Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

“As a matter of fact,” Kim said, “there were.”

They all looked at her in surprise. Sounding not completely pleased, Wai Fung said, “And who was that?”

“When I looked out the window,” she said, “while he was running down the fire escape, there were two painters out there, painting the fire escape.”

Wai Fung said, “And what did they see, exactly?”

“They saw the man roll out of my room, kick George in the face, and run down the fire escape.”

Now Wai Fung made a note, then peeled off the top sheet of his pad and gave it to one of his assistants, with quickly murmured instructions. Then Wai Fung turned back to the others. “Whatever may have happened in Ms. Baldur’s room this morning — and we will investigate, I assure you — the connection between this incident and Richard Curtis remains, at least to my eyes, invisible.”

Rickendorf said, “Inspector, my friend Jerry has a friend working for Curtis. That friend told us last Wednesday that he had seen a man in Richard Curtis’s office who fit the description of the man who attacked Kim. He said he himself had carried an envelope containing five thousand dollars to Curtis, and that he’d seen Curtis give the envelope to this man.”

Wai Fung said, “And this friend’s name?”

Fairchild watched waves of indecision cross Rickendorf’s face, like speeded-up cloud systems on a TV weather broadcast.

“Mr. Rickendorf,” Wai Fung said, “without this person’s statement, what do I have? Mere assertions. Your assertions.”

Rickendorf said, “Would it be all right if I telephoned him?”

“Certainly,” Wai Fung said.

Though Wok Wok was just off a main passenger corridor at Changi Airport, a broad main pedestrian thoroughfare full of foot traffic and some wheeled traffic as well, the food stall also had a section at the rear, behind the kitchen module, that was quiet and unobtrusive. Here is where Curtis placed himself, at one that afternoon, and here is where Bennett eventually found him, coming around the corner of the kitchen, lugging one huge battered suitcase, “A perfect place, sir,” he said, by way of greeting, “A perfect place.”

Curtis didn’t know why Bennett looked so disheveled. There were stains on his shirt, his hair was spiky, and he had the general look of someone who’s been trying to run through brambles. As the man sat down, across the table, Curtis said, “What’s happened to you?”

“That girl,” he said, and sounded bitter.

“Girl? Kim Baldur, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.” Bennett slowly shook his head, seemed to think about what he wanted to say, and began, “Mr. Curtis, some things went like they should, and some didn’t.”

“Well, tell me about them.”

“I could see they were onto me,” Bennett said. “Not me, I don’t think they spotted me in particular, but they knew they were being watched. It had to be. At first they were all in a hurry, making phone calls, setting up meetings, and then all of a sudden they’re not, they just wander around the city, they don’t make any more phone calls, they don’t even call between their rooms anymore. So they’re waiting me out, I could tell.”

“Hennessy must have told them somebody was on their tail.”

“ There’s a chap I’d like to meet,” Bennett said.

“Oh, you will,” Curtis told him, and smiled at the thought. “But go on. They were stalling.”

“And I couldn’t, because of you going to go away. So I snatched Diedrich and took him home—”

“Home!”

“That’s the only place I had, Mr. Curtis. I set it up so he wouldn’t know where he was, and I asked him the questions, and he told me about Hennessy, but then, I misjudged or whatever, and he was done for. It was an accident, but there it is.”

“Don’t worry about it, Colin,” Curtis told him. “I know it was an accident, and I for one will not miss him.”

“No, sir. Nor I.”

The waitress, a tiny ancient woman barely taller than the table, now brought their meals, and they had to remain silent while she distributed the dishes. Curtis took the opportunity to study Bennett, this shambling messy creature across from him, and consider what he had done and what he seemed willing to do. He hadn’t realized how much of a brute Bennett was, and the knowledge was both pleasing and alarming. The man could be even more useful than Curtis had thought, but he would also be more dangerous, because he clearly wasn’t very smart. To take Diedrich home!

The waitress left, and Curtis said, “Where is he now? I mean, the... Not at home anymore?”

“In the Straits of Jurong.”

“No bullets in him? Knife wounds?”

“No, sir. A broken nose, as might be.”

“All right. But how did the girl get into this?”

“It seemed to me, sir,” Bennett said, “you wanted her out of the way.”

“I never said such a thing, Colin.”

“No, sir, you didn’t. But I read between the lines, like. And I went after her. And some boyo I never saw in my life come along and queered the pitch, and I had to scarper.”

“A passerby?”

“No, he knew her, he kept calling her name, when he was trying to get into the room.”

Curtis wasn’t sure he wanted to know this entire story, but he couldn’t help himself. “What room?”

“Her room, in the hotel,” Bennett said. “I got in and it would’ve been all right, but this fellow come along and she managed to let him in, and that was it.”

“Colin,” Curtis said, and smiled thinly again, “are you ready to travel?”

“Yes, sir, I am,” Bennett said.

Curtis put down his chopsticks long enough to take the envelope from the attaché case on the floor beside his chair. “This is your ticket,” he said. “You’re flying to Taipei at three o’clock.”

“Taipei,” Bennett said, sounding surprised, but he asked no questions.

“When you get there,” Curtis told him, “you don’t go through Customs. Can you carry that bag aboard?”

“It’s a bit big, but I’ve done it in the past.”

“Good. At the airport in Taipei, go to the transit passengers area, there’ll be someone there to meet you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“He’ll take you to a small charter plane that’s got a flight plan to Okinawa, but you aren’t going to Okinawa, you’re going to Kaohsiung, at the southern end of the island.”

“Sir, if I may,” Bennett said, “why are we saying I’m going to Okinawa?”

“Because that’s international, and you will never have actually entered Taiwan. You’re a transit passenger, no checked luggage, there’ll be no record of your having been in Taiwan at all.”

“Okay, fine,” Bennett said, though clearly he didn’t understand why that was necessary.

Well, he didn’t have to understand. In fact, it was better if Bennett were never to understand that Curtis was keeping a wall between them, that Bennett was a non-person in Curtis’s life. Curtis said, “At the airport in Kaohsiung, someone else will meet you and drive you to the docks, where I’ve chartered a small ship. You’ll board and wait for me, and I’ll join you tomorrow.”

“Okay, Mr. Curtis.”

Curtis smiled. “And I’ll have a pal of yours with me,” he said.

Bennett looked puzzled.

“Mark Hennessy,” Curtis said, and the big man’s grin made him shiver.

Eating lunch at home, a salad of the perishables he’d already had in the kitchen, Mark Hennessy wondered about the trip, what it would be like and what kind of experiences he’d have there. Mark had worked for RC Structural ever since college, first in the field and the last three years here in the head office, and all he knew of the world was the places where Richard Curtis had sent him.