THE GIRL IN THE WINDOW (The Inspector Samuel Tay Novels Book 4) (9 page)

As he climbed, Tay found himself looking at Sergeant Lee and realizing he had forgotten how attractive she was. Her Malaysian-Chinese ancestry had provided her smooth, golden skin to set off her striking Chinese features. She had straight, lustrous black hair that fell several inches below her shoulders, a wide face, high cheekbones, and deep brown eyes.

Tay tried to remember exactly how their brief personal relationship had veered so disastrously off the rails. Had he broken it off, or had she? Maybe neither of them had really broken it off. Maybe they had just allowed the relationship to slink off somewhere and die a quiet death. Although he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened or how it had happened, the closer he got to where Sergeant Lee was standing with Robbie Kang the more certain he was he must have been out of his damned mind to
let
it happen.

“Morning, Inspector,” Sergeant Lee smiled when he got to the top of the steps.

Tay nodded, but he said nothing.

“Bloody hell, sir,” Kang said, “what in the world—”

“Not here, Sergeant,” Tay interrupted. “Let’s keep the conversation for outside.”

Out in the anteroom the same guy who was manning the desk when they came in was waiting for them. He handed over their ID’s, telephones, and weapons. Tay was surprised to see Sergeant Lee was carrying, too, and even more surprised she was carrying a revolver. Patrolmen in Singapore were still being issued revolvers, but all the CID personnel he knew now carried the H&K forty calibre semi-automatics. Tay would have bet he was the last detective in CID with a wheel gun.

He tried to see what kind of a revolver Sergeant Lee had without being too obvious about it, but he couldn’t be certain. It was big and he thought it might be something chambered in .357 magnum. His first thought was that a .357 magnum was a lot of gun for a woman, but his second thought was that he was glad he hadn’t spoken his first thought out loud. He was reasonably certain Linda Lee already thought he was a misogynistic old fart. No point in handing her solid proof she was absolutely right.

Still, he couldn’t help but wonder a little about Sergeant Lee’s choice of sidearm. Why wasn’t she carrying the H&K semi-automatic like everybody else? Why an old fashioned revolver? Maybe she was just an old fashioned kind of girl after all.

Sergeant Lee’s revolver was in a brown leather paddle holster. With a graceful flip of her right hand, she tossed back the bone-colored cotton blazer she wore over her jeans, used her left hand to snap the paddle over her belt at about the four o’clock position, and let the blazer swing forward to cover it. It was such an elegant move that Tay caught himself staring.

The security man pulled a black cloth backpack from under the desk and held it out to Sergeant Kang.

“Here you go,” he said. “Your ID materials and an encrypted radio. There’s a key card for your post in there, too.”

Kang took the backpack with a nod and turned away, but the security man grabbed his elbow.

“Not so fast, buddy.”

He scooped a clipboard and pen off the desk and held them out to Kang.

“You’ve got to sign for everything. If it’s not all returned in good condition when this operation is over, you’re responsible.”

Kang started to say something, but thought better of it. He accepted the pen and the clipboard without protest, signed the form, and handed it back.

“Aren’t you going to check the stuff?” the security man asked.

“I trust you,” Kang said.

“Huh,” the security man snorted. “I sure as hell wouldn’t.”

Out in the hall, Tay looked at Kang and Lee and gave a very small shake of his head. None of them said a word as they took the elevator to the ground floor, crossed the parking lot, and got into Kang’s car.

Kang slid behind the wheel and Tay got into the passenger seat. Sergeant Lee got in back and slid forward until she could lean against Tay’s seat on her folded arms.

“They’re not serious about us sitting in a hotel room waiting for them to call, are they, sir?” she asked.

Tay had always thought Linda had a wonderful voice, throaty with a slight rasp like a smoker, although as far as he knew she didn’t smoke. Whatever the reason, Tay thought it was downright sexy.

“They sounded serious to me, Sergeant.”

“Are you going to let them get away with that?”

“What would you have me do, Sergeant? Wrestle Mr. Goh to the floor and slap him around until he relents and gives us a more important role?”

“No, sir, but…well, there must be something we can do. This sucks.”

Tay considered trying to find a way to convey to them the SAC’s suspicions CID was being set up to take the fall if the operation went sour, but he had promised the SAC not to bring him into the discussion, and voicing that concern without mentioning the SAC would probably make him sound like a paranoid old fool. He might have said something anyway if he had been alone with Sergeant Kang, but having Sergeant Lee in the conversation changed things for Tay. Her being there made him more reluctant to say something that might make him look silly. That was the major drawback to being around a beautiful woman, he supposed. It made you self-conscious.

“We’re going to do what ISD has asked us to do, Sergeant. Not one bit more or one bit less. And we’re going to keep our eyes open and be very careful.”

“Eyes open for what, sir?” Kang asked.

Tay hesitated. He wasn’t quite sure how to put it.

“I think I understand, sir,” Sergeant Lee broke in.

Maybe she did, it occurred to Tay. Kang still looked puzzled, but Tay rushed on before he could say anything else.

“I’ll take the first shift,” he said as he glanced at his watch. “You relieve me at six, Robbie, and then Sergeant Lee can relieve you at two. I’ll come back at ten tomorrow morning and relieve her. We’ll keep up that rotation until we’re told to stand down.”

“I’ll take the two o’clock shift, sir,” Sergeant Kang said. “It doesn’t seem right to ask a woman to take an overnight shift.”

“What?” Sergeant Lee asked from the backseat.

Kang turned his head and looked at her. “I was only trying to—”

“You figure the two o’clock shift is a man’s shift? Maybe it’s too risky for a woman to work after midnight? Are you for real, Kang?”

“I’ve given you your assignments,” Tay cut in. “This is not a negotiation. Any questions?”

Tay paused a second or two at most.

“Good,” he continued before anyone could say anything. “Take me down to the beautiful Santa Grande Hotel, Sergeant Kang, then drop Sergeant Lee wherever she wants to go. Both of you need to get some rest. Overnight surveillances suck.”

“But we’re just going to be sitting around waiting for a call, aren’t we, sir?” Kang asked. “We’re not really going to have anyone under surveillance, are we?”

“Let’s pretend we are, Sergeant. Let’s simply pretend we are and maybe that will make us feel like we’re at the table with the grown-ups.”

THE SANTA GRANDE Hotel was nothing to write home about but, since Tay didn’t intend to write home or anywhere else for that matter, he didn’t much care.

The room allocated to CID was on the third floor at the front and it was furnished like any other room in any other tourist hotel: a double bed with a dark maroon bedspread matched to the drapes, a mahogany-veneer chest with four drawers, an old cathode-ray television set, a narrow desk with a lamp, and a straight wooden chair. The room had only one window, but at least the window overlooked Temple Street and provided a fine, unobstructed view of the Temple Street Inn.

Tay dumped the backpack with the encrypted radio and the photographs on the bed, walked straight to the window, and pulled the drapes all the way back. He was directly across Temple Street from the pedestrian alleyway he had seen in the photograph during the briefing. It was a space designed for tourists and was lined with vendors’ carts selling souvenirs, soft drinks, and food, but it ran all the way down the east side of the hotel and could be used to walk all the way from Temple Street to Pagoda Street.

Was there another door to the Temple Street Inn somewhere down there, Tay wondered? He didn’t recall it being mentioned in the briefing so he decided there probably wasn’t. He might not think much of ISD, but they weren’t
that
stupid.

Tay had always hated the tedium of surveillance operations and he always found a way to push them off on somebody else. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been stuck with one himself, but here he was. And this wasn’t even a CID operation.

He hadn’t brought anything to read and he only had one pack of Marlboros, and he knew unless he fixed both of those problems right away he would lose his mind well before Kang came to relieve him at six o’clock. A quick run for supplies was an absolute necessity. He needed cigarettes and a couple of paperbacks as well as something to eat and drink. He would take the radio with him. How would Goh know he wasn’t dutifully waiting in the room?

Reaching into the backpack Tay pulled out a black plastic box about the size of a paperback book. It had a slide switch on one side and a button and two dials mounted on the front below a perforated grill that appeared to cover a loudspeaker. Did the loudspeaker also work as a microphone? He supposed it must since he didn’t see any other possibility.

Tay flipped the switch back and forth a couple of times, but nothing seemed to happen so he began fiddling with the two dials. All at once a loud burst of static erupted from the grill. He was so startled he dropped the radio on the bed, but he retrieved it in time to hear Goh’s voice above the static.

“Testing. Radio check. All posts please acknowledge.”

“One here,” said a man whose voice Tay didn’t recognize.

“Two here,” another man said.

“Three acknowledging,” a third voice chimed in.

There was a brief silence, then, “Are you there, Tay? Or haven’t you figured out how to turn on the radio yet?”

Fuck him
, Tay thought. He twisted both dials counterclockwise as far as they would go and dumped the radio on the bed.

Then he headed out in search of supplies leaving it behind.

Less than fifty yards up Temple Street, Tay found a 7-Eleven with a rotating metal rack right inside the front door crammed with at least a hundred paperbacks.

He was happy to see a couple of titles in the rack that looked like they might hold his attention for a while: a Don Winslow novel he hadn’t read yet, and something called
Bali Dreaming
by a travel writer named Vanya Vetto. He didn’t know who Vetto was, but a blurb on the cover compared him favorably to Hunter Thompson which was a pretty good recommendation in Tay’s book so he took both Vetto’s book and the Winslow novel. He also picked up a bag of pretzels, a package of Japanese rice crackers, a six-pack of Coke Zeros, and a package of cookies.

He took everything over and piled it on the counter in front of the cash register and asked the clerk for two packs of Marlboros and some matches. The clerk stacked the Marlboros and matches with the rest of Tay’s shopping.

“That all?”

Tay contemplated the pile of books, cigarettes, and junk food and was suddenly overcome with embarrassment. He had the judgment of a twelve-year-old boy when it came to taking care of himself. He really did. He was going to have to do better. After a moment’s thought, he pushed the package of cookies to one side.

“Forget those and give me two more packs of Marlboros instead,” he told the clerk.

Almost at once he felt better. Nothing beat healthy living, did it?

Walking back to the Santa Grande Hotel with his provisions, Tay impulsively took a quick detour down the alleyway he could see from the room. It was jammed with what looked like the usual batch of tourists roaming Chinatown, and the crowds gathered around the vendors’ carts made walking difficult. Tay was nearly halfway to Pagoda Street and about to turn around when he spotted what looked like an emergency exit from the hotel. It was a metal door that had on some long-ago day been painted green. Tay stood for a moment and contemplated the scarred metal door.

Why wouldn’t Goh have mentioned the emergency exit in the briefing? Tay tugged at the handle, but the metal door didn’t move. Either it was sealed completely or it opened only from the inside. Still, it was a door. Unless ISD had somehow established it couldn’t be opened at all, someone ought to be covering it. Was there a surveillance team back here that Goh hadn’t told them about for some reason?

Tay looked up and down the alleyway. Unless ISD had people disguised as food vendors or tourists, and he didn’t for a moment think they would do anything so pedestrian, the only location from which the emergency exit could be observed was a building directly across the alleyway from the hotel. The space, now empty, had once been something called the Mango Travel Service, but now nothing was left of that doomed enterprise other than a sun-faded sign in the front window and the few pieces of abandoned furniture Tay saw beyond the plate glass window. He also saw a staircase at the rear of the room, and he leaned back and spotted another Mango Travel Service sign in a second floor window. An abandoned two-story shophouse straight across from the emergency exit? That was almost too good to be true. Was ISD upstairs right now?

When Tay tried the door to what had once been the Mango Travel Service, he discovered it was unlocked. Surely that settled it. ISD must be upstairs right now watching the emergency exit, but why hadn’t Goh told them he had another observation post?

When Tay started up the stairs, he called out, “This is Inspector Tay of CID. I’m coming up. For Christ’s sake don’t shoot me.”

No one shot him. And when he got to the second floor, he saw why.

The place was dusty and deserted. No ISD surveillance team. No one at all. It looked like no one had been there in months. It was odd the front door had been left unlocked, but in real life odd things occasionally did happen.

Tay looked around and an idea occurred to him.

Wait in a hotel room until ISD felt like calling, huh? Fat chance of that now. Finding this place gave him an opportunity to get back in the game and he wasn’t going to lose out on that. Goh would shit himself if he found out, but how would he?