Bill Pronzini: The Jade Figurine

“And you’re a blundering ass. God, I should have put this gun to your head right at the start!”

“Why didn’t you, Marla?”

“La Croix was a coward, but from what he told me about you, I wasn’t sure I could handle you with a gun. The other way seemed better.”

“He picked some partner when he picked you, all right.”

“He was the one who double-crossed me to start all this.”

“Not until after the two of you together double-crossed Van Rijk,” I said. “He hired you and brought you onto Singapore to steal the figurine from the Museum of Oriental Art, didn’t he? But you decided to keep it for yourselves, and then La Croix got fancy and went you one better; a triple-cross, his one big gamble. The two of you had arranged for the flat in the Katong Bahru Housing Estate, and you went to ground while La Croix went out to make arrangements for leaving the island. The poor bastard took the Burong Chabak with him, cached it here at Mikko Field, and then came to me, thinking that I would fly him out alone. I refused. So he went to the Swede immediately after leaving my place, and Dinessen agreed to take him to Bangkok, where the two of you had set up a buyer to replace Van Rijk. La Croix went to pick up the figurine, but he never got to it. You found him first.”

“I found him, all right.”

“How?”

“He’d rented a car for the two of us, and he still had it when he disappeared on me. I found a place where I could watch the rental agency, thinking that maybe he’d come back there to turn it in. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all I had. And he did show up there, but not for that reason; the rental had been giving him trouble, and he wanted another one for the drive out to Mikko Field to pick up the Burong Chabak.”

“So you surprised him with the gun and forced him to drive you out to the lonely stretch near Bedok-and once there, to tell you where he’d hidden the figurine. He must have told you that I had refused him, too, and why-but before he could tell you anything else, such as whether or not he’d been able to make other arrangements for safe passage and the name of the man if he had, something happened. Maybe he tried to run. Or maybe he found a spark of bravery buried under his cowardice and tried to take the gun away from you.”

“He clawed me like a woman. I didn’t want to kill him yet, but I didn’t have any choice.”

“And so you pumped the rest of the clip into his face in frustration.”

She said nothing.

I went on, “You still had no way off the island, and no contacts here except Van Rijk-and you obviously couldn’t go to him. There was nobody but me. Not to take you out directly, but to provide you with the same name I’d given La Croix, or another one just like it. You came to the Old Cathay and went to work on me, and if Van Rijk’s hirelings hadn’t shown up so abruptly, you’d probably have made your little-girl-journalist pitch sometime that night.

“But the two of them did show up. They’d been watching me ever since that morning, when I brushed Van Rijk off; he’d figured I was hiding something. The hirelings saw the two of us in the Old Cathay, waited until we left, and then moved in; but they weren’t after me at all, the way I thought-they were after you, Marla, and you knew it immediately. So you let me stand them off while you got away.

“You went back to the safe house in the Katong Bahru Estate, and you stayed there. The close escape at the Old Cathay must have shaken you up-and given you a new respect for Van Rijk’s capabilities-and you decided to remain in hiding until you could arrange for passage off the island. The Burong Chabak was safely tucked away where you could get it at any time, and until you were ready to leave, all you had to do was to keep to ground and work on me.

“My refusal to help with your ‘article,’ after I’d responded to your note, infuriated you, didn’t it? My guess is that when you ran out of the apartment living room that night, it was to get the Browning. You were going to drop the little girl role then and there, and force co-operation out of me at gunpoint. I was your only link to freedom, and you couldn’t afford to let me walk out. Only I had already walked out when you returned with the gun.”

I paused, watching her. She was grimly silent, stilt looking at both me and what was transpiring outside. I could hear movement nearby, at my back, but all I could see was one man armed with the Sten gun I had heard earlier, standing out on the runway. Tiong-I was still certain it was Tiong-and the others would be searching the hangar and the duty quarters; but it wouldn’t take them long to get around to here.

I said, “You didn’t know what to do after I’d gone, did you, Marla? You were afraid I’d tumble to who you really were, what with Van Rijk, and the police sniffing around and asking questions. You could have come to my place directly, but the chances were good that Van Rijk was still having me watched and you didn’t want to play into his hands again, like you had at the Old Cathay. So you waited until the next afternoon and called me and gave me the little-girl routine again. I hung up on you. You knew you couldn’t sit in the apartment forever, and yet you were afraid to walk the streets for fear of being spotted by one of Van Rijk’s lookouts. You still hadn’t made up your mind when I showed up on your doorstep last night, ready and prime for plucking, and poured out my story to you.

“If you’d known I was that deeply involved previously, you’d never have stayed where I could find you. And if I’d used my head, and gotten some luck, I’d have tumbled to you a long time ago. But as it was, circumstances worked in your favor-at least for a while.

“When the Australian girl came to see me two days ago, claiming to be you, I took her at her word; I had no reason to doubt her, especially after Van Rijk confirmed Marla King’s complicity in the theft later that night. Dinessen had told his mistress about La Croix and about the figurine-or she’d been present when the Frenchman showed up; and when La Croix turned up dead, the two of them were certain I was the one who killed him, and that I was the one who had the figurine. They didn’t consider you for it because La Croix must have told them there was no way you could find him here on the island-another of the poor bastard’s mistakes-and because La Croix had said that I was the only other person who ‘knew’ where the figurine was hidden.

“So Penny Carlisle convinced Dinessen that the best way to pry the Burong Chabak out of me was for her to pretend to be Marla King. I let her think I had it, to play her along and set her up for the police, and once she felt sure that I was going to deliver, she played your game and tried to double-cross Dinessen. He found out about it and killed her, and then came to me.

“Christ, you must have been laughing inside when I turned up last night. It was perfect for you. You kept on playing little girl, and then nursemaid and sympathetic confidante-and I kept right on believing in you. You pried Shannon’s name out of me this morning, and when you went out to buy me some clothing, you called Shannon, got him to agree to an offer, and set up a rendezvous here at Mikko Field-where the figurine was cached, a perfect pickup and departure point. As soon as you finished talking to him, you called the police, no doubt anonymously, and told them you’d seen a man answering my description, wearing the clothes you’d bought for me, in the vicinity of Geylang Road and the housing estate. If they’d picked me up as you expected-”

“Shut up!” she said suddenly in a fierce sotto voce. “They’re coming over here now!”

I straightened slightly, placing my hands flat on my knees. “Jesus Christ, you’re a sugarcake, all right,” I said. “Oh, Dan, be careful, Dan, goodbye, Dan-and a Judas kiss so sweet and gentle I couldn’t feel the knife at all-”