Saint Jack (27 page)

Shuck didn't flinch.

“And another five when I finish the job.”

“Okay,” said Shuck. Was he smiling, or just making another fishmouth?

“Plus expenses,” I said.

“That goes without saying.”

“I could use a drink.”

“They pass out Green Spot when we get to the model shipyard in Kallang Basin,” Shuck said. “What's wrong?”

“I was just thinking about Andy Gump,” I said. “How old would you say he is?”

“Mid-fifties.”

I shook my head. “I might have known.”

“I'll tell you a couple of stories,” said Shuck, “just so you don't go and get a conscience about him.”

“A
ND GET THIS
—” Shuck rattled on, itemizing Andy Gump's waywardness with such gloating and sanctimonious fluency he could have been lying in his teeth. Still, the image of the man, whose proper name was Andrew Maddox, rank major general, was a familiar one to me—so familiar that twice I told Shuck I had heard enough to antagonize me: it was not the man I was after, but the job. I did not need convincing; my mind was made up. This effort of mine, a last chance to convert my fortunes in a kind of thrusting, mindless betrayal, had required a number of willful deletions in my heart.

But Shuck was unstoppable. He ranted, pretending disgust, though the man he described was of a size that every detail, however villainous, enhanced. Shuck's accusations were spoken as the kind of envious praise I always thought of when I overheard someone in a bar retailing the story of a resourceful poisoner.

“You name a way to make a fast buck, and he's tried it,” said Shuck. And he added in the same tone of admiring outrage that General Maddox had a yacht, smoked plump cigars, sported silk shirts, went deep-sea fishing off Cap St. Jacques, and stayed in expensive hotels.

“I know the type,” I said.

The stories were not new—the fellers at Paradise Gardens had told me most of them without naming the villain, and Shuck had alluded to him before. But while I had taken all of it seriously, none of it had given me pause. I had lived long enough to know how to translate this bewilderment. I heard it as I heard most human sounds—Leigh's pastoral retirement plans, Yardley's jokes, Gunstone's war stories, my old openers (
Years ago
—and
I once knew a feller
—), and especially the exultant woman's moan of pleasure and pain, half sigh, half scream, while I knelt furiously reverent between her haunches—all this I heard as a form of prayer.

Vietnam stories throbbed with contradiction, but were as prayerful and pious as any oratorio. Like the tales of murder and incest associated with Borgia popes—horror stories to compliment the faith by supposing to prove the durable virtue of the Church—the song and dance about corruption in Vietnam never intended to belittle the bombings and torturings or the fact of any army's oafish occupation (the colonial setup, with Maddox as viceroy), but were meant as a curious sidelight on a justly fought war in which Shuck maintained, and so did some of the fellers, we had already been rightfully victorious: “But human nature being what it is—”

“I'll tell you another thing about him,” said Shuck. He screwed up his face. “He's got a finger in the B-girl rackets.”

“So he can't be all bad,” I said. The
Kachang
, turning to port, pitched me close to Shuck's face. “Ed, I've got a whole
arm
in those!”

“He's a general in the U.S. Army,” said Shuck. “You're not.”

Shuck then set out to describe what he took to be the darkest side of General Maddox, his operating a chain of Saigon brothels, and his involvement with the less profitable skin-trade sidelines—which I knew to be inescapable—wholesaling massages, pornography, exhibitions; forging passports, nodding to con men, and smuggling warm bodies over frontiers—for the servicemen. Without wishing to, Shuck convinced me that, murder apart, this general was a more successful version of myself, his charitable carnal felony a fancier and better-executed business than “Kinda hot,” the meat run, or Dunroamin. I hadn't bargained on this; warm wretchedness thawed my resolve.

“I don't get it,” I said. “Your objection to this feller is that he's ungallant.”

“He's a creep,” said Shuck. “A disgrace.”

“Tut tut, you're flattering yourself,” I said, and went on, “Still, he's no stranger to me. If you called him a hero I'd find him ten times harder to understand.”

“That's what
you
say.”

“Heroes aren't my department,” I said. “You want to end the war, so you try to unmask the villain. Me, I'd unmask the hero—he's your feller. Especially war heroes. If I was in charge I'd have them shot.”

“You've got some screwy ideas,” said Shuck.

“I haven't had your advantages,” I said. “See, I don't know very much about virtue.”

“
I
do,” said Shuck.

“Good for you,” I said. “Virtue is the distance that separates you from your favorite villain, right? It's an annual affair—every year there's a new American villain. Ever notice that? Virtuous people like you elect him, and then stone him to death. It's a sign of something.”

“Maybe it's because we're puritanical,” said Shuck.

“I was going to say bankrupt, and pretty fickle.”

Shuck gave me a sour laugh. “So Maddox is an angel.”

“Maddox is a hood, obviously,” I said. “But you think he has a complicated motive. I know lots of fellers like him who behave that way because they're middle-aged and have bad teeth.”

“Suppose he really
is
evil,” said Shuck. “Think what a service you'll be doing by nailing his ass to the wall.”

“Don't give me that,” I said.

“You know what I think?” said Shuck. “I think you don't want to do this.”

“I don't always want what I need,” I said. “Why else would I have so little?”

“You're losing your nerve.”

“Only when you try to justify this lousy scheme.”

“Who's justifying? I told you the whole thing stinks.”

“Now you're talking!” I said.

 

Not a job—an exploit, blackmail, an irrational crime with an apt rotten name; it was what I needed, the guarantee of some evil magic I didn't want to understand. Like a casual flutter at the Turf Club with an unpromising pony, and then a big payoff; the single coin in the fruit machine for the bonus jackpot; anything for astonishment, no questions asked. Then I understood my fantasies—they were a handy preparation for making me bold; little suggestions made my tattooed bulk jump to oblige. As a young man I often dreamed of a black sedan pulling up beside me as I sauntered down an empty street, the door swinging open, and the exquisite lady at the wheel saying softly, “Get in.”

My fantasies provided something else: method, and a means of expression.

So: “
Follow that car
,” I said to the taxi driver at the airport. The fantasy command, immediately suspicious to any native English speaker, I could use in Singapore. I had wormed a copy of the passenger list from May Lim, a fruit fly turned ground hostess. From behind a pillar near the Customs and Immigration section, not far from the spot where I had first recognized Leigh, I watched the general arrive—a tanned, well-shod, barrel-chested man who walked with the easy responsible swing of a man accustomed to empty hands. He strode past me, followed by a laden porter, and got into a waiting taxi. Now, in my own taxi, I was saying, “Don't lose him—
keep on his tail.
”

At the Belvedere I stood next to him while he checked in. He signed the register with a flourish, then straightened up. He untangled the springy wire bows of his military sunglasses from his ears and glanced around the lobby: that look of lust, the prompt glee of the man about to deliver a speech. I caught his eye.

“Kinda hot.”

He agreed. “Muggy.”

“This way, sir,” said a costumed porter to him. He said, “See you around,” and overtook the porter with long scissor steps.

I scribbled my name in the register, noting that Maddox had omitted his rank, that he was in room 913 and was staying for a week.

“Here I am again,” I said to the Chinese clerk. “Remember me?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, without looking up. He was scribbling on a pad. “So you like Singapore? Clean and green.”

“A great little place,” I said.

“Don't mention,” he said, still scribbling.

“And this is a mighty fine hotel,” I said. “I wouldn't stay anywhere else. I got sorta attached to that room you gave me before—nine-fifteen. Can you put me in the same one?”

“If it is empty.”

“I'll make it worth your while,” I said softly.

“Can,” he said, glancing at the pigeonholes behind him.

I congratulated myself on knowing that odd-numbered rooms were on one side of the corridor, evens on the other. After all, it had only been a matter of weeks since I had fixed up Gunstone with Djamila here; over there, in the bar lounge, I had pretended to be Bishop Bradley.

“This way, sir,” said the porter, at the elevator door.

“Put my suitcase in the room,” I said, when we got to the ninth floor. “I'm just going to have a word with my friend here.”

The elevator operator's face creased with terror. He shut, his mouth.

“You look like a smart feller,” I said. “Do you know how to keep your eyes open?”

“Do,” he said, and widened his eyes.

“That's it,” I said. “You're destined for big things. If you want to make a little extra money, just listen—”

After an hour my buzzer rang.

“Yoh?”

It was the elevator operator, grinning. “I take him down to lobby. He walk outside. I come straight back.”

“Beautiful,” I said, handing him five dollars. “Keep up the good work.”

 

“Okay boys, this is it,” I said into the phone, and five minutes later, Mr. Khoo, Jimmy Sung, and Henry Chow were in my room, sitting on the edge of the bed, straining to understand the plan.
The boys, the room, the plan:
the labels had an appealing sound.

What was most touching was the way the patient fellers listened, gaunt, threadbare, unblinking: my shabby gang of Chinese commandos. It was pleasing to conspire with a makeshift army, skinny sharpshooters in cast-off clothes. I had always served the rich by depending on such people, putting trust in the only helpers I could afford, the irregulars, the destitute, the socially famished—silent Karim, crooked Ganapaty, limping Gopi, the whispering urchins who stood sentry duty outside the blue-film sheds off Rochore Road, my girls. Poverty made them invisible, and I saw how much their devious skills resembled mine. I picked them for cunning and loyalty. I liked the drama: the rumpled middle-aged blackmailer in the elegant but smoke-fouled hotel room, saying, “Okay, boys—” to his team of ragged disciples who might have had nicknames like Munkypoo, Broomface, and The Ant.

In his lap, Mr. Khoo cradled an electric drill, like a nickel-plated Tommy gun; Jimmy Sung held a tape recorder, Henry Chow a camera. They hadn't asked why, and wouldn't—Chinese: the people with no questions.

“You know what you're supposed to do,” I said. “Let's get moving.”

Henry Chow flipped the lever on the camera; he had removed the ratchet from the spools: it wound noiselessly. Mr. Khoo speedily drilled and reamed a hole through the baseboard, into the next room, just under the general's bed. We took the additional precaution of disguising the microphone as a light socket. The positioning of the camera was next. Henry took a bucket and window washer's squeegee and crawled from my balcony to the general's, and giving the glass doors a good splash, estimated the angle for a shot at the bed. He returned, white-faced and shuddering, heaving himself slowly over the parapet, holding lightly to the balcony rail.

“Can we sling a camera up?”

“Can,” he said, “but curtains—”

“It's no good,” I said. “If he goes out to the balcony he'll see it and the jig's up. We can't do it that way.” I was stumped. How
did
you take pictures in a feller's room without his knowing it? After I had spoken to Shuck I imagined myself, tape recorder slung over one shoulder, camera over the other, in a blackmailer's crouch, by a keyhole or window, listening, watching, pressing buttons, and then hopping away on tiptoe with the damning evidence.

The simplicity of that had struck me as cruel, but it wasn't so simple. This was a technical problem, a dilemma which in the solving made the cruelty slight, and as an executioner might think of himself as an electrician, absorbed in the study of watts and volts, a brainwasher a man concerned with candlepower, my sense of betrayal was soon forgotten in my handyman's huffing and puffing over the matter of wires, lenses, drilling, and testing—so complicated the general no longer seemed vulnerable. He was safe; I was the victim.

“Now, let's see here,” I said. “We can't put the camera on the balcony. What about in his air conditioner? Make it look like a fuse box.” My boys were silent. I replied to my own question. “That means we have to get into the room.”

“Get a key,” said Jimmy Sung.

“If only the bed was on the other side of the room,” I said. “Then we could cut a hole up there, stick the camera through, and bingo.”

“Move the bed,” said Henry.

“He'll see the mike if we do that,” I said. “Gee, this is your original sticky wicket.”

Jimmy Sung suggested an alternative. He had once been hired to spy on a
towkay's
wife, to get evidence of adultery. He followed the wife and her lover to a hotel. He bribed the cleaning woman to give him a key and had simply burst through the door at an opportune moment, taken a lightning shot of the copulating pair, and run.