bedside table. He lit it and took a long, hard pull.

  However he looked at things, he kept coming back to DeSouza. Was DeSouza himself the killer? No matter how much he would like that to be true, he really doubted it. For someone disturbed and unstable enough to murder two women to go unnoticed in the ranks of the FBI seemed unlikely to the point of utter impossibility.

  Still, DeSouza knew something. Tay had no doubt about that. He would bet DeSouza either knew who the killer was or thought he did; and either way, he was trying to bury Tay’s investigation. So why would he want to do that? Because the killer was someone prominent? Possibly. Because the killer was someone who would embarrass the embassy if he got caught? Probably.

  Tay started running through the obvious candidates in his mind. Who would embarrass the American embassy most?

  Ambassador Munson would certainly have to be at the top of the list. The first person you look at when a wife is murdered is the husband, of course, and Ambassador Munson’s involvement in his wife’s murder would be a natural nomination for a cover-up. But what about the murder of Ambassador Rooney? Munson might very well have wanted his wife dead, and he seemed to have no difficulty admitting to Tay that quite a few people knew it, but he appeared to have no motive at all for killing Ambassador Rooney.

  Then there was a practical problem, too. An ambassador who was intent on shooting two women in two different countries would have a number of logistical problems to solve, not the least of which would be figuring out a way to slip around quite a bit without anybody noticing him. Even if Tay could somehow break Munson’s alibi for the time his wife had been murdered in Singapore, could Munson have made a quick trip from Singapore to Bangkok on the Tuesday after he returned from Washington, killed Ambassador Rooney, and then flown back to Singapore again without anyone missing him? No, of course he couldn’t.

  Tay was just scratching Ambassador Munson off his mental list when his cell phone rang. He snatched it up and punched the green button.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  “INSPECTOR Tay?”

  Not Cally. Not Kang. A man’s voice. One Tay didn’t recognize.

  “Yes?”

  “This is August.”

  Yes, it was indeed August and next month would be September. So fucking what?

  “What are you talking about?” Tay snapped.

  “This is August, Tay.” Now the voice had an edge in it. “John August. Cally introduced us in Pattaya.”

  Tay’s irritation was quickly replaced by surprise, and then almost immediately by embarrassment.

  “Oh…of course. Sorry.”

  “We need to talk.”

  Tay wasn’t expecting anyone to call other than Cally or Sergeant Kang, but if he had been expecting someone else it certainly wouldn’t have been John August. They hadn’t exactly hit it off the one time they had met, had they?

  “How did you get this number?” Tay asked, thinking as he did what an insipid thing it was to say.

  August snorted. He didn’t even try to answer him, which Tay recognized was pretty much the kind of response his question deserved.

  “Where are you?” August asked.

  “In Bangkok. At a hotel. The Marriott.”

  Tay cleared his throat unnecessarily. “Look, Cally was supposed to be back here by now and—”

  “What room?” August interrupted.

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “Cut the crap, Tay. I don’t have time for it now. What room are you in?”

  “Six thirty-four.”

  “Two hours,” August said.

  Then he hung up without another word.

  TAY was sitting in a chair staring out the window and watching construction cranes turn on a distant building when he heard the knock on his door. He looked at his watch. Two hours, very nearly to the minute.

  When he opened the door, August nodded and came in without saying anything. He didn’t offer to shake hands and neither did Tay.

  August was carrying a large manila envelope which he dumped on the bed. Then he took the chair Tay had just been sitting in. It was the only chair in the room so Tay sat on the bed next to the envelope.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” Tay asked automatically.

  August shook his head. “She’s dead,” he said.

  Tay didn’t need to ask August whom he was talking about.

  He was surprised, of course, but not shocked. Some part of him was already prepared for something, even if he was not really prepared for this, not exactly. He let the weight of knowing take him and didn’t fight against it. In the most rational part of his mind, he couldn’t understand why he felt it so much. He had hardly known Cally, he supposed, but perhaps he really had. What is that supposed to mean? Closing his eyes, he lay back across the bed and rubbed at his face with his open hands.

  “I’m sorry, Sam.” August’s voice sounded as if it was coming from a television set playing in another room. “I’m really sorry.”

  Tay sat up again. “What happened?”

  “She was on a raid out in Ratchaburi. The Thai police had a suspect in your murders and surrounded a house where they thought he was. She went in with them and the suspect shot her.”

  Tay struggled to understand what August was telling him.

  “She was just going to the embassy. She didn’t say anything about—”

  “She didn’t know,” August interrupted. “DeSouza did
n’t tell her about the raid until she got there this morning. That’s when she decided to go.”

  “DeSouza?”

  “Yeah. He was there, too.”

  “Why?”

  “It was his operation really. The Thai cops were just along to make it look good.” August pointed to the envelope he had dropped on the bed. “There are photographs if you want to see them.”

  Tay reached over and pulled the envelope over. He was oddly conscious of the way it felt as it scraped across the bedspread. The flap was unsealed and he lifted it and pulled out the thin stack of 5x7 color prints. The photographs looked as if they had been made with a phone, then emailed to a computer and printed. They were lousy photographs, poorly framed and a little blurred, but they did the job.

  Tay glanced up at August.

  “Who are you?” he asked. “I mean…who are you really?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “CIA? FBI? Defense Intelligence Agency? What is it?”

  August shrugged and looked away.

  “Let’s try it this way then,” Tay said. “What do you do here in Thailand?”

  “I do what I can.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Whatever is necessary.”

  “This isn’t going to get me anywhere, is it?”

  “No,” August said, shifting his eyes back to Tay. “It isn’t.”

  Tay shook his head and went back to examining the stack of photographs.

  The first three showed the exterior of two shophouses with some men in Thai police uniforms standing around in front of them. They were all carrying automatic weapons and had their faces covered with balaclavas. The next two photographs showed the interior of a building, presumably one of the shophouses, and either the same men or men who were similarly dressed were running up a flight of bare concrete stairs.

  The final five photographs were the hardest for Tay to look at. In two of them, a man he did not know lay spread-eagled on a concrete floor. The man was wearing a wrinkled T-shirt, dirty jeans, and one sandal. The front of the T-shirt had been shredded by what looked like a shotgun blast. Although Tay couldn’t see the chest wounds clearly, it was obvious the man was dead.

  In the other three photographs Cally lay sprawled on what appeared to be the same concrete floor. She was as alone as the man, and she was also dead. The entry wound in her forehead was small and neat, but she had bled a lot and the blood had streaked her face and collected in a dark pool under her head. Cally’s eyes were open and Tay thought he could see both surprise and puzzlement in them. He wondered if he would be surprised and puzzled, too, at the moment he realized the time of his death was upon him.

  “She was shot with a .22.” August said. “DeSouza thinks it may have been the same gun that was used to murder Rooney, but that still has to be confirmed.”

  “You talked to DeSouza?”

  “Not directly.”

  Tay nodded, his eyes still on the pictures.

  “He came into the room right behind Cally,” August continued. “DeSouza shot Dadi after he killed Cally.”

  “Shot who?”

  “Dadi. The suspect they were taking down. The man in the other photos.”

  Tay thought about that for a moment.

  “How did DeSouza shoot this guy if…” Tay hesitated. “What’s his name?”

  “Dadi.”

  “Indonesian?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of weapon did DeSouza use?”

  “It looks to me like it was a combat shotgun of some kind.”

  “How many times was the guy hit?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Tay picked up one of the photos of Cally. Holding it in his right hand, he turned it toward August.

  “What do you see?” he asked.

  “What do you want me to see?”

  “The blood. Look at all that blood.”

  August nodded. “I see it.”

  Then Tay took one of the photographs of Dadi and held it up in his left hand right next to the photograph of Cally.

  “No blood,” Tay said. “His chest torn to ribbons by a point-blank shotgun blast and no blood.”

  August just looked at Tay and said nothing.

  “When Cally was shot, her heart was pumping hard from the adrenaline, which is exactly what you would expect,” Tay said. “She bled out quickly.”

  August said nothing.

  “Dadi’s heart couldn’t have been pumping at all when he was shot or there would have been blood all over the place. He was already dead when DeSouza used that shotgun on him.”

  “You think it was a setup,” August said. He did not make a question of it.

  “I know it was.”

  August folded his arms and consulted a spot on the wall just over Tay’s right shoulder.

  “So do you,” Tay added.

  But August said nothing at all.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “DESOUZA killed Cally,” Tay said. “Didn’t he?”

  August’s eyes remained fixed on the wall.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a moment.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Let it go, Sam.”

  “Maybe he killed Munson and Rooney, too.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well there you go.”

  “If he didn’t, he’s protecting whoever did kill them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Cally must have known that. She was getting too close and that’s why DeSouza set her up and killed her.”

  “Slow down, Sam. You’re getting way ahead of yourself. You don’t know any of that.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Look…” August hesitated. “That road won’t take you anywhere you want to go.”

  “It might take me to the truth.”

  “What truth?” August exhaled heavily and rubbed his face with an open hand. He sounded like a man running out of resources and surprised to discover how quickly that could happen. “This is Bangkok. You never know what’s true here.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Tay shook his head in disgust. “What a load of crap.”

  “You’re in over your head, Sam. Let it go.”

  “Goddamn it, August,” Tay exploded, “look at the fucking photographs and tell me that I’m wrong. Can you do that? Can you?”

  August took a breath and shifted his eyes to the window. He didn’t say anything.

  “DeSouza either killed Cally himself or he stood there while somebody else killed her,” Tay said. “And you fucking know it’s true.”

  August suddenly looked exhausted. He seemed to Tay somehow smaller than when he first walked into the room. Tay wondered if he looked the same way to August.

  “I’m going to need your help,” Tay said. “Can I reach you on the number that you used to call me today?”

  “Yes, but don’t bother. I’m not going to help you.”

  “You can bullshit me, August, but you can’t bullshit yourself. This all stinks. What is it? Some kind of half-assed intelligence operation gone bad?”

  The surprise on August’s face was only a flicker and then it was gone, but Tay caught it.

  “That’s right,” Tay said. “I know that Elizabeth Munson was a spook. A NOC. That’s what you call it, isn’t it? Wondering what else I know?”

  “How’d you find out about Liz?”

  “Cally told me.”

  “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  Tay slammed his open hand down on the photographs on the bed.

  “She shouldn’t have walked into that setup either and gotten herself killed, but damn it all she did, and she was. Maybe if I’d been with her…”

  Tay trailed off into silence and cleared his throat.

  “Whatever you’re trying to cover up here, August, just answer me this. Was it worth it? Was it worth Cally dying for? Was it worth three dead women?”

  August looked as if he was about to
say something, but he didn’t. The room slipped into an uneasy stillness. Tay heard the refrigerator in the mini-bar click on, hum softly for a minute or two, and then click off again.

  “So what do we do now?” Tay eventually asked into the silence.

  “I don’t know about you, Tay, but I know exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to go straight back to Pattaya and get blind drunk. There’s no better place on God’s green earth to get blind drunk than Pattaya and no better time to do it than today.”

  “You can do what you want. I’m going to find out what in Christ’s name is going on here and I’m going to hang somebody for it. And understand this, pal. If you had anything to do with it, that includes your worthless ass, too.”

  “Fuck you, Tay. I would have done anything in the world to protect that woman.”

  “But you didn’t protect her. You let her walk right into it.”

  “I didn’t fucking let her do anything. Cally always did what she wanted to. Always.”

  “You could have warned her.”

  “Warned her about what?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  The two men glared at each other for a while, but neither of them had the energy to keep it up for very long and soon enough they just stopped.

  “What are you really after here, Tay?” August asked.

  Tay didn’t know exactly what to say to that, so he said nothing.

  “Is it justice you want,” August went on, “or would revenge do?”

  “I’m a police officer. I’m going to find out who killed Cally and why, and I will see to it that he is punished according to the law.”

  “That’s what I thought. Well then, let me tell you this, my friend. You’re going to end up with nothing at all. There is no justice down that road and you don’t have the balls to be serious about revenge. I could give you DeSouza on his knees, holding a signed confession in his teeth, and you still couldn’t pull the trigger. Leave this to people who can.”

  “I’m a police officer,” Tay repeated doggedly.

  “No, you’re not. Not here in Thailand. You’re just passing through, one more piece of foreign shit in the dirty great toilet of Bangkok. You haven’t got a hope in hell of accomplishing anything here. Go back to Singapore.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”