Free The Jade Figurine by Bill Pronzini Page A

Inchon, South Korea, that had shattered what idealism remained in him and destroyed all his desire to return to the place of his youth; about the aimless wandering for two years following his discharge, looking for something, for roots, for peace of mind, looking and never finding; about the Belgian who ran a small air freight line out of Kuala Lumpur, and who had offered excitement and the fast dollar flying weapons into Indonesia during their struggle for independence with the Dutch; about the substitutes of easy living and big money for the things that should have counted in his life over six years and seventy-nine nighttime runs across the Straits of Malacca, dodging bullets, soldiers and himself during Sukarno’s konfrontasi with the Federation of Malaysia; about the prospect of even more of the bitch goddess Money, and the graduation to the black market smuggling of contraband and illicit art objects, and the contacts this lucrative hauling made for him; about the move to Singapore and the purchase of a couple of DC-3s and his own freight line in partnership with a quiet, honest young guy named Pete Falco, whom he had known in Korea —simply because Pete had a solid reputation with the government, and it had seemed like a very good idea to bring him in on the legitimate end of things; about the warm and genuine friendship that had grown and prospered between him and Pete, and the way he had thought he would be helping his friend by bringing him in on the smuggling angle he had so carefully concealed previously; about Pete’s refusal, and the way he had kept after him and finally convinced him to make that one run to Penang with the load of contraband silk; about Pete’s protests and the crash and the waking up in a hospital in Wellesley Province three days later with a broken leg and a few minor burns, hearing Pete’s scream of terror echoing in his mind, finding out that Pete was dead; about dying a little inside, and understanding what he was, what he had become, and giving it all up because the bitch goddess meant nothing to him any more—there was not much of anything that was meaningful in his life any more . . .
    I realized Tiong was speaking to me, and again I pushed the memories back into the dark corners of my mind. “What did you say?”
    “I asked you, Mr. Connell, why you came here this morning.”
    “To get you off my neck, that’s why.”
    “I do not believe I understand.”
    “I can put the principal suspect in the death of the Frenchman, La Croix, right in your lap,” I said. “And in the process, I can tie Van Rijk into it—and into the theft of the Burong Chabak from the Museum of Oriental Art.”
    Tiong’s back stiffened into a regimental pose. “What do you know of the Burong Chabak?”
    “I know that La Croix was one of the ones who stole it,” I told him. “The other was a woman named Marla King. Your friend the tobacco merchant was involved, too—I’m not sure how.”
    Tiong stared at me for a long moment. Then he folded his hands on top of the papers in my file and said patiently, “You will please explain how you came by this information.”
    I told him about Marla King’s visit to the godown the previous afternoon, and about the talk I had had with Van Rijk in my flat. I said then, “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the girl will get in touch with me sooner or later. When she does, I’ll set up a meeting with her, just as Van Rijk wants me to do. Then I’ll wait for him to call, and tell him the location of the meeting, and you can be there waiting to catch the two of them together. That way, you ought to be able to get one or the other to incriminate himself.”
    Tiong sat in silence, studying his folded hands in a speculative way. At least two minutes had crawled away before he raised his head to look at me again. “Why have you told me all of this, Mr. Connell?”
    “Because I want to be left alone. Everyone keeps trying to involve me in this thing, and I