The Ambassador's Wife (22 page)

“A place down on Walking Street. It’s called Baby Dolls.”

Tay gave Cally a long look.

“I’m asking the favor, Sam. The least I can do is meet the man wherever he wants me to meet him.”

After that they sat for a while without talking. It was a companionable silence and neither of them seemed to be in any hurry to break it. Off in the distance, Tay could hear faint music on the ocean breeze and the distant sound of voices from somewhere. He tried to decide where the music was coming from and what the voices were saying, but he couldn’t.

“This is the first time I’ve had a meeting like this,” Tay said after a while.

“What kind of meeting is that?”

“One with somebody whose name I’m not allowed to know.”

Cally chuckled and he glanced over, but it was too dark to see the expression on her face.

“You can just call him George,” she said after a moment, “if that will make you feel less awkward.”

“Like George Bush?”

“No,” Cally chuckled again. “Like George Washington.”

Tay could no longer hear the music. The voices were gone, too.

“Why would I call him that?” he asked quietly.

Cally caught something in Tay’s tone and glanced over before she answered. “It’s just a euphemism. The State Department has a lot of euphemisms. That’s what makes us the State Department.”

“What is George Washington a euphemism for?”

Cally hesitated, then smiled. “Oh, I guess it doesn’t really matter if I tell you. It’s hardly a matter of national security.”

Tay waited.

“It’s our all-purpose expression for the Agency guys who are posted in an embassy,” Cally said. “I’ll have to check with Mr. Washington. Send it to Mr. Washington. Like that.”

Tay nodded slowly.

“Anyway, it doesn’t really matter,” Cally said, waving the conversation away with one hand. “He may give you a name. He may even give you his real name. He probably will, now that I think about it, but if he doesn’t, call him anything you want to. He won’t care.”

This doesn’t prove anything at all
, Tay told himself.
It could just be a coincidence.

Who was he trying to kid? A coincidence? What were the chances of that?

Tay now knew where Ramesh Keshar’s spare security card for the Singapore Marriott had been going. It was going to somebody at the American embassy in Singapore who worked for the CIA.

Could the CIA have duplicated the security card and then had access to the Singapore Marriott any time they wanted without showing up on the security tapes? Yes, of course they could. Tay didn’t have the slightest doubt of that.

But that wasn’t really any of his business, was it? What
was
his business was whether a duplicate security card had anything to do with the murder of Elizabeth Munson. That was another matter altogether and Tay knew full well jumping to any kind of conclusion about that on the basis of as little as he knew right then was foolish.

How
could
a duplicate security card in the hands of the CIA have anything at all to do with Elizabeth Munson’s murder? It couldn’t, not unless he was ready to believe the CIA had committed the premeditated murder of the wife of the American ambassador, and that for some reason whoever had handled the job had beaten the woman’s face to a pulp in a post-homicidal rage. Tay might not like Americans very much, but there was a limit to the things he was prepared to blame them for.

“What are you thinking about?” Cally asked.

Tay felt like a little boy who had been caught in the bathroom with a copy of
Playboy
.

“What do you mean?” he asked a bit too quickly.

“You’re fidgeting around on that chair like you’ve come down with hives.”

Should he tell Cally the story about Ramesh Keshar’s arrangements with Mr. Washington? No, at least not yet. Better to hold on to something than hold on to nothing, even if he wasn’t entirely certain what value there was in what he had. He could always give it up later. If he gave it up now, he could never get it back again.

“I’m not fidgeting. I’m fine.”

“Okay, if you say so,” Cally said. “But you
are
fidgeting.”

Tay didn’t defend himself any further, but he made sure he stayed absolutely still.

A few minutes later Cally glanced at her watch and stood up.

“Ready?” she asked. “It’s not far. Maybe a fifteen-minute walk.You don’t mind walking, do you?”

“No,” Tay shook his head. “That’s fine.”

The stroll was pleasant enough; at least it was at first. They followed a broad walkway bordered with spindly palm trees along the beach side of the main road. A light breeze off the water stirred the sodden air and thinned the brackish clouds of automobile exhaust. After a few hundred yards, the traffic turned to the left and they continued walking straight ahead into a wide street closed off to vehicles and filled curb to curb with pedestrians. The street was lined on both sides with bars, more bars than Tay had ever before seen in one place.

The ocean breezes, now blocked by the buildings, were just a memory, and a sense of languid sleaze filled the still, heavy air. A mix of sour smells hung over the street. Rotting garbage, stale beer, vomit, and sweat. It was a carnival of the lost and misbegotten. There were underage prostitutes on the hustle, over-aged hookers on the stroll, and incorruptible cops on the take. There were bar touts, flower peddlers, cigarette sellers, and vendors of genuine Rolexes for only five dollars. There was everything Tay ever dreamed could exist anywhere, and a lot he had never imagined could exist at all.

By the time they shouldered their way through the crowds to Baby Dolls, Tay’s shirt was soaking wet and sticking to his back and chest. Pattaya, God help it, was even more humid than Singapore. Baby Dolls was a blue two-story building outlined with flashing tubes of white neon. Just in front of the entrance, half a dozen young girls stood beckoning people toward the heavy black curtains covering its doorway. They were all dressed in uniforms prim enough to mark them as high-school students and they looked so young that, for all Tay knew, maybe they were.

He stopped in front of the building and stood with his hands on his hips.

“It’s a go-go bar,” he said to Cally, “What did you think it was going to be, Sam? A public library?”

“You come inside, sir and madam!” one of the girls shouted and made a grab for them. “Happy hour now! No cover charge!”

Tay evaded the girl’s clutches, but Cally let the girl take her hand and lead her to the curtain. Not knowing what else to do, he followed. From inside, unseen hands pulled the curtain open and suddenly they were through it and inside a dimly lit room vibrating with the over-amped base of a disco beat.

“There he is!” Cally shouted into Tay’s ear.

She pointed toward an open balcony so large it amounted to a second floor, but Tay lost track of where Cally was pointing when his eyes found the stage. At least two-dozen good-looking young girls were dancing right there in front of him. They swung from chrome poles, shuffled their feet and tossed their heads, and every one of them was as naked as the day she was born.

Tay’s mouth was just starting to drop open when Cally grabbed his hand and towed him toward a staircase. At the top there was an alcove over the stage with a single round table in it. Sitting alone at the table was a good-looking man wearing khaki trousers and a white shirt. He seemed to be in his mid-forties, which surprised Tay.

“I thought you said he was retired,” Tay screamed into Cally’s ear. “I was expecting an old guy.”

The man pushed himself away from the table and stood up as they climbed the stairs. There was a sense of world-weariness in the way he did it that Tay had to admit seemed to suit him very well.

He was very tall. His face was deeply tanned and he wore round eyeglasses with what looked like steel frames. His dark brown hair was quite long and brushed straight back against his head in such a way that it made him appear a bit old-fashioned.

The man looked like he might have been a university professor on vacation. Tay gathered he probably wasn’t.

TWENTY-FOUR

CALLY
reached the table first and the man put his arms around her and kissed her on both cheeks. Tay tried not to evaluate the technical aspects of the hug too closely, but he couldn’t help it, nor could he help the conclusion to which he came when he did. It was not at all the way former colleagues hugged, at least not former colleagues whose relationship had been purely professional.

Then, before Cally could say anything, the man broke off the hug, stepped around her, and offered Tay his hand.

“Welcome to Pattaya,” he said.

Tay noticed as they shook that the spot where they stood was quieter than the rest of the bar for some reason and he could hear the man quite clearly. His voice was warm and resonant.

“Thank you. I’m Samuel Tay.”

“I know. Inspector Samuel Tay. Singapore CID-SIS.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m John August.”

“Is that your real—” Tay, embarrassed, abruptly stopped talking when he realized what he was about to ask.

John August didn’t seem embarrassed at all.

“Yes, Sam, it’s my real name.” He tilted his head toward Cally.

“Ask the kid here.”

Tay didn’t look directly at Cally although he wanted to. It would have been far too clumsy a thing to do. Still, out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod.

They sat down and Cally ordered a beer. Tay asked for a whiskey. He figured he was probably going to need it.

Cally and August made small talk for a while about people they had apparently known when they were both at the embassy in Bangkok. Tay didn’t even try to follow them. He did notice August seemed to be paying more attention to him than he was to what Cally was saying. He was being sized up. Tay had no doubt of that. August was looking him over as if he was appraising him for auction and thought his provenance somewhat dubious.

While they were talking some of the girls from the stage came upstairs and mounted the tabletops and they were now dancing very near them. One particularly arresting girl was wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of black leather boots with a card bearing the number 81 pinned to the top of one of them. After a minute or two she jumped up on the table where they were sitting and spun around once to make certain they all got a good look at her. Then she bent backwards with surprising grace, grasped the chrome rail that edged the balcony, and writhed between it and the table in rhythm with the music. The overall effect, Tay thought, was quite remarkable, although perhaps less erotic than gynecological.

After the girl finished her dance, if that was the appropriate expression for the bodily movements which she had been displaying, she straightened up, bent down and gave August’s cheek a little tweak, then jumped to another table and started in again. Tay shot a quick glance at Cally and saw her face was devoid of all expression.

August was trying to goad Cally by bringing them here. Tay had no doubt of that. It was none of his business, of course, but he couldn’t help but be proud of Cally. She was giving August absolutely nothing at all for his trouble.

Cally leaned toward August, but Tay could hear her easily enough.

“What are we doing here?”

“You don’t like it?”

“What are we doing here, John?”

August put both hands flat on the table and tilted his head slightly to one side. He smiled thinly. “It’s my place. I thought you might like to see it.”

“You own this place?” she asked.

“Sure.”

It was plain August relished his surprise.

“Everybody needs something to do in his old age, Cally. Some kind of retirement gig.” August raised his hands, palms up, and gestured to the room around him. “This is mine.”

Cally studied August for a moment, looking at him as if he were a safe to which she had forgotten the combination.

“You’re not going to get to me, John.”

“Yes, I am.”

“This won’t do it.”

“Maybe not, but something will. Everybody can be gotten to, darling. Even you.”

Cally watched August for a while, nodding slightly for some reason, but saying nothing.

“Could we go somewhere else?” she finally asked. “What I came to talk to you about is important.”

“There’s a blow job bar up on Soi Post Office just behind the Pizza Hut. It’s pretty quiet. They don’t have any music and nobody talks much for some reason.”

“No thanks,” Cally said. “I don’t much like the idea of drinking next to some German with a hard-on.”

August grinned hugely at that.

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you, kid?” he said.

“Sure I have, John. I’ve changed a whole lot.”

There was an entire conversation going on in front of Tay that made no sense to him at all, although of course he could guess easily enough what it was about. Cally and August had once been lovers. Tay couldn’t tell for how long or why it had ended or who had left whom; nevertheless, he had no doubt it was true, and August was reminding Cally of that in his own way.

Against all logic, Tay felt a frisson of jealousy. It was ridiculous, he told himself, downright stupid. But still, reason aside, there it was.

SOON
after that August stood up and led them downstairs and outside without comment. Just across the street from Baby Dolls was a large open-fronted bar with wicker chairs, round tables, no music, and no girls. Tay wondered how it stayed open in a place like Pattaya.

They ordered coffee and August took out a pack of Camels and offered them around. Cally declined, but Tay nodded his head. He had intended to buy a carton of Marlboros at the airport in Singapore, but he was in such a hurry he forgot and then Cally whisked him away in Bangkok before he could buy any there either. Ending up in a place like Pattaya without a couple of boxes of Marlboros in his pocket was a deeply unhappy thing. A Camel was hardly the same, but it was going to have to do.

“I’m surprised,” August said to Tay as he tipped a cigarette out of the pack for him. “You don’t look like a smoker.”