“YOU KNEW ALL along who the dead man was, didn’t you, sir? You just didn’t want to tell me.”
“No, I didn’t know, Robbie. I thought there was something familiar about him when I saw the body, that’s true, but I didn’t know who he was. Even when I found the photograph, I still didn’t know who he was.”
“So how did you find out?”
“I showed the photo to someone and he put a name to the face. Well, sort of a name.”
“Who did you show it to?”
“I can’t tell you that, Robbie. I’m sorry. I just can’t tell you. But it’s someone who knows a lot of people and someone I trust.”
Kang’s face clouded, but at least he shifted his eyes back to Tay.
“I’m listening, sir.”
“The only name my source could give me was Johnny the Mover,” Tay said.
Kang laughed in spite of himself. “You’ve got to be kidding me, sir.”
“No, I’m completely serious. Our dead man is an old-time smuggler who has worked as a freelancer over the years for American intelligence. They called him Johnny the Mover.”
“So your source is this American spook buddy everyone knows you have,” Kang grunted. “You showed your CIA connection the picture and he IDed this guy for you.”
Tay didn’t want to lie to Kang. Not directly at least. So he settled on a response that was literally true, even if somewhat misleading.
“I don’t have a CIA connection, Robbie. The SAC thinks I do, but I don’t.”
Kang looked away, not sure whether to believe Tay or not, and even less sure whether it mattered if he did.
An uncomfortable silence fell over Tay’s office. Tay knew Kang was completely disgusted with him. He wouldn’t have blamed Kang if he had just stood up and walked out right then.
But Kang didn’t stand up and walk out.
“Are you going to let me see this photograph now, sir?” he asked instead.
Tay opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a thin manila-colored file. Opening it, he removed the picture of his father and Johnny the Mover and handed it across the desk to Kang.
“It’s him all right,” Kang said almost immediately. “He’s gained weight and looks a lot older, but that’s him right there in the center.”
Tay didn’t say anything.
“Is your father the man on the right?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so. You look a lot like him.”
As far as Tay knew, there was no one alive who had known his father and who knew Tay now so he had never heard anyone say that before. And now that Kang said it, he didn’t know what to make of it. Tay’s father had been born in America, but his grandparents had both been ethnic Chinese. In the pictures Tay had seen of his father, Tay never thought his father looked particularly Chinese, and Tay certainly didn’t think he looked very Chinese either. He wondered now if Kang was saying his father did look Chinese, or that he didn’t. He considered briefly asking Kang exactly what he meant, but quickly decided that would make him look foolish and vain, so he said nothing.
“Who’s the other guy in the photo? The one with the umbrella?” Kang asked, cutting off Tay’s ruminations before they spun him away somewhere he would be better off not going.
“No idea.”
“So whoever you showed the photo to didn’t recognize the other man or your father?”
“No.”
“Or at least that’s what he told you.”
Tay wasn’t sure what to say to that. Tay didn’t think August lied about recognizing either of them, but he might have. Tay couldn’t deny that. Maybe August knew exactly who the umbrella man was and just didn’t tell Tay for reasons too complicated and obscure even to guess at.
***
“The umbrella that other guy is holding up looks pretty strange,” Kang said.
“It doesn’t make any sense to me either.”
“It can’t just be a coincidence, sir.”
Coincidence? Tay couldn’t see what Kang meant.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“The umbrella. Didn’t you say the deposit box where you found the ledgers with your father’s initials belonged to some company called Paraguas Ltd?”
“Yes.”
“Well…Paraguas is the Spanish word for umbrella.”
Tay’s mouth slowly opened. He didn’t know whether he was more dumbfounded at what Kang was telling him or that Kang apparently spoke Spanish.
“How did you know—”
“My wife and I went to Spain on holiday two years ago, sir. I don’t really speak the language, but I remember a few words.”
Tay closed his mouth and tried to get his mind around what he had just heard.
The name of the company that owned the safety deposit box meant umbrella in Spanish. He had a photograph of three men taken thirty-five years ago in which one of the men was holding up an umbrella on a sunny day and making the other two laugh. Another of the men in the picture had the key to that box and in it Tay had found ledgers with the third man’s initials on them.
What did all that mean?
Tay had no idea at all. But Kang had to be right. It wasn’t a coincidence.
It meant something.
***
“My father was an accountant,” Tay said. “But…well, things keep coming up that suggest he was involved in a lot more than accounting.”
Kang said nothing.
“I know now my father was somehow connected with Johnny the Mover. Not only because he was photographed with him at least this once, but because ledgers with his initials on them were in a safety deposit box that Johnny had access to.”
“But those ledgers would have to be at least thirty-five years old. What could they have to do with why this man was killed now?”
“I don’t know,” Tay admitted. “I really don’t, but there’s something else, too.”
Tay told Kang the story of Laura Anne Zimmerman and her memory of her father having told her once her mother was a spy.
“And she worked for my father, so—”
“What are you saying, sir? That your father was also a spy thirty-five years ago? And this Johnny the Mover was a spy back then, too? Even if you’re right, how does knowing all these people were spies get us any closer to finding out who killed this guy last week?”
It was a good question, of course, and Tay had no answer for it.
But he did have an idea where to start looking for one.
“When I found that photo, Robbie, I also found a lot of other old ledgers in the same trunk and some of them also had my father’s initials on them. You understand accounting a lot better than I do. I want you to have a look at them and see if anything jumps out at you. If we can figure out what my father was actually doing, maybe we’ll see what the connection with Johnny was.”
“I still don’t see how that helps us find his killer, sir.”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” Tay conceded. “But I’d like to see where it takes us anyway.”
“Fine with me, sir,” Kang shrugged. “When are you going to bring the ledgers in?”
Tay hadn’t planned that far ahead. He stopped and thought a moment.
“What are you doing today?”
“Well…nothing that can’t wait.”
“Okay, let’s go to my house and I’ll get the ledgers out for you. You can look them over right there.”
“Fine, sir. Just let me return one call. Five minutes?”
***
Kang was almost out the door when he stopped.
“I almost forgot, sir. One other thing. You remember the FMB report said they had found traces of flour on the dead man’s shoes?”
Tay honestly didn’t. So many things had happened since Kang had brought him the FMB report he didn’t even remember it saying the dead man was wearing shoes. But he didn’t want to admit that so he nodded.
“Well, they took another look at what they found. It was flour, all right, but not just flour. They were traces of HMX mixed in with it. HMX is a military grade explosive that’s used as a nuclear detonator and—”
“I know what HMX is, Sergeant, but what was it—”
Abruptly Tay leaned back and slapped his forehead with his open palm.
“For Christ’s sake, I’m an idiot! Why didn’t I think of that before?”
“Think of what, sir?”
“Aunt Jemima!”
“Who’s Aunt Jemima, sir?”
“Not who, Sergeant, what. Aunt Jemima was a brand of pancake mix that used to be sold in America.”
“I don’t understand what this has to do—”
“During World War Two, HMX was mixed with flour and smuggled into China to use in guerrilla operation behind the Japanese lines. The mixture looked and tasted just like ordinary flour so it was easy to get it past checkpoints and inspections. You could even cook the stuff into pancakes without it exploding and eat them without poisoning anyone. So they started calling it Aunt Jemima.”
Tay slapped the desk with one hand.
“Get on to one of your friends who’s involved in the bombing investigation, Sergeant! I’ll bet you a year’s salary the explosive the bombers used was HMX!”
“I already know it was, sir.”
That stopped Tay.
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, sir, there’s always a lot of gossip around here and I hear most of it. That’s what they’re saying. That the explosive was HMX.”
Tay slapped his desk again. “So there you go. There’s our connection. Johnny delivered the HMX mixed with flour and it passed right through customs without making a ripple. A package must have broken wherever they had it stored. That would explain the traces on his shoes.
“Do you want me to—”
“I sure as hell do. See what you can find out from customs about large shipments of flour into Singapore over the last couple of months. I need to know where they came from and who they went to.”
“They’re going to want to know why I’m asking, sir.”
“I already told you. Use the Mayling Aw case.”
Kang looked puzzled at that, and Tay didn’t really blame him.
“Look, Robbie, just make something up. Be creative. Say…maybe traces of flour were found in her apartment and the lab tests showed them to be contaminated…with rat droppings. Since neither she nor her sister ever worked in a bakery that we know of, it’s a loose end we’re trying to tie up.”
“Rat droppings, sir?”
“You can say it was moose shit for all I care, Sergeant. Make up anything you like. Just tie whatever it is to the Mayling Aw case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t be long about it. I want you at my house by three to start going through those ledgers.”
Kang rolled his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. He just nodded and went to work.