Free The Jade Figurine by Bill Pronzini Page B

don’t want to be involved.”
    “That is the only reason?”
    “Yes.”
    “You realize, there is no reward for the recovery of the Burong Chabak.”
    “I’m not interested in rewards or jade figurines, or even that a great amount of justice gets done,” I said. “I don’t like Van Rijk and I don’t owe anything to Marla King. The way I see it, one of them killed La Croix—and because he was a friend of sorts, I’d like you to have his killer. That’s the sum total of my motivations.”
    “I find it somewhat difficult to believe that a man of your background would turn his back on twenty thousand Straits dollars. That is the sum you said Van Rijk offered you, is it not?”
    “That’s it. And it doesn’t interest me in the least.”
    “Why not?”
    “Money doesn’t mean much to me these days.”
    “Money means something to every man.”
    “In varying degrees.”
    “You would have me believe that a man such as you, a man who smuggled arms and contraband for high prices, a man who once cast money about Singapore as if it were leaves on a pond—you would have me believe that man has no interest in money?”
    “Why do you think I gave up my villa on Ponggol Point, and the Eurasian women, and the parties, and the smuggling? Why do you think I live in a Chinatown tenement and work coolie labor on the river?”
    “Primarily because your commercial license was revoked, and you were forced to sell what remained of your possessions after the government seizure. It is also my theory that you had a falling out with certain of the men with whom you dealt, that you came into their disfavor.”
    “Bullshit,” I said.
    “Yes? What is your version, then?”
    “Pete Falco is my version, though I doubt if you’d understand. But you can understand this: I don’t work the black market any more, I don’t fly any more, I don’t play games with the government any more. Those are facts, and because they are you can’t discredit them. It’s also a fact that I don’t give a damn for money, except what I need for food and shelter, and that’s why Van Rijk’s twenty thousand Straits dollars is so much sawdust as far as I’m concerned.”
    Tiong’s eyes searched my face and found nothing he wanted. His own features were completely expressionless, but behind the mask lay doubt and suspicion. He was certain, in his one-track Asian cop’s mind, that I had some kind of underlying monetary motive for coming here as I had done. Once a penjahat, always and forever a penjahat —his philosophy was as simple and unyielding as that. And that righteously implacable certainty made him a dangerous man where I was concerned. If I had been trying to con him in any way, I would have been worried; as it was, even when he finally realized that I was being completely open and honest with him, his insular beliefs wouldn’t allow him to apologize to me, or to judge me in any different light. In his eyes I bore the indelible mark of Cain.
    He said finally, his mouth thinner than it had been, “Van Rijk is a man who cannot be trusted—a vicious man behind a genteel façade. Perhaps you fear him, Mr. Connell, and rightly so after his alleged attack on you the other evening. Perhaps you thought that your payment for helping him locate the girl would not be the twenty thousand Straits dollars, but a death sentence instead. That would be a good reason for coming to me, would it not? A simple matter of self-preservation.”
    “All right, there’s a little of that involved too—but not as much as you’d like to think. Van Rijk could be a snow bunny and I wouldn’t take a cent from him.”
    “Self-preservation,” Tiong said again, as if he liked the sound of the words. Then abruptly he leaned forward, and I knew even before he spoke that he had finally succeeded in dredging up an underlying motive for my visit. “If you had murdered the French national in order to obtain the Burong Chabak, and you found the others involved in the