Paul Theroux: Saint Jack

“Oh, yes,” he said, without looking up. He was scribbling on a pad. “So you like Singapore? Clean and green.”

“A great little place,” I said.

“Don’t mention,” he said, still scribbling.

“And this is a mighty fine hotel,” I said. “I wouldn’t stay anywhere else. I got sorta attached to that room you gave me before — nine-fifteen. Can you put me in the same one?”

“If it is empty.”

“I’ll make it worth your while,” I said softly.

“Can,” he said, glancing at the pigeonholes behind him.

I congratulated myself on knowing that odd-numbered rooms were on one side of the corridor, evens on the other. After all, it had only been a matter of weeks since I had fixed up Gunstone with Djamila here; over there, in the bar lounge, I had pretended to be Bishop Bradley.

“This way, sir,” said the porter, at the elevator door.

“Put my suitcase in the room,” I said, when we got to the ninth floor. “I’m just going to have a word with my friend here.”

The elevator operator’s face creased with terror. He shut, his mouth.

“You look like a smart feller,” I said. “Do you know how to keep your eyes open?”

“Do,” he said, and widened his eyes.

“That’s it,” I said. “You’re destined for big things. If you want to make a little extra money, just listen—”

After an hour my buzzer rang.

“Yoh?”

It was the elevator operator, grinning. “I take him down to lobby. He walk outside. I come straight back.”

“Beautiful,” I said, handing him five dollars. “Keep up the good work.”

“Okay boys, this is it,” I said into the phone, and five minutes later, Mr. Khoo, Jimmy Sung, and Henry Chow were in my room, sitting on the edge of the bed, straining to understand the plan. The boys, the room, the plan: the labels had an appealing sound.

What was most touching was the way the patient fellers listened, gaunt, threadbare, unblinking: my shabby gang of Chinese commandos. It was pleasing to conspire with a makeshift army, skinny sharpshooters in cast-off clothes. I had always served the rich by depending on such people, putting trust in the only helpers I could afford, the irregulars, the destitute, the socially famished — silent Karim, crooked Ganapaty, limping Gopi, the whispering urchins who stood sentry duty outside the blue-film sheds off Rochore Road, my girls. Poverty made them invisible, and I saw how much their devious skills resembled mine. I picked them for cunning and loyalty. I liked the drama: the rumpled middle-aged blackmailer in the elegant but smoke-fouled hotel room, saying, “Okay, boys—” to his team of ragged disciples who might have had nicknames like Munkypoo, Broomface, and The Ant.

In his lap, Mr. Khoo cradled an electric drill, like a nickel-plated Tommy gun; Jimmy Sung held a tape recorder, Henry Chow a camera. They hadn’t asked why, and wouldn’t — Chinese: the people with no questions.

“You know what you’re supposed to do,” I said. “Let’s get moving.”

Henry Chow flipped the lever on the camera; he had removed the ratchet from the spools: it wound noiselessly. Mr. Khoo speedily drilled and reamed a hole through the baseboard, into the next room, just under the general’s bed. We took the additional precaution of disguising the microphone as a light socket. The positioning of the camera was next. Henry took a bucket and window washer’s squeegee and crawled from my balcony to the general’s, and giving the glass doors a good splash, estimated the angle for a shot at the bed. He returned, white-faced and shuddering, heaving himself slowly over the parapet, holding lightly to the balcony rail.

“Can we sling a camera up?”

“Can,” he said, “but curtains—”

“It’s no good,” I said. “If he goes out to the balcony he’ll see it and the jig’s up. We can’t do it that way.” I was stumped. How did you take pictures in a feller’s room without his knowing it? After I had spoken to Shuck I imagined myself, tape recorder slung over one shoulder, camera over the other, in a blackmailer’s crouch, by a keyhole or window, listening, watching, pressing buttons, and then hopping away on tiptoe with the damning evidence.

The simplicity of that had struck me as cruel, but it wasn’t so simple. This was a technical problem, a dilemma which in the solving made the cruelty slight, and as an executioner might think of himself as an electrician, absorbed in the study of watts and volts, a brainwasher a man concerned with candlepower, my sense of betrayal was soon forgotten in my handyman’s huffing and puffing over the matter of wires, lenses, drilling, and testing — so complicated the general no longer seemed vulnerable. He was safe; I was the victim.

“Now, let’s see here,” I said. “We can’t put the camera on the balcony. What about in his air conditioner? Make it look like a fuse box.” My boys were silent. I replied to my own question. “That means we have to get into the room.”

“Get a key,” said Jimmy Sung.

“If only the bed was on the other side of the room,” I said. “Then we could cut a hole up there, stick the camera through, and bingo.”

“Move the bed,” said Henry.

“He’ll see the mike if we do that,” I said. “Gee, this is your original sticky wicket.”

Jimmy Sung suggested an alternative. He had once been hired to spy on a towkay’s wife, to get evidence of adultery. He followed the wife and her lover to a hotel. He bribed the cleaning woman to give him a key and had simply burst through the door at an opportune moment, taken a lightning shot of the copulating pair, and run.

“That’s okay if you want one picture,” I said. “But one’s not enough. There must be another way.”

I paced the room. “Henry says the general’s room is just like this one, right? Bed here, chair there—” The three men looked from object to object as I named—“bureau there, desk over there— wait! ”

Over the desk was a large rectangular mirror, reflecting the room; Mr. Khoo, Jimmy Sung, Henry Chow, seated uneasily on the bed. A mirror, distracting for anyone using the desk, made it useful as a woman’s dressing table.

“We can’t photograph the bed,” I said, “but we can make a small hole in the wall and aim the camera at that mirror. It’s right across.”

“Wide-angle lens,” said Jimmy.

Henry Chow smiled.

This time Mr. Khoo used his drill like a chisel, to loosen plaster and scoop out brick from our side of the wall. He made a niche for the camera and punched a small lens hole through to the other side. Jimmy Sung fitted the camera with a plunger on a long cable, and fixed the camera against the hole, bandaging it into the niche with adhesive tape.

“I guess that wraps it up,” I said.

Mr. Khoo wiped his drill with a rag.

“This calls for a drink.”

Henry said no. Mr. Khoo shook his head. Jimmy Sung scratched his head nervously and said he had to take his wife shopping.

“Come on, I’ll treat you,” I said. “They’ve got everything at this hotel. We could have lunch sent up. Anything — you name it. No charge!”

Mr. Khoo muttered something in Chinese. Henry looked embarrassed. Jimmy said, “Seng Ho want money,” and winced.

“Anything you say.” I paid them off, and when I did they edged toward the door. I said, “What’s the rush? It’s early. Stick around.”

There is a Chinese laugh that means “Yes, of course!” and another that means “No, never!” The first is full of sympathy, the second is a low mirthless rattle in the throat. They gave me the second and were gone.

“So long, boys.” I was alone. It was bright and noisy outside, but waiting I felt caged in the dim cold room of the Belvedere’s ninth floor. On the far wall was the print of an old water color, Fort Canning, ladies with parasols, children rolling hoops, the harbor in the distance. I became aware of the air-conditioner roar, and shortly it deafened me and gave me goose flesh. In my bedroom in Moulmein Green I had a friendly fan that went plunk-a-plunk and a scented mosquito coil; a fig tree grew against the window. An old phrase came to me, my summing up: Is this all? I looked at the completed handiwork and hated it. The problem of eavesdropping had been complicated and nearly innocent. The solution was simple and terrible, the sticky tape, the wires, the mirror, the black contraptions, the violated wall.