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Inspector O 04 - The Man with the Baltic Stare

Page 23

by James Church


  “Says who?”

  “They’re legal. They’re on paper. That makes them sacred, isn’t that right?”

  “I have news for you, Inspector. When your government goes out of business, everything it ever signed goes in the toilet.”

  “You wish. What happens is, everyone goes to court and things are tied in knots for years. Meanwhile, though, my government is still in business, and its treaties remain in force. That’s the law, comrade.”

  “Since when are you an international lawyer?”

  “I’m not, and neither, obviously, are you. The fact is we don’t have any exchange agreement with the Macau police on this particular issue. I checked.”

  “We keep circling around on this, O. How is that? I don’t need any documents from Macau. I need you to fix a problem.”

  “ ‘A little problem’ is what you said. Only it isn’t little. If it were little, Mr. Blue Suit wouldn’t have been up here. If it were a little problem, we might be able to wiggle between the words. But it’s big, a very big problem, and big problems fall under the heading of Treaties, Agreements, Memoranda of Understanding, and So Forth.”

  “Can you or can you not fix this problem? The man in the blue suit wasn’t kidding. He’ll get someone else to do the job, and he won’t want people hanging around who are leftovers with a lot of information they shouldn’t have.”

  “Tough guy.”

  “Not tough, thorough. He doesn’t leave loose ends. He wasn’t happy with what he heard today. He made that clear after you left.” Kim picked up the map and put it back on the wall. “Funny how territory can be moved around, yet it always goes back to where it belongs. See what I mean?”

  “It’s crooked,” I said. “Tilted to the right.”

  “You haven’t told me, Inspector. I’ve been waiting patiently. But I’m not waiting anymore. Are you with me or against me? Your performance this morning was ambiguous. It raises questions. There can’t be questions about loyalty. It’s not possible.”

  Loyalty? Did the man actually think I was loyal to him? Or might ever be? “Is that how things are in your world, Major? Do you imagine that people here are going to line up, once you’ve raised your flag and sounded the trumpets to announce a new dynasty has swept aside the old? What are you going to do, have everyone sign oaths of allegiance? You don’t have enough pens.”

  “They’ll come along, as long as there aren’t troublemakers stirring things up. The point is, it will be even smoother if they have someone at the top whom they can cheer and weep for, someone on the reviewing stand, waving as they march by. The lead on every newscast, the picture on the front page every day, the name that follows them around from the moment they wake up in the morning.”

  “If that’s your idea of order, good luck.” That was the problem I was supposed to fix. That was why Kim’s assembled group was so anxious. They needed a shepherd for the sheep. It didn’t matter what he had done or not done. The past was irrelevant when the future was about to blow down the walls.

  Chapter Four

  In the line standing at the front desk was a man whose wig was not straight. This was the sort of thing I used to focus on right away. These days, I might not have paid attention if not for the young woman on his arm. She was golden brown all over from what I could see, and I could see plenty. The fish on the carpet were goggle-eyed.

  The bellboy was standing next to me. “My lucky day,” he said. “Brazilians! Hot! Hot! Hot!” He wiggled his hips. The people in line turned to watch him. The golden one put out her arms and made a noise with her tongue. Then she laughed. The man in the crooked wig laughed. The desk clerk—busy collecting passports and giving out room keys—frowned in concentration, but the group laughed as it did the samba up the stairs.

  “You want a list of their rooms?” The bellboy had loaded the luggage onto his cart and was pushing it toward the elevator. “You never know when one of them will get lonely. Beautiful people. Very hot.”

  “You fool around with tourists and you’ll get a one-way ticket to a coal mine.”

  “These days? My, oh my, Inspector. You are a relic. We interact; that’s the word. We interact globally. Boy, I’d like to interact with the Golden One. Why don’t you have a drink with her friend later? Give us an hour or three.” He winked at me as the elevator door closed.

  I walked twelve floors up to my room and was sitting on the bed catching my breath, thinking about what Kim had told me, when an envelope came under my door. The note was on the hotel’s stationery. “Drinks at 4:30?” No signature. At 4:15, I went down to the bar and made my way to the darkest corner, farthest from the door.

  “You don’t have any customers,” I said to the bartender as I walked past him. “I’m not here.”

  “So what else is new?” he said. “Don’t tell me, you just want to sit.”

  No one came in at 4:30. A few minutes later, a wig poked through the door. “This the bar?”

  “It’s not the bus station,” said the bartender. “Have a drink?”

  The rest of the man stepped inside and immediately was searching the corners of the room. “Sure,” he said at last. I could tell from the way he moved that he’d seen me. “A bottle of vodka, if you please, senhor. And two glasses.”

  He sat down at the table next to mine. “Sorry to have kept you, Inspector.”

  “Not at all, Luís,” I said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

  The bartender appeared. “Finnish vodka. The label came off the bottle, but I know it’s Finnish.” He put down the glasses. “Why don’t you sit together? That way I don’t have to wipe off two tables. I think there’s another bottle somewhere if you finish this one, so go ahead and drink yourselves silly.”

  When we were alone again, Luís straightened his wig. “I love Brazilian girls, but they can be rough.”

  “Already? You just got here. Besides, I thought you were Portuguese.”

  “I am. But your consulate people were rejecting all Portuguese passports, wouldn’t even take any extra money for the visa. I figured it must be serious. That’s why I didn’t get here when I promised.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d make the next flight. I was worried someone had come up behind you in a dark alley.”

  “Nothing so dramatic. I went back to the office, rummaged around in the bottom drawer of my desk, and came up with something from Brazil. I nearly forgot I had it.”

  “And the wig?”

  “It wasn’t what I would have chosen if I’d had more time. Work with what you have—that’s what they teach us. It fit better in China. Something about the air here makes it slip.”

  “What have you got for me?”

  “You want to talk now?”

  “This is good, better than going for a walk. That only attracts flies. Don’t worry about the bartender.”

  “All right. It’s simple. Remember those security tapes I told you about? The ones taken in the hallway? I heard they were altered. New times put on. Who knows when that Russian girl was there? That’s not all that was fixed, I bet.”

  “I think I know how to get something more on the tapes. But that still leaves a problem. Either he brought out a bleeding suitcase or he didn’t. What difference does the time make?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t him that came out.”

  I thought about it. “Back up a second. Has anyone seen him in the meantime?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Would you know?”

  “I know people who would know.”

  “Has anyone heard from him?”

  “Messages, I’m told. I haven’t seen them. I haven’t asked to see them. I prefer not to see them.”

  “Phone messages?”

  “No.”

  “So they’re written, these days maybe e-mail or whatever else they use. Birdsongs, I don’t know. Anyone could be sending them in his name. In other words, he could be missing.”

  “Yes.”

  “OK, so he could be dead.”

 
“Didn’t I imply that?”

  “New problem: Who wanted him dead?”

  “We call that ‘motive.’ ”

  “The old rectification of names. Call it by its right name and it gets you most of the way you want to go. I call it someone-wanted-to-make-sure-he-was-out-of-the-way. I have my suspicions why they would want him on the sidelines. But dead?”

  “Not just dead. Parked in a Louis Vuitton. I double-checked. They took out the hanger to make space.”

  “Kim’s people, maybe. Pang’s people. That bastard Zhao. All of them could have done it. Personally, I think it was Zhao. Something this sick, it’s right up his alley.”

  “Maybe. Each of them had reasons to get rid of him. Each of them had reasons to keep him around.”

  “We call that motive.”

  2

  “Everyone was supposed to believe that no one had a reason to kill him, that anyone who thought about it needed him alive. But late at night, when everything was quiet and the branches were brushing against the windows in the wind, it occurred to someone that if he was around, there was always a chance he might turn out to be brilliant. What then? What if instead of chaos they ended up with stability? Maybe even recovery? What if he turned out to be charismatic? Even ‘capable’ could be a problem. They couldn’t risk the chance that a thirty-three-year-old might know what he was doing, might rally his forces and tell them to get out of his country.”

  “So, she killed him, and they killed her.” Kang was sitting across from me in the restaurant on the second floor, except we had missed breakfast and so were picking at our lunch. “I needed him alive. Without him, we don’t have anyone to hold the flag.”

  Kang had appeared that morning. There was a knock on my door at 10:00 A.M. and there he was.

  “May I come in, Inspector?”

  “Well, cut off my legs and call me Shorty.”

  Kang gave me a puzzled look.

  “I saw it in a movie a long time ago. I think it indicates surprise in the American West. Come in, absolutely. It says in the hotel rules I’m allowed to have visitors until ten P.M. Here, let me take your bag.”

  Kang had a small nylon carry-on over his shoulder. “No, I’ll keep it with me.” He stepped inside and gave the room a careful once-over. “Nice place,” he said. “You think we can get some tea?”

  I went to the desk and retrieved the room service menu. “It says here we can. All I have to do is dial six.” I dialed 6. “Yes, a pleasant good morning to you. . . . Yes, I slept well. . . . Yes, you can do something for me as a matter of fact. I would like two pots of tea.” I paused. “I see. . . . Yes, it is after nine thirty. All right, two pots of coffee. Maybe some toast with strawberry jam as well? . . . Aha. I see. All right, blueberry will do fine. Thank you.” I hung up. “Ten minutes, they said. Meanwhile, make yourself comfortable. Take a shower if you want. Don’t mind the TV; they promised me the picture only goes one way.”

  The coffee showed up; the toast did not. I was a little concerned about talking in the room, but Kang said not to worry.

  “Not to step where I’m not wanted,” I said, “but how did you get in the country? I would have thought some sort of lookout had been issued for you.”

  “They don’t even know for sure if I am still alive, Inspector. They have a collection of faded photographs and out-of-date descriptions. I could be anybody’s grandfather. I’ll bet my documerits are better than yours. It was time to come back. I’ll be out of your hair and set up in another part of town by the end of the day. Then we shall see what we shall see.”

  After a little more Delphic volleyball like this, by 11:30 we were both hungry. “Let’s try the restaurant. I hear the soup is good.”

  3

  “Maybe he’s not dead; maybe we’re still speculating,” I said, though I only said it to make Kang feel better. It didn’t make me feel any better. The armrest on my chair was loose. Fancy restaurant, gold-trimmed mirrors, gold-trimmed tables, and the damned gold-trimmed chairs were falling apart. The table wobbled, too; it was the sort of wobble that would only get worse if they didn’t tighten the screws. I reached underneath to see if I could turn the ones on my side with the end of my spoon.

  “No, I’m not speculating. I know Macau, Inspector. I used to do my banking there. It was hard not to bump into someone who would dispose of a body for the right fee. When the economy was bad, you could even get a rate for more than one body. He’s gone; I’m sure of it. But I need to know what happened. That’s the only way I can figure out where the solid ground is, and where the swamp. If we know who did it, and how, it may put us in a better position for the next move. Greta thinks you have a theory.”

  “Greta. You know, if you mix up the Roman letters for her name you get ‘great.’ How is Greta, by the way?”

  “Busy.” Another couple of words would have been polite, but he wasn’t handing them out. “Now, tell me your theory. Don’t worry with the political gloss. We’ll treat this like a police matter.”

  “Nice try,” I said. “But you know as well as I do that these strands wrap around each other. I can’t separate the political from the criminal even in normal times—on this one, it is completely impossible.”

  “What a relief, Inspector. For once, I thought, you might actually do exactly as I asked, and that would mean we had both become boring old men. All right, we’ll throw everything into the pot and see what we get.”

  “He arrived in Macau on Sunday night, the ninth of October, at five o’clock, but you already knew that. There is a gap between that time and when he showed up at the Grand Lisboa Hotel. That you may not have known. He wasn’t preregistered, didn’t even have a reservation. That suggests a last-minute move, or an effort to keep his travel as far as possible under the radar. I don’t know where he was between the moment he put his feet on the soil of Macau and when he walked into the lobby. It might matter a lot, or it might not matter at all. If you ask me, it was the first time he had been out of the country in a while. Maybe he wanted to stretch his legs and gather his thoughts before the operation got underway.”

  I kept myself from staring into Kang’s eyes. I knew they would tell me nothing. They would go from expressionless to dead, barren orbs in a frozen sky. It wouldn’t even help to watch his hands. I’d learned the lesson sitting across from him fifteen years ago, and I never forgot. Kang was in complete control of his every gesture; if he needed a nervous tic, he could time it to the millisecond. If I wanted a reaction, the only thing to do was wait. I’d laid down the challenge to him—that I was pretty sure what had happened in Macau wasn’t the result of an accident, that it was far worse than that, that it was a political assassination. I’d already told Greta that I suspected she had been in Macau to pass a message. Kang knew I was picking up the shards of a broken operation, but now I was challenging him directly to tell me the details, or at least a few of them.

  “Maybe someone spotted him while he was walking around.” Kang’s voice was completely noncommittal. Then his cheek twitched. Astounding, I thought, right on schedule. “Maybe it was someone who wasn’t supposed to know he was there.”

  “Could be.”

  “That wouldn’t help if, as you say, he was involved in an operation.”

  “Listen, either we play this on level ground or we finish our lunch and go our separate ways. You know exactly what the operation was. I have my suspicions. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but please don’t play dumb. It’s annoying. After all these years, it’s very annoying.”

  Kang nodded. “Let’s put it to the side for now. Good enough?”

  It wasn’t nearly good enough, but it was clear that I wasn’t going to get anything more on this from him, not yet, so there was no sense pouting. “I’ll throw some more in the pot. You tell me when to stop. He arrived at the hotel at half past six. He wanted a very specific room. He gave the front desk a list of requirements, but that was chaff. There was only one thing he really cared about: It had to have a good
view of the Portuguese fort on the hill. I think I know why. I think you do, too.”

  Kang made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “More for the side pile.”

  “He had one suitcase with him, a Louis Vuitton Pegase 60. That’s a two-wheeler, good enough for a few days’ travel if you don’t care about wrinkling your suit. Not as good as the 70.”

  “Get on with it, O.”

  “He goes up to his room and locks himself in for three days. I think he was nervous. He wanted to be alone to think. Maybe he wasn’t sure he was ready for what was coming. And he was waiting for a message. That’s when he made the first mistake. He put on the DO NOT DISTURB light. He may not even have known he turned it on. The light switches in those rooms are a nightmare. They’re like the control panel in an agent submarine. But the housekeeping staff had no way of knowing whether he did it by mistake or not. All they knew was that the light was on and that meant they were supposed to stay away.”

  “And they did?”

  “Religiously. He waited for the message. By the second day he began to worry when it didn’t come. His stomach was in knots and he couldn’t eat. He wanted to talk to someone, anyone, but he knew he couldn’t do that because he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone at all where he was. It was too dangerous. He was alone, without friends, without protection, for the first time in his life. His only hope was the message. That would be his lifeline. But the message didn’t come.”

  “Why not? It was delivered.” Kang bit off the last word. He knew he had gone too far. Or he wanted me to think he had.

  “Yes, it was delivered. It showed up the first night, exactly according to plan. But the concierge held it. The DO NOT DISTURB light was on. The next morning, word came in that the message was to be ‘misplaced’ for another day or so. The concierge didn’t ask why. He just put it in the bottom drawer. Once that happened, the trap was set.”

  The waiter came over to the table to see if we needed anything else. Kang waved him away.

 

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