I am a travel writer. I visit interesting places and write about what I experience. The pieces are published in the newspaper that employs me. Sometimes they are syndicated, and when they are, everybody makes a little more money.
The following story will not be syndicated. It can’t be because it won’t be published. Travel articles are meant to enlighten and entertain the prospective traveler and the casual reader. They are not meant to describe murder and correlated crimes.
People expect me to steer them to where the sun is hot and to where the snow is powdery. They expect me to tell them where to get the best pizza and where not to be cheated on souvenirs. No exposition on clotting puddles of blood, thank you.
But read on and that’s what you’re gonna get.
My assignment was Indonesia. Ten days max, my editor said. Pick your spot.
How do you pick a spot? Indonesia is the fifth most populous country in the world, a thirteen thousand six hundred seventy-seven island archipelago that stretches farther than from Seattle to Miami. It’s like asking an Indonesian journalist to come to the States for a week and a half and Pick A Spot. Disney World? NYC? The Grand Canyon?
What I didn’t pick is Bali. Everybody who does Indonesia does Bali. Colorful culture, sandy beaches, et cetera. They take their notes, shoot their films, and go home, figuring that there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing.
Maybe that’s what I should have done.
But I didn’t.
I picked Jakarta, the capital. I get that syndication stroke now and then because I scout out the unusual, the exotic, the obscure.
If you can call a city of eight or nine or ten million obscure. Nobody knows the exact population. Leave the modern downtown core of vertical glass and steel glitz and Jakarta is a mazelike sprawl of neighborhoods and villages. It’s flat, hot, and growing like crabgrass. The Los Angeles of Asia.
By the fourth day I had seen the obligatory tourist attractions. I had visited Old Batavia, bailiwick of the early Dutch colonials. I had duly observed the massive monuments erected at crippling expense by Sukarno in the 1960’s. I had seen the waterfront. I had seen the spectacular Istiqlal mosque, Southeast Asia’s largest. I had perused any number of markets, museums, and exhibits. I had toured batik and rattan factories. Interesting, yes. But enough already.
It was time to venture off the beaten track.
Which, of course, required the services of a becak.
The Hotel Indonesia was located on Jalan Thamrin, a manic ten-lane throughway that was Jakarta’s main drag. The hotel was partially responsible for my off-the-beaten-track itch.
Remember The Year of Living Dangerously, the Mel Gibson-Sigourney Weaver movie set in 1965 at the time of the attempted communist coup? Living dangerously was putting it mildly, and the journalists covering the event hung out at the hotel.
I’d like to be able to report that I could still smell the intrigue. But that would be a lie. It seemed to have become a quiet venue for visiting delegates attending various conferences and seminars. In other words, bureaucrats. Boring.
Which brings me to the becak. More or less pronounced bet-jak, it is a three-wheeled pedicab. The driver sits above and behind his passenger, who sits in a padded seat under an awning. Once there were in excess of a hundred thousand Jakartan becaks. Now the number is below twenty thousand and dropping rapidly.
The becak was vanishing by government decree. It created a bad image for a modern and metropolitan international city. It was a backward, inhumane eyesore. It was a vestige of colonialism, the native wracking his body to tote his better. It was a nuisance.
All true. No argument. But the becak was also the conveyance of the poor who could not afford a taxi or even a bus. The becak was integral to mainstream Jakarta.
Long banned in the city center, the becak was being scooped up in a widening radius by government trucks, like so much garbage. They were dumped into Jakarta Bay, where they served as a fish reef. Total eradication was the goal.
So I couldn’t just step out of the Hotel Indonesia at high noon and hail a becak.
But there was a way.
Jakarta was a restless and vibrant twenty-four hour per day city of night owls and early birds. People were up late or early, visiting, doing things, ducking the ferocious midday sun. The government trucks, however, did not patrol at night. Becaks could ply their trade close to the affluent core and fade into the back roads and alleys when the sun and the trucks appeared.
I walked into the pre-dawn. Four blocks from the hotel, on a secondary street of small shops, I found my becak driver.
He was short, leathery, and smiling. His name was Malik. Through a combination of gestures, handbook Indonesian, and a smattering of English and Dutch and generic pidgin we managed an agreement. For a price he would be my transportation and my teacher.
At the outset, before the trouble, it was a mutually satisfactory arrangement. He was grateful to have an exclusive passenger who was paying him relatively well, I to have an insider as a guide.
We toured the neighborhoods, which were actually a patchwork of self-contained villages known as kampungs. Over the years, people had migrated from the countryside, essentially bringing their kampungs with them. They ranged from modest middle class to squalid, but were generally quite tidy, considering the numbers of residents shoehorned into them. Kampung streets were often little more than footpaths, barely wide enough for a becak. Canals built by Dutch colonials homesick for Amsterdam provided another means of kampung transportation. I won’t tell you how the canal water had taken on the color and aroma it had. The common denominator, though, was the people. They were almost without exception friendly and sincere.
I asked Malik about the government crackdown on becaks. He shrugged and said what else could he do? I said I’d read that the government was retraining drivers to be shoemakers and blacksmiths and vegetable vendors and so forth. He laughed and said that he was fifty-three years old, and that the average life expectancy of an Indonesian male was fifty-one. Let them make cobblers and peddlers out of the young, he said; I’ve been statistically dead for two years. And besides, Malik added, he ate and slept in his becak. What would he do for a home? He came from a rural village, but hadn’t been back there for years.
I told Malik he was lucky they hadn’t already confiscated his becak. His smile widened into a grin as he pointed out a rust spot on the otherwise immaculate framework. They had grabbed his becak. He had paid a fisherman to locate, hook, and reel it in.
Malik and I parted at noontime, when the blistering sun was straight up. When we rendezvoused in the wee hours of the next morning, he was on foot and he wasn’t smiling. He said we couldn’t do anything together today. I insisted on knowing why. He insisted that I didn’t want to know. I insisted that I did. This went on until I finally out-insisted him.
Malik sighed in defeat and led me into a kampung half a kilometer away. The homes were rather substantial — cement and wooden frame. We weren’t alone, but we weren’t members of the proverbial sardine can, either. Early risers and insomniacs were about. Shopkeepers were setting up their stalls. Malik was visibly nervous at the increasing humanity and walked so fast I had to jog to keep pace.
He stopped at a space between a shop that sold car bumpers and a stucco-walled home and gestured into the void. I hesitated. Malik considerately handed me a book of matches. I ventured into the darkness with a stride too short and jerky to be termed intrepid.
I lit a match. Seated in Malik’s becak was a Chinese gentleman right out of Somerset Maugham’s Asia. White linen suit, panama hat, sandals. He was dead. Buried nearly to the hilt in his chest was a kris, a centuries-old much-prized Indonesian antique, a dagger as beautiful as it was lethal. The ritzy shops on and in the vicinity of Jalan Thamrin offered the kris at breathtaking prices. The handle, hilt, and what I could see of the blade were gold-inlaid. It could be priceless.
Who is he? I asked hoarsely.
I honestly do not know, I just found him there, Malik said.
Recall the earlier reference to “clotting puddles of blood”? Suffice it to say that my traction as I backed out of the cubbyhole was less than firm. I said police to Malik in seven languages. He shook his head, an emphatic no in any tongue.
Why no police? I asked as Malik clamped an iron grip on my wrist and towed me away.
A dead body is in my becak, he said. What are the police to think? Who would be their first suspect?
Good point. Not to mention that my proximity to Malik qualified me as an accomplice. My readership had no interest in accommodations offered by the Jakarta jail.
Come on, I said, let’s go for a walk. I’ll buy breakfast.
No, we have to go back, Malik said suddenly, snapping his fingers, reversing our direction, we have to get the body out of my becak; the police will find him and trace the number on the becak to me.
We? Uh, wait a minute, it’s still circumstantial.
The gloom on Malik’s face told me he was hiding something. What? I demanded, digging in my heels to halt us.
His name is Mr. Lee, Malik admitted.
Mr. Lee, I thought cynically, a Chinese John Smith. Who exactly is — was Mr. Lee, please?
A sometimes regular nocturnal customer, Malik told me. You, sir, are not my only regular, I must confess. Mr. Lee is in town a week, two weeks, is gone a month, two months, and the cycle repeats.
Where do you drive him? I asked.
Different places and same places, he said.
Swell, I said. He was a thief, a smuggler of krises?
No, no, Malik swore; I never saw him carry a thing.
I accepted his word for the moment. I had little choice. We returned to the murder scene. The becak was there. Mr. Lee was not. I looked around. It was daylight now, but there were fewer people in the vicinity than there had been when we discovered the corpse, and those who remained refused eye contact. Selective myopia, a universal affliction in such situations.
Malik retrieved his becak. There wasn’t a spot of blood on the vehicle. I sat in it. Where to? he asked. Elsewhere, I said, anywhere but here.
Malik began pedaling. I felt a lump. I reached in the crack between the seat and seat back and pulled out a ring. It had a heavy gold setting. Small diamonds surrounded a large translucent green stone.
I asked Malik to stop. I got up and showed him the ring. His mouth fell open.
Do you know a jeweler you can trust? I asked.
I know everyone, he replied.
Malik took me deep into yet another kampung. Its market was as pungent and cacophonous as any Middle East bazaar. Our destination jewelry shop sold primarily baubles and imported knockoffs, cheap Rolex imitations and the like, but Malik and the jeweler were well acquainted. After a whispered conference, the shopkeeper invited us behind a curtain, into the rear of the shop.
We shared tea and cordialities. Then the jeweler examined the ring. Real gold in the setting, he said. Real diamonds too, perhaps two carats total weight.
And the green stone?
He shrugged. He could only guess. Burmese jadeite, he thought. The finest jade in the world. Jadeite was not found on the island of Java. It was a gemstone seldom seen in Jakarta. He wouldn’t know jade from a piece of glass.
Value, please?
He shrugged again and said maybe one hundred million rupiah. Quick mental arithmetic converted the rupiah to Yankee dollars: over fifty thousand of them.
The jeweler asked if we wished to sell the ring.
I said it was not mine to sell.
No matter, he said; I could not afford to buy.
I paid him a small appraisal fee and we left.
What next? Malik asked.
Good question, I said, answering his with mine: What “same places” did you drive Mr. Lee?
Actually just one same place, Malik said.
Will you show me?
After a pause, Malik said yes. But not now.
When?
Tonight. Midnight. When the night sky is as dark as it can be.
So why am I doing this? I asked myself as I yawned and climbed into Malik’s becak. The truth, I replied. Truth and justice. Well, sure, yeah, that’s part of it. But another factor is that we’ve been hanging on to (and have been seen hanging on to!) a valuable piece of probable contraband that is evidence in a crime we can’t prove took place.
In other words, I’m up to my you-know-what in alligators. I’ve got nothing to lose by lowering my head, plunging forward, and playing detective. I figure we’ll get to the bottom of the mess, then I’ll put the ring and an anonymous note into an envelope and drop it in a mailbox at the airport about ninety seconds before I board my plane. I’ll do the right thing, have myself an adventure, and escape intact.
Funny how things work out.
Malik entered Menteng, a close-in ’burb, a neighborhood that was by no stretch a kampung. Menteng was green and leafy. Menteng was paved roads and street lamps. Menteng was spacious villas, orange tile roofs, and walls of concrete and hedges. Menteng was where you lived if you were a Jakarta somebody and could afford digs costing a billion rupiah and up.
Malik stopped. We pushed his becak into thick shrubbery to conceal it.
Mr. Lee always came to Menteng this time of night; he made me hide my becak here and climb this tree, he said. He pointed at a bushy banyan across the street. Keep quiet and out of sight, Mr. Lee told me. Mr. Lee was gone one or two hours. I got cold and sore being so long in the tree. One night I followed him.
To where?
Come on, Malik said.
A left, a right, and a left, and we were there, at the iron gate of a residence that need not feel inferior to its neighbors. Inside the gate was a driveway and a three-car garage. But for the flat terrain and drenching humidity we could have been in Beverly Hills. Lights were on, draperies not fully drawn.
Who lives here?
Malik didn’t know. The night he followed Mr. Lee, he had gone no farther than this. I had a queasy feeling he would go farther now, though, a hunch confirmed by squeaking gate hinges. He opened the gate just wide enough to slip through. Two more hinge squeaks allowed me to make it through. Sideways.
I trailed Malik to a lighted bank of windows, thinking how overrated “adventure” was. Henceforth, I vowed, when I visit a strange land, I shall confine myself to folk dancing festivals and the cathedral.
The windows were jalousies, but the louvered panes were cranked shut despite the temperature’s being a typical seventy-five or eighty degrees. Air conditioning, of course.
The windows were also high, several inches above the top of my head. I told Malik to get on my shoulders. He said no, you sit on mine, you are the holder of the ring who must see faces. I’m twice his size, but by the way he stated his position I knew he’d lose face if we didn’t at least give it a try.
Malik was as solid as a pillar. Thus elevated, I pressed my face to the glass and saw a bearded Caucasian male of about forty pacing the room. Although I couldn’t make out what he was saying, even the language he was speaking, his tone and expression and jerky hand gestures suggested extreme frustration and anger. He was wearing a pistol belt, khaki shorts, and a matching shirt with epaulets.
He was ranting and raving at an Indonesian male in his thirties. Garbed in the first polyester leisure suit I had seen in over a decade, and in spite of being Javanese, a member of a slender and lithe race, he enjoyed the dimensions of a sumo wrestler.
He was dealing with the tirade by puffing furiously on a cigarette and staring at the floor. I was reminded of a circus bear whipped into submission by a sadistic trainer.
My surveillance ended as quickly as it started. Either my breath fogged the glass, attracting the bearded one’s attention, or he merely happened to focus in my direction. Whichever, he began pointing at me, shouting louder. No Neck had spotted me too, and was flexing fists the size of boxing gloves.
I came off Malik’s shoulders as if I had been bucked from the world’s meanest rodeo bull. Verbalization was unnecessary. I lit out of there, Malik at my heels. He passed me, but I kept him in sight.
He was already in the banyan when I arrived, stretching an arm down to help me upward. Within a minute, the two men were there, almost directly below us, walking, looking, muttering.
The bearded one, looking even more like a refugee from one of those magazines that glorify mercenary soldiers, was carrying an automatic pistol. No Neck was wielding a kris. A kris with a wavy, gold-inlaid blade.
Malik and I held our breath until they passed. He whispered that we should stay the night.
Good advice. We did.
A note of interest. Jakarta is situated at seven degrees south latitude, just about as tropical as tropical can be. But if you spend the night in a banyan tree while pursued by killers, you will become cold.
The next morning I was afraid to go to my hotel room, afraid I had somehow been traced. An irrational and paranoiac fear, true, but I stuck with Malik nonetheless. He maintained an outward calm, but we didn’t travel a familiar route. He, who knew everyone, was as much a stranger as I.
I again pleaded that we seek professional assistance. Malik relented. I thought we were bound for a police precinct station. I thought otherwise when we stopped in the core of a kampung, at a wooden and corrugated iron house.
It was the home of Malik’s dukun.
A dukun is a traditional Javanese mystic. A dukun is consulted for his magical powers to cure diseases, to discombobulate enemies, and to predict the future.
Swell.
If age were a valid yardstick of wisdom, we had it made. The dukun was a graybeard as old as Malik and I combined. Malik explained our dilemma, and I gave the dukun the jade ring to examine.
The dukun pondered awhile, then recited a short chant, gave us cups of foul-tasting herb tea, and handed me the ring as if it were on fire.
The ring is evil, said the dukun.
Plausible, Malik and I agreed. But what should we do?
Return it to the evildoing owner, advised the dukun. The evil departed his foul heart into the ring. It will stay locked in the green stone and infect you both until it can escape to its origin. Nor can Mr. Lee’s soul depart to the abode of the dead specified by his particular religion until the ring evil escapes.
Will the ring help catch Mr. Lee’s killer? I asked.
The dukun shrugged ancient, bony shoulders. He could not answer; he was a magician, not a detective.
We thanked and paid the dukun. Malik’s mood had improved substantially. We have a purpose, he said, a solution.
I was not so upbeat. I wondered how to express my feelings without insulting Malik’s dukun and therefore Malik too. I turned through my pocket dictionary, seeking the Indonesian words for “figurative” and “literal.”
I know everyone, Malik reminded me before I could open my mouth; I’ll ask around, I’ll find out who the men in that splendid Menteng home are.
I repocketed my dictionary. So much for reason.
It didn’t take much time or money for a network of taxi drivers and merchants and people with no apparent occupation to identify the owner of that swank Menteng address. His name, quite appropriately, was Hardcastle.
Hardcastle was either American, Canadian, or Australian. Nobody was certain. His mercenary soldier apparel was no facade. Hardcastle had been in Zimbabwe when it was Rhodesia, Zaire when it was the Belgian Congo. He was no stranger to Central America and the Indochina nations.
Hardcastle had evidently retired from the kill-for-hire profession. With a nice nest egg. Besides the villa, he owned a yupscale jewelry shop on Jalan Thamrin.
Malik’s sources weren’t as sure about No Neck. He was believed to be an unemployed actor who did odd jobs for Hardcastle, but they were rarely seen together.
No Neck had played a villain in a dozen martial arts films, but could not or would not pull his punches. He was hurting the good guys, costing the production companies too much money. No longer would any Jakarta filmmaker risk casting him. He also had ties to an assortment of lowlife types — thugs and burglars and whatnot.
Quite a pair, I said. What do you recommend we do?
Easy, Malik said, smiling cheerily. You go see him.
Me? And say what?
You will think of the right thing to say when the time comes. I have the utmost confidence you shall.
Sure. Yeah. Easy.
Unshaven, wearing clothing for the second day, stained by banyan sap, I took a cab to a thirty story office tower on Jalan Thamrin. The lower level was a frigidly air-conditioned arcade of glittery boutiques and expensive restaurants. I could have been in the affluent maw of Chicago or Hong Kong or Berlin.
Hardcastle’s shop was on the mezzanine. Gold leaf on the glass door simply announced Hardcastle, Ltd.
He was too modest. The rings, necklaces, and earrings on display sported rubies, sapphires, star sapphires, and — yes, jade. You didn’t need a schooled eye to know that this stuff wasn’t paste. If that wasn’t enough to convince me that we weren’t talking about costume jewelry, no price tags were visible and the young Indonesian clerk in the spiffy suit was as haughty as his Rodeo Drive and Fifth Avenue counterparts.
Well, perhaps my appearance and aroma put him off, but I think the young man would flare his nostrils at the Prince of Wales. I asked, please, to see Mr. Hardcastle.
Impossible, he said. Mr. Hardcastle is indisposed.
Un-indispose him, I politely requested. Inform him that I would like to speak to him regarding a gold and diamond and Burmese jade ring.
The clerk reluctantly complied. Mr. Hardcastle emerged from the back room. It was him, the bearded one. In a silk suit today, though, not the soldier of fortune outfit.
How may I serve you, sir?
Hardcastle spoke evenly, in the neutral accent of a man with no nationality. He was playing it as cool as the interior of the building, but there was a glint of recognition in his eyes.
I also played it cool, casually perusing his wares, hoping he did not hear my knees knock. No krises for sale, I commented matter-of-factly.
I deal in fine jewelry, he said, not antiques and curios.
A shame, I replied. Too bad. I’m in the market for a rare and unique example. Something in a wavy blade and gold inlay.
Hardcastle glared at his clerk, who was at the end of the counter, dusting, fussing with the goods, all ears. He retired to the rear in a hurry.
You told my boy you wanted to discuss a jade ring. What’s this about a kris? Take a second gander. See any old daggers in my shop?
I do want to discuss a jade ring, I said vaguely. I described it.
Okay. Let’s have a look.
Uh-uh. I don’t have it on me.
You buying or selling or wasting my time? he said in a tone and with a gaze that removed any doubt that he could kill for a pay-check.
None of the above. I’m trading. Can you locate a kris of comparable worth?
Could be.
Are you interested in the jade ring?
Could be. I’ll give you my address. Come to my home this evening with the ring and I should have a kris—
No, thanks, I interrupted, equal parts peeved and curious about why he persisted with the charade. He recognized me, I knew he did.
Where? he said. You name it.
I made an impulse decision. Five P.M., I blurted. The National Monument. Monas.
Hardcastle grinned and said, Monas at five it is. Don’t be late.
I walked out, more frightened than before. If that were possible.
It had been too easy, Hardcastle had been too agreeable. I met Malik and related the encounter.
You did well, he said; you picked the busiest place in town at one of the busiest times.
I know, I said. Maybe Hardcastle won’t kill me in front of a thousand witnesses. I hope.
You did right, Malik said. You did fine.
Thanks, I guess. Do I really meet Hardcastle?
Yes. You must give him the ring. You could not have taken it to his shop. You might not have departed alive. You will give him the ring, and you will accept a kris in exchange. He will be suspicious if he acquires something for nothing.
Then?
Then we will be free of the evil.
And what about you while this is happening? I asked Malik.
He smiled. Me? he said. I will be exceedingly grateful.
The National Monument, Monumen Nasional, a white marble obelisk called Monas for short, was patterned after our Washington Monument. Another Sukarno inspiration, completed in 1961, Monas betters our needle on two counts. It has a pedestal base, and on top is a bronze flame coated with seventy-seven pounds of gold leaf.
Sukarno intended Monas as a testament to the strength of the Republic. Some Indonesians call it paku jagat, “axis of the world.” Others, less reverent, refer to it as Sukarno’s last erection.
It is located in the center of Medan Merdeka Independence Field, a square kilometer of neatly landscaped park. At five o’clock Jakarta was awakening from its afternoon siesta. People on foot and on vehicles clustered to the park.
A thousand witnesses, hell. I’d have two thousand, three thousand. Bring on Hardcastle!
I was a few minutes early. He was waiting on the south lawn midway between Monas and the adjacent street, waving to me. In gray slacks and white shirt, he looked like a tropical Western diplomat, a mid-level embassy staffer. Congeniality was written all over his face.
I was scared spitless.
But I went to him.
I stopped just out of arm’s reach. A gaggle of laughing children ran between us.
Move in closer, Hardcastle said. I won’t bite. I don’t want to shout.
Do you have a kris? I asked, firm and businesslike.
He stepped backward. Do you have a ring?
I looked around. No Neck wasn’t in sight. I stepped forward and said — words I didn’t know were there tumbled out of my mouth— You killed the Chinese man in a becak.
He cheated me, Hardcastle said pleasantly.
How?
Please allow me to examine your ring.
I tossed it to him. He held it to the sky and squinted. Same one, same garbage, he said with a twisted snarl I hadn’t seen on a diplomat’s face lately.
I have it on good authority that the gold and diamonds are genuine and the jade is the finest Burmese jadeite, I said.
He laughed. Genuine for a no-class loser, he said. Like you. Look at yourself, you look like a transient. The setting is ten-karat gold and the diamonds are chips. The garbage is the piece of glass you’re pawning off on me as jade.
I don’t understand. You did business with Mr. Lee on a regular basis.
He was moving on. The authorities were putting the heat on him. I have an associate in government with wide eyes and big ears. He tipped me. Lee figured he’d rip me off as a parting shot.
Mr. Lee was smuggling?
And stealing. Hot jewels and avoidance of import duties are proportional to increased profits, he said. Phony papers aren’t that difficult to secure. Plenty of governmental hands are palms up, for the grease. Every piece in my showcase is pedigreed.
Permit me a wild guess, I said. Mr. Lee was a two-way smuggler. Rubies and premium jadeite from Burma, sapphires and star sapphires out of Thailand and Sri Lanka. Gemstones in to Jakarta, to Hardcastle, Ltd.; collectible krises to Mr. Lee and ultimately the best art and curio shops in Hong Kong and Bangkok.
Not bad, Hardcastle said, slowly stepping back.
Why the disappearing act with Mr. Lee’s body and the becak?
My colleague met Mr. Lee in the kampung. Sometimes he met Lee there, sometimes Lee came to my home. Since I smelled a ripoff, the kampung was preferable to home. The becak boy hadn’t arrived yet and—
Boy? He is older than you.
Hardcastle laughed. You know what I mean, he said. A figure of speech. Anyhow, we exchanged a kris for—
The kris Lee was killed with?
You want to hear my story, friend? Yeah, that kris. My colleague examined the ring, saw it was this phony, and the rest is, as they say, history. The becak boy turned up before my boy could dispose of the body. When the becak boy went off with you, he got rid of it at last. Where’s the real ring? Cough it up.
The real ring? Then it dawned on me. Because we employed the same becak driver, I said, you decided I was affiliated with the late Mr. Lee. Did you think I was replacing him?
You aren’t?
I shook my head. I am but a humble travel writer. Why, by the way, are you being so candid with me?
I have a hunch you’re telling the truth, friend. It’s a shame you aren’t the businessman I thought you were, Hardcastle said. He grinned, dropped the ring, and walked off.
I answered my own question, and the answer was highly relevant to the saying about dead men telling no tales. Hardcastle’s subtle backstepping had drawn us to the edge of the street.
I scanned the traffic, desperately searching for a needle in a moving haystack of cars, bicycles, motorbikes, trucks, and three-wheeled taxis. There he was! No Neck, dwarfing a motor scooter, veering toward me, scant meters away, two or three seconds away, unbuttoning his jacket, exposing the golden glint of a kris hilt.
I lurched back and stumbled, barely keeping upright. No Neck bore in, fist wrapped around the hilt. Ready to fillet me with a single slash and vanish into the anonymity of Jakarta traffic, my thousands of witnesses instead a human screen.
Malik appeared, his arms a blur. A piece of debris, a two by four, something like that, thrown in No Neck’s path. The scooter nose up, flipping, No Neck on the pavement, on his back. Malik gone, blended into the crowd. Policemen, three of them, in uniform, presenting badges and guns to the dazed No Neck.
I completely lost my balance. I landed on my butt, on the grass and on something hard and sharp. The ring.
The morning after.
Lots happening. The body of an unidentified adult male Caucasian in gray slacks and white shirt was found floating in a canal. I wonder who. In another story, a gangster and former movie actor was arrested at Medan Merdeka with a kris that resembled one recently stolen from a museum. The Jakarta press was having a field day.
I saw Malik to say goodbye. The appearance of the police had been no coincidence. Malik, who knew everyone, had arranged it via third parties, thus staying clear of the mess himself.
I gave him the ring. He was grateful. I said nonsense, it was the least I could do for the man who saved my life.
He said that his dukun had advised that since Hardcastle, the evildoer, had touched the ring, the evil had escaped to its source.
Poor Hardcastle, we commiserated. We came to the conclusion that No Neck had thought, however incorrectly, that Hardcastle had set him up.
What will you do with the ring? I asked.
For the gold and diamond chips, my jeweler will pay the equivalent of four hundred American dollars, he said; as much as I earn in one year.
Retirement? I asked. Return to your home village?
And do what? No, he said; I will save the money and spend it when need be.
Including paying fishermen to rescue your becak?
He smiled. Maybe, he said. Maybe my becak will be Jakarta’s last.
While waiting at the airport I read the afternoon edition of Jakarta’s English-language paper. The kris No Neck carried was discovered to be a fake, a reproduction of the type peddled to gullible tourists. The police were hanging on to him, though. There were plenty of other things about which they wished to chat.
I wondered where the real kris was. I supposed Hardcastle had taken that secret to his grave.
My flight was announced. I got on the plane and flew to Bali.