The Ambassador's Wife (13 page)

When Tay got back to his office the autopsy report was waiting on his desk. He read it carefully, but it contained nothing new or unexpected. His conversation with Dr. Hoi had covered everything quite thoroughly.

Tay shuffled the other papers on his desk for a while without any great interest, thinking mostly about what Lucinda had told him. When he suddenly remembered he had more or less promised the OC he would send DeSouza a copy of their case file, it occurred to him he should do it now while there was almost nothing in it. Tay certainly wasn’t going to add anything about his little chat with Lucinda. Perhaps he would leave out the autopsy report as well, at least for now.

Sergeant Kang was out of the office examining the Marriott’s surveillance tapes, so Tay called the secretarial pool and asked one of the girls to take the file, make a copy, and courier it over to DeSouza at the American embassy. Tay briefly considered telephoning Kang and asking if he had found anything on the hotel’s tapes yet, but he decided that was silly. If Kang had found anything, Tay would already know about it.

Around five-thirty, Tay decided he’d had enough. If he left now, he could walk to Harry’s Bar to meet Susan Hoi rather than having to find a taxi. As a rule people in Singapore didn’t walk anywhere, but Tay walked whenever he got the chance.

Tay understood why most people thought he was crazy to walk anywhere in Singapore. It was hot out there, and sweaty. When he walked places rather than taking a taxi, he generally arrived at his destination with his shirt plastered to his back. Still, he thought it was worth it. He would have preferred walking in a cooler place, of course, but then he would not have the warm nights he loved so much, nights when the air itself seemed alive with possibilities. Maybe there was a city somewhere on earth that had cool days and warm nights. If he could find one, he would pack up and move there without a moment’s hesitation.

Boat Quay was a crescent-shaped strip of shophouses nestled in a bend of the Singapore River near the bottom of South Bridge Road. At night, workers fleeing the financial district overflowed its stylish restaurants and noisy pubs, but Tay had never been there before in daylight. He had the impression that during the day the area was frequented primarily by Australian tourists: heavy of leg, loud of voice, and clothed in their habitual uniforms of wrinkled T-shirts, baggy shorts, and flip-flops. Perhaps that wasn’t true, but just the threat of it had so far been more than enough to keep him well clear of Boat Quay whenever the sun was out.

Harry’s Bar was one of the oldest and best known of the pubs in the quay and it had a prime slot right at the beginning of the crescent. When Tay got there, the ground floor was already about half full of briefcase-carrying trendies. He checked the tables outside along the riverbank and then had a quick look upstairs. When he didn’t see Dr. Hoi in either place, he took a stool at the bar close by the front door and ordered a Campari and soda.

Lounging at a bar was an unexpectedly congenial feeling and it made him start to wonder if he really ought to think about getting out more. Had he even been a little unfair to Harry’s perhaps? Tay sipped at his Campari and glanced around, but before he could decide whether or not that was the case, Susan Hoi slipped onto the stool next to him and gave his elbow a little squeeze.

“Sorry I’m late.”

“Just got here myself,” Tay said and raised his arm to attract the bartender’s attention. “What will you have?”

“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” Dr. Hoi said.

Tay wondered if she even knew what he was having, but he didn’t ask. Catching the bartender’s eye, Tay pointed first to his drink and then to the empty space in front of Dr. Hoi, wiggling his finger back and forth a couple of times. It was a bizarre gesture when he thought about it, but it apparently made perfect sense to the bartender since the man immediately reached for a bottle of Campari and began mixing another drink for Dr. Hoi.

They sipped their drinks and talked for a while, altogether pleasantly Tay thought. It was the sort of small talk that two people of opposite sexes made when they didn’t know each other particularly well, but it was nevertheless entirely agreeable. Still, as Dr. Hoi talked about her work and asked Tay questions about his, he grew more and more curious. What was it she wanted to tell him about the Elizabeth Munson case that was so important she had to tell him in person, and why was she stalling now that they were here? He eventually grew tired of waiting to find out.

“You said on the telephone that you had some ideas about the dead woman at the Marriott,” Tay said.

“Yes,” Dr. Hoi conceded, “I did.”

She didn’t say anything else right away and Tay thought she looked as if she had gone utterly blank.

“So what are these ideas?” Tay prodded her.

“None. I don’t have any ideas about the woman at the Marriott. None at all. Not a clue.”

“But—”

“I lied. I thought it would be pleasant to get to know you and that was the first excuse that jumped into my head. So I lied.”

Tay cleared his throat and looked off toward the other end of the bar where the bartender was drawing a draft of Tiger beer.

“Well,” Tay said, “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Are you angry?”

“No, certainly not angry. Surprised, I guess. You could have just asked me to meet you for a drink, couldn’t you?”

“I suppose so, but you would have said you were busy, wouldn’t you?”

She had him there, Tay knew, so he didn’t say anything.

“Yes, I thought so,” she went on. “You strike me as the kind of man who automatically deals with every unexpected invitation by saying he’s busy and then wonders later if he should have gone.”

What was
that
supposed to mean? Tay asked himself.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” she persisted.

“I don’t know,” Tay said. “Maybe.”

“Then I did the right thing,” Dr. Hoi said. “You’ve got to speak up for yourself if you see something you want, not just sit around and hope that it eventually comes to you.”

Tay was so flustered he didn’t have the first idea what to say. This was certainly his day to be set back on his heels by women, wasn’t it? Maybe Lucinda Lim and Susan Hoi were both crazy people. Perhaps that was all there was to it.

No, that wasn’t fair. They both probably thought he was the crazy one. After all, they were both perfectly nice women, young and attractive, the kind of women most men would turn cartwheels in the street to attract. And here they both were making plain their interest in Tay while he had stared back at them with about as much enthusiasm as if they had been reciting the day’s closing prices on the stock market.

Christ, maybe they were right. Maybe he
was
crazy.

Tay caught the bartender’s eye and pointed at his empty glass. It was either that or flee and stick Dr. Hoi with the check, and he didn’t think that would be particularly dignified. Still, he knew perfectly well that preserving one’s dignity usually came with a price tag attached. He was not at all certain what that price would turn out to be on this occasion, and he had no idea whether or not he could afford to pay it.

Screw it
, Tay thought, as he sipped at the fresh drink the bartender brought him. Why was he being such a pussy about this? So a woman, two women if he were being entirely honest about it, had made it clear they were interested in him and would be pleased to have his company. It was about bloody goddamned time, wasn’t it?

Tay threw caution, or something, to the winds and turned toward Dr. Hoi. He resumed their conversation as though nothing untoward had happened. And, so far at least, he guessed it hadn’t.

FOURTEEN

ARTHUR
Elliot Munson III felt beaten up. As a matter of fact, he thought he might have felt better if he
had
been beaten up.

It was nearly two in the morning, local time, before he made it back from Washington. His diplomatic passport greased him through immigration and while waiting for his luggage he glanced out through the glass wall past customs and spotted Tony DeSouza waiting for him instead of his driver. He would bet his ass, he thought to himself, that didn’t mean anything good.

In the car DeSouza told him about the Interpol fingerprint inquiry; then he related the story of his Sunday visit with Inspector Tay and what he had learned from him. DeSouza laid out the details as dispassionately as he could and the ambassador didn’t say much. Munson was a bit surprised that an ID had come out of Interpol so quickly, although he supposed he shouldn’t have been. He was even more surprised how little he actually felt as he listened to DeSouza talk about Liz. Maybe it was because he was so tired, but then again maybe it wasn’t.

He asked DeSouza only one thing. Who else knew about Liz’s murder? And with that question he recognized he was thinking like an ambassador rather than like a husband. He needed to move quickly if he was going to get control of events rather than let them take control of him. That was his job. That was what he did.

DeSouza told him no one else at the embassy knew anything about the murder, at least not yet. Outside the embassy, of course, he couldn’t be certain.

“All I know for sure,” DeSouza said, “is that CID-SIS has the investigation and this Inspector Tay is in charge of the case down there.”

“CID-SIS?”

“Special Investigations Section of the Criminal Investigations Department. They handle the homicides and most of the other major investigations.”

“Do you know anything about…what’s this guy’s name again?”

“Inspector Tay. Samuel Tay. He’s a bit of an oddball, I hear. Frankly, he strikes me as a plodder, maybe even a little slow on the uptake, but he’s been with CID-SIS for a long time. He’s supposed to be about the best they have. Whether that’s saying very much is another question, of course.”

The ambassador thought that DeSouza sounded like one of those Americans abroad who habitually took the locals too lightly. That was a common form of American tone deafness, taking anyone who wasn’t American lightly, and he hoped this time that kind of a mistake wasn’t coloring DeSouza’s judgment.

He asked about the press coverage and DeSouza assured him there had been no press other than the few anonymous lines about a suicide in the Case File column in the
Straits Times
, but they both knew that wouldn’t last long. Even if the Singaporean police were discreet, and he imagined they would be discreet as all hell about the brutal murder of the American ambassador’s wife in a five-star hotel within the spotless confines of their fairy-tale city, he had no doubt the story would get to the international press quickly enough. Then those bastards would be all over his ass in a New York minute. It was too good a story for anything else to happen.

The ambassador let his thoughts drift while he examined the almost unnaturally perfect landscaping that bordered the motorway into the city. Lush and well watered, glazed to the color of money, it never failed to catch his attention. Perfectly trimmed carpets of thick grass, banks of red and purple bougainvillea so rich and dense that they threatened to spill out over the road, and perfect lines of identically trimmed trees of exactly equal height as far as the eye could see.

Sometimes it seemed to him that Singapore wasn’t a city at all, but a replica of a city, something that had been built just yesterday to impress visitors rather than as a habitat for actual human beings. Singapore bore about as much resemblance to the swarming, stinking, impoverished reality of Asia as San Diego did. Asia Light, some people called it. It always made him think of a gigantic movie set someone had built to represent a generic city. He had heard a lot of American television shows were actually filmed in Toronto because Toronto looked like everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Singapore was exactly like that. Everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Whatever Singapore really was, wherever it really was, it sure as hell was hard for him to think of it as being in Asia. Shoot, sometimes it was hard even for him to think of it as being on Planet Earth.

DeSouza took the ambassador directly to the residence. He showered and brushed his teeth and then he lay down for a while, but he couldn’t sleep. By five o’clock he gave up trying and got up and took another shower without thinking about it, then he sat in the study drinking coffee and pondering what it was he ought to be doing.

The study of the ambassador’s residence was a pleasant room where he had always felt at ease. His desk was a huge mahogany table that someone told him had come out of an eighteenth-century Philippine church and in the opposite corner were two deep, red leather chairs. He had spent his very best hours in Singapore sitting alone in one of those chairs, his feet up, Puccini roaring out of the stereo, and a glass of malt whisky in his hand.

His housekeeper knocked and offered him breakfast, but he sent her away. When he realized the woman might have been hurt by the way he dismissed her, he called her back and apologized and asked for some yogurt and toast. It tasted better than he expected and, almost in spite of himself, he started to feel okay.

Just before six he picked up the telephone and began making calls. That was one of the perks of being an ambassador. You could call anyone you wanted at six o’clock in the morning and no one would dare say a goddamned word to you about what time it was.

The thought caused him to speculate for a moment on what Liz’s death might mean to him. Would it push him down a new road entirely, perhaps even end his cushy ride as an ambassador and take him to a place he could not now even imagine? A sudden prick of apprehension ran over his scalp as real and as strong as a jolt of electricity, but then it was gone so suddenly he wondered for a moment if it had ever been there at all.

His first call was to Marc Reagan, his staff assistant, and his second was to Cally Parks, the Regional Security Officer at the embassy. He told each of them to be at the residence in an hour. He called their cell phones so he didn’t know exactly where they were, but Marc seemed more surprised at the first call than Cally was at the second, which started him wondering if the two of them were together when he called. No, he doubted that. Cally had been at the embassy less than a month. It was her first overseas posting and he doubted she and Marc would have hooked up that quickly. On the other hand, who knew anymore? As nearly as he could tell, all around him people were fucking like bunny rabbits these days. Pretty much anytime the urge hit, they did it. He had missed out on all that, damn it to hell.