“Goodbye, little girl. Take care of yourself.”
I turned away from her and went out and down the stairs. All the way down I felt an odd sense of regret at the finality of our parting-and a feeling of having used Tina Kellogg without giving anything of substance or importance in return, the way you feel after spending the night making love to a nice girl you care nothing about at all…
Chapter Seventeen
The city lay within an enfolding canopy of heat, like stones and sand dabs imprisoned under the smothering weight of a transparent jellyfish. As soon as I stepped from the vestibule of Tina’s building, into the glare of the sun, sweat formed and ran on my face and under my arms, and the weakness made my legs begin to ache again.
I walked slowly, west toward Geylang Road. I felt conspicuous in the bright sports shirt, even though I knew that I wasn’t, and I wondered if passers-by could detect enervation in the way I moved. But no one seemed to look at me. Recogition was still a definite threat; I knew Tiong would have a picture of me on the front page of the morning edition of the Straits Times under one of those scare heads-and while apathy and disinterest are prevalent in Singapore, there are always those who read and observe. Even dressed as I was, I could be spotted at any time, by anybody from an old Chinese nona to a fat British tourist from Liverpool.
The thing I had to do, and quickly, was to get off the streets and into a safe house somewhere. Going to Wong Sot directly and immediately seemed like the answer, but it wasn’t. Tiong would have regular patrols along the river, for one thing, and for another, Wong Sot’s godown was a place which saw hundreds of people in and out every day, rendering it useless as a safe house. Too, he dealt only in the relatively uncomplicated service of smuggling human cargo in a cheap and efficient manner, and for the prices he charged, you couldn’t expect much more than a hollowed-out burrow beneath sacks of rice in the hold of an ancient junk.
No, Wong Sot was out as an immediate destination-but I would have to call him as soon as possible so that he could make arrangements. There was never any waiting period. You called him and told him you wanted passage to Sumatra or Kundur or Bintan or Mersing; then you haggled over the price and settled on a figure, and he gave you a time and a place the same night. Assembly-line smuggling. Guaranteed only as long as it lasts.
A safe house in which to spend the remainder of the day was no real problem. Both North Bridge Road and Victoria Street were lined with movie theaters, showing British imports, American imports, West German imports, Japanese imports. Air-conditioned anonymity. And most of the houses had public telephones, which meant I could make the call from one of them without running additional risk.
I reached Geylang Road, crossed it with a stream of pedestrians at the corner light, and entered Andrews Road; Geylang was too well-traveled, and I thought that my safest course would be to take one of the narrower parallel streets. As I approached the first of these, Merapoh, one of the sleek new city buses pulled to the curb and discharged a clot of passengers. I slowed to make my way through them. In the outside lane on the street a car bearing the insignia of the Singapore Police appeared around the bus, moving without haste. There were four helmeted constables in the car, and they were watching the ebb and flow of foot traffic on both sides of the street.
I turned abruptly, instinctively, and pushed my way into a small store advertising Malay arts and crafts. The police car stopped for the light at the corner. I moved deeper into the store and pretended to examine a display of silver trinkets, watching instead Andrews Road through the shop’s long front window. The light changed finally and the car pulled ahead, still without hurry, and then disappeared from my view.
My mouth was dry, and I worked saliva through it. It could have been nothing more than a random patrol; and then again, it could be that Dinessen’s body had been found and Tiong had made a connection between the Swede and me, and a bulletin on Dinessen’s Citroen had located the car farther along Geylang Road, where I had parked it the night before. If the latter was the case, the city vehicle I had just seen wouldn’t be the only one patrolling the area. I would have to be more careful-very careful; if it had not been for that bus…
A smiling Malayan girl in a brightly colored sarong walked toward me from across the shop. I made a negative gesture with my head and moved to the door. Plenty of vehicular and pedestrian traffic, but no one and no machine with official markings. I wiped oily moisture from my forehead and went out to join the throng on the sidewalk.
Up to the corner and across Andrews Road and west on Merapoh, past the southern greensward of the block-square Royal Palms Hotel. Two blocks, three, four. My head began to ache pulsingly again, and the garish sports shirt was matted to the bare skin on my back and stomach; rancid perspiration burned in my crotch. Heat blurred the edges of my vision. I felt as if I were shambling like a drunk, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it all the way to Victoria Street on foot.
I stopped under a corner awning to rest, keeping my back to the street. A bus, I thought; I’ve got to take a chance on a bus. I waited there until one came along, and boarded it, and stood among the sweating bodies of the natives and the tourists crowded at the rear. It was oppressive, stifling in there. Nausea churned in my belly. I held onto the overhead strap and kept my eyes shut and my head down, enduring the lethargic lurch and sway of the bus.
A long time later we crossed the Kallang River and entered Victoria Street. I got off at Rochore Road, a block from Bugis Street and the teeming open-air food stalls. The thought of food increased the nausea. I bypassed Bugis Street and went along Victoria for another half-block, and there was a small theater with a huge multicolored marquee shading the sidewalk in front.
I stepped under it and up to the box office, averting my face from the old man inside the cage without being furtive about it. But I needn’t have bothered; he was a sleepy-eyed Oriental who spoke and acted like an android on low charge. He told me in a by-rote voice that there was a telephone in the restrooms, and I bought a ticket. The lobby was air-conditioned, all right. I sucked hungrily at the refrigerated air as I crossed the deserted expanse to a door marked with a Chinese character and with the Malay word Laki and the English word Men. At one of the basins I doused my head with cold water and drank a little to ease the rawness in my throat. The nausea receded. Better now, a little better. The bus ride, in my memory, seemed almost as dim and half-real as last night’s dreams.
The wall phone was just that: a wall phone, with no facilities for privacy. But the toilet was empty. I found one of the coins the old man had given me in change, and then fumbled through the Singapore directory hanging from the bottom of the telephone unit until I located the number of Wong Sot’s godown.
A voice answered in Chinese on the fourth ring. I said, “Wong Sot?”
The voice said, “Yayss?” in sibilant English. If a reptile born in China had the power of speech, it would sound just like that, I thought.
“I’m a sailor looking for a ship,” I said. Catch-phrase.
Pause. Then, “Yayss?”
“I want to go to Sumatra.”
“Yayss?”
“Tonight.”
“You ’Melican?”
“What difference does that make?”
“No diff-lence. Plice one hund-ed fifty dollah.”
“The hell it is.” Americans are prime in Southeast Asia, all through the Orient; when the natives see one coming, the price doubles. Wong Sot was no different from his more legitimate counterparts. “I know the going rate. I can pay seventy-five.”
“One hund-ed.”
“All right.” I would need a few dollars when I arrived in Sumatra, and I had no intention of giving Wong Sot all my money; but this was not the time for haggling. I could talk him down to seventy-five, I was certain, when I met him vis-a-vis. “When and where?”